# HiFi and Hollow Forms



## Eric The Viking (3 Dec 2011)

This is entirely Jacob's fault: 

A discussion elsewhere about being pretentious about 'hollow forms' reminded me of my HiFi experiences years ago. Here's pretty much what I learned:

There are good and great hi-fi designs, and there are some rules of thumb: 


 you can hardly, ever, hear the difference between two competently-designed amplifiers,
 you cannot at all hear the difference between two lots of heavy gauge speaker cables,
 you cannot hear the difference between two brands of half-decent CD player,
 you couldn't possibly, ever, in a million years of trying, hear the difference between mains leads,
 you shouldn't be able to hear the difference between different types of interconnecting cable. If you can, mend the broken one.
 turntables should be heavy and level, go round smoothly, and go 'thunk' if tapped with a metal object.
 putting a CD player on any sort of vibration-absorbing pads usually leads to marks on the surface underneath and a perceptible lightness in the upper wallet region
 painting CD edges green leads to being laughed-at, and green fingertips, and a perceptible lightness in the upper wallet region
 lifting loudspeaker leads off the floor on little pylons is really good for running your son's train-set, and adds a perceptible lightness in the upper wallet region 
Nothing can track the digital cannon in the Telarc 1812 Overture properly, because the groove walls are almost at right angles to the spiral.
 proper measurements tell you far more than any hi-fi mag review.

and finally, 


 there are more snake-oil salesmen in hi-fi than in snake oil.

Anybody care to add any others?

Cheers,

E. (who once got thrown out of a Bose factory outlet in the States for asking for a 'proper' spec of one of their loudspeaker designs).


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## gus3049 (3 Dec 2011)

How strange, I find that actually agree with at least two of those points.

However, I have five complete hi-fi systems. All consist of first class components designed and made by Quad, Radford, Sugden, Kef, Garrard etc..

If what you say is true, how is it that changing any one item in the various systems, changes the sound?

That is FOR ME - WITH MY EARS AND SENSITIVITIES. The problem with a statement such as yours is that it can only be true for you, you have no idea what my system (bodywise) is going to hear in my various systems (hi-fiwise). Measurements can only be a guide. Hi-fi is, at best, an approximation of reality and even reality is filtered by our individual make up and experience. Some equipment seems to sound more REAL than others even if they measure very similarly. This is my experience. If yours is different then so be it.

I don't drink snake oil and I never listen to hi-fi salesmen. I buy with my ears - what's left of them. I am, by training, a guitar maker. I have a fairly well developed sensitivity to nuances of sound. This is necessary to make a first class instrument. There are basic measurements but the final tuning of the instrument is made by ear.

My best hi-fi - Leak Stereo 20, Quad ESL57, Garrard 301, sounds very close indeed when playing a recording of one of my guitars. By todays standards they probably don't measure too well, all being made in the 1960's but they make glorious music and music is what hi-fi should be for.


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## Jacob (3 Dec 2011)

It's the totality though. Any single item may make little discernible difference but put all the top-end things together and you presumably will notice a difference with the opposite.
We used to take the p;;s out of a touring cycling friend who would go to extremes with weight reduction and had been spotted weighing toothbrushes and cutting the handles off. His argument was if you approached all your kit in this way it could add up to a kg or so. 
Not sure what this has to do with urns (a.k.a. hollow forms r.i.p. :lol: :lol: ).


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## Doug B (3 Dec 2011)

Eric The Viking":3h07lr1y said:


> This is entirely Jacob's fault:
> 
> A discussion elsewhere about being pretentious about 'hollow forms' reminded me of my HiFi experiences years ago. Here's pretty much what I learned:
> 
> ...



Yebbut what hifi did you end up with :?: 



Jacob":3h07lr1y said:


> Not sure what this has to do with urns (a.k.a. hollow forms r.i.p. :lol: :lol: ).



I prefer pots & lidded pots, urn is sooooooooooooo last year. :lol: :lol:


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## Eric The Viking (3 Dec 2011)

@Gus: I think that's my point though - you evidently use your ears!

And, I'd agree with your choice too (apart from the 301, but every one I've ever used was probably knackered). 

I own some similar items, including Sugden, Surrey Electronics and Quad. My dad was friends with Arthur Radford for many years, and I have one of his design of amps, Dad's I mean, it's very good. The round-and-round stuff is Connoisseur (Sugden) and Technics and Cambridge (for digits). Tape, for location, is usually DAT (hasn't been bettered as a non-solid-state format - would like an HD2 but don't do enough to justify it these days).

I don't have any 'interconnects' that cost more than about £2.50*, and at least one pair of speakers are connected with old Flymo cable, because it's reasonably heavy gauge and convenient. I haven't found an audio use for the lawnmower yet though. 

@ Jacob: Of course you're right, but there is this weird 'follow the crowd' thing that leads to paying >£20 each in a well-known High St. store for phono cables, and buying 'better' mains cables too. Provided the things are _properly_ made in the first place, there's no detectable difference between cables costing £2.00 and those costing £200. 

Don't get me started on gold-plated digital cables of various sorts (HDMI, DVI, etc.). I've even seen gold plated fibre-optic connectors, which plug into moulded plastic receptacles on the back of the units.

@Doug: I've got quite a nice setup, acquired over the years. The most used system is Cambridge Audio CD + LS3/5A speakers (AM8/12). There's gain adjustment but no EQ in that setup. I have too many turntables at present and will be slimming down to one SP10/SME SII imp. and one Sugden (Connoisseur BD2/SAU2/Nagoka or Ortofon). I prefer the SP10 as it doesn't rumble noticeably, at all, but I'm most fond of the one I should really sell :-(. 

E.

*there is merit in careful screening/impedance matching for vinyl pickups, but it's the exception - perhaps go to £4.50 there!


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## Racers (3 Dec 2011)

Eric,

Have you tryed Eichman bullet plugs? http://www.latinternational.co.uk/eichmann_bullet.html They recon to be a better impeadance match tham normal RCAs, I have mostly DIN plugs on my HiFi, only 2 on the back on one of my CD players, I changed the other cd player to a DIN socket which made it sound better.

My speaker is 16mm CSA cable its about 1/2" across! and four seprate wires, luckly I have an understanding wife.

