I need an education

[DrWho]

There are many speakers that will drop down to 2 ohms at some point

in the frequency spectrum - many hybrid panels do for a start.

===============

But not woofers, which I think was Colin's reference for use of the amp. I just thought it amusing that no one ever brags that at 100W amp "puts out 50W at 16 ohms or 25W at 32 ohms."

I think it has more to do with a low output impedance and better damping...not so much the power handling itself.

[oldbuckster]

Well OB,

Looks like we ain't local enough

HarryO

Yeah Harryo, guess your right......Hell, he could spend the night, I wouldn't charge him anything, even feed him, Oh Well...................

[maxg]

In response to Parrot's message on 4/1 about auditory memory testing:

I remember choir auditions when I was played a series of non-melodic notes which I was expected to repeat. Start with one, and go to incrementally more notes. He plays, I sing. One college choir director took me to nine. Nine was enough for him, I guess.

I have no opinion on the previous posts here.

SSH

Not actually quite the same thing but interesting all the same.

Few questions come to mind:

If those same notes were recorded on different pianos could you pick which piano was played for your test?

Can you recall those notes that were the basis of the test now?

[Mallette]

TBHWY, I really did not expect the reaction to my claims. I make it a practice not to judge others abilities by my own, or vice versa, as there would appear to be some level of absurdity in that route. I have been confronted in my own and in others listening rooms with perceptive abilities I found utterly astounding, though they appeared to be completely effortless. In my own case, I never gave any thought to my ability to recall a performance in space/time or the ability in many cases to determine what mikes were used and where they were placed in a fine recording I did not make and was not present for. Detecting the presence of a mixer in an acoustic recording is childs play, and I can occasionally even tell where the musician was before the edititorial. These things matter more to me that whether I am listening to a SET, SS, or car radio. Perhaps only for me, but my rule is that a crappy recording is a crappy recording no matter how it is played back.

Now, a person who can tell what the beer will taste like by smelling the wort...THAT's a miracle!

Dave

[maxg]

Dave,

TBHWY? To be honest with you - just figured it out whilst completing the text below.

Anyway - sorry I appear to be bustin your chops over this - I will stop. I think the cause of this apparent disbelief is that audio memory - in the sense we are using it here - it notoriously poor and largely cited as the reason DBT's are so often failed with component swaps.

If you genuinely to have total sonic recall it is a truely rare gift. I certainly do not - I can recall aspects of a system's playback but not more.

Case in point. Last week I was at a house listening to a high end system. Last night I listened to the same music on my own system. It sounded FANTASTIC last night - but was it better or worse than Friday's session - can't tell - cannot remember Fridays performance in enough detail. In fact tonight a few audiophiles are coming over to give their opinion - and tomorrow night come to that - but SWMBO and Junior are away so I can.....

[Mallette]

Well, Max, you aren't really a "bustin" kind of guy. Raised eyebrow is more your style. I rather suspect I would be mystified at some of your own abilities. "Total sonic recall..." is something of an overstatement. I suspect my ability to recall a musical space/time event I've recorded is due to the incredible intensity with which I experience these events. About all I can compare it to is the experience I had of "corporate existence" in college days when I was a member of a trully extraordinary choir with a world-class conductor who had the ability to take 24 individuals and make a single mind from them. I would emege from a performance as though appearing on a transporter pad after a journey through space-time. I still have powerful imprints of those moments. I've a single tape I made of a final rehearsal of the Randall Thompson "Peaceable Kingdom" I can still pretty much "slip into" as through a mirror to another time and place.

Life is fascinating...

Dave

[Speedball]

Arf,

I too am anxious to one day hear tubes with my setup. I have a strong sense of curiosity anyway which makes me all the more anxious. I wonder if anyone will have any at the next Indy Klipsch gathering....Mmmmm.

[pauln]

All, there is great variability among people regarding their senses and the way these senses are experienced and utilized. Take vision for an example. Many folks lose some of their visual acuity and wear corrective lenses. Some are color blind (there are various forms of it), and some have poor night vision. Back in the days before corrective lenses I can imagine someone wondering how another could possibly see that thing in the distance, or distinguish two things that appear to be the same color, or see something as it gets dark.

