Preferred Characters

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What characters of sound is preferred by human ears or brain (in a technical or in a non-technical description)? This is not about human preferences that differ from person to person.

1. Sweet vocals. Female vocals seemed to be more preferable. It’s nice to have a feeling that the voice is sexy. Simple circuits give more probability for a sweet vocal. Speaker sensitivity and amplifier capability to send flat signal such that we can hear the voice membrane or the emotion of the singer (whether she is shy, trembling, etc). Well, tubes are extremely sweet and natural. We can enjoy hearing a good singer with sweet voice lively without music, can’t we?

2. Frequencies. Lows seemed to be more preferable than highs. Cymbals are nice but not likely to trigger adrenalin like lows do. But to standard extent, distorted lows are more acceptable than distorted highs. So it’s always better to have low decibel of highs than flat but distorted (correspond to resistor or L-pad in tweeter crossover)

3. THD. I don’t think that this is important. Any hi-fi system will do to me regardless of their THD. But what is the physical metric of second harmonic distortion? Could it be possible that this have something to do with sweet vocal? Because even that tubes are natural, vocals are seemed to be sweeter than natural voice.

4. Sonic/dynamics. Don’t know the correct “jargon” to express this. This is associated with fast respond (and enough power or flat respond), especially in low frequencies. Zero feedback design, high trans-conductance of amplifying transistors, flexible woofer cone, flat respond of amplifier and speaker circuit, all I think contribute to this character.

5. High fidelity. It’s sometime annoying when many musical instruments mixed together creating one resultant of voice. But I guest this is only because I’m expecting for the better. And may be all those words in audiophile dictionary fall into this category.

From above, number 4 is I think the most important. This is why I leave tubes and go back to solid state. But using complex circuit as in bipolar designs lose some preferred characters, especially if power is not a big concern. Simple bipolar circuits like DOZ and Bride of DOZ are very nice indeed. But I think only in inefficient speakers. In efficient speakers, may be MOSFET is preferable. So, has anybody with many experiences set up a Balanced line stage, Son of Zen, and fed the signal directly to a Lowther without crossover? I’m not yet convinced with the use of full-range driver.
 
HiFi = High Fidelity.
Fidelity, to be totally true to.

In this case HiFi is when
the reproduced soundwave is as close as possible to
the recording material's description of the soundwave
according to the standard used to descibe the soundwave.
--------------------------

Besides, you are not really interested in Chess
or
you are a coward. ;)
Because you haven't yet challenged gromanswe
at http://gameknot.com/
I am not afraid. And I will try to win over you.

Here is my statistics:
http://gameknot.com/stats.pl?gromanswe
I have lost, in average, 1/40 (every 40th game)
that is 5 games ouyt of played 200

this is the link for anyone to challenge me
http://gameknot.com/start_game.pl?chlg=gromanswe
I will play anyone of you members at diyaudio.com.
I will NOT lose - and in 90% of cases I will win! :D :)

/halo - thinks you we should use our diyaudio-ID
- when we join gameknot.com :cool: = more fun & we can discuss audio while playing :cool:
 

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To bring more psychoacoustics into it:
It seems to me that slowly creeping things (animals, person of authority walking towards your bedroom door.....) produce low frequencies. This means danger, and in the wild it could mean something very bad indeed. So adrenaline hops you up to GET YER A$$ GOIN!
So LF = adrenaline, I see no reason why to doubt it :)

Anyone think of some other things?

Tim (IANAB, B = biologist ;) )
 
diyAudio Moderator Emeritus
Joined 2001
Sch3mat1c:

Did you think of this yourself, or did you read it somewhere? Because if you thought of this yourself, it basically agrees with an audio book written in the fifties. The explanation in the book was written to explain why our hearing is most sensitive in the middle ranges.

According to that book, the hearing is most sensitive in the middle ranges-the range where twigs break, for instance-because that way early man could detect both danger and possible prey. And by the same reasoning, we would have a reaction to deep frequencies, because it takes something large to generate them.

Interesting that your thinking goes right in line with someone else's writing of half a century ago.
 
