The PWK no-BS Tribute Thread

[Chris A]

I think he runs them down to their limits with about a gazillion watts of power for a month or two. Okay, I can't remember exactly, but he does run them pretty hard until the T/S parameters stablize.

I remember something like 10 volts (p-p) for 30 minutes; compression drivers, too. [:|]

[oldtimer]

If you like the Meyerson I suggest you go here.

http://music.unt.edu/mpac/

Much more intimate and more pleasurable in my mind. And I love the Meyerson.

You are of course referring to "The Armadillo."

[Mallette]

You are of course referring to "The Armadillo."

And a wonderful acoustic space it is. It was heavily underwritten by Lupe Murchison, major Texas old oil money.

As you know by living there, Denton in general and the UNT College of Music are a couple of the best kept secrets on the planet. Recall a year or so back being there in October on business. LoneLobo and I went to an early music consort performance there, just another grad student and faculty group of the God knows how many have come and gone over the decades. The program said "This is performance number 228 of this years calendar." Most are free, we may have paid a few bucks for this one but the performance was magnificent and the acoustics perfect.

Take a look.

Meyerson is a bit overrated by Dallas brag...but still a fine hall.

Dave

[oldtimer]

I watched it being built from the ground up.

[Marvel]

Nice! So many new buildings have horrible acoustics. It's nice to know someone knows how to figure this out.

Bruce

[ClaudeJ1]

Everyone always speaks about how awesome it must have been when the old man flashed the button and threw down the engineering straight talk.

Is there any one that had the fortune of being on the receiving end of one those instances??

I doubt getting schooled on audio by the man was all that fun as it often was / is made out to be...especially with professionally-sized ego involved.

Spent a full day with him in Hope. His office, lab, private club lunch, dinner at private restaurant, but mostly at his house listening to his classical recordings and even did a shot of Glenfiddich with him. I was like a kid in a candy store for sure. He treated me like his long lost grandson. His responses to my questions were uncomfortably slow and deliberate. I soon realized it was because he had to rewind his "tape" about things written 40-50 years prior to that day (way before I was born) and wanted to be accurate with his answers.

I thought his judgment on CD's was a bit harsh (yes he showed me the button on that one) and I didn't agree with him. He referred to ANY commercial recording as "dilute stereo." He had a HUGE tape collection of his own making (usually twin spaced omni mikes) and he did exactly what he wrote about in the "Dope from Hope" papers, including false corners for his Khorns, and the resistor box to feed mono to his center channel Belle. The system was to the left of 2 grand pianos in his huge living room (one Steinway and one Bosendorfer).His second wife, Valerie, was a piano teacher. He was a gentleman of principles and he practiced what he preached in an irascible manner. (BTW, I had the same setup as PWK since I was 23 for 30 years, until I went for 5.1 and started going "beyond Khorns" with an MWM stack in 2007).

He dismissed most modern ideas about sound as mostly manure and molasses and his B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T. button was used frequently. He would blurt out exactly what was on his mind about any topic. If you looked up the term "straight shooter" in the dictionary, they would be well served to have a photo of PWK to illustrate it.

 

To quote another famous man from Indiana: "You gotta stand for something, or you're gonna fall for anything." in the case of the audio ignoramuses, the fall is BOSE ads.

Edited October 1, 2014 by ClaudeJ1

[Chris A]

On 12/4/2012 at 2:04 AM, Chris A said:

bs) [Well...a tribute to PWK: "...I 'recalibrate my ears' frequently at live concerts, and I urge our clients, factory workers, salespeople, and engineers to do the same."] (NOTE: And PWK wasn't talking about amplified music concerts...)

 

Last night I attended a Christmas performance of Voices of Fort Worth in the Marty Leonard Community Chapel in Fort Worth, designed by E. Fay Jones, a noted student of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

 

 

 

The story here was much different than the one I wrote about two years ago in a local "multipurpose performing arts center".  I sat next to the wall just out of the frame to the bottom right of the picture shown above and the performance was spectacular even in this location.  The voices of this a cappella choir blended seamlessly with each other and the reflections from the extremely high ceiling and other diffusion sources, such as the joists and ceiling/wall lamps.  The choir had a cohesive sound that reinforced both the chorus and solo voices with pleasing reflections and diffuse decays that effectively added volume to each voice without detracting from intelligibility of the lyrics. 

