My new DeanG networks…

[NOSValves]

OK.....!!! I'm going to try my best to ignore the silly rantings posted today....

I made my point on the 3rd page of this thread of why in my experience a high quality DSP unit with EQ and crossover capabilities can offer improvements to a system well beyond any negatives if used properly. This is based on real world personnel experience over several decades and yes this was after many years (15 easily) of owning a minimalist system with Klipschorns in dedicated and acoustically treated listening rooms. So it's not like I haven't been there and I definitely appreciate and understand that approach to sound reproduction. Less anyone thinks I don't understand op-amps and electrolytics and their potential drawbacks please know that I made my living for over 25 years servicing consumer electronics and have built and modified audio equipment for over 40 years which is where the real fun is... The only reason the DSP units I own stay in my system is because they bring my music reproduction closer to reality than any approach I've used before IMHO.

My point is some form of EQ effects whether intentional or unintentional (this includes electrical, mechanical and acoustical forms) is present in practically every part of a reproduction system. EQ effects exist from the Recording Environment, the Recording Engineers Choices, the Recording Storage Medium, Source Components, Pre-amps, Amplifiers, Crossovers (active or passive), Loudspeakers and Listening Rooms. Many forms of EQ can prove very beneficial if applied properly throughout all aspects of a system and a high quality Modern Active EQ when applied properly can improve a system much more in comparison to any negative effects it might bring to the table in my experience and personnel opinion. Bottom line I respect anyone's choice to not use an active EQ unit in their system but I reject the suggestion by you or anyone else that those who choose to use a high quality active EQ in their system is somehow compromising the system versus not using one. Oh and by the way "fixing the problem at the source in the simplest possible way" is sometimes best accomplished by EQing as for examples again in the LP storage medium in combination with it's compensating EQ circuits or proper use of local and/or global negative feedback in an amplifier or in the case of loudspeaker systems the use of electrical EQ compensation (either through an active crossover or passive crossover/balancing networks) for the mechanical and acoustical properties of the components of the system that cause some of the errors of the system. As far as one of the worst offenders of good sound reproduction which is the poor recording standards and practices of that industry our only way to deal with that is to either listen to them warts and all, stop listening to some very good music that's recorded poorly, take some control available to us through high quality and effective tone controls systems as I mentioned before or as I do presently using a very good quality DSP active unit with my tone control simulation program of the Cello Palette. miketn

The point I take from the above is you spent all those years and ended up a total failure. I'd be dispointed too but seriously doubt I'd resort to a digital processing unit...like I said in my first post I'd give up audio first....but then I'm pretty good at fixing and tuning things (eq'ing with a soldering iron) Edited August 5, 2014 by NOSValves

[Deang]

I have no doubt that there is a market share of folks who prefer that re-builds and the design of electronic equipment is best done without resorting to electronic measurement.

Another straw-man. What makes you think Craig doesn't measure what he builds? This is ridiculous. Is anyone here capable of staying on point without resorting to misdirection and straw-man arguments?

No one has bothered to address either of my two primary concerns. I can only conclude that no one has evidence showing how rows of electrolytics in the signal path don't degrade the signal.

In what world is the cheaper thing better than the more expensive thing? Every once in a while we run across something of tremendous value, but it's not the norm. I just read that a $2 capacitor is every bit as good as its more expensive counter parts. Well, it IS from Germany you know. Seriously -- there are people here who actually believe a POS metallized cap sounds as good as a good film and tin foil or a paper in oil? SERIOUSLY!?

If I build with cheap parts in a highly touted design, and then build with good parts in a design that we are assured is poorly designed and obsolete (Type AA) -- the latter completely buries the former in sound quality. I'm over here. I'm doing it. I build stuff and actually listen to it. Not a single thing I've done over the last two months with my LaScalas has contradicted what I learned when I had my Klipschorns and Jubilees. Passives sound better, and the better the parts, the better the sound.

I'm done here.

Edited August 5, 2014 by DeanG

[Mallette]

OK, Craig: It doesn't. Your business benefits from the excellence of your work.

Dave

[mark1101]

Dean ..............so you then reject the idea of using the latest and best horn designs like CD horns altogether...........like the 402?