Sch3matic and Kelticwizard,

I don’t think there’s such a strong DNA transfer from our great great grandparent so that the ancient situation apply to us now. In my situation, the opposite is even truer. Whistles, car horns, well no, this is ridiculous. :nod:

Halojoy,

Thank’s for reminding me with HiFi definition. So do you think that I should have written “hi definition” here? Then hi-fi is more related to speakers than amps. This is because when an analogue signal gets out of an amplifier, the signal represents at least 90% of the recording material’s description of the sound-wave (Hell, where did I get this number from). When the analogue is transferred to sound wave by the speaker, the sound-wave represents at most 63.72%. :devily:

When I said: “It’s sometime annoying when many musical instruments mixed together creating one resultant of voice”, that’s almost the same thing. When a complex passage is interpreted by a speaker, especially if highs and lows are generated at the same time (I think this is why classical music fans don’t like 2-way systems), the sound becomes “muddy”.

About the Chess,

I subscribed to www.gameknot.com 3 times and they promised to send me the procedures to activate my membership in 15 minutes. I thought the admins are… Only just now I thought I have given wrong email address.

Stay there Halojoy. Every Saturday and/or Sunday, I will make sure to push your king out of the chess-board!
 
Sch3mat1c said:
To bring more psychoacoustics into it:
It seems to me that slowly creeping things (animals, person of authority walking towards your bedroom door.....) produce low frequencies. This means danger, and in the wild it could mean something very bad indeed. So adrenaline hops you up to GET YER A$$ GOIN!
So LF = adrenaline, I see no reason why to doubt it :)

Anyone think of some other things?

Yes, Sch3mat1c, I think you have had too much home theatre.
:devilr: :devilr: :) :nod: ;) :cool:
 
Yes, Jay

The loudspeaker is by far the bottleneck in todays soundchain.
CD-players, Amplifiers and the rest is HIFI
already in the budget segment.

Not even real HIGH END, so called HIFI speakers (5.000 dollars or more)
can compete in distortion figures with a massproduced amplifier or CD-player.

High end loudspeakers, without correction system,
is more in the same class as a good compact cassette player.
Slope begins several kHz before 20kHz in the hi freq end.
The bass has a slope worse than a SONY Walkman Cassette player.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

I wait for you. Hope you find out trouble of registering at gameknot.
I am almost sure the fault is with your email.
Member "Tazzy" from NED plays very good.
I have only very slight advantage. He took the white pieces. So I have to play black.
But I have better stats as black, anyhow.

/halojoy - hope he can match up to his words, on the chess board.
- who can know what will come ...... ;)
Chess is a game from Asia. It takes a brain to make a game like chess.
 
halojoy said:
Here is my statistics:
http://gameknot.com/stats.pl?gromanswe
I have lost, in average, 1/40 (every 40th game)
that is 5 games ouyt of played 200

200 games! It takes me 10 years to play that much. What are you doing with your time? I will tell your mother!!

When I joined the YahooChess, my score was boosted with only a few games. The trick was I would play only with people with much higher score (I know this is not fair, but it worked). In the beginning, I could hardly get anyone to play with me, but my "track record" did attrack best players to win over me. :devily: . So I guest I will get a great point if I beat you, halojoy? ;)
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
halojoy said:
The loudspeaker is by far the bottleneck in todays soundchain.


I think that the loudspeaker, even having the greatest range of "colour" is still the least important part of a hifi.

The smaller the signal the more important the device.

And CDs were a big step backwards in hifi... even today's best players don't send as much information on to the next stage in the chain as a modest TT. Hopefully SACD and/or DVD-A will be successful enuff that the CD becomes a thing of the past.

dave
planet 10/thousands of records, tens of CDs
 
diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
???

Hi,

I think that the loudspeaker, even having its own particular range of "colour" is still the least important part of a hifi.

Really?

You really surprise me here...what good is it sending a perfectly good signal through a no good speaker?

I would dedicate at least half of the budget to the speakers.

While I do get your point...rubbish in rubbish out, right?

Cheers,;)

\Vinyl lives.:nod:
 
planet10 said:



I think that the loudspeaker, even having the greatest range of "colour" is still the least important part of a hifi.

Cool. Everyone go get the windows opened, please. This is getting hot :bulb: :cool: :bulb:

I guest planet 10 is a fan of rock?

That halojoy’s mini DynAudio wouldn’t count to his taste, would it? I’ll bet planet 10’s speaker has the size of at least 4 times halojoy’s.
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
Re: ???

fdegrove said:
...what good is it sending a perfectly good signal through a no good speaker?

