Just casting back to the bass issue for a moment, one of my benchmarks, which the current speaker setups would not do so well at, is Boney M. A greatest hits CD, the songs have a very intense, repeating bass punch which is extremely effective in the context of the style of the music. And I've heard this CD on systems with walloping big bass drivers, and how pathetic were they in conveying that sound ...
Yes Frank, music we listen is a source of misunderstanding. Terms are source of misunderstanding as well, if someone considers 90 - 150 Hz repetitive automatic drummer as a bass. Try another benchmark, with real notes below 100 Hz. Pop b..s...t is not any measure for sound quality of the system.
All music, and sound, we listen to is a measure, and irrespective of how it was created it is the duty of the system to faithfully reproduce it, no matter how much we may dislike it. Or should the audio elements have 'magical' knowledge of the 'worthiness' of what it is passing through, and treat it accordingly ... 😀?
I agree. You know how live cello or saxophone sounds, and you may compare. We may compare sounds of unamplified, acoustical instruments with their captured and recorded sound.
But no one knows live and original 'sound' of BoneyM. It is completely artificial, machine created, and there is no measure and no starting point, no original sound to compare with. As such it is useless for evaluation of quality of audio system.
🙂
Frank. Give this a listen, particularly the final 20 seconds or so. You like 😉
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wzu5nm1hoozfcxo/Test.mp3
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Agree Scott, I could have been clearer there, indeed what you'd do is record the acoustics at a certain listening position. But you can also move the speaker around at say 30 degree intervals and record each of those positions which gives you a 'surround sound' record of the venue. I've done that and it really does work. Of course, this only comes into play when you have surround sources, but then it does work very well.
Jan
That's a good one, Karl😉. I guess from from PC speakers one would get mostly noise, sometimes a bit of the upper register and time gaps during pedal melody.
Fair enough. So the procedure is this: I play a cello, saxophone recording on my system in optimum state, and am pleased with the comparison to remembered live sound; so then I immediately play the Boney M and because a moment before I had realistic sound, I make the decision that what I'm hearing now is close to the "true" sound of the recording. So if I go out and just use the Boney M CD to test another system, and the match is poor - then I believe I have reasonable grounds for assessing that the latter will also do poorly with cello, and saxophone ...
Getting there ... for some reason dropbox is unbelievably slow at the moment - pedalpower, dialup modem speed, 🙁
Frank, we've been over this in another thread. So I'll just sum it up briefly. When refreshing the Marantz 170 DC, I took some time to look over the schematics very carefully, to try to figure it out. Plus points for its transformer, main fuse is 3.16 A for 220-240 VAC, leading me to believe that it's a say (220 x 3.16) 600 VA unit. This feeds some rather powerful rectifier diodes, forgot the type. It was finally filtered by a dual concentric 2x12,000 uF/56V capacitor. This was honorably retired after 35 years of faithful service and replaced by two discrete BC Components 22,000 uF/63V caps, an upgrade of +86%. Given that the rails are +/- 53V, I should be able to have around 31 Joules of energy in storage, or so. I wouldn't be especially pleased if I owned some difficult 4 Ohm speakers, but I own some unusually clean 8 Ohm speakers.
Yet, that same amp will quite happily drive my other room AR94 speakers (also refreshed) to uncomfortably loud volumes, and they are rated by the manufacturer as 88 dB/1W/1m, full 5 dB less than mine. Not a small and insignificant difference.
I read somewhere on the Internet that a favorite trick owners of these amps do is to exchange the supplied two pairs of output devices (rated at 130W each, TO-3 package, directly on the heatsinks) for Motorola's MJ 21195/21196 transistors (rated at 250W each, practically double). I didn't do that because I reckon that if it works, don't fix it, but I did buy a lot of those trannies, given that I also own a Marantz 1152 DC integrated amp, which is for all practical purposes exactly the same, only rails are +/- 51V and nominal rating is a bit lower. Just in case. Besides, I like those trannies.
On basis of that, I think it's not at all likely that I have problems with usable supply voltage. I could be wrong, but I honestly don't think I am likely to have problems with a transformer rated at 600 VA when I am drawing from it about one half of that worst case.
Frank, I don't think I'm hung up on monickers and price tags, but honestly, you sound like comparing Nissan Micra with a Ferrari and stating that this is near enough a comparison.
I am sure you can extract the most from your Micra, but no matter how much you put the pedal to the metal, you just can't keep up with the Ferrari. No matter how much hard faith you put into it.
Micra, a great city car 🙂, I have had one since 1999, no problems till now, 7 years ago I gave it as a gift to my son. However, nothing special at highways, especially not in Germany 😉
I think you're mixing issues here.
I for one will easily believe you when you say that far too many people have no idea of how to put togther a coherent audio system, one in which everything works together towards the common goal. The fact that many such people manged a mismatch using excellent components each on its own, they still blew it as a system, is another matter.
To which I would reply that I have heard a number of low cost systems which did work even unexpectedly well together, producing a very pleasing overall result. Perhaps the fact that most such systems I heard were put together by professional musicians has some relevance. They have the hearing but not the money for Levinsons, whereas most who do have the money for Levinsons usually lack the hearing.
But trying to put an almost equal sign between cheap powered plastic PC speakers and the PC on almost the same level as a well put together discrete system defies all logic known to me. As I see it, if it were so, then say 90% of the High End should just lock up and go home for good. They would no longer serve any meaningful purpose.
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TRANSLATION - SOME PC speakers will probably do a decent job of playing music at low levels you'd expect for one sitting near them, and for them placeed around a monitor. I haven't heard them, but doesn't mean they don't exist.
PROBLEM - dynamic range at even normal levels. How much can you wreak out of a chip amp being fed with like +/- 12V or so?
THE CHALLENGE - getting those PC speakers to play say Also Sprach Zarathustra at NORMAL home listening levels. Actually, that's a problem only if you hate clipping. Even more so if you are trying to get that sound into the whole room.
And I have a problem with usable voltages?
Yes, a noisy recording - note I have mentioned elsewhere that the response of these speakers drops like a stone at 100Hz, courtesy of Brad's, bcarso, design - none of the low stuff gets to the driver. At max volume, there is always something musical going on, but there is quite a bit of messiness soon after the beginning - bits of the machinery need some oil on them, 😀?
I'll do a pitch manipulation of the track a bit later, and push the lot above 100Hz - see what's going on ...
And it's from ...?
Noisy ? There's a bit of hiss if you turn it up but "the main event" swamps that.
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