Being new to this forum I was drawn to this thread when I saw John Curl's name in the title. Needless to say I have not read every post from the beginning, but what I have read has been entertaining.
I have a question for Soundminded though. Every comment that you have made in this thread that I have read seems to be an attack or a slight on Mr. Curl. Did he insult or slander you in some way? Just curious why the personal attacks on someone that has done so much for audio.
Again an entertaining thread, but it does seem to wander to and fro a bit. Carry on.
I have a question for Soundminded though. Every comment that you have made in this thread that I have read seems to be an attack or a slight on Mr. Curl. Did he insult or slander you in some way? Just curious why the personal attacks on someone that has done so much for audio.
Again an entertaining thread, but it does seem to wander to and fro a bit. Carry on.
Yes, dB SPL (re: 94dB SPL = 1 Pascal) at 1 meter is one reference. The level 100' from the stage has little to do with the distortion.
Two of the (very few) rock gigs I attended which had excellent sound were the Moody Blues at (indoor) Wembley and Deep Purple - it was their first appearance after the famous breakup - outdoors at Knebworth. Both made a very great amount of noise, but the quality was outstanding - within the limits of my experience.
I agree with LR Shooter's comment above. In fact I checked Soundminded's total contribution over the past, and it seems that with the exception of this thread he has made but one post. I know that "having a go" at JC is deemed to be fair sport by many; but when he is disbarred from responding in kind it is a rather pointless - if not cruel - activity...bit like poking caged animals with a stick! But be that as it may, is there any chance whatsoever that someone can pull this thread back on topic?
The best I can suggest is that someone proposes a thought-out new design based on the principles established thus far regarding JC's Blowtorch, but which relies on obtainable components. It would be better if such a proposed design had been built and not yet another simulation. Many here have enough experience to re-start this topic in a positive way. However I am aware that a camel is a horse designed by committee.
I agree with LR Shooter's comment above. In fact I checked Soundminded's total contribution over the past, and it seems that with the exception of this thread he has made but one post. I know that "having a go" at JC is deemed to be fair sport by many; but when he is disbarred from responding in kind it is a rather pointless - if not cruel - activity...bit like poking caged animals with a stick! But be that as it may, is there any chance whatsoever that someone can pull this thread back on topic?
The best I can suggest is that someone proposes a thought-out new design based on the principles established thus far regarding JC's Blowtorch, but which relies on obtainable components. It would be better if such a proposed design had been built and not yet another simulation. Many here have enough experience to re-start this topic in a positive way. However I am aware that a camel is a horse designed by committee.
Someone apparently knew how to run a sound system to control feedback with a "wall of speakers/sound" behind the microphones.
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An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
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I tried a DC blocker and it didn't help.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
I've got one fist-sized ASC 20uF 250VAC polypropylene capacitor that I can install here.
Thanks, guys!
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OK noseybody, if you must know my exchanges with JC go back many years to other we sites. I'm not going into the history of it but the short answer to your question is yes.
Actually, Soundmind, I think you are way out of line, but you do give me something to react to, and you make your reputation, usually by challenging me, without getting any info in advance.
Brianco, I do wish that I could stay on some sort of topic, but it is almost impossible as I have no control over my critics, and (for some reason) the disruptors of this thread, apparently are ignored by the other moderators.
Of course, my being on PERMANENT (it seems) moderation means that even this message may not get through, except to you. Why this is so, please ask SY. He must know something, but he has not spoken to me since he moved to Austin, TX for some reason. Perhaps it is because my beliefs in audio are different than his.
Brianco, I do wish that I could stay on some sort of topic, but it is almost impossible as I have no control over my critics, and (for some reason) the disruptors of this thread, apparently are ignored by the other moderators.
Of course, my being on PERMANENT (it seems) moderation means that even this message may not get through, except to you. Why this is so, please ask SY. He must know something, but he has not spoken to me since he moved to Austin, TX for some reason. Perhaps it is because my beliefs in audio are different than his.
Looking at the LAST configuration of the GD Wall of Sound system, it is possible that 130 dB levels would NOT be easily generated at person height on stage. When I overheard speculation about some measurements of the system approaching 130 dBc (probably) with a B&K sound level meter, we used another configuration that put MORE midrange energy at ear level. We did NOT, at first, use the big circular stack that radiates mostly above the heads of the musicians and everyone else on stage. The original stack was more like a solid wall of vertical stacks behind the band.
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Nope, it's more about the workdays.
My concert-going schedule just makes things worse. Call when you have the chance- if you don't get an answer, it's because I'm knee deep in writing (99% of my job these days).
Don't bring old fights here.
I didn't. I merely responded to a question.
