John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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Right in between my 4 kids. 🙂. My daughter brought home this tiny Bose box with a bizarre amount of bass and I have to say from a few feet away it sounded better than most of those 80's boom boxes. This needs some serious research.

I'm right in the middle of my parent's 3 kids, too. 🙂 My bet is that your daughter's Bose has a decent prominence in the midbass that gives the impression that the lower harmonics are there. But that's pure speculation.
 
Interesting quote from Chris Lord Alge: " I listen on [Yamaha] NS10s, the original ones with the covers, plus an old Infinity 12-inch subwoofer that cost me $300, so I can hear the ultra-low end."

Guess I should break down and get a sub, although Bob Clearmountain says not necessary.
 
Isn't he one of the pair behind the current trend to compress the living daylights out of things?

That is usually done later in mastering at the customer's request. Record company executives want music to play as loud as possible on the radio because they believe it helps sell records. And there is probably something to that, it's just been way overdone.

Are you thinking way back to Phil Spector and the Wall of Sound?
 
You get what you pay for. Gosh those NS10's were shite probably the most unlistenable speakers I ever heard.

In the case of Alge, you are paying for hit records.

And nobody said NS-10s sound good. They do mate quite well with a Bryston 4B, however, as many people have observed. It helps a lot. The speakers are only used because they are good for hearing if a mix is balanced right for translation to other systems, that's all.
 
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I understand exactly what I said. I was referring to cases where there there might be a problem with a test. It seemed like it would be quite obvious to anybody there are many cases where tests work well.

What is "obvious" to most people is that tests which confirm their beliefs work well, while tests that contradict their beliefs are flawed. 🙂. At least that's how my universe works.

May I ask if I would be incorrect to infer from your comments that you don't hear distortion or dither noise types? If so, could it be that believing your own ears is at the crux of your own bias?

I hear lots of things, some of them are even real. I don't know much about dither and likely could not identify dither artifacts by ear. I will take the easy cop-out and say I mostly listen to vinyl, though of course much of the source is recorded digitally, I just don't have to run it through a DAC. I don't own a stand-alone DAC, though it's on my "maybe someday" DIY list. So if I play a CD the DAC is in my Sony DVD player, but most of my digital playback is via a Squeezebox,again using the internal DAC.

My bias is a belief that any audible effect, positive or negative, which requires training to discern, likely has no impact on my enjoyment of music reproduction.
 
I'll tell you a story about my NS-10s. I was highly skeptical that something like that could work and never even wanted to try out a pair. Then one day Guitar Center had a sale on them for half price, but they they accidentally also made it a two for one sale. So I got the pair for $189, and couldn't resist buying them at that price even if they weren't good for much. A month later GC charged my credit card another $189 and I contacted to see why. They said the speakers were mislabeled in the ad they were actually $189 each! I told them I took their offer at face value and wouldn't have purchased otherwise. They retracted the second charge.

Now, the Bryston is another story for another time, but they cost a heck of a lot more than the speakers ever would. Strange match up in that respect. But it works.
 
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That is usually done later in mastering at the customer's request. Record company executives want music to play as loud as possible on the radio because they believe it helps sell records. And there is probably something to that, it's just been way overdone.

Are you thinking way back to Phil Spector and the Wall of Sound?

Nope Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Chris Lord-Alge | Sound On Sound he admits it here. He is the reason so many current releases sound *** on anything half decent. (note this is my opinion, but I personally hate the squashed dynamics of stuff that runs a DR of less than 8. It annoys me, especially when the music is good. It doubly annoys me when they don't even do a full DR high res or red book release when most would be happy if the MP3 was ironed flat. )
 

He does say he uses wave L1 and L2 limiters, which are intended for mastering. (I have used them too in mixing, for a bass player that couldn't keep time with the drummer. Then ducked the bass under the kick with a side-chain compressor, which creates an illusion of playing together.)

But the hard clipping still usually doesn't get added until mastering. And if the songs aren't already loud enough when they come in, the mastering engineer understands quite well what the record company is paying them to do.

There are mix engineers who take pride when the mastering engineer tells them there was nothing to fix, or maybe only a very minor .5 db EQ tweak. If Alge is that type, and if he wants his mix to stay exactly the way he wants it without further changes, then it would make sense for him to step on it himself rather than having it get done outside of his control.

Speaking of overdoing it, Metallica's Death Magnetic was too distorted for many of their fans. Many liked the less distorted version in the Guitar Hero video game better. But, by then the CD was already out. There was no choice but to stick with what had already been done.
 
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I never said hard clipping. It's just over compressed. When you watch the VUs on a track and the vocalist comes in and the level stays the same you know its squashed to death. At this point distortion products 80dB down just don't matter anymore as the music is all in the top 10dB below FS. As a music lover I try not to care, but it annoys me.

I hate to think what these wunderkinds would do with something like 'Breathe' from DSOM. The initial 'heartbeats' start around -60dB on my foobar VU. Now I listen quietly at the office (ety 4s) and cannot hear them until they hit the -30 mark. Now I haven't compared with a 70s vinyl pressing, but does seem we have spend the last 30 years+ going backwards.
 
Bill these days it seems that they are recording for cell phones and $5 ear buds as much as anything else. We have been getting junk recordings since before the first CD's came out, not as bad on vinyl but even then it was done. Now it has just become like a standard that music has no dynamic range, one note music recorded in someone's home studio and perhaps if your lucky mixed down on some Genelec speakers. What is being called professional small speakers these days aren't much better than something that use to come from Radio Shack! Then again you have modern hip hop music that all sounds to me like it was made for someones boomy car stereo to rattle the license plates!
 
But the net result is the same, which is that is sounds flat and lifeless on any sort of half decent reproduction chain. I can understand this for top 40 pop, but when folk music is also treated that way, you have to wonder what is happening to the world.

Bill, I am mostly with you. I never cared much for the sound of compression, but some people think it sounds good. I seem to recall Bob Ludwig saying its use was necessary to make some jazz sound its best. It does make smooth jazz sound smoother, I would say.
 
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