pauln
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Posts posted by pauln
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Nice thoughts JeffRay!
It is music we are talking about...
So, when components are compared using test instruments and physical measurments, is that *DDT?
* Double Deaf Testing
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I actually like it when an ancient thread gets pulled to the top again.
It's facinating to read them from today's perspective,
makes me feel like I can predict the future!
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2005 La Scalas after pulling the AL4's and putting in Bob's type A's with motor run caps have to be 110% with the SETs. I can't imagine ever looking at another speaker.
Mine may be unique in having a little more low end response, too!
I think the AL4 was designed to accomodate the slightly lower inherent sensitivity of the new sourced units for the mid driver and the tweeter by padding them less (elevating their level) against the woofer to hit the 104dB rating (which the LS II calls 105db). Using the type A restores the original padding, so with the slightly less sensitive mids and highs, the low end is up a little relative to the mids and highs. The difference in the new high end drivers was supposed to be about 1-2 db, so pulling the 105db configuration back down to 104db with the Type A results in an additional 1-2db relative boost in the low end.
So my La Scals may be providing a little more relative power at the bass end of the frequency response curve... with changing anything about how the woofer itself is behaving - a perfect match for SET listening!
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Hang on , if you just want really low bass from instruments strictly for testing purposes,
get a 12" 45rpm record and needle drop it at 33 1/3... burn a CD;
that will be some serious bass! Very low notes played long and heavy.
Hz@45rpm=Hz*(33.3 / 45)@33.3rpm
80Hz becomes 60Hz
70Hz becomes 52.5Hz
60Hz becomes 45Hz
50Hz becomes 37.5Hz
40Hz becomes 30Hz
30Hz becomes 22.5Hz
Depending on the source music, you should be able to make an absolutely crushing
thunderous test CD, especially if the original is featuring a five string electric bass guitar...
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Steve,
The double blind is based on the threshold of perception.
A lot of the "everything matters" folks are not trying to claim that they can hear "under the threshold". What they often mean is that various combinations of things that are individually under the htreshold when combined may cause an effect to emrge above the threshold and be heard. The problem is that tweaking around may make this happen but you don't know which one caused the perceptual change. And because of system differences, other "everything matters" folks may agree or disagree about the effect of the same tweak.
Most folks aknowledge the "everything matters" idea by rolling it into the concept of synergy - some combos of equipment and adjustments will "happen" and others won't. And sometimes they get irritated by the DBT folks when it is claimed that something can't make a difference (in isolation - the isolation and control of the experimental condition is part of the DBT methodology).
And, there may be other things going on. Just the other evening I read where it has been discovered that people listen to music with a preferred ear. Now most people know that we have a dominant eye, but this preferred ear is different because it changes depending on the music. What was found is that we have a preferred ear for listening to music with which we are familiar, but with new strange music we switch to the other ear. This is something that is not considered in the design of DBT. The suggestion was that our ear for familiar music would be the one that "scores well" in listening test, but the other ear probably would not.
Just an example of a lot of things that keep some folks from taking the DBT too seriously...
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Hey Dave! How have you been?
That picture was cropped from something I found on the internet.
I was just thinking of you the other day while studying Chapter 17 (Reproduction from Records) of Langford-Smith's Radiotron Designer's Handbook, Fourth Edition.
I love the way people used to write; clear words, unambiguous phrases, useful equations and calculations... nothing like that now days. Dozens of questions I had set aside over the years as unanswerable from searching on the net were answered quickly and clearly when I found this old book.
Preserving the Knowledge of the Ancients!
Paul
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Hey pauln, where you been?
Rick
"I've been here and,
I've been there and;
I've been in between."
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The answer is NOOOO!!!!!
Guitar amps and speakers are made to accept overloads and breakup playing overdriven for hours at full volume. They are also quite band limited - no extended lows and no extended highs - even the speakers rolloff about 5-6KHz. Using your stomp boxes would be the worst of all - they boost signal level, harmonic distortion, and compression.
Technically you could do it, but the level would have to be so low it would not be much more satisfying than playing unplugged. The temptation would be to turn it up a little, but the problem is that unlike listening to music, you would not be able to tell the difference between the distortion of your effects and the distortion generated by the amp and speakers going into distress. You would have no real clear warning signs of trouble, so you turn it up a little more and before you know it the next time you play music something sounds blown...
Do yourself a favor and get a Roland MicroCube; about $100, has the Roland/Boss COSM modeling engine with built in effects and amp models, plenty loud for 5 watts at home, smaller than a car battery with a carry strap. It even sounds on stage with a mic and has an excellent line out for sending to a PA mixer (so it makes a great spare amp, I put it in my trunk for every gig).
I have six Fender tube amps I save for the stage (one at a time) - I do almost all my home playing through the Roland MicroCube. It even runs off battries if you want.
