D-MAN Posted August 5, 2004 Share Posted August 5, 2004 I'm flying off on a tangent, here... I have been considering lately what PWK thought about things. Unfortunately he's gone now, and what we have left is all published stuff that, well, is basically business-related propaganda (that is, information with a particular agenda behind it). So I am left trying to read between the lines... PWK is one of my heroes, but he was also making a living at building and selling his designs for loudspeakers. That means that he had to make a few compromises in his decisions. Also, I expect that it means that he said things, or guarded what he said, or couched it in terms suitable for the times and his purposes, as well as to promote his products any way that he could to his potential market. Anyway, his designs are even more important taken in context with his business savvy and long term marketing performance. His Klipschorn design is reason enough to be rightfully recognised as a genius, but it's his abilities as a business man that really count. In studying his well-known horn designs, I can see where he cut corners, and where he did not. The choice of drivers in particular...leaving untreated 90 degree corners in the horn channels of both the Belle and the La Scala, but not the Klipschorn. Using 1/2" plywood. The use of the EV-tweeter. Some of this stuff is simple cost reduction, certainly not the best available at the time, and not the best choice for the sound. But we all agree that it could be certainly "good enough to sell" and stand behind and that is where one cannot fault Mr. Klipsch at all. His choices were/are indeed correct, and the longevity of his product line proves it beyond a doubt. But just because it could be manufactured and sold in that way doesn't mean that he actually thought that was the best. And he certainly wouldn't TELL his audience that it was a compromise made to be economically viable... I think one should study and be discerning about things. Some people by cars and drive them without ever changing them; some add things to them that make them go faster or look better. In our cases, the experimenters gravitate toward the Heritage speakers because of what PWK admittedly said were an experimenters dream... DM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted August 6, 2004 Share Posted August 6, 2004 ---------------- On 8/5/2004 6:11:19 PM D-MAN wrote: I'm flying off on a tangent, here... In our cases, the experimenters gravitate toward the Heritage speakers because of what PWK admittedly said were an experimenters dream... DM ---------------- Yes, you are On the other hand, it's quite apparent that most of our "experimenters" here couldn't solve a Bessel function or a Fourier Transform if their life depended on it! Nor do most have the resources or access to the proper measurement equipment to confirm what they do or do not hear, to look for consistency or inconsistency in their subjective findings. I think there is are some misconceptions as to what PWK determined as "best". Take a tweeter for instance. Yes there are "better" tweeters than the EV T35. But better for what? More acoustic output? Better power handling capacity as would be required in certain professional applications? These types of things do not necessarily translate to better sound or accuracy of reproduction. Many of the tweeks I see on the Forum actually demonstrate how little most actually know and understand about "how a horn works" and what it does. Or about wave propagation, mechanics and even more importantly (IMHO) how all the components, in particular the speaker/listener, relates to room acoustics. PWK simply stated that the cost of many of these "so-called" improvements were not economically justified (in his opinion) because what was the sense in substantially increasing the cost to everyone, when such a small percentage of people even found it audible, and even then, only under the best of, or only certain conditions. Maybe today, with all the ultra porno-priced "boutique" products out there for the truely compulsive nerotic, he might have been able to get away with that. The real qustion boils down to his integrity in not doing so, making "the best" affordable to a much larger audience. Beyond this, my position is still one of, if you don't have the proper environment, regardless of what you do with the components, you are not going to be able get the best performance from them, and there will still be things you hear that are exaggerated, or attenuated, because of it (they don't build special "rooms" for sypmphony orchestras for nothing you know!). In rooms the size that we have to deal with in domestic environments, you are basically listening to the room, even more so, than in a "acoustically perfect" auditorium/concert hall. This is a fact, not my opinion. My reference is live sound. Music or otherwise. And I have conducted live verses recorded sound tests with better than expected results, as well as some disappointments. In any instances, the recording medium itself (either analog or digital) has been the limiting factor. Achieving "good sound" that sounds good to you is one thing (easy). Achieving "good sound" that not only sounds good to you, and most other people, but is also known to be able to accurately reproduce "sound" with "live sound" as a reference is another matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-MAN Posted August 6, 2004 Share Posted August 6, 2004 Artto, correct! You bring up an inarguable fact about the environment, and perhaps THE most important... As far as modifications, etc., I think that we will never really know about