what was that I wanted to say?... uhm.. er... ah whatever, let's move forward! 🙂
thas is very fortunate - DCX can be very useful in carrying out some experiments
some allusions from an insider on a French-speaking forum (the link is now unfortunately lost) and the results of some extensive tests carried out recently by our fellow diyaudio user, also with DCX
plus the fact that my simple stereolitic double wideranger box without any clever filter sucked a lot with numerous recordings (that is why I have eventually dropped it in favour of the flooder approach)
best,
graaf
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So you've never seen the inside of a stereolith? Did you ever listen to a stereolith?
By the way, this beauty made out of finest Swiss cardboard (used to carry finest Swiss honey) already has the looks of a real winner:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Oh but it's actually very easy to comprehend audio fascism if you go into any hi-fi store and look at preamps that cost >$1K. Dam few of them have tone controls, and if they do, you probably have to go into some sort of programming mode; menus within menus, just to turn up the f-ing bass... More often, all you get is a volume control and input selector... They don't want you to like the sound too much or they won't be able to sucker you out of $500 for fancy special interconnect cables and speaker wires later... Or maybe there's a parametric EQ in the surround sound receiver for those who like to spend hours pushing buttons, going through sub-menus, etc.
I really like knobs, and I think it's absurd to not have well designed tone controls; Lo, Mid-Lo, Mid-Hi and Hi. And this dark gray on black front panel decor is getting real old. Why don't they want you to be able to see and read the nomenclature on the front panels? The front panels back in the "golden age" of tubes were gorgeous art objects (Scott, McIntosh, Fisher, Sherwood, etc.), and it was easy to read nomenclature and make adjustments. How did we lose that? 😕
The movie industry is able to lead the way, to some extent, because movie theaters have a set of standards that were put together by Dolby Labs and the THX guys up at George Lucas' Sprocket Systems,(or whatever they're calling themselves these days). Once the playback situation is somewhat standardized, you have something to design for. But the theater standards do not call for a flat frequency response last time I checked. At one point there was a 3dB/oct rolloff above 2kHZ, if I remember correctly, but that was a long time ago.This is essentially why the long thread. However, most new monitors are flat, but power/polar response is still all over the map and industry pros have all sorts of opinion of which monitor is more accurate--AND IT CAN EVEN DEPEND ON WHAT TYPE OF MUSIC THEY ARE RECORDING.😕 They don't like it when you point out how silly that is. Then throw in the differences of control room acoustics, which are all over the map and home listening environments, again all over the map, and it almost seems a miracle any of this is listenable. Perhaps not.
Here's to adaptation and not knowing the reference!
Really though, thankfully we are getting closer to having a reference and the movie industry is leading the way.
Dan
Assuming you're not being facetious, people just stopped buying it. Little demand, little or ultimately no supply. I don't understand the confusion. The reason for the lack of demand may be cost, it may be marketing, but in the end it doesn't matter. It's business. The "best" (subjectively determined by whom?) doesn't always succeed in the marketplace.
I've got to say, I'm a bit surprised by the ease with which a word such as fascism is used in the context here. Seems totally inappropriate to me and trivializes what it really represented. I also don't see anyone actually denying anyone anything. Dismissing some approach, sure. Deciding that some bottom line was determinant, that's what businesses do. But fascism? In the marketplace?
Dave
The most basic problem with introducing controls on speakers and pre-amps is we don't know what are the perceptually important variables. What we get instead are the controls that are easy to create (and which are inherently the ones used from olden times for the same reason).
For speakers, there have been some interesting tries. For example, the AR-1 has some trick adjustments of its complex cross-over, no kidding. I have seem egg-shaped speakers with a correction the tracks a bass correction nicely depending on whether you are mounting them close to the wall or away from the wall. Otherwise, all we get is L-pads controlling the loudness of middle and upper-range drivers. And that can sometimes (but not always) screw up the sound in a way far worse that simply not having controls, so "fascist" or arrogant speaker designers remove that control from the user.
While ordinary tone controls, even with some variable inflection points, tend to be off-the-target for perceptually meaningful control, loudness controls can be quite close to the target, providing you can set you room level to track the pre-amp loudness controls. I think bass and treble filters can be useful but then that kind of filtering is a pretty blunt instrument and sort-of-close is good enough when all you are trying to do is get rid of certain noxious noises.
How come nobody makes a nice middle-tone control?
For speakers, there have been some interesting tries. For example, the AR-1 has some trick adjustments of its complex cross-over, no kidding. I have seem egg-shaped speakers with a correction the tracks a bass correction nicely depending on whether you are mounting them close to the wall or away from the wall. Otherwise, all we get is L-pads controlling the loudness of middle and upper-range drivers. And that can sometimes (but not always) screw up the sound in a way far worse that simply not having controls, so "fascist" or arrogant speaker designers remove that control from the user.
While ordinary tone controls, even with some variable inflection points, tend to be off-the-target for perceptually meaningful control, loudness controls can be quite close to the target, providing you can set you room level to track the pre-amp loudness controls. I think bass and treble filters can be useful but then that kind of filtering is a pretty blunt instrument and sort-of-close is good enough when all you are trying to do is get rid of certain noxious noises.
How come nobody makes a nice middle-tone control?
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put it on Your head and I say YES
I feel you're not as serious as I am about this project. Glued in some super stiff pizza cardboard braces which adds constrained layer damping too.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
that is massively impressive!
You qualify as a really smart tweakin monkey Markus 😉but as I think that continuation of this particular ...er... project in this thread would be verging on disrespect WRT the guys who want to discuss the arcana of flatness' correctness for a stereo system let me propose You moving to a more appropriate place:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/10962-stereolith-loudspeakers-question.html
but please - read the whole "stereolith" thread first
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that is massively impressive!
but as I think that continuation of this particular ...er... project in this thread would be verging on disrespect WRT the guys who want to discuss the arcana of flatness' correctness for a stereo system let me propose You moving in a more appropriate place:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/10962-stereolith-loudspeakers-question.html
but please - read the whole "stereolith" thread first
Well, this is not a stereolith clone. The principle has formed after studying acoustics, psychoacoustics, electronics, signal processing, materials research, physics, pizza eating and beer drinking for many years. The principle might be revealed at a later point in time but first I have to create enough interest so I can sell kits, plans, pre-built speakers or the idea. The idea's name is monosphere.
Reminds me of the Luxman L-309 my Dad has had from new since 1974:
‚k-‚R‚O‚X (In Japanese but includes pictures)
Not only is it from the "Golden Age" of gorgeous looking brushed metal front panels, (as opposed to today's boring black plastic) it has possibly the most complete and actually useful set of tone controls I've ever seen on an integrated amp.
It includes traditional variable slope +/- 12dB bass and treble controls, but they both have three switchable roll-over frequencies, 150Hz, 300Hz, and 600Hz for the bass control, and 1.5Khz, 3Khz, and 6Khz for the treble control. Being able to switch the roll-over frequency makes them immensely more useful at achieving the desired result than a fixed roll-over design.
The bass and treble controls are also both stereo concentric ganged controls which track L-R together by default but can be adjusted separately if you want to make independent adjustments for Left and Right. Both controls also have fine detent steps which make it easy to return to an exact setting without guesswork.
In addition to this it has what Luxman called a "Linear Equalizer", which tilts the entire spectrum up or down either 1.5dB or 3dB whilst maintaining it flat, with 1Khz as a pivot point. (This is a switched control with 5 positions, not a variable control)
Since the spectrum remains flat but tilted, this is a very different effect than turning bass up and treble down or vica versa, and is surprisingly useful and pleasing sounding for correcting some recordings - for example thin toppy sounding early 80's CD's sound much nicer applying a downwards tilt.
