To me it seems very hard to achieve a natural / flat reproduction without EQ (= tone control)... there are just to many aspects in the speakers / room that will create very big variations. Now that there exists completely transparent DSP solutions, I dint see why we wouldn't use them. It all just gets so much better as I hear it. My goals are precisely the same as yours Andy.
Okey - extra "artistic" points if that can be achieved without EQ but I doubt its possible...
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Okey - extra "artistic" points if that can be achieved without EQ but I doubt its possible...
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Hi Andy,
Agreed with your statements. I reply trying to cover more than your statements because we have lurkers and these pages show up all over the place.
All I can do is ensure the electronics reproduce signals accurately. Speakers, room and source material is out of our control.
Yes, emotion is in the performance. I was simply indicating that I get that. If you can capture the emotion that comes through the performance you're doing well. You can feel the musician's emotion as he puts it into his playing. That captures my attention. Often in a studio recording session, the repetition puts the musician into a different headspace where some expression disappears.
Natural acoustic, electronic sound? You can still identify the instrument sometimes. With the natural instrument you mics, placement and acoustics of the space all come into play. Even with a guitar head - speaker combination that is mic'd you have the same issues. They are all valid. My favorite is a Fender twin whatever played well (not screaming), but equally an acoustic guitar. I love all musical instruments (except the steel guitar, not crazy about steel drums either come to think of it).
A great vocal captured properly is a treat, I still like Studers rolling. For me, the goal is to deliver that to someone's living room. Pure and simple. Anything that detracts from that is undesirable as far as I'm concerned. If people could only experience the full dynamic range going into the mics or console to begin with, and the original sound. Even the mixed master lacks many things, but it is far better than many systems I hear.
Anyway, you know my goal. It's not complicated. What I try to do is save equipment from being wrecked and money being wasted. My work has always included repairing a lot of damage done by people trying to "improve" products. This can be done, but it isn't easy if that product was well engineered to begin with. Some stuff is simply not designed well enough to ever sound good, and that has zero to do with price. So go ahead and try to improve things, but please work neatly, carefully without causing damage. However, before you start, consider what you are doing and if it will actually improve anything. Most often, it will not.
Agreed with your statements. I reply trying to cover more than your statements because we have lurkers and these pages show up all over the place.
All I can do is ensure the electronics reproduce signals accurately. Speakers, room and source material is out of our control.
Yes, emotion is in the performance. I was simply indicating that I get that. If you can capture the emotion that comes through the performance you're doing well. You can feel the musician's emotion as he puts it into his playing. That captures my attention. Often in a studio recording session, the repetition puts the musician into a different headspace where some expression disappears.
Natural acoustic, electronic sound? You can still identify the instrument sometimes. With the natural instrument you mics, placement and acoustics of the space all come into play. Even with a guitar head - speaker combination that is mic'd you have the same issues. They are all valid. My favorite is a Fender twin whatever played well (not screaming), but equally an acoustic guitar. I love all musical instruments (except the steel guitar, not crazy about steel drums either come to think of it).
A great vocal captured properly is a treat, I still like Studers rolling. For me, the goal is to deliver that to someone's living room. Pure and simple. Anything that detracts from that is undesirable as far as I'm concerned. If people could only experience the full dynamic range going into the mics or console to begin with, and the original sound. Even the mixed master lacks many things, but it is far better than many systems I hear.
Anyway, you know my goal. It's not complicated. What I try to do is save equipment from being wrecked and money being wasted. My work has always included repairing a lot of damage done by people trying to "improve" products. This can be done, but it isn't easy if that product was well engineered to begin with. Some stuff is simply not designed well enough to ever sound good, and that has zero to do with price. So go ahead and try to improve things, but please work neatly, carefully without causing damage. However, before you start, consider what you are doing and if it will actually improve anything. Most often, it will not.
Hi TNT,
Very true.
However, never attempt to compensate for one impairment by impairing something else. Make each part operate properly, the best it can. Speakers, that's up to the designer and some are far better than others. Fully active crossover speaker systems here have a huge advantage, but they are costly. When it comes to the listening space, they are all problematic. You just try to reduce those effects best you can and accept the result. If you can't accept your space you will never be happy, and in that case you need an open field and massive SPL capability! lol!
Very true.
