Being aware of misbehaviour of the playback chain

[PeterSt]

7 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Wrong. State-of-the-art recordings are recordings that sound like real music. The kind that bring the real musical performance into one's listening room (or takes you to the venue where the original performance took place).

 

Without fast enough gear and with -3dB at 70Hz or whatever it was you told - that would bring you decent response to your mid 30's ?

Never.

You wouldn't even have the slightest realistic response from a kick drum. I know, you skip those to feel more secure. Then take kettle drums. In a church.

Never.

 

If I change the bass response of my speaker with ONE dB in either direction from the standard measured tuning, nothing remains from what should be. And my speaker coincidentally is rated +/- 0.5dB straight from 100Hz to 19Hz.

We're not only living in an other country but also in another world. 

[PeterSt]

I now will misbehave, so you can lay me aside just the same :

 

I (too) have said countless of times that the room response is important to crucial, but that seriously nothing needs to be done with it if one only first has all other correct. For me it is the explicit measure for something being wrong. That "being" is a misbehaving device (could be an old Pioneer) or mismatch with whatever is involved, especially grounding.

 

Remember, I am that guy with the 118dB sensitive speakers (speaking about "fast") and 30W amplifiers (x8) into them, always at full gain. No noise can be heard from this and I can tell you that the challenge is huge to achieve his. Huge.

 

With improvements I "tweaked out" all the standing waves. This is otherwise high frequency buzzing (wrong digital filtering does that, "bad" amps do this, preamps in general incur for this (because detrimental to sound anyway)) and the low frequency type we all know of easily. Peaks and dips.

There is no single spot in my fairly large room anywhere, where standing waves can be detected by ear (I am not speaking about microphone). But be aware for the wrong tweak because I know the spots prone to audible standing waves and as said - it is just an explicit measure.

 

Of course you don't believe me. Still 30+ CA readers visited us over time and the same gag is always applied : walk around the room and find those standing waves. Anyone reading this who can testify they are not there ?

Anyone who can testify at what levels I might play and what undistorted bass up to any under limit of a normal instrument means, let alone synths which do go to that 19Hz easily when the artist wanted that ?

Or

How sheer infinite loudness is not going to hurt your ears while at the same time you never heard so much cymbal ? And you know, the feeling with that is really one of "infinity". No matter the sound pressure, highs are not going to hurt.

 

Of course you are not going to do this with the old Pioneer etc. It - for me - requires careful selection of everything which can contribute to speed, less noise and adequate coverage of the whole spectrum. It even requires the careful selection of not too low speced jitter oscillators. It requires thinking of how the various bandwidth capabilities of the as many components "interact" or influence each other.

It takes years. And prior to that a virtual infinite experience of what to listen for and how to interpret what you actually hear (going wrong).

 

And please, this is not about myself or my system. It is, however, about all who don't believe a thing of this and thus also don't make progress. That is really a waste, you know.

So the message : go ahead with first decorating your room, to next find yourself in the impossibility of using your "lousy" room as a measure for what is wrong in the base - and thus never solve the root cause.

And be in a dead room, of course.

 

So it is true, apparently no guitarist is able or allowed to play in our living room because it is not adequately decorated. This, while you know it is fine.

Would you, please, be able to describe why suddenly the sound from two speakers does need that decoration ? I have a small hint you possibly did not think of : what about the ambiance sound of the guitar going lower than 100Hz where each speaker starts to distort audibly, that ambiance sound even going under 30Hz quite easily (depending on whether you're Chris Jones or not), that fundament now lacking because the speaker can not represent it at all (say dead at 30Hz) and now your Chris Jones guitar may come forward inconsistently because of fundamentals of that ambiance lacking with the overtones still present.  Sorry for the long sentence but to me this sounds technically wrong. But this is also how I "set up" a system and continuously think about.

Do you ?

[Ralf11]

impressive even on mediocre midfi gear ===> mastered for itunes

[Allan F]

16 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Forget trying to rationalize this subject with Frank. He truly seems to believe that even bad recordings can be made to sound state-of-the-art with "correctly"* set-up playback gear.

