Class D - heaven or hell ?
May 19, 2012 at 6:44 PM Post #91 of 134
What we MUST have in mind is that many manufacturers speculate with tha fact that most of their clients listen to live music hardly ever. Their idea of how acoustic intruments sound differs from the truth. Many "high end" systems sound more surreal than realistic.


Also a good point. I think this goes back to the surround sound argument as well - how many movie-goers are involved in impressive car chases or fast-paced shoot-outs in their daily lives? Let alone exposed to things like dinosaurs, vampires, alien invaders, and monsters from hell?

So do you go for "cool" or "accurate" in this case?
 
May 19, 2012 at 7:03 PM Post #92 of 134
What we MUST have in mind is that many manufacturers speculate with tha fact that most of their clients listen to live music hardly ever. Their idea of how acoustic intruments sound differs from the truth. Many "high end" systems sound more surreal than realistic.
I've listened to many hard-audiophile systems consisting of "high-end"class A tube amps feeding exotic horn or transmission line speakers that produce ridiculous "real" sound.


No high end system produces "real" sound. Real instruments vary in radiation patterns based on whether they're strings or horns, etc.; speakers vary in radiation patterns for wholly different and incongruous reasons. Real instruments need a good supporting acoustical space, speakers are played in the confines of personal dwellings bereft of room treatment.

Aside from that, my most favorite live music concert was Daft Punk. So even though I've listened to renowned orchestras in ancient European concert halls and septuagenarian blues musicians in the dinkiest dives, I preferred the experience of sampled and artificial instruments blasted through a PA system. It's not that I'm obviously a philistine who can't appreciate the nuance of acoustic instruments, it's that there's more than one kind of experience musicians may seek to create.

I don't think that manufacturers speculate and compromise their products by cynically choosing class D amplification. There's nothing inherently more natural about electricity flowing a certain way through a transistor or tube, you're already dealing with a mere approximation of real sound. Then again, choosy moms pay extra for "organic" cereal for their kids.
 
May 19, 2012 at 7:09 PM Post #93 of 134
speakers are played in the confines of personal dwellings bereft of room treatment.


Doesn't have to be. You can properly treat and design a listening room to deal with many of these problems, even tailor it to the specific radiation abilities of your speakers. No, it won't be quite the same, but you can get a very accurate sounding approximation.
 
May 19, 2012 at 7:17 PM Post #94 of 134
Quote:
No high end system produces "real" sound. Real instruments vary in radiation patterns based on whether they're strings or horns, etc.; speakers vary in radiation patterns for wholly different and incongruous reasons. Real instruments need a good supporting acoustical space, speakers are played in the confines of personal dwellings bereft of room treatment.

Accidentaly some months ago I've dicovered the "truth" of the omnidirectional speakers. Everyone interested in hi-fi must try them. I've realized that our biggest problem is the unnatural directional reprodution of the conventional box speakers. The instruments do not produce sound in one direction, the microphones do not accept sound from one direction,
 
May 19, 2012 at 7:20 PM Post #95 of 134
Doesn't have to be. You can properly treat and design a listening room to deal with many of these problems, even tailor it to the specific radiation abilities of your speakers. No, it won't be quite the same, but you can get a very accurate sounding approximation.


True that was only a generalization, though even if you turn your listening room into an anechoic chamber you're still only creating a better blow-up doll. Check out the first chapter to Toole's "Sound Reproduction". A good system will allow you to maximize what you get out of a recording, but then you're left with the inherent limitations of recording technology.

Whatever the case, amplification is not a limiting factor. You can still get perceptually transparent amplification whichever class/tech tickles your fancy.

Accidentaly some months ago I've dicovered the "truth" of the omnidirectional speakers. Everyone interested in hi-fi must try them. I've realized that our biggest problem is the unnatural directional reprodution of the conventional box speakers. The instruments do not produce sound in one direction, the microphones do not accept sound from one direction,


I've made it my mission to some day try out an MBL omni :xf_eek:
 
May 19, 2012 at 7:38 PM Post #96 of 134
Quote:
The instruments do not produce sound in one direction, the microphones do not accept sound from one direction,

 
No, but the microphones do capture one sound in one point in space which captures the acoustics of the venue where the recording was made.
 
So now you play that back on an omni. The only way for you to hear what the omni is radiating in the other directions is after the sound has bounced off your walls, ceiling and floor, effectively imposing much more of your room acoustics on the acoustics of the original venue which were captured by the microphones.
 
Omnis would sort of make sense if the music was recorded "dry" in an anechoic chamber so that the only room acoustics are those of your own listening room (i.e. more of a "they are here" than a "you are there").
 
se
 
May 19, 2012 at 7:57 PM Post #97 of 134
Accidentaly some months ago I've dicovered the "truth" of the omnidirectional speakers. Everyone interested in hi-fi must try them. I've realized that our biggest problem is the unnatural directional reprodution of the conventional box speakers. The instruments do not produce sound in one direction, the microphones do not accept sound from one direction,


Omnis are neat, but Steve really nailed it with their limitations. I have not heard the MBLs mind you (I've heard/owned examples from B&O, Sansui, Mirage, etc). They can do lots of things very nice (and I consider them the next logical step after dipoles), but I've come to prefer point-source over time.
 