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If he had asked what is the tallest , heaviest, or other objective attribute he might have gotten a coherent and conclusive consenus.
But "musical" is like best, finest, prettiest... even worse in fact, because it may imply some musical expertise to qualify one to make the evaluation.
Does one need to be a real performing musician?
Or a recording engineer?
Someone with a flat spot on their butt from a life of attending concerts?
Someone who can create a speaker design on a napkin with a pencil and a sliderule?
Someone who can hear in mono when Sonny is turning to face Ray and Shelly to signal the end of his sax solo?
Admitedly, this does kind of describe many here...
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Just guessing, I would expect the most musical speaker to have been designed from a set of fundamental and physically correct guiding principles, call them cardinal rules or something, and evaluated by direct comparison to live music.
Hmmm... what a coincidence! I have a pair of those just like Dean predicted.
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It will be interesting to see what actually happens.
As a musician I'm familiar with the history of Fender. In the mid 60's Leo Fender was making just a handfull of different instruments when CBS bought the company. The new management made many errors (directed the designers and engineers to make "improvements" in the products) to the point that musicians came to prefer the "pre CBS" guitars and amps. It took 15 years for the company to recover from most of the damage. Now, Fender makes over 150 diffent models of the original Stratocaster, but musicians with sufficiant money today still insist on pre-CBS vintage guitars and amps - there is a cult following for the old guitars and amps made before the 1965 CBS buyout. that just grows stronger with time. The primary reason for this is that the ORIGINAL PRODUCTS WERE SO GOOD.
Hopefully the new management for Klipsch will be enlightened.
Good luck Amy, Trey, et al.
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It is a little known secret that is gradually becoming known...many records made back then did not all get sold. There are wharehouses around the country that have stored brazillians of new sealed records from years ago. Now with the internet, a lot of these have been coordinated with databases online so you may search and buy these records. I have had good luck with lpnow.com, but there are many sources online for sealed unplayed new old records. And new records are being made as well.
I listen exclusively to records and own no CDs, never made that transition. Most of my records are 30 years old and because of my care for them, they are clean and quiet. Part of the ritual of record playing is cleaning them properly and handling them right... it just takes a few minutes but makes all the difference as the years go by.
There are still amazing deals out there. A few years back I had was able to buy a collection of records from a radio station - a weird one in Austin. 13th Floor Elevators, complete Tangerine Dream, just totally wonderful stuff in perfect condition (over 100 albums for $60!!!).
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I guess my story is pretty typical... In college.
My first roommate decided to get speakers, so we went to the HiFi shop and brought back three sets of speakers to try out (hard to beleive that they let us loose with three pairs of speakers!). They were the new big Advents, some popular JBLs, and Heresys.
The Advents were really good but needed about 30W to start sounding right.
The JBLs sounded totally plastic synthetic unnatural, and the woofer danced around with about a 2 inch excursion even during the lead in groove.
30 seconds of Heresy and we knew we had speakers.
The next year (with a new roommate) I bought a pair of Heresy, and the year after that he bought a pair. I think a lot of Heresys got bought in the seventies from direct listening like that.
I had mine for 25 years and passed them to family members when I got La Scalas.
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How many of you press tommorrow's pants between the mattress and box spring overnight?
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"Gentlemen. If all you want to do is go into that dark, black night, then
get off of here and let the wise minds prevail. God, you guys are
Funny. Think about Why
guys........................................................................"Why?
Some of us have finished sufficient modifications and are now satisfied to just listen to music.Some are satisfied without modification.
Some aren't done yet.
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"So it is established that for music a 2.1 set up will be perfect."
Uh..., no. I guess I'm anti-establishment.
I don't use subs (or loudness compensation, equalizers, or the common practice of riding the bass tone control at 3 o'clock). I do wonder quite often if the majority of folks really don't know what real low frequency instruments actually sound like anymore.
There are three somewhat interdependent concepts here;
bass extension (ability to play lower frequencies)
bass boosting (increasing the power to existing lower frequencies)
and bass hearing (the relative perceptual level of the low frequencies)
To my thinking, the biggest misunderstanding about "bass" is that it is not the general deliberate unnatural downward extention and boosting of low frequencies that so many find satisfying and exciting. Bass is only the actual sound of the instruments that play in this range. Only a handfull of instruments have any content below 40Hz and I doubt the typical bass extending/boosting folks are doing so in order to hear the tuba, contrabassoon, harp, or pipe organ play their lowest notes. Sometimes these instruments are cited as evidence that one's system needs to be able to play the very lowest frequencies. For those that actually DO listen to these instruments their argument has merit.
The Fletcher Munson curve is often cited as a justification for extended/boosted bass, but the FM curve was never meant to be a guide as to how to compensate the frequency response of one's system at low volume levels; it was simply an experimental observation of how things actually sound naturally at lower levels. It does not entail or imply that there is an "error" to correct. If the music is quiet or far away you will hear less of the frequency extremes. Just like when you look at something from a distance, the object subtends a smaller arc of visual field and you see a smaller image with less detail... totally natural.
