i guess if the prat is right and the system is therefore assumed to be set up right then the latter factors (tone) will automatically also come into focus???>>
That's far from the case. I'm actually more concerned with tone than timing, despite having attempted to contribute something on timing from a musician's perspective. Getting really lifelike tone with acoustic instruments is a whole other story, and that's what I've been working on.
andy
That's far from the case. I'm actually more concerned with tone than timing, despite having attempted to contribute something on timing from a musician's perspective. Getting really lifelike tone with acoustic instruments is a whole other story, and that's what I've been working on.
andy
The only system I EVER heard that could really sound like a live jazz band or a live symphony was 2 Hartley 24" in transmission lines the size of refrigerators, stacked Quads ,and stacked decca ribbon tweets. Woofers run with transistor monster amp, quads and decca's wth tube. Next closest was those giant polk things with multiple boxes and the giant infinity linesource things. However those were all way outside my financial ability, I got flat panels from martin logan and eminent technology and decided on the ETs, run with a 100 WPC tube amp with tube preamp. Price was bearable and the sound was musical. I was working at a very high end shop in Mass. at the time so I had a chance to hear lots of great stuff and get it at cost.🙂 Yankee Audio flat panels and Atmosphere amps are great but cost like a small house . All that said. Musicality and tonal impacts that approximate live are pricey, the best that most of us can hope for is "close enough". You can do a lot worse than just a pair of Rogers LS35As( just about any small decent monitor) and a sub woofer( just about any fast sub) run with anything you already have , If you don't mind giving up the empty beer can, bass thumping hitting your chest and violin/ trumpet solos that make you cry,feelings. We won't even try to get Live at Leeds by The Who sound levels.
I've been a member of this forum for quite a number of years now, and there's indeed a handful of members here who are extremely skilful about their work - some are even highly acclaimed designers of commercial equipment, of international fame and recognition.
Who am I ? - I'm a highly dedicated electronic pro, but may day job is mostly in somewhat higher frequencies and technologies that are common to this forum. I've been dabbling in audio for the last 35-40 years. At 57 now, I've also been an amateur musician since the age of 10, maily playing woodwinds of various kinds. Evenif I haven't built something of real significance for the last 10 years or so, for various reasons, I still find interest in DIY audio, and have lot's of plans and ideas, whenever money, but mainly time and occation permits.
While you are accusing other members of living in a their closets, it seems to me that you yourself came her totally enclosed in your own closet, as you seems totally ignorant towards arguments that does not fully support your own predistened opinions - or rather prejudices.
You argue about PRAT and musicality. OK - as a musician, albeit amateur, I can understand PRAT - beleive it or not. An example , not relevant to loudspeakers though - I used to own one of the better 1st generation CD players - the Yamaha CD-3 ( although mine was a Nikko- which proved to a Yamaha innards with a Nikko front plate). When DVD came around, I bought an early version, cheap DVD player, mainly to satisfy the kids wishes for playing DVDs. I also had the satellite RX connected to my amp, to play satellite radio. One evening, when the old Nikko was playing tricks on me, I stuffed a CD into the DVD player...... Total disaster! Even my the best of my CDs, including some of the early direct-to-disc recordings, were totally lifeless! No kidding - there were music, alright - but it was totally lifeless - no detail, no dynamics - just boring crap!
I have a lot of friends, some who are really outstanding amateur musicians. Except for the fact that they have another main occupation for income, they are easily a par with many socalled pro's - a fact often encountered in rural areas. Most of them have, - in terms of High End
audio , rather mediocre stereo setups. Most of them don't understand what I'm talking about, when we from time to time talk about the technical aspects of music reproduction. Why is it so? I don't know - and they don't! Maybe they have some inner vision of the music they play on CDs, or what? Most of these setups have a freq. response very far form flat , often heavily bass augmented , to get "the punch".....
But that's their choice! Who are we to tell them otherwise? We may try to explain our side of the coin, and maybe they are interested - maybe not!
The moral of things is that maybe we technofreaks are - maybe just technofreaks!? I happen to know a highly acclaimed professor of atmospherics physics, who is also a true affiacionado of classical music (living in one of Germanys's larger cities), but who is also totally content with listening to music from his shoebox size Sony compact system!
Maybe it is really us HiFI freaks who are the real weirdos......?? 😛
My main point, Audiojoy, is that you seem to have exactly the opposite of your nick from audio??? Where is your joy? Where is your objectivity? Where is your general respect for other people's opinions?
If you came here to openly discuss and debate YOUR opinions vs ours, you have most certainly put your wrong foot down first!
If you're still interested in debating wether YOUR or your opponents opinions in this thread are the the more correct or accurate ones, I suggest you accept a more humble state of mind and start accepting that there may be other valid opinions in addition to your own.
Otherwise I'd strongly suggest that you take YOUR closet with you and move your *SS and opinions elsewhere, and leave the rest of us ( and our closets) in peace. There is indeed a LOT of serious knowledge in some of these closets!
- OTOH - there's also the odd one smelling real foul.......🙁
Who am I ? - I'm a highly dedicated electronic pro, but may day job is mostly in somewhat higher frequencies and technologies that are common to this forum. I've been dabbling in audio for the last 35-40 years. At 57 now, I've also been an amateur musician since the age of 10, maily playing woodwinds of various kinds. Evenif I haven't built something of real significance for the last 10 years or so, for various reasons, I still find interest in DIY audio, and have lot's of plans and ideas, whenever money, but mainly time and occation permits.
While you are accusing other members of living in a their closets, it seems to me that you yourself came her totally enclosed in your own closet, as you seems totally ignorant towards arguments that does not fully support your own predistened opinions - or rather prejudices.
You argue about PRAT and musicality. OK - as a musician, albeit amateur, I can understand PRAT - beleive it or not. An example , not relevant to loudspeakers though - I used to own one of the better 1st generation CD players - the Yamaha CD-3 ( although mine was a Nikko- which proved to a Yamaha innards with a Nikko front plate). When DVD came around, I bought an early version, cheap DVD player, mainly to satisfy the kids wishes for playing DVDs. I also had the satellite RX connected to my amp, to play satellite radio. One evening, when the old Nikko was playing tricks on me, I stuffed a CD into the DVD player...... Total disaster! Even my the best of my CDs, including some of the early direct-to-disc recordings, were totally lifeless! No kidding - there were music, alright - but it was totally lifeless - no detail, no dynamics - just boring crap!
I have a lot of friends, some who are really outstanding amateur musicians. Except for the fact that they have another main occupation for income, they are easily a par with many socalled pro's - a fact often encountered in rural areas. Most of them have, - in terms of High End
audio , rather mediocre stereo setups. Most of them don't understand what I'm talking about, when we from time to time talk about the technical aspects of music reproduction. Why is it so? I don't know - and they don't! Maybe they have some inner vision of the music they play on CDs, or what? Most of these setups have a freq. response very far form flat , often heavily bass augmented , to get "the punch"..... But that's their choice! Who are we to tell them otherwise? We may try to explain our side of the coin, and maybe they are interested - maybe not!
The moral of things is that maybe we technofreaks are - maybe just technofreaks!? I happen to know a highly acclaimed professor of atmospherics physics, who is also a true affiacionado of classical music (living in one of Germanys's larger cities), but who is also totally content with listening to music from his shoebox size Sony compact system!
Maybe it is really us HiFI freaks who are the real weirdos......?? 😛
My main point, Audiojoy, is that you seem to have exactly the opposite of your nick from audio??? Where is your joy? Where is your objectivity? Where is your general respect for other people's opinions?
If you came here to openly discuss and debate YOUR opinions vs ours, you have most certainly put your wrong foot down first!
