The bloke was over 35 at the time, still lived at his mom's, zero chance of a relationship. Total introvert, provided one did not mention music.
Audio is never rational.
(Sons of my g/f travelled across the US for 3 weeks with their dad. One sent a smartphone message, mentioned he wanted to buy headphones in the US. I told her he could get a Grado top model for almost half the retail here. They just returned home, he bought a Beats)
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I tried the Beats. The ones with skull motif.
Oh dear :-/
I bought a $350 pair of Audio Technica's instead.
Oh dear :-/
I bought a $350 pair of Audio Technica's instead.
Consumers have been sold a bunch of lies and fallacies. The biggest one is that newer is better.
Many decades ago I briefly dated a girl that bough into this mantra. She hated my car (it was a six year old Cadillac, OLD) and she laughed at my hi fi system. She swore up and down that her super cheap and crappy Coby boombox was way better than my carefully selected and restored vintage hi fi system. Newer = better, right? And she also insisted that compact discs were perfect; absolutely flawless. Never mind empirical evidence from a trained engineer!
Many people are like this, on a variety of subjects. I try to avoid them, but they're everywhere.
Many decades ago I briefly dated a girl that bough into this mantra. She hated my car (it was a six year old Cadillac, OLD) and she laughed at my hi fi system. She swore up and down that her super cheap and crappy Coby boombox was way better than my carefully selected and restored vintage hi fi system. Newer = better, right? And she also insisted that compact discs were perfect; absolutely flawless. Never mind empirical evidence from a trained engineer!
Many people are like this, on a variety of subjects. I try to avoid them, but they're everywhere.
If you could point me at something I could build for a few 100 with full range sound and the source/amplification to match I would be all ears. I haven't seen it yet. Mind you need a nearfield desktop setup for the summerhouse (in UK if you paint a shed it becomes a summerhouse). For low listening levels and true nearfield it's less of a tall order.
Take a power amp, measure it listen to it, then take the same power amp, double the capacitance in the power supply, solder solid copper wires under the traces leading to the output transistors, replace the output relay with a mosfet pair, measure it again. No difference same results, now listen again. Hear a difference..?
So much more to amplifiers than numbers. Differencies does not show up in the lab reports, unless you look at a lot of other things than what is talked about here (THD, IMD S&N)
So much more to amplifiers than numbers. Differencies does not show up in the lab reports, unless you look at a lot of other things than what is talked about here (THD, IMD S&N)
I can only N=1, but I'm here because designing things, even if sub-optimal from a time/$$ perspective is a lot of fun. Glass, sand, magnesium, or bamboo. Doesn't matter to me (to an extent)--it's all cool and fun. I doubt I'll build anything terribly state of the art, but if it's (relatively) good and looks cool (why lie about that?), I'm pretty satisfied.
That said, designing an electronics chain that is audibly below quiet thresholds is a goal.
I'll +1 that one. But I think us engineers have a hard time accepting that some of things that create better (maybe not smarter?) illusions are things like:
- Seeing, smelling, feeling the heat of glowing tubes and cooking transformers.
- The ceremony of cleaning a record and setting the stylus on it
- Having spent money on something mysterious seeming
- Distortions that make the signal actually less accurate but more acceptable to a brain that wants to be deceived
- A compelling story or even well constructed BS
- going along with whatever turns-on others who seem happy with how their audio illusion is working for them
- Having put in time reading about, "auditioning", trying, discussing audio gear and tweaks
- Ceremony and ritual!
- whataver it takes to fool the brain. After all, an illusion is really what it is all about
It goes against the engineer brain to pursue something that seems illogical and that a clear specification can't be written for. It goes against the audiophile brain to be told what he is doing and what is working for him is stupid and wasting resources.
A very sane and zen-like approach, Jan. 🙂
My reasons are much the same, except of course I'm learning much more than I'm able to teach. I like to listen to the sound sound of different things. Yes Stuart, I like my "effects" boxes 🙂 And, it's fun to attempt to correlate design differences to perceived 'sonic' differences.
Plus, it's a fairly innocent hobby which keeps me off the streets.
As for feedback being a huge benefit to audio, I imagine it probably is, except when it isn't. And, I think there's much to be said for what SY mentioned somewhere along the way. I think subtle frequency response and phase variations are responsible for most of what we think of as 'sonic' qualities bigness, thinness, open, dark, bright, wide, and so forth. Though I'm not entirely ready to abandon low-level harmonics and their effect on timbre.
You mean like recording engineers have been using for decades to make things sound the way they want?
Found this Interactive Frequency Chart - Independent Recording Network now I don't know how accurate the recommendations are but interesting to mouse over for a few mins.
You do wonder if levinson was onto something when he commissioned the audio palette. These days its easy to do in DSP. Could drive you mad though...
Jumping on the bandwagon I'm afraid here both in terms of following the crowd and 'newer is better', but you'd be doing rather well if you went with a good TPA3116/8 build. I use the TPA3118 near field where I do my soldering and it's never put a foot wrong. I use these for the output inductors.
On topic though, the TPA3118 does use feedback 😉
Indeed Bill, all these things are fully documented in decades of research, just as all the feedback and control system theory has been researched and documented. Funny enough, many do not understand or even deny the existence of perception and how our brain works. They still think the brain wants to tell us the truth. Not so! The ONLY task of the brain in this context is to preserve and enhance ones ego, and it will do anything to get there.
Jan
Yes, certainly. Though I hope I didn't present it as if it was a revelation 🙂 I have replicated some interesting things with (heaven forbid) an EQ.
To that I would just amplify SY's point that we may be too quick to dismiss frequency response as a solved problem because we can make amps that have flat FR into an 8-ohm resistor.
The nice thing about that product was the "gentle" low-order filter shapes. Also the build quality was exemplary---I recall the rotary switches were particularly nice and frightfully expensive.
Really good mastering and restoration folk tend to favor equalization that is fairly modest in its extent, and do achieve remarkable improvements sometimes. A good example is Steven Lasker's work.
Frequency response of electronics is a solved problem. Flat amps driving most any loads are a solved problem. Of course loudspeakers and rooms are the tough part, but they are getting to be closer to solved problems.
The treacherous approach attempts to use a particular amp as the tone control when used in conjunction with a particular loudspeaker in a particular room. Do this if you like to play with things, but realize that you are introducing confounding variables. There's nothing wrong with tone controls if done well, although in the hands of some they can be grossly overused. The scene from Risky Business...
I never heard one but twiddled the knobs once. Just the right mix of lab equipment and luxury.