 

On one composition, the principal cellist from the Fort Worth Symphony (Allan Steele) accompanied the choir in O Magnum Mysterium by composer Ola Gjeilo that highlighted the magnifying effect of the architectural space for a single cello -- which surprisingly matched the volume and resonance of the choir in dialog for this composition, something that I didn't know was possible. 

 

Note that I didn't mention "localization of voices" as in a stereo demonstration disc, but rather a pleasing blend of directionality and cohesion of sound that surpassed any other venue that I can remember.  If I only had a listening space like that one at home...

 

I recommend finding an a cappella ensemble in your area to tune your ears to, and a great performing venue in which to hear them...I guarantee that you won't be disappointed in recalibrating your ears.

 

Chris

[Thaddeus Smith]

such an event would be a fun reason to have the DFW'ers gather together and attend.

[twk123]

 

 

So I began looking around the venue for clues to why I was missing the liveness of the performance, and then I began to see some things that I hadn't noticed before:

 

• The symphony sounded very quiet, especially the violins, violas, and cellos: overall I would guess the average SPL at my listening chair was in the 55-70 dB© region. I was seated about 75-100 feet from the front of the stage, slightly to the left of center looking squarely at the first violins.
• Because of that low average SPL at my listening position, it was difficult to stay focused on the performance quality, instead the tendency for me was to look around on stage at the various performers and equipment, the venue architecture, etc., the backs of other people heads while they scratched, others not paying attention to the music and looking about, etc. I compensated for these distractions by simply closing my eyes to listen as if I were at sitting in my listening chair home, and then it hit me...

 

 

That would be hilarious if you sat down at an orchestra and pulled out an SPL meter to measure the reference level for your home speakers, thats dedication right there. Great thread btw. 

Edited December 16, 2014 by twk123

[Khornukopia]

I went to The Nutcracker Ballet last night and sat front row center as a forty piece orchestra performed the music of Tchaikovsky. It was excellent.  

 

I was not permitted to take pictures of the ballerinas on stage, but here are some screenshots of my SPL meter.

[wvu80]

I went to The Nutcracker Ballet last night and sat front row center as a forty piece orchestra performed the music of Tchaikovsky. It was excellent.  

 

I was not permitted to take pictures of the ballerinas on stage, but here are some screenshots of my SPL meter.

 

I was not aware ballerinas were quite so noisy...

[Khornukopia]

At home and listening to some of Tchaikovsky's music as performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra and recorded for Walt Disney's Fantasia movie soundtrack, then years later transferred to a CD and now played back on my home stereo at the same SPL readings that I noted during the recent live orchestra music performance. I am very pleased with the sound of my Klipschorns. Impressive for a 1940 recording of 1890's music played through a pair of 30 year old speakers.

[Chris A]

I was amazed when someone asked me the date of Fantasia - I'd guessed it was early 1950s, but then I found out that they were working on the soundtrack when Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz were being filmed (1939 for those non-film buffs).  That was a bit of a shocker since the SQ is far above anything else I can think of for that time - in "Fantasound" stereo at the theaters...the first stereo motion picture.

 

Chris

[Boxx]

I was not aware ballerinas were quite so noisy...

[Chris A]

Why are equalizers provided in such varied forms in virtually every component type of a sound reproduction system...including switches on loudspeaker crossovers?  It is because that when you get relatively flat in-room frequency response (with some low frequency "house curve" gain) out of your system, i.e., in each loudspeaker and driver/horn channel, the listening experience improves dramatically.

 

After I spent a fair amount of time equalizing and time aligning each channel in my setup, the results were like a night-and-day improvement.  I dare say that many "audiophiles" that advise against in-room equalization have not had the opportunity to hear the results of this done well (except perhaps when they once went to a movie theater but didn't realize that to which they were listening).  I find that this is a much more important property of any setup than any "audiophile purity" statements by those that do not use in-room measurement systems and equalization to adjust their sound reproduction system's output to their room and listening positions. 