 

An absolutely absurd notion, IMO. GIGO applies to music reproduction as much as it does to computer science and/or mathematics. While steps can be taken to decrease the effect of some characteristics of bad recordings to make them more listenable, a bad recording can't be turned into a good one on playback.

[gmgraves]

12 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Well George, still this is so. Maybe Frank is making it all up, but I sure don't. 

If we would be able to search for it, I could show you 2 or 3 times my own reporting in the Phasure forum about a change which implies 10K amplifiers to 50K. I mean the money, not the number of them. And this is only with software "upgrade".

 

I often explicitly say : how in the world can people be discussing any device when the Operating System alone is 100% crucial to the SQ performance. So I mean Do or Die, such a difference.

But first take that hurdle of annoyances / distortions because else all is moot. And this is 99,99% of people, thus also You. Just statistics.

I think I read somewhere that you use JRiver. So no wonder that no message can be put across. Haha.

Haha, but the most serious ... and not at all pointing in the direction of my own software, but surely tho those which can be counted on one hand that aim for the best SQ. Not that you would be interested ...

And no, I am not even talking about HQPlayer which most will recognize. That is a digital means to technically produce the best reproduction of the digital recording. That's filters. I do talk about how the whole noisy environment should be attacked and which is more crucial than any amp or DAC. And then take that filtering with it. So this is one or two dimensions many people think they can do without.

Each his own of course, but ...

Well I do HAVE JRiver, but it has nothing to do with my stereo system. I use it to play music through my desktop system. My main system uses the Logitech Media Server to stream my mostly WAV files from my computer to my Squeezebox Touch, and then to my DAC via coax SPDIF. I try to stay away from USB whenever possible, as I find it inferior in SQ to SPDIF.

My objection to Frank is not that he has a system, the quality of which he enjoys, but rather that he 1) brags about it constantly, but that he won't fully explain his "procedure" to anyone, no matter how many times people ask, and the things that he does reveal don't make any sense, and certainly wouldn't improve his system one iota. 2) He keeps pushing his belief that the quality of a recording doesn't matter and that the most horrible recordings can be made to sound like a live performance simply by performing a few nebulous tweaks on the playback side on some pretty mediocre equipment. Despite his protestations to the contrary, this simply cannot be done. Now I've run poor sounding recordings through all kinds of equalizers, run it through the various tools in Audacity and other sound manipulation software, trying to make them sound "less bad". I have improved some recordings a little, but nothing can improve the sound of a recording if decent sound wasn't captured in the first place despite Frank's claims!

[gmgraves]

51 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

An absolutely absurd notion, IMO. GIGO applies to music reproduction as much as it does to computer science and/or mathematics. While steps can be taken to decrease the effect of some characteristics of bad recordings to make them more listenable, a bad recording can't be turned into a good one on playback.

I've been trying to tell Frank this for weeks. But he insists that his system can perform this magic trick because he has "removed all the obstacles to good sound" from his system!

[Ralf11]

removing all those obstacles really cleans up things - you can hear the distortion of cheap crummy components in all its #$%^&*()_(* glory!

 

I'm gonna do it to my boom-box!

[gmgraves]

12 hours ago, PeterSt said:

I now will misbehave, so you can lay me aside just the same :

 

I (too) have said countless of times that the room response is important to crucial, but that seriously nothing needs to be done with it if one only first has all other correct. For me it is the explicit measure for something being wrong. That "being" is a misbehaving device (could be an old Pioneer) or mismatch with whatever is involved, especially grounding.

 

Remember, I am that guy with the 118dB sensitive speakers (speaking about "fast") and 30W amplifiers (x8) into them, always at full gain. No noise can be heard from this and I can tell you that the challenge is huge to achieve his. Huge.

 

With improvements I "tweaked out" all the standing waves. This is otherwise high frequency buzzing (wrong digital filtering does that, "bad" amps do this, preamps in general incur for this (because detrimental to sound anyway)) and the low frequency type we all know of easily. Peaks and dips.

There is no single spot in my fairly large room anywhere, where standing waves can be detected by ear (I am not speaking about microphone). But be aware for the wrong tweak because I know the spots prone to audible standing waves and as said - it is just an explicit measure.

