I have many speaker systems and many sound systems in a large house. It hardly matters which one I mention, I've re-engineered all of them according to my own criteria for performance. It is not easy. Right now my main system, the one I listen to most remains Teledyne AR9. However, they don't sound anything like the way they did when they left the factory.
Does anyone recognize this man?
Does he now design pre-amp circuits?
It is in fact Max Wall who for most of my last 50 years or more was a mainstay UK one man comic performer. He also had a very good baritone singing voice. More often than not he performed whilst wearing tights. He is sadly missed.
Does he now design pre-amp circuits?
It is in fact Max Wall who for most of my last 50 years or more was a mainstay UK one man comic performer. He also had a very good baritone singing voice. More often than not he performed whilst wearing tights. He is sadly missed.
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No, I didn't say that. You put those words in my mouth. I said that the problem had been solved, not once but many times. When I shop for amplifiers, I shop specs and price. I don't buy tube amplifiers and I don't buy oddball audiophile type equipment. I buy mainstream cost effective equipment of proven reliability. I've come to the conclusion that buying more power than you need for a particular system is a waste of money and bad engineering. If I needed a high powered amplifier, I'd look to Crown and QSC. It must have been an interesting discussion when the engineers at Crown met the engineers at Mark Levinson for the first time under the Harman Kardon brand and Sydney Harman brought up the subject of why Levinson amplifiers should cost five to ten times as much as Crown amplifiers for the same amount of power. I would have been interested to hear their answer. Sydney doesn't care. If people want to spend the extra money, he'll be only too glad to take it.
That is my point within the context of the present paradigm. The problem of reproducing the sound of live acoustic musical instruments is actually at least two separate problems. One problem is to reproduce them as they would be heard in your own room. For obvious reaons this is confined to soloists and small ensembles. The second problem is to reproduce them as they would sound at a large public peformance venue. The second problem is orders of magnutide more difficult but even the first problem defies solution so far, at least for the commercial market.
The strategy has always been the same regardless of the technology. Capture, store (or broadcast), retrieve (or receive), reproduce. It is the strategy that reaches a dead end. The first problem with it is that the capture is inadequate. A second is that the requirements for the sound fields themselves are not understood. A third is that there are many variables in the way recordings are made and the acoustics of rooms the reproducing equipment is installed in with no standardization whatsoever. Even if a sound system could be made to perform perfectly with one recording, it would fail with most others because of these variables. And so whatever era you look at from the most primitive Edison wax cylinders to the latest blue ray 9.1 channel high end system a hundred years later, it's the same basic idea. If you look at very old ad copy, you will read exactly the same claims for whatever technology existed at that time that you read today. Despite all of the research and technology, so far the problem has beaten those who've tried. So which will be solved first, curing the common cold or reproducing music accurately with electonic equipment?
> Don't see how one can realistically re-create the soundfield
> from a live event with two speakers in a typical listening room.
But yet one can produce a positive musical experience.
I always admired bands that sounded like the record more
than records that sounded like the band..........
(No insults implied) ................
> from a live event with two speakers in a typical listening room.
But yet one can produce a positive musical experience.
I always admired bands that sounded like the record more
than records that sounded like the band..........
(No insults implied) ................
Oh absolutely!
Especially when you're stoned.
I always admired bands that sounded like the record more
than records that sounded like the band..........
(No insults implied) ................
Same here.
se
Agree with all of that which you state - in principle.
I have a collection of mastertapes of original recordings which have been subjected to very little post production messing around. The sound of which these are capable of giving through an optimised system is exceptional. Yet they were produced from old well serviced but not tweeked tube equipment by some of the then best recording engineers.
Listen to the same recordings on good vinyl and they are not so good, but listen to them as "re-mastered" for CD and the degradation is enormous.
Regarding rooms which we use, we took a system to Abbey Road Studios (VT4 SE based amp and very fast articulate speakers.) editing suite and what had been the most wonderfully involving, satisfying system in a good domestic room became all but useless in the over dead editing suite when replaying digital masters. Our speakers - in that situation - lacked extension, and the sound was muddled. The resident system, based on B&W large monitors driven by what were crude PA amps worked better, but I am confident that it was such monitoring which led to so many very poor CD remakes of analogue recorded material.