However, never attempt to compensate for one impairment by impairing something else. Make each part operate properly, the best it can. Speakers, that's up to the designer and some are far better than others. Fully active crossover speaker systems here have a huge advantage, but they are costly. When it comes to the listening space, they are all problematic. You just try to reduce those effects best you can and accept the result. If you can't accept your space you will never be happy, and in that case you need an open field and massive SPL capability! lol!
Sounds like an interesting job - you probably have plenty of work.
I don't work on commercial amplifiers at all - I design and build everything from scratch using my own circuits. So fortunately I have as much room for parts as I want to design for. Just as well when using FT-2 teflon coupling caps and DC Link cathode bypasses. I also use KBG paper in oil capacitors in the PSU and they're huge, but very good. A lot of space goes to the capacitors in builds - better capacitors make a big difference to the overall sound. Where possible I use DHTs in filament bias, so no caps needed there, just big resistors which get hot. DIY gives you a lot of freedom.
Hi Salas - I've been using Kemet C4AQ, mainly because when I bought them they were the cheapest. I did compare them to Vishay MKP1848 series and they were not quite as pure sounding, but had a slightly more interesting harmonic profile. I like the Vishays but I like the Kemets too. These days it depends on what you can find in stock - long lead times for most values. They're well worth making space for as cathode bypasses - they're not small, but being rectangular they do fit together quite neatly.
it is off topic but I experienced you have to work on many things to try to approach it. And there is always something missing. at iso capacitance (at more than 0.1 uf precision) in the high pass of a tweeter. I had to mix several different type of film cap to have something tonality I can live with. And that's hard to understand cause to much factors to rule. 10 uF for illustration can be reach with different value in parrallel for the main bigger capacitance whatever you use the same small decoupling cap, you will have a different sound, close but different. And according your system before, a choice is certainly better than another.
Which is the conclusion I went long time ago: since you know the basic about which dielectric to use (trade offs but avoiding the biggest issues at choosing the wrong dielectric and so on), voltages,l the ESR, ESL, etc, etc : there is not a best cap that always works everywhere. There are trade offs you can deal with and there is still differences within caps of a same technology (be it winding, inductance, legs, manufactering quality, and so on.
The funiest I found one day is the ringing I heard in what I believe to be an aluminium tweeter was in fact a bad mix of caps (and I talk at iso capacitance).
Anyway the caps are one of the many items to experiment and I do not think tilll now one can make the economy of it to approach what is wanted as a whole sounding result, but just one of the many spices to make a good meal. Problem is the price of it relative to its importance in the mix is way much overated (frankly it should be cheap as we have so many horses to chase to reach the good sound). The good news is you have not to spend the most expensive to reach the best sounding result, it is unluckilly not so easy. Because when you make a compensation here, you move something elswhere. As said, it is playing with trade offs untill you find one you can live with ! How futile we are...
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really as cooking some time need a side step,!I haved rebuilds my tube amp with a complete new mix of resistor and caps is great learning experience
really a new sound !!
Hi Andy,
Yes, educational opportunities were great and I took full advantage. University also. I also learned to understand manufacturability plus supply chain issues. Most of my detailed education was on my own and I borrowed heavily from the test and measurement field. You can learn massive amounts there. Then there are the application notes written by practicing engineers who deal with real life. Better than uni.
I design my own equipment as well, tube amps included. It is easier to take a commercial product and either modify or replace the circuitry. Casework is done then. Some commercial designs are inspired and well worth examination with an open mind - plus you can hear and measure what was done (and sections in isolation). You learn quite a bit.
One huge lesson is that the so called "best part" can have limitations, some having to do with large size and wire runs. That can hurt you. Parts also have areas of strength and weakness, and you have to account for all of that in order to come up with the best part for an application. It depends on exactly where in the circuit they are, what currents they deal with and impressed voltages. One truth is (very unpopular idea but it's true) if you do not have a signal voltage developed across the part, it will not affect the signal. One example is ESR. Look at the impedance of the circuit it's in. ESR almost never matters in signal stages. Speakers yes - because you do have out of band signal voltage across them and also higher current levels. But you can't "read across" and apply that information to a different situation. By definition, a coupling capacitor doesn't have in-band signal voltages across it. So as long as you have a good quality part, you won't have sonic differences. I've experimented and proved this by listening and measuring as well. I use women and children, their minds are free of mental pollution and their hearing is excellent.
In contrast, Dissipation does matter. I measure for that, and I am talking about dielectric loss, not related to ESR in any way.
