Erukian

Another good option is Replaygain, that isnt MP3 specific. With replaygain you can apply it to every type of audio codec. Foobar2000 does it, and I think there's a winamp plugin that does it. From what I've read, replaygain is also more efficient since it's more popular. Best of luck in finding dynamic records. I found my dad's Pink Floyd - The Wall (unmastered CD version) about a week ago, the thing has SOOO much dynamic its creazy! Dire Straits - Brothers in arms is surprisingly awesome at this too, I found a unmastered version and "the man too strong" abso-freaking-lutely blew my hair back with the slam of the guitars. (starting about 1:15-1:20) Crank it, even the mastered version should sound "woah, awesome" when cranked. -Joe

I've noticed that mainly Klipsch speaker's suffer from sibilance. Let me explain, this can be both a good and bad blessing. On good recordings, the extra detail sounds awesome. On some recordings, comparing a Klipsch horn loaded tweeter to a soft dome will make you honestly want the soft dome. This is especially the case with some of Diana Krall's recordings.. They just have a slight edge that just grinds on you after a few songs and you want to stop listening to the disc. At least this is from my experience. -Joe

I think I get your point, but it seriously looks like your advertising for the company. =/ just saying -- a quote would of been nicer -Joe

let me know how the battery mod goes later on down the line. I've told myself to stop investing in audio for a while, which so far is working... Even though i've thought about the mod quite a bit, I'm still very reluctant to throw $400+ at Vinne of RWA just to have a guy take out my PS board in my teac and hook up a couple 12V batteries and bypass a couple things and replace a cap here or there. From what i've read before, using battery power makes it a whole different animal. It's like giving the amp chip the best possible power it could take. -Joe

This contest between you guys is retarded. You guys are TOTALLY twisting my topic around. I made an observation. I'm not demanding better, i'm not blaming mp3's and ipods, i mean dudes, seriously chill out. If you actually take your heads out of your butts, you'd see that this trend started BEFORE mp3 was even really used. pre-napster, pre windows 95. The fact is it's been on a train wreck course since the 1980's when labels decided to make records louder so their songs sound better on crappy systems. This is something DVD did well, they learned from the mistakes made w/ cd technology. Almost all movies now are mixed and mastered w/ the music having about 30dB of headroom (voices being run very hot). Listen to a Hans Zimmer CD (Pearl Harbor OST -- The Last Samurai OST) and listen to THOSE dynamics, that'll knock your socks off. It's because his music is mastered for a movie, where he can use crecendo's to emphasize passages of his songs really makes his music, well, musical. DVD-Audio from AIX records (ripped to my computer) after i analyzed the PCM 5.1 audio 24/96 audio, i found it to be recorded very very well. Little to no compression or limiting in any of their recordings. There is hope for the future as well. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (the new high definition dvd formats coming out later this year) are going to use 24/96 audio, through and through. They will allow much much more dynamic headroom -- about a 144dB dynamic range (in theory) instead of 96dB found in 16/44.1 (CD) content. It definitely explains why I love to hear the soundtrack in dvd-credits, because they mastered the music to actually have some life! Check out the dvd of Collateral when they drive up to the korean club their playing a Audioslave song. Now compare that to the CD. No comparison, the DVD version of the song is like having black coffee in one hand and starbucks in the other. -Joe -Joe

It seems that the continuing trend in the recording industry is to make recordings louder and louder. Since CD's hold up to 90dB of transients. In the past 10 years, the trend has gotten out of control as engineer's are compressing the audio to only work with the top 5dB, sometimes the top 3dB, which leaves no punch, no slam, no air. If you have no idea what i'm talking about read this. http://loudnessrace.com/ and this page of quotes. I've been pretty much raised with hard compressed music, i've always thought before i went to my first concerts that bands always sounded flat-ish. I'm sure millions of kids in my generation do to. It's a problem that I can't see going away either. I just thought i'd share with some of you guys that if you haven't noticed, all of the dynamics in CD recordings these days are pretty much gone -- even Klipsch speakers can't make up for it... Almost makes me want to get into vynil. -Joe

shouldnt be a problem -Joe

---------------- On 8/12/2005 2:47:31 PM pauln wrote: If you think about it, a vinyl signal is 40 bit resolution at the molecular level. Not bad at all for a rock scratching plastic! ---------------- Where'd you pull this bit depth out from? Dragon, jamie just lipsync's it. He's turning out to be an incredible actor. But ray charles did teach him how to play a little bit of the piano before he passed. -Joe

