John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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For those interested, Angelo Farina's web site. He is highly respected and his papers are always very enlightening. And who could have 5 dogs and not be a great guy. He uses Audition as a GUI and for what I think is its greatest feature its memory management and writes his software as a plug-in.

I have loaded 10hr wav files with instant access, zooming and scrolling to any section with virtually no redraw, etc. delays. I archived some overnight music "orgies" on WGBH. The files broke other software. Speaking here of Cooledit/Audition, I have not had a need for Angelo's plug-ins myself.

Angelo Farina's Home Page
 
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I've always been a Gaudi fanboy. I live in Madrid (the best city in the world if you love good food) but Barcelona is nicer. It just looks better.

I've only eaten more than one meal in San Sebastian. The food varied from hopelessly mundane (our cheap hotel) to spectacular.

Arzak | The World's 50 Best Restaurants

The owner and his daughter were wonderful, recreating all 16 items on the tasting menu for my wife's dietary restrictions. So I got to taste 32. :)
Unfortunately the menu at lunch was 185 euro each without wine.
 
Barcelona has very good restaurants .. and .. bars!

This is Boca Grande, May 2014.
 

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As another point I'm not that interested in the whole room equalization problem.

The proper way to equalize a room requires carpentry skills. If a room has a nasty resonance you can filter the audio signal to remove it, but it works much better to fix the problem with either a diffractor baffle or some absorption. I cut out a bit of wall in my house.

One of the amusing things in pro work is when someone places a single microphone and then carefully equalizes the sound at that point to read as flat as they can make it. So many reasons why that is wrong!


I'll do you one better se --- L.D.Fielder (Dolby Labs) - AES Fellow on the subject of dynamic range requirements. From this and others, I can extract what I want for my HiRes goals.



Dynamic-Range Issues in the Modern Digital Audio Environment


THx-RNMarsh

You guys are talking at cross purposes. Hearing may be modeled as a 70 dB dynamic range system with another 60 or so or level adjustment system. The issues is what is instantaneous or how long does the level adjustment take to change.

But J.J. also maintains he is capable of providing two signals that can both be perceived with level differences much greater than 70 dB. (Not really very difficult.)

Also the threshold of hearing in the midrange can be -6 dB SPL or even lower.
 
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I've only eaten more than one meal in San Sebastian. The food varied from hopelessly mundane (our cheap hotel) to spectacular.

Arzak | The World's 50 Best Restaurants

The owner and his daughter were wonderful, recreating all 16 items on the tasting menu for my wife's dietary restrictions. So I got to taste 32. :)
Unfortunately the menu at lunch was 185 euro each without wine.

Arzac is a well-known guy here in Spain. He's got a big heart.
 
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I had a hilarious experience when in Barcelona in 2009. We were sitting at one of those sidewalk cafes at about 9 pm at night (this was August) on La Ramba. I had had about half a bottle of wine. I looked up and there was a guy casually walking along the sidewalk stark naked. I remember he had open sandles, one of those side pouch bag things slung across his shoulder and he was smoking a pipe.

No one batted an eyelid. It was just 'oh, there's a naked rambler strolling down the main drag' at 9 pm at night with thousands of people around.

Spain. Awesome! :)
 
Hopefully when you leave one of those five star restaurants when you are all done you don't leave hungry! I am glad not to go into some of the trendy restaurants where it is more about the presentation of the food fancy platting where you are lucky to get a bite of the food and then on to the next course, when you are done you are hungry and looking for somewhere to go and eat a meal that satisfies the soul. Been there done that. Not to say anything about the people you all are talking about there in Europe, but here in LA I have had enough of some of the bs, I'm not going there to be entertained by art as food, I'm there for great food with a nice presentation. Luckily here in LA we have such a wide range of cultures and foods you can usually find some exceptional foods in the most unlikely of places.

ps. Happy Birthday John.
 
Hopefully when you leave one of those five star restaurants when you are all done you don't leave hungry!

There were some restaurants in the Bay Area just like that. I remember a dinner at one of them with Scott. When we were through, the question was, "OK, where do we go now to get something to eat?" I once overheard some folks talking about leaving a restaurant hungry, and I asked, "Elka?" They stared at me and said, "How in the world did you know that?"

BTW, question for you- do you do any composite work for auto racing guys?
 
Sy,
I have done that type of work in the past but not for some time. I did work with a guy when I was doing work on a UAV who was an F1 composites guy, he was as good as they get. I learned so much from him and another fellow but wondered why he left F1 racing. His reply was that he was sick of building beautiful bodywork only to see it crashed into a wall ten minutes after they finished building the car, just couldn't stand it anymore. Besides that unless you are the driver they really do work long and hard hours for not great wages. Thank Bernie E. for that one, his daughter needed a big house!
 
I'll do you one better se --- L.D.Fielder (Dolby Labs) - AES Fellow on the subject of dynamic range requirements. From this and others, I can extract what I want for my HiRes goals.

He too is basing his conclusions on absolute hearing thresholds under ideal conditions, not while actually listening to music, which as I said is the only context germane to this subject.

I'll go with the person with the extensive experience in perceptual coding.

se
 
Sy,
If you need someone to do some composites work I have a friend closer to your side of the country in WI. I know. He made all of the original Saleen Mustang hoods for them and does restorations and one offs. I have known him for more than 35 years and he has his own shop. Great guy and he can make anything. He started at one of the major car companies as a development guy in interior and exterior surface development if I remember correctly. Let me know and I can get you in touch. He does cars that end up on the show circuits, he is one of the best. Last car I saw pictures of was an old Buick GM prototype that was supposed to have been crushed but wasn't that he restored for the show circuit. We both raced street cars here in L.A. when there was a Mulholland racers club, blocked off the top of the mountain and road raced up here. right where I learned to drive. My car was only 4" off the ground and set up just for Mulholland Drive with 13" of tire in the back and 10" up front, Guildsterand suspensions pieces and custom Bilstein shocks made for me in San Diego. Those were the days, 120 miles an hour on a winding street marked for 35mph. We use to laugh as the cars that came to race against us. mostly Porsche and BMW's would end up off the road down the mountain, they didn't realize that some of these cars were actually cars that had been in Can-Am racing and put back on the street!
 
If he is our age I would have probably met him at one time. There are a lot of racers in Ventura County and many ended up next door to me. My friend built so many engines for those guys when he was alive on Johnson Drive. There was a major group of short track racers and drag racers that I met when I worked there. I just knew many of them by their first names only. Just mentioning my plastics company reminds many of them of me, being next door to my friends shop. My molding press was something most of them would never forget at 21 foot tall.
 
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