Ah, OK - got ya. Makes sense - a reference. Well..... I like quite a few, here is a short list.
In no particular order, speakers that have impressed me with life-like "real music" sound.
In no particular order, speakers that have impressed me with life-like "real music" sound.
- Quad ESL 57 (double stacked) with added electrostatic tweeters
- Magnapan Tympani II and the smaller models, too
- Jean Hiraga's hotrod Altec A5s. I've tried to build a similar pair. Almost there.
- Don Keele's new CBT shaded line array, despite its prototype flaws.
- Dave Slagle and crew's field coil Lowther on a horn.
- John Bush's Big Boys with the P.Audio 18" coax, not perfect, but soooo big and real.
- Gershman Sonogram for its beautiful midrange and good balance.
- Joseph Audio Pearl II. Similar to above.
- JohnBlue JB3 Tiny speaker with a big sound. Very enjoyable within tight SPL limitations.
- Planet 10 Fonkens. If I had to live with a small, fullrange speaker, these would probably be it.
- Gary Pimm's OB 3 way with dual 15s, 8" paper cone mid and planar tweeter. Real top notch.
is it kosher having odd number of speakers ?
Yes, I have 49. Something about that commercial center channel leaves me a bit uneasy though, being the even keeled guy I am.
Hi KSTR, Art
Umm….. I was aware you could do that to simulate particular room’s acoustics, Synaudcon has a library of room impulses you can down load. I have to say, none of the DSP stuff I have access to is done by convolution so I am only superficially familiar. I had not tried this with the “speaker” itself before however and spent the last couple hours fiddling with it.
The program one used for the room samples was called “Gratisvolver” from Catt acoustics (free) so I used that and a converted impulse I had taken at a meter in the living room. I don’t think I have any “tower” (nearly anechoic) measurements I can easily convert to an impulse.
Interestingly on headphones it does sound a lot like one speaker in my cluttered room.
I used the same program to convolve the impulse against itself like you suggested and then used that to modify the music and that did seem at least similar to what the recording produced, sort of a “warts ^2” effect, one can hear the bass getting slouchy.
I didn’t go past that but it did sound like it was along the same line as the gen loss recording at a minimum. I will see about t /if I can convert something from an outdoor measurement because one can hear the room at a meter, even with a pile of directivity. If you can go past what I was doing and have a place to e-mail one, I can send you an impulse to play with.
If I have time tomorrow there is another experiment I want to try.
Some time back people were talking about measuring at the listening position and seeing the difference between in and out of polarity.
To the degree the sound is equal and opposite they cancel out.
Anyway, I know I saved the impulses and if the same idea hold true, that “out of phase” impulse would be the “not” equal but opposite stuff, none of which is part of the signal you want. Convolving music with that should be all the ick.
Also it would be fun to take the impulse with the mic at the listening position and see how much that sounds like “being there”.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, this was fun and with the popularity of impulse response measurements, it is something that isn’t hard (like not getting out of your chair) to try either.
Best,
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs
Umm….. I was aware you could do that to simulate particular room’s acoustics, Synaudcon has a library of room impulses you can down load. I have to say, none of the DSP stuff I have access to is done by convolution so I am only superficially familiar. I had not tried this with the “speaker” itself before however and spent the last couple hours fiddling with it.
The program one used for the room samples was called “Gratisvolver” from Catt acoustics (free) so I used that and a converted impulse I had taken at a meter in the living room. I don’t think I have any “tower” (nearly anechoic) measurements I can easily convert to an impulse.
Interestingly on headphones it does sound a lot like one speaker in my cluttered room.
I used the same program to convolve the impulse against itself like you suggested and then used that to modify the music and that did seem at least similar to what the recording produced, sort of a “warts ^2” effect, one can hear the bass getting slouchy.
I didn’t go past that but it did sound like it was along the same line as the gen loss recording at a minimum. I will see about t /if I can convert something from an outdoor measurement because one can hear the room at a meter, even with a pile of directivity. If you can go past what I was doing and have a place to e-mail one, I can send you an impulse to play with.
If I have time tomorrow there is another experiment I want to try.
Some time back people were talking about measuring at the listening position and seeing the difference between in and out of polarity.
To the degree the sound is equal and opposite they cancel out.
Anyway, I know I saved the impulses and if the same idea hold true, that “out of phase” impulse would be the “not” equal but opposite stuff, none of which is part of the signal you want. Convolving music with that should be all the ick.
