I hear this all the time...

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Danny Richie

I hear this all the time...
« on: 24 Dec 2012, 06:32 pm »
I have heard basically this same story from so many of our customers that I just had to post a link to this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAXn6JkwonA

I challenge any of our customers to tell their story too.

HAL

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Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #1 on: 24 Dec 2012, 08:39 pm »
It was 1979 in Alexandria VA.   They yearly audio show had a large room with Infinity speakers.   The brand new IRS Reference III four 7' cabinet line array/bipole speakers.  The system had 144 drivers and dedicated 3KW of Class D bass power driving the 12 - 12" servo woofers.  The turntable had the Infinity Black Widow arm.  Playing vinyl as that is what we had at the time.

The cut they played was Mannheim Steamroller's Fresh Aire III, Tocatta.  The last note is 30Hz.  When it hit, your chest cavity started resonating!  Everyone looked at each other with our mouth's open and said, did you feel that!  It was a defining moment for the experience!

That was my first experience with a line array.  Hopefully there will be more line array's to come! :)
 

tubesaab

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Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #2 on: 24 Dec 2012, 08:45 pm »
 It will be hard to make a better wife video than this...in most places are the wife a big factor in buying speaker
here by me ,is my wife not happy ,,she said, i will make something bad to you,if the LS-9 is worse than the speaker we have now..
he he i must pray for the LS-9 is good-- :lol:
The wilson speaker is in Denmark some off the worlds most expensive..The Alexandria cost 303500usd

gab

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Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #3 on: 24 Dec 2012, 09:07 pm »
Alexandria XLF? Stereophile just reviewed this speaker in their latest edition and quoted it at $200,000 USD. Is the markup in Denmark that much more? Crazy!

gab

PS - I don't know what your current speaker is but the LS9 is a very good speaker (I have the little brother the LS-6). Your wife won't be disappointed!

tubesaab

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Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #4 on: 24 Dec 2012, 09:22 pm »
jep the price in denmark are high
my speaker is a diy version of Peak-Consult Emperor--the same driver--only the tweter is different---scanspeak beryllium
this is a super speaker--but i want to try something different

Danny Richie

Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #5 on: 25 Dec 2012, 05:11 pm »
jep the price in denmark are high
my speaker is a diy version of Peak-Consult Emperor--the same driver--only the tweter is different---scanspeak beryllium
this is a super speaker--but i want to try something different

My money is on the LS-9.  :thumb:

tubesaab

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Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #6 on: 25 Dec 2012, 05:19 pm »
He he i have shown this to my wife--you better have right ,,she says

Danny Richie

Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #7 on: 25 Dec 2012, 05:22 pm »
He he i have shown this to my wife--you better have right ,,she says

No worries.

SoCalWJS

Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #8 on: 25 Dec 2012, 09:12 pm »
It was 1979 in Alexandria VA.   They yearly audio show had a large room with Infinity speakers.   The brand new IRS Reference III four 7' cabinet line array/bipole speakers.  The system had 144 drivers and dedicated 3KW of Class D bass power driving the 12 - 12" servo woofers.  The turntable had the Infinity Black Widow arm.  Playing vinyl as that is what we had at the time.

The cut they played was Mannheim Steamroller's Fresh Aire III, Tocatta.  The last note is 30Hz.  When it hit, your chest cavity started resonating!  Everyone looked at each other with our mouth's open and said, did you feel that!  It was a defining moment for the experience!

That was my first experience with a line array.  Hopefully there will be more line array's to come! :)
 
HAL
Almost identical to my own story, except somewhere in the SF Bay area, roughly the same time frame. Infinity IRS III with the servo towers. They played the beginning of PF Dark Side of the Moon - as the heartbeat increased you could see the suspended acoustical ceiling panels moving up and down to the beats.
The acoustics sucked in the room, but it sure left a lasting impression. I knew right then that my Advent speakers were not going to be the long term answer.

HAL

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Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #9 on: 25 Dec 2012, 09:38 pm »
Cool!

