Pano - I didn't mean offense, and no you are not an idiot. But still I don't see that what Toole said is the same thing as what you said - similar maybe, but everything is similar if you generalize enough. As I said before we are all seeing proof of our position in sources that do not directly address what we are talking about. Toole said on those pages things that make the room "sound bigger". That has never been the issue. I agree that can be done, its true in my room. I contend that a small room cannot be tricked into sounding like an auditorium with just two speakers. Toole also talked about multichannel in those pages, which, again, is not the issue.
Eldam - yes there is a rise at the upper band edge, but this can be combined with a LP filter and smoothed out in the end result.
Earl, yes. I left out Toole's discussion of multi-channel as it did not seem to be relevant to what I was talking about.
I see what I was saying in Toole's book, you don't. We will have to leave it at that.
But no worries, I'm used to being wrong. Example. When I turned 50, I said to my wife.
Me: Dear, I've gotten to the point in a man's life when he realizes that everything he does and everything he says - is wrong.
Wife: Oh, that's completely untrue!
Me: Exactly.
😀
I see what I was saying in Toole's book, you don't. We will have to leave it at that.
But no worries, I'm used to being wrong. Example. When I turned 50, I said to my wife.
Me: Dear, I've gotten to the point in a man's life when he realizes that everything he does and everything he says - is wrong.
Wife: Oh, that's completely untrue!
Me: Exactly.
😀
Enjoyment of Music: Thomas Mann's Fullness of Harmony
Last February, while on vacation in Vietnam, I read Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. The story revolves around a young man, Hans Castorp, who ends up spending seven years in a TB sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, with his stay there terminated by the advent of World War I. Towards the end of the book is a fascinating description of the acquisition by the sanatorium of a phonograph, or more precisely a Polyhymnia gramophone. The description of its unveiling and the reactions of the patients to it is entertaining and revealing of the new technology of sound reproduction.
I scanned the first few pages of the section called "Fullness of Harmony" that describes the unveiling. This is from the recent English translation by John E. Woods. Please download this and read it:
View attachment FullnessOfHarmony.pdf
The Polyhymnia gramophone described was made in Germany and appears to be pretty sophisticated for the time: the turntable was driven by an electric motor and it appears to have an acoustically correct horn built into the cabinet. My friend and phonograph expert, David Fletcher, was unable to dig up any information on this machine - maybe some of the European readers here have some more information.
Here is Thomas Mann before a Polyhymnia gramophone, ca. 1920:
This photo was gleaned from this web site: Macumbeira: MM Part 7: Fullness of Harmony.
The reason I bring up this passage from The Magic Mountain in my series of posts on enjoying music is the incredible reaction of the people to what we know is a very imperfect reproduction. The story here takes place in 1913 or 1914, and Thomas Mann first heard the Polyhymnia in 1920 as he was finishing up the book. Thus, the records being listened to were acoustic recordings, and anyone familiar with them knows the severe sonic limitations and colorations they have.
The audience, composed of upper and upper-middle class Europeans, undoubtedly had heard much live music of all types. Yet they were entranced by the clear and lifelike reproduction from the gramophone. It didn't exactly match "being there"; Mann wrote: "The body of sound, though not in any way distorted, had suffered a diminution in perspective ... as if one were gazing at a painting through the wrong end of opera glasses, so that it looked distant and small, but without forfeiting any definition of line or brilliance of color." On the other hand, when "a celebrated Italian baritone" (most likely Caruso) was put on, Mann wrote: "The splendid vocal organ swelled to its full natural range and power, and indeed if you walked into an adjoining room, leaving the doors open but staying out of the line of sight, it was exactly as if the artist were physically present, as if he were standing there in the salon singing music in hand." Of course, male vocals was the one area where acoustic recordings sounded the best.
With the limitations of acoustic recording in mind, what was going on here? I think it is a combination of expectations and the power of suggestion. When the audience is told ahead of time that the mechanism is state of the art and the experience is one they have never had before, the minds of the listeners "fills in the blanks" which makes them truly believe that what they are hearing is excellent, or as Mann wrote: "It was exquisite." There had to be a basic quality to the Polyhymnia gramophone that elicited this response, as opposed to the "nasal braying" Mann associates with lesser phonographs.
A similar phenomenon happened during Edison's "Tone Tests", held between 1915 and 1925 where a blindfolded audience was presented with a real person singing and the Edison Diamond Disk playing back. Most reported hearing no difference. More information on the Tone Tests is here and here, the latter giving some thoughts on live-versus-recorded tests in general.
Getting back to the Beyond the Ariel thread, here is an early example of where a horn reproducing system was the source of much enjoyment!