There's nothing wrong with wiring through the sub. I was told the resistance the sub adds to the signal by the time it gets to the end where the speaker is, it's very very small. Sub's don't alter the amped signal, they just pass it in and out real fast and extract the LF info from it, so it shouldn't be altering your sound at all, even if the crossover switch is on or off. -Joe

Ok i'm gonna say it. Equalizer -Joe

Images and Words is probably their most loved CD. nicholtl, thanks for the suggestion with Muse, they get better with every listen. I like their newest CD out of showbiz/symmetry after they ditched the radiohead producer and got a new one, they finally have their own sound on the album! And James LaBre is the weak link, download his live stuff, his voice doesnt nearly have the range that's on CD's. DT records their albums w/o him then they add his voice later, maybe they just wait for his voice to have a "good day" then add it in? I dunno. -Joe

---------------- On 8/8/2005 2:58:53 AM sunburnwilly wrote: My God Man , You have 10 speakers in your living room and your still using a CRT ?!!! Oh Well , I guess we all have our priorities ... ---------------- CRT's have always had the best picture, the best contrast ratio and the best defined dark colors. Plasma and LCD sell like hotcakes because their thin. Tubes will be getting thin later this year w/ a new technology from Toshiba. OLED is the future though, better than tube contrast ratio and colors, but i think some of the early screens are having some problem's with burn in (like the early plasma's did, big time) All in all, tube has always, always, by far, had the best picture avaliable. It's silly to think a plasma or LCD can beat it. I've talked with professionals in the cable tv business and service technicians that have repaired tv's for years, from old tubes to the newest LCD's. If you don't believe me though google will back me up Oh, and never buy plasma, if a part of the screen fails chances are you will probably have to replace the whole screen which costs (a lot). I don't mean to start a war or anything, but CRT's honestly are the best, maybe not with asthetics, but definately with picture quality. -Joe

The cheap-o toshiba uses teh same DSP (DAC and Video chips) as the big-wig dvd-players costing up past 2000, what matter's in the end is the quality remote, the look of the player and of course, the higher end materials inside. Sort of like comparing a bel-canto tripath amp to a teac I suppose. Same core, different components inside which affects the overall sound. -Joe

Here's a great video about building a interconnect, I thought it was definatly worth the download and I highly recommend this if you have any interest in interconnects. Just check it out http://revision3.com/systm/avcabling/media Just don't try to roll your eyes too much when they talk about some of the marketting buzz -Joe

i'm 99% sure the belle doesnt have shielding, but i'm sure someone here can confirm it. i'd be more worried about the magnets from the drivers screwing with the TV and possibly giving the tube long term damage. Yeah your living room is what i'd call a little crowded. Maybe someone here know's of a panel or some sort of material that can be put between at TV and a speaker to block the direct interference of the magnets? Even if you dont see any effect from the magnets, it can still harm the picture over time. -Joe

iirc, the toshiba $80 dvd-player has a DAC that can resample to 24bit/192khz. also, i think vinnie from redwineaudio did some major modding on these $80 dvd players and made them compete with ones that cost $2000+ so yeah, dvd-players are going to give you more bang for the buck when it comes to music playback on cd formats.

I too think noise cancelling headphones are your best bet. It's almost impossible for a speaker to beat the bang for the buck fidelity when it comes to headphones (at least from my experience). -joe

I understand how recordings tend to be nearfield. ie, right above the bald guys head. but wouldnt more mic's give more cue's to the size of the recordings? honestly it seems like to me that the best way to record something is to put it right where the director's standing (sorta the sweet spot) and have a stereo-mic placed there which can absorb all the sound cue's, blending of sections, etc.. Then lets say it's pressed to vynil or stored in dvd-a, or any sort of audiophile approved format. so I wonder then, if it comes down to the recording being done on stage vs audience perspective's, you might lose a lot of soundstage cue's from the mixdown of the on-stage recording, but everything might get blurred with the audience perspective recording. It seems like the only scientifically way to do this would be through ambisonics. -Joe