If you're still interested in debating wether YOUR or your opponents opinions in this thread are the the more correct or accurate ones, I suggest you accept a more humble state of mind and start accepting that there may be other valid opinions in addition to your own.
Otherwise I'd strongly suggest that you take YOUR closet with you and move your *SS and opinions elsewhere, and leave the rest of us ( and our closets) in peace. There is indeed a LOT of serious knowledge in some of these closets!
- OTOH - there's also the odd one smelling real foul.......🙁
I wonder of audiojoy is referring to TAS who's editor is the king of subjective reviewers - Robert Hartley.
OTOH, Stereophile 'tries' to be both objective and subjective by publishing reviewers listening opinions and JA's measurements supplementing the article in sidebars.
OTOH, Stereophile 'tries' to be both objective and subjective by publishing reviewers listening opinions and JA's measurements supplementing the article in sidebars.
Audiophile Magazines?
I haven't noticed a lot of reality in many of the reviews, although there are some reviewers that are consistently better than others. OTOH, the various magazines have extolled gear (and speakers) that are pretty awful sounding, while downplaying other gear that was better sounding, but was a great deal less expensive.
AFAIK, the term "PRAT" started being used in the British publications and was later adopted by some American reviewers. Is there an equivilent term used in other areas of the World?
If this is a notion that's touted elsewhere, is there universal acceptance by the Audiophiles in that country or area? I may be ignorant, but I get the sense that there are many out there that don't "get it."
Best Regards,
TerryO
Hi audiojoy
I only read the first page.
So I don't know all of the advice you have been given.
My advice is try sending charles hansen a pm
I only read the first page.
So I don't know all of the advice you have been given.
My advice is try sending charles hansen a pm
I deleted even more as this is nothing more than a war of words, chest puffing and sword clanging. Funny, I can see both sides of the fence but see no reason to participate as there is no means to an end here and what I perceive as musicality matters not to others as their beliefs matter not to me. This is one of the most subjective threads in the forums today and speaking your mind is neither productive nor fruitful. No one will win regardless of your conviction so I will be asking the other mods if this thread needs to remain open.
There won't be a common ground here because all advanced DIY create one of a kind personal expression to satisfy their own needs (or at least thats how I understand DIY) It is a very personal, subjective hobby. Some don't know what they want or don't have the skill so they run from design to design blindly just like casual shoppers (thats were DIY gets expensive but it's expensive anyway).I'm not sure how many of "designers" have clear picture of what they want (beyond constant directivity and flat on off axis)Its like taking a pictures. You see a beautiful scene so you grab a camera to "still the moment" Now , it gets easier with digital but with film ,you develop it and the effect is 99% a misery , hardly anything left from the beauty of the moment only a technicolor correct banal.
Audiojoy you have no chance off succes in DIY before you find the answers on your own beyond kindergarten (which is actually prooving quite difficult to me as well) of computer aided design and measurements. All the bad sounding equipment is finding their afficionados after all (they would not sell it otherways)
Nobody forced you to buy bad sounding 30-40k pile of xxxx(in your opinion) You did it to yourself so you're perfectly qualified to find a good sounding pile of xxx. I don't believe there is a single factor or topology.Where did you read that OB is a path to nirvana? How many drivers did you try 10-20??You probably even didn't measure the thing to determine if there aren't any simple technical anomalies .And if there are not any maybe the drivers itself are inept, and lacking the tonal qualities you look for? I mean there are many gifted designers with years of experience and best equipment and how often do you find result of their work worthy? (and I don't buy the story that they all are corrupted by marketing and accounting departments.) OK enough of ESL (English as a second language )training for today🙂
Audiojoy you have no chance off succes in DIY before you find the answers on your own beyond kindergarten (which is actually prooving quite difficult to me as well) of computer aided design and measurements. All the bad sounding equipment is finding their afficionados after all (they would not sell it otherways)
Nobody forced you to buy bad sounding 30-40k pile of xxxx(in your opinion) You did it to yourself so you're perfectly qualified to find a good sounding pile of xxx. I don't believe there is a single factor or topology.Where did you read that OB is a path to nirvana? How many drivers did you try 10-20??You probably even didn't measure the thing to determine if there aren't any simple technical anomalies .And if there are not any maybe the drivers itself are inept, and lacking the tonal qualities you look for? I mean there are many gifted designers with years of experience and best equipment and how often do you find result of their work worthy? (and I don't buy the story that they all are corrupted by marketing and accounting departments.) OK enough of ESL (English as a second language )training for today🙂
Instead of the moderators genuinely protecting those that are innocently trying to make some headway in diy design all i get is a battering from 'those' because I am not so technically minded and they really hate someone alien and foreign playing on their turf. Afterall its their showpiece their baby their self esteem. I should be protected against the constant attacks but alas a lot of the moderators are of the same mind, so what protection can I possibly get.