Pete


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## woodbloke (3 Dec 2011)

You forgot about the old Linn saying...'garbage in, garbage out'. Probably the most important one of the lot - Rob


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## Racers (3 Dec 2011)

Yes they are right load of rubbish that LP12 :wink: 

Have you seen the price of a top spec one? over 12K I beleve :shock: A 2K Well Tempered Amadaus is said to be better.

Pete

P.S Eric I wouldn't say all those statments are true, but I don't want to start a 83 page thread off :wink:


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## Eric The Viking (3 Dec 2011)

Pete, 

Outstanding find! That cable (with the phonos) is almost £500/m, but I see they do mains cables too - yummy! 

The technical blurb is utterly brilliant, especially where it gets going on "impedance matching." I wonder if the average punter realises it's leaving around 2-300 ohms and arriving into anywhere between 2k and 10k? I didn't look -- do they sell snake oil too, to polish everything with?

. . .

Regarding my 'checklist' don't tell me you can track the Telarc 1812?

Ackshully, the best workout my LS3/7s probably ever got was being dragged into the playroom for eldest's birthday party. He watched 'Master and Commander' with his friends. I used the Monitor Audios for the main front pair, eq'd the 3/7s "slightly", and set them up to fire across the room at each other from about 10ft apart. 

After a quick test with no kids present, I kept their faders shut, until the French fired on Russell Crowe...

"That's a real 200W/channel for you, Mister Maturin."

I got told off by the Domestic Controller, mind, but the boys thought it was brilliant.


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## Jonzjob (3 Dec 2011)

It's OK for you lot with all yer fancy kit! we had to go to the very large Basilic St Nazaire in the old Cité of Carcassonne with our French neighbours and listen to a 12 piece string orchestra for a couple of hours this evening and apart from the orchestra being superb and the acoustics in the church being fantastic it was rubbish. Lovely music in a wonderland setting and NO electronics of ANY kind, not even a mike, or fred for the leader to speak into!












This is the window they were playing under, photo taken this morning after we had been to the Christmas Marché






It beats any kind of home entertainment centers you could possibly get! Oh, and because one of the neighbours we went with is a 17 year old music student we got to chat to the musicians afterwards too. try talking to yer getto blasters and no matter what you paid for them they ain't goin to answer, are they 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 

Oh yes, and on the way into the Cité we got some of this too






Two things that I had forgotten to say. One, it was _*free*_ to go in and two, they were all playing hollow forms :mrgreen:


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## cambournepete (3 Dec 2011)

OK, I'll bite...

My wife and I can both hear differences between cables and I'd certainly not use a £2.50 interconnect...

I also noticed a worthwhile difference in our TV/hifi setup changing the freebie HDMI and mains cables with better (more expensive) ones.


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## cutting42 (4 Dec 2011)

The forum that Pete M and I inhabit have these discussions on a boringly regular basis. There are folks that say can hear cable differences and some who think it is hooey.

I am of the later group generally, I use mains cables from Farnell for mains and respectable £3-4 per metre speaker and interconnect cable that has plenty of copper conductor and that is it.

However I did hear my std cables on a friends system - Sonus Faber Amators with high end valve amps can't remember which ones - and it sounded a bit flat to be honest. we put back his £1000 solid 5n silver cables and it sprang to life, very nice indeed. I am not about to spend a grand on cables but just saying they can change the sound on occasion.

PS just remembered they were Audio Research pre and power amps.


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## Eric The Viking (4 Dec 2011)

I'll be the first to concede that bad cables can sound nasty. I don't want to knock people who want good sound either. What gets me is the companies who feed off gullibility.

Mains cables are an excellent example. If the power supplies of the amp are properly designed, and the mains supply is adequate, changing the last few feet of cable can't possibly make any difference. This is why you _never_ see the results of statistically valid double-blind tests in magazines, only highly subjective reviews instead. In any case, nobody's going to wind the mains transformer with oxygen-free silver, or whatever, nor insist on 'aligned crystals' in the wiring back to the sub-station! And what about those pesky sub-stations, and pylons for that matter... and the 13A fuse without which you can't turn it on!

HDMI/DVI is wholly digital. If the signal is so poor that you can hear the error correction working (the only possible reason for hearing any difference between correctly working cables), the cable itself is sub-standard. If cables meet the standard, by definition you won't tell the difference between ones that just meet it and ones that exceed it by 'lots'. That doesn't mean there are no duff cables being sold, but it does mean that the very expensive ones bring no benefit other than 'pride of ownership' over the merely adequate ones.

You don't, by and large, read discussions about the linearity of DACs (or ADCs!!) in Hi-Fi magazines, which would make a BIG difference to fidelity, largely because (a) they usually don't have the technical competence to discuss it, and (b) the relationship with manufacturers is incestuous and the issue would open a can of worms. Instead you get stuff about raw error rates and jitter, which, generally speaking, have no effect in normal use because they're expected and corrected-for. 

What about the kit used to make the recordings? The best-performing stuff I own uses 1/8" jacks in and out for the analogue sections! I've no control at all over the wiring inside either.

Got an MP3 player? Use DVDs? Both of them use lossy compression with clearly audible artefacts. I use DAT for recordings, which doesn't. It's a rare opportunity nowadays though, that lets me use it to its potential. Nothing off-air or otherwise pre-recorded is likely to be clean enough for any difference in quality to be apparent.

Even then, nobody seems to pay any heed to the analogue outputs (and inputs) of portable digital devices. Given the voltages used by the things, they can't drive moderate impedance headphones, and consequently require (relatively) high currents in the headphone circuits. It's the same problem as hi-fi loudspeaker cables - controlling the damping factor. Unlike a loudspeaker, which is generally considered to be radiating into free space, earbuds effectively acoustically couple to the eardrum. The ear canal becomes a resonant cavity. That means any change in position, or even the difference between individuals, would make a dramatic difference. to the sound. If you use over-ear cans, you're back at damping factor and voltage issues.

I'm sure, like me, you've heard audio systems that blow you away with the sound. I remember the first time I was allowed to 'play' with a full symphony orchestra, for example (Neumann SM69s, Calrec and monitoring on LS3/7s). It didn't sound like sitting in the stalls, and it wasn't the same off-tape, either! But there wasn't an oxygen-free copper anything in sight, although my senior colleague did smoke like a chimney!

Cheers,

E. 

