pauln

Separating the common ground in headphones is a great thing. If you are very fortunate, the joining of the two grounds occurs at the plug end of the cord (my 35 year old Sennheiser HD424 for example). By changing the phones to independent stereo, some of the noise that would appear in both channels is reduced. If you have separate amps for your chennels (I have a pair of mono blocks), the advantage is maximized. My Sennheisers have an impedence of 2000 ohms, so they may be connected directly to the speaker outputs of the amps, and they sound best this way because my amps are 2A3 and the power being transferred is microscopic. In my case, I just cut the cord and identified the wire pair for each channel, tested polarity, and hooked them directly to the amps... I'm forgetting the details of why, but the geometric aural image space with true independent headphone channels is a listening delight, a more "out there around me" kind of sound. For those that do a lot of headphone listening, I recommend trying it; especially if you have a pair of little amps (like the TriPath or Trends).

I really like the Light as a Feather album...

Cheek to Cheek (I'm in Heaven), the Irving Berlin tune from the 30's ... I'm playing it on my guitar. I have been working it up for a few days and finally got curious what the name was, a little internet searching got it identified. I've worked out a nice jazzy bebop version I'll play next week at the club if I can catch a certain female singer by then.

No, what I hear in movie theaters is 30 minutes of coming attractions folowed by: crackling candy wrappers, gum popping intentional cell phone ring tones crying children, inane conversations and that excitable woman who talks to the movie screen,"Don't open that door! Don't you do it! Look out! Oh, I told you not to open that door!"...

Three reasons to believe it is fake. Way to deadly: The tub of water is setting on what appears to be a plywood support, with sharp corners, edges, etc. No way anyone is going to be hurling toward that without safety precautions. Way too fast: The elevation of the beginning of the slide is about the same as the ending. This would result in the slider reaching the end of the ramp and stopping there. The speed coming off the slide is way too fast. The sound is wrong: Notice that the camera is very far from the pouring of the water (after the zoom out), yet the splash of the water on the slide is heard without delay, likewise the end of the sliding sound of him leaving the ramp, the splash at the end. They are all synced perfectly with the video, which gives it away a FAKED.

Seems the half, quarter, and eigth space gains are generated in the near field by local boundaries but propogated into the far field. The room gain is the contribution from the proximity in the far field space of the walls, floor and ceiling boundaries which reflect and "recover" a portion of the sound that would be lost in free space. If this is all true, then the room gain would be variable from room to room, but for a particular room it would be fairly constant - somewhat independent of the speaker placement, in the sense that the gain would be about the same, not the actual level which would vary with speaker placement. So some of room gain is placement based. So I think you are correct that moving the speaker from a back wall to a corner would add 3dB (with two speakers it would add 6dB), and probably boost the room gain a little, too. I'm sure it is much more complicated because the room gain would be frequency dependent with respect to the absorbtion/reflectivity of the room, as is the placement of the speaker where the corner will add more low than high.

I thought this might be about the new crop of guitars that can digitally simulate hundreds of the sounds of all the other guitars including alternate tunings, pitch transpositions, 12 strings, and effects modulations that can be altered by waving the guitar through a light sensor. There are a few of these out now. I've heard them... New ideas and technologies are always popping up, but we guitarists are a very conservative lot when it comes to instruments. For all of the "advances" in shapes and electronics, the two guitars that totally dominate the electric guitar scene are still the simple Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul; both have remained basically unchanged for the last 50 years, and the older ones are highly prized. Real guitarists tend to ignore these new things. The truth of the matter is that almost all of the tone of a guitar is in the hands of the musician, not so much from the attributes of the instrument itself. The most important quality of a guitar is to not impede the movement of a musical idea from the guitarist's mind, through his hands, to the final sound. That is all, and that is why simplicity and transparency are the things we like in a guitar. As for the "no heel" guitar that allows easy access to the higher frets, its been done before and has never caught on. Part of the popular "mystique" of playing lead guitar is the supposed difficulty in playing up in the high frets. In reality, acomplished guitarists find it no more difficult than anywhere else. In many solos, the highpoint or climax occurs in conjunction with playing up in the high frets, and the popular dramatic association is that this is the hardest part of the solo to play. This is almost never true, but it looks good on stage and impresses the crowd. Pretty much a non problem; common practice is to not overdo the time spent up there anyway, for musical reasons and to preserve the drama, not technical. As far as the multiple wiring configurations of the pickup coils, that has been going on for a long time. I have modified my Strat wiring so the pickup selection combinations allow two configurations that none of the normal Strats offer. I rewired guitar pickups 40 years ago as a teen, just about all electric guitar players have done this, usually to discover that the best sounds were from the original design. As far as the NPR segment, they dropped the ball as usual, a disappointment, but not a surprize. No one tests guitar pickup selection combinations by using a distorted overdriven amp. And the true test for discriminating players will not be just chords, but single notes, phrases, and solos where the tone of the instrument is most critical to the musician. I think it is a little funny that of the dozen "different" settings, only about three of them have a discernablby distinctive sound from the others, but that is probably due to the distorted amp playing chords. Playing my Strat at rehearsal

