John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part IV

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Yah.....plan is to try incorporating my lab 15’s as high into the mid bass as possible (up around 200hz)
It’s gonna be a two sub (l/r) stacked speaker configuration (10” mtm on top) just gotta finish the kitchen b4 I’m allowed to work on the new wall of sound!
 

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Shure were the only people who actually measured and published on the limits of what was on records. It's always intrigued me that no one tried to counter this or publish their own numbers.

Shure started with the trackability issue (first publication I've seen) in 1966 and argued already then with records "known as difficult to play or impossible to play" . The marketing department began at that time with advertisments based on the trackability.
An excerpt from that said advertisement:
"2) A reprint of the definitive technical
paper describing the Shure Analog and
trackability in cartridges, which appeared
in the April 1966 Journal of the Audio
Engineering Society, is available (free) to
the serious audiophile.
(3) A representative list of many excellent
recordings with difficult -to -track
passages currently available is yours for
the asking. These records sound crisp,
clear and distortion -free with the Shure
V-15 Type II."

They later produced (or let produce) the first special test record for trackability, which is today standard on test records but apparently wasn't routinely tested before Shure's efforts.

One possible reason why others (as you've said) didn't publish their own numbers, could simply have been that they trusted Shure's numbers.

I've found a few interviews with cartridge manufacturers from 1981 (done by Franz Schöler for a german audio mag) and he quoted the same Alexandrovich with (translation by me, so blame me):

"After getting notice from customers three years ago about allegedly defect vinyl records that even our best professional cartridges couldn't play, we started to research the issue using our SEB microscope. Measured and photographed were tracks with frequencies above 40 kHz and velocities of 100 cm/s.
From the photographs we were able to calculate max. velocities of 102,4 cm/s at 2 kHz that were actually existent on the records. From that time we intensified our research wrt problem."

Given the fact that Stanton already had an SEM since 1968 and the Shure trackability campaign started in 1966, I've my doubts about the time frame Alexandrovich talked about, but it seems that the problem wasn't just an "invention" from Shure.
 
there’s something to be said for the technique, if you listen closely there seems to be actual skill behind the noise!

Well, myself I care less for the "technique" but about the message (emotional, social, cultural, etc... in the top levels of the Maslow hierarchy) behind the music. To me, the concept of "music" is as much a transport protocol as TCP/IP.

I can hear another bunch of horrified "audiophiles" :rofl:. Strictly about BB, one probably needs to live his childhood in a small midwest town to get the angst diffusing from BB's music. If anything else, it's kind of revenge for a lost youth. That's yet another reason why I don't like bands of the kin of Ramones - behind some catchy lines there's only a bunch of spoiled white kids finding a new toy to play with, while e.g. John Lydon was about to be charged with high treason carrying the death penalty.
 
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And for context on my comments on the shure trackability please see attached the graph from the shure 1978 technical seminar (r) and Holman's chart (l)from his papers. The 105cm spot point is from a mono record and is clearly untrackable by anything, and possibly uncuttable?

Bill, do you have that Shure paper or a link to it?
 
Syn08,
It was more a compliment that they stood out from the crowd in their genre.....even though listening to it is more like staring at the carnage of a horrible accident (just can’t look away)!

I grew up in a town with one blinking light, post office inside the only gas station, and k-12 in one building. Angst wasn’t in my vocabulary.....I was way too busy being a kid.
 
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When I was 15 or 16, I did as I was told. Period.

Then there was the interminable family bible reading every nite. 6.30 to about 8 that I endured from about 11 years old until about 16.

At 17 I got to leave home because I’d become ‘too difficult’. It was in retrospect on a par with getting married and later having kids ie one of those 4 or 5 life shaping moments.

I quickly learned to smoke weed (and I inhaled) but regrettably never got to drop some acid.

Oh, and I became an atheist.

:D
 
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