The amazing part of the demo was that the room acoustics were very good!  It was a large room with lots of space around the system.  Imaging was a good as the overall response of the system.  I sat on the center axis even back then when possible.

Taught me that room acoutics matter, as in another demo in a small room with the IRS Reference V speakers a few years later, the same piece of music had no bass response!  Talk about apples to oranges demo's.  After that, knew the room one day would need to be correct for any large speakers.  Finally built this house around the listening room! :)

bdp24

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Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #10 on: 26 Dec 2012, 07:35 am »
This is going to sound like what it is, ancient history. I can't be the oldest guy here, can I? I hope this is of interest to somebody! After hearing a new friend of mine's hi-fi (Rek-O-Kut turntable and arm with Shure M-44e cartridge (what a memory, eh?), Scott integrated tube amp, KLH speakers---designed by Joe Grado. Amazing that a high school senior would have a system like that in '68, isn't it?), I wanted my own. I did some research, and bought an AR turntable, Shure M91e cartridge, used Fisher integrated tube amp (X-100, I think it was), and AR 4x speakers. I was on my way! That served me well as I started my record collection. After finishing school and starting to work, I had the money and desire to get better (sound familiar, anyone?). Somehow in '72 I discovered this little digest-sized hi-fi magazine named Stereophile, written by one Gordon Holt in Pennsylvania. In that issue Mr. Holt happened to review a tube amp (in '72? You gotta be kidding! Surround sound 4-channel receivers is all that Stereo Review were talking about. Well, that and Bose 901's and the Phase Linear 700) by a new company named Audio Research (they had just changed their name from Electronic Industries, Inc.), and previewed a new speaker he had just received, which he said looked like a folding room divider (the original Magneplanar I). Every word in the mag was written by this one guy, and he spent most of his time talking about how the component being reviewed sounded playing music. If you weren't there, at that time, you can't imagine just how revolutionary that was. Music to my ears (pun intended)! In the back of the mag were little ads from independant Audio "Consulants", and I was lucky enough to live in the Bay Area, which had some good ones. I visited Sound Systems in Palo Alto and heard the Infinity Servo-Static's (2000 bucks, the price of an entry level 4-door sedan) driven by early SAE amps. In Berkeley I went to a tiny shop owned and operated by David Fletcher, who, when I asked if he sold Magneplanars (I just HAD to hear those), looked down knowingly and said "No, I'm pushing Dayton-Wright's (a Canadian electrostatic. They sounded terrible, I thought. David told me they were low in gas, a part of the design). David went on to become a hi-fi star, designing "The Arm" and the Sota turntable. Next was Audio Arts in Livermore, where I spent the day with it's owner and sole empoyee (also the nicest man I've met in hi-fi), Walter Davies. You might recognize his name from the products he developed, Patended, and has been selling for a long time, the Last record care line. I had been in his built-from-the-ground-up-for-sound-quality listening room, hearing for the first time (but certainly not the last) the Quad electrostatic speaker (very nice), when he told me that we would have to continue another day, as he was expecting the designer/owner of a company whose line he was "trying out for". And that man soon appeared.....Bill Johnson himself. I learned more that day than all my days since put together. What a mind! He set up his Thorens TD-125 Mk.II turntable, a wooden arm (!) he had designed and was hoping to put into production (never came to pass), and a hand-picked Decca Blue cartridge. He plugged that into his new SP-3 tube pre-amp, onto his D-51 and D-75 tube power amps, with which he was bi-amping the---there they were---Magneplanar I's (ARC was distributing them then). The openess---the sound wasn't coming out of a box, it was just there in the room. A HUGE sound field. And depth---how fun! Singers standing there, the sound of their voices coming from where their mouths would be if they were in the room (speakers TODAY fail that test). The timbre and texture of the whole picture was cut from the same cloth---the tone of an upright bass didn't change as notes from the top and bottom of it's range were played. I needed to save more money!

