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5 hours ago, tube fanatic said:

Exactly.  No matter what we do with our systems it is not possible to recreate a theater like Carnegie Hall, Fillmore East, or even a large college auditorium in our homes.  And that is why I made the point about listening level.  A 120 db peak heard in even a 5k cu. ft. listening room isn't going to sound the same as it does in a theater.  About the best we can do is to get some reasonable facsimile which reminds us of the live event (try, for example, to duplicate Chicago's Carnegie Hall performance of around 1971, or Santana's at Fillmore East from '68, in your listening room and you will quickly see my point- it is a total impossibility regardless of what kind of system you employ).

 

Maynard

Well, somewhat exactly ;) 

 

What I am saying is that with Dirac software on my PC and 12 bass traps and other 4" owens corning 703 panels I made and the other items from my post, I CAN take my room out of the equation and get very very close to what the mics were hearing in the concert hall (to the point your hairs will stand up it sounds so real, assuming the recording is not compressed or post processed to the point of being ruined as most are).

 

This is the best you can do.  Honestly, how often do you get up and move seats when doing critical listening?

 

It takes the 4 items I outlined in my post.  If you are near Columbia, SC I don't mind showing you and I promise you will agree after hearing ;) It is not cheap though.  Just tri-amping almost triples the cost of a stereo system.  Let alone the calibration mic, Dirac software, room treatments, measurement and filter knowledge needed, etc...

 

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Based on my 40+ years in the audio industry, here's my opinion of the hierarchy of the importance of audio system components (listed in order of most influence on the system's audible performance to least influence):

 

1)  Loudspeakers. The ONLY components in the system that actually produce sound. The speakers contribute the overwhelming majority of influence on the sound of any audio reproduction system. You can swap amps or preamps forever and you'll never change the system's sound anywhere near as much as you will by changing the speakers.

 

2)  Listening-room acoustics. Non-believers: Compare $10k spent on improving your room acoustics vs. $10k spent on that new preamp you've been lusting after and get back to me about which made the bigger improvement in how your system sounded. Be honest now; listen with your ears and brain, not with your heart (and wallet).

 

3)  Signal source device if you still get your music by dragging a rock through a groove in a piece of plastic. If you get your music by decoding it from a robust set of numbers, this moves down to #6.

 

4)  High-level amplification device. When connected to an actual loudspeaker, this becomes part of a two-way circuit that exhibits its own unique performance characteristics (as heard through the loudspeaker), so it's important to select a device that plays nice with the particular speaker.

 

5)  Low-level amplification device(s). This matters a little more for rock-draggers and it matters a little less for number-crunchers.

 

6)  Signal source device if you get your music by decoding it from a robust set of numbers. If you get it by dragging a rock through a groove in a piece of plastic, this moves up to #3.

 

7)  (For number-crunchers only) DACs and other devices that deal exclusively with numbers — no analog circuitry. Once you eliminate jitter, they really all sound the same. If it contains analog circuitry, it belongs up in #6.

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On 5/6/2017 at 0:02 PM, Chris A said:

As far as other high-end loudspeakers, I do recommend listening to full-range multiple entry horns (MEHs) set up well to hear the differences in-room with their point source capability, extremely low modulation distortion, and controlled in-room polars to low frequencies.  I don't see other high-end loudspeakers that can do that, and every report that I've read by those that do listen to them at audio shows have mentioned the large qualitative difference in sound listening to MEHs. 

I listen to 6 MEH horns with Tapped Horn subs every day. You are right Chris. Better and SMALLER.

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That's very insightful 'Drummer, thanks. A couple year back I was dragging out the old 'rock and plastic' until knowing how am and always needing to "upgrade" I wisely tucked everything back into its box. Those hi-end "rocks", rock suspension devices, and the newly recorded "plastic plates" quickly turn into Real $$$. Like you I'm sticking with 0 and 1's. 

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7 hours ago, richieb said:

That's very insightful 'Drummer, thanks. A couple year back I was dragging out the old 'rock and plastic' until knowing how am and always needing to "upgrade" I wisely tucked everything back into its box. Those hi-end "rocks", rock suspension devices, and the newly recorded "plastic plates" quickly turn into Real $$$. Like you I'm sticking with 0 and 1's. 

Can't agree more.    Good high resolution media is more repeatable, convenient and ends up cheaper in the long run for me.