- John Atwood
Last February, while on vacation in Vietnam, I read Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. The story revolves around a young man, Hans Castorp, who ends up spending seven years in a TB sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, with his stay there terminated by the advent of World War I. Towards the end of the book is a fascinating description of the acquisition by the sanatorium of a phonograph, or more precisely a Polyhymnia gramophone. The description of its unveiling and the reactions of the patients to it is entertaining and revealing of the new technology of sound reproduction.
I scanned the first few pages of the section called "Fullness of Harmony" that describes the unveiling. This is from the recent English translation by John E. Woods. Please download this and read it:
View attachment FullnessOfHarmony.pdf
The Polyhymnia gramophone described was made in Germany and appears to be pretty sophisticated for the time: the turntable was driven by an electric motor and it appears to have an acoustically correct horn built into the cabinet. My friend and phonograph expert, David Fletcher, was unable to dig up any information on this machine - maybe some of the European readers here have some more information.
Here is Thomas Mann before a Polyhymnia gramophone, ca. 1920:
This photo was gleaned from this web site: Macumbeira: MM Part 7: Fullness of Harmony.
The reason I bring up this passage from The Magic Mountain in my series of posts on enjoying music is the incredible reaction of the people to what we know is a very imperfect reproduction. The story here takes place in 1913 or 1914, and Thomas Mann first heard the Polyhymnia in 1920 as he was finishing up the book. Thus, the records being listened to were acoustic recordings, and anyone familiar with them knows the severe sonic limitations and colorations they have.
The audience, composed of upper and upper-middle class Europeans, undoubtedly had heard much live music of all types. Yet they were entranced by the clear and lifelike reproduction from the gramophone. It didn't exactly match "being there"; Mann wrote: "The body of sound, though not in any way distorted, had suffered a diminution in perspective ... as if one were gazing at a painting through the wrong end of opera glasses, so that it looked distant and small, but without forfeiting any definition of line or brilliance of color." On the other hand, when "a celebrated Italian baritone" (most likely Caruso) was put on, Mann wrote: "The splendid vocal organ swelled to its full natural range and power, and indeed if you walked into an adjoining room, leaving the doors open but staying out of the line of sight, it was exactly as if the artist were physically present, as if he were standing there in the salon singing music in hand." Of course, male vocals was the one area where acoustic recordings sounded the best.
With the limitations of acoustic recording in mind, what was going on here? I think it is a combination of expectations and the power of suggestion. When the audience is told ahead of time that the mechanism is state of the art and the experience is one they have never had before, the minds of the listeners "fills in the blanks" which makes them truly believe that what they are hearing is excellent, or as Mann wrote: "It was exquisite." There had to be a basic quality to the Polyhymnia gramophone that elicited this response, as opposed to the "nasal braying" Mann associates with lesser phonographs.
A similar phenomenon happened during Edison's "Tone Tests", held between 1915 and 1925 where a blindfolded audience was presented with a real person singing and the Edison Diamond Disk playing back. Most reported hearing no difference. More information on the Tone Tests is here and here, the latter giving some thoughts on live-versus-recorded tests in general.
Getting back to the Beyond the Ariel thread, here is an early example of where a horn reproducing system was the source of much enjoyment!
- John Atwood
Thanks John, that's very interesting indeed. I enjoyed the descriptions.
I believe that Lynn has heard the same player, perhaps even the same recording.
Quite so. Back in 1992 I visited a small museum in Palo Alto, CA. In one room there was an Edison Diamond Disk player that fascinated me. I had read much about them, but never heard one. The owner walked by and noticed my interest. "Do you want to hear it?" he asked. "Of course!" was my reply. He cranked it up and out came the voice of a tenor. I was gob-smacked. It sounded soooo good. I was amazed at how good, how lifelike it sounded. Big, rich, loud, charismatic. People came quickly from other rooms to hear what was going on. "That sounds great!" was the general response. It did.
I believe that Lynn has heard the same player, perhaps even the same recording.
I was visiting my parents in Berkeley in the early Seventies and ambling around Telegraph Avenue, having fun watching the various zany activities of the locals and the students. There was an small enclosed arcade just beyond Cody's Bookstore, and I wandered in, enticed and entranced by this really wonderful singer. Berkeley is always full of surprises, so I was curious who was singing "really good, and for free".
I turned a corner and there was this large console-sized gramophone playing an unusual 78-rpm disc. At first I was startled, followed by a growing sense of amazement. It didn't sound like any 78 I'd even heard before, and more strangely, didn't have any "electronic" coloration to it. It just sounded like somebody with a really good voice singing right in front of me. It sure didn't sound like a horn PA system ... not in the slightest, and didn't sound like those awful morning-glory horn gramophones with all their scratch and distortion. Most of all, it sounded realistic with a tremendous sense of presence.