In addition to variable slope controls and the linear equalizer it also has switchable high cut and low cut filters - the low cut can be switched to 70Hz or 20Hz (the latter effectively a rumble filter) and the high cut to 7Khz or 12Khz. All are 6dB/octave rolloffs when enabled.
There is also a "low boost" switch which is a 6dB/oct boost below 70Hz, which is quite good at giving a bit more kick in the bass without adding any bloat in the upper bass or lower midrange.
Finally there is a proper tone defeat switch which removes the variable bass/treble controls (including buffer stages) from the signal path completely, for those that want to. (The rest of the tone controls are all switched controls, so don't need a separate defeat switch)
Terrific sounding amp even by today's standards. Aside from one accident a few years ago where a faulty sound processor which was connected in the pre-amp/main-amp loop took out the output transistors in one channel, (easily repaired) it has been working in daily use for over 35 years... 🙂
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ah so! so this is rather a fruit of tedious and data intensive process, perhaps a bit too tedious...
anyway, at least You can still put it on Your head to look a bit better, and still You will be even able to drink more beer and eat more pizza thanks to clever design of those big holes in the cardboard 🙄
Yet another...
The trouble with L-pads on the back of a speaker is that they introduce an abrupt change in the freq resp.(unless set exactly right) which I feel has undesirable psycho-acoustic effects. I think it's the cheap way of helping you compensate for proximity to room boundary effects. I'm a pretty firm believer in variable slope tone adjustment because I think you're better off avoiding any abrupt freq resp anomolies. I believe that the ear will adapt better to long term deviations. Having said that, I do however believe in high resolution parametric or graphic EQ for any resonance issues below about 200 HZ. Good flat bass to 20HZ is something I really like. 😎
Having variable turnover frequencies could be good for people who really know how to use them, but too many people can barely use normal bass and treble without making things worse.
Although I'm a firm believer in "Loudness Comp", I feel that it needs to be very adjustable so you can get it right for the level you're listening at. That's why I totally believe in a four control variable slope tone circuit, which I'm in the process of re-designing right now. I've already done it with opamps and lived with it for 30 years. I know from that many years of experience that it's the way to go. It corrects for several things, Loud. Comp. being one of them. Now I'm developing a James style with tubes (no feedback anywhere in the circuit). The distortion spectrum shape suggests that my tube version will sound even better than the Baxandall with opamps. Time will tell. 😉
The trouble with L-pads on the back of a speaker is that they introduce an abrupt change in the freq resp.(unless set exactly right) which I feel has undesirable psycho-acoustic effects. I think it's the cheap way of helping you compensate for proximity to room boundary effects. I'm a pretty firm believer in variable slope tone adjustment because I think you're better off avoiding any abrupt freq resp anomolies. I believe that the ear will adapt better to long term deviations. Having said that, I do however believe in high resolution parametric or graphic EQ for any resonance issues below about 200 HZ. Good flat bass to 20HZ is something I really like. 😎
Having variable turnover frequencies could be good for people who really know how to use them, but too many people can barely use normal bass and treble without making things worse.
Although I'm a firm believer in "Loudness Comp", I feel that it needs to be very adjustable so you can get it right for the level you're listening at. That's why I totally believe in a four control variable slope tone circuit, which I'm in the process of re-designing right now. I've already done it with opamps and lived with it for 30 years. I know from that many years of experience that it's the way to go. It corrects for several things, Loud. Comp. being one of them. Now I'm developing a James style with tubes (no feedback anywhere in the circuit). The distortion spectrum shape suggests that my tube version will sound even better than the Baxandall with opamps. Time will tell. 😉
I'm fine with you talking about stereolith without ever having listened to it but giving beauty tips to someone you actually never met? 🙄
yes, You are right, it was mistake, thanks for giving me occasion for correction - what I really wanted to write was to look a bit smarter 😀
but first of all - congratulations Markus! You are already on the third page of that thread! keep reading 😀
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Now you feel combining allegation with insult is appropriate. How could anyone not like you?
Well you obviously missed the fact that the markus76 in this thread and the markus76 in the other thread is the same person.
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