 

Of course you don't believe me. Still 30+ CA readers visited us over time and the same gag is always applied : walk around the room and find those standing waves. Anyone reading this who can testify they are not there ?

Anyone who can testify at what levels I might play and what undistorted bass up to any under limit of a normal instrument means, let alone synths which do go to that 19Hz easily when the artist wanted that ?

Or

How sheer infinite loudness is not going to hurt your ears while at the same time you never heard so much cymbal ? And you know, the feeling with that is really one of "infinity". No matter the sound pressure, highs are not going to hurt.

 

Of course you are not going to do this with the old Pioneer etc. It - for me - requires careful selection of everything which can contribute to speed, less noise and adequate coverage of the whole spectrum. It even requires the careful selection of not too low speced jitter oscillators. It requires thinking of how the various bandwidth capabilities of the as many components "interact" or influence each other.

It takes years. And prior to that a virtual infinite experience of what to listen for and how to interpret what you actually hear (going wrong).

 

And please, this is not about myself or my system. It is, however, about all who don't believe a thing of this and thus also don't make progress. That is really a waste, you know.

So the message : go ahead with first decorating your room, to next find yourself in the impossibility of using your "lousy" room as a measure for what is wrong in the base - and thus never solve the root cause.

And be in a dead room, of course.

 

So it is true, apparently no guitarist is able or allowed to play in our living room because it is not adequately decorated. This, while you know it is fine.

Would you, please, be able to describe why suddenly the sound from two speakers does need that decoration ? I have a small hint you possibly did not think of : what about the ambiance sound of the guitar going lower than 100Hz where each speaker starts to distort audibly, that ambiance sound even going under 30Hz quite easily (depending on whether you're Chris Jones or not), that fundament now lacking because the speaker can not represent it at all (say dead at 30Hz) and now your Chris Jones guitar may come forward inconsistently because of fundamentals of that ambiance lacking with the overtones still present.  Sorry for the long sentence but to me this sounds technically wrong. But this is also how I "set up" a system and continuously think about.

Do you ?

I don't disbelieve you. You have explained the steps you have taken (although I don't know why anyone would would think that a dead silent system at full gain would be that important. Nobody listens at those levels, or anything like them. And speakers that are 118 dB sensitive should be able to run anyone out of the room when being powered by a smartphone's headphone jack, much less a 30 Watt amplifier.) and they seem logical. If you have managed to tame the standing waves in your listening room, of course your system is going to sound better. These are real, concrete, improvements. They aren't Voodoo or secret rites of the Knights Templar, that you have performed. These can be real improvements. I salute you on your diligence.  

[gmgraves]

12 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Without fast enough gear and with -3dB at 70Hz or whatever it was you told - that would bring you decent response to your mid 30's ?

Never.

You wouldn't even have the slightest realistic response from a kick drum. I know, you skip those to feel more secure. Then take kettle drums. In a church.

Never.

 

If I change the bass response of my speaker with ONE dB in either direction from the standard measured tuning, nothing remains from what should be. And my speaker coincidentally is rated +/- 0.5dB straight from 100Hz to 19Hz.

We're not only living in an other country but also in another world. 

I'm afraid that I have no idea what you're on about with this post! Where in the world did you get a figure like  -3dB at 70 Hz? What does it have to do with my reply to Frank about what constitutes a realistic recording? Have you been smoking Mexican laughing tobacco, Peter? 

[Allan F]

4 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I'm afraid that I have no idea what you're on about with this post! Where in the world did you get a figure like  -3dB at 70 Hz? What does it have to do with my reply to Frank about what constitutes a realistic recording? Have you been smoking Mexican laughing tobacco, Peter? 

 

The more generally employed expression, George, is wacky tobacky.

[PeterSt]

1 hour ago, Allan F said:

The more generally employed expression, George, is wacky tobacky.

 

    

[rando]

April 20 is still a month away and already this place is getting littered with casual references and threads about following The Dead around.  The run up to that last week is going to be wacky alright.

[PeterSt]

6 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Where in the world did you get a figure like  -3dB at 70 Hz?