How would you propose to EQ such a beast? With passives and 400 components (like was done 8 years ago)? I helped carry Marion's crossovers (took 2 of us) for each board.................simply ridciulous to build something like that. When you want to tweak the setup, throw it away and rebuild..........you can't just change a cap and a coil.

You can't experiment with different horns either...........you have to spend $2K and 3 months just to get the networks sourced and built. Hopefully, you didn't put it together wrong either.

Using the best horn technology of today doesn't lend itself to passive netowrk technology any longer.

[PrestonTom]

I have no doubt that there is a market share of folks who prefer that re-builds and the design of electronic equipment is best done without resorting to electronic measurement.

Another straw-man. What makes you think Craig doesn't measure what he builds? This is ridiculous. Is anyone here capable of staying on point without resorting to misdirection and straw-man arguments?

No one has bothered to address either of my two primary concerns. I can only conclude that no one has evidence showing how rows of electrolytics in the signal path don't degrade the signal.

In what world is the cheaper thing better than the more expensive thing? Every once in a while we run across something of tremendous value, but it's not the norm. I just read that a $2 capacitor is every bit as good as its more expensive counter parts. Well, it IS from Germany you know. Seriously -- there are people here who actually believe a POS metallized cap sounds as good as a good film and tin foil or a paper in oil? SERIOUSLY!?

If I build with cheap parts in a highly touted design, and then build with good parts in a design that we are assured is poorly designed and obsolete (Type AA) -- the latter completely buries the former in sound quality. I'm over here. I'm doing it. I build stuff and actually listen to it. Not a single thing I've done over the last two months with my LaScalas has contradicted what I learned when I had my Klipschorns and Jubilees. Passives sound better, and the better the parts, the better the sound.

I'm done here.

Dean: I have no argument with you. As far as the evils of opamps and electrolytics are concerned, we are probably not very different.

Sometime ago I took a Behringer DCX DSP crossover and stripped the output sections (after the DAC). I replaced the cheap caps and opamps and substituted things with a transformer. Yes, It made things sound quite a bit better and gave me all the advatages of DSP crossovers (wait, did I say a bad word ...).

Believe me, all this was done with the guidance of electronic measurements, especially on the first round of design and tuning. I would never attempt something like that without measurements. On this forum, one would think that I was an idiot for not doing things "by ear alone". These really are engineering projects and not fooling-around-and-hope-I-get-lucky-projects.

You are right ... enough already!

[NOSValves]

Again, I don't see how insulting folks adds to the credibilty of your business. You have no idea about my system, my buying habits, my insecurities, or my hearing. Care to speculate further?

Now who exactly is speculating....what the hell makes you think my business needs added credibility or that posting here would add any? I post here for strictly entertainment purposes .....show where I have mentiooned my business any where on this forum in recent history....please show me and quit speculating about things you know absolutely nothing about.

Best of luck on your business endeavors. I have no doubt that there is a market share of folks who prefer that re-builds and the design of electronic equipment is best done without resorting to electronic measurement. I guess it would take away from the "mystique". We have different views of the world. There is plenty of room for that. Again, good luck.

Another polite and complete inaccurate insult....Where from this thread do you garnish such a totally inaccurate assumption of what I do and don't do. Can your totally childish post be any worse?

[NOSValves]

OK, Craig: It doesn't. Your business benefits from the excellence of your work.

Dave

Why Thanks Dave!

[A1UC]

OK, Craig: It doesn't. Your business benefits from the excellence of your work.

Dave

Why Thanks Dave!

And your great customer service

[NOSValves]

Dean ..............so you then reject the idea of using the latest and best horn designs like CD horns altogether...........like the 402?

How would you propose to EQ such a beast? With passives and 400 components (like was done 8 years ago)? I helped carry Marion's crossovers (took 2 of us) for each board.................simply ridciulous to build something like that. When you want to tweak the setup, throw it away and rebuild..........you can't just change a cap and a coil.

You can't experiment with different horns either...........you have to spend $2K and 3 months just to get the networks sourced and built. Hopefully, you didn't put it together wrong either.

Using the best horn technology of today doesn't lend itself to passive netowrk technology any longer.

I have an answer for that...If the thing was designed properly to start with it would not take 400 components to EQ the shite out of it to make it work....

[NOSValves]

OK, Craig: It doesn't. Your business benefits from the excellence of your work.

Dave

Why Thanks Dave!

