No way Cal RU going to get me going to B.C. Bud.
It is way to cold up there, plus the blues are better down here.
My assistant thanks you for the offer any way.
I meant the top 10 % that I have actually had/built in my own home. It's pretty nice to be able to kick back and listen without constantly listening for problems. They simply are not there. at least not in an audible sense. There was a slight squak I would hear now and then but once I switched off the DTS on the blue ray player it has gone away. I'm not totally giving up DIY just changing over to other things like some grills that don't dilute the sound like the original Klipsch ones do. Or maybe some better cables. the 60 foot round trip the signals need to make on these Menards 14 gauge wires might be limiting the sound a bit.
Hi Tvrgeek,
I'm not about to join any opinion-bashing squad here, but just my $0.02...
This post after all is about someone who believes he's finally found his soul-mate with a pair of speakers (for now – we all know what happens a couple of years down the line...), so I think you're justified in raising an eyebrow when a DIY-er tells you he's reached the finishing post. I'll just smile quietly to myself; sooner or later he'll start to think about bi-amping, cables, room acoustics...
However, I would like to reply to your statement re:
At the risk of alienating some, or possibly myself, I kinda empathise with you to a point; in fact this was common belief if you go back 30-40 years – many folk were spending two or three times on speakers as they were on the rest of their systems. Indeed, I've played with quite a few different amplification arrangements over the years, and frankly I agree that much larger gains can be made for less $$ elsewhere in the system unless you've really screwed up somewhere (impedance/power mismatching etc). My biggest eye-opener was a direct comparison between a rave-reviewed 250W/CH class AB SS amp originally in the ~$4,000 bracket, and a $200 Chinese EL34 (~25W) flea-bay jobbie. Listening impressions showed identical transparency, the bass slightly more “fruity” on the EL34, and the EL34 again brought the sound stage slightly more forward. Yes, differences sure, but only slight and not worse. Naturally, the 10 x power rating of the SS made sod-all difference. I'd go as far as to say that if I'd been listening to one, then left the room for half an hour & someone crept in & swapped the other in, I wouldn't notice the difference. Pretty much all of these cheapie amps have nasty volume control pots, which could be removed for a tangible improvement, and the far lower costs make bi & tri amping possible, and likely to give far more improvements that throwing more money at a single amp. Just my opinion based on my findings chaps, if you can afford Conrad Johnsons & Krells, and you can justify their worth, I certainly won't argue.
HOWEVER...
I'm taking a leap here based on your earlier comment which suggests a digital front-end?
OK, I listen to 0's &1's too, but only out of convenience. Without opening up the D/A argument I'll just make the following point. Say you have a car. The car is (impossibly) perfect in all aspects except for the engine (source). You take a 1,000cc Kawasaki bike engine – a good one; there's a lot of tweaking you can do: replace the crankshaft with a hardened, balanced unit. Replace the pistons with lightweight high performance titanium units, turbo-charge, supercharge, oil-cooling etc. You can probably double the performance of the stock unit, but there comes a point where you simply cannot do any more. So you swap the Kawasaki for a F1 engine, and apply all the upgrades not allowed by F1 regulation: obviously it's going to trounce the bike engine. What's my point?
Higher amount of genuine information released at the source will inevitably improve performance all the way through the signal path. An improvement of 20% information retrieval at the source correlates to a 20% improvement out of your speakers regardless of how good amps or speakers are; just like altering the gain. Doesn't matter how good or bad your system is, turning up the volume makes it louder. If you could apply the same principle to information retrieval and have a “retrieval control” you would hear the same degree of difference.
I would urge you, if you can, to see if you can find someone locally (I really hope this is possible) who is able to give you a demonstration (in your own system) of a properly recorded first master analogue recording, preferably on a good open reel recorder. If you can do this, I think you'll be blown away with the results.
I'm not convinced that digital media is really capable using 44.1, 48, or even 96KHz sampling frequencies, of making any really huge leaps in performance over what we're doing now – OK we'll squeeze an extra % here or there, but short of applying post processing effects (not real or HiFi) to the source signal, the media industry has left us stuck with what we have: just my opinion chaps, put your rifles down.