 

Chris

[Sancho Panza]

Old Thread Alert: Top, so I may find it easier...

[garyrc]

At home and listening to some of Tchaikovsky's music as performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra and recorded for Walt Disney's Fantasia movie soundtrack, then years later transferred to a CD and now played back on my home stereo at the same SPL readings that I noted during the recent live orchestra music performance. I am very pleased with the sound of my Klipschorns. Impressive for a 1940 recording of 1890's music played through a pair of 30 year old speakers.

 

I was amazed when someone asked me the date of Fantasia - I'd guessed it was early 1950s, but then I found out that they were working on the soundtrack when Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz were being filmed (1939 for those non-film buffs).  That was a bit of a shocker since the SQ is far above anything else I can think of for that time - in "Fantasound" stereo at the theaters...the first stereo motion picture.

 

Chris

 

I have been a fan (no pun intended) of Disney's Fantasia ever since I first saw it in the theater when I was about 4 years old.  I can safely say it changed my life for the better, even though the print I saw at 4yrs was in mono.

 

I knew two individuals (now long dead) who saw the original Fantasound version c 1940.  They both used the same word to describe the sound -- "hypnotic."  One became a professor of drama, and the other an audio engineer, who, in his later years taught a course called "Discover Your Ears" at San Francisco University.

 

After years of waiting for Fantasia to come back (and enduring a prank by my fellow college students who took me to the Fantasia Bakery), I saw a transfer from the Fantasound tracks to 4 channel magnetic stereo (c. 1964).  This version had the best Fantasia soundtrack I've experienced; it was warm, very spatial, and very dynamic.

 

The modern theatrical presentations and the DVD and Blue-ray -- all from the surviving Fantasound tracks, but with a re-dubbed voice of someone other than Deems Taylor introducing the selections, for reasons passing all understanding -- are all pretty good, but the CD of the soundtrack sounds a bit harsh, IMO.  The Blu-ray is much better on my Khorn system.

 

The Bullshit award goes to the re-recording with Irwin Kostal conducting, if meme serves.  They must have thought that a newer recording is necessarily better, but we know that to be B.S., right?  Also, the Kostal lacks Stokowski's flair and verve.  Thankfully that one didn't last long in the theaters.

 

The January 1941 edition of Scientific American has a good article on Fantasound, now available online.  I think it claims that there were 96 sound locations in the theater, but I think they counted every speaker, ever woofer and every tweeter, as a "location."  Other articles (like the Garity ones) point out that there were several different types Fantasound playback systems, depending on the theater, and funds available.  It's amazing that it took 12 years for stereo to come back to the movies (This is Cinerama, 1952).

Edited January 25, 2015 by Garyrc

[Chris A]

More audiophilia...(from here--attributed to Sean Adams, Founder of Slim Devices):

 

"You claim that an
(x) audible
( ) measurable
(x) hypothetical

improvement in sound quality can be attained by:
( ) upsampling
( ) non-oversampling
( ) increasing word size
( ) vibration dampening
( ) bi-wiring
(x) litz wire
( ) replacing the external power supply
( ) using a different lossless format
( ) decompressing on the server
( ) removing bits of metal from skull
( ) using Ethernet instead of wireless
( ) inverting phase
( ) reversing “polarity” of resistors
( ) ultra fast recovery rectifiers
( ) installing bigger connectors
( ) installing Black Gate caps
( ) installing ByBee filters
( ) installing hospital-grade AC jacks
( ) defragmenting the hard disk
( ) running older firmware
( ) using exotic materials in cabinet
( ) bronze heat sinks
( ) violin lacquer
( ) $500 power cords

Your idea will not work. Specifically, it fails to account for:
(x) the placebo effect
(x) your ears honestly aren't that good

( ) your music files honestly aren't that good
( ) your idea has already been thoroughly disproved
( ) modern DACs upsample anyway
( ) those products are pure snake oil
( ) lossless formats, by definition, are lossless
( ) those measurements are bogus
( ) sound travels much slower than you think
(x) electric signals travel much faster than you think
( ) that's not how binary arithmetic works
( ) that's not how TCP/IP works
( ) the Nyquist theorem
( ) the can't polish a turd theorem
( ) bits are bits