May 19, 2012 at 11:41 PM Post #98 of 134
Quote:
Accidentaly some months ago I've dicovered the "truth" of the omnidirectional speakers. Everyone interested in hi-fi must try them. I've realized that our biggest problem is the unnatural directional reprodution of the conventional box speakers. The instruments do not produce sound in one direction, the microphones do not accept sound from one direction,


I've heard both bi-polar speakers described as omni (old Mirage) and true omni speakers. They aren't magic problem solvers. Granted the Radialstrahlers and German Physiks bending wave driver based omnis are more impressive than the cheaper stuff, but being a monopole doesn't make a speaker bad. The problems with conventional forward radiating box speakers are diffraction, and resonance from the box itself. When you solve those issues with truly inert cabinets and carefully designed baffles that are as narrow as possible, you can produce a speaker with truly out of this world imaging with a sound stage that exists above, outside, and behind the speakers. 
 
May 20, 2012 at 12:22 AM Post #99 of 134
I'm way out of my depth here, but on the few occasions when I have been in the same room with genuinely scary pricetags and the labels to match, I thought the music lacked 'oomph'. Granted, the acoustics in that shop werent ideal and the owner is a notorious eccentric who is happier playing with 20W tube amps than anything from the *stack* of SS integrateds he literally has piled up against a wall. He's off with the fairies most of the time, but the place is an Aladdin's cave for those with the fortitude to enter. 
 
He let me plug my Grados into a few of his NAD amps, but I didnt dare ask him to put some metal on the 'big rig' - the guy has been known to tell people to get out of his shop for having the audacity to come in with one of their own CDs. All the other places that formerly sold hi-fi had long since moved on to HT - no way would I pay 11k AUD for something like this over the kind of headphone rig that money would buy:
 
http://www.pioneer.eu/uk/products/62/98/405/SC-LX90/index.html
 

 
Sure, 10 channels and megawatts to burn, but does any of it sound as good as the Stax rig / ortho combination of your choice ? I like movies as much as the next person, but AV receivers are on the same plane as games consoles in my world. Horses for courses, I guess. 
 
May 20, 2012 at 12:37 AM Post #100 of 134
RE: megawatts. From Nelson Pass's FirstWatt into:
 
http://firstwatt.com/
 
[size=15pt]Dick Olsher famously remarked that “The first watt is the most important watt.” This sentiment has also been expressed by others as “Who cares what an amplifier sounds like at 500 watts if it sounds like crap at one watt?” With this in mind, I created First Watt in 1998 as a "kitchen-table" effort, exploring unusual low power amplifiers with an emphasis on sound quality.[/size]

 

 

 
May 20, 2012 at 1:49 AM Post #102 of 134
Quote:
no way would I pay 11k AUD for something like this over the kind of headphone rig that money would buy:
 
http://www.pioneer.eu/uk/products/62/98/405/SC-LX90/index.html
 

 
Sure, 10 channels and megawatts to burn, but does any of it sound as good as the Stax rig / ortho combination of your choice ? I like movies as much as the next person, but AV receivers are on the same plane as games consoles in my world. Horses for courses, I guess. 

 
Assuming you're not having friends over for movies O2+BHSE+Realiser+bass shakers = cheaper and better and you haven't even bought the speakers yet.
 
The only reason the number of channels is multiplying like rabbits is to make the sweet spot bigger.
 
May 20, 2012 at 2:11 AM Post #103 of 134
Quote:
 
No, but the microphones do capture one sound in one point in space which captures the acoustics of the venue where the recording was made.
 
So now you play that back on an omni. The only way for you to hear what the omni is radiating in the other directions is after the sound has bounced off your walls, ceiling and floor, effectively imposing much more of your room acoustics on the acoustics of the original venue which were captured by the microphones.
 
Omnis would sort of make sense if the music was recorded "dry" in an anechoic chamber so that the only room acoustics are those of your own listening room (i.e. more of a "they are here" than a "you are there").
 
se

It's not that simple
biggrin.gif

Read this:
http://www.cd-konzert.de/details/roomreflections.shtml
The practice validates it.
I had the opportunity to hear omnis in my room and I'll never go back to tradiotional speakers.
 
But the thread is for amps. :)
 
May 20, 2012 at 2:14 AM Post #104 of 134
This reminds me...there was a time when the SS camp wanted their equipment to sound tube like and the tube camp wanted theirs to sound SS like.
The reviewers got a hold of this so they started making comments like "OMG! this SS amp has the mids and trebs of a tube amp!"
and "What! this tube amp has Krell bass!". Ofcourse that was all untrue.
 
May 20, 2012 at 2:17 AM Post #105 of 134
Quote:
Sure, 10 channels and megawatts to burn, but does any of it sound as good as the Stax rig / ortho combination of your choice ? I like movies as much as the next person, but AV receivers are on the same plane as games consoles in my world. Horses for courses, I guess. 

 
Agreed. Many A/V receivers have gotten worse over the years as more and more of the cost has gone to video processing and codec licensing at the expense of the parts that actually produce sound. IMO the under $1K receivers available today basically sound like garbage.
 
I used to have a fairly high-end home theater with a SSP and a powerful multi-channel amp, and I got bored with it. I think HT is boring. Other than brain dead action movies, most move soundtracks send some 60% of the sound to the center channel, so you're basically listening to a glorified sound bar most of the time, with the rest going to waste. Ironically, stereo is actually an improvement over that as you avoid the combing issues and dynamic limitations of the center channel. One of the idiotic things about home theater is that center speakers are designed to look good, not to sound good. M-T-M is a terrible arrangement for a horizontal speaker and the engineers know it, but they have to build them that way because it's what the market demands.
 
The other reason I got tired of home theater is that there's far too much dynamic range in most film soundtracks. While modern music has been squashed flat, modern films are the exact opposite. You have a choice of inaudible dialogue or 120dB explosions. 
 

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