But here in the real world of the DIY guy it would be - in any circumstances - impossible to reproduce any acoustic music in such a manner as would be accepted by all of any three people to represent a real improvement. Likewise the same people could sit in the same area of an auditorium and hear the same music played live for them and they would come away with a divergence of experience.
It has therefore to be left to individual trial and error as to what works best within available budget within one's own (usually domestic) environment. Although a new preamp may well not be the complete answer to ultimate problems it may very well (for a variety of possible reasons) take the individual to being more satisfied than before. Whether this satisfaction lasts is of course another matter!
My signature quotation is from the thoughts of a truly gifted designer friend, and uttered over twenty years ago!
By the way, if you're interested, check out jj's patent, 7,149,315.
se
Thanks Steve, will do in the morning.
Its 001 here in the UK, and B++++Y well SNOWING - AGAIN!
I'm off to bed.
The first time we showed 2001 at MIT our "AV" guys tried to impress everyone with 4 pairs of Bose 901's (pointed AT the audience) and a bank of Crown DC300's. The Crown amps smoked before the first Also Sprach ended. Back to the Dyna MKIII's and Voice of the Theaters.
I trust that you must have seen the Billy Elliot movie. Its plot was about what you mention in that post. If not, its highly recommended, you will probably like it.
I did not say there aren't differences. But then an Atwater-Kent radio was different from a Crossley. Which was more accurate? For some equipment, subtle differences in FR translate into sharp debates except among those for who know that equalizing the differences out would make them indistinguishable from each other in actual use. On these difference rests the fortunes of people who make a living from it. Could you tell blindfolded if your preamp was playing or if it was someone elses?
Several years ago, I got into quite a row on another blog site about a device which supposedly improved CDs by copying them and somehow eliminated errors. There were many very ardent people arguing vociferously over the remarkable benefits of this magic machine. When I suggested that the entire thing might be a fraud because the distributor who was touting it refused to make any technical claims I was banned for a week. Some months later there was fury when buyers of this machine found out that the distributor who made all of these non technical claims of benefit had merely rebranded a standard off the shelf disc duplicator which made no pretensions and then doubled the price. Of course the suckers fell for it, they fall for it every single time. It's all about magic done with smoke, mirrors, advertising, and a friendly publisher of a hobbyist magazine that caters to a niche market which more than makes up in available cash what it lacks in engineering knowledge. At what percentage does non linear distortion and noise become inaudible?
That was over 40 years ago. AV professionals who can recommend anything on the market to their clients rely on Crown, QSC, and others because they perform well and are very reliable. Crown amplifiers are backed with a three year no fault guarantee. They couldn't do that if they blew up all the time or they wouldn't stay in business. They are also cost effective. One objection audiophiles have to amplifiers designed for professional use is their cooling fans which make noise when these units get hot. They are also not tweaked to produce desirable colorations. They aren't "voiced."
One brand which seemed to me to blow up a lot was Yamaha. But that was decades ago. Any of them can fail. One guy on another blog had a Krell that kept blowing up. Turned out eventually to be a defective power supply capacitor. It happens.
Studying ballet as a young man is a 'calling' rather than rational. Just like the 'priesthood' might be for some. The young women dancers thought that something was wrong with me and wouldn't go out on dates, some people related to ballet were gay and wouldn't stop chasing me. Most of my male dance colleagues were straight and went on to Ballet Theatre. Ballet was the most difficult physical study that I have ever done, certainly more difficult than weightlifting or wrestling, which I did in high school, and of course, ballroom dancing was a snap. Try going on 'point' sometime!
Personally, i love fans.
Last active cooled power amps i botched together is a Class A design by the most prominent Class D guy, sound better than Crown or Qsc amps.
(iI did gymnastics in high school years, similar tights, feeling sorry i didn't do ballet back then, would have scored chicks by the handfull)
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