"It seems that in the US you have two choices, 15-year or 30-year, that's it." As mdeneen and others have mentioned, just as with a credit card, as it is with a mortgage - you are not restricted to just making the minumum payment. You can shorten the mortgage period by making principle payments over and above the minimum.The sacrifice is worth it - you pay off the house sooner and not only save hundreds of thousands of dollars, but looking forward, you no longer have yet another 20 years or so of house payments in front of you!

I prefer speakers that reproduce the acurate sound of bass instruments, not the ones that just play more extreme "bass", or as Coulterphoto1 so elequently describes, "Crazy stupid bass". That stuff tends to be a monotone thump and buzz kind of experience I don't care to hear.

Congrat's on the La Scalas. I used to drive my Heresys with a Carver m500t, not bad for a solid state amp, but on my La Scalas I never quite cared for the sound. I tried the little Trends ta10 with the La Scalas for a while and it was pretty good, but still not quite right in the high end. That Trends amp is floating around this forum right now, being passed around for listening; I think the last one to have it was Lisa "Meagain", and I think Fini was supposed to be next... see more here: I'm now driving my La Scalas with little tube mono blocks rated at less than 4 watts, never put more than 1 watt through them so far in five years.

I did this stuff in grad school many moons ago... Systems like this commonly use a hierarchy of negative feedback control loops. Each loop has a comparator that receives both a reference signal from the level above and an input signal from the level below. The input signal includes any disturbance encountered and the comparator subtracts the input from the reference signal. At the lowest level, this input and disturbance signal is from the sensors in contact with the outside world. The sensors measure a "controlled quantity" in the lowest level, the higher levels' controlled quantities are the weighted inputs from the multiple loops in the level below. The comparator subtracts the input signal from the reference signal and that difference becomes the output. This is the basis of the negative feedback loop which tends to correct the output to drive the input (error signal) to minimum, and in so doing takes into account automatically any additional disturbance to the input. When these loops are stacked in a hierarchy, the outputs of an upper level becomes the reference signal to the lower level, and the inputs to the comparator of the lower level (multiple inputs from a bunch of them) are paralleded to the input of the next upper level. The lowest level in the hierarchy may only control something simple like the tension or force in a segment of a leg structure. The next level "up" may then use the multiple inputs from below to provide a reference signal to the lowest level that might be interpreted as a configuration or shape or position. The next level up might control the change from one shape or position of the leg to another (movement), and the next level up might coordinate a series of movements or patterns, and on and on... like the difference between walking and running, turning, jumping, etc. This allows the top level to respond to a strategic instruction like, "Move from here to over there" and the tactical details are taken care of in the levels below. This is why the disturbances are corrected and why the robo dog was able to recover from being kicked over. This hierarchy of control systems is used all the time when a thing needs to move "smartly" as in industrial robots, fly by wire aircraft controls, and is also the underlying design for how WE move, too! Oh yeah, the noise may be from the use of stepper motors which are used in lots of control systems. The motors have a set number of positions of rotation or extension an a series of electrical pulses are used to move from one rotation or extension position to another. The motor may have hundereds of individual positions, and the noise comes from it responding to each of the high speed signals to move it through each of those steps real fast, one by one. By the way, if you have a Firefox browser, type this into the address line and hit enter... about:robots ... it will surprize you. A simple two level control system hierarchy might look like this:

I also have La Scalas with Bob's AA's. I drive them with amps rated at less than 4 watts, have yet to put more than 1 watt into them. The La Scalas are very easy to drive and don't need a lot of power to get loud levels. Whatever you look at for amplification, you should be looking for something that presents its best quality at the lowest levels of output (in the first watt, especially). Many high power amps are designed to present their best quality only at the highest levels of output, which you will may not ever be able to approach with the La Scalas (because those amps are designed to drive very inefficient speaker designs), the La Scalas would be just too loud.

Jewelry heists are often very peculiar because the heisters tend to be "in the know" about precisely what they want and very clever about ways to get it. I heard that a woman wanting a particular peice had a copy made, took the hidden copy to the store, asked to examine the original so she could make the swap without detection. While trying it on (it was a ring), she pretended it was sticking a bit on her finger and she put that finger in her mouth to help pull the ring off. She had the copy in her mouth, and what appeared to finally come free off of her finger was the copy, which she lay back on the couter; then she walked out with the original in her mouth.

