[satfrat]

OBF  Thata boy!

JLM    One is for my agreeing to disagree,,,, the second's for your Rockies.   

Enjoy your evening. 

Robin

[EDS_]

I may be pretty naïve, in present company, but I would venture that if the recording is good and location was intended, that information is in the recording and can be reproduced in two channel playback with great center imagery.  Yes, the room is a factor.  So is time and phase when selecting a speaker.  I have a wonderful recording on Athena (vinyl) of Symphonic Dances made in McFarlin auditorium in Dallas (EDS- Is the Meyerson the round one?).  Rich, sumptuous, big bass transients but its recorded rather close up as compared with, say, some Reference Recording’s symphonic works.  This, too, makes a difference.  I’m a fan of a couple of Sennheiser mikes in a Blenheim configuration placed some distance away from the proceedings.  Peter McGrath’s recording of Mahler’s first on Harmonia Mundi is such a beast, sounds like to me.  True, your not going to get you are there sound.  The sphere of the stage is there however and the instrumentalist can be heard in an array, or not, depending on if they were.  In the hands of good sound engineers, I think two channel is a Godsend.  My beef is that when vocalists turn it up, some turkey is squelching it at the console.  I expect that their concern is overloading playback (maybe the mikes themselves, I don’t know).  If it’s the former, let me worry about that, OK?

Quiet enclosures on dynamic speakers is important.  Most dynamic speakers have good to very good dynamic range these days.  Mid range tonal accuracy is biggie.  It's where the soul lies.

I listen to concerts some Saturday nites on NPR and think they sound awfully good.  I think they use 3 mikes on a line in front of and above the stage.  I could be wrong on this.  Whatever, everything sounds very complete.  Sorry, if I strayed off topic.

http://www.meyersonsymphonycenter.com/photoGallery.htm......I.M. Pei designed a masterpiece for Dallas.

http://www.smu.edu/McFarlin/......McFarlin has to be one of the best university owned performing arts venues anywhere.

http://www.basshall.com/seating/thehallseatingnew.jsp......It's a little too young to know for sure but the Bass may have acoustics as spectacular as the Meyerson.



Oh yea, the Meyeson is round - sort of.

[jimdgoulding]

Holy toledo!  Is the Bass in Fort Worth or Dallas?  Thanks.  I suppose I could'a read more.  I just did read more.  I was thinking of a round hall that is, or maybe was, near Turtle Creek Blvd.  It's been awhile.  Great to see the area is so healthy.

[JLM]

Robin,

They're not my Rockies (wished I did own the team  ), but I did go to a game there while at a conference and had to sit above the purple row of seats (that indicates a mile above sea level).  We also toured Coors brewery on an off day (it was a hot, dry day and the samples at the end of the tour were greatly appreciated).     I enjoy sport (and hopefully the spirit/lessons that should be learned) more than any player or team.  In fact the money/corruption of almost any major college/profession sport is a huge turn off for my entire family.

BTW, how can one do better/cleaner power than being totally off the grid and on battery power?     I've been there and wasn't impressed (again location specific).  If we're being philosophical here, I concede that clean power should be a consideration, but based on location and budget. 

Speaking of sports, I tried to take delivery of a HDTV yesterday, but the warehouse guys were all busy wiring a house for 15 TVs!  The house belonged to Tom Izzo (Michigan State basketball coach, and mid-Michigan's current living sports icon).  Game over.      

[BrianM]

If we're being philosophical here, I concede that clean power should be a consideration,

I just checked, and didn't find any philosophy.  Dogma, yes.  Philosophy, no. 

[satfrat]

Robin,


BTW, how can one do better/cleaner power than being totally off the grid and on battery power?     I've been there and wasn't impressed (again location specific).  If we're being philosophical here, I concede that clean power should be a consideration, but based on location and budget. 

I wasn't referring to your battery power statements JLM, just your denial that there's no difference between that and what you have in your home outta the socket, that's all. But thinking about battery power, aren't you still gonna have crosstalk interference from component to component, especially digital components thru your cables? Component to component intererence is also a consideration of haviing clean power to each and every component and that includes isolating each from the other. Minute maybe but it's still a factor.

That's it for my sunday morning sermon,,,, promise. 


Robin

[sunshinedawg]

Below are some excerpts from "As We See it". The first, is from Stereophile's "As we see it", Sept. 1992 issue and the last is from the current Nov. 2007 Issue. The first is a speech that J. Gordon Hilt gave at CES 1992.

