Jump to content

muel

Regulars
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    3070

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by muel

    Advice for Beginners - consider this test from an audio club

    in General Klipsch Info

    Posted

    Would any electrical engineer say that they know everything there is to know?  Well, maybe you can find someone like that.

     

    Hundreds of years ago people joked and made fun of the idea that there were little creatures smaller than the naked eye could see.  It wasn't until the invention of the microscope that the existence of microorganisms could be proved.  If I'd lived at the time perhaps I would have laughed too.


    I'd suggest we look at things with a tentative eye... or ear.

    Advice for Beginners - consider this test from an audio club

    in General Klipsch Info

    Posted

    18 minutes ago, ODS123 said:

     

    Hasn't this been discussed?  Okay, here goes again...

     

    MDF vs Ply water resistance:

    Sorry about your floors, but we're talking about speakers here.  Water resistance in a home speaker is of no greater importance to me than is water resistance in choosing an Amplifier, CD player, Music Server, or TV.    ..None of these were ever engineered to get wet.  In all of my years, I've never had a speaker get wet, or a component for that matter..   Ditto with respect to drop-resistance.  ..None of my other components are designed to be dropped on their corner, so no need for my speakers to be.   To me, suggesting Ply is superior because of this is to provide a solution that is in search of a problem.

     

     

    I also have some MDF speakers that I bought in 1986 or so.  Yes, they are still fine since I've been able to protect them from any mishaps so far.  A lot of people sit their speakers on the floor which is usually where the water goes if there is a leak or flood.  I've also lost some equipment many years ago due to a flooded basement and lived through tornado aftermath.   Perhaps I'm just sensitive.  I'm glad you're not worried.  I have a strong basis for being concerned.   I'm mostly sorry I let myself get sucked into this thread again.    

    Advice for Beginners - consider this test from an audio club

    in General Klipsch Info

    Posted

    The idea that MDF is a structural equivalent to plywood is ludicrous!  This is a different use but you simply don't want this stuff to ever get wet!

    I had a water heater burst a few months ago and thought I was lucky to be home at the time so I could get it turned off right away.  Water was mopped up quickly but within half an hour the MDF underlayment started to swell.  I'll spare you the details but the end result so far is over 40k in repairs and a week spent in a local hotel.  If the underlayment had been decent material the mopping and drying would have been  the end of it.  Luckily, only the house suffered and not much "stuff" was even touched.

    I have 2 pairs of Cornwalls that are over 50 years old... I won't be around to verify but I wonder how many MDF constructed speakers constructed in recent years will survive to that age?

    BS from PS Audio Paul McGowan

    in 2-Channel Home Audio

    Posted

    11 hours ago, glens said:

    I was merely musing when I came up with this post.  I left it sit for some time and looked at it again.  I can't decide whether to post it or not so I will, but with this note that you can feel free to not even read it if you're pressed for time.

     

    -----

     

    Well, I had a few browser windows open, each with several tabs, was going through them to "clean house" a bit, and found one open to https://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/air-gaps/.  Might as well add this to the BS list as well.

     

    He's got flac files sounding different from wav even though after reconstruction they're numerically identical.  This is what he says, not my take on what he says.  Evidently it's because the reconstructed (but identical!) bits have become polluted during the course of reconstruction.  Bits are bits.  They're either a one or a zero.  A "distorted" "1" is still distinctly different from a "0", whether or not that "0" is "distorted" and so long as the combinations are maintained in order the information they represent can be perfectly recovered.  Now in this case the word "distorted" is mine.  He actually uses the term "pollute."  But we're used to hearing changes-from-original being called distortion.

     

    So he's got polluted and jittery 1s and 0s feeding a DAC and wants to clean that up for us.  Isolation between the digital crunching section, with all it's noisy digital manipulation, from the digital to analog conversion section will surely take care of this.  Not.  Firstly, it doesn't matter if there's jitter heading toward the DAC.  Everything is re-timed when it hits there anyway.  (Do you suppose that the packets of data traversing the Internet, be they text, images, or audio, always arrive in perfect order and perfectly timed?  Absolutely no guarantees and missed packets get re-requested, re-transmitted, and re-ordered-when received all the time!)  And it must have slipped his mind that the DAC itself involves digital manipulation with all it's noise and pollution, so perfect isolation between digital and analog sections can not be achieved.  Isolating the noisier from the more-critical section's power supplies and grounds is just plain old good design.

     

    But maybe some of his fancy power cords and/or power regenerators will magically fix all the pollution that's left!

     

    Yeah, flac and wav CAN sound different. 

    I have an opinion on why I think this is true (besides having experienced it) and have heard reasonable explanations regarding increased power usage due to more processing but I'm likely not educated or trained to the level to satisfy those here who are so quick to throw things on the BS pile.  Some folks just really wear me out.  With them, it's all or nothing... yes, or no,  truth or BS.  I'm glad if that world view works for them.  Not aiming this at glens specifically, to be clear.  