I stayed around for several minutes while the record played and the store owner came out and changed the disk. It was a top-of-the-line Edison unit, I don't remember the name, and it was playing a vertical-cut disk (Blue Amberol or something like that), not the usual shellac crap that 78's are made of, so the disk was quiet, like a 33 1/3 LP. Dynamic range was frankly amazing ... it was loud and sounded just fine in that semi-outdoor space (away from the usual ruckus of Telegraph Avenue).
Fun to listen to, and quite educational. One of the first times I became aware that "modern" high fidelity didn't have all the answers, particularly when it came to that sense of live music right in front of you. Contemporary high-end audio can be technically perfect ... nothing that I can directly identify as "wrong" ... but not sound "live" at all, but more like music performed by noisy robots.
This Edison phonograph didn't sound like a machine. It had a remarkable sense of presence I only rarely hear in very advanced and sophisticated high-end audio systems. My only guess why it could do this was careful selection of the musical program (to work around the limitations of the system) and the horn reproducer was superbly designed ... obviously, by cut-and-try back in those days, but whoever did it had good musical taste.
I've heard that "live" quality a few times since. At the BBC Research Labs in 1975 listening to a first-generation quadraphonic master-tape of Last Night at the Proms, playing back the choral section of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I've had tastes of it at Christian Rintelen's place when I went to the European Triode Festival in 2004. A few times visiting friends with very advanced and esoteric systems. Never at a hifi show, ever. Never in a hifi store, except for my first exposure to the Quad ESL57 back at Radio People in Hong Kong in 1963.
My neighbor Thom Mackris had a local band play acoustic (no PA, no electric guitar) in his living room a few weeks ago. Nothing sounds like a live band when they're playing in a living room and you're sitting no more than three feet to five feet away from the musicians. It does not sound like a hifi system. The highs don't grab your attention, the imaging is something you don't even notice, the bass line is much clearer, and the sense of rhythm and the playful interchange between the musicians is all there right in front of you.
It certainly makes you aware of just how unnatural and artificial recorded music can be ... similar to the difference between real sugar and artificial sweetener. Not the same at all.
I turned a corner and there was this large console-sized gramophone playing an unusual 78-rpm disc. At first I was startled, followed by a growing sense of amazement. It didn't sound like any 78 I'd even heard before, and more strangely, didn't have any "electronic" coloration to it. It just sounded like somebody with a really good voice singing right in front of me. It sure didn't sound like a horn PA system ... not in the slightest, and didn't sound like those awful morning-glory horn gramophones with all their scratch and distortion. Most of all, it sounded realistic with a tremendous sense of presence.
I stayed around for several minutes while the record played and the store owner came out and changed the disk. It was a top-of-the-line Edison unit, I don't remember the name, and it was playing a vertical-cut disk (Blue Amberol or something like that), not the usual shellac crap that 78's are made of, so the disk was quiet, like a 33 1/3 LP. Dynamic range was frankly amazing ... it was loud and sounded just fine in that semi-outdoor space (away from the usual ruckus of Telegraph Avenue).
Fun to listen to, and quite educational. One of the first times I became aware that "modern" high fidelity didn't have all the answers, particularly when it came to that sense of live music right in front of you. Contemporary high-end audio can be technically perfect ... nothing that I can directly identify as "wrong" ... but not sound "live" at all, but more like music performed by noisy robots.
This Edison phonograph didn't sound like a machine. It had a remarkable sense of presence I only rarely hear in very advanced and sophisticated high-end audio systems. My only guess why it could do this was careful selection of the musical program (to work around the limitations of the system) and the horn reproducer was superbly designed ... obviously, by cut-and-try back in those days, but whoever did it had good musical taste.
I've heard that "live" quality a few times since. At the BBC Research Labs in 1975 listening to a first-generation quadraphonic master-tape of Last Night at the Proms, playing back the choral section of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I've had tastes of it at Christian Rintelen's place when I went to the European Triode Festival in 2004. A few times visiting friends with very advanced and esoteric systems. Never at a hifi show, ever. Never in a hifi store, except for my first exposure to the Quad ESL57 back at Radio People in Hong Kong in 1963.
My neighbor Thom Mackris had a local band play acoustic (no PA, no electric guitar) in his living room a few weeks ago. Nothing sounds like a live band when they're playing in a living room and you're sitting no more than three feet to five feet away from the musicians. It does not sound like a hifi system. The highs don't grab your attention, the imaging is something you don't even notice, the bass line is much clearer, and the sense of rhythm and the playful interchange between the musicians is all there right in front of you.
It certainly makes you aware of just how unnatural and artificial recorded music can be ... similar to the difference between real sugar and artificial sweetener. Not the same at all.
