I've had several millionaire friends with Bose 901's and old Macintosh amps and they were in heaven. As W. C. Fields said never smarten up a chump.
If this were your blog, you could arbitrarily censor people whose views are diametrically opposed to your own. You could be Tsar of your realm. But that is not the case. My experience is entirely different from yours and you have no way to know whether it is or isn't any more valid than yours is.
One difference in our experience, I never exposed my ears to 130 db unprotected even unwillingly and I do not like the kind of sound produced by groups like the Grateful Dead, never did, never will. In that regard, it seems with time, age, and experience, your views have come closer to mine than the other way around. As you have not produced the perfect sound system yet, you should be at least tolerant if not open to views other than your own. You may not agree with them, you may not even understand them, but until proven wrong, they have as much chance of being right as yours do.
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I tried on two occasions to re-engineer original Bose 901. The fist effort sometime in the 80s and 90s ended in complete failure. The second about ten years later after much experience with re-engineering other models was highly successful. By that time I knew exactly what was wrong with it and how to fix it. Even so, it took almost four years. I don't expect anyone to believe it without having heard the results. The shortcomings of this speaker system as manufactured are obvious and unacceptable to those who are looking for an accurate reproducer of acoustic musical instruments and voices. However, its novel direct/reflecting principle has substantial advantages over direct firing speaker systems when correctly executed. It also has other advantages.
Even after re-engineering, it cannot reproduce the acoustics of a large hall or any other hall for that matter. What it can do when carefully adjusted for each recording is to accurately reproduce the sound of musical instruments as they would be heard if they were in the same room with you. This restricts its usefulness to soloists and small groups. Its main shortcomings IMO are 1) it cannot reproduce the highest octave of sound, 2) it has a substantial peak in the upper bass/lower midrange, and 3) its deep bass falls off too fast starting at around 200 hz. It falls at 6db per octave and reaches the 1khz level at around 90 hz below which it keeps falling. This requires additional bass boost increasing its power requirements to reproduce the lowest octaves substantially. Therefore it eats up power like a sponge. It may be the least efficient speaker at low frequenies I've encountered. Without multiple pairs and lots of amplifier power its deep bass output is therefore somewhat limited even in a small room. However, within its power handling capabilities, it will compete against much larger speakers like Teledyne AR9.
Starting with Series III, the design changed from acoustic suspension to ported. I haven't had any experience with any of the newer models but I expect that efficiency increased at the sacrifice of the lowest octave. Listening to Series VI in a mall in Newport Beach Ca about 3 years ago, it seemed to me to have the same dull inadequate high end the originals have.
Were there other viable methods ?.
Do you mean a tape copy of a vinyl record not sounding as good as the original vinyl ?.
Maybe one day the standard transport medium will be uber high-res digital...and that ought to be better than analogue tape or vinyl.
Hearing a two track master and immediately hearing the 44k/16bit version is like chalk and cheese - the life in the performance is deleted in the digital version.
Dave.
Well Dave, at least you can hear the difference. Yes, what I meant to convey was that I purchased an Ampex pro tape record recorder back in 1967, in order to record my favorite vinyl records and put them on tape, in order to save the extra wear on the vinyl, itself.
The REAL DIGITAL challenge, is: WHERE DID THE LIFE OF THE PERFORMANCE GO?
Some say: 'It is just our imagination' others say: 'You are just prejudiced about digital', yet others say, that many of us miss the distortions often audible in a poorly engineered analog recording and playback.
I, personally, would like digital to be as good or even BETTER than analog.
Now, I don't have a lot of investment in digital, myself, but many of my customers do.
I have been invited to listen to a 1/2 million dollar system, on occasion, and I want to leave the room, after 1/2 hour, if the presentation is digital. If vacuum tube amps are used, maybe 1 hour would be possible. Still, vinyl rules, and the was shown at the latest CES in several of the best demonstrations. Why? Because it conveys the 'EMOTION' of the performance, not just the information about the performance. Go figure. If we solve this, then we will have solved the digital-analog dilemma.
The REAL DIGITAL challenge, is: WHERE DID THE LIFE OF THE PERFORMANCE GO?
Some say: 'It is just our imagination' others say: 'You are just prejudiced about digital', yet others say, that many of us miss the distortions often audible in a poorly engineered analog recording and playback.
I, personally, would like digital to be as good or even BETTER than analog.
Now, I don't have a lot of investment in digital, myself, but many of my customers do.