the rest except for the examples PWK left (the Heritage line) as to his decision making process... But anyone who studies those can draw their own conclusions. DM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg928gts Posted August 6, 2004 Share Posted August 6, 2004 The kick drum (bass drum) in a modern rock music recording is the foundation of the low frequency impact that is heard and felt by the listener. It doesn't matter if one is being critical of the quality of the low frequency sound or the impressive volume, if the engineer has not "created" the sound of that kick drum properly, and balanced it well with the bass guitar, the impact is lost; on the master tapes, or on the cd off the shelf. So much of what is heard in modern recordings (rock music especially) that is considered "good recording", happens right at the sound board during the take. Give the engineer his due. 9 times out of 10, if you were there at the studio and sat in front of the individual band members while they were playing, you'd be surprised at how differently the engineer (and producers) are making the instruments sound. The recordings that I enjoy listening to the most, start with a solid kick drum that has frequencies between 40 and 80 hz almost flat and a neat little snap at 5K, a snappy snare drum with a "crack" somewhere around 400hz, every note of the bass guitar finding it's own space in the low end of the mix, never mushy, and always distinct, guitar, keyboards, and horns properly mixed so that they don't overpower the vocals, cymbals that ride over the instruments with lots of air around them, never having frequencies that get into the vocal range, vocals that are clean, clear, just barely mixed out front, and believable (meaning it sounds like they're are singing with the band and not to a recording, which of course is what they are really doing). I have a limited selection of recordings that meet these standards. Most recordings I listen to make me wish I had a mixing board and a rack of outboard gear in front of me while they're playing. Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted August 6, 2004 Author Share Posted August 6, 2004 ---------------- On 8/6/2004 8:43:18 PM greg928s4 wrote: The kick drum (bass drum) in a modern rock music recording is the foundation of the low frequency impact that is heard and felt by the listener. It doesn't matter if one is being critical of the quality of the low frequency sound or the impressive volume, if the engineer has not "created" the sound of that kick drum properly, and balanced it well with the bass guitar, the impact is lost; on the master tapes, or on the cd off the shelf. So much of what is heard in modern recordings (rock music especially) that is considered "good recording", happens right at the sound board during the take. Give the engineer his due. 9 times out of 10, if you were there at the studio and sat in front of the individual band members while they were playing, you'd be surprised at how differently the engineer (and producers) are making the instruments sound. The recordings that I enjoy listening to the most, start with a solid kick drum that has frequencies between 40 and 80 hz almost flat and a neat little snap at 5K, a snappy snare drum with a "crack" somewhere around 400hz, every note of the bass guitar finding it's own space in the low end of the mix, never mushy, and always distinct, guitar, keyboards, and horns properly mixed so that they don't overpower the vocals, cymbals that ride over the instruments with lots of air around them, never having frequencies that get into the vocal range, vocals that are clean, clear, just barely mixed out front, and believable (meaning it sounds like they're are singing with the band and not to a recording, which of course is what they are really doing). I have a limited selection of recordings that meet these standards. Most recordings I listen to make me wish I had a mixing board and a rack of outboard gear in front of me while they're playing. Greg ---------------- I've often wondered with all the multitracking crap what the possibilities of putting out raw unmixed recordings (or slightly mixed recordings) that follow some standard to allow the listener to tweak to his heart's content...I suppose this contradicts the whole purpose of a recording engineer in the first place (which totally destroys my future career, lol), but gets rid of the referencing crap to try and make it sound good on as many systems as possible. I really don't think that it'd be too hard to write software that does all sorts of basic mixing operations (expandable to the complexity desired by the listener) that also automatically recognizes each song and remembers your settings. And for those too lazy or that just don't care, the recording itself should be mixed to already sound good without any tweaking. I know there's lots of issues and problems with this, but I still think it's an interesting thought...oh how the industry would change. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg928gts Posted August 7, 2004 Share Posted August 7, 2004 You know, I think you're right, they could do something like that in the digital realm. Kind of like how they fiddle with movies on DVD, where you can choose your own ending and such. Wow, I would love to be able to real-time remix at the source! Here I am, just trying to figure out a way to adjust bass from one cd to another without an op-amp getting in the way. Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edwinr Posted August 7, 2004 Share Posted August 7, 2004 ---------------- On 8/4/2004 9:56:43 AM artto wrote: Because I (or anyone) can easily add whatever distortions we want to a known, clean, accurate reproduction system to make any particular recording sound more 'pleasant', impressive, or whatever. If the distortions (both equipment and acoustical) are there in the first place, it's not so easy, if not impossible, to get rid of them and get the best out of the best recorded material. ---------------- ...and from there we start going back to the old 'bass' and 'treble' controls, and so-called graphic equalisers that were (are) so popular in the mass produced hi-fi for dummies end of the market. It's a fact that some cd's are poorly recorded and I admit some of them are close to being unplayable on my Klipschorn system. So I've recorded these bad sounding cd's on my cassette deck, and when I want to listen to this stuff on my Klipschorns, I do so via this cassette deck. I don't want to sacrifice the high resolution of my system just so I can play a few poorly recorded cd's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted August 8, 2004 Author Share Posted August 8, 2004 hey Art, have you ever tried taking a crap recording and editing it on your pc and then burning a new CD? I would think that doing this would likely only result in a further compromised recording that sounds akward; even if the remix is "correct." I'm just secretly hoping that I could remix Nightwish to make it sound awesome on your system (I still can't get over how it sounds so unbelievable on my mediocre system while sounding like utter crap on your very nice setup.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted August 10, 2004 Share Posted August 10, 2004 ---------------- On 8/8/2004 7:27:37 PM DrWho wrote: hey Art, have you ever tried taking a crap recording and editing it on your pc and then burning a new CD? I would think that doing this would likely only result in a further compromised recording that sounds akward; even if the remix is "correct." I'm just secretly hoping that I could remix Nightwish to make it sound awesome on your system (I still can't get over how it sounds so unbelievable on my mediocre system while sounding like utter crap on your very nice setup.) ---------------- For the most part, its called boosting the bass +16dB. Yes, thats probably the deviation you are used to hearing. Richard Burwin, many years ago, in his 20KW home system, five channel, fully horn loaded, said he found that most commercial recordings needed anywhere from 5 to 30 dB of boost in the low frequencies. As the room gets smaller, these kinds of anomolies increase. Mike, I think you need to come over for a second listen, both for the SS version of things as well as some EQ experiments. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rigma Posted August 11, 2004 Share Posted August 11, 2004 Greg, "The recordings that I enjoy listening to the most, start with a solid kick drum that has frequencies between 40 and 80 hz almost flat and a neat little snap at 5K, a snappy snare drum with a "crack" somewhere around 400hz, every note of the bass guitar finding it's own space in the low end of the mix, never mushy, and always distinct, guitar, keyboards, and horns properly mixed so that they don't overpower the vocals, cymbals that ride over the instruments with lots of air around them, never having frequencies that get into the vocal range, vocals that are clean, clear, just barely mixed out front, and believable (meaning it sounds like they're are singing with the band and not to a recording, which of course is what they are really doing). I have a limited selection of recordings that meet these standards." Can you list some of the recordings that meet these standards? I agree with the above and would like to add these type to my collection! Rigma Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted August 11, 2004 Author Share Posted August 11, 2004 ---------------- On 8/10/2004 6:59:25 PM artto wrote: ---------------- On 8/8/2004 7:27:37 PM DrWho wrote: hey Art, have you ever tried taking a crap recording and editing it on your pc and then burning a new CD? I would think that doing this would likely only result in a further compromised recording that sounds akward; even if the remix is "correct." I'm just secretly hoping that I could remix Nightwish to make it sound awesome on your system (I still can't get over how it sounds so unbelievable on my mediocre system while sounding like utter crap on your very nice setup.) ---------------- For the most part, its called boosting the bass +16dB. Yes, thats probably the deviation you are used to hearing. Richard Burwin, many years ago, in his 20KW home system, five channel, fully horn loaded, said he found that most commercial recordings needed anywhere from 5 to 30 dB of boost in the low frequencies. As the room gets smaller, these kinds of anomolies increase. Mike, I think you need to come over for a second listen, both for the SS version of things as well as some EQ experiments. ---------------- I would love to take you up on such an offer...I'll be working during the week in Michigan for the next month or so, so perhaps a sunday afternoon or evening sometime? You are too kind. For what it's worth, I've been trying to do some critical listening of Nightwish and I'm totally sick of the stuff now, lol. All that crap I heard coming out of your system is coming out of my system, but just quieter. But now that I hear it, I can't ingnore it anymore! I so knew this would happen, lol. *runs off to go listen to the beatles* (plz don't tell me their recordings suck too) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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