You guy's make it seem like it's impossible. I do understand that if the recording equip is crap and the engineer wasn't trained properly that the recorded sound can obviously lose the information that i'm looking for. In some classical recordings this is obviously the case. But there are some excellent recordings which do contain all the information because I did hear it on the headphones, so it is there. I know I can't afford any speaker capable of recreating a hyper-detailed soundstage, all I want to know is if such a speaker simply exists! That's my quest, not to break my wallet over owning it (yet!) Gil, thanks for pointing out speaker placement, i've read maybe dozens of full articles on speaker placement and that was something i was working on when i was checking out the klipshorns. i'd adjust them about 5 degrees at a time (i measured) then ran back to the listening chair. I am glad it wasn't torture for the owner, him and I were discussing speakers, amps, preamps, sources, music, recordings, etc. (he's a retired service tech who repaired lots of vintage gear) and since there were mostly no other customers all day.. I was at least upfront when i started testing out his stuff that I didn't have any money to buy anything that day. Maybe this is my personal audio holy grail. That perfect soundstage that brings out the best of each recording. I won't be able to start on my quest for quite some time being a poor college student which prevents me from investing in all sorts of gear i drooled over at the hi-fi shop! The center channel idea is definately something I should check out next time i'm out there, since the whole point of it from what I know back in the PWK days to today, was to enhance the depth of content in the middle of the stage. -Joe

From the audience I can't tell at a live event, but more often than not, mic's are as close as the director is to the sound. I guess it is sad that when I listen to a classical or jazz peice (because that's what I play in real life) that I tend to analytically rip it apart and look for weakness because what i've been trained to do in real life. But sometimes when i'm playing, i hit an emotional peak that when everything's going right, the solo's are tight, the timing is just on and everyone's in tune, that my arms get weak when holding up the trumpet from the sheer emotional surging. So i'd say it depends on my mood -- I've been known to crank out rock music for a few songs at 90+ dB and just sing with the leader singer and feel the emotion in his words. Before I got into hi-fi (from age 8-18 really) i'd use recordings to pick apart my weaknesses in my own playing abilities. Maybe it's because of this thought process that I sometimes am overly critical of a bad recording, but sometimes I absolutely love listening to old Armstrong records that sound like crap. back to the topic, I think it's possible to make a complete 3d soundstage (maybe not on the z axis) but complete as in a more accurate playback of a recording. I'd like to keep this a technical discussion please, no technical vs emotional enjoyment or any of that crap, please. But then maybe I am the only person who find's speaker's soundstage generally lacking. -Joe

I was checking out the latest Klipsch Heritage lineup (not the ones coming out next month). I was listening in a very good playback room, lots of sound deflecting/absorbing panels, the 10x30 room sounded like a 30x90 or even bigger, seriously. Almost no echo, almost like I was outside. Anyways I spent literally 4-5 hours at the dealer checking out their stuff (yeah i'm the punk kid who goes to the local heritage dealer to just hear the stuff, not buy it) and one thing that i've never heard a speaker do is soundstage. Correctly that is. The owner had good amps, vintage McIntosh monoblocks and i brought in my vintage Yammi/HK and he had some some high end stuff from various generations of Bel Canto, oh and I brought my teac. Firstly i'm convinced it's something that mostly ahs to do with the fidelity of the speakers. I've tried a pair of $300 Sennheisers and even with good crossfeed device, and the sound far far easier to pick out instruments in a classical peice. What i'm going for is absolute precision. I want to get the point where i can say "3rd or 4th chair trumpet is a little flat" not just "one of the trumpets is off" I know i'm asking for a lot here, and while the heritage speakers sound very dynamic (i guess is the word) their soundstage like pretty much every other high end speaker leaves me desiring more accuracy. I want to hear the full depth of an orchestra and know how wide their laid out and not have a system color the soundstage to make it sound big *cough*Bose*cough* I'd rather not have to resort to high-end headphones because i love sound coming at me vs going straight into my ears, give's a more realistc impression of being there if i close my eyes. Am I the only person who wants this level of accuracy without having to sell some organs (no, not that one) to afford them?

