Brad
If you are really into that, here are some preliminary fragments of “ruined harmony”
Byzantine music
72 musical intervals, 8 “sounds”-scales-(1 diatonic, 2 chromatic, 3 enharmonic, 4 diatonic, 5 diatonic, 6 chromatic, 7 enharmonic, 8 diatonic), relative pitch within each scale, bizarre notation, 100+ orthographic rules, each rule has at least one exception and there exceptions of an exception and so forth.
Byzantine vs. Western Notation
http://newbyz.org/guide_to_music_of_eoa.pdf
http://stanthonysmonastery.org/music/ByzOrthography.pdf
George
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I've been interested in just intonation for about 45 years. Although I've played and written music, both so-called classical and jazz, which is nominally equal temperament, I've planned on getting around to doing some just intonation stuff with actual modulation, as opposed to things like Indian classical music or certain other drone-oriented things.
At the rate things are going I may not get to it, but that's o.k.
Thanks for those references. Duffin is fun to read by the way, as I quickly discovered when I pulled it out, began re-reading, and realized how much I enjoyed it. He attempts to give a history of how things have come to be the way they are.
At the rate things are going I may not get to it, but that's o.k.
Thanks for those references. Duffin is fun to read by the way, as I quickly discovered when I pulled it out, began re-reading, and realized how much I enjoyed it. He attempts to give a history of how things have come to be the way they are.
I designed probably the best mike of the last millenium and the digital filters for the best mike for this one. I can make such claims cos I can define what a perfect mike must do and judge any mike against this ideal.
But my real expertise is loudspeakers. In my previous life, I was regularly approached by people with new ideas for making a noise. I did extensive theoretical studies for the more promising and have even commissioned expensive work on some where I felt my understanding of the principles were inadequate to do them justice.
Out of all that, the only thing I came away with was greater respect for the Constant Charge Electrostatic speaker .. for bass .. unfortunately its mid & treble hasn't the potential to topple Rice & Kellog's invention.
Some principles need materials specs. of a magnitude greater than available so you keep an eye on new materials. Rare earth magnets in the late 80's made our Isodynamic (and similar stuff like Esperado's) viable but they still don't have the potential for world leading mid/treble.
There is a piezo method that requires film with piezo constants at least 10x what is currently available to make it viable as a high quality transducer. In the meantime, they make nice toys.
I can't make claims about the 'best speaker in the world' because I still dunno what that needs to do .. after more than half my life trying to define this problem.
So yes. Keep an open mind .. but also have a clear idea of what needs to be done.
If you do this, quite often, working with new technologies gives you insights that allow you to go back to 'tried & tested' and put it even further ahead of fancy new stuff.
My main interest is in art and that means music, too. When I got bored with Classical - only because I heard it over and over with no more new compositions coming from the great dead masters - I found "world" music to be very fresh. Including musical instruments that are unique and blends of old and new styles is exciting. [ not done on computers for the most part.] There's a lot of great music going on - it just isnt American pop.
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But my real expertise is loudspeakers.
Out of all that, the only thing I came away with was greater respect for the Constant Charge Electrostatic speaker .. for bass .. unfortunately its mid & treble hasn't the potential to topple Rice & Kellog's invention.
So yes. Keep an open mind .. but also have a clear idea of what needs to be done.
If you do this, quite often, working with new technologies gives you insights that allow you to go back to 'tried & tested' and put it even further ahead of fancy new stuff.
I am always looking for a better speaker. Do you publish detailed specs on yours? I am especially interested in distortion of all types. My room is fairly large in size and volume so I need plenty of volume and bass extension with high spl. Thx-RNM
I have quite a liking for traditional music with no Western influence at all, there was a French label that I have forgotten and David Lewiston on Nonsuch that basicly did "fly on the wall" recordings of musicians with virtually no contact with the modern world.
About 20 yr. ago the Taiko drummers from Edo Island came as guests of the Boston Symphony and I remember the "blue hairs" running for the doors at intermission. Recently the Taiko performances I have seen are full of cheesy sops to a public weaned on pop culture.
BTW Dick have you run across the guy in Singapore who paints with coffee?
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With the f.o. mic --- I havent read anywhere that it overcomes any laws of nature and that vibrating membranes are still held to known principles. can the performance be made to equal mic in use today. Thats the question. Because they do offer advantages in some use and application. Such as with long cable runs (studio/PA/live) and in noisy rfi/emi/power invironments. You could lay it right on top of a power cable or speaker/high level signal cable.... nil loss of signal quality with long cable lengths; nil cross-talk, etc These issues are also part of a microphone system.
BTW - f.o cable isnt necessarily fragile at all. It depends on the cladding used to protect the f.o. [One job I had was to develop a f.o. lab for f.o. research. The French had invented an o'scope that could directly measure light wavelength signals and display on screen for their nuclear weapons program and we got one from them for the f.o. lab] -RNM
BTW - f.o cable isnt necessarily fragile at all. It depends on the cladding used to protect the f.o. [One job I had was to develop a f.o. lab for f.o. research. The French had invented an o'scope that could directly measure light wavelength signals and display on screen for their nuclear weapons program and we got one from them for the f.o. lab] -RNM
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Art
Not yet. But there are soooo many uses of materials that we throw away - they creatively use it to make something else.