 

I was a few dB's off :

 

On 20-3-2018 at 12:02 AM, gmgraves said:

My Martin -Logan Vistas are 3 dB down at 41 Hz in my listening room, which means they are useful down to the mid 30's.

 

Apologies !

 

6 hours ago, gmgraves said:

although I don't know why anyone would would think that a dead silent system at full gain would be that important. Nobody listens at those levels

 

Hi George - At full gain means : without any (analogue) attenuation. And of course I can't use the 30W for real in any occasion (say that I play at -15dBFS - digital attenuation - at most (at the loudest)).

What the message meant to say is : that low is the noise level. I think you may recognize this :

 

Ever back, when I for the first time was trying all without analoge attenuation (hence no preamp in the chain as well) which was with by FireFace800 back at the time and my horn speaker being 115dB sensitive, I could hear the noise blasting behind closed doors. This was only that bad because all the digital outputs were open (all doing nothing) via that RME matrix. I assume you know what I am talking about. Now prior to that situation I used a preamp all right (one of such passive Django's or whatever it was called) and all I did was eliminating the audible noise with it (because attenuating by analogue means also attenuates the noise, obviously). Meanwhile the noise was still there at ~-70dB or so and thus influencing the signal quality massively. But the mere message : this would be fairly normal to most systems, but people won't know it (for example because the speakers are 90dB sensitive only). But the signal quality would be just as bad.

In my case it measures at -120dB at this full gain and I know the theoretical improvement which is another 20dB because I know where it emerges (in the DAC's output stage).

 

Btw, for sure back at the time (which is now 13 years back I think - yes, 2005) I had no real reason in improving SQ by means of eliminating noise. But I was heading for eliminating the CD Player and eventually *all* what could be detrimental to sound, and then fund that the preamp should not be there as well. But with this noise ever slightly audible in the room (all on 24/7) I just had to work on that. So this is how I tweaked and tweaked (but it is not real tweaking already at this stage because just technical / electrical improvement without real SQ sense (at the time !)) until I got it dead silent.

Also, from there I learned how it made things literally faster (with the super fast speaker as the base) and how I could proceed on that with an even faster speaker (now 118dB) because the noise level could have it, so to speak.

 

On a side note I am not trying to explain what Frank maybe can't, but it *is* these kind of things which improve vastly. Otoh I am not fair because I can and do measure everything with equipment which is not for everybody, so to speak.

With "speed" as the target, in the end it comes down to higher slew rates with lower bandwidth down the line so HF noise can be tamed in a natural way (the amps have a bandwidth of 200KHz on purpose) with again crazy stuff like 6GHz (over 130m) capable interlinks. This, so the cable can't influence and sure with the knowledge that in the end it can't do a thing anyway BUT it won't ba a filter (nothing is solved by filters as such - but mind the bandwidth story).

 

7 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I try to stay away from USB whenever possible

 

Yes, I read that too and it is justified (IMHO). I recall the first days of CA and Gordon Rankin advocating (asnync) USB with everybody around that in hooray mood except for me (it should all still be in here somewhere). This is where I created that other interface but I could stick to it only for 6 months or so because it was too "proprietary" (for a commercial matter) and went to USB after all. Since then I am "fighting" it with first internal isolation (which I hunted after for literally years before I could do it) and later the Intona (mine has serial # 00001) which of course was not my invention. Then again my own with the in-DAC Phisolator (just weeks before the ISO Regen) and finally the Lush cable. These tweaks all matter vastly and they shouldn't. So as said, justified (your idea about it).

 

I will stop teasing you and better also not come in between the little fight you and Frank seem to have, and I do recognize that Frank puts his ideas forward quite often. Btw I must be careful not to do that too. I guess we are all audio enthusiasts. And oh, I think in the Lush thread I put up that list of quite old recordings (old hits) which all sound as today's but without the compression (try The Byrds for example). Say it starts with The Guess Who (American Woman) and not that this very one sounds like it was recorded yesterday, but unlike when I heard it back at the times as a very far away grindy ugly thing, today it is just beautiful. Maybe I should "state" that far and far more recordings only sounded bad but are not so bad at all. And/but my own recording is by far out the best (I am not able to molest much and all I personally can do is cause the meters not to overblow underway). ... Only trying to be in your context a little, George.