And your great customer service

Well geezzz now I'm starting to blush and get a warm fuzzy feeling!

[A1UC]

OK, Craig: It doesn't. Your business benefits from the excellence of your work.

Dave

Why Thanks Dave!

And your great customer service

Well geezzz now I'm starting to blush and get a warm fuzzy feeling!

OK, Craig: It doesn't. Your business benefits from the excellence of your work.

Dave

Why Thanks Dave!

And your great customer service

Well geezzz now I'm starting to blush and get a warm fuzzy feeling!

We really don't need to know that

[Don Richard]

thankfully I have nothing to do with digital processing units, EQ's or active crossovers....so please tell me how my business benifits directly from this BS....I don't get it!

By denigrating what has become industry standard components and methods for dealing with performance anomalies, and insisting on adherence to "the path" of simplicity as the only way to go, you hope to steer business to yourself. You have insisted that the simplest "path" gives the best results in all cases (such as with tube equipment), with no proof at all of what you state as true. Perhaps that is because there is no such proof.

There have been advances in horn technology during the last 30 years or so. Constant directivity horns are a good example. They require equalization for proper performance because of their design. When implemented properly, CD horns have much less, or no, beaming of high frequencies.

Folded bass horns have traditionally caused time alignment problems because of differences in the acoustic path length between them and the other drivers in the horn. With the Khorn that difference is about 4 feet. It is impossible to correct this in a practical manner other than to do it electronically. You say the solution is to redesign the speaker. That's not practical. It is much easier to correct the time alignment with a processor. After that alignment was done on my Khorns they sounded much closer to what I hear when I hear live music. And recordings I thought were "bad" suddenly sounded "better" with no other changes to my equipment.

Edited August 5, 2014 by Don Richard

[Mallette]

The poles are so clearly shown in DRs post and Marks response. It is a non-issue unless one side decides it is "right." I think my oft made statement that it is the height of ignorance to think you can know what another hears often falls on deaf ears...as it were. Some here know my own recording philosophy of nothing in the chain but mikes, a preamp, and an ADAC. Last night I listened to George Ellis Mims last CD recorded at on the magnificent Schoenberg instrument in the mighty hall of St. Martin's Church in Houston. The engineer who recorded it works for the NPR station here and George took me to a mixing session. The guy used multiple microphones and a host of equipment, and then used what he said was a 30k software package that allowed him to splice performances together quite seamlessly. All of this is in total opposition to my own approach.

It's a magnificent recording. My philosophy cannot lie to my ears.

They require equalization for proper performance because of their design.

And acoustic suspension speakers require high power to reach their potential.

And one could go on. Every approach to accuracy in audio has its drawbacks and flaws. Some prefer to start with that which has the least of those and keep it simple. Others prefer to go to the extreme opposite (perhaps electrostatic would be a good example in speakers) and do what it takes to achieve accuracy.

Doesn't matter. It's right when it sounds right regardless of how you get there.

Dave

[Heritage_Head]

I have no doubt that there is a market share of folks who prefer that re-builds and the design of electronic equipment is best done without resorting to electronic measurement.

Another straw-man. What makes you think Craig doesn't measure what he builds? This is ridiculous. Is anyone here capable of staying on point without resorting to misdirection and straw-man arguments?

No one has bothered to address either of my two primary concerns. I can only conclude that no one has evidence showing how rows of electrolytics in the signal path don't degrade the signal.

In what world is the cheaper thing better than the more expensive thing? Every once in a while we run across something of tremendous value, but it's not the norm. I just read that a $2 capacitor is every bit as good as its more expensive counter parts. Well, it IS from Germany you know. Seriously -- there are people here who actually believe a POS metallized cap sounds as good as a good film and tin foil or a paper in oil? SERIOUSLY!?

If I build with cheap parts in a highly touted design, and then build with good parts in a design that we are assured is poorly designed and obsolete (Type AA) -- the latter completely buries the former in sound quality. I'm over here. I'm doing it. I build stuff and actually listen to it. Not a single thing I've done over the last two months with my LaScalas has contradicted what I learned when I had my Klipschorns and Jubilees. Passives sound better, and the better the parts, the better the sound.

I'm done here.

That was quite an advertisement

[Daan]

Some prefer to start with that which has the least of those and keep it simple. Others prefer to go to the extreme opposite (perhaps electrostatic would be a good example in speakers) and do what it takes to achieve accuracy. Doesn't matter. It's right when it sounds right regardless of how you get there.