Also it would be fun to take the impulse with the mic at the listening position and see how much that sounds like “being there”.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, this was fun and with the popularity of impulse response measurements, it is something that isn’t hard (like not getting out of your chair) to try either.
Best,
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs
Is that a drink with tomato juice?bloody Mod
Oops, OT again. I hate when that happens.
David, first let me say how much I appreciate your response. It’s the type of response I hoped to have gotten earlier on and I’m really grateful you’ve taken the time to share your personal take on the topic. Thank you!
if I appeared rude it’s because I take exception to those who profess their ideas and experience to be rooted in scientific methodology to label the rest of as quasi-religous fanatics obsessed with the “magical”. We’re not. We’re simply asking whether the established scientific methods of measuring and analyzing speakers are sufficient for dealing with the complex nature of musical reproduction. I’m extremely glad science gave us Thiele/Small parameters and ways to measure horizontal dispersion. But, as many have said before, none of those things tells us whether a loudspeaker can reproduce the inherent qualities of music.
I agree. Language is problematical. I love whisky. “Peaty” I understand. “Smokey” I understand. “Spicy”, “Woody” and “Tobacco-y” I all understand too. But as I’ve experienced more my lexicon has broadened so I know understand when someone uses descriptors such as the finish is like “cookie dough ice cream with ginger.” Some will write that off immediately as rubbish (containing “magical” qualities) because there’s no ice-cream cookie dough in there at all. (And there’s never any smoke or tobacco either). But I get that. Having tasted Lord-knows-how-many whiskies now, I get what someone means when they say that. I’m not taking them literally, as if the distillery has some “magical” powers. I’m reading into the emotive content in the language used, which can’t be conveyed via literal means.
If someone uses the word “majestic” to describe the presentation of a whisky or a speaker – I’m ok with that. I get they (probably) mean it’s authoritative, bold, and the antithesis of thin, reedy and impoverished in any way. I understand many find those types of descriptors as dramatic, but isn’t language a way of communicating how we feel, not just what we think? Telling my wife “I’m biologically interested in you for the sake of my gene pool” isn’t the same as telling her I want to ravish her with the entirety of my being. I love my wife but would struggle to measure it. I’d take a bullet for her, but would really avoid having to prove it in some lab. Just because something can’t be measured doesn’t mean it’s not significant.
Thanks, David. I appreciate your candor. Just so you know, touch texture and phrasing are really important to me as an end-user, because when touch, texture and phrasing are used by an artist to convey meaning in music, I’d like my multi-thousand dollar purchase to at least attempt to play those things back.
Right. We use language to describe that which can’t be articulated any other way. But can you measure “texture”? I don’t know of any way of doing it and I’ve never seen John Atkinson mention it in any of his tests. Nevertheless, you and I agree it exists, despite the fact we can’t measure it. I’d go one step further and argue it not only exists, it’s important. At least to me.
No argument from me. I used to sell this stuff, remember. The worst group we’d ever have come in would be *ahem* the DIY crowd. “Oh my word..!” They’d say. “It’s just a Scanspeak tweeter and Morel midbass with $2.00 worth of crossover parts and some fancy veneered MDF and you want how much for it...? My (latest work-in-progress) blows that away and it cost me (several-thousand less)..!” And they’d take their 24-carat re-remastered copy of Yello back out into their $500 car with a smug self-satisfied look. The fact that all the above you mention has to be equated as part of the process is never entertained by them because commercial reality is so far removed from buying caps of the internet and soldering them in for an audience of one. Gotta love them though. I’m here aren’t I?
And one’s perception is only as good as one’s perception. I’m a fallible human being like most everyone else here. But my perception is based on some measure of experience. I can’t tell you how many hundreds of speakers I listened to in my hi-fi retailing days. But I can tell you what it did for my perception. It gave it some context for making critical judgements. Right up to the point where my perception exceeded the results the high-end was offering and I left. And heard my first proper compression-driven horn set up. My perceptions then? Totally blown away. It was so unlike what I had been living with and selling and reading about that my perceptions were re-arranged and priorities significantly altered. Had I not had that experience my perception of what was possible from music replay that it was at best flawed, and at worst, downright un-musical.
And yet there remain speaker designers who manage to achieve that without resorting to magic. I’ve named a few who I think do it well. A ported speaker will often exhibit great bass but with a disconnect in transient response. A sealed enclosure will often display better rhythmic prowess but usually at the expense of extension. Phrasing is part of the lexicon of rhythm. A speaker’s transient response can be altered (and measured). Therefore we have speakers that are able to unravel subtle rhythmic inflections and ones that don’t. But not all of them do or don’t solely based on whether they’re ported or not. It’s art and science, isn’t it?
