Concert Hall sound

[fas42]

6 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

With all due respect, I don't believe this is possible.

 

Ummm, that's exactly how it works - no pain, no gain ... the pattern has repeated over and over again, year after year. Why this happens is possibly because when the SQ is very close to the right level the mind wants it to all make sense - but, subconsciously, is frustrated because it still manifests defects which the mind can't see past; when the sound is midfi, then mind has no expectations and doesn't try to find more in the sound than the obvious elements.

[pkane2001]

7 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The "huge hole" being speakers and room? If so, completely wrong - competent sound doesn't require very much from here.

 

Not just room and speakers, but practically everything else in the audio chain. But I get it, if the sound is all in your head, nothing else matters but what you believe.

[Ralf11]

it's cheaper too - why blow your hard earned sheckels on gear when you can Mentalize Yo Sound!

[gmgraves]

3 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

Why doesn't the mind compensate for crummy solder?

 

or for mp3?

 

vinyl?

 

I think in Frank's case it does. He has said that recording quality doesn't matter. So, in that case, neither would a grungy vinyl record of a 32 kbps mp3 file!

 

3 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

Where is the event boundary that sets the acquisition limit on the black hole of SQ for the mind to suck it all in and create the illusion of a space-time continuum?

 

And.. since brain power is energetically expensive, why do I want to burn neuronic energy fields to create this illusion?

 

Since that I am now convinced that Frank is the (willing?) victim of an extreme case of expectational and confirmation bias, I don't think that in his mind there are any boundaries; event or otherwise.

[STC]

31 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

but practically everything else in the audio chain. 

 

Including good ears and brain. 

[gmgraves]

56 minutes ago, fas42 said:

then I start to believe

Just as we suspected.

 

56 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The 'learning' makes a difference - as said before, the current NAD gear on first test switch on was midfi mediocre - so I dived straight in, and did major surgery before trying to take it seriously. Immediately had huge gains, and knew I had something very promising to work with.

Do you have a degree in electronics, Frank? You say that you "dive right-in" making changes. What changes? And don't just say "circuit changes". Take the NAD amp that you are talking about, for instance. When you "dove-in" what did you change? Describe the part of the circuit you changed and tell us specifically what parts you change and why. I need to see phrases like "The NAD's input stage used a pair of LM301 OP Amps and I changed them to LME47910s". Or, "I replaced all of the NAD's interstage coupling capacitors with jumpers making the amp direct-coupled". Things like that. Then tell us why you did it and what specific benefit you expected to gain from the modification. Things like: "I changed the op-amps to LM47910s because they have much better slew rate than the LM301s and they have much better self noise specs. I did it because the newer parts' symmetrical slew when compared to the LM301 will give better square-wave response and the noise and distortion figures for the LME47910s gives a lower noise floor and cleans up the signal in a very noticeable way."

 

You get specific with what you did, and what if you did makes technical sense, then perhaps you can regain some credibility here.

 

Sound reasonable?

 

BTW - I'm not saying which of the two mods I mentioned above is a real modification (where applicable) or which won't work. They are just examples to find out how much you know about audio circuitry and whether you really CAN modify a NAD amp to make it high-end (or just sound "better").

[fas42]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Not just room and speakers, but practically everything else in the audio chain. But I get it, if the sound is all in your head, nothing else matters but what you believe.

 

The "everything else" in the audio chain is in pretty good shape - what people still seem to have great problems appreciating is that the circuitry if working as designed, as intended, does do a extremely good job of replicating what's on the recording. Which is why "cheap" gear can be pushed up to very high standards of subjective quality - the core functionality is fine. Which brings it all undone are the poorly chosen parts or methods of implementing the circuitry and the ways different areas are connected - going back the 100 lbs pull chain, most parts of a rig can do the 100 lbs, easy peasy - it's the other links which don't have the glamour of the circuitry parts which are below strength, that.do the damage.

 

I note people want answers, but it HAS TO FIT IN WITH THEIR CURRENT BELIEF SYSTEMS - if it doesn't, then then don't bug them about it any more ... for those who think that way, very little can be done - for those whose minds are not set in concrete, there is hope ...

[kumakuma]

6 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The "everything else" in the audio chain is in pretty good shape - what people still seem to have great problems appreciating is that the circuitry if working as designed, as intended, does do a extremely good job of replicating what's on the recording.

 

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you on this point.

 

The issue is more your contention that you can take your equipment past accurate playback into a mystical state where shitty recordings suddenly start to sound good.

[fas42]

46 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Just as we suspected.