Not yet. But there are soooo many uses of materials that we throw away - they creatively use it to make something else.
Iaudio, have you a model no. or link to this beast? Can't seem to find it on the present B&K site nor in their 2008 dead tree catalogue.
After making me all excited with their original release, their present offerings equal mediocre electret omnis.
As for long cable runs, http://www.optoacoustics.com/sites/default/files/documents/optimic-1200-datasheet.pdf says
Eq. Self-Noise @
<19dBA 10m
<21dBA 100m
<34dBA 1000m
I'm flattered by your interest Mr. Marsh but I've been a beach bum for more than a decade. IMHO, the only product worth dealing with the pain of no Service support is the Wharfedale Diamond V. It's claim to fame is that it has come up top in every Blind Listening Test it's entered, mostly against much larger and more expensive Golden Pinnae models. More than a dozen tests in all. We do ABC rather than ABX tests, so the chances of this being chance are 3^12. In nearly 2 decades of Blind Listening Tests, no other speaker has come near its record.
Though it has much solid BS & (now) Unobtainium, I still don't know what gives it this performance though some aspects, eg the bass response can be replicated.
I humbly suggest it is the best small speaker ever made.
My view of speaker distortions goes back to
AES E-Library Simulation and Investigation of Doppler Distortion &
AES E-Library Intermodulation Distortion Listening Tests
They deal with far more than the title distortions. I was fortunate to have worked with Peter on these while still a young whippersnapper. IIRC there is a good readable summary of these in HFN 1981? called "Loudspeaker Distortions - can we hear them".
Alas, Wharfedale speakers are no longer made by Yorkshire virgins and the company no longer designs & makes its own drive units. It has become a 'box stuffer'.
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Hear, hear ...
In the field of reproduction there are still so many unfinished edges in the sound quality of a high percentage of assembled systems, for which there are no reasons apart from a lack of attention to detail or desire to look beyond standard methods of measurements. The very best reproduction at the recent hifi show I just attended demonstrated that significant movement forward has occurred in the last decade; in one sense no more has to be done to "improve" things, it's more a case of understanding why the "good" systems are so, and systematically applying that understanding to all systems ...
Frank
The B&K microphone is the 4147 and the "carrier" system is the 2631 of which one is on eBay: Bruel Kjaer Microphone Carrier System 2631 Used | eBay It uses a 10 MHz carrier and senses the modulation from the change in capacitance.
I 200 percent agree with you Frank. It is an excuse to say that either art, or science, or materials are not ready. BS. Instead of optimizing the whole thingy people are too busy polishing what is not significant, then complain that nothing better can be done.
It reminds me a guitar pickup that I made being a high school student: there were no magnet pickups in SU for sale, and I was too lazy to wind one. So I used parts from FM radio and made it on a PCB under strings.
That's the way Sennheiser makes its electrostatics from more than 50 years. It has an advantage for humid outdoors operation and less noise, because the capsule's impedance is low.
About induced noises in long cables, with remoted preamp near the source and symetrical lines, anything to fear ?
cable drivers at the source helps but cables themselves are not precision parts and rejection is only adequate for PA/Live use. Not for SOTA HiDef recordings.
With moderate to long cable runs, emi/rfi and cross talk is not eliminated or even reduced much by driving cable at mic/source end. Never-the-Less, that is not the norm.... not even at mega dollar studios like Lucas Film.....[ I've been there and seen the situation]. Mics attached to long cables and snake boxes are more common in studios. F.O. is also small and light weight I wonder how good the performance can be improved by the electronics portion of the opto-mic. Thx-RNM
With moderate to long cable runs, emi/rfi and cross talk is not eliminated or even reduced much by driving cable at mic/source end. Never-the-Less, that is not the norm.... not even at mega dollar studios like Lucas Film.....[ I've been there and seen the situation]. Mics attached to long cables and snake boxes are more common in studios. F.O. is also small and light weight
I wonder how good the performance can be improved by the electronics portion of the opto-mic. Thx-RNM
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There are solutions... f.o. is another with unique solutions. AES-42 is for ADC inside a mic body or nearby.... for long cable runs it can help with some of the analog issues.... however, there is no free lunch -- you may be changing one set of issues for another --- such as jitter and signal waveform degradation of high speed data on long cables. May still want f.o. cable for the digital mic signal.
One analog solution is to have really good cmr in the preamp/amp. Not really trying to go off in a microphone tangent. What isnt handled with mic/source/cable et al is rejected with the cmr of the recieving amp. We should always look at cmrr of all analog amps/systems as well as thd/noise/harmonics which gets all the attention. Thx-RNM
One analog solution is to have really good cmr in the preamp/amp. Not really trying to go off in a microphone tangent. What isnt handled with mic/source/cable et al is rejected with the cmr of the recieving amp. We should always look at cmrr of all analog amps/systems as well as thd/noise/harmonics which gets all the attention. Thx-RNM
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You do mean this, therefore you have my greatest respect.
And extremely efficient actuators (that’s where the money is, where the need is)
Deposition of thin films of multicomponent materials
Out of all that, the only thing I came away with was greater respect for the Constant Charge Electrostatic speaker .. for bass .. unfortunately its mid & treble hasn't the potential to topple Rice & Kellog's invention.
Well, you threw a bomb here. This is contrary to all I have heard and read. Can you put some more words on this?
George
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