I have been invited to listen to a 1/2 million dollar system, on occasion, and I want to leave the room, after 1/2 hour, if the presentation is digital. If vacuum tube amps are used, maybe 1 hour would be possible. Still, vinyl rules, and the was shown at the latest CES in several of the best demonstrations. Why? Because it conveys the 'EMOTION' of the performance, not just the information about the performance. Go figure. If we solve this, then we will have solved the digital-analog dilemma.
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There are many reasons why a vinyl phonograph record may be more pleasing to listen to than an equivalent cd that have nothing to do with limitations of the Redbook CD system. Among them;
Between the time the vinyl and cd were issued, the master tape may have deteriorated.
The dynamic compression of recordings edited for vinyl records can have desirable effects by making the last part of each musical phrase and the recorded reverberation louder.
The skill in mastering the vinyl version may have been greater than the skill used in mastering the cd version.
Choices of equalization in the vinyl era were made using speakers that were equalized for flat response, their calibration often checked weekly by the larger recording companies creating greater uniformity of the spectral balance from recording to recording, record company to record company although there were variations. Many recording companies used the same speakers for monitoring, Altec VOTA A7-500. In the CD era not only do companies use different speakers, the idea of equalizing speakers is out of favor and spectral balance even on the same label is all over the map. In one instance, even recordings of the same group played by the same musicians in the same studio but recorded by different engineers and issued on two sequential catalog numbers from the same company are substantially different.
A comparison between the cd version and vinyl version of Carol Rosenberger playing Water Music on a Grand Bosendorfer piano on the Delos label sounded identical to me. The vinyl was played on an Empire 698 with a Shure V15 type V MR and the cd was played on a Toshiba DVD player circa 2007 with a 192khz 24bit processor. That CD player sounded identical on factory made duplicate cds with a JVC 1 bit 8x oversampling player circa 1991. Even their output level was indistinguishable. Conclusion, both players perform their function flawlessly. They are good enough for any audio recording. If there's a problem, it's elsewhere.
Well, lots of opinions and very little 'proof'. My 'proof' is in my experience making recordings, hearing digital 'equivalents', using direct disc vinyl as a good reference, for fidelity, and the experience of my colleagues ACTUALLY WORKING in the audio industry, rather than 'arm chair' critics who dabble in audio design, and in truth, confuse me with the contradictory conclusions that they come up with.
Imaging
If indeed the evolutionary function of emotions is to tag events to indicate their existential significance, then without sufficient auditory data to identlfy the nature of the auditory stimulus, emotional transfer would indeed be impared.
I agree with you, Pavel.
At that point, I guess the ongoing question would be: what data is missing? Soundminded (among others) certainly has identified one aspect which is notoriously difficult to engineer: correct imaging in a finite reverberant acoustic space. Even assuming excellent amplitude and time domain response of the electronics in a reproduction system, (re)creating the sound field at the listener(s) ears is notoriously difficult. Since it is largely dependant on the space in which the system and listener are present, it is also not saleable as a pre-programmed box at a retail dealer. That one fact limits or eliminates R&D budgets on the issue.
Over the last 15 years I have evaluated DSPs with microphone feedback claiming to fix the issue (at least for the one 0.25 sqin spot the microphone occupies), and have yet to hear one that works well. Did any correct the space to allow the original imaging to emerge from the room acoustics, No. They can partly remove certain room modes and speaker beaming effects, but in doing so introduce a host of other problems at the one spot, and elsewhere in the listening space they can make a total mess of things.
Although imaging may indeed be the last frontier high-end needs to conquer to be truly more re-productive, I believe that is fodder for another thread. There is an antagonism expressed towards the basic worth of the accomplishments of the actual engineers here (many of them at that!) who are making progress designing superior analog line-level circuitry. But whether one considers the tweaking of line-level circuitry to be a major or minor factor in fidelity or not is not the point. This is an analog line-level forum.
If someone has a better idea for how to control wavefronts in an acoustic space, that is great! We need progress on that front as well. But let's take it to a new forum on that issue, it is a parallel and neccessary subject that need not interact with this one. It merely obscures progress on both fronts. Moderator?
Just my $0.00 worth, and y'all know what they say about opinions: they are like speakers, they are all different, they all stink, but we are all inured to the stink of our own.
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill
www.wxyc.org
1st on the Internet
If indeed the evolutionary function of emotions is to tag events to indicate their existential significance, then without sufficient auditory data to identlfy the nature of the auditory stimulus, emotional transfer would indeed be impared.
I agree with you, Pavel.