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I got my La Scalas the last year before the new model II, so this refers to the original, not the new II.
That said, soon after, I got a pair of Crites type A's to compare to the stock AL-4... three seconds of listening and the decision was made to pull the AL-4's and keep the type A's forever. Easiest audio decision I ever made in my life.
But, I listen at moderate levels, usually with SET, and I honestly doubt I have ever passed more than 1 watt through them in the five years I've loved them. I think the AL-4 was designed to accomodate the speaker when playing at high listening/power levels and it may work very well for that...
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As mentioned above, the frequency tells you how much to cover... somewhat.
For higher frequencies that are more directional, blocking the line of sight approach is a good start. You may need to have someone hold the mirror for you while you sit at the listening spot and determine the subtended angle (the apparent width of the source in the mirror) to be blocked. The pathes outside the visual width of the source will go past you (above, below, left and right), so I'm thinking that even for a large mid horn mouth, from a few yards away something the size of a meduim picture frame like 15x15 inches would be about right.
Lower frequencies are going to spread to the room and respond more to large things like drapes, curtains, carpets, and space in general.
The higher frequencies will also spread to the room and provide a more indirect ambience, reverberation/decay balance...
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I'm surprized no one has challenged the idea of seeking more bass at low volume.
The FM curve is not meant to indicate how much you should increase the bass for a low level of listening to sound "right". It indicates that at low listening levels there should not be the expectation of much bass (and treble). Attempting to get a loud level flat response at low levels will always result in an artificial sound; real sound does not sound like that and fooling with subs or altering the EQ to get a fat low bass sound at low volumes is really grossly departing from the natural sound.
The message of the FM curve is that the reduced bass and treble at lower levels IS the true natural flat response one should expect to hear at that level. not that something is missing. The reality is that low level sound is going have less bass and treble unless you artificially boost it. I would think we were well past the era of "bad HiFi" when people thought that good sound meant getting lots of "boom and twinkle" ...
Just my thoughts, I'm sure many will disagree.
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LoganC,
I think we all have had an original music experience that made us stop in our tracks and rethink what might be possible (and redefine what we consider to be our goal for home system reproduction).
That yours occured in a theater is not so unusual. The early development of music reproduction was led by the big major studios back in the '30's when the studios were organised vertically - meaning that the individual studios contracted their own actors to make make movies that were shown in theaters owned and operated by those same studios - they had controll of the product throughout the whole chain of creation and presentation. The different studios competed fiercly and the sound quality of the theater systems was discovered to be a huge draw for the audiences. The result was the evolution of very fine tube amps, horn loaded speakers, sound recorded and played back from the wide film running through the projectors, and thoughtful construction and sound treatment of the theaters... all long ago when people at home had little more than the Victrola for home listening. HiFi would not become available to the masses at home until the '50's with the onset of the LP format record.
On your comments on physics...
Is it possible that relativity is a theory about measurement data and how that data is distorted by distance and/or speed, that it does not suggest actual existential distortions of the measured object?
Is it possible that the wave/particle duality of light (and many other things) may be understood by what is called "stacked spins"?
See what you think about these:
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Nice comments from some of our more seasoned folks.
Hmmm... just thinking out loud, but is there anything structurally, architecturally, of historically "important" behind these corners?
I mean, if you like woodworking there are some additional possibilites for a high efficiency horn loaded approach... some of which might not intrude into the room at all.
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"...compressions and rarefactions of electrons..."
That is how I'm thinking, in the cartridge coils, in the circuits, in the tubes, and in the speakers.. Their lateral movements would make no difference even if they were otherwise than random...
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Am I the only one that bothered to look over PWK's EQ patent? Take this quiz:
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Which functions was the EQ proposed to apply to the frequency spectrum?
A) Equalization
CompensationC) Predistortion
D) All of the above
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Maybe it's one of those peculiar engineering terms, but I find it funny knowing something of PKW's feelings about distortion that in the patent text one of the EQ's operations is repeatedly referred to as "predistortion". Maybe someone can explain about this predistortion function and its restoration (correction?) using the complementary circuit to the EQ circuit?
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Romy the Cat... he believes that the waves of an electrical audio signal (AC) are tranverse waves...
Compensation
Power Question
in Technical/Restorations
Posted
It depends on:
How loud you like it
How sensitive your speakers
Listening room
Type of music (how much low bass)
I don't agree with the idea that you can't have too much power.
A lot of high power amps that test clean at rated power (where the distortion is tested) sound horrible in the low power levels (where the majority of the music is).
Read the Dope from Hope, it makes a lot of things clearer.
DOPE from HOPE!!!.pdf