X2

"and that's all I have to say about it.." [Forrest Gump]

[Don Richard]

The common difficulty here seems to be to claim the preference for a technique without explaining the benefits derived from it. Good sound is insufficient and mostly meaningless, just like good art.

Ask and you shall receive. When a sound is being reproduced by two sources, such as the drivers in a loudspeaker system, and that sound is displaced in time, two related bad effects occur. The first is comb filtering, the second is lobing of the polar dispersion pattern. With a first order crossover filter these anomalies occur over a wide frequency range.The audible effect of both of those two conditions is a vastly different frequency response in every place in the room. You not only hear the direct sound from the speaker when you are in the sweet spot but also the room sound, which imposes a coloration to what you hear.

The unsynchronized arrival of the different frequencies that make up a sound has another effect. Using the Khorn as an example, the first thing you will hear is the tweeter's output, followed by the mid, then the bass. The brain tends to lock onto the first sound it detects, in this case, the higher frequency sounds. This makes the speaker sound brighter than the frequency response graphs would indicate. When this speaker is time-aligned the audible frequency balance is much better, even though the frequency response plot hasn't changed that much.

With other speakers that don't have the degree of misalignment that a Khorn has, a passive crossover can be an effective solution. The trick is using the proper technology for the job at hand. Most of the Danley Synergy horns use passive crossovers with time alignment built in. They are not simple crossovers, however. I read that the Danley SH-50's crossover weighs 55 pounds.

[babadono]

Honk,honk........ Hey it says "Honk if you love horns"

[Schu]

"Honk if you love horns"

that's Harsh!

[PrestonTom]

Again, I don't see how insulting folks adds to the credibilty of your business. You have no idea about my system, my buying habits, my insecurities, or my hearing. Care to speculate further?

Now who exactly is speculating....what the hell makes you think my business needs added credibility or that posting here would add any? I post here for strictly entertainment purposes .....show where I have mentiooned my business any where on this forum in recent history....please show me and quit speculating about things you know absolutely nothing about.

Best of luck on your business endeavors. I have no doubt that there is a market share of folks who prefer that re-builds and the design of electronic equipment is best done without resorting to electronic measurement. I guess it would take away from the "mystique". We have different views of the world. There is plenty of room for that. Again, good luck.

Another polite and complete inaccurate insult....Where from this thread do you garnish such a totally inaccurate assumption of what I do and don't do. Can your totally childish post be any worse?

It is clear that you need to have the last word.

Fine, you are correct and I am "childish" and "insulting"

[mark1101]

Dean ..............so you then reject the idea of using the latest and best horn designs like CD horns altogether...........like the 402?

How would you propose to EQ such a beast? With passives and 400 components (like was done 8 years ago)? I helped carry Marion's crossovers (took 2 of us) for each board.................simply ridciulous to build something like that. When you want to tweak the setup, throw it away and rebuild..........you can't just change a cap and a coil.

You can't experiment with different horns either...........you have to spend $2K and 3 months just to get the networks sourced and built. Hopefully, you didn't put it together wrong either.

Using the best horn technology of today doesn't lend itself to passive netowrk technology any longer.

I have an answer for that...If the thing was designed properly to start with it would not take 400 components to EQ the shite out of it to make it work....

The obvious problem we have here is that the minimalist approach (as Mark puts it) does have a reasonable way to make use of the best Klipsch horn technology which REQUIRES equalization by design (CD horns).

Whether you like the horn design or not...........you can't use it without a passive network that is totally unpractical and cost prohibitive. The networks wih the EQ inside will probably cost more than the rest of the system if you build them with the really nice components.

A bummer of a constraint..........as the newer CD horns are much better as those who have used and compared know. In the tests done with several present to witness, they "bested" the homemade wooden tractrix by a wide margin of opinion, and the old exponentials on teh Heritage were not even in the park.

So..........I guess no EQ..........the minimalists will be listening to the stuff the digital guys rejected long ago because of inferior sound (by opinion).

You know there is "middle ground" though. I run a K402 horn with an ALK passive.............and use an outboard DBX-1231 31 band analog EQ on the tape monitor loop of my Peach. 100% analog..........gets you into the better horns........keeps you using passives.