PS: I still have two Sony pro-Walkmans somewhere. All analogue and very good for their time but wholly obsolete now, obviously. Sony put a DC-DC converter in them so that the audio circuits run at 24V to improve the s/n and headroom, and it worked magnificently. I can't imagine anyone doing that in an iPad! This was the closest I could find to any look at the audio design. I'd be fascinated if anyone knows of anything more comprehensive...


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## RogerS (4 Dec 2011)

Jonzjob":kf3hn9pe said:


> .....
> Oh yes, and on the way into the Cité we got some of this too
> 
> 
> ...



So *that's* where Jacob has been hiding ! :lol:


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## RogerS (4 Dec 2011)

Eric, you forgot a few.

The type of capacitors is critical and even if they are non-polarised then they will sound better connected one way round to the other
If your freezer needs defrosting then the extra load needed to keep it cold will affect the sound of your hi-fi


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## Jacob (4 Dec 2011)

RogerS":1zxpaxn4 said:


> Jonzjob":1zxpaxn4 said:
> 
> 
> > .....
> ...


Well I've got to earn a living somehow. :roll:


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## Eric The Viking (4 Dec 2011)

That's surprising. I'd always got you down as moonlighting with one of these:





:?


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## doorframe (4 Dec 2011)

Eric The Viking":1oy24lk0 said:


> Nothing can track the digital cannon in the Telarc 1812 Overture properly, because the groove walls are almost at right angles to the spiral.
> .



I don't know. Sounds fine on the old Amstrad.


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## Eric The Viking (4 Dec 2011)

Point taken. People tend to forget Alan Sugar's early days.

Does yours have the 'spatial depth'* switch too? 

E.

*I think that's what it was called. Time blurs the memory, thankfully.


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## gus3049 (4 Dec 2011)

Eric The Viking":2wd7bibb said:


> Point taken. People tend to forget Alan Sugar's early days.
> 
> Does yours have the 'spatial depth'* switch too?
> 
> ...



I have a long memory. It was listening to an Amstrad that made me seek out something that actually sounded like music. So I have Suralun to thank for my journey into the nether regions of 'quality gear', including, of course, a few nice esoteric bits of cable, supporting racks, anti-vibration gizmos and crystals.

I could hear a change with almost everything, not necessarily and improvement of course, but a change - yup. 

I now have - gasp - £5 interconnects and the usual 49 (or thereabouts) strand speaker wire. It all sounds fine to me. Even if I thought that the odd £1000 lead might make a difference, I couldn't justify the cost of a zillion new bits of music to listen to (to which to listen).

But for some, hi-fi itself is the hobby whereas to me its the music. perhaps this makes a difference.


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## Eric The Viking (4 Dec 2011)

gus3049":ka5j37se said:


> But for some, hi-fi itself is the hobby whereas to me its the music. perhaps this makes a difference.



Heck, me too!

I really enjoy listening to a good hi-fi system as much as anyone, but it's always about what performance I'm listening to rather than what's emitting the noise in the room.


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## dickm (4 Dec 2011)

A friend from many years ago was a professional opera singer. At the time (late 1960s), I had a really mediocre audio system (reel to reel tape and home-built speakers). I thought it sounded c**p, but professional singer had no problem with it. My guess is that his understanding of music meant he was hearing something totally different from me, and presumably filling in/blanking out whatever wasn't "musical".
Which is presumably Gus1049's point.
The old Tandberg reel-to-reel that I acquired later still sits in the loft. And when it does come out, it still seems to sound better than later digital stuff! Just a bit "inconvenient".


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## Racers (4 Dec 2011)

Hi, Eric

I know the digital stuff is just 1 an 0s but I have had a couple of faults on thin eithernet caused by having 75 ohm cable instead of 50 ohm, one fault was caused by 6" on 75 ohm cable with BNC on each end! tha other was caused by a radio ham thinking that VWSR would be o/k if he put in a couple of 1M lenghts he had kicking around, it wasn't it even caused my tester a problem, I was getting closer and closer to the fault when the distance started to increase!

There is a couple of laser turntables that might track the 1812.


Don't look at this unless your blood pressure is dangerously low http://eandt.theiet.org/news/2011/nov/power-cable.cfm

Pete


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## Eric The Viking (4 Dec 2011)

Racers":1glqegi0 said:


> Don't look at this unless your blood pressure is dangerously low http://eandt.theiet.org/news/2011/nov/power-cable.cfm



It's wonderful - a cable costing more than a car! 

You could buy a lot of lead acid batteries and a very good charger for that, and dispense with mains altogether - absolutely no ripple at all!

Slightly depressing that it's on the IET web site though*.

Sorry, that sounded a bit uncharitable. I'm sure it sounds really lovely. 

Of course you're absolutely right about impedance issues - it does make a difference with Ethernet, just not much difference in the analogue cables of a home hi-fi setup.

E.

PS: for many years I had one high quality co-ax cable with these on the ends:








but that was for 50Hz timing pulses!

*I missed the irony: they have a good article here.


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## Racers (4 Dec 2011)

Hi, Eric

I prefered crimp BNCs much quicker to do, I used a battery stripper that even cut the foil on Belden 9907 one wizz and pull, crimp the pin and the sleeve and job done.

I find DIN plugs/sockets work better for audio, don't know if its the impeadance or the single earth path.

I used to run my preamp from batterys but a mains supply sounded better, I had 4 12 7AH sealed lead acid ones suplying 2X 24V.

If you are ever in Nottingham pop round for a listen.

Pete


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## Woody Alan (4 Dec 2011)

> PS: for many years I had one high quality co-ax cable with these on the ends


Ah the old manual board jack plug, the reliable work horse of the GPO and when the cord got dodgy, the bane of the manual board engineer having to get down in the back of the board and having to put up with looking through at the operatotrs legs. Ahh happy days. One had to wear a tie as an engineer before being allowed into the manual board in those days, although today no more manual boards.([aside] as a result there are many unmarried GPO engineers these days) Sorry I digress from hifi and am talking about 300Hz to 3.4kHz..... hardly hifi. 

Alan


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## doorframe (4 Dec 2011)

Eric The Viking":1x6bzi1u said:


> Point taken. People tend to forget Alan Sugar's early days.
> 
> Does yours have the 'spatial depth'* switch too?
> 
> ...



This is the offending article.






It looks much better than it sounds. And it looks pineapple.

