A lot of the 3-Q circuits were designed in an era when a single transistor was more expensive than a premium opamp today, compared in buying power. So there was a drive to make the best circuit with as little active devices as possible.
That doesn't mean that you can't make better circuits if this constraint is removed - you really can, and the nostalgia for those simple circuits is totally misplaced, albeit understandable.
The phono preamp by Hannes Allmaier in Linear Audio is a case in point: the original Baxandall 3-Q phono pre, optimized and upgraded with, for instance, a 3-terminal voltage regulator that is very much more complex internally than the whole preamp!
Jan
Indeed. Rupert Neve surely was a good designer, but he had constrains of cost, size, power etc as anyone. If he hadn't had them, it is a sure bet that he would have designed more involved circuits with even better performance.
In this 21st century we also have constraints but different ones then he had, so we can for the same cost and effort design circuits that run circles around his, in objective performance, transparancy, linearity, reliability etc *.
This is a peculiar process, that has been discovered long ago; it's called 'progress'.
Jan
* that does not mean that one cannot like the sound of those constrained circuits - that's personal preference and you can't argue with that.
With console modules, the input and output transformers were the most expensive items.
Impedance matching, gain of active stages, feedback topology, freq range were governed by –or designed around-these transformers (mostly the input one).
Ground loop isolation, establishing a well defined local reference voltage and balanced/unbalanced mode change were also attained through them.
George
Impedance matching, gain of active stages, feedback topology, freq range were governed by –or designed around-these transformers (mostly the input one).
Ground loop isolation, establishing a well defined local reference voltage and balanced/unbalanced mode change were also attained through them.
George
Sims , measure out the door , must be good ...
Long time passed is forgiving to 'sound quality'
Actually SOTA FROM THE LATE 60's , 70's still sound good today , i used to do regular comparisions a couple years back ...
Recording industry in the Eastern block was state owned and state had to have the best!
They used the same tools, John!
Studer C37s and 80s tape recorders, Studer consoles, mics by Neumann (U47, SM2, SM69, U49, U50, U87), Telefunken (250), Shoeps, AKG .. EMT plates, Neumann VMS cutting lathes, measurement equipment by Bruel&Kjaer.. you name it! Some Eastern equipment was very good as well, btw.
When it comes to putting out some LSD influenced rock music, sure, that one was kept away from state owned studios (from any studios, in fact), but classical ... mmm... I am still wondering what treasures Russians might have in their Melodiya vaults in Moscow.
One of my favourite live recordings of Louis Armstrong (I'm not a big fan of him, btw.) is this one, made in 1965 in Prague! Note the East German tube CMV563 Neumanns (M7 capsule, EC92 tube) on the stage
http://www.discogs.com/Louis-Armstrong-Lucerna-1965-Lucerna-Hall-Prague-1965-Live/release/1736385
Here are a few docs about Siemens Austria console and Studer A80 delivery to Czech TV in '70s as a proof.
I do have a few recordings from USSR era and they are not at the same level as what we had here, i was told not to riaa curve ,maybe the issue , if not so, then i can understand why you guys hate analog ..
Last edited:
Sims , measure out the door , must be good ...
Not exactly. All heard in the last week from, of all folks, a cell phone designer.
1) The best measured design is not necessarily the best sounding design.
2) The "hearing, feeling" test is the most important one to pass.
3) This is also considered an objective not subjective test.
One of my favourite live recordings of Louis Armstrong (I'm not a big fan of him, btw.) is this one, made in 1965 in Prague! Note the East German tube CMV563 Neumanns (M7 capsule, EC92 tube) on the stage
http://www.discogs.com/Louis-Armstrong-Lucerna-1965-Lucerna-Hall-Prague-1965-Live/release/1736385
Thanks for the tip, just ordered one from the interwebs for 2 Euro's.
BTW, in the sixties and early seventies, my parents took the family on vacation to East block countries, so I spent many of my youth summers behind the iron curton.
My father was an early audiophile and my mother loved music, so on each of these holidays, they stocked up on LP's. The primary reason was low cost, but the quality was as good or sometimes even better than what the capitalist firms where putting out.
Yes, and many gallons of sweat have been spend to find better and lower cost alternatives to those dreaded transformers, as witnessed by Bill Whitlock's InGenius balanced receivers.
jan
You regularly can stumble across audio equipment that clearly was NOT designed by an engineer!