I am probably missing the last 2% of organic bloom but for the above reasons, it's worth it to me.

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IMO, vinyl sounds good despite dragging a rock across wavy plastic, not because of it.

 

I love old vinyl because it can be a source of excellent recordings of excellent performances unavailable on digital media.  Records from the "3 for a dollar" bin clean up nicely with Reg Williamson's facial, whereupon I rip them to FLAC files.  The restored treasures are then returned to the record store to be purchased by some lucky soul.

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  • 5 months later...
On 5/6/2017 at 12:02 PM, Chris A said:

I see a lot of really large direct radiating loudspeakers with obvious changing polar coverage vs. frequency, higher modulation distortion, and surprisingly low efficiency for their size.  That seems to be a common theme.  It's a bit amazing to me that the "high end" loudspeaker marketplace is basically unchanged since the early 1980s.  It's a shame because there are much better engineering ways to do it--and much more cost effective.

Direct radiator loudspeakers are much easier to design than horns. Most of the money goes into making the cabinets "pretty" with curves, etc. Sonus Faber uses leather and aluminum trim, like THAT affect the SOUND...........puhlease!  But I don't agree about general consumer products "unchanged since the 80's" other than..............no horns. Driver technology has gotten much better, especially in the subwoofer driver arena.

 

Seems to me that so many designs have adapted the D'Appolito configuration, which helps a great deal. Also keep in mind that the wild fluctuation in directivity at different frequencies makes it an expensive proposition to tweak and tame any room with those as electro-acoustic transducers. 

 

What's interesting is, BY FAR, the best sounding speaker at Axpona 2 years ago, was one of the cheapest (Spatial Audio)..........an open baffle design with double 15" woofers.....one of them with a co axial compression driver.........for a shade over $2,200 a pair with passive network. For those who like active networks, you can't beat the LX-5 by Sigfried Linkwitz, or the CBT36 by Don Keele. 3 years ago, the best sounding at the show, at $40,000/pair were the Sadurni horn system from Mexico, using Hypex Class D amplifiers, which sold me on those babies.

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Well, this thread went into left field. 

 

i used to go visit Hi-end stores occasionally.  Not so much anymore, I'm too happy with what I have to be interested.  It helps that most of ours died in 2008/2009.  The music experience is often not that good, but I did enjoy a Holly Cole CD through Martin-Logan SL-3s several years ago at Nicholson's Hi-Fi.  They sounded like my La Scalas with a HUUGE soundstage.  

 

The Pipedreams were disappointing.  Boomy and indistinct from an overabundance of upper bass.  The electronics were impeccable, McIntosh separates.  

http://www.nearfieldacoustics.com/Products.php#Series_4

The room certainly was a part of the problem, but to sell me $200k+ of audio gear, it would have to sound a LOT better. 

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This Royal Oak, MI audio boutique sells Audio Research, Spendor, Magnepan, Vandersteen, and the like, and yet their window to the traffic on Woodward Ave. has a crappy aluminum mini-blind in the window.   The least expensive cartridge they offer costs more than $300,  more than the cost of a nice stained wood blind.  The subliminal message the owner sends to customers is, "Come on in, sit on some aluminum folding chairs and listen to speakers on cinder blocks." 

 

The alternative would be an elegant wood blind or, even shutters, to welcome customers to the elegant comfort of their audio salon and to encourage them to part with thousands of dollars.  A cheap blind from Home Depot sends the wrong message, IMO.  I had this discussion with the owner years ago, but no change.

 

You don't get a second chance to make a first impression.

 

IMG_0271.JPG

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I would recommend attending one of the high end audio shows in your area, such as AXPONA, and see what you've been missing.....or not.  I went to an AXPONA show in Chicago two years ago, and was seriously flabbergasted at the amount of people in attendance, the highly modern styling of many of the speakers, and of course....the pricing.   But actually, what was most surprising was the really, really poor setups that the manufacturers had to put together within the confines of a hotel room.  Can you imagine listening to a pair of $50,000 speakers, $25,000 worth of amps/preamps, etc, etc, etc, in a hotel room, where you would be sitting (at the most) 10-12 feet away, and then making a buying decision?  