My poor old Mum worked many hours O/T to get me a stereo ('music center' back then) for xmas when i was a young teenager. I couldn't tell her how lousy this piece of junk was and had to suffer it for about 5 yrs. Eventually every button had fell off. Bit by bit it fell apart. The cassette deck was first to disintegrate. The tuner was barely useable from the start, and the 'stroboscopip' turntable was NOT stroboscopip!! It was just a piece of cleverly disquised plastic, with more wow and flutter than you could poke a stick at. The speakers had the handling capacity of a banana, and the graphic equaliser was farcical.

How did they get away with selling such utter tosh??

Alan Sugar....... YOU'RE FIRED!!

Roy


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## CHJ (4 Dec 2011)

The best amp in my house is a home built in the early 1970's, based on a design by John Linsley Hood who continued to simplify and tweak the design for some years. (I worked in the TRE/RRE at the time so was influenced somewhat in choice of design) currently fed via a Quad pre-amp from a Goldring-Lenco variable speed deck.
Quite capable of removing the coils from the speakers cones if you disturbed the input connectors before you turned the gain down. (still go the rebuilt warfdales in the loft I think that were in those large base reflex cabinets.)

Afraid day to day listening is now down to a set of listenable denon boxes matched to some coda speakers that take up a fraction of the room and are easy on the ears.


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## xy mosian (4 Dec 2011)

CHJ":rz6bdc4q said:


> (still go the rebuilt warfdales in the loft I think that were in those large base reflex cabinets.)



Would they be the original Airdales? Six sided ceiling facing tweeter etc. I joined the acoustics lab at Wharfedale not long after they went out of production, thankfully. If I'm right they have a sand filled baffle. I wouldn't have wanted to mave many of those in and out of the acoustic chamber  
xy


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## CHJ (4 Dec 2011)

No didn't have the cash for such luxuries as pre-made units, just managed to buy the best gold badged speaker units I could afford (I started paying a mortgage in 1963), it was a case of getting the books out and building the cabinets myself, first ones were 3/4" veneered blockboard skins with sand filled baffles, base reflex, the most solid pieces of furniture in the house. The cause of much comment when we had our first fitted capet fitted and they had to be moved, likewise when we moved house in the mid 70's, removal men not amused.


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## Hudson Carpentry (4 Dec 2011)

I agree and disagree.

I can tell the difference in inter-connectors and cables but to a degree. You do need a "decent" set of separates and speakers and more to the point, a decent well tuned set of ears.

Mains cables is just a hoaxs I say. The only time a mains cable could make a difference is if that mains cable was shielded and your laying the mains cable close and in parallel with interconnects and speaker cables. Ill admit I know little about building amps but what I know about electronics is that once a transformer has stepped down the voltage a voltage regulator is used. So whether the transformer gives 20, 24 or 28v it will always supply the circuit with the voltage the VR is rated for.

Now back to the ears thing. You take your average person and they can't tell the difference between cheap and expensive cables but if knowing what each cable costs they would have you believe the more expensive ones sounded better (I call this the Festool effect). In many cases there brains will tell them the more expensive onces sound better because they expect them to. Now for someone with a tuned set of lugs, they generally can and the proof is when they can say that the more expensive cable isn't matched to the system and gives a poorer sound. One expensive cable can sound brill on one set up but pants on the next, as you say, impedance matching and resistance in the cables.

On my setup I use a mix of cheap, budget and expensive leads. It depends on which speaker and which device.

Like all things having the best is always nice but not needed. Having £1000 leads might make a difference to the sound but does it really add that much to the music from say a correctly set up system would give you. Does not having the best or even a perfect setup detract from the sound? 

Me I think not. Its all margins, every little it in. I haven't bothered upgrading to BluRay, DVD looks like real life, its a good clean picture even on my 83" screen. I don't see that I need more resolution for movie watching, I don't see that I need more vibrant colours (but does it? Ill get around to this) and I don't see that a cleaner picture when watching real film (ie not cartoons and animation/cgi) is really that much cleaner.

Ask yourself, why make adverts containing stunning colours and effects that wow you to advertise HD when they are assuming your on a non HD TV? Surely you wouldn't see the stunning colours and effects to HD standard. All but you do, a well toned TV will display colours at the same vibrance (within its range) as an HD TV. Its back to what has already been said, cleaver advertising and the human need for better. HD is really just a better pixel count per inch.

When watching cartoons, films filmed in cgi or animation on Sky HD or playing xBox I can clearly see the difference between HD and non HD, but watching real life films the difference is marginal. My point in the HD is with the average music listener, its them in the know that can tell. To further explain my point, when me and the other half go into the cinema, I will say (if I hear so) that there is something wrong with the sound, she will say it sounds no different to how it normally does, then get annoyed as ill start playing with the settings.


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## Jacob (4 Dec 2011)

Lengthening thread - very toolyish - all about the tools and no mention of woodwork!
So do you all listen to music with all this kit or just the cannon in the 1812?
Abba? Max Bygraves? Pinky and Perky? Nothing at all?


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## studders (5 Dec 2011)

Jacobs 'State of the Ark' System.


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## Racers (5 Dec 2011)

Hi, Hudson Carpentry 

Mains cables do make a difference, the current draw from a power amp is in a series of pluses as the smoothing caps charge up so the peak current is much higher than the rating for the amp, so a thick cable will sound better, doesn't have to be an expensive one.
I have 60.000uF in each of my amps and when I turn them on the lights dim,

Pop round for a listen if you want.

Pete

Jacob, Japanese Death Jazz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaufAE7-imY


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## Jacob (5 Dec 2011)

Racers":3c293dy7 said:


> ...
> 
> Jacob, Japanese Death Jazz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaufAE7-imY


Like it. Very retro - they did it better in the old days http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxibMBV3 ... re=related


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## Eric The Viking (5 Dec 2011)

OK, if we're going _there_, try this on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8Msxznyhfc
It doesn't say on the YouTube version, but that's Tommy Flanagan on piano.

Phenomenal album.


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## CHJ (5 Dec 2011)

Hmmm.


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## Eric The Viking (5 Dec 2011)

Sorry - it played here (on Virgin BB). 

The album is "Then & Now" CBS 4625162. It's playing (off CD!) as I type.

Deffo easy-ish listening, but brilliant. Herbie Hancock is on it too, and Sid Simmons.