Jan
Studer
Hi John,
I had a similar run-in with Studer in the late 1980's. I purchased and maintained a slew of A-80s and A-820s from 1/4" 4T to 2"24T and everything in between, including the A-80QC, which handled (sort of) 0.150" cassette pancakes in our cassette department. Studer considered "accurate" to be the stated spec +-3dB. and the stock units had massive low-freq head-bumps. We too liked the transports on the larger machines and that's why we kept them. I had to change all the heads to our own design (and built by John French) to improve the low-freq smoothness and modify all of the repro equalizers in them to make them accurate.
We were a Studer and Nakamichi dealer and had settled on the Nak 1000ZXL for reproduce reference duty. Studer vied for the business, and sent us a sample A721 Cassette Deck. I identified several flaws: the low freq had unacceptable errors from head geometry, the repro EQ was wrong and the tape handling of the transport was flawed: the pinch roller/head block pivoted into the plane of the cassette (as opposed to moving along the plane of the cassette) and would often cause edge damage to the tape as it squirted the tape sideways. My comments to Studer were met with an icy reply amounting to: "we do not make mistakes, the eq is the only deck in the world that is right, and you don't know how to use the deck."
Um, given my experience (member of the AES/ITA Cassette Equalization Standards Committee along with Jay McKnight of Ampex and Rick Wartzok of RCA) at that point, their statement was laughable...and the fact was the deck had solenoid controls so it was difficult to"misuse". Oh well...tempest in a teapot.
A once great company that got too full of itself and where are they today?
Another silly recollection from the past...
Howie
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill, NC
WXYC Chapel Hill, North Carolina - 89.3 FM
1st on the internet
Hi John,
I had a similar run-in with Studer in the late 1980's. I purchased and maintained a slew of A-80s and A-820s from 1/4" 4T to 2"24T and everything in between, including the A-80QC, which handled (sort of) 0.150" cassette pancakes in our cassette department. Studer considered "accurate" to be the stated spec +-3dB. and the stock units had massive low-freq head-bumps. We too liked the transports on the larger machines and that's why we kept them. I had to change all the heads to our own design (and built by John French) to improve the low-freq smoothness and modify all of the repro equalizers in them to make them accurate.
We were a Studer and Nakamichi dealer and had settled on the Nak 1000ZXL for reproduce reference duty. Studer vied for the business, and sent us a sample A721 Cassette Deck. I identified several flaws: the low freq had unacceptable errors from head geometry, the repro EQ was wrong and the tape handling of the transport was flawed: the pinch roller/head block pivoted into the plane of the cassette (as opposed to moving along the plane of the cassette) and would often cause edge damage to the tape as it squirted the tape sideways. My comments to Studer were met with an icy reply amounting to: "we do not make mistakes, the eq is the only deck in the world that is right, and you don't know how to use the deck."
Um, given my experience (member of the AES/ITA Cassette Equalization Standards Committee along with Jay McKnight of Ampex and Rick Wartzok of RCA) at that point, their statement was laughable...and the fact was the deck had solenoid controls so it was difficult to"misuse". Oh well...tempest in a teapot.
A once great company that got too full of itself and where are they today?
Another silly recollection from the past...
Howie
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill, NC
WXYC Chapel Hill, North Carolina - 89.3 FM
1st on the internet
Jan, that's true, a lot of overpriced exotic designs (mostly SE tube amps) with high degree of sound colorization.
Examples? No sane engineer would ever design this:
http://www.stereophile.com/content/...verter-2000-premium-cd-transport-measurements
Examples? No sane engineer would ever design this:
http://www.stereophile.com/content/...verter-2000-premium-cd-transport-measurements
Last edited:
Jan Didden & I had a discussion once. We said that Hi-End Audio is a fashion industry (as opposed to a scientific one).
A team member of XEN also put it very nicely.
Tube amps with "sweet sound" are not (meant to be) pieces of equipment to reproduce sound with fidelity.
They are music instruments. And each music instrument has its unique sonic signature.
Of course people are free to choose which music instrument (or sound reproduction equipment) they want to own or listen to.
And clearly there is a significant demand for such "music instruments".
If we can look at things that way, then there is no right or wrong approach. It is a matter of choice.
And in the world we live it, we should be glad to have that freedom of choice.
Patrick
A team member of XEN also put it very nicely.
Tube amps with "sweet sound" are not (meant to be) pieces of equipment to reproduce sound with fidelity.
They are music instruments. And each music instrument has its unique sonic signature.
Of course people are free to choose which music instrument (or sound reproduction equipment) they want to own or listen to.
And clearly there is a significant demand for such "music instruments".
If we can look at things that way, then there is no right or wrong approach. It is a matter of choice.
And in the world we live it, we should be glad to have that freedom of choice.
Patrick
Last edited:
,
- Status
- Not open for further replies.