This is where people often mis-interpret this point-of-view. You still need a good speaker... but i know good ones can be had for even just a couple hundred bucks (hell -- with good scavenging and build your own boxes a good speaker can be assembled for less than $50) -- perhaps a bit bandwidth limited at these levels but fortuneatly most of the music is in the midrange.

Everything is important, but the least important is the speaker.

I would dedicate at least half of the budget to the speakers.

Half is far to much to spend on speakers* ... i could see spending half on a source in a budget system. (and have people come up to me 20 years after the fact and thank me for selling them the $2k system where half was spent on the Linn LP12)

* unless you count the amps & electronic XO as part of the speaker :)

dave
 
diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
SPEAKERS.

Hi,

* unless you count the amps & electronic XO as part of the speaker

Oh no...I wouldn't push it that far.;)

Let's just say I was talking on behalf of "Joe Average" ...not the enlightened "Frugalphile".

Don't forget where we come from Dave...in order to distinguish you need to have some reference/experience.

Cheers,;)
 
diyAudio Moderator Emeritus
Joined 2001
Jay said:
Sch3matic and Kelticwizard,

I don’t think there’s such a strong DNA transfer from our great great grandparent so that the ancient situation apply to us now. In my situation, the opposite is even truer. Whistles, car horns, well no, this is ridiculous.

Not applying to car horns, of course, but there is a very strong DNA transfer from our ancestors to us indeed. This is through the genes. If your ancestors have given you the genes for a certain trait, then you have that trait.

What you have to understand is that through most of humankind's time here on Earth, civilization did not exist. Nor did farming. Living in small groups of perhaps a dozen or so, humans were absolutely dependent on hunting and gathering-going into the wild and emerging with enough food to survive another day or two. A few bad days or weeks in a row, and people begin to die.

In such a scenario, people with just a little advantage over their neighbors will begin to survive enough to pass their traits onto their offspring. Those without the desirable trait will tend to die off and produce less offspring. As a result, the human population as a whole will, after several generations, adopt the desirable traits.

Acuteness of hearing, especially in certain ranges, is an advantage that helped some of our ancestors make it over their less well-equipped neighbors. This is why we hear some frequencies more acutely than others. Ability to hear those frequencies alerted our forefathers that either danger or a potential meal was nearby. More of those with acute hearing survived, had children, who had children, etc., who eventually produced us.

I think that the same could be extended to Sch3mat1c's idea of primal feeling when hearing low frequencies. Humans are very large animals, but there are others that are larger. Until such time as we developed weapons capable of bringing down lions, bears, etc., we were prey for these animals.

Obviously, then, the individuals who had a sensitivity to these vibrations were able to take evasive action before their colleagues who were less able to sense the low frequency energy. Just a split second can frequently make the difference. Considering that we are talking life-and-death situations here, why is it hard for Jay to consider that this could be the basis for our emotional response to low frequency sounds?
 
The source or the speaker???

Speaker is important, and so is the source. It is the amplifier that is not. But what if the RCA cable is made up from 24 gauge aluminium wire? Is then cable important too? Off course, but that’s not what we are talking about.

The bottleneck is in the speaker and in the source. In situation A, the speaker will be the bottleneck, in situation B the source will. Which one is having the most probability to be the bottleneck? Like probability theory, we must set a pre-determined assumption. Should we limit our analysis to audiophile community? Or may be to a universal audio community?. You have to remember, that if you use a Linn, you are in the minority. Your situation may not apply to “average” that uses Sony compo.

Thus, you may agree that putting the Linn LP12 and the $50 speaker at the same frame is not relevant.

If you want to build an audio system, how much budget you will allocate to the speaker? 50%? Assume that your budget is $100. What will you do? You will buy the $50 speaker from Dave. How about the other $50? Sure you cannot buy a Lynn, so buy the cheapest CD player available! (you cannot find any turntable that match the cheapest CD player in the same price level), and build a 50W IC based amplifier (TDA7295 already has a good ripple rejection so you don’t have to build sophisticated PS regulator. And what you need is a single cheap 12V “E” transformer for both channel). Is above approach acceptable, in that you will get the best sounding system from $100?

If your budget is $5K, how would you split the budget to the source, amplifier, and speaker? Will you buy a Linn and use a $50 speaker?Speaker is important, and so is the source. It is the amplifier that is not. But what if the RCA cable is made up from 24 gauge aluminium wire? Is then cable important too? Off course, but that’s not what we are talking about.
 
kelticwizard said:

In such a scenario, people with just a little advantage over their neighbors will begin to survive enough to pass their traits onto their offspring. Those without the desirable trait will tend to die off and produce less offspring. As a result, the human population as a whole will, after several generations, adopt the desirable traits.