Haven't seen that DVD, but I also saw him in the mid seventies, either 75 or 76 in San Antonio, he opened for John McLaughlin. It was the first concert I ever attended; I've only been to a handful of concerts in my life not counting the ones I perform. As a guitar player now for the last 40 years, I was deeply impressed and am still influenced by both Jeff and John. Here's a picture of me playing...

H1N1 has a new varient, A/Sao Paulo/1454/H1N1 isolated in Brazil. This is a mutated form.

I don't know the reason, but I suspect is has to with the offset geometry of a playing seated violinist - they hold the violin off their left shoulder and they site down the fingerboard to their sheet music, and hopefully are noticing the motions of the conductor off to their right at about a 15 degree angle. I'm betting the conductor puts them on the right so their seating geometry and playing position puts the conductor in line of site straight down the fingerboard above the sheet music. Perhaps this direct line of sight is better than depending on peripheral vision when performing works that are technically difficult as are many post common practice period works...?

I understand about the round carts, but what's with the round belts? My 1900 uses a round cross section belt and it is still operating perfectly after 35 years of service... I do not favor the radial tracking B&O tables that use the newer MMCX series carts so much. They replaced the mechanical operations with electronic operations and they are less robust. The ones that use the MMCXXXX series carts and forgo the electronic controls are superior, in my judgement.

The ease of use and convenience concerns have run off a lot of people, so it is refreshing and uplifting that there are still those who enjoy the technical and mechanical aspects of these things. It really all comes down to dragging a little rock across a piece of grooved plastic without harming the rock or the plastic, and you sound like an excellent candidate for learning how to enjoy doing that.

Even if it it just a modern fable, is it true? Do you think this really happens?

Thanks for pointing to that cool film about the tubes. I absolutey love seeing that kind of old fasioned machinery in operation. When I was in the third grade we took a class outing to a bread factory. I was facinated by the whole sequence of conveyors and various machines along the line. I drew machines and assembly lines for months after that, I was so impressed! That film just brought it all back to me.

It sounds like you may be new to the turntable and records thing. If so, here is my recommendation: 1] First and formost, you want to step in gently to see if you like it, see if you can stand the effort of changing the record every 20 minutes, see if you can stand cleaning the records; and you want to be very sure that you do not impart any damage to the records you may have begun to collect or already have aquired. 2] Those who know turntables know that there are a lot of things to know about matching the cartridge to the arm to the table. Then there are about a dozen micro-adjustments, various alignments, and other geometric aspects that need to be made to get everything to work like it should. In the old days just about everyone was skilled at these adjustments, but for those entering this now without experience it can be pretty overwhelming. What I would recommend is a two step process. Like many things, it is easier to really know what you want after you have gained some experience with one. Step one would be to get a bullet proof record player that would allow you to satisfy the primary issues - seeing if you like it, the cleaning ordeal, and something that has all the adjustments and cart to arm to table matching already machined into the design, and something that will not harm your records. This gets you right into the listening on day one without the preliminary engineering, adjustments, trial and error, and all the complex difficulty. The second step would be to evaluate yourself and the starter table after a while. You would be in a much better informed position to determine what your final table might be, and cartridge, etc. An excellent first turntable might be one of the old tangential tracking B&O series, they are very tough, the cart and arm are designed so that there are no adjustments or matching to be done except setting the stylus pressure. The carts are of extremely high quality and fidelity, and the tables are solid. They are relatively inexpensive on the used market, and they will not damage your records. You may decide to stick with the B&O, or; after getting educated and experienced your may go for one of the many fine regular design systems. My main turntable is a B&O 1900 I bought new in 1975. I have built a collection of 10 cartridges (takes 2 seconds to snap them in and out). The 1900 has never failed and I'm begining to think it may last forever.

On the subject of space, location, standards... and "physical engineering", may I consider it an offensive abomination that the current conductor of the Houston symphony insists on seating the violins on the audience's right side of the stage?

Has to be nanometer... his remaining available space for more speakers.

Those strips are veneer over plastic and they just snap in place through holes on the sides. I was tempted to buy a junker on ebay just to salvage a set of strips because I lost the rosewood on my 1900 (bought new in 1975) many years ago. Didn't look too bad with the bare black metal and holes, but I got some wood strips from a hobby shop that were the perfect width and thickness.. Cut them to proper length, sanded them, beveled the ends to 45 degress so they would fit right at the corners, and spray painted them black, used a hobby craft two-part glue to place them. Turned out perfect. Iosprophyl alcohol will bring back the deep clean sheen of the brushed aluminum deck top.

Also prefer the type A with my 2A3 SET and La Scalas.