JUst read how innocebtly this and my thread on NS100o crossover starts then see what a shambles it becomes just like this one.
JUst read how innocebtly this and my thread on NS100o crossover starts then see what a shambles it becomes just like this one.
The arguments between engineeers and non-engineers who claim to have 20-20 vision are as old as the hills and will carry on irrespective of what forum or thread we are talking about.
In the worst case we have engineers that can't see outside their text books and non-engineers that are naive, fanciful and out of touch with reality.
In the best case we have engineers that are highly creative and have a truly scientific and innovative attitude to trying and perfecting new ideas. And we have non-engineers that are creative and clever in other fields and use their natural skills in audio, probably learning a lot of the science by trial and error and reading forum threads like this.
If you pair up a naive non-engineer with a text-book engineer you get rants about 100 posts long.
If on the other hand you pair up a creative non-engineer with a creative engineer you get the kind of threads that are a joy to read.
I'm not going into a who's who here, but suffice it to say that the engineers on this forum have, with few exceptions, more than proved their creativity and their willingness to innovate and debate new ideas. And, incidentally, to give really useful advice to those that can benefit from it on an ongoing basis. Non-engineers on this forum aren't victims - they're very lucky people to have the input from some of the best minds in the industry.
andy
In the worst case we have engineers that can't see outside their text books and non-engineers that are naive, fanciful and out of touch with reality.
In the best case we have engineers that are highly creative and have a truly scientific and innovative attitude to trying and perfecting new ideas. And we have non-engineers that are creative and clever in other fields and use their natural skills in audio, probably learning a lot of the science by trial and error and reading forum threads like this.
If you pair up a naive non-engineer with a text-book engineer you get rants about 100 posts long.
If on the other hand you pair up a creative non-engineer with a creative engineer you get the kind of threads that are a joy to read.
I'm not going into a who's who here, but suffice it to say that the engineers on this forum have, with few exceptions, more than proved their creativity and their willingness to innovate and debate new ideas. And, incidentally, to give really useful advice to those that can benefit from it on an ongoing basis. Non-engineers on this forum aren't victims - they're very lucky people to have the input from some of the best minds in the industry.
andy
So, what are original DIY speakers which inspired masses??? I see only two-Basszilla by Dick Olsher and Ariel by Lynn Olson.Anything else beyond a flow of clones??I don't see.
So, what are original DIY speakers which inspired masses?>>
There's more to originality than overall design. It's such a technical field that advances can be made anywhere - crossover theory and practice, enclosure materials, damping materials, plus the speaker units themselves and how to combine them. There's been a lot of advances in the details of construction, which are pretty damned important to the sound!
andy
There's more to originality than overall design. It's such a technical field that advances can be made anywhere - crossover theory and practice, enclosure materials, damping materials, plus the speaker units themselves and how to combine them. There's been a lot of advances in the details of construction, which are pretty damned important to the sound!
andy
Hello audiojoy
You are simply not listening to what some are trying to tell you. You need to be technically minded if you want to make "good" well balanced systems. The simple truth is if the engineering is lacking the design will end up with obvious faults. The point is to educate yourself and then go back and try again.