Hey! I don’t dislike scientific method... I dislike “neutral” speakers. (The Spendors, ProAcs and ATCs were all great “neutral” speakers, but they struggled to communicate the emotional content of the music.) Again, it comes back to throwing the baby out with the bath water because somewhere along the line we’ve aligned ourselves with scientific method without consideration that these devices are meant to play art. Messy, intangible, revelatory art. That’s Coltane for you right there.
I don’t want my art delivered by something that imparts “minimal personality" if in the process of doing so destroys the illusion of it being art, rather than just a bunch of “balanced frequencies.”
I might be in the minority here. But there it is.
Nope, I’m not confused. Remember, I sold this stuff. Energy, Infinity, Naim, Polk, Paradigm, PSB, Spendor, Epos, Mission, Sonus Faber, Dynaudio, B&W, Magnaplanar, ProAc, ATC, A&R, KEF... I’ve sold it and quoted from the brochure liberally. Read all the marketing and all the reviews. Had the reps come in and tell us that this version with the new tweeter blows the previous range away and ushers in a new level of transparency... (Yawn).
A competent designer – I’m thinking of Billy Woodman, Stewart Tyler, Alan Shaw, John DeVore, Kevin Scott, whoever – will make a thousand choices and most of them will be significant. It still doesn’t mean the end result will be able to communicate the essence of music in a meaningful way regardless of the fact that the above are all quite opinionated and use materials of a diverse nature. Though I happen to believe, based on my experience with their products, that they do a better job than most.
I never met a WE engineer so I’d have no idea how talented they were, nor whether any of them debated the concepts of touch and phrasing. I just know no designer has access to any sort of magic. So can we drop that descriptor now?
What I do know, in my experience, is that the one WE system I have heard had all those qualities and more and redefined what I thought was possible from a stereo system. It was a bit freaky, actually. And y’know – I didn’t want to believe the Ardbeg Corryvreckan Committee Release was gonna redefine my whisky drinking experience and beliefs, but it did. And I don’t like peaty whiskies...! Was it the alcohol, you’re thinking? Duh, of course it was the alcohol (it’s 57%)! And this was after reading the reviews and the hype and being skeptical that something could possibly be worth that much. Now, I’m not going to say that it was “better” than everything else I’ve ever tasted and that any other distillery could possibly make. Just that I enjoyed it more than anything else I’ve ever tasted – and it’s impossible to remove that event from my collective experience. What else should I do?
Now I don’t make whiskey. I don’t pretend to know what goes on inside the Ardbeg distillery. Because I don’t care. I don’t care how they do it. I’m an end-user. I only care how the experience of it moves me. Was I done over by the price? By surprise of the fact that I don’t like peaty whiskies? That I was probably wasted from the fumes before it even got to my throat? Maybe. Again, I don’t care. I enjoyed it. Immensely. Any my single WE experience was exactly the same. I learnt something new by opening myself to a new experience. I'm very very glad I did.
All I can say David, is that as much as I really appreciate you taking the time to post – and I do, sincerely - I don’t believe a system should be a personality-less, neutral conduit for the musical performance. It should be an intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant one that speaks art. I hope we can agree to disagree until one of us has an experience of life or art that surpasses all that we’ve experience thus far. I'd like some element of surprise before I check out.
Best, FC.
@Pano,
Thanks, gives me some perspective to go along with your comments ...
@ Fatchance,
Spendors, proac and ATC are bad examples IMO ...
@Cal ,
Wow 49 altecs ........................
Personally I have never heard horn speakers in a domestic setting that has ever given me that
wow factor! Most sound very coloured , some coloured and shouty, all could play loud and all excelled when reproducing , yep , the sound of horns ....
Aside , this doesn't mean the WE drivers will exhibit the same, but I would be pleasantly surprised if it did not ..
Thanks, gives me some perspective to go along with your comments ...
@ Fatchance,
Spendors, proac and ATC are bad examples IMO ...
@Cal ,
Wow 49 altecs ........................
Personally I have never heard horn speakers in a domestic setting that has ever given me that
wow factor! Most sound very coloured , some coloured and shouty, all could play loud and all excelled when reproducing , yep , the sound of horns ....
Aside , this doesn't mean the WE drivers will exhibit the same, but I would be pleasantly surprised if it did not ..