JC and I see the world through very different eyes. There's an old saying that if you are a hammer, every problem is a nail. With that attitude, you can spend all of your energy for the rest of your life pounding golden spikes with a sledge hammer but it won't help a bit if the timbers won't hold together because they have rotted out from the inside or the building design is strucurally unsound.
It seems to me that in JC's world, the ultimate solution to improving the performance of a sound reproducing system is to tweak the existing paradigm to its extreme perfecting every element of it. That is the audiophile view of it too. JC professes this point of view at its highest level being focused on preamplifiers although not exclusively having expounded on many other aspects from wires to FM distortion in loudspeakers to phonograph cartridge design. These in that view are the magic bullets that will kill off the last remaining obstacles to what they want to accomplish even if they aren't sure of what that goal is. This leads to an endless pursuit of a golden chalice that doesn't actually exist. It also leads down an endless road of an infinite number of variants of the same ideas and each one coincidentally more expensive than the last which inevitably fall by the wayside as obsolete junk, the electronic roadkill of yesteryear. JC's statements make no pretense about it being otherwise, he designs to obtain results that he "likes."
Whatever the merits or successes of the audiophile approach, engineers don't look at problems that way. They define what they are trying to achieve in specific terms and apply known scientific principles in their desgn. They set specific objective goals, define measurement parameters to be met by their efforts and then judge the success or failure of their efforts by whether or not they've achieved those goals. If a measurement method is inadequate for setting or judging their goal, they have to develop a suitable measurement method first. The audiophile approach seems to me to use measurements when they are convenient to rationalize what they already like by imputing a scientific veneer around it but it isn't real science at all. Their methods of measurement are invariably flawed. Cheever's paper on amplifiers is a quintessential example of this approach and the multiple scientific flaws it exhibits. I only bring this up because there was a time when JC would not respond to anyone who was not a degreed electrical engineer although it emerged that he was not trained as one himself.
Although I chide JC about the Grateful Dead occasionally and for valid scientific reasons (for example it is a know fact that exposure to very loud sound impairs hearing acuity often permanently being one of them) I would never attack him personally, that is not only uncalled for and unfair but self defeating. Once the attacks become personal, they are an admission of surrender. Instead I challenge his ideas. Many people confuse these two by concluding that an attack on ideas is an attack on the individual who propounds them. This failure to make a distinction is especially common when the individual whose ideas are being challenged has a cult following who think he can do and say no wrong. But nothing could be further from the truth and challenging ideas is what this and all other discussions of this type should be about. Ideas are fair game to be shot at to see if they can stand up to scrutiny. Often in this particular market they can't which is why those challenges elicit so many emotional responses.
Another difference is that engineers are always aware of money, of cost. They have to be because they must answer to investors and be aware of markets. They know that within a particular paradigm there are points of diminishing returns and points of no return, that is throwing more money at a problem may get you a different solution but it is no better than others that are much cheaper.
The art and science of electrical engineering including electronics has made remarkable strides in the last decades to a point where what was once the most expensive state of the art equipment has been objectively surpassed by the least expensive products. Not so for acoustics where progress has been far slower and more uneven but ultimately that is what this effort is really about. At a time when the typical sound system is an MP3 player with earbuds, this diminishing niche market does not like to be reminded of its shortcomings and failures. That may not be the only reason for its decline but it has to be considered as likely being among them.
SM, although I agree with just about everything you've said, my impression reading your various posts is that you're targeting an individual and often just skirting the line. The impression is aggregate rather than specific, but mentioning that you've hounded John in particular from forum to forum is the same sort of red flag to moderators that a "Legalize it!" bumper sticker is to the cops.
If someone like me who is largely in agreement with your technical points gets that impression, you might consider that your arguments could be better accepted by the humans who participate here if they had a less hostile tone.
This week, I measured distortion in connecting cables again. I showed a new associate, just after CES, my lab, and the test equipment was up and running from a previous project. I casually showed my associate how my equipment works, by running a wire from input to output. It measured pretty good, but then it was one of my 'better wires', so then, just for the heck of it, I pulled out a relatively unused Radio Shack (RS) RCA connecting cable, and measured it. WOW! Distortion city!
Not knowing if I might have accidently bumped an adjustment, etc, I put back a 'reference wire' and the distortion products disappeared.
Then, I looked in my wire box, for another similar cable, in fact identical to the RS measured prevously. WOW! Distortion, big time!
This is when my associate told me that I SHOULD post my measurements on the internet. I just laughed! I said, nobody would believe me, they would attack my test equipment, me, and my lying eyes and ears. They have done so, already, haven't they?
Not knowing if I might have accidently bumped an adjustment, etc, I put back a 'reference wire' and the distortion products disappeared.