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1 hour ago, DizRotus said:

This Royal Oak, MI audio boutique sells Audio Research, Spendor, Magnepan, Vandersteen, and the like, and yet their window to the traffic on Woodward Ave. has a crappy aluminum mini-blind in the window.   The least expensive cartridge they offer costs more than $300,  more than the cost of a nice stained wood blind.  The subliminal message the owner sends to customers is, "Come on in, sit on some aluminum folding chairs and listen to speakers on cinder blocks." 

 

The alternative would be an elegant wood blind or, even shutters, to welcome customers to the elegant comfort of their audio salon and to encourage them to part with thousands of dollars.  A cheap blind from Home Depot sends the wrong message, IMO.  I had this discussion with the owner years ago, but no change.

 

You don't get a second chance to make a first impression.

 

IMG_0271.JPG

 

That's because you're a blind man yourself...

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On 10/23/2017 at 3:51 AM, ClaudeJ1 said:

Direct radiator loudspeakers are much easier to design than horns.

If you don't count the design, test, and production of the drivers , yes.

 

On 10/23/2017 at 3:51 AM, ClaudeJ1 said:

But I don't agree about general consumer products "unchanged since the 80's" other than...no horns. Driver technology has gotten much better...

Drivers may have gotten better on the top of the scale, but I've noticed that many loudspeaker integrators ("manufacturers") don't use the best drivers with overhung or underhung voice coils, really big magnets, better heat transfer from the VCs, the best diaphragm materials, or even the best shorting ring designs. 

 

I've noticed far too many drivers that have internal resonances off of the spiders, the lack of a proper phase plug on to handle the on-axis cancellations at 1-2 kHz (woofers) or 4-6 kHz (midrange), and poor polar control on tweeters (i.e., lower register tweeter polars don't match the midrange upper registers in the crossover regions, etc., etc.)  Most crossovers/cabinets are not designed with true phase alignment at the interference bands, and all passive crossovers are still susceptible to ohmic heating issues and resulting electrical characteristics drift.  Some loudspeakers are partially designed to address "baffle step" (infinite baffle into half space) frequency response issues, and almost no loudspeakers have anechoically flat frequency response on-axis from 100 Hz-10 kHz, something that should be very easy to do with direct radiating loudspeaker designs. 

 

On 10/23/2017 at 3:51 AM, ClaudeJ1 said:

...the best sounding at the show, at $40,000/pair were the Sadurni horn system from Mexico, using Hypex Class D amplifiers

So what do you think the markup over manufacturer's cost is? 700%?  That's definitely "old school" marketing.  That sort of thing has single-handedly killed the higher performance audio marketplace for Millennials.  I think that boutique outfits need to get real with their marketing concepts if they intend to sell more than 5 pairs and have some real effect on the market.

 

Chris

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1 hour ago, Chris A said:

If you don't count the design, test, and production of the drivers , yes.

 

Drivers may have gotten better on the top of the scale, but I've noticed that many loudspeaker integrators ("manufacturers") don't use the best drivers with overhung or underhung voice coils, really big magnets, better heat transfer from the VCs, the best diaphragm materials, or even the best shorting ring designs. 

 

I've noticed far too many drivers that have internal resonances off of the spiders, the lack of a proper phase plug on to handle the on-axis cancellations at 1-2 kHz (woofers) or 4-6 kHz (midrange), and poor polar control on tweeters (i.e., lower register tweeter polars don't match the midrange upper registers in the crossover regions, etc., etc.)  Most crossovers/cabinets are not designed with true phase alignment at the interference bands, and all passive crossovers are still susceptible to ohmic heating issues and resulting electrical characteristics drift.  Some loudspeakers are partially designed to address "baffle step" (infinite baffle into half space) frequency response issues, and almost no loudspeakers have anechoically flat frequency response on-axis from 100 Hz-10 kHz, something that should be very easy to do with direct radiating loudspeaker designs. 

 

So what do you think the markup over manufacturer's cost is? 700%?  That's definitely "old school" marketing.  That sort of thing has single-handedly killed the higher performance audio marketplace for Millennials.  I think that boutique outfits need to get real with their marketing concepts if they intend to sell more than 5 pairs and have some real effect on the market.

 

Chris

I agree with 90% of what you say here, Chris. I only question generality about anechoic testing, since very few companies ever discuss this in the specifications. IOW, how do you know unless you have tested them yourself??

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