 

Do you have a degree in electronics, Frank? You say that you "dive right-in" making changes. What changes? And don't just say "circuit changes". Take the NAD amp that you are talking about, for instance. When you "dove-in" what did you change? Describe the part of the circuit you changed and tell us specifically what parts you change and why. I need to see phrases like "The NAD's input stage used a pair of LM301 OP Amps and I changed them to LME47910s". Or, "I replaced all of the NAD's interstage coupling capacitors with jumpers making the amp direct-coupled". Things like that. Then tell us why you did it and what specific benefit you expected to gain from the modification. Things like: "I changed the op-amps to LM47910s because they have much better slew rate than the LM301s and they have much better self noise specs. I did it because the newer parts' symmetrical slew when compared to the LM301 will give better square-wave response and the noise and distortion figures for the LME47910s gives a lower noise floor and cleans up the signal in a very noticeable way."

 

Ummm, you will never get it ... because I have never, ever altered a component with those sort of ideas - see my previous post. The NAD was a mess because it had too much extraneous circuitry, with cheap pots and cheap switches controlling those areas - ditch all that functionality, and one starts to get somewhere ...

 

You see, you're still trapped in the "That link has 105 lbs strength; I need to up it to 114 lbs!" mindset - completely ignoring the cheap bit of hardware which is the next link - which is only 75 lbs. So, what happens when you pull on the chain?

 

Quote

 

You get specific with what you did, and what if you did makes technical sense, then perhaps you can regain some credibility here.

 

Sound reasonable?

 

No, it doesn't. There are pointless mods, and then there are genuinely useful ones - I tend to focus on the latter ...

 

[pkane2001]

4 minutes ago, fas42 said:

I note people want answers, but it HAS TO FIT IN WITH THEIR CURRENT BELIEF SYSTEMS - if it doesn't, then then don't bug them about it any more ... for those who think that way, very little can be done - for those whose minds are not set in concrete, there is hope ...

 

Frank, your beliefs are not supported by any known scientific, engineering, or psychological framework. For this reason, you need to supply real evidence and not anecdotes about your personal experience or analogies to car mechanics. Until you provide something more solid than that, you’ll keep getting the same responses.

[kumakuma]

6 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Ummm, you will never get it ... because I have never, ever altered a component with those sort of ideas - see my previous post. The NAD was a mess because it had too much extraneous circuitry, with cheap pots and cheap switches controlling those areas - ditch all that functionality, and one starts to get somewhere ...

 

You see, you're still trapped in the "That link has 105 lbs strength; I need to up it to 114 lbs!" mindset - completely ignoring the cheap bit of hardware which is the next link - which is only 75 lbs. So, what happens when you pull on the chain?

 

 

No, it doesn't. There are pointless mods, and then there are genuinely useful ones - I tend to focus on the latter ...

 

 

How about sharing some photos of what you've done to the innards of the NAD?

[fas42]

Just now, kumakuma said:

 

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you on this point.

 

The issue is more your contention that you can take your equipment past accurate playback into a mystical state where shitty recordings suddenly start to sound good.

 

Not mystical, merely where the detail is recovered cleanly enough for the mind to sort the good, from the irrelevant. This transition occurs for any sort of genre, style of music, age of recording - I have heard classical, blues, jazz, pop, folk CDs sound one time like a heap of poo; and at another as something that makes sense, and comes to life as an enjoyable experience - I have heard Louie Louie many, many times; often extremely sludgy, and then I hear it when the rig is in better shape - Ah-hah!! That's what's going on!

[fas42]

14 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Frank, your beliefs are not supported by any known scientific, engineering, or psychological framework. For this reason, you need to supply real evidence and not anecdotes about your personal experience or analogies to car mechanics. Until you provide something more solid than that, you’ll keep getting the same responses.

 

Do you get the concept that a chain is as strong as the weakest link - and that addressing those lesser elements is the most useful strategy? If not ...

 

The aspect of why the mind switches into another mode when listening to high quality sound is more precarious - Bregman and all those who are following his lead are most likely closest to getting a handle on that.

 

Most people in the audio game have experienced at least one occasion when a rig has produced 'magical' sound - the only thing unusual about me is that I have made it my "thing" to chase down what is required to make this happen, at will.

 

[gmgraves]

24 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Ummm, you will never get it ... because I have never, ever altered a component with those sort of ideas - see my previous post. The NAD was a mess because it had too much extraneous circuitry, with cheap pots and cheap switches controlling those areas - ditch all that functionality, and one starts to get somewhere ...