I know what I am saying sounds pretty dry, but we are dealing with physics. Components do not differentiate between control signals and music. The laws of physics and electronics do not change. Dealing with impairments is where the art comes in. You're also dealing with layout and a myriad of other factors. If you can balance that, you're doing great!
Yes, educational opportunities were great and I took full advantage. University also. I also learned to understand manufacturability plus supply chain issues. Most of my detailed education was on my own and I borrowed heavily from the test and measurement field. You can learn massive amounts there. Then there are the application notes written by practicing engineers who deal with real life. Better than uni.
I design my own equipment as well, tube amps included. It is easier to take a commercial product and either modify or replace the circuitry. Casework is done then. Some commercial designs are inspired and well worth examination with an open mind - plus you can hear and measure what was done (and sections in isolation). You learn quite a bit.
One huge lesson is that the so called "best part" can have limitations, some having to do with large size and wire runs. That can hurt you. Parts also have areas of strength and weakness, and you have to account for all of that in order to come up with the best part for an application. It depends on exactly where in the circuit they are, what currents they deal with and impressed voltages. One truth is (very unpopular idea but it's true) if you do not have a signal voltage developed across the part, it will not affect the signal. One example is ESR. Look at the impedance of the circuit it's in. ESR almost never matters in signal stages. Speakers yes - because you do have out of band signal voltage across them and also higher current levels. But you can't "read across" and apply that information to a different situation. By definition, a coupling capacitor doesn't have in-band signal voltages across it. So as long as you have a good quality part, you won't have sonic differences. I've experimented and proved this by listening and measuring as well. I use women and children, their minds are free of mental pollution and their hearing is excellent.
In contrast, Dissipation does matter. I measure for that, and I am talking about dielectric loss, not related to ESR in any way.
I know what I am saying sounds pretty dry, but we are dealing with physics. Components do not differentiate between control signals and music. The laws of physics and electronics do not change. Dealing with impairments is where the art comes in. You're also dealing with layout and a myriad of other factors. If you can balance that, you're doing great!
You can call any statement an excuse to dismiss it. That's if you don't accept truth and you see something you disagree with.
My world is all truth, there is no advantage in entertaining an idea that will eventually be proved false. It only wastes time and effort. If you want to call something "taste" or opinion, now that is fine. Cool. I'm dealing with well defined concepts and ideas.
My world is all truth, there is no advantage in entertaining an idea that will eventually be proved false. It only wastes time and effort. If you want to call something "taste" or opinion, now that is fine. Cool. I'm dealing with well defined concepts and ideas.
The only sound at home I had where drums approached a real drum was with v high efficiency horn speakers (104dB Living Voice Tonescouts/Airscouts), and you needed to be far away from them to get them to truly integrate and work on voices well (still not amazing on voices). These at the start of this review But they never did everything well, just some amazing dynamics and realism on some instruments. They also lacked deep bass and hated working with a normal sub.
anatech...."My world is all truth"
There is no "truth" in hi-fi systems, because NOTHING is true to the sound of live instruments. Everything is relative - there will inevitably be losses of one kind or another. The art is to minimise the losses as much as possible. Tonescout just posted a perceptive comment on exactly this.
So inevitably it will be a question of what losses you can and can't live with, and this will vary from one person to another. Consequently "taste" and "opinion" are equally inevitable.
If anybody imagines they can reproduce live instruments in a lossless form they are living in the same world as perpetual motion machines.
There is no "truth" in hi-fi systems, because NOTHING is true to the sound of live instruments. Everything is relative - there will inevitably be losses of one kind or another. The art is to minimise the losses as much as possible. Tonescout just posted a perceptive comment on exactly this.
So inevitably it will be a question of what losses you can and can't live with, and this will vary from one person to another. Consequently "taste" and "opinion" are equally inevitable.
If anybody imagines they can reproduce live instruments in a lossless form they are living in the same world as perpetual motion machines.
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a lot if you do in a diy amp from zero , is really bad not know difference form elko vs pp on katode for a diy'z
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Who can be sure that the live experience of music is fully captured in a recording to start with. Only thing we can strive for in audio equipment is to amplify twenty kilohertz bandwidth of signal almost lossless. These days we have enough electrical measuring ability to know. Then acoustically we distort that to a transducer's set of mechanical and emanation properties under a new acoustic environment's further shaping.