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tom wrote:
Re: the bass. Many, many moons ago I used to play bass guitar. Standing in front of a 200watt Marshall amp and a stack of big magnet 18" units, I didn't notice the effect they were having on the audience until my brother took over while I went to the bog. When I came back I stood 10 ft off stage directly in front of the stack and it felt like someone was firmly patting me in the chest.Keith Abraham wrote:That's what HiFi used to mean - High Fidelity - as close an approximation to the original sound as possible. Nowadays it is very much a choice of which acoustic con you prefer rather than any attempt at fidelity. Most systems are pop oriented these days - lots of distortion that benefits pop music but is generally lousy for classical. And true bass is unheard of these days - play the lowest note on a bass guitar (40hz) and most modern speakers dont even flutter - I think they're designed not to reveal mains hum!! I used to do some tests with two HIFI setups playing the same source - a 300W ultra low distortion amp into quad els63's and 25W from quad33/303 into some small studio missions at the other end of the room. Almost all listeners claimed greater volume/clarity and depth of field for the missions as they blur pop music giving it a more solid feel. The electrostatics actually revealed significantly more 'data' - people could hear instruments and effects they couldn't on the missions - but caused the music to 'collapse'. Classical had mostly the opposite preference - the ability hear the nuances and instruments and lack of intermodulation made the electrostatics preferred. Organ music is divisive - the Missions do the Bose trick of distorting lower frequencies so that the higher harmonics give the illusion of bass even when its not there (trouser test) and despite the Missions not going as low as the quads a lot of people thought they had more bass! My favourite illusion though was volume. Most people thought the missions were 10* louder than the quads - until both were played together and people realised they had to actually have their heads 1ft away from the missions and 20ft away from the electrostatics to hear the missions at what they thought were equal volumes!tom wrote:Although there is a difference in recordings and it's where I would maintain the notion of HiFi has mostly lain.Benjamin M. A'Lee wrote:Double blind tests stopped in about 1969 when the Golden Ears of the hifi magazines were asked to tell the difference between quad Mk11 valve amps(1% distortion) 33/303 (0.1% distortion) combos and 45/405 (0.01%).On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 10:27:49PM -0000, Michael Mortimore wrote:On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:05:56 -0000, bas <baslake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:What's the difference between a £85 cable and a £8 one? (other than price)The cables between the player and the amp where £85.00 (1/2 metre cables) and the cables to the speaker (bi wire) where £48.00 each, but worth every penny as you only buy them once.So just how much did you pay for the oxygen free copper againI do have to wonder exactly how much difference it would make. Anybody conducted any double-blind trials of audio cables?They couldnt spot the differences.Double blind tests show that very little has changed in hi-fi over the last 40 years or so - but magazines that do proper scientific testing dont get toys to play with if t[they use them. The market is stitched up and the customer lied to and conned. I wen to college to study electronics cos I was obsessed with hi-fi/PA etc and discovering the maths/physics lies that the industry puts out... Oxygen free copper (of similar resistance to solid ring mains wiring cable) has less accoustic effect than a candle burning in a 20'*15'*8' room by an order of magnitude or so. Double blind tests reveal that most people hear what they want to hear about hifi improvements and that almost all increases in component cost are just that.Tom te tom te tomMost "pop" recordings are compressed out of existence and consequently have very little dynamic range (it sounds loud all the time). Contrast that with a quality "classical" recording that has very little if any compression. When playing a compression less recording in a low noise level environment (ambient and electronic) a sudden change from ppp to fff WILL blow your socks off. The ear (brain) like to be surprised and therefore pays attention when the dynamic range is wide and tends to switch off when it's narrow. This is what a HiFi means; a recording which forces you to pay attention to the nuances of the music.Wonderful thing sound - shame about the HiFi industry. Tom te tom te tom
Re: Electrostatics etc. A friend of mine had an 18" speaker built in to the chimney of his "listening room", 2 Quad electrostatics and Quad amp. He had a large tape machine using wide tape (I can't remember if it was 1/2" or 1"" tape) situated in another room as it was "too noisy". The effect was very impressive. It was especially startling to hear human voices (Purcell songs if I remember correctly). The depth of the audio field seemed large and yet there was an impression of intimacy which brought the voices right into the room. And the large dynamic range allowed you the hear even the rustle of a dress as one of the singers moved. I've been to a few "classical" concerts in my time but never to an intimate choral recital so that experience at my friends house will probably remain as the closest I will ever get.
Even more OT: Plymouth may be virtually culturally dead but at least we used have some lunchtime/evening concerts in the Guild Hall. Where I live now (west coast of Cumbria) there is no culture at all. The nearest concert hall is in Carlisle (45mins train journey) and even then any program of serious music other than the pop classics is very rare. Oh well back to my old Koss headphones (I like 'em).
Keith -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html