Thanks.

 

[PeterSt]

7 hours ago, gmgraves said:

What does it have to do with my reply to Frank about what constitutes a realistic recording? Have you been smoking Mexican laughing tobacco, Peter?

 

What I wanted to say with it is that when one lacks the ambiance levels to at least 20Hz in undistorted fashion, one misses about all when for example being in a church. So for our both fun (I hope) :

 

I have been listening to music for a month or so in a row with the analyser (FFT) constantly on, me watching the monitor for where played what, especially when I noticed "specialties" by ear. From there I learned that the kick drum in almost all occasions "rolls" into 20Hz without too much decay. Of course it depends on the reverberation of the recording room and of course it just as well depends on wat my own room adds (the microphone was very close to the speaker, though, like when the speaker itself is tuned.

This is also where I learned (because easy to see) that we should stay away from high passed LP masters, because there these ambiance levels lack (filter point is at ~30Hz).

 

What most people can't know is that these low frequencies are not about 32' organ pipes as about the only instrument which goes that low BUT if you want to represent it at realistic levels, don't make it a synth sound which is what would happen with distortion which is the most normal everywhere ... but it is thus about that ambiance which plainly lacks even at 2-3dB down, let alone when not present at all (most speakers are dead silent under 27Hz). Point is that this is also not solved with subs, unless they are so good that I am not aware of their existence (2nd harmonic should stay sufficiently low that no 20Hz will exhibit as 40Hz and the lot should remain inaudible assumed I can only feel 20Hz and not hear it).

These mere technical matters (though 100% SQ related now) all contribute to realistic representation of the real thing (be that live or a studio recording). It may come across as crazy but at some stage I started to be bothered by not being able to detect whether the recording was live or from the studio. I had to wait until the end to observe applause or not. So that crazy it can go, although I must say I got used to it and can recognize it better now.

 

Maybe I should mention an other explicit target I once started to be obsessed with : no cabinet around the speaker (bass) drivers. So for me such cabinet implies another means of distortion, and so it had to be open baffle. Well, that alone took more than 5 years ? First versions failed miserably because of the lack of power or inordinate positioning requirements. And now ? now it does 120dBSPL (1W/1m) easily (but is rated at 89dBSPL for "inaudible" distortion which is loud enough in my own 36x24x10' room).

All can be done I guess, with infinite time and some times $. But as I implied earlier : I guess it wouldn't have happened to the degree it did, if the target did not start to be "you" (I do all for myself but when finished I make it commercial and only *then* the real sh*t happens (because so much more difficult and with responsibility)).

[gmgraves]

3 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

The more generally employed expression, George, is wacky tobacky.

And a good euphemism it is too! Another is Maui Wowee, Humbolt Hemp, etc. 

[fas42]

8 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I've been trying to tell Frank this for weeks. But he insists that his system can perform this magic trick because he has "removed all the obstacles to good sound" from his system!

 

As is very obvious, Peter goes about optimising SQ in a very different manner from myself - and that's because he's coming from a very different direction; his set of experiences has guided him down certain roads which are quite a contrast to mine, but he's at the point now where everything he does quite distinctly impacts the sound - this is a good, and bad, place to be. The good is obvious, the bad is that one is constantly aware of how it can be better, and so one's thinking keeps being drawn to the next step ...

 

Those who have a few marbles rattling around inside their skull , should be able to pick up something happening here - those individuals who are very persistent about worring about small details are able to achieve something that most others can't. And if they really think just a little bit more, they might surmise that what is important is not what those few individuals actually do; rather, it's the type of focus being applied to the situation.

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

 

I was a few dB's off :

 

 

Apologies !

No worries, mate. I just didn't know to what you were referring!

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

Hi George - At full gain means : without any (analogue) attenuation. And of course I can't use the 30W for real in any occasion (say that I play at -15dBFS - digital attenuation - at most (at the loudest)).

What the message meant to say is : that low is the noise level. I think you may recognize this :

Of corse I do. Both my Krell and my H-K amps do the same thing, but then my speakers have nothing like 118 dB/watt/1 Meter sensitivity either! Of course I have plenty of power, so it doesn't really matter. 