 

"The NAD was a mess because it had too much extraneous circuitry, with cheap pots and cheap switches controlling those areas..."

 

No, it doesn't. There are pointless mods, and then there are genuinely useful ones - I tend to focus on the latter ...

  

Show us what extraneous parts you ditched and what did they do; or more importantly, what did they NOT do that made you feel that they were extraneous, and how did you know?  You can't just go into a circuit and start ditching parts willy-nilly. For instance, what did you replace the pots with? Which brand and how do you know they were better than what NAD used? You can't tell my looking, you know! Were the NAD pots carbon pots or plastic film pots? were the pots you replaced them with plastic film? If so, what brand? 

 

And forget the pointless mods. Tell us which ones are are  "Genuinely Useful". WE WANT SPECIFICS!

 

24 minutes ago, fas42 said:

You see, you're still trapped in the "That link has 105 lbs strength; I need to up it to 114 lbs!" mindset - completely ignoring the cheap bit of hardware which is the next link - which is only 75 lbs. So, what happens when you pull on the chain?

I'm not trapped anywhere Frank. This isn't about me, this is about you. Trying to deflect the conversation won't work.  I'm trying to find out specifically what you did to that NAD and other components to elicit this incredible performance you brag constantly about. 

I back-up KumaKuma's request that you post a photo of the innards of your and and highlight on it what you changed or deleted. 

 

[pkane2001]

7 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Do you get the concept that a chain is as strong as the weakest link - and that addressing those lesser elements is the most useful strategy? If not ...

 

Yes, of course. And it would appear that the mind is that weakest link.

[fas42]

14 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

How about sharing some photos of what you've done to the innards of the NAD?

 

Would be no point. I've disconnected parts of the circuitry, link other bits in permanently. I use the shortest, simplest way of doing this, a length of copper wire a couple of mms long if I can - there is almost nothing to show, and anything significant always looks very messy - I have no interest in neatness when investigating, a rough and ready fix so long as it has the necessary electrical integrity is all I worry about.

[gmgraves]

11 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Do you get the concept that a chain is as strong as the weakest link - and that addressing those lesser elements is the most useful strategy? If not ...

Of course, Frank. It's obvious to even the most casual observer. Hell, Obvious to most 12-year olds. But that's not relevant to the subject at hand. Which is SPECIFICALLY what to do to to address those elements and even more specifically, you've been asked to show us PRECISELY what you have done to modify that mundane NAD amp of yours to get this incredible sound. stating the same circular arguments post after post is not going to get you off the hook here! So 'fess-up!

[gmgraves]

6 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Would be no point. I've disconnected parts of the circuitry, link other bits in permanently. I use the shortest, simplest way of doing this, a length of copper wire a couple of mms long if I can - there is almost nothing to show, and anything significant always looks very messy - I have no interest in neatness when investigating, a rough and ready fix so long as it has the necessary electrical integrity is all I worry about.

Of course it wouldn't. But humor us, Frank, post it anyway and mark the places you where you changed things and describe the changes in an accompanying text. Oh, yes, and how would you know if a circuit mod were necessary or not? You still haven't told us what your electronic background is that would allow you to know what parts in a given circuit are extraneous or necessary? 

IOW Frank, we're asking you to put-up or shut-up!

[fas42]

7 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Show us what extraneous parts you ditched and what did they do; or more importantly, what did they NOT do that made you feel that they were extraneous, and how did you know?  You can't just go into a circuit and start ditching parts willy-nilly. For instance, what did you replace the pots with? Which brand and how do you know they were better than what NAD used? You can't tell my looking, you know! Were the NAD pots carbon pots or plastic film pots? were the pots you replaced them with plastic film? If so, what brand? 

 

Go to STC's thread - I posted some photos of the amp's exterior, etc - picked up on the net. Huge array of switches and knobs on the front - not a single one now does anything, they're all eliminated. That is, all pots are now non-functional, even the volume!

 

7 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 

And forget the pointless mods. Tell us which ones are are  "Genuinely Useful". WE WANT SPECIFICS!

 

I'm not trapped anywhere Frank. This isn't about me, this is about you. Trying to deflect the conversation won't work.  I'm trying to find out specifically what you did to that NAD and other components to elicit this incredible performance you brag constantly about. 

I back-up KumaKuma's request that you post a photo of the innards of your and and highlight on it what you changed or deleted. 

 

 

Have you read what I posted on my blog?

 

The problem with trying to get a handle on what I do is that there is almost no overlap with the original Perreaux amp, so far. The latter had biggest issues with its power supply, and I haven't even started looking at this area on the NAD.