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To add further complication , I do agree with fat chance, I also agree with speaker Dave , not on evrthing mind you , but the core of their arguments, if for nothing else , both arguments emphasize what is wrong with reproduce music , why there are no winners , no checkered flag , it frustrated me when I was in the industry and why it is so difficult to produce and or design that almighty winner takes all product...
Cheers ....
Cheers ....
Sorry to hear that, but it's pretty common and what gives horns such a bad name. I blame the crossovers!
When properly set up for home use, there isn't much that can touch them. For me, the large electrostatic and planar dynamics come close, and even better on some fronts. But they also have their faults - ultimately I choose the faults of a great horn system over the faults of a great planar system. I do (very much) enjoy both.A couple of years ago I bought a pair of used Altec of A7-500. Got them in the room, hooked them with great anticipation and - OMG - awful! Really sucked. No bass, in your face, no fun to listen to. Buzzes, rattles, shouty midrange, anemic bass - at least they did sound "big". No way I wanted those as a music system. Two years later, they are not the same speakers at all. Much of that has to do with the crossover, but there are other changes, too. They are now A5 with the multicell horns and large format drivers, custom crossover.
People who walk into my listening room for the first time are usually overwhelmed - and maybe a bit scared - by the speakers. They expect a hair parting, ear bleeding experience. They don't get it. Instead the speakers and walls disappear and there is a large, open sound, slightly recessed (my taste). Voices hang in the air where they should, instruments sound a lot like the real thing.
I wish I could tell you where to hear a system like this in North America, but I don't know where they are. You are welcome to come hear mine, if you'd like.
Perfect they are not, but they should change your mind about horns.
Fatchance , I feel like sendig you a bottle of whisky for your posts but ... I need all I can source for myself
For many years wandering trough high-End audio stores and visiting friends and strangers , also buying recommended components I thought that there is something wrong with me ,since my impressions of performance were quite different than what I've read and heard around. And I consider myself rather average listener and easy to please really, with quite unsophisticated taste. Worst performing systems were usually DIY (sorry and here I am too, with absolutely horribly performing " soon to be finished " for last 6 years junk. My perception changed when I accidentally acquired single Electrovoice Patrican IV behemot. Yes , it is terribly colored speaker far from neutral but as a whole it can be wonderful performer , simply wonderful with intimate ,seductive sound. Funny , I had friends visiting who disqualified it after a few seconds of listening -no imaging .No spatial effects equals old junk not worthy listening. Since than a "neutral speaker" is like marriage of convenience to me.
There was this painting I saw with cattle feeding on the meadow with their heads turned toward the audience , standing stil with this empty gaze. Chiling portrait of consumer society without single emotion. Back to horns I'm convinced that it's the best speaker topology just too complex and expensive to gain more exposure.
For many years wandering trough high-End audio stores and visiting friends and strangers , also buying recommended components I thought that there is something wrong with me ,since my impressions of performance were quite different than what I've read and heard around. And I consider myself rather average listener and easy to please really, with quite unsophisticated taste. Worst performing systems were usually DIY (sorry and here I am too, with absolutely horribly performing " soon to be finished " for last 6 years junk
. My perception changed when I accidentally acquired single Electrovoice Patrican IV behemot. Yes , it is terribly colored speaker far from neutral but as a whole it can be wonderful performer , simply wonderful with intimate ,seductive sound. Funny , I had friends visiting who disqualified it after a few seconds of listening -no imaging .No spatial effects equals old junk not worthy listening. Since than a "neutral speaker" is like marriage of convenience to me.There was this painting I saw with cattle feeding on the meadow with their heads turned toward the audience , standing stil with this empty gaze. Chiling portrait of consumer society without single emotion. Back to horns I'm convinced that it's the best speaker topology just too complex and expensive to gain more exposure.
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My last post was long, perhaps you missed where I wrote:
"Also will be recording the output of the two- tone distortion tests and a musical passage at various volume levels ranging from “home listening” to “full tilt boogie”.
Plane wave tube tests would require adapters for the various exit size (or different tubes for each exit size, and adapters to reduce down to the mic size, similar "best transition" problems.
The Maltese horn is only 15 degrees wide, much less than any of the drivers under test throat angle.
None of the drivers will have any problem "illuminating" the full dispersion width of the horn.
Wish I had access to a WE horn + 555 driver to compare, but I doubt anyone who has one would want to send it to the high desert for testing.
At any rate, there have been great drivers made long ago, it will be interesting to see how some of the modern drivers stack up against the older ones in this test.
Art
We play Beastie Boys, BLACK SABBATH, ZZ Top.... you name it. You haven't heard Delta slide guitar till you heard it on a 16A.
When we played Beastie Boys at CES 2011 with 594A/24A horns and backhorn loaded GIP 18"s it felt like the walls would collapse.
It could very well be that the Mirrophonic era multicells are better for headbanging then the wood snail horns but we'll definitely try to play rocked-out tunes on the 15A in Munich.
Thanks for a super post!! Your description of R&D process really rings true.
In my reading, there is a scientific underpinning to the process and lots of culturally-defined stuff in there too. In the end, after the measurements are in line with you go with your ears, which is the important thing. That's where it becomes a human-crafted object, made with a degree of integrity and purpose. It has to pass group muster as a good sounding transducer.
If this step were not vital. we would have to admit that well-programmed robots could take the place of engineers and I am too big a fan of human ingenuity to accept that.
I want my speakers designed by people, even if they are nerds!
Hey, I'm a nerd. I am actively involved in product design and evaluation of some rather sophisticated electronics. Most recent is a phono stage that jc morrison came up with...pentode/FET folded cascode front end yielding crazy gain and 1 nV/√Hz noise. Measures great And, yes, software CAD tools are involved. hybrid folded cascode Gm amp
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
jc and Seongho Bae, a PhD physicist and genius builder, dial this stuff in then it ends up between a turntable and, yes, WE horns. We use the Mirrophonic Model 2 for this kind of careful monitor test listening.
We go in listening hard for weird artifacts and irksome qualities. Some of this discussion requires new abstract terminology and a lot of hand waving and exaggerated facial gestures. Somehow, we arrive at a certain consensus. A bit hard on peaks, might need a grid stopper on the 437A, what about the overload characteristics of the 6900 output stage, blah blah blah.
jc and Dr. Bae go back to the lab and attack our subjective nit picks technically...check the mosfet capacitance multipliers on the power rails. Install grid stoppers. Anyway, they fixed it. Then it went back into the listening room to be used in day to day normal listening to see if any anomalies rise to notice after getting to know the piece.
The institutional characteristics of Silbatone might be a bit different than at, say, Harman International. For one thing, we have better wine...and far less concern with manufacturing economics. But regardless of how the process is framed and formalized, I think it is mostly the same general thing...design build measure listen change listen measure compare etc. it is a social process.
subjectivism is a very a necessary part of the way we make things-or at least it should be that way. At Silbatone, we have a group notion of subjective excellence which is derived from our notions of the WE sound---fast, detailed, rich texture, colorful when it should be. Capable of occasional shocking realism. We try to objectively compare the sound to WE aural benchmarks but it all feels like rationalizing subjective preferences to me.
So, I go one step further and deny the opposition between objectivism and subjectivism. Some subjective biases (preconceptions, goals) are necessary to take a foothold and get started on a project. Otherwise it is all a shapeless blur.
The choice of a scientific engineering framework to organize these design efforts does not bracket out subjective culturally-determined factors but rather it embraces them. Science is a culture like any other, a contingent shared belief system. We can see that in the clustering of responses in this thread.
The so called subjectivist positions cluster quite a bit also...h'mm? Just how subjective/individualistic are they really?
Both are reflections of systematic, organized commonly-held belief systems. We almost know what the other guy is going to say because many of us actually know a lot about both systems of belief and choose between them.
Now, what I think is important about the WE Wide Range experience is that it can provide a very valuable sonic picture to learn about. Once you know and internalize this sound image, your range of sonic reference points will be expanded in a direction that is very distinct from the trend of most more modern speakers. Popular response suggests there is something very desirable in there.
Whether it "beats" this that or the other thing in the ensuing "apples and oranges" comparison is a sideshow.
and this:
OK, now we are getting somewhere! The almighty gap between experience and imagining.
Neither words nor logic can bridge that divide.
What we get when we try is AUDIO FORUMS!
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most horns suck, imo
...and that is because, imo at least, most horns suck
... so you would be pleasantly surprised.
I urge folks to think of it this way, maybe. Think of a big square planar speaker (the mouth of the horn), like an ESL, but with much much higher efficiency, so that you can drive it with a silly 5 watt amp and blow ur self out of the room, and with much more warmth and a sense of somehow it's not being a mechanical process doing the reproduction... forget about what is behind that big square mouth!
Of course that description does depend on the signal chain providing such a signal, one that is lacking the grain and edge that is all too common even today in most electronics and signal paths...
There is always going to be a range of compromises, the question ends up being which ones are you going to accept and to what extent?
_-_-bear
...and that is because, imo at least, most horns suck
... so you would be pleasantly surprised.
I urge folks to think of it this way, maybe. Think of a big square planar speaker (the mouth of the horn), like an ESL, but with much much higher efficiency, so that you can drive it with a silly 5 watt amp and blow ur self out of the room, and with much more warmth and a sense of somehow it's not being a mechanical process doing the reproduction... forget about what is behind that big square mouth!
Of course that description does depend on the signal chain providing such a signal, one that is lacking the grain and edge that is all too common even today in most electronics and signal paths...
There is always going to be a range of compromises, the question ends up being which ones are you going to accept and to what extent?
_-_-bear
Plane wave tube testing approximates a "perfect" horn, the raw frequency, distortion, and impedance response of a driver can be measured and compared to other drivers on plane wave tubes.
That said, microphone termination, fill and tube size all impact the measurements, so one manufacturer's plane wave tube may not be identical to another, so we still don't get an exact "apples to apples" comparison, though the difference between plane wave tubes is far less than the difference between horns.
I won't be doing plane wave testing, the HF drivers will be tested all on the same type of horn for sensitivity, phase and frequency response, then with tones and music, which will be recorded at differing levels frome "home listening" to concert levels. The recordings will make it possible to compare the original sound file to the various driver's response, and listen to how the sound quality changes at differing levels.
Post #404 describes the plan in more detail.
I may need your help posting the sound files (in another thread), never have done that before.
Art
DJNUBZ:
jc and I are scheming on some pro gear built to Silbatone standards which will be produced under the "labjc" marque. He is currently working on tube mic pres and mixer building blocks. Very cool stuff.
Knowing morrison, he will definitely kick back some ideas to the experimenting public. There is enough on labjc.com right now to get started.
jc comes on diyAudio sometimes. He's been scarce due to design projects.
Being an active forum hound does take some time, especially when a hot topic like subjective/objective split comes up. Nothing like 375 year old themes from Descartes to fire up a bunch of speaker builders!
The need for a Post-Enlightenment theory of speaker design is upon us! Hear Ye! Here ye!
We don't yet know how the hybrid folded cascode fares sound-wise vs. the tube transconductance amps that we know sound really great. We like the phono preamp but there is so much going on that it is hard to single out the contribution of any particular element pending further experiments..
I hope the preamp doesn't sound like it does because of the silver LCR chokes because that would be another stupid expensive part one would need to buy to be truly "state of the art"
A good reason to be a vintage technology fan! Don't have to worry about surges in the spot price of silver.
For the WE speakers, we use 10ga. rubber-jacketed 2 cond. industrial wire such as would be used on a floor polishing machine. Might be even some twine spacers in the twist if you get some primo NOS. This is always good for a laugh at audio shows.
jc and I are scheming on some pro gear built to Silbatone standards which will be produced under the "labjc" marque. He is currently working on tube mic pres and mixer building blocks. Very cool stuff.
Knowing morrison, he will definitely kick back some ideas to the experimenting public. There is enough on labjc.com right now to get started.
jc comes on diyAudio sometimes. He's been scarce due to design projects.
Being an active forum hound does take some time, especially when a hot topic like subjective/objective split comes up. Nothing like 375 year old themes from Descartes to fire up a bunch of speaker builders!
The need for a Post-Enlightenment theory of speaker design is upon us! Hear Ye! Here ye!
We don't yet know how the hybrid folded cascode fares sound-wise vs. the tube transconductance amps that we know sound really great. We like the phono preamp but there is so much going on that it is hard to single out the contribution of any particular element pending further experiments..
I hope the preamp doesn't sound like it does because of the silver LCR chokes because that would be another stupid expensive part one would need to buy to be truly "state of the art"
A good reason to be a vintage technology fan! Don't have to worry about surges in the spot price of silver.
For the WE speakers, we use 10ga. rubber-jacketed 2 cond. industrial wire such as would be used on a floor polishing machine. Might be even some twine spacers in the twist if you get some primo NOS. This is always good for a laugh at audio shows.
I'll just put this here.
hifi heroin: Western Electric 16a and 16b - verifying the model with the measurements...
hifi heroin: Western Electric 16a and 16b - verifying the model with the measurements...
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