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

Ever back, when I for the first time was trying all without analoge attenuation (hence no preamp in the chain as well) which was with by FireFace800 back at the time and my horn speaker being 115dB sensitive, I could hear the noise blasting behind closed doors. This was only that bad because all the digital outputs were open (all doing nothing) via that RME matrix. I assume you know what I am talking about.

Not really. I follow the part about the open inputs, but I really don't know what a FireFace800 is, or if I knew once, I've certainly forgotten!

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

Now prior to that situation I used a preamp all right (one of such passive Django's or whatever it was called) and all I did was eliminating the audible noise with it (because attenuating by analogue means also attenuates the noise, obviously). Meanwhile the noise was still there at ~-70dB or so and thus influencing the signal quality massively. But the mere message : this would be fairly normal to most systems, but people won't know it (for example because the speakers are 90dB sensitive only). But the signal quality would be just as bad.

In my case it measures at -120dB at this full gain and I know the theoretical improvement which is another 20dB because I know where it emerges (in the DAC's output stage).

I can see where a very small signal (like an electronic noise component) would be amplified greatly with very efficient speakers. When I was in high school, a friend or mine's dad had a Klipschorn (mono) in his basement. One day we wired up a length of line cord to a transistor radio earphone plug and connected the other end to the Klipschorn. When we connected it to the radio and turned it on, it surprised the hell out of us by being really loud (they sounded awful, of course)! A year or so later I was given a pair of Altec Lansing A7s (Voice of the Theater) speakers out of a local movie theater that was being demolished. They could do a similar trick, (not so loud though) but sounded equally as awful - I didn't even like them connected to my two hi-fi amps. I ended up donating them to my high-school as stage speakers. 

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

Btw, for sure back at the time (which is now 13 years back I think - yes, 2005) I had no real reason in improving SQ by means of eliminating noise. But I was heading for eliminating the CD Player and eventually *all* what could be detrimental to sound, and then fund that the preamp should not be there as well. But with this noise ever slightly audible in the room (all on 24/7) I just had to work on that. So this is how I tweaked and tweaked (but it is not real tweaking already at this stage because just technical / electrical improvement without real SQ sense (at the time !)) until I got it dead silent.

Also, from there I learned how it made things literally faster (with the super fast speaker as the base) and how I could proceed on that with an even faster speaker (now 118dB) because the noise level could have it, so to speak.

I see lots of folks on they forum say that their stereos sound better with preamps. I have to believe them, but I don't see how that's possible. Every active gain stage one adds to a system, the more the signal quality deteriorates. This is simple electronics. There is no such thing as "a straight wire with gain". There is  always a price to pay for active gain. It has always been my experience that removing a preamp and replacing it with a passive volume control always improves the sound by lowering the noise and distortion (providing the passive volume control is designed correctly, that is. IOW, a T-Pad). 

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

On a side note I am not trying to explain what Frank maybe can't, but it *is* these kind of things which improve vastly. Otoh I am not fair because I can and do measure everything with equipment which is not for everybody, so to speak.

It's not so much that Frank can't explain it, it's that he doesn't (won't?). The things he has revealed are nonsense. He might not know that, but there are lots of people here who do. 

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

With "speed" as the target, in the end it comes down to higher slew rates with lower bandwidth down the line so HF noise can be tamed in a natural way (the amps have a bandwidth of 200KHz on purpose) with again crazy stuff like 6GHz (over 130m) capable interlinks. This, so the cable can't influence and sure with the knowledge that in the end it can't do a thing anyway BUT it won't ba a filter (nothing is solved by filters as such - but mind the bandwidth story).

Most interconnect cables (even many cheap ones) are dead flat up into the 10 MHz range. That's plenty for audio.

 

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

Yes, I read that too and it is justified (IMHO). I recall the first days of CA and Gordon Rankin advocating (asnync) USB with everybody around that in hooray mood except for me (it should all still be in here somewhere). This is where I created that other interface but I could stick to it only for 6 months or so because it was too "proprietary" (for a commercial matter) and went to USB after all. Since then I am "fighting" it with first internal isolation (which I hunted after for literally years before I could do it) and later the Intona (mine has serial # 00001) which of course was not my invention. Then again my own with the in-DAC Phisolator (just weeks before the ISO Regen) and finally the Lush cable. These tweaks all matter vastly and they shouldn't. So as said, justified (your idea about it).