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## Jacob (5 Dec 2011)

Eric The Viking":9j6j5dkr said:


> OK, if we're going _there_, try this on:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8Msxznyhfc
> It doesn't say on the YouTube version, but that's Tommy Flanagan on piano.
> 
> Phenomenal album.


Grover Washington. Nice but just a bit "easy listening".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_TG18cL ... re=related

Brilliant links on youtube - could be here all day :shock: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ja2v0CI ... re=related


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## CHJ (5 Dec 2011)

Will have to come back to the links when back in UK.


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## cutting42 (5 Dec 2011)

Jacob":1lnedvox said:


> Eric The Viking":1lnedvox said:
> 
> 
> > OK, if we're going _there_, try this on:
> ...



I'll play as well, my fav piano player

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvc5tSqak2Q&feature=fvst

Oh by the way Jacob, equipment fetishism is way more advanced in HiFi than in woodworking circles. Woodies think a 5 grand plane is over the top, 5 grand is not even getting strated in HiFi circles for some people, how about these speakers. A snip at 210 grand.


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## CHJ (5 Dec 2011)

As the boss found out a couple of weeks ago whilst we were being demo'd a 8000 series Tv, she remarked that the small set of speakers stood on the side would look better matched than the ones we have if they were to be placed alongside a new unit.
The rather high 4 fig. price tag quoted changed the visual appreciation for some reason.


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## Eric The Viking (5 Dec 2011)

I chuckle a bit about the going rate for 3/5As on fleabay. 

If I were to re-veneer mine really carefully, they'd probably be worth around £1500. But it's like house prices - what would I replace them with? Far too useful and convenient. A second pair would be handy, but now, ridiculously unattainable. 

Still, it's amusing to think we used to use them for foldback and talkback a lot of the time. And monitoring, it's true, but 'twas a foolish man who touched any tone control below 200Hz...

E.

PS: I count three lots of horn loading in that picture, and a rather odd attempt (possibly) at an acoustic lens. "Now class, what's the rule about horn-loaded loudspeakers... ?" I don't actually like Spendor BC1s very much, but I know instantly which I'd prefer to listen to. Are they what's becoming known as 'steampunk'?


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## gus3049 (5 Dec 2011)

cutting42":recwl2xm said:


> Oh by the way Jacob, equipment fetishism is way more advanced in HiFi than in woodworking circles. Woodies think a 5 grand plane is over the top, 5 grand is not even getting strated in HiFi circles for some people, how about these speakers. A snip at 210 grand.



I suppose if you are spending that sort of money on speakers, the £1000 mains lead might not seem to stupid. Nice looking bit of woodwork though.

It would be interesting to discover the percentage difference in quality between a system like that and my classic old system. I strongly suspect that I won't get the chance but I doubt its more than 2 or 3% better which makes the cost difference a bit of a waste of time - for me at least.


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## gus3049 (5 Dec 2011)

Eric The Viking":31ym38po said:


> I chuckle a bit about the going rate for 3/5As on fleabay.



And indeed the Garrard 301. I found mine in the loft of a house I bought, along with the Leak amp and tuner. Bargain.

Mind you, if you look at the engineering, it would no doubt cost a fortune to make nowadays. In the UK anyway, the Chinese could probably do it for a couple of quid.


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## cutting42 (5 Dec 2011)

gus3049":3d9yq7kj said:


> cutting42":3d9yq7kj said:
> 
> 
> > Oh by the way Jacob, equipment fetishism is way more advanced in HiFi than in woodworking circles. Woodies think a 5 grand plane is over the top, 5 grand is not even getting strated in HiFi circles for some people, how about these speakers. A snip at 210 grand.
> ...



And therin lies the conundrum. I have heard some excellent systems, one of which probably pushed 40 grand and did have fairly expensive interconnects and mains leads, he also had a dedicated main supply isolated from the rest of the house. It did (and does) sound astonishing and is very accurate. I have tested much of my DIY hifi stuff through it and it is very revealing of differences between components. 

However my home system which is much more modest although I probably have spent a few thousand over the years is also capable of making music that I enjoy but in a very different way to my friends system. I would not spend 20k on a pair of speakers but I am making some for which the drivers alone were 800 quid and the crossovers probably 200. If these were to be commercialised they would have to sell at 10 grand to make a profit for someone.


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## gus3049 (5 Dec 2011)

Probably my last word on this thread. Starting anything about hi-fi seems guaranteed to get a few comments  

I've heard very expensive systems that clearly demonstrate how the music was put together, show the minutae of the performance and leave me absolutely cold. My only criteria is - does it move me? - if I don't start tapping my feet and jumping up and down in time to the music, the system is 'hi-fi' and nothing to do with 'music'. My cheapest system - Marantz Cd63 SE, Musical Fidelity A100 and Kef 101's - absolutely rocks. All my bits were chosen for that reason and no other. If I have ever bought anything that failed to move me at home it went straight back to eBay or the shop.

It doesn't always take lots of money - just a good set of ears and a love of music.


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## RogerS (5 Dec 2011)

Eric The Viking":33r01us4 said:


> ..... I don't actually like Spendor BC1s very much, ....



Wash your mouth out immediately and go and stand in the corner !


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## doorframe (5 Dec 2011)

gus3049":xg2tez0t said:


> My only criteria is - does it move me? - if I don't start tapping my feet and jumping up and down in time to the music..........




......... then you're listening to the wrong music :wink: .

Roy


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## RogerS (5 Dec 2011)

gus3049":3cc69qmk said:


> ... My only criteria is - does it move me? - if I don't start tapping my feet and jumping up and down in time to the music, ....



How does that work with Schoenberg ? :roll: :wink:


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## gus3049 (5 Dec 2011)

RogerS":9wdjdhkz said:


> gus3049":9wdjdhkz said:
> 
> 
> > ... My only criteria is - does it move me? - if I don't start tapping my feet and jumping up and down in time to the music, ....
> ...



Yikes - wot a norrible thought :shock: 

I'm sure I mentioned 'music'


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## gus3049 (5 Dec 2011)

doorframe":1whejm9q said:


> gus3049":1whejm9q said:
> 
> 
> > My only criteria is - does it move me? - if I don't start tapping my feet and jumping up and down in time to the music..........
> ...