PMAT

Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #11 on: 26 Dec 2012, 10:00 am »
That was awesome, time machine stuff.

Kinger

Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #12 on: 26 Dec 2012, 06:18 pm »
Really cool video.  Love how he has his family involved.

corndog71

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Re: I hear this all the time...
« Reply #13 on: 26 Dec 2012, 07:36 pm »
Though I was a music lover at a young age, I never really gave much thought to the equipment playing it.  I have a memory of being very frustrated with not being able to understand the lyrics people were singing.  As a teenager in the mid to late 80's I was playing LPs and making mix tapes on my all in one Fisher stereo. (5-band EQ and Dual-cassette deck!)  But after high school I went into the Marines and it was a walkman life for the next 4 years.

About 9 months after getting out I needed a cheap car to get around and bought an '83 Honda Prelude.  The stereo that came with it was virtually unusable and was so frustrating that I eventually took a pair of scissors and cut the wires and ripped it out.  While I had previously attempted to install car stereos in my friend's cars when it came to mine I decided to have a pro do it.  Then I found a cheap 20-watt external amplifier on clearance and had that installed under the dash to better drive my front speakers.  I was reading about car audio (since that was where I spent most of my free time) and quickly learned a lot of the basics.  One day I took a look under my dash to inspect what I had paid for and got very upset at what I saw.  I could've done a better job installing that amp for sure!

Now around that time my brother had tossed a catalog at me from one of the local hi-fi shops.  On the cover was a pair of the B&W Matrix 801's which went for the unimaginable amount of $5,500! :o  I was making about $800/mo net working as a security guard so I thought this is waaaaay out of my league.  I flipped through it and in the back noticed a cable company I had never heard of called Kimber Kable.  I was a bit intrigued by their story and eventually bought a 1m pair of the semi-shielded KC-1's.  I got these to replace the two half-meter pair of freebie cables used to connect my deck to my amp.  ( I got these instead of the unshielded PBJ's since everything I read in car audio recommended shielded cables.)  There was a definite improvement but something didn't seem quite right.  I took off the shield (turning them into PBJ's) and BOOM!  I heard a clarity to the sound I never knew was even possible at the low end!  I could hear differences in cymbals which I never noticed before.  I could understand the lyrics!  There was a soundstage!  Never heard that before!  I was thunderstruck!  Gobsmacked!  The audiophile bug not only bit me but burrowed deep inside and has never left!

I went back to Audio Emporium and became a regular visitor listening to every system they had and learning to hear the different brand sounds.  I bought a gloss finished pair of Paradigm Atoms for my first "real" speakers and loved them for many years.  I also started tweaking my garage sale Superscope integrated amp and eventually picked up an NAD CD player and integrated amp.   When I moved to Chicago I got a job at a small electronics repair shop where I learned the ins and outs of VCR's, all-in-one-stereos, professional amps, and vintage tube gear.  Someone brought in a suitcase turntable with built-in mono tube amp.  Amazingly the amp and speaker still worked and there was a lone RCA jack as an AUX in.  I plugged in my walkman and even though it was only one channel and even though it had a very loose, tubey sound to it I immediately recognized something special about it.  One of the older techs turned me onto an old 12AX7 single stage preamp schematic which I built and used in lieu of the preamp side of my NAD.  It was noisy but at the same time sounded better than the NAD's preamp.  BOOM!  I fell in love with tubes.

It's been 17 years now and I'm STILL learning!  I've told my story about discovering AV123 speakers before but suffice to say I'm a big fan of Danny's work and own several of his designs.  After my latest rebuild of my tube amp I continue to hear how great the X-series speaker are.  In particular the X-Statiks which are the best sounding speakers I've owned.  They beat the pants off of B&W, Definitive, Polk, Paradigm, and many others at 2-3 times the price I paid for them!  My single servo subwoofer is a beast in disguise and cost less than the crappy B&W sub it replaced!

I can go on and on... :thumb: