And as best I can.
si fuisses placidi philosophum te crederes
periti credere , sed quid versatus? ( Often said " Experto Credite which I suspect is a business term in Cod Latin meaning expert in supplying credit ) .
Enough of fake latin. I was taught it and was rubbish.
si fuisses placidi philosophum te crederes
periti credere , sed quid versatus? ( Often said " Experto Credite which I suspect is a business term in Cod Latin meaning expert in supplying credit ) .
Enough of fake latin. I was taught it and was rubbish.
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Apologies as this is totally off-topic to the thread, but LPs have (almost) always been made of vinyl (though many 45's were made of cheaper and faster-wearing polystyrene), but it's only in the last 10-15 years or so that I've heard the name of the substance used for the object, often in the plural such as 'vinyls.'
So yes, it appears to be a hipster thing.
One reason to like vinyl is the turntable. To me as a kid, turntables were a marvel of engineering to the point of being an entertainment device. An art object. You could think of all the ways you could improve it. Now days a stereo system may just be a bunch of black boxes and a remote. Same thing with tube amps; many were art objects to me. Cool to look at.
I would say about 1985. LP was more common as what people said. Shellac I suspect also for 78's about then.
Is there any evidence at all that this is a measurable, or even detectable, effect?
I think I can say without fear of successful contradiction that every statement you have made there is wholly wrong.
It should be a hetrodyne effect which for a Garrard is 23 Hz mixed with 100 Hz ( circa, or 1.2 times higher 60 Hz ). The Graphs I took from Greenwich University were on a topic I set for a degree level student. If I find the graphs at Loricraft Audio I will post them. They are not unusual or unknown. the BBC would have thought of this when helping Garrard design 301/401.
CD as a system is good. As a typical product 80 % of mine never get played ( inherited and given to me, I have hundreds) .The 20 % are played all the time. CD is like Burger King. It's OK and handy. It's not great. Paintings are worse than photo's right? Douglas I advise you the vinyl movement will have no time for what you say and they seem the only ones who care. I side with you in my head. Not in my heart. It's the product. I have to say if someone judges to know how another hears they assume the power of a god. I wouldn't.
GARRARD 501
This is a translation of a German text by my old boss Julian Mason. It is a celibration by a German magazine coupled with Mercades who thought the design worthy ( Stuttgart Motor Press ). They helped us get to our goal by saying it could be possible. Hope the links works. It's not a posh PDF. The reviewer is a totally professional who has worked all his life with studio gear. We have never bothered to get reviews in the UK as we don't think the press has a clue what they are doing. Ken Kesler did a kind of review that seemed to mention WW2 a lot. It was a weird review with no measurements. I like Ken so must not complain. In Greman also. Julian learned German by watching German saterlite TV. He may know Latin, but not German really.Not bad seeing that. I designed the motor and driving electronics ( Hitachi bassed, the only one to be OK with the motor )
http://www.garrard501.com/501 review En 10.05.pdf
http://www.garrard501.com/aud1005_p0120_Garrard501.pdf
This is a translation of a German text by my old boss Julian Mason. It is a celibration by a German magazine coupled with Mercades who thought the design worthy ( Stuttgart Motor Press ). They helped us get to our goal by saying it could be possible. Hope the links works. It's not a posh PDF. The reviewer is a totally professional who has worked all his life with studio gear. We have never bothered to get reviews in the UK as we don't think the press has a clue what they are doing. Ken Kesler did a kind of review that seemed to mention WW2 a lot. It was a weird review with no measurements. I like Ken so must not complain. In Greman also. Julian learned German by watching German saterlite TV. He may know Latin, but not German really.Not bad seeing that. I designed the motor and driving electronics ( Hitachi bassed, the only one to be OK with the motor )
http://www.garrard501.com/501 review En 10.05.pdf
http://www.garrard501.com/aud1005_p0120_Garrard501.pdf
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It is just as much a waste of my time to respond to Douglas Self as he to me even though I own all additions of his book and respect him greatly as an engineer. I have learned so much from him. How to star ground, physical layout of power supply, etc. He is a true pioneer and a genius.
There are few engineers who listen to what they do and still rely excessively on measurements, which although necessary, never carry the day.
There are even fewer engineers who have or even could afford a state of the art system. Without a true reference system, how can they even know whether what they design in their heads is better or worse.
Nelson, Self, Pass, Cordell are unbelievable engineers but no one I know would want to own their products. I have read them all. It is because audio design is so holistic and you have to be a good listener to know whether you are truly improving the sound and your ego must reside on the shelf.
For instance, Convergent Audio Technology always recognized the importance of constrained layer damping of the chassis. Not only must the product used to damp excessive resonance be effective but it must not impose its own amusical sound upon the sound. How many engineers take the time to study how you damp the chassis. ARs new preamp has a much better chassis and it sounds way better. It was the biggest single improvements to their latest line stage. They finally caught up in this regard. No mention in Self's book about this. Perhaps any such changes would not be audible in his system or perhaps it does not interest him.
I read with great interest Cordell's book, particularly the section on how the RF environment affects the amplifier. Power line noise, RF etc. He even mentions the well known audio fact that torroid transformers have wide bandwidth and high interwinding capacitance providing no meaningful isolation of power line noise getting into the system. Of course, if you do not have a reference system, you would not even hear the improvement wrought by a larger transformer with low interwinding capacitance that is critically snubbed to keep the transformer ringing out of the power. No mention of that in Self's book either.
Vinyl and tube gear is still the reference in the ultra high end, with all of its objective flaws. Why? Because tube flaws are more human than solid state flaws, which are more amusical. The most important thing is whether what we are hearing is convincingly real or is it merely a convincing representation. Most solid state representation ultimately sounds fake and no discriminating listener can ever close his eyes and believe he is listening to the live event
At least you recognize the voice. The piano does not sound like an electric piano. The violin does not sound grating and metallic to the ear.
We may use a solid state amp on the woofer tower or subwoofer to get better control of the driver but not in the sacred midrange or treble.
I suppose we are just a cult to most scientific engineers, but I promise you that anyone walking in the room and hearing my system or any of my friends would say the sound is unbelievably real with no electronic artifacts. They would not develop listening fatigue and want me to turn it off.
There are few engineers who listen to what they do and still rely excessively on measurements, which although necessary, never carry the day.
There are even fewer engineers who have or even could afford a state of the art system. Without a true reference system, how can they even know whether what they design in their heads is better or worse.
Nelson, Self, Pass, Cordell are unbelievable engineers but no one I know would want to own their products. I have read them all. It is because audio design is so holistic and you have to be a good listener to know whether you are truly improving the sound and your ego must reside on the shelf.
For instance, Convergent Audio Technology always recognized the importance of constrained layer damping of the chassis. Not only must the product used to damp excessive resonance be effective but it must not impose its own amusical sound upon the sound. How many engineers take the time to study how you damp the chassis. ARs new preamp has a much better chassis and it sounds way better. It was the biggest single improvements to their latest line stage. They finally caught up in this regard. No mention in Self's book about this. Perhaps any such changes would not be audible in his system or perhaps it does not interest him.
I read with great interest Cordell's book, particularly the section on how the RF environment affects the amplifier. Power line noise, RF etc. He even mentions the well known audio fact that torroid transformers have wide bandwidth and high interwinding capacitance providing no meaningful isolation of power line noise getting into the system. Of course, if you do not have a reference system, you would not even hear the improvement wrought by a larger transformer with low interwinding capacitance that is critically snubbed to keep the transformer ringing out of the power. No mention of that in Self's book either.
Vinyl and tube gear is still the reference in the ultra high end, with all of its objective flaws. Why? Because tube flaws are more human than solid state flaws, which are more amusical. The most important thing is whether what we are hearing is convincingly real or is it merely a convincing representation. Most solid state representation ultimately sounds fake and no discriminating listener can ever close his eyes and believe he is listening to the live event
At least you recognize the voice. The piano does not sound like an electric piano. The violin does not sound grating and metallic to the ear.
We may use a solid state amp on the woofer tower or subwoofer to get better control of the driver but not in the sacred midrange or treble.
I suppose we are just a cult to most scientific engineers, but I promise you that anyone walking in the room and hearing my system or any of my friends would say the sound is unbelievably real with no electronic artifacts. They would not develop listening fatigue and want me to turn it off.