Obviously, then, the individuals who had a sensitivity to these vibrations were able to take evasive action before their colleagues who were less able to sense the low frequency energy. Just a split second can frequently make the difference. Considering that we are talking life-and-death situations here, why is it hard for Jay to consider that this could be the basis for our emotional response to low frequency sounds?

Hmmm, I think I just followed the same logic of thinking. People with little advantage over their neighbors will begin to survive and pass their traits onto their offspring, right? As a result, after several generations the human adopt desirable traits, right?

In the era where human is close to monkey (At least this is what they believe), giraffes have short neck, right? But because trees are very tall at the moment, the longer necks lived longer and pass the genes to the offspring, right? So that is why all giraffes have long neck nowadays, right?.

I did can follow the logic behind such idea. The whole message is even simpler: evolution, traits heritage. But it doesn’t mean that I believe that they are reasons why giraffes’ neck are very long. Nor I believe that my great parents were monkeys. Even worse, that Adam and Eva were both monkeys. Not that I don’t want to admit that I came from an animal, but there are a lot of flaws behind the logic.
 
Gromanswe,

Halojoy,

I have checked the www.gameknot.com rules, and noticed that the minimum time threshold for 1 move is 3 days.

The problem is I can feed each move to a computer software, so that basically my opponents play with my computer.

You can find such software, which equivalent to at least 2100 Elo rating (International Master).

I used to win over Fritz and ChessMaster 2000. And as far as I can remember, with CM2000 you can simulate a game starting from any position you set up.
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
Re: The source or the speaker???

Jay said:
Speaker is important, and so is the source. It is the amplifier that is not.

Everything is important. Amps too. I put amps as more important than speakers thou.

Like probability theory, we must set a pre-determined assumption. Should we limit our analysis to audiophile community? Or may be to a universal audio community?. You have to remember, that if you use a Linn, you are in the minority. Your situation may not apply to "average" that uses Sony compo.

I have a background in stats, i had to sell my Linn, and i'd only ever consider a Sony if i found it used and was putting together a $100 system or needed the Power Trans & heatsinks.

Thus, you may agree that putting the Linn LP12 and the $50 speaker at the same frame is not relevant.

Totally relevant. It was a pr of <$200 CAD ($130 USD) speakers that introed me to the beauty of full-ranges & small tube amps. The Linn was an integral part of that intro... and i lived with my <$50 geek fest specials in that system for a while too.

If you want to build an audio system, how much budget you will allocate to the speaker? 50%? Assume that your budget is $100. What will you do?

Pull a set of my 2-buck drivers from the stash (cost up to $10) scavenge some wood from the cabinet shop dumpster, add one of my budget TTs ($50-75 with cart) and the hard part -- finding a decent sounding little amp or receiver (but i know some of the sleepers) ... wait you are probably talking USD, which means i can sub in that NAD 3020 i have (and maybe scare up a better cart).

Putting together a CD based system as good as this is a real challenge because good CD players are few & far between. There are a lotta used ones thou. A little tweaking can help thou. Add the same speakers (leave out the optional helper tweeter so we aren't annoyed by the high frequency problems on the CD player), and then find an old console tube amp to clean up -- prefereably SE as the colorations in the amp tend to counter the defincincies of the CD player.

You will buy the $50 speaker from Dave.

The $50 speaker if bought from Dave is the $10 speaker above -- the key to a decent Frugal-phile (tm) system is a large dose of DIY and some clever sourcing of bits (nothing helps like finding that $2 pr of tunnel reflex speakers at the thrift store to savage for drivers (or similar))

If your budget is $5K, how would you split the budget to the source, amplifier, and speaker? Will you buy a Linn and use a $50 speaker?Speaker is important, and so is the source. It is the amplifier that is not. But what if the RCA cable is made up from 24 gauge aluminium wire? Is then cable important too? Off course, but that’s not what we are talking about.

$5k -- only in my dreams ... but i'd start with a good TT, a Teres or Redrock kit perhaps (with a reasonable arm & cart that is half the budget)

and why 24g aluminum when you could salvage some plenum grade CAT 5 from a computer store or installation.

dave
 
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