The thing is, you see, that I suspect Bose was not, shall we say, truly original with the concept, and his speakers look awfully alike to a Swedish manufacturer of the time, Sonab. A bit too much for comfort.
Sonab had used excactly the same approach for at least 7 or 8 years before Bose series 3, 5 and 9 even appeared. And, I might add, with very similar results. Take a peek here: Sonab Katalog 1972
I believe Sonab was responsible for some of the most innovative thinking on audio in Europe in 1970. A little off-beat, but good, really good. A Canadian colleague of my dad did own OA6, the largest model in the line and loved them so much he enjoyed giving demos, almost like a salesman. A few hours with them said all there was to say, an excellent concept well executed.
Bose came years later. While I like the concept and support it as such, I have always found Bose speakers to be lacking in the top end. To my ears, irritatingly so.
Sonab had used excactly the same approach for at least 7 or 8 years before Bose series 3, 5 and 9 even appeared. And, I might add, with very similar results. Take a peek here: Sonab Katalog 1972
I believe Sonab was responsible for some of the most innovative thinking on audio in Europe in 1970. A little off-beat, but good, really good. A Canadian colleague of my dad did own OA6, the largest model in the line and loved them so much he enjoyed giving demos, almost like a salesman. A few hours with them said all there was to say, an excellent concept well executed.
Bose came years later. While I like the concept and support it as such, I have always found Bose speakers to be lacking in the top end. To my ears, irritatingly so.
Agreed . By some twist of fate I can show you how they sound . This is people dancing to them .
Clubbers upstairs at Kirklands Wine Bar, 1981, Liverpool museums
A Russian guy on another thread is suggesting amplifiers have a 3 dimensional system of working . Thus the current and voltage verses time is not the only question . He used a paper on twin oscillators and Chaos maths to suggest an idea . I sort of thought I understood . An amplifier like a bad clock perhaps ? It might even have Chaos qualities like the strange attractor where order arrives from Chaos . Is a feedback amplifier ordering a turbulent system ? As far as I know that requires we go beyond turbulence which as far as I know we don't . All very fascinating .
I doubt if a typical audio amplifier has enough nonlinearity to behave chaotically. At the amplifier input the only issue is voltage vs.time. Same at the output. Of course, the voltage may be affected by current draw and there may be reactive components but my hunch is that people raise esoteric complications because they don't sufficiently understand the basic engineering problems and solutions of amplifiers. Get the basics right and the esoterica disappear.
double that lol. I actually smiled when I read the reply you qouted and thought it's worth a comment.Lol ......
and that's because Marantz is more than rumored to be a marketing-driven company nowadays. someone I rather trust told me that Ken Ishiwata has no idea what goes on inside their products and is no more than a marketing gimmick. but I guess that for a geek/snob niche of the market a weird-looking Japanese guy that dresses like a homo and has the most irritating accent has some appeal.
You need to differentiate between Marantz as company, and Saul B. Marantz as a person. Saul sold the company in the mid 60ies, and had no say in its running since the mid 70ies (even if he did own stock in it).
Personally, the last and only Marantz products I cheris were made in the last ever "Desogned in the U.S.A., manufactured in Jašpan" series 1978-1980. After that, its fall began, and it is now a typical, me-too Japanese manufacturer of no particular significance.
Be that as it may, I still like to think of Saul B. Marantz as one of the pioneers of the audio industry.
Personally, the last and only Marantz products I cheris were made in the last ever "Desogned in the U.S.A., manufactured in Jašpan" series 1978-1980. After that, its fall began, and it is now a typical, me-too Japanese manufacturer of no particular significance.
Be that as it may, I still like to think of Saul B. Marantz as one of the pioneers of the audio industry.
You need to differentiate between Marantz as company, and Saul B. Marantz as a person. Saul sold the company in the mid 60ies, and had no say in its running since the mid 70ies (even if he did own stock in it).
Personally, the last and only Marantz products I cheris were made in the last ever "Desogned in the U.S.A., manufactured in Jašpan" series 1978-1980. After that, its fall began, and it is now a typical, me-too Japanese manufacturer of no particular significance.
Be that as it may, I still like to think of Saul B. Marantz as one of the pioneers of the audio industry.
Personally, the last and only Marantz products I cheris were made in the last ever "Desogned in the U.S.A., manufactured in Jašpan" series 1978-1980. After that, its fall began, and it is now a typical, me-too Japanese manufacturer of no particular significance.
Be that as it may, I still like to think of Saul B. Marantz as one of the pioneers of the audio industry.
That's about what I thought . I will think about it a bit more . The guy who said it I suspect does do esoteric research in a similar field . I have friends like this and English or Russian they usually speak in a different tongue . When my brother went to college his tutor wrote he thought my brother didn't know what he was talking about . Soon they realized it was they who didn't understand . When asked where he read an idea he said he hadn't . He had worked it out . They even said they teach his proofs as they are far simpler to understand .
My brother showed me a very quick way to calculate RIAA . It was only 0.2 dB out . I lost my notes and have forgotten . It was so easy .
If anyone knows legitimate hacking I would love to use his e-mail address as my own . I write to him about twice a year . It is the same as taking him flowers as I did on Tuesday . I just need his pass word . I have friends who can I am sure .
It was Model 10 that pulled them under . Sid Smith said they lost $250 on each one . We were selling Garrard 501 too cheaply . Sid and my Boss Terry became friends due to the loosing of money ( Sid heard and wanted to meet Terry ) . Terry at one point had lost $600 000 on 501 . The losses were just not making any yet living the life of a minor film star when we went to shows . I loved every minute and made friends I could never have imagined . We got the money back , not through 501 . Terry is 68 now . He should retire . He just about has a good life/work balance . He said the other day how on Earth can anyone live on a pension of $43200 a year ( after tax ) . I would give it a try . Sid probably saved Terry . He said grit your teeth and charge more .
When the Model 8 or 9 was relaunched the now Marantz never contacted Sid . Terry and I made a point of telling the man with the pony tail that . He has never spoken to us since . Irony is Sid would have helped him for nothing .
Sid said out of him and I think Dick Siquara combined ( spelling ? or John D ) you got one decent engineer . I would say so . Williamson was the company inspiration . Sid said winding the transformers himself was the only way to get what he wanted . I think he said they made in house from his designs ? We were to work together . Alas never to be . It was obvious he was someone very elevated as a thinker .
BTW Dvv. If I understand correctly Marantz was then bought by Philips to have access to Japan for component trading . Credit to the man with the pony tail he begged them to respect the company history and drag them out of the pit they had fallen into . I think although now so unlikely Philips hadn't given it any thought . Superscope was the name of the unworthy stuff which had been the down market Marantz . The tape decks were not too bad .
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Interesting conversation going on over at another forum: Measurements & the stereo illusion. In particular, this gent, James D. (jj) Johnston Home Page, is very actively contributing, so lots of good technical perspective is being injected into the chat ...
I will have to go cause trouble there .
McIntosh. The only comment Sid Smith made about any maker of hi fi was they were the other company he would have liked to work for . He held Joe Grado and Ed Vilchur as people he respected . Other than that he was everyone's favourite grandfather . I never asked him if he knew Albert Einstein , I think they were neighbours ? I remember in his neighbourhood there was a pristine 1930's power station . How do you Americans do that ? Maybe it was preserved ? I sort of think it was working ? It was at night I saw it and perhaps my extreme love of power stations clouded my vision ? Maybe is was a ghost building ? I have never heard of that even in fiction . The Mary Celeste - Brigadoon power company Long Island .
Just had a quick look at the other forum . The BBC did a lot of this when doing Binaural encoding . They wanted compatibility so not focused just on our interest . Last night I had a conversation about exactly this . If anyone ever gets to the Plough at Finstock near Oxford on Thursday night come meet us because we can get some interesting people who love music who are scientists to group together . The conversion last night was 100 kHz in output transformers to make them more linear . Rejected as the friend wants a typical ( read , awful to me ) valve sound . Binaural ,could we decode for headphones to make AB stereo into headphone stereo . It was decided we couldn't .
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If I wrote this people would laugh . When Michael did they didn't . Some laughed all the way to the bank who listened to him . Sort of the same stuff as the other debate . Michael and Percy Wilson lived about two minutes apart . Both had the light touch ( Michael in writing ) . Both were serious mathematicians . I have no idea if they were friends ? Meeting Michael was a bit like meeting the Old Sea Tar in the Ancient Mariner .
http://www.audiosignal.co.uk/Resources/Stereo_shuffling_A4.pdf
http://www.audiosignal.co.uk/Resources/Stereo_shuffling_A4.pdf
I'm not sure there's really anything interesting there, some guy that seems to make a living in the field is backing up claims with facts intead of simply promoting personal opinions. how does that encourage a discussion filled with speculation? because, looking at this thread, I gather it's what people are after.
I bet you didn't read the paper I posted ? It would be impossible to say that of it ? It is also do-able on a low budget . It goes back to 1931 for inspiration .
Dvv stated I was one of the few people who advocates stereo sub woofers as a necessity . Without me realizing Gerzon says why . Bass needs stereo . It needs wider spacing . If so everything sounds better . Happens in real life .
There is nothing more to audio than the waveform, period.
Not only can we show that there is virtually no difference between a reproduced and original waveform, can measure significant differences in waveforms that cannot be heard, because the ear is a crude instrument which is limited in numerous ways not limited to just frequency response.
For instance, if we play white noise which contains a silent gap, there is a limit on the minimum size of the gap which can be heard, and it is rather large (I can dig this up in an acoustics text for anyone interested).
What is accurately reproduced and what sounds good are different things.
Proper audio gear for reproduction does not have a sound, or ideally should not. It sounds like the source material. (By which I mean the final cut that the studio engineers heard out of their reference monitors.)
If the material sounds bad in an acoustically treated room, with electronics and loudspeakers in proper working condition, all of which have excellent measurements, then the only conclusion is that, in fact, the source material itself sounds bad (subjectively, to that listener).
Anything else is unscientific lunacy, like homeopathy, alien abductions, creationism, and all the rest of it.
Not only can we show that there is virtually no difference between a reproduced and original waveform, can measure significant differences in waveforms that cannot be heard, because the ear is a crude instrument which is limited in numerous ways not limited to just frequency response.
For instance, if we play white noise which contains a silent gap, there is a limit on the minimum size of the gap which can be heard, and it is rather large (I can dig this up in an acoustics text for anyone interested).
What is accurately reproduced and what sounds good are different things.
Proper audio gear for reproduction does not have a sound, or ideally should not. It sounds like the source material. (By which I mean the final cut that the studio engineers heard out of their reference monitors.)
If the material sounds bad in an acoustically treated room, with electronics and loudspeakers in proper working condition, all of which have excellent measurements, then the only conclusion is that, in fact, the source material itself sounds bad (subjectively, to that listener).
Anything else is unscientific lunacy, like homeopathy, alien abductions, creationism, and all the rest of it.
I enjoyed this video mentioned in that thread by James Johnston, Opus 4 Studios: James D. (JJ) Johnston, Richard Heyser Distinguished Lecturer - AES-PNW - YouTube, particularly his emphasis on perception ...
Regarding the ear being crude, au contraire, it's incredibly sophisticated but it's not the lightest bit interested in "dumb", technical, jumping through hoops exercises - it 'wants' to hear meaning in the sounds it picks up, if the material is intrinsically boring nonsense then it doesn't waste time trying to digest it.
What is accurately reproduced should sound good, I've done the exercise too many times personally to have any other view. Having "electronics and loudspeakers in proper working condition" is the killer conditional, seems to be a pretty rare thing to achieve. As an example, YouTube is filled with clips of supposedly high quality audio equipment playing music and audio tracks - which sound dreadful, appalling, a million miles from being accurate - that is, vaguely like what the recording is supposed to be of ...
Regarding the ear being crude, au contraire, it's incredibly sophisticated but it's not the lightest bit interested in "dumb", technical, jumping through hoops exercises - it 'wants' to hear meaning in the sounds it picks up, if the material is intrinsically boring nonsense then it doesn't waste time trying to digest it.
What is accurately reproduced should sound good, I've done the exercise too many times personally to have any other view. Having "electronics and loudspeakers in proper working condition" is the killer conditional, seems to be a pretty rare thing to achieve. As an example, YouTube is filled with clips of supposedly high quality audio equipment playing music and audio tracks - which sound dreadful, appalling, a million miles from being accurate - that is, vaguely like what the recording is supposed to be of ...