I find that Coax SPDIF is good through 192 KHz, and Toslink through 96 KHz. I've never been fond of USB, although my DragonFly v.1.2 , connecting my desktop computer to my desktop stereo and I'm listening to it right now (through an IFi iUSB power supply) and for it's purpose, it's OK. 

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

 

I will stop teasing you and better also not come in between the little fight you and Frank seem to have, and I do recognize that Frank puts his ideas forward quite often. Btw I must be careful not to do that too. I guess we are all audio enthusiasts. And oh, I think in the Lush thread I put up that list of quite old recordings (old hits) which all sound as today's but without the compression (try The Byrds for example). Say it starts with The Guess Who (American Woman) and not that this very one sounds like it was recorded yesterday, but unlike when I heard it back at the times as a very far away grindy ugly thing, today it is just beautiful. Maybe I should "state" that far and far more recordings only sounded bad but are not so bad at all. And/but my own recording is by far out the best (I am not able to molest much and all I personally can do is cause the meters not to overblow underway). ... Only trying to be in your context a little, George.

Thanks.

 

 

[fas42]

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

I will stop teasing you and better also not come in between the little fight you and Frank seem to have, and I do recognize that Frank puts his ideas forward quite often. Btw I must be careful not to do that too. I guess we are all audio enthusiasts. And oh, I think in the Lush thread I put up that list of quite old recordings (old hits) which all sound as today's but without the compression (try The Byrds for example). Say it starts with The Guess Who (American Woman) and not that this very one sounds like it was recorded yesterday, but unlike when I heard it back at the times as a very far away grindy ugly thing, today it is just beautiful. Maybe I should "state" that far and far more recordings only sounded bad but are not so bad at all. And/but my own recording is by far out the best (I am not able to molest much and all I personally can do is cause the meters not to overblow underway). ... Only trying to be in your context a little, George.

Thanks.

 

 

My main concern is that George puts his ideas forcefully, about what is possible with playback - and such should not be allowed to be unchallenged if obviously wrong; people with less experience will soak it up, and we will have more decades of mediocre audio surrounding us - enough is enough!!

 

Very few get to hear how good those old recordings really are - like American Women, and I find that a great shame ... the audio friend down the road is into the band Yes; but I found it hard to understand why - when he first played his copies of their albums they sounded pretty awful, on his rig as it was in those years ago it had all the qualities that George would have showed great contempt for - weedy, confused, a "why am I wasting my time listening to this rubbish!?" experience. Years later, with much greater knowledge at his disposal, the true majesty of these musical creations can be largely heard - and there is still more to be revealed ...

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

Maybe I should mention an other explicit target I once started to be obsessed with : no cabinet around the speaker (bass) drivers. So for me such cabinet implies another means of distortion, and so it had to be open baffle. Well, that alone took more than 5 years ? First versions failed miserably because of the lack of power or inordinate positioning requirements. And now ? now it does 120dBSPL (1W/1m) easily (but is rated at 89dBSPL for "inaudible" distortion which is loud enough in my own 36x24x10' room).

All can be done I guess, with infinite time and some times $. But as I implied earlier : I guess it wouldn't have happened to the degree it did, if the target did not start to be "you" (I do all for myself but when finished I make it commercial and only *then* the real sh*t happens (because so much more difficult and with responsibility)).

This is Dave Wilson's belief as well. That's why he uses some strange mix of epoxy and other "stuff" for his cabinets to make them very heavy and very inert. It must work because to me, the best cone speakers I've ever listened to for any amount of time was the WATT/Puppy 5. After all, even Dave Wilson admitted that the drivers he used were nothing special and were off-the-shelf from a European supplier (he tweaked them somewhat though, especially the tweeter. I think by injecting ferro fluid into the voice-coil gap, but I could be disremembering here). My M-L ESLs don't have a cabinet above about 400Hz, but I have wondered how much better they might sound if the bass cabinet could be eliminated...