Last edited:
I am reminded of the 'Prima Voce' series of recordings made by Nimbus where old 78s were played through a really good horn and recorded with modern microphones in a good acoustic:
The Prima Voce Series
and
The battle of the little and big horns: Nimbus Records like doing things the old-fashioned way. So when they began worrying about the loss of low frequencies on their CD transfers of old 78s, there was only one solution - to stick a bigger horn on th
The Prima Voce Series
and
The battle of the little and big horns: Nimbus Records like doing things the old-fashioned way. So when they began worrying about the loss of low frequencies on their CD transfers of old 78s, there was only one solution - to stick a bigger horn on th
Takeaway: Do a horn right or don't do it at all.
Done right, they're pretty good. There have been so many horrible-sounding PA and movie-theater horns ... that we've all heard ... that it's sometimes hard to believe that a good horn can even exist. But they do.
Done right, they're pretty good. There have been so many horrible-sounding PA and movie-theater horns ... that we've all heard ... that it's sometimes hard to believe that a good horn can even exist. But they do.
Last edited:
Having spent some time with the JBL M2, there's a good horn.....a REALLY good horn. But I'm sure the concentric driver has a lot to do with it too.
Pano - I have been meaning to ask: Who did you have to kill to get to live in Hawaii? You can send me a note off line if you don't want to give a public answer.
Exactly correct. Horns have a bad name because most of them are bad. But that is not a given, its a product of the design. I have found that it is usually compromises made for size.
Yes - once you get there in your home system it's always a chore to listen to traditional "hiend end" systems people spend big bucks to buy and brag about. The pure tuneful sound of up close live acoustic bass is a wonderful spirit building thing. It touches in the soul in a way that is unmistakable pleasant and real. Uncompressed strain free live tone is the goal I put above all. It's the best route to realism and playback pleasure. 😉 It is an unconventional goal and requires unconventional means.
No I have successfully gone from a six way to a four way and the range that used to be covered by the the mid bass horn, CMCD (actually deeper into the low mid with the new, almost as low as the midbass horn - 120 cycles up) and treble horn is now covered by a 12" front loaded Tannoy coaxial. I did loose a bit in the "size" (what is right? it seems I moved a meter back with most recordings) of the playback but made up for it in coherence from the wide range point source. Just got back from a friends restaurant eating dinner with my wife where a 3 piece acoustic ensemble played 8 feet from me - My system will do that 🙂 all of it, no problemo
That's cool, I take it the other 2 channels are bass below 120? Any pics?
The Prestige speakers are consistently ones that sounded pretty good whenever I've heard them.
The Prestige speakers are consistently ones that sounded pretty good whenever I've heard them.
Yes below 120 down to 50-60 there are eight JBL 2225. each side below the wide range horn there are two in BR tuned to 40 cycles and two 2225 open back side wall firing (butted up to concrete walls) off the side of the enclosure of the wide range horn, Deep bass is almost done with a rear ambiance sub loaded with two Dayton 18" sub drivers , two front corner loaded deep tuned reflex boxes each loaded with two 18" JBL 2242's and a front center folded floor/front wall horn loaded with a single JBL 2242 - no pictures I plan on finishing the system soon. Now I use corner horns and line arrays with rear sub and center front sub horn below 60 and the newer setup will be a bit better and take a lot less space
Last edited:
I'm sure it's been asked. What if the rear wall gives diffusion toward the walls and ceiling at steep angles, and vertical diffusion varies between this and a more direct reflection to a second reflector on the ceiling angled down toward the listener. Reflectivity, etc... ?
Jimmy Hoffa. It took a long time to pay off, but was worth it. 😀
Kidding aside, the first time we just moved out here (Honolulu) because I knew there was work. Same for moving to Maui. This time (Big Island) was a job offer. But all those moves were pretty much me contacting a company and saying "Hey, you want me to come work for you?" They all said yes. You just have to look for opportunities. It's a lovely place to live, but very expensive. Here you are either wealthy, homeless, or work like a dog to get by.
Maybe Australia will be next on the list, tho we really want to move to Tahiti-Moorea. At least they speak my language.
Pano,
Nothing like being proactive in getting what you want. I'm sure if I hadn't met my future wife 20 some years ago I would be living the island life now, that was the original plan when I was single. Now I'm single again, a widower, so again I can think of getting back to where I loved the lifestyle and the place. My kid landed there last night, he's at the university housing in Hilo, his first move away from home and at least a 3 year commitment. My daughter cried as we pulled away from the departure drop off.
Nothing like being proactive in getting what you want. I'm sure if I hadn't met my future wife 20 some years ago I would be living the island life now, that was the original plan when I was single. Now I'm single again, a widower, so again I can think of getting back to where I loved the lifestyle and the place. My kid landed there last night, he's at the university housing in Hilo, his first move away from home and at least a 3 year commitment. My daughter cried as we pulled away from the departure drop off.
Curious about the horn (if any) in front of the 12" Tannoy and what handles the range above the top of the internal HF horn of the Tannoy.