Then, I looked in my wire box, for another similar cable, in fact identical to the RS measured prevously. WOW! Distortion, big time!
This is when my associate told me that I SHOULD post my measurements on the internet. I just laughed! I said, nobody would believe me, they would attack my test equipment, me, and my lying eyes and ears. They have done so, already, haven't they?
I would like, if I am allowed, to make a comment about MY design approach, whether it is 'engineering' or 'physics' or something that I came up with, and give a little more concise overview of MY background in engineering and physics.
First, I was not a 'science project' sort of student. My family was definitely 'blue collar', my father mostly trained and raced horses, when he was doing what he wanted for a living. My mother was a waitress in a high class restaurant.
I was left alone, a lot, and not encouraged by anyone to do more than 'average' in school, stay out of trouble, if possible, and amuse myself. My bad eyesight kept me from doing well in sports, so I got to tinkering with electrical circuits like relays, and reading books about gas discharge tubes, building model airplanes, leading to modifying real automobiles a few years later.
I took the college focused courses in high school with relative indifference, until my senior year in 'physics' the teacher introduced ELECTRONICS. Then my attitude changed, my grades shot up to straight A in this class, to the annoyance of the teacher, since my appearance,(I was in an informal gang at the time, sort of like the movie 'Grease' ) was not in alignment with the students destined to go to college. You see, since I got the highest grade in the class, I got to pass out the exam results to everyone else.
Moving on, I started college in 1959, hoping to become a TV repair man. I was talked out of this by a concerned uncle who recommended that I try engineering. So, I took the engineering courses, which at the time, were mostly math and chemistry, but also with history, English, psychology, etc also required. Once in college, I never looked back, but I was pretty far behind many, who had patiently worked hard in school, and were better prepared. It took me years to catch up with most, and some, I never caught up with.
In any case, I got through my first two years as an EE major, when I was forced to go to work, full time, as my mother could not continue to support me, even though I ALWAYS had a part time job while attending college. This was 1962, when I went to work at UL Labs as a test technician for about 1 year. As a tech, I did pretty well, working with some very bright engineers, especially from overseas, who had difficulty in getting government related employment, where the 'best jobs' were, at the time. They saw in me, someone who was energetic, could catch on quickly, and liked diversity. One engineer(Iranian) did the EE program at the University of Santa Clara, WITHOUT a calculator or slide rule. A real feat! In any case, conditions at UL were such that I decided that if THIS is electronic engineering, I should set my sights higher.
So, when I went back to college, I changed my major to PHYSICS, and we are now at 1963. (more later)
First, I was not a 'science project' sort of student. My family was definitely 'blue collar', my father mostly trained and raced horses, when he was doing what he wanted for a living. My mother was a waitress in a high class restaurant.
I was left alone, a lot, and not encouraged by anyone to do more than 'average' in school, stay out of trouble, if possible, and amuse myself. My bad eyesight kept me from doing well in sports, so I got to tinkering with electrical circuits like relays, and reading books about gas discharge tubes, building model airplanes, leading to modifying real automobiles a few years later.
I took the college focused courses in high school with relative indifference, until my senior year in 'physics' the teacher introduced ELECTRONICS. Then my attitude changed, my grades shot up to straight A in this class, to the annoyance of the teacher, since my appearance,(I was in an informal gang at the time, sort of like the movie 'Grease' ) was not in alignment with the students destined to go to college. You see, since I got the highest grade in the class, I got to pass out the exam results to everyone else.
Moving on, I started college in 1959, hoping to become a TV repair man. I was talked out of this by a concerned uncle who recommended that I try engineering. So, I took the engineering courses, which at the time, were mostly math and chemistry, but also with history, English, psychology, etc also required. Once in college, I never looked back, but I was pretty far behind many, who had patiently worked hard in school, and were better prepared. It took me years to catch up with most, and some, I never caught up with.
In any case, I got through my first two years as an EE major, when I was forced to go to work, full time, as my mother could not continue to support me, even though I ALWAYS had a part time job while attending college. This was 1962, when I went to work at UL Labs as a test technician for about 1 year. As a tech, I did pretty well, working with some very bright engineers, especially from overseas, who had difficulty in getting government related employment, where the 'best jobs' were, at the time. They saw in me, someone who was energetic, could catch on quickly, and liked diversity. One engineer(Iranian) did the EE program at the University of Santa Clara, WITHOUT a calculator or slide rule. A real feat! In any case, conditions at UL were such that I decided that if THIS is electronic engineering, I should set my sights higher.
So, when I went back to college, I changed my major to PHYSICS, and we are now at 1963. (more later)
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