Likewise, some people are tone deaf, which means that to some degree they cannot very well tell the difference between frequencies and intervals in music (when they sing they can't "carry a tune" or when they play an instrument they can't tell if the notes are in tune). There are variences in how well folks hear and experience the more subtle aspects of sound and music. Those like myself that can identify the key of a peice instantly and can walk up to a piano and sing in advance the pitch of any note you point to tend to be more interested in the musical instrument side of music and become composers or musicians. I can see why those that have a gifted ear for the spacial dimensions of sound and music would be especially interested in the nature and art of the recording process.

As far as memory is concerned, this is interesting. It has everything to do with the strategies employed in how the information is experienced and encoded. These strategies are internal and related to the inate and learned capabilites of the individual. If requested to memorize a peice of text or list of numbers, most of us will employ one of the common strategies and the resilts will vary. On March 14th, (3-14, or 3.14 as in the ratio pi) the news showed people that had memorized some of the digits of pi, some out to tens of thousands of places. Clearly their strategies are different than the common person. Some of them discussed their unusual strategies.

If asked to memorize a picture, now the internal reconstructive aspect is more hidden from observation to one's self. But take a simpler case - memorizing a color. For most folks, this seems easy and no confusion really exists between two shaes of green, for example. Even a month later the selection of the correct color from memory will be extremely close to perfect. Old style lense and film photographers know, of couse that all this may be upset by the use of different levels of lighting and different color temperatures of lighting. With pitch, all hell breaks loose. Most people, even most professional musicians will not be able to match a pitch within a semi-tone after a 3 minute lapse. The visual and auditory modalities are very different and use different strategies to achomplish discrimination.

When Mallette mentioned hearing music in his head I had to laugh to myself. I am much the same way. Often I will hear a peice in my head and walk over to the piano to confirm the key. For that matter I hear water in pipes and wind in the wires as music, too. Musical listening strategies seem to bleed over into the rest of the world of sound and noise.

For what it is worth, I think there is a sound-as-music (SAM) to music-as-sound (MAS) spectrum of listeners with a broad overlap between them. SAM is the more music focused side of the spectrum which especially hears and experiences pitches, intervals, melodic and harmonic relations - basically the music-structure aspects of the music. I think this explains why many musicians can tolerate relatively poor reproduction systems because they can "hear through" the limitations and map the existing sound to the one in their mind. The MAS end of the spectrum is the more sound oriented listeners who attend to and focus more on the actual sound acoustic representation-presentation of the music - the transients and decay in the envelope, the timbre, the closeness of the reproduced instrument to the real instrument sound, the spacial localization, the correctness of image scale, the trueness of dynamics, and the overall synergy of the recording - system - room presentation. Again, there is a great overlap across the total spectrum. I think it would look something like this, below.

What do you think?

[oldbuckster]

All of this just because the man wants to hear tubes..............Come on Arf, Head East brother, Head East............

[J M O N]

What do you think?

Interesting plot, looks like a normal distribution curve. But what characteristic is the Y-axis supposed to represent -- auditory memory, dollars sunk into stereo equipment, ability to repel the opposite sex???

[Mallette]

JMON, I am with you. I've had Mr. Paul in my house and while I appreciated the person I did not fully recognize the intellect present at the time. I've been looking at this thing and it's taking a bit of time for me to see where his head is. Perhaps a couple of days, or eons. I suspect this represents somehow the spread of the forum members from pure equipment to pure art, a thing I have pondered since I came here and have yet to figure out.

Parsing...

Dave

[DrWho]

I think you need to label the middle of the plot as "sound as magic" and then it might make a bit more sense.

[mas]

I find the irony amazing, as the point of the curve seems to correlate almost exactly with the point on the top of their heads.

But then I am amazed at persons who find it surprising that often poetry can benefit from an understanding of the tool of language as well as those who see no connection.

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