The problem with that belief is that the ear perfectly well picks up some boring nonsense while ignoring other boring nonsense. And in fact, boring nonsense can mask interesting material, so that the boring nonsense is preferentially heard, and the masking nonsense doesn't necessarily even have to be loud.
For example, the ear (or rather the listening subject as a whole, ear to brain) cannot pick up a portion of a signal which occurs a very short time after some masking noise.
The ear does have a wide dynamic range, and a lot of the processing that is going on is clever, particularly that which is upstream from the acoustic mechanism.
The ear-brain complex does does some wondrous things with that which it does pick up, but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of the information coming in is discarded.
Of that which is not discarded, it is what it is; the ear cannot hear something into the material that it "tunes" into, which isn't in that material's waveform.
But what if the source material doesn't sound "good"? What if it sounds bad not due to neglect, but because the recording artist intended to create a sound that is bad to most listeners? If your equipment makes it sound good, it's a fail.
Equipment can make a bad sound sound good, or at least okay, in some fairly obvious ways, such as having inadequate frequency response, which attenuates some harsh harmonic. When the listener is used to that version of the material, and is later confronted with the high fidelity original, he or she may show a preference for the familiar, degraded version.
This could be because people are re-recording their equipment acoustically, so that it picks up the reflections in the room and ambient noise. The microphones used are often not very good. The encoding further degrades the sound, and YouTube itself puts in another kick by transcoding people's uploads into even lower bitrates.
Such videos can hardly be used to justify any statement about the worthiness of someone's stereo.
I was specifically referring to such things as "play white noise which contains a silent gap, there is a limit on the minimum size of the gap which can be heard, and it is rather large" - this type of audio signal is of little value, and interest, to human hearing
Yes, much is discarded, because the hearing mechanism is extracting out the crucial information which informs it that there is something of interest in what it hears at a particular moment -- that video I mentioned in the earlier post describes this.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, the ear can hear what's not there - I've experienced this myself, if playing two versions of some material where qualities are missing in one, then my brain "fills in the gaps" because it remembers what should be there, from the 'good' version - this is where DBT gets into trouble ...
If the artistic quality is "bad", then that's something different from reproduction quality.
Yes, familiarity is part of the process, and needs to be taken into account.
This would sense for some videos, but there are plenty where one also hears the 'natural' sounds of the environment where the stereo is playing: people talking, objects being moved, the ambience of the place - these all sound 'right', but the playback, the reproduction within the reproduction, sounds 'wrong'. There are some videos where a specific sound or live music clip is played, immediately adjacent to a reproduction of the same, and it's very easy to hear in the video there is a huge difference between the two. I've even analysed the acoustic waveforms of these, and there are variations of a very large order ...
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Without trying to be rude how do you know that ? To be self critical I would say the same myself as you . It worries me that I do . Like I am being stupid and no one told me . I think Fourier series is great . He was very self critical . When people say " the problem with Fourier is " I say did you read him ?
DF 96 gave me a very simple statement as to why beliefs about distortion are wrong with some people . What they observe fits their story . Just they didn't see the simplicity of it . It helped me find optimum feedback . Surprisingly what he said was commonsense and the machine works as one would imagine . As you say " Alien abduction " . Roswell was covering up early supersonic flights I am told . DF told me about pentode noise . Interesting but of no practical help to me . I won't forget .
In another tread I say " unknown mechanism " . Like quantum mechanics there might be something ? I doubt we will know because who will be so interested to find out ? Finding out costs money . Quantum mechanics lives between reality and dreams . Personally I think it is nonsense . But it helps us solve problems to think it real . I strongly beleive Quantum mechanics is a ghost in the machine . Infinite universe sideways as well as in the perceive direction ? Perhaps . If so Quantum is possible . Now you see Alien abduction is a mild version . As I said how do you know ? I don't believe in Quantum mechanics . I do beleive in using Quantum mechanics to solve problems . It is real ? I have no idea . If it is real it shows how little we perceive of where we live . Are we blind ? Are we stupid ?
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