Easy there pal, you are starting to sound "bitter"
I guess any audio component made after the glorious 50's is junk and not progress
Now if only Edison still made those great sounding wax cylinders *sigh*
Dude, I have vinyl cause I love the way it makes music feel likes it's happening in the now rather than that I'm listening to something that happened in the past. I have CD's because that medium has the greatest and broadest range of music and a lot of music I listen to isn't available on vinyl. I have an iPhone which lets me listen to music on the plane or on the beach. And I can find my way around town and play Angry Birds.
I'm absolutely not against progress. Only progress that lowers the art form. Hence this thread.
Last edited:
and all of that means that anyone that questions why the owners of the WE drivers can't do measurements is being unreasonable?
No. All that means that is we use a complex combination of processes to understand the world. Some measurement is useful. Some of it is not. And some of it cannot measure what cannot be measured.
But a purely rational human being is a myth, at least according to the current research. (We have had a little bit of progress since Descartes, don't you think?)
Ranting are they? Not important, eh? Perhaps you need to spend some more time re-reading the posts in this thread.
So do you
I thought this thread was titled....."Western Electric 1928- How Far Have We Come in the Last 100 Years?"
I can answer that for you simply.....a LOT.
Okay so an WE engineer either got lucky, had loads of experience or maybe just maybe even the knowledge to make a good driver back then. Heck throw enough time, money and effort at something and you have to end up with a decent driver after a while. So far we have a frequency response of a We 555 posted and that's it with no details about how it was done.
I never said anywhere in this thread that the WE is a bad driver. Maybe it's an over hyped driver but without any measurements posted what so ever then it's just a guessing game. Plenty of people have their own opinions about which speaker sounds best. Yes it's a personal opinion and not always a rational one. I would hope that those that do favor a special driver would at least have the curiosity to WANT to find out the WHY of the driver and what makes it sound like it does If all you wanted was a thread where everyone just gives listening opinions then all you have is just that ........opinions. Frankly I find such threads about as much use as some one posting "Here's an audio file for you to download" and all the other replies are "Thanks" with out anyone commenting on the quality of the file.
As someone mentioned earlier, what about using a modern configuration, perhaps a hybrid of sorts using a modern driver as opposed to a traditional compression driver.
I am really tempted to clone a WE horn, at least the last 3/4 of it, using a traditional direct radiator as a driver element.
Has anybody heard both a WE horn and say a back loaded exponential horn?
http://www.mh-audio.nl/Horn/GExpoHorn.asp
I am really tempted to clone a WE horn, at least the last 3/4 of it, using a traditional direct radiator as a driver element.
Has anybody heard both a WE horn and say a back loaded exponential horn?
http://www.mh-audio.nl/Horn/GExpoHorn.asp
Last edited:
like this ? -
Audio Artistry / CBT Products
and -
one might look to a different sort of measurements, to see how a 'tower of direct radiators
will certainly outperform, any current pro-use horns.
1 horn + 1 compression driver + 1 50/100 watt amp + a sort of frame, to hold in position,
or,
25 to 30 direct radiators + 12 2000 watt amp(s),
+ the enclosures they ride in on. to do the same thing.
given 'david s' work history, looks like moving product would be a certain priority.
building support for such products, on this or any forum certainly makes him more valuable
to the corporation he is employed by. and for future employment.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
the truth often being funnier than fiction,
michael korda's book 'power' is a funny and factual look at
corporate boardroom politics .
Power! How to Get It, How to Use It, Random House: New York, 1975, ISBN 0-394-49314-1
here in los angeles, thats called comic relief.
i notice mickey mouse did much better in california,
than in kansas city ...
2719 HYPERION: Long Ago Magic Along 31st Street in Kansas City
31426
Reformatted to be readable by moderation. Just because you can format things as obnoxiously as you would like doesn't mean you should. Don't do it again..
Last edited by a moderator:
There we differ. But I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, in fact they overlap to a large degree, but I've hear too many system that measure well and sound exactly like - speakers. Not music, not musicians - speakers. If that's what someone wants, OK. I'm more interested in a system that sounds like what I hear when I listen to live music. That is my number one priority. To do that, it has to be neutral and uncolored. How it measures is interesting and informative, but not my primary concern. A sense of reality is.
Electrically, or sonically?
Sure, that's part of the argument. But all along I've said that the old stuff used in a more modern way sounds more neutral and realistic than the new stuff. You don't have to use the W.E. gear full range, just like you don't have to use the modern stuff fullrange.
That reminds me of a number of vintage MacIntosh amps I've heard. Big Rose Colored Glasses effect. Very pretty and a lot of fun for awhile, but eventually you'll be wanting something more neutral, less intrusive.
Unfortunately we rarely know what the artist intended. The artists themselves hardly know. (I was in the art biz for years). They generally want the reproduction to look better than the original. Really. With recorded music we may not even know who the artist is. The musician? The conductor, producer? The mixing engineer? The mastering engineer? Who intended what and do they even agree?