See next post :lol:


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## xy mosian (5 Dec 2011)

CHJ":3py2uano said:


> No didn't have the cash for such luxuries as pre-made units, just managed to buy the best gold badged speaker units I could afford (I started paying a mortgage in 1963), it was a case of getting the books out and building the cabinets myself, first ones were 3/4" veneered blockboard skins with sand filled baffles, base reflex, the most solid pieces of furniture in the house. The cause of much comment when we had our first fitted capet fitted and they had to be moved, likewise when we moved house in the mid 70's, removal men not amused.



I bet thay have a good solid sound Chas. I never got around to making my own cabinets myself. Although I did have a pair of concrete drainpipes with my first system. On a suspended wooden floor I certainly felt the music  
xy


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## myturn (5 Dec 2011)

Eric The Viking":1lm7ow2k said:


> This is entirely Jacob's fault:
> 
> A discussion elsewhere about being pretentious about 'hollow forms' reminded me of my HiFi experiences years ago. Here's pretty much what I learned:
> 
> ...



When you say "You cannot" you should really be using the first person and saying "I cannot". Some people _can_ hear the difference between some of the components and setups you mention in your list although I am inclined to agree about the cables.

Many years ago (15+) I did a blind test between several high-end CD players with a view to purchasing one and could definitely hear a difference and one in particular stood out which was the one I ended up buying. I still have it now and it wasn't until earlier this year that the laser started playing up so it's off to the manufacturer for repair. 

Even further back in the mists of time, before the digital revolution really took off, I auditioned more speaker setups than I can remember and tried a number out at home but one set stood out from all the others like night and day. As you can't beat litres for effortless grunt in an engine, the same applies to loudspeakers and my taste in music requires both grunt and subtlety which is not easy to achieve. But achieve it I did and still have those speakers and will probably be buried in them.

My hearing is not as acute as it was 20 years ago but I can still tell the difference between an LP and a CD.


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## Eric The Viking (5 Dec 2011)

RogerS":235qv7ry said:


> Eric The Viking":235qv7ry said:
> 
> 
> > ..... I don't actually like Spendor BC1s very much, ....
> ...



Unrepentant, although former colleagues blame the built-in amps of the BBC version. 

But don't tell MTS I said that (if he's still with us!).



S.


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## CHJ (5 Dec 2011)

Only ever had three homes of my own, non of which have had 'ideal' sound presentation capabilities, just the living accommodation as supplied.
The acquisition of, or change out of equipment has in the main been that which gave a non offensive to the ear sound in the current surroundings and as the years have passed and the effects of too many jet engine encounters and the like have taken their toll, common sense tells me that spending more on the latest exotics is unlikely to provide me with any more pleasure for the few hours available each day to sit and listen to its output. 
Having had a daughter whose hearing was exceptionally acute at high frequencies sorted out a lot of high end distortion I could not hear in the early days, (could be seen on a scope but never sure that was not the fault of the mic.) but had a marked effect on the overall pleasure of the sound when removed by tuning the cross-over chokes/filters.
But overall I'm a sound heathen, if I walk into a great cathedral and someone is at practice and saturating the space with various improvisations or variations on a theme of something not related to the normal sunday dirge I can just melt into a pew and sit in rapture.


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## Eric The Viking (5 Dec 2011)

myturn":16f6a9z4 said:


> When you say "You cannot" you should really be using the first person and saying "I cannot". Some people _can_ hear the difference between some of the components and setups you mention in your list although I am inclined to agree about the cables.



Statistically, they can't. Not in double-blind tests, anyway. But the caveat is that the components in question should work correctly. Cables with, for example, high capacitance, or poor screening, will probably sound significantly different to others. But even then people can't tell which one is _right_.



> Many years ago (15+) I did a blind test between several high-end CD players with a view to purchasing one and could definitely hear a difference and one in particular stood out which was the one I ended up buying. I still have it now and it wasn't until earlier this year that the laser started playing up so it's off to the manufacturer for repair.
> 
> Even further back in the mists of time, before the digital revolution really took off, I auditioned more speaker setups than I can remember and tried a number out at home but one set stood out from all the others like night and day. As you can't beat litres for effortless grunt in an engine, the same applies to loudspeakers and my taste in music requires both grunt and subtlety which is not easy to achieve. But achieve it I did and still have those speakers and will probably be buried in them.
> 
> My hearing is not as acute as it was 20 years ago but I can still tell the difference between an LP and a CD.



Speakers and amps together interact, quite audibly in some cases. I had a hard lesson about this when I thought I'd try to find some new bookshelf speakers years ago. 

I owned Monitor Audio MA7s (still do although they've been extensively rebuilt since), and used 3/5As a lot at work. I got a local HiFi shop to set up a listening test between three pairs of speakers - 3/5A and two now forgotten others. They had the same CD player as me, and I brought the music: some rock and jazz, some Telemann, and Saint Saens' symphony #3, which is evil on the wrong system. I didn't choose the amp though - it was a Mission Cyrus something-or-other. 

I thought I'd start with the 3/5As as I "knew" them. 16 bars (I think - might be 32) into the last movement of the SS there is a loud entry of the 1st violins, with the signature crashing organ chord about the same amount later on. We never got to the organ: to my surprise the violin entry 'cracked' in other words it clipped, quite nastily. I was quite surprised by this, especially as the system wasn't very loud. Trying different speakers, it was clean. The golden-ears from the shop couldn't actually hear the effect! 

I spent my lunch hour going over the same section with all three sets of speakers. He got a bit frustrated with me as he really couldn't hear what I was trying to point out! Two pairs were fine, but the 3/5As weren't. Back at work, it was fine on the 3/5As there, which were far more abused (regularly blown tweeters because of tape spooling past the heads). Assuming the shop's speakers were OK, and they were pretty much new, that left the amp. It turned out that the Mission amp couldn't drive 15 Ohm speakers properly! The other two pairs were 8 Ohms, and at work the 3/5As were driven by HH AM8/12s (which I still use today).

That amp had had rave reviews in the hi-fi press, but it wasn't properly designed. There were more than a few like that out there too. 

But don't get me started on Bose 

E. 

PS: Having read Chas' post above, in recent years I've looked at the waveform of that CD sample-by sample using a direct digital copy. Insofar as I'm able to tell, it's clean.


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## myturn (5 Dec 2011)

Eric The Viking":22w7vftb said:


> But don't get me started on Bose
> .