"At the core of high-end audio is the pursuit of the live-music experience The dream continues."

"Or does it?"

"I've been getting the impression that we don't believe our own hype anymore. No one today would claim seriously that a reproducing system sounds "just like the real thing." And we're right. I've heard hundreds of classical concerts, a few stadium rock concerts, and a number of electric instruments playing in nightclubs and music stores, and I can attest that the vast majority of so-called high-end systems don't come CLOSE to reproducing those sounds."

"But what's worse is that, among ourselves, we seem to have come to a tacit agreement that it's no longer necessary, or even desirable, for a home music system to sound like the real thing."

"We design the all-important musical midrange out of our equipment in order to try—vainly, I might add—to re-create the illusion of three-dimensional space through what is essentially a two-dimensional reproducer."

"Because that's where we're at. Real sounds very different from reproduced."

"This does not need to be so."

"The idea that all we are trying to do is make equipment that gives the listener some sort of magical emotional response to a mystical experience called "music" is all well and good, but it isn't what High End is all about."

"I think it's because we've lost our direction."

"But the pursuit of that Holy Grail of perfect sound—even temporarily, if not forever—could give us back the sense of purpose we have lost in recent years."

"It might even bring back some of the old excitement.—J. Gordon Holt"



The following are from "As we see it" in the current Nov. issue of Stereophile. It is 2007 follow up to Holt's speech. Questions by John Atkinson are in italics. Repsonses follow from Holt.

Do you still feel the high-end audio industry has lost its way in the manner you desribed 15 years ago?

"Not in the same manner; there's no hope now. Audio Actually used to have a goal:perfect reproduction of the sound of real music performed in a real space. That was found difficult to achieve, and it was abandoned when music lovers, who almost never heard anything except amplified music anyway, forgot what "the real thing" had sounded like. Today, "good" sound is whatever one likes. As Art Dudley so succinctly said, fidelity is irrelevant to music."

"Since the only measure of sound quality is that the listener likes it, that has pretty well put an end to audio advancement"

I remember you strongly feeling back in 1992 that multichannel/surround reproduction was the only chance the industry had for getting back on course

"With fidelity in stagnation, spatiality was the only area of improvement left."



Power conditioning, dacs etc. etc. are never going to give you perfect reproduction. If you want that, you need to have a grander view. The first step involves realizing that 2 channel, equilateral setups are never going to get you there.

[darrenyeats]

As long as attitudes and non-sequiturs like:

* digital EQ for in-room response is "cheating"
* equipment A costs twice equipment B therefore it is better
* active speakers have many measurable advantages, but it's about emotion therefore these don't matter
* putting absorption pads under your CD player can completely transform the sound of your system
* flat frequency response isn't everything therefore a flat frequency response is not essential

exist in the "audiophile" world...no wonder advancement in SQ is held back.

If people keep clinging to these types of belief our progress will certainly have a lower ceiling.

However, if people start being more open-minded we can achieve more than we think possible.
Darren

[sunshinedawg]

If people keep clinging to these types of belief our progress will certainly have a lower ceiling.

However, if people start being more open-minded we can achieve more than we think possible.
Darren

You hit the nail on the head, be more open-minded.

[JLM]

Robin,

Each component had its own battery, so I'm not understanding where power related interferences would come from.   


dawg/darren,

The only true standard is live, unamplified music.  Otherwise its just a game of chasing the sound of one setup versus another as veiled by microphones and studio "magic".

The decades long marketing mantra of "needing" 20 - 20,000 Hz at 130 dB has sold lots of amps and big/complicated speakers that has taken us away from the heart of the music (midrange at more moderate spls).  Marketing would have us invest thousands in cables, pads, and other "toys" instead of perfecting the essentials.  For instance, speaker cabinets are fairly essential yet are almost universally made of the cheapest possible material (MDF) or a meager step up to baltic plywood.

The quest for "just like the real thing" should start with something relatively easy, say an acoustic guitar.

[satfrat]

Robin,

Each component had its own battery, so I'm not understanding where power related interferences would come from.  

The interferences are being generated from the digital components themselves. Digital feedback's generated regardless of the power supply and that feedback interacts with other components via cables.

[JLM]

System philosophy would vary based on the type of music, budget, and available room.

A headbanger living in an apartment with paper thin walls had better look at headphones.

A rocker could be well served by home versions of professional sound reinforcement speakers/amps.

Etc.