You will try to defend you idea by:
(x) claiming that your ears are “trained”
(x) claiming immunity to psychological/physiological factors that affect everyone else
(x) name-calling
( ) criticizing spelling/grammar

( ) employing audiophilia memes

( ) claiming an audiophile magazine writer (on commission) heard a difference

Your subsequent arguments will probably appeal in desperation to such esoterica as:
( ) jitter
( ) EMI
( ) thermal noise
(x) quantum mechanical effects
(x) resonance
( ) existentialism
(x) nihilism
( ) communism

( ) earth-ionospheric "natural" frequencies
( ) cosmic rays

And you will then change the subject to:
( ) theories are not the same as facts
( ) measurements don't tell everything
( ) not everyone is subject to the placebo effect
(x) blind testing is dumb
(x) you can't prove what I can't hear
(x) science isn't everything

( ) PWK's ideas aren't relevant anymore

Rather than engage in this tired discussion, I suggest exploring the following factors which are more likely to improve sound quality in your situation:
(x) room acoustics
( ) source material

( ) demastering
( ) quality of loudspeakers
(x) speaker placement
( ) crossover points
( ) equalization
(x) Q-tips
( ) psychoanalysis
(x) trepanation"

 

[JohnA]

This must be one of the longest running threads on the Forum. 

 

My contribution of unbelievable BS:

https://www.gcaudio.com/tips-tricks/electrical-delivery-systems-overview/

[HDBRbuilder]

On ‎10‎/‎1‎/‎2014 at 9:24 AM, ClaudeJ1 said:

Spent a full day with him in Hope. His office, lab, private club lunch, dinner at private restaurant, but mostly at his house listening to his classical recordings and even did a shot of Glenfiddich with him. I was like a kid in a candy store for sure. He treated me like his long lost grandson. His responses to my questions were uncomfortably slow and deliberate. I soon realized it was because he had to rewind his "tape" about things written 40-50 years prior to that day (way before I was born) and wanted to be accurate with his answers.

I thought his judgment on CD's was a bit harsh (yes he showed me the button on that one) and I didn't agree with him. He referred to ANY commercial recording as "dilute stereo." He had a HUGE tape collection of his own making (usually twin spaced omni mikes) and he did exactly what he wrote about in the "Dope from Hope" papers, including false corners for his Khorns, and the resistor box to feed mono to his center channel Belle. The system was to the left of 2 grand pianos in his huge living room (one Steinway and one Bosendorfer).His second wife, Valerie, was a piano teacher. He was a gentleman of principles and he practiced what he preached in an irascible manner. (BTW, I had the same setup as PWK since I was 23 for 30 years, until I went for 5.1 and started going "beyond Khorns" with an MWM stack in 2007).

He dismissed most modern ideas about sound as mostly manure and molasses and his B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T. button was used frequently. He would blurt out exactly what was on his mind about any topic. If you looked up the term "straight shooter" in the dictionary, they would be well served to have a photo of PWK to illustrate it.

 

To quote another famous man from Indiana: "You gotta stand for something, or you're gonna fall for anything." in the case of the audio ignoramuses, the fall is BOSE ads.

It was me who suggested to Mr. Paul to try out some Glenfiddich while he was in Scotland with Ms. Valerie on vacation...He liked it so much that he brought back two cases of it (which he bought while there), and a couple of days after he returned, there was a surprise on my worktable after lunch...he had wrapped up the canister the bottle of Glenfiddich came in with newspaper, and scotch-taped to the top of the wrapped canister was a small note which said "thank you Mr. Barr and here is something for you...PWK"...come to find out he gave away numerous bottles of it, but I was the only person in the cabinet shop who got one!  Sure wish I had saved that little note which he had taped to the wrapping!  He paid the Scot price for it not realizing that he could get it cheaper here, due to the whisky industry being subsidized in the U.K...meaning they paid more for it there than it cost outside of the U.K, in order to make it more affordable elsewhere and increase sales, thereby increasing jobs for production back home in the U.K.  Back in those days the 8-year-old Glenfiddich was all that was sold.