     

    I believe what I've heard from Paul McGowan has been accurate (note that I said accurate and not correct) more often than not and mostly agrees with what I've experienced.  He has built some nice sounding equipment.  Whoops!  I forgot it all sounds the same... my mistake.

     

    Paul McGowan was wrong in his comments about Klipsch and I believe was guilty of grossly over generalizing.  Personally, I think a retraction was in order but I'd rather go fishing than worry about that.  

     

    By the way, with my current setup I cannot hear any difference between flac and wav.

    Between the two, there was never a dimes worth of difference though anyway.

     

     

    • Like 1

    Moving La Scala II upstairs solo?

    in General Klipsch Info

    Posted

    I moved my 40+ year old La Scala's upstairs by myself a few years ago.  Left hand on the mid horn opening and right hand on the rear opening of the cabinet.  Took one step at a time with 2 landings where I could rest a moment.  If I'd lost my balance it would have been damaging to both me and the house!  It was kind of dumb even though it went fine.  No way will I try to get them down that way!  Maybe I could set them on a piece of cardboard and let them slide down like my kids used to do?  I find it easier to go upstairs than down.

    • Like 1

    Advice for Beginners - consider this test from an audio club

    in General Klipsch Info

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Shakeydeal said:

     

    You know what the difference is? You don't see (most) others on this forum pushing their opinions as the gospel of Jesus Christ himself.

     

    I don't care what your (or anyone else for that matter) credentials are. I trust my ears as to what sounds good.

     

    I was listening to "March of the Toy  Drums" on my Kenner close n play in the  mid-60s. Been immersed in music ever since. Don't you dare challenge my credentials.........

     

    Shakey

    Do you think we could hear the difference between your Close N' Play and my Show N' Tell??

    I just have to see if I can get one back from Ebay.

     

    Would like to hear thoughts on Chromecast audio

    in Technical/Restorations

    Posted

    ROON will ruin you!

    It is a whole new experience with playing your music.  It is way beyond any other interface I've used (never used Sonos but a friend moved from Sonos to ROON recently).

    My only potential complaint is the search capability but I haven't delved into that much yet.   It plays all my flac through the Chromecast just fine.  Spotify works with it great as well.   This is an area for background music so I'm not picky about sound quality as much but it is fine.   I tried one of the DLNA interfaces with it to play direct from a NAS and that didn't work as well (very slow, locked up or didn't work at all).  It's been months so I don't remember the specifics.  

     

     

    Zenwave D4 Single Ended Cables

    in Garage Sale

    Posted

    6 hours ago, mopardave said:

    Someone was being a little snarky and linked that to me from another thread.  Sorry, no disrespect intended.

    I understand saying something without enough thought... I do it all the time.  You might want to edit your posts to delete negative comment on his garage sale post

    • Thanks 1

    Advice for Beginners - consider this test from an audio club

    in General Klipsch Info

    Posted

    6 minutes ago, richieb said:

     

    === I refuse to skim the past 78 pages of back and forth but I recall the premise was that all amplifiers sound alike? I’m curious why no one brought up what can actually influence the sound of an - the preamp. Is the OP going to say that like all amps, all preamps sound alike too? I bring this up as I shuffled pre’s today and the difference is by no means subtle — 

    The premise wasn’t worthy of a response 

    Advice for Beginners - consider this test from an audio club

    in General Klipsch Info

    Posted

    My 1976 La Scala's produced their own fart sound when I first got them (only slight exaggeration).  Starting at around 85db and up they really produced some lousy noise.  They had spent their life in a choir loft organ installation so I imagine they were exposed to a lot of heat through the years.  A large injection of glue at all the joints and bracing the bins took care of the vibration.  This didn't do anything for the 148hz peak.  I had never heard about this peak being a characteristic of La Scala's but was playing with DSP settings by ear to get pretty close to finding this out on my own.  I just assumed it was my room causing the issue.  Using pink noise I found that I had gotten pretty close already but was able to dial it in great.  The iPhone makes for a surprisingly good spl meter. 

     

    You don't have to go to an active crossover.  If you are using a DAC it can be pretty simple to dial in these settings into DSP that is available with some players.  I originally used Foobar which can get pretty close to the settings you want.  Roon (I know... it's expensive) allows you to dial this in perfectly.  What a nice difference there is dropping 148hz 7db (q=8)!    We can do this even with our passive crossovers.  However, I haven't figured out how I'm going to address this for vinyl.  I might go as far as to digitize my vinyl so I can play it back via DAC with DSP enabled.  

    • Like 2

    veneering tips needed

    in General Klipsch Info

    Posted

    1 hour ago, mopardave said:

    Thank You.  I'm very pleased with the results.  Only mistake I made was not cutting the face strips in one long piece so the grain structure would line up nice.  took 12hrs to finish and I was getting tired and just forgot.      

     

    Good Job!  That can be a hard lesson when you don't quit when you are tired.  I find that making notes for myself and checking them off as I go can help.  Thanks for sharing!

×
×
  • Create New...