[fas42]

2 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

It's not so much that Frank can't explain it, it's that he doesn't (won't?). The things he has revealed are nonsense. He might not know that, but there are lots of people here who do. 

 

 

 

It's not so much that you can't understand what I'm saying, it's that you don't want to - the concept that an electronics chain requires a certain, very high level of integrity to be able to fool human hearing is distasteful to you - because it gets in the way of the normal audiophile fantasies, those similar to a teenage boy dreaming about his "best car" - it's got to have the biggest engine, the widest tyres, the loudest exhaust, the brightest paint job, to be "good enough" ...

 

A driver of many years experience wants a car that just gets the job done, in an uncomplicated, controlled manner - consistency and good behaviour "win the race" ... and so too in audio.

[gmgraves]

11 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

My main concern is that George puts his ideas forcefully, about what is possible with playback - and such should not be allowed to be unchallenged if obviously wrong; people with less experience will soak it up, and we will have more decades of mediocre audio surrounding us - enough is enough!!

THEN TELL US ALL HOW TO FIX IT! Since you "obviously" know. 

11 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Very few get to hear how good those old recordings really are - like American Women, and I find that a great shame ... the audio friend down the road is into the band Yes; but I found it hard to understand why - when he first played his copies of their albums they sounded pretty awful, on his rig as it was in those years ago it had all the qualities that George would have showed great contempt for - weedy, confused, a "why am I wasting my time listening to this rubbish!?" experience. Years later, with much greater knowledge at his disposal, the true majesty of these musical creations can be largely heard - and there is still more to be revealed ...

Well, you can put lipstick on a pig. But it's still a pig. That's my opinion of worrying over the last soupçon of "Fi" just too play topical "pop" crap. 

[fas42]

4 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

THEN TELL US ALL HOW TO FIX IT! Since you "obviously" know. 

Well, you can put lipstick on a pig. But it's still a pig. That's my opinion of worrying over the last soupçon of "Fi" just too play topical "pop" crap. 

 

Well, I politely asked you to evaluate how your system behaved when you varied the volume with brass content recordings - and you treated that with contempt. If you're not prepared to take a first step, I "can't help you".

[gmgraves]

1 minute ago, fas42 said:

It's not so much that you can't understand what I'm saying, it's that you don't want to - the concept that an electronics chain requires a certain, very high level of integrity to be able to fool human hearing is distasteful to you - because it gets in the way of the normal audiophile fantasies, those similar to a teenage boy dreaming about his "best car" - it's got to have the biggest engine, the widest tyres, the loudest exhaust, the brightest paint job, to be "good enough" ...

Once again, Frank. You are wrong! I would love to "understand you" but - and here's the crux of the matter - YOU HAVEN"T SAID ANYTHING! All you do is boast about your results and post in vague terms; and the things you do actually say, make no sense in the realm of electronics, acoustics, or even Newtonian or Einsteinian physics! 

 

7 minutes ago, fas42 said:

A driver of many years experience wants a car that just gets the job done, in an uncomplicated, controlled manner - consistency and good behaviour "win the race" ... and so too in audio.

Bad analogy. Lewis Hamilton does not win F1 races by tweaking the air (pardon me, the nitrogen) in his tires! He has the best car, with the best engine and the best solid engineering in the team behind him (not to take anything away from his talent as a driver, you understand). What wins in motor sport as well as Hi-Fi is good, well designed and well made equipment. Again, Lipstick applied to a pig or a tuxedo on a goat does nothing to alter the fact that they are still a pig and a goat.  

[gmgraves]

7 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Well, I politely asked you to evaluate how your system behaved when you varied the volume with brass content recordings - and you treated that with contempt. If you're not prepared to take a first step, I "can't help you".

See that doesn't make any sense. Because the brass will get louder or softer as one would expect, but the shortcomings of the recording (any brass recording) and it's inability to accurately record the sound of live brass in a real space, doesn't change one iota. Now what? 

[opus101]

10 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Now what? 

 

...is there a point where the tonal quality of the brass changes, or is it totally consistent throughout the range of volumes?