On the other hand, I think we've barely scratched the surface of analogue. Regardless of what any reviewer has to say, I believe that most analogue sources do NOT address the real issues of performance. I don't trust a NASA engineer to build a turntable any more than I trust him to cook me a gourmet meal; these appear to be the most fashionable credentials of current “high-end” TT designers. I think more advances in analogue will be found amongst the pages of forums such as this, where committed enthusiasts can innovate and make progressive improvements. However, from the perspective of a committed digital user, I can fully appreciate how daunting the prospect of opening the analogue Pandora's Box must be – even for certified vinyl junkies, the field is plagued by polarised opinions, misinformation, and compromise.
My $0.02, like I say, and apologies if I got it wrong about your source, but seriously; if you can try the experiment I described above and load far more information into your system than it has ever seen, I think you'll be surprised at what comes out.
If it weren't for the limiting factors such as a handful of truly epic sounding analog recordings I'd say yes, but you simply are not gonna find the majority of recordings to be like that. They just don't make them nor to my understanding there is no way to convert them short of reincarnating the greats (Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin and all the others) and having them re-record their stuff that way.
I've scratched the surface of a few....Hate when they skip.Actually, the truth is that most people barely scratch the surface of digital ...
Granted, but now you're opening a new topic; which I don't mind so long as no one else does. If Hendrix, Joplin and so-on are your bag what's your alternative? I've rarely heard any digital remasters that offer any improvements, but again you've actually qualified my point: if the source (the recording in this example) is crap, short of applying post-production effects, the result will be crap regardless of how much you spend on speakers. If you're speakers are 90% there, but your TT is only giving you 30%, then it follows that if you can improve your TT to 50% you've won, even on a duff recording.
Just to throw in another variable, although “rarely”, yes – I have heard extraordinary results from digital remastering: this applies to archive recordings, mainly acoustically recorded masters & subsequent pressings thereof, typically old 78's that have had noise & distortion removed, equalisation restored, wow & flutter elements removed, and complex acoustic affects applied in order to make a new stereo master that has a convincing sound-field applicable to the original recording venue. I think (if memory serves & I haven't loused up artist title etc) “The Rhumba Jumps!” by Hoagy Carmichael in front of a live audience along with background chatter & clinking glasses springs to mind: very convincing, but don't forget that these affects were applied 50 or 60 years later in a studio by an engineer who was listening through a pair of speakers, and therefore able to apply effects, remove, experiment & re-apply until he found the most convincing compromise likely to be heard by a real-world listener. Dunno whether it's still the case, but my conversations with studio guys going back over a decade usually turned up non-audiophile phrases like “digital kills reverb & echo: makes it sound flat” - so they threw on a load more reverb, “aural excitation” & echo effects when post mastering. If you go fishing there are quite a few algorithms available to studios that are designed to enhance vocals and other areas. But hey, this is nothing new; post production effects have been applied in the analogue domain for decades too. Truth is, most “remasters” are simply copies of the original masters with a little noise removed & not much else, but there are exceptions that prove the rule.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who's played at doing this on an amateur level either: there are plenty of free-ware mastering/remastering suites that can be found on the net: I took an old copy of English Congregations “Softly Whispering I Love you” - same time period as your stuff. In it's raw state the sound has been compared to fingernails being dragged down a chalk-board. I messed with the equalisation, boosted the sample rate to 96Khz, then applied a few reverberation effects. It's now quite enjoyable assuming you like that kinda thang...
BUT – I'd much rather listen to a live acoustic recording performed on a 1” 30ips tube Studer if it were possible
That explains something ... many of the 80's pop recordings have massive levels of reverb, etc, on them - when digital replay is working well the soundstage on them is staggeringly huge! I thought it was a fashionable thing to do at the time, but now it sounds like what they were really trying to do was compensate for what they perceived were recording problems, from using the equipment they had at the time for playback ...
It wasn't until the 90's that DDD really started in most "pop" studios; mainstream was still being mastered with analogue tape - don't know if the CD's were given an extra boost compared to the 45's & lp's issued at the time.
The biggest complaint most recently has been that (again mainstream) regardless of whose playing what, the engineers rarely change any of the settings so everything sounds the same: usually compressed to hell so kids can hear stuff on their smart-phones etc.