At that point, I guess the ongoing question would be: what data is missing? Soundminded (among others) certainly has identified one aspect which is notoriously difficult to engineer: correct imaging in a finite reverberant acoustic space. Even assuming excellent amplitude and time domain response of the electronics in a reproduction system, (re)creating the sound field at the listener(s) ears is notoriously difficult. Since it is largely dependant on the space in which the system and listener are present, it is also not saleable as a pre-programmed box at a retail dealer. That one fact limits or eliminates R&D budgets on the issue.
Over the last 15 years I have evaluated DSPs with microphone feedback claiming to fix the issue (at least for the one 0.25 sqin spot the microphone occupies), and have yet to hear one that works well. Did any correct the space to allow the original imaging to emerge from the room acoustics, No. They can partly remove certain room modes and speaker beaming effects, but in doing so introduce a host of other problems at the one spot, and elsewhere in the listening space they can make a total mess of things.
Although imaging may indeed be the last frontier high-end needs to conquer to be truly more re-productive, I believe that is fodder for another thread. There is an antagonism expressed towards the basic worth of the accomplishments of the actual engineers here (many of them at that!) who are making progress designing superior analog line-level circuitry. But whether one considers the tweaking of line-level circuitry to be a major or minor factor in fidelity or not is not the point. This is an analog line-level forum.
If someone has a better idea for how to control wavefronts in an acoustic space, that is great! We need progress on that front as well. But let's take it to a new forum on that issue, it is a parallel and neccessary subject that need not interact with this one. It merely obscures progress on both fronts. Moderator?
Just my $0.00 worth, and y'all know what they say about opinions: they are like speakers, they are all different, they all stink, but we are all inured to the stink of our own.
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill
www.wxyc.org
1st on the Internet
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This is also what I found.
I have a vinyl and a CD version of the first release of Paul Simons' Graceland. Same production, the serial numbers differ by one. Indistiguisable in sound.
But. The same tracks have been re-released on CD a few times since the initial release in 1994. Those re-releases sound progressively worse, flat, compressed, uninteresting. If you look at those tracks with Audacity you clearly see the progressive compression and decrease in dynamic range with each new release. It's not uncommon in later releases to see tens of milliseconds of clipped digital-all-ones. Horrible it looks, horrible it sounds.
Things are often not as they seem.
jan didden
If you study the sound field of say pianos or violins from the way they are constructed and how they propagate sound and then look at the way loudspeakers propagate sound, you'll find that they are world's apart. No amount of tweaking of the existing paradigm can overcome this disparity or make it inaudible. This just represents the difficulty of engineering systems to duplicate the sound of musical instruments as they would sound in the same room as you're in. Engineering systems to recreate the acoustic effects of other rooms is a problem orders of magnitude more difficult.
IMO anyone who ignores the listening room's acoustics or fights it will lose. It's a battle that can't be won. The only alternative is to incorporate the listening room into the design of the system or to provide sufficient adjustments and design features to adapt the system to different rooms....and to different recordings. Only then do you even have a fighting chance.
That assumes that some form of perfect recreation of the sound field is necessary to convey the emotional content.
I think most people have the experience that this is not necessary. It is very well possible to get 'goose bumps' or otherwise experience emotional reaction to music even with mediocre replay systems. Even music from a lowly kitchen table radio can trigger an emotional response; it depends on the type of musik and the 'relation' you have to that musik.
jan didden
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I mean that even the most exact reproduction of the signals captured by microphones is most probably not enough to yield emotional satisfaction to the listener. It may easily happen that certain kind of technical imperfection pleases subjective sound perception in a way that it is more acceptable than a mere exact reproduction of electrical signals captured by microphones.
Well, that wouldn't explain why SACD sounds good with good recordings. Better than my LP rig with very good recordings anyway. Personally, I think 24/192kHz Bluray sound beats everything. It's sounds more real to me than anything I've heard, maybe do to better recording techniques or maybe no compression. Don't know. I heard others say that SACD soften the sound a bit in comparison to Bluray, and I've noticed this too.
That's just the subjective impression I get.
Not sure I get it Pavel. My view, supported by many cases of experience by me and others around me is that you need only very modest technical reproduction systems to convey the emotional impact of music to the listener.
Some people 'have nothing' with, say, opera and that will not change even with the most sophisticated system.
Some people have a 'relationship' with, say, C&W and they will react emotionally to a Johnny Cash song even when it comes from the proverbial kitchen table radio.
IOW, the emotional impact of music on listeners has almost no relation to the technical perfection of the reproduction system.
And that is logical. If you say: "Might be that pure technical means are unable to re-create original sound field, thus emotion transfer is impossible" and if that was true, we would never have an emotional impact, and clearly we DO have it.
jan didden
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