Take your position on PRAT. We all understand what you mean but there is a disconnect here. When I open CLIO I don't have window to display PRAT. If I post a Frequency response curve and the set-up conditions there is something tangible to discuss. If I post a CSD or a ETC same thing. When you bring PRAT into the discussion it all falls apart. There is nothing real no reference for comparison. It's hard to see a way forward without a common language. The measurements give us the tools and the language to move forward.
Rob🙂
I read thru the first 6-7 pages of posts in that thread and was particularly impressed with post #34 by Salas. It, IMO, was one of the most balanced assessments of the forever objectivist vs subjectivist debate I have read on ANY audio forum.
By definition, this forum is going to have a preponderance of techies (read objectivists). Among them, there's going to be a small % that will dig their heals in and become an adversary to someone like yourself. You may have to 'grow a thicker skin' and find ways of defending your position/s if you plan to continue discourse here.
I would recommend to design and test for no output lack in the ''upper bass presence area'' 250-500Hz, no floor suck-out Allison geometry between 100-200Hz and a Q 0.6 closed box or extended bass shelf reflex so to suit the room modes better. No F3 lower than 40Hz. 20% shorter reflex tube than software indicates. Use of diffraction prediction software combined in the software modelling should help. Those steps would work towards what audiojoy describes as P.R.A.T, popularized in the U.K. press by Colloms in the 90s. UK homes with suspended wide plank floors would marry better with multi 5.5-6.5 inch medium Fs bass-mid drivers and rigidly coupled well braced 1m tall narrow cabinets (Mission 753, AE). Or 10-12 inch push pull doublet open baffle with off axis and separate or decoupled upper range assemblies for the more elaborate and roomy installations, i.e. about Naim NBL+ scale. Design axis should be defined between upper mid and tweeter aiming at average ear height at low English living room sofa. Atkinson's TW axis testing should not be followed, prefer the aformentioned (what he said!😀) BBC, KEF practice, also ease the ''BBC dip'' slant from 200Hz to 10kHz to 1dB. Modern tweeters can handle more natural presence than the T-27 of yore.
P.S. Don't mix moderators role that is keepers of civil order and janitors, as judges of factual reason, its not their function. Its better to skip personal calls and make something out of a debate than push for a show closure. Just my 2C.
P.S. Don't mix moderators role that is keepers of civil order and janitors, as judges of factual reason, its not their function. Its better to skip personal calls and make something out of a debate than push for a show closure. Just my 2C.
Hello limono
Who cares who it inspires?? That's not the point of doing it in the first place.
Not true IMHO. The basics are the same. The differences lie in the tradeoffs made. Just because a speaker does not perfectly fit my idea of what a speaker should do in no way takes away from what it does do well. What it does do well is there for all to hear. If you are the type of person to condemns a design because it is OB or CD without a listen then yes I could agree. I think DIY types are much more open minded than you think. That open minded attitude goes a long way to reaching a common ground.
Rob🙂
Who cares who it inspires?? That's not the point of doing it in the first place.
Not true IMHO. The basics are the same. The differences lie in the tradeoffs made. Just because a speaker does not perfectly fit my idea of what a speaker should do in no way takes away from what it does do well. What it does do well is there for all to hear. If you are the type of person to condemns a design because it is OB or CD without a listen then yes I could agree. I think DIY types are much more open minded than you think. That open minded attitude goes a long way to reaching a common ground.
Rob🙂
Post #34 was from Audiojoy making comments about the Judges of our recent speaker contest ("The Puget Sound! DIY Speaker Contest").
BTW: I replied to his remarks in post #42 (I think it was).
Best Regards,
TerryO
Your post #34 I referred to was in the Yam N2000 crossover thread referenced in audiojoy's post.
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