The biggest complaint most recently has been that (again mainstream) regardless of whose playing what, the engineers rarely change any of the settings so everything sounds the same: usually compressed to hell so kids can hear stuff on their smart-phones etc.
Music goes through fashion cycles.
In the '80s it was gated snares and lots of reverb. Reverb because digital reverbs just became affordable to most.
In the '00s it was autotune as an effect because it became possible AND affordable but luckily that is on the wane now too.
I just hope that the trend for overuse of dynamic compression will eventually go away as well.
In the '80s it was gated snares and lots of reverb. Reverb because digital reverbs just became affordable to most.
In the '00s it was autotune as an effect because it became possible AND affordable but luckily that is on the wane now too.
I just hope that the trend for overuse of dynamic compression will eventually go away as well.
The extent of my music selection could be described as **** poor. Actually it's a dvd of pink floyds Pulse, The dvd of Zeppelins Celebration day, a Peter Frampton cd remastered and the absolute worst sounding thing I've ever heard and the rest is bootlegged videos from youtube in mp4 format. Everyone of the videos that sound like it's a vinyl record sounds much more rich and pleasurable. Such as Dobie Grays Drifting away.
Dobie Gray - Drift Away (Original Official Video) - YouTube
So you'll get no argument from me on the analog or digital fight. My point was your not gonna find movies like Avatar with an analog soundtrack. So unless you want to be limited to a very small fraction of perfect music that's your bag and I'm hip with that. But I also find the crisp perfectness of digital to be a necessity during top movie titles such as The Avengers. That soundtrack is top notch. (p.s. If you haven't seen the avengers you probably ought to It's really good!!!!)
Dobie Gray - Drift Away (Original Official Video) - YouTube
So you'll get no argument from me on the analog or digital fight. My point was your not gonna find movies like Avatar with an analog soundtrack. So unless you want to be limited to a very small fraction of perfect music that's your bag and I'm hip with that. But I also find the crisp perfectness of digital to be a necessity during top movie titles such as The Avengers. That soundtrack is top notch. (p.s. If you haven't seen the avengers you probably ought to It's really good!!!!)
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Some of the best in the world
dave
beat me to it - I'll add that lots of folks are going to BC Bud, but that's just a silly play on words and punctuation
yes, even our warmest day (Lytton / Lillooet in the interior commonly above 40C, and even on the coast well above 30C not unusual ) would be considered way colder than the all time high recorded in Texas - 120F? - but of course it's the humidity, right
as for the blues, depending on your mood, there's cities in other states as well - shall we talk Chicago, Louisiana, Memphis, -and it pains a West Coaster to utter the word, but even Toronto
I could go on
We will just have to disagree about the moist significant parameter. And we will REALLY have to disagree with "any reasonable"... Further discussion on this point won't help the OP.
Strange. I always start the project with what will be providing the midrange and build around that. Any old speaker just won't do. You said so when you used the term "the key mid-range" I'll admit you've got me confused Frank.
Just ask Bose about the Wave radio. Yes, I know it's a mono unit, it was the two different speakers I was referring to.
Sure it is, my Forte's are fine listeners. I use them for the TV in the front room, but they are far from the end all.
Obviously if one can choose a better quality driver then it makes sense to do so - I'm just coming from the angle of being curious whether one can achieve acceptable sound from a nominally very ordinary driver, like the ubiquitous, small, full range ones that you find on most midfi audio units. And IME you can, if it's driven by very, very competent electronics - they can produce wholly satisfying sound at very decent volume levels - way superior to the normal standard of "hifi" sound ...
Now I know you are kidding. If you believe that, you are turning what everyone else believes on its head. Speakers have the highest level of distortion of any hifi component, so you really believe the difference between 0.01% and 0.005% amplifier distortion is in anyway audible? If that is true, then I may as well throw all of my SB Acoustics, Vifa and Peerless drivers in the bin, along with all of the active circuitry that drives them to deafening levels with very little audible distortion. It is a pity you aren't in Melbourne or I would show you what the opening thrash of Smells like Teen Spirit can do to your audio senses (but alas, not to the others).
Rolls eyes in disbelief!
Abs
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