"Right" is what the user wants to hear, there is no absolute.

Bose. What are they? They advertise modern music-centres and fancy sounding speakers but they don't figure in the world of real music. 

These are what I call REAL speakers.


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## RogerS (5 Dec 2011)

No..this is a large home hi-fi speaker!






John Crabbe ..editor of HiFi news back in the late 60's built these two large concrete horn speakers in his sitting room. They sounded pretty damn good as I recall.


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## myturn (5 Dec 2011)

RogerS":3l13d9i8 said:


> No..this is a large home hi-fi speaker!
> 
> 
> John Crabbe ..editor of HiFi news back in the late 60's built these two large concrete horn speakers in his sitting room. They sounded pretty damn good as I recall.


Wonder what he'd do, or did, if he ever moved house? #-o


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## Jacob (5 Dec 2011)

myturn":1karqaod said:


> RogerS":1karqaod said:
> 
> 
> > No..this is a large home hi-fi speaker!
> ...


I read somewhere of speakers being built in to the house using voids in the floor and other places as the horn. But powered by fairly cheap speakers, the sound quality being in the horn construction. Is this viable or just badly remembered?
What about the organ? I've been in churches (Durham Cathedral particularly) during a virtuoso practice sessions and the sound was amazing, like nothing I'd ever heard anywhere else. Can you get that at home, would you need serried ranks of speakers like organ pipes, or just the right compact kit?


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## Harbo (5 Dec 2011)

You can make some Lowther Acoustas - I think the drivers are still available? 
Folded horn design.

The was a story of a man in Japan who had a house backing onto a mountain. He excavated some enormous horns into the mountain side leading into his listening room?

People used have pairs of quadruple stacked Quad Electrostatics!
And there are people who have their turntable sitting on a concrete pile driven through their floor.


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## Eric The Viking (6 Dec 2011)

myturn":3jbvfkl4 said:


> RogerS":3jbvfkl4 said:
> 
> 
> > No..this is a large home hi-fi speaker!
> ...



I think the idea was that the speakers moved the house _for_ him!

E.


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## Eric The Viking (6 Dec 2011)

Jacob":2ia1fl75 said:


> I read somewhere of speakers being built in to the house using voids in the floor and other places as the horn. But powered by fairly cheap speakers, the sound quality being in the horn construction. Is this viable or just badly remembered?


It's been done. There's a really elegant example I've seen somewhere on the net of a pair of folded horns, built as brick labyrinths under the floor.

But bear in mind that it doesn't buy you everything. At bass frequencies, loudspeaker cones act as pistons. Just like in a car, if they move in free space, they don't do any work, as the air can move round the sides too easily. They also move too far in and out. The horn design is a sort of acoustic transformer, changing the big cone excursion (as much as an inch or more on a really big drive unit) into smaller pressure waves over a much wider area - the equivalent of what you hear naturally. This does work pretty well, and folded horns are used in many large PA systems, to couple the bass units to the air more efficiently. They often have very large cones too, and the labyrinth has another purpose, which also applies to mid-sized speakers in hi-fi designs: it couples the space inside, behind the bass unit to the outer air. In theory the delay from the labyrinth would be 1/2 wavelength of the sound you want to reproduce, so bigger = lower. 



> What about the organ? I've been in churches (Durham Cathedral particularly) during a virtuoso practice sessions and the sound was amazing, like nothing I'd ever heard anywhere else. Can you get that at home, would you need serried ranks of speakers like organ pipes, or just the right compact kit?



There are three problems: 

1. the ability of the system to reproduce the 'sound'. The lowest rank of pipes in a properly indecent organ is usually 32ft. That's 10m, so the lowest 'note' is roughly 16.5Hz (assuming 1/2 wave). That's at roughly the bottom end of human hearing - below that we tend to perceive pressure waves as individual thumps rather than a 'sound'. And you can achieve lower notes still by 'beating' notes together. It's true those pipes usually don't speak on their own, but are added to the overall organ sound either in sympathy or dissonance (if it's Messiaen!). 

Then you've got the building resonances. Apparently my dad got into trouble at school by sneaking into the chapel (with his brother!) and beating the lowest rank of pipes together in pairs until they found the building's resonances and nearly removed the window glass. It's impossible to divorce the cathedral organ as an instrument from the building it's situated in. I've been told that in certain places, certain combinations of stops and notes are banned, because of the risk of damage (but it may be an urban myth). But you can definitely create very low frequencies at quite significant amplitudes (loudness), vibrations you feel rather than hear.

How you make a hi-fi system to produce such sound is thoroughly non-trivial. Ignoring what plays the sound in the first place, the amplifier and loudspeaker systems become pretty complex and big!

2. what was originally recorded and mastered: Digital systems in common use usually are specified between 20Hz and 20kHz*. For a sound engineer, the problem with very low sounds is the amplitude (loudness) of them - you have to avoid overloading the recording system, and you ought to consider the playback system too. 

Yes, you can turn down the wick a bit, but that makes everything quieter. When it's played back on a system that can't create the bass, it will be somewhat odd, and people would complain the CD (or Radio 3 broadcast) was too quiet on their ordinary systems. Sound 'balancing' IMHO is an art as well as a craft skill, but that doesn't stop excessive bass being a problem. So almost all recordings in the real world, will have some sort of filter applied, to 'roll off' or limit the bass end, so that it doesn't become excessive. Exactly how much and where it's applied all depends, but there will be something. 

This is a particular problem with vinyl records. Because loudness = width of groove 'wiggle', and in stereo, channel difference = depth of groove, there are practical problems in cutting a disc with a lot of bass on it. Bass on just one channel is worst of all, as it has a lot of 'height'. You can only go so far before the cutter runs out of shellac and hits glass or aluminium underneath (and they do, and it's expensive). At the other extreme it could theoretically jump right off the surface! Similarly side-to-side, grooves can collide with each other. There are strategies to deal with this, nowadays involving computer-controlled cutters and a lot of number crunching, but the bottom line is that the nature of the system severely limits how you can handle bass frequencies. Mastering is the process of converting a recording into something that's actually cuttable and playable too (it affects high frequencies differently, hence my comments about the 1812 overture).

3. neighbours.

So it's tough. In practice, you *might* get a digital system to produce something like what you experience in a cathedral with César Franck at full throttle, but you'd need big (really big) bass speakers and a reasonable space to listen in. It would be a practical impossibility with vinyl or most sorts of analogue tape.