A speaker company could totally perfect every single Hz of the xover by just having a computer algorithm take the overlapping frequency's of the driver's getting the full range singal, then adjust the xover 1 Hz at a time across the whole audio spectrum and correct any phase issues that analog xovers can have. I think it's a great idea, but I haven't heard of it in any practical applications yet. -Joe

Here is how I rip, store and burn my music. --Rip It-- I use EAC, Secure mode. --Store It-- Download FLAC Frontend from flac.sf.net Use that to encode the wav files --Tag It-- Download MP3Tag, I then use Freedb in foobar or mp3tag to download all the tags and tag the files the way I want to. --Burn It-- down burrrn from burrrn.net - it's a new burner designed to handle any audio format and it's super tiny, doesn't add any junk into the cd either. It also supports cue sheets. Which is very cool if you want to store your audio in a bit-perfect way with the stuff like the same gaps between tracks and all that stuff. -Joe

Class D sub amps like BASH amps are efficient like Tripath. It's just that even with 90% efficiency, when your putting out an amp that's 300-500 Watts, it's going to need a decent sized heatsink because there's going to some heat when you actually push the maximum wattage. If you pull out a BASH amp, it's really not that big or heavy considering how much power they put out. A SI doesnt even need a sink because it's putting out like 7-8 watts into 8ohms. The teac has a small peice of metal over it as a sink (no fins) and that's for something like 26 watts into 8ohms. So I could only imagine a sub that's rated to 500 watts would have a heatsink big enough to safely keep the chip cool in the instance you might actually push it that hard. Also keep in mind that subs can be put into positions that are not well ventilated at all, so they need the heatsink mass just to keep the temperature down safely in case you stick it by a heater in the corner of the room behind a ton of other gear blowing hot air out it's rear. -Joe

---------------- On 8/1/2005 1:07:58 PM Colin wrote: How is Tripath class t chip different than class D amplifiers? Firstly, Class D doesn't stand for digital, it was just the next letter after Class A,B,C. It doesn't digitally amplify the signal. What distinguishes Class D amplifiers from all others is that their power transistors are always operated at that state of on or off unlike say class A. With that said, Tripath amps are Class D amps. Why do they call them Class T? It's just marketing hype! They made a product that they want consumers to believe is superior to all other Class D implementations so they decided to trademark "Class T" and since Tripath own's the class T trademark, it give's them an advantage when selling their Class D amps as a class of their own, because their "that good". Think of a Class T amp as a Class D amp. They both have high efficiency (80%-90%) and so they both can be used in small implementations like headphone amps or sonic impacts, teacs, what have you. Where it breaks away is how it amplify's the signal. Lemme try and go over it real quick. Older Class D amps would take the audio signal 20Hz-20kHz, then compare it to a triangle wave somewhere around 100kHz-200kHz. The signal that comes out is then used to turn the transistors off and on in a push-pull fashion. Then after the signal is amped, they use a low pass filter to remove all of the triangle wave noise above the audible range. Tripath improves on the above method. Tripath claims that on all Class D amps the switching isnt perfect which causes all distortion, ground bounce, etc etc.. Tripath doesnt explain how they do it (probably a trade secret) but they claim they have used various algorithms where the Tripath chip can actually learn the characteristics of the transistors to get them to switch at the perfect time avoiding all kinds of distortion. Also tripath amps use instead of a triangle wave, a spread spectrum technology that ranges up to 1.5mhz but averages 600-700Hz. This is so they move a lot of the noise generated by amplifying the audio with the triangle wave becomes way out of the audible area, which keeps the audible range very pure after they apply their lowpass filter. How is class T different than BASH amplifiers? I think I sort of explained this just above. BASH amps are still used because their so cheap. They haven't fazed out in audiophile subwoofers because their distortion isn't even noticable when your only dealing with a very low range (20-90Hz). Why doesn't it need the large caps and other parts of solid-state amplifiers? Maybe a real engineer can answer this one. I used this a tripath paper as a reference. Hope I was of some help. -Joe