[fas42]

14 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Of course it wouldn't. But humor us, Frank, post it anyway and mark the places you where you changed things and describe the changes in an accompanying text. Oh, yes, and how would you know if a circuit mod were necessary or not? You still haven't told us what your electronic background is that would allow you to know what parts in a given circuit are extraneous or necessary? 

IOW Frank, we're asking you to put-up or shut-up!

 

Us magicians have special powers, you see, George - an important henchman is Google, and that faithful companion provided me with a service manual for the beast; I now had a circuit, which was vital - the amp when I got it was dead, wouldn't power up. Had to do quite a bit of troubleshooting, from the diagram to work out how a special chip monitored conditions, before it allowed power up. Was that chip faulty? No! Turned out to be that a simple resistor in one of the sensing paths had gone open circuit - replace, voila!

 

Guess if I can work that out, that I know enough about such stuff to do other things as well, eh ... .

[STC]

20 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Go to STC's thread - I posted some photos of the amp's exterior, etc - picked up on the net. Huge array of switches and knobs on the front - not a single one now does anything, they're all eliminated. That is, all pots are now non-functional, even the volume

 

Since you mentioned my thread, did you overlook the possibility that I too could have done the same before in search of perfect sound?  

 

AND, I think I got the least components in my chain compared to most here. I don’t even have a preamp in my signal chain. My power amp got 500 less component than a typical digital amp. I have been there, done that so nothing you tell us is new or relevant. 

[fas42]

42 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Since you mentioned my thread, did you overlook the possibility that I too could have done the same before in search of perfect sound?  

 

AND, I think I got the least components in my chain compared to most here. I don’t even have a preamp in my signal chain. My power amp got 500 less component than a typical digital amp. I have been there, done that so nothing you tell us is new or relevant. 

 

Of course I'm not covering new ground in what I do! Many of things that I have done over the years have been picked up from all the experiences of people out there; I've learnt a lot by just reading what others have done - and tried variations for myself.

 

What is the difference, is that I managed to fluke getting a very high standard of SQ over 3 decades ago, when all I had for help was the hifi mag I regularly got, HiFi News. And, electronics books from the library, etc.

 

What is relevant is that I've confirmed, for myself, that this high standard of playback is not a fluke, but is just the automatic result of taking sufficient care with correcting enough weaknesses - by tweaking. Others who tweak may not get these results - there are no guarantees; if one doesn't take care of all the critical weaknesses then the SQ will never get that good - that's guaranteed!

[STC]

17 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Well, you see that's what I mean. If the brain simplifies complex patterns like music,  then a compression algorithm should be able to use that information to simplify the the complexities of music by discarding most of the information in the sound field. And that is exactly what MP3 does. I had read somewhere that MP3 discards much of the sound in an audio file and that what it discards and what it keeps is based upon psychoacoustic research on how humans perceive music. I can listen to 192 kbps (WCRB Boston) and higher and better (BBC3 in GB which streams in ALC rather than MP3).

 

I don’t think that was the conclusion reached in the research. Unlike compressed music, we actually hear them but the brain reconstruct the pattern differently as opposed to sound being masked. 

[STC]

8 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Of course I'm not covering new ground in what I do! Many of things that I have done over the years have been picked up from all the experiences of people out there; I've learnt a lot by just reading what others have done - and tried variations for myself.

 

What is the difference, is that I managed to fluke getting a very high standard of SQ over 3 decades ago, when all I had for help was the hifi mag I regularly got, HiFi News. And, electronics books from the library, etc.

 

What is relevant is that I've confirmed, for myself, that this high standard of playback is not a fluke, but is just the automatic result of taking sufficient care with correcting enough weaknesses - by tweaking. Others who tweak may not get these results - there are no guarantees; if one doesn't take care of all the critical weaknesses then the SQ will never get that good - that's guaranteed!

 

30 years ago, the best 16bit DAC chip probably wasn’t invented. I doubt your NAD had that chip. No matter what was your tweak you could never exceed the SNR and THD of the chip. 

 

Please start your own thread. This is about concert hall sound, recording and natter related to that. Not a 30 year old fantasy. I ever tried to understand you but the book which you cited got nothing to with tweaking. 

 

This is will be my last reply to you. 

[semente]

17 hours ago, fas42 said:

The 'learning' makes a difference - as said before, the current NAD gear on first test switch on was midfi mediocre - so I dived straight in, and did major surgery before trying to take it seriously. Immediately had huge gains, and knew I had something very promising to work with.

 

Would you mind describing the surgery step by step?