Aside: this is actually my favourite from Hoffnung's "Symphony Orchestra":







Cheers,

E.

*OK there's 24/96 sampling but let's keep it simple!


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## Racers (6 Dec 2011)

Hi,

I was at Lincoln at the week end in the cathedral they had a brass band playing in the middle, and it didn't work the reverberation time was to great, but later they had a choir which worked very well in the space. Room size is very important for both recording and reproduction.
As I have improved my system I have found you get a better idea of where it was recorded, you get a real feel for the size.


Pete


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## gus3049 (6 Dec 2011)

Eric The Viking":1eqhsams said:


> In practice, you *might* get a digital system to produce something like what you experience in a cathedral with César Franck at full throttle, but you'd need big (really big) bass speakers and a reasonable space to listen in. It would be a practical impossibility with vinyl or most sorts of analogue tape.



Why is that Eric, when tape or vinyl go down further than CD. I know all about warps, feedback and rumble etc but a REALLY good record player will reproduce fantastic base, far better than CD (eg. my Garrard 301). I ask out of interest not in a "what the hell are you talking about" manner.


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## Jacob (6 Dec 2011)

Very interesting thanks for that Eric. 
Yes its the low notes which do it - you can't really hear them you just sense their presence around you. Or underneath you, like swimming in very deep water.
I'm converting a chapel and might think about a good DIY sound system at some point. Luckily the previous owners removed the organ or I would have felt committed to finding out how it worked and restoring it, which would have slowed things down even more.


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## Eric The Viking (6 Dec 2011)

gus3049":19ngt969 said:


> Eric The Viking":19ngt969 said:
> 
> 
> > In practice, you *might* get a digital system to produce something like what you experience in a cathedral with César Franck at full throttle, but you'd need big (really big) bass speakers and a reasonable space to listen in. It would be a practical impossibility with vinyl or most sorts of analogue tape.
> ...



The _system_ (vinyl) cannot store/reproduce high-level bass properly, for quite a few mechanical reasons that cannot be overcome easily. Within the design limitations, an uncompressed digital system doesn't have that limitation. It's not problem free, but the problems are several orders of magnitude less evident. Does vinyl actually reproduce sound better than CD (or other digits)? It's not even close, but that's not the whole story.

I read an article on the IET site that compared vinyl to digits, expressed as 'bits'. Generalising, the more bits, the closer the recording maps to the original wave, and each extra bit doubles the volume 'detail' in the recording. CD uses 16 bits, the equivalent of vinyl would at best be eleven (thirty-two times better signal-to-noise). It's not entirely fair (The BBC managed very good quality with 10 bit PCM in the 1970s), but it's a realistic comparison.

I think the answer is that less processing was applied in the old days, and more carefully too. I have Archiv, Philips and DG organ recordings (one is Schweitzer!) on 45 that are wonderful, but they are 'quiet' by modern standards. Broadly, you are swapping sound quality for surface noise. 

Does it matter? Most probably not. Our brains are very good at tuning out noise we're not interested in, and, as discussed, for most of us it's the performance that matters. 

As an ageist thing, I'd also mutter darkly that most of the 'engineers' of today don't know how to use the equipment they have properly. Many toys don't make excellence, and in times past you literally had to 'engineer' the sound or you had nothing usable at the end of the day. Now you turn the kit on and it pretty much works, but in the same way that automatic cameras rarely take great pictures. 

On vinyl you are listening to the careful interpretation of an event by at least two people - the balance engineer and the mastering engineer, both overseen by a producer (usually). If they know their stuff, the outcome may be musically better than just sitting in the audience. With digits there are no guarantees!

Just my twopence.


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## bugbear (6 Dec 2011)

Eric The Viking":g9ve32wk said:


> There are good and great hi-fi designs, and there are some rules of thumb:
> 
> 
> Anybody care to add any others?



* No hifi can reproduce the original sound exactly.

BugBear


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## Jacob (6 Dec 2011)

bugbear":2bj2ktzz said:


> Eric The Viking":2bj2ktzz said:
> 
> 
> > There are good and great hi-fi designs, and there are some rules of thumb:
> ...


No really? So if I listen to the 1812 in my car it won't sound as though I really have the following on the back seat? I'm so disappointed.

* Brass Band1 (finale only)
* Woodwinds: Piccolo, 2 Flutes, 2 Oboes, Cor anglais, 2 Clarinets in B♭, 2 Bassoons
* Brass: 4 Horns in F, 2 Cornets in B♭, 2 Trumpets in E♭, 3 Trombones, Tuba
* Percussion: Timpani, Bass drum, Snare drum, Cymbals, Tambourine, Triangle, Carillon, Cannon
* Strings: (Violins I, II, Violas, Cellos, Double basses)


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## Eric The Viking (6 Dec 2011)

In my car, you only get the cannon - or perhaps it's just a backfire!


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## gus3049 (6 Dec 2011)

Eric The Viking":3c0xfdrg said:


> Does vinyl actually reproduce sound better than CD (or other digits)? It's not even close, but that's not the whole story.



To *MY* ears this is nowhere near the truth. I don't care about the fact there has been human involvement in the process or that the measurements say one thing and my ears say the other.

Apart from cheap rubbish, any decent turntable, arm, cartridge combination makes better MUSIC than any CD player I've ever heard. The only one that came close was the original Phillips CD1 but that was built like a tank and presumably someone actually listened to it to compare it to vinyl before they started cost cutting.

I know that the 'engineers' amongst us prefer the measurements but I'm a musician / musical instrument maker and no-one will persuade me that my ears are lying to me. I'm quite sure there are more things in heaven and earth and all that. Our perceptions might play tricks but if they are convincing, who cares.


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## bugbear (6 Dec 2011)

bugbear":1vocg8vd said:


> Eric The Viking":1vocg8vd said:
> 
> 
> > There are good and great hi-fi designs, and there are some rules of thumb:
> ...



And I have a converse:

* I have never heard a system so bad it can make Fats Waller sound anything but magically joyful.

BugBear


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## Eric The Viking (6 Dec 2011)

bugbear":3i0fxevm said:


> * I have never heard a system so bad it can make Fats Waller sound anything but magically joyful.



=D> =D> =D> =D> 

E.


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