But what live music? A dodgy pub band playing far too loud with the vocals running through a pair of well worn JBL Eons? A stereo pair classical recording where you're mostly hearing the room? An arena gig where you're too close to the stage and all you can hear is the bins? The "live" studio recording when the guitarist is still trying to nail the middle eight five hours in?
Bingo. The questions of accuracy for a box of gain (or ADC/DAC) are easy and objective- is the output indistinguishable from the input except for size? For transducers, the concept is not clear- what is "accurate"? Accurate to what? Where? You have a complex 3d soundfield collapsed to two points, put into a different space, then belched out from two other points.
Well, Dave, from where I'm sitting, the answer for me is equally as simple. And that answer is: not as far as we think.
You say to-may-toe, I say to-mar-toe - let's call the whole thing off.
Last edited:
Then quit posting...
Some of us are interested in WE drivers and their relevance for experiential music listening today.
Let me explain a bit of what I mean by accuracy.
AR did an interesting experiment decades ago where they put a speaker into an anechoic chamber and played music through it. A mic picked up the signal of the particular speaker. In an outside room they had a second system where they could play music that went through the speaker in the anechoic chamber, or bypassed it completely.
Now the thinking was that if the speaker in the chamber was accurate then it would make little difference whether it was in circuit or not. The less accurate the speaker the greater the difference (the more obvious) its insertion made.
More than this, you could use different speakers and see how well one could reproduce the sound of the other. For example (if I remember this right) they used an AR4x as a not so good speaker and and AR LST as the excellent speaker. The AR LST was excellent at mimicing the sound of the AR4x. The AR4x could not mimic the sound of the AR LST. Why? Because the AR4x was more colored and its inherent personality was always there. In trying to sound like an LST it still just sounded like a 4x.
I know this is a flawed test, totally ignoring the off axis response of the respective speakers and bypassing how well they might or might not interact with the room. I do think it illustrates what accuracy means to me: the ability of a speaker to pass a signal with minimal modification. Even better, the ability of a system to reveal the body and texture of the recording and, hopefully, the original musical event.
Nothing more and nothing less.
David S.
Yes, I'm just rolling in the dough (due to my contributions to this forum!).
And I would think "moving product" would be key to any professional's career survival, wouldn't you?
Regards
Articulating the gap is the key. Absolutely. When science is used to discredit history because we must have made improvements since then, then we fail to realize it's the gap that provides the ultimate contextual reference, not what bridges it.
Bridging the gap certainly provides lively (yet, inevitably, subjectivist vs objectivist) debate. But unless we understand the properties of the gap and why there is one in the first place attempts to bridge it will only ever provide the sort of polemic we've had here.
But that's why I think this thread is important. Why, after all these years of mechanical and material progress are there people investigating compression drivers and snail horns? Surely by now someone with all their R&D and measuring equipment and scientific progress must have made the perfect transducer by now.
Ooh wait, someone has...! According the the Magico Q1 literature: "As is the case with most products, addressing problems with more precision allows us to carefully consider a broader range of demands. In the Q1, compromises of form factor, mass, power requirements, and versatility were not necessary due to eliminating inefficiencies in common problem solving design principle. The outcome is a compact, convertible stand-mounded bookshelf loudspeaker with explosive true full-range performance. It is the 2-way monitor that has never before been built. By Magico or any other." (Bold passages mine.)
I'm not picking on Magico, bless 'em, just trying to point out that if the gap is not properly articulated, attempts to bridge it will be pointless.
Me, I think what's actually going on with this thread is at essence the debate on direct (or "naive") realism (i.e., we perceive the world directly) versus indirect realism (representationalism) (i.e., we interpret the world via sensory means). If we ascribe to the concept of direct realism then measurements would correspond to our perceptions exactly and vice cersa. If, however, we ascribe to the representationalist view, then perception is a complex neural summation based on our interpretation of the world, and, as such, cannot be explained as a 1:1 ratio. And I realize this is problematic when one is faced with the prospect that the things that are most measly measurable may not be the things that are the most significant.
I think it's worth asking whether almost a century of mechanical and material development has moved us much further along the path of music reproduction. Like many have argued, in many cases it has. But the fact that a 15a driven by a 555 might possibly eclipse the best efforts of modern-day engineers and experts in some areas is not so much about whether the technology was better or worse, but whether it serves to articulate the gap between hearing and perceiving.
Last edited:
ebb and flow, ebb and flow... patience.
sometimes gems arise, other times <plonk> and sometimes people just lose interest and the thread stops of its own mass.
Now, here is a real question to ponder:
Would the 15a sound any good if it were built as a straight horn?? this is a serious question, non trivial.
_-_-bear
Oh no, you did not diss my Eons! Fightin' words!
OK, I could get the sound of a band thru the pair of super loud EV boxes at Robert's Western World. Uh, but I don't want to. (With ear plugs it's pretty enjoyable). Sometimes I just don't want the real thing.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.