We're getting off subject here, but solidstate done right is competitive with the best of tubes. It's just that so many EE's don't do it right. It's subtle little things like PS bypass caps (.1uF or so) within an inch of each opamp, doing grounding right, a passive Rf filter at the input, putting a 100-200 ohm R at the output of an opamp circuit, having any idea how to gauge phase margin, cranking up the gain in the first stage and dropping it back in the last stage in order to push down the noise floor and effectively crossover distortion. And then there are those people who don't know how to deal with tone control circuits so they delete them altogether... that's laughable. A 4 section Baxandall is infinitely better than nothing, and so many don't get this.
Having said all of this, a SE triode does have a better distortion spectrum shape, but it's usually 40dB down, so... In a guitar amp where tubes are pushed into distortion for effect, tubes are way better, but in Hi-Fi with nothing ever over driven it's hard to tell if the difference is any more than psychological.
The warmer sound of tubes is often because the output impedance is higher, which lets the woofer have a bit of resonance in the bass freqs, and because many tube circuits have some real-time dynamic range compression in phase splitters (effectively) and in push-pull output stages that nobody talks about. Virtually all tube stages generate more 2nd harmonic distortion which makes for a more natural distortion sound, but it comes with I.M. distortion, which is rarely a good thing.
Having said all of this, a SE triode does have a better distortion spectrum shape, but it's usually 40dB down, so... In a guitar amp where tubes are pushed into distortion for effect, tubes are way better, but in Hi-Fi with nothing ever over driven it's hard to tell if the difference is any more than psychological.
The warmer sound of tubes is often because the output impedance is higher, which lets the woofer have a bit of resonance in the bass freqs, and because many tube circuits have some real-time dynamic range compression in phase splitters (effectively) and in push-pull output stages that nobody talks about. Virtually all tube stages generate more 2nd harmonic distortion which makes for a more natural distortion sound, but it comes with I.M. distortion, which is rarely a good thing.
The genius of Douglas it to make hard things seem very easy. There are plenty of people who say the designs are too simple ( John Curl might ). Jean Hirage also would not endorse the design priorities if his work is anything to go by. The English Douglas uses is a leason to me. And yet the designs are Audiophile if you care to try some parameters like VAS Cdom ( scope and analyser needed with a realistic load ). I suspect that is a near accident of the simplicity shining through. Apart from H C Lin no one has made it so simple. J L H also should be mentioned and the unknown designer of Hitachi MOS FET designs circa 1978. Then the RCA amplifer circa 1978 often wrongly said to be the Naime NAP 160 ( Alan Mornington West refuses to say it's his, my eye ). HK Citation looks more like the RCA. Then the genius design albeit poorly made, Sinclair Z30 which was the origine of the hyper reliable A&R A60.
Quad 303 is the best amplifer I know of although deceptively very complex in how it works ( and £10 000 less than what people think better ). It needs extreme care to get it to shine and separate caps to each drive unit which is a bonus as it simplifies the signal path and acts as DC protection. The 33 is OK , but hopeleesly mismatched with the modern world. Phono is low grade. The window of correct working might be only +/- 3dB. Most will not be able to get it right. Tape high suits modern CD ( medium if Rotel single 1 bit DAC, RCD 965 is a bargain secondhand ). That is something.
Quad 303 is the best amplifer I know of although deceptively very complex in how it works ( and £10 000 less than what people think better ). It needs extreme care to get it to shine and separate caps to each drive unit which is a bonus as it simplifies the signal path and acts as DC protection. The 33 is OK , but hopeleesly mismatched with the modern world. Phono is low grade. The window of correct working might be only +/- 3dB. Most will not be able to get it right. Tape high suits modern CD ( medium if Rotel single 1 bit DAC, RCD 965 is a bargain secondhand ). That is something.
This is an interesting thread if turntables interest you. I know the TD124 quite well and was trying my best to help. Ultimately what is so good about TD124 also stops it being better. The belt.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/anal...storing-improving-thorens-td-124-mkii-38.html
Lenco 75, JVC L3-E L5-E and TT71 are good.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/anal...storing-improving-thorens-td-124-mkii-38.html
Lenco 75, JVC L3-E L5-E and TT71 are good.
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