Is this forum still active?

I hope you don't enjoy any music or the sound of any instruments without peer reviewed laboratory testing then? We can't have people going around willy nilly liking the sound of something without now can we.... I mean what will the world come to if just anyone can say "that looks and sounds like a saxophone" without this hypothesis being scientifically and rigorously tested

 

You're referring to enjoyment. I'm referring to verifiable differences in sound.
As far as HiFi is concerned, I really don't care whether I like the sound or not. As long as it measures well, if by any chance I don't like it, that's my problem, not that of the equipment.

For the record, I've never ever found something that measures well that I didn't like, except possibly aesthetically.

S.

 

Ah yes silly me.... I was mistakenly thinking we should enjoy hi fi

 

I suppose that's where we differ. If the equipment measures well, then the sound will be correct, and it's my job to get to like it. Now in practice, I've always liked anything that measures well, and indeed, sometimes actually like stuff that doesn't, like my GEC 912s and Quad IIs. They measure OK for what they are, but I like the looks, so accept their poor measurements by today's standards.

What I would never ever do is buy something I liked the sound of, if I wasn't also happy with the measurements being adequate for transparency. The opposite, something that measures well but sounds bad isn't something I recognise as being real. Not when auditioned blind and level matched.

In my view, there's too much 'I buy what I like' in society, which has resulted in 25 different shampoos and 35 different brands of toothpaste, not to say dozens of brands of loudspeakers, amplifiers etc. Rather a waste of the world's limited resources.

 

Never the twain....

My ears tell me if an amp is transparent. Test gear is completely useless here as I can confirm by having measured amps so good that they beat my test gear on THD and were flat from DC to >100KHz but sounded bloody awful.

One of the best amps I've heard was a Hiraga "Le Monstre" clone. When I got this in from a customer it would only manage 2W and THD was around 12%! (he was driving 107dB/W horns and hadn't noticed any problem). After much jiggery pokery I managed to get about 8W @10% THD from it but, more relevantly, down to around 0.1% below 5W. Output impedance was around 6R!!

Into my Spendor BC2's (89dB/W IIRC) and at suitable volume levels it sounded amazing.... and in fact "transparent" is the adjective that instantly comes to mind. I've yet to hear a string quartet sound like "they are there" to that extent with any other amp in my system and room (although a zero NFB SS amp of my own design at least matched it but in another room a few years before so not easy to compare). On rock, bass was very tight in spite of a damping factor of not much more than 1. Bass was tighter than with a Krell KSA50 I had there at the time, though not by much. The Krell is a very nice unit as well BTW.

There's now't as queer as folk as they say though and I once had an Audio Note SET zero NFB amp in which of course sounded dreadful and way short of the minimum standard for hi fi.... think "grans old radiogram" as what it sounded like (it couldn't manage its specified 16WPC and gave 16%THD @ 8W!). It's owner had a listen to my own system and way back then I was using high end 200WPC monoblock power amps with Mission 770 speakers and liked things LOUD. Well the guy has a listen and says "I used to work in the recording industry and heard many live bands in the studio and the instant playback on the studio monitoring system and your system sounds very much like that sound...." I'm obviously happy with this but then comes the gob-smacking comment "HMM NO NO I COULDN'T TOLERATE LISTENING TO ANYTHING LIKE THAT!"

There are even people out there who consider the Quad 33/303 and 44/405 as transparent amplifiers when they are in fact only suitable for non critical listening or background music due to lack of transparency (and lack of bass!).

 

Me for example!

How can you say a 44/405 has a lack of bass when it's flat to 20Hz? The 303 is only specced down to 30Hz, but then how many loudspeakers go that low? I see nothing in these amps to suggest they won't be transparent when used within their design parameters (like the 405 wasn't very good into low impedances).

Used with correct loudspeakers, they're fine.

S.

 

Tied that fly by hand and landed it still wriggling into the keep net

Strangely enough I completely disagree with you and in this case there are real and measurable reasons for the poor bottom end on these amps. 303 is capacitor coupled (fine when done right... as in recent designs of my own, natch) but with far too small an output cap (yes a bigger one was difficult to get and huge at the time) which is not in the feedback loop. Zout is 2.5R by 30Hz!

405 has a cleverly implemented active filter giving a fast roll off (3rd or 4th order...IIRC) HPF with poor group delay characteristics and in both amps 20 or 30Hz is WAY to high a bass roll off point. I design for <2Hz in all my work as phase shift starts about a decade higher than the 3dB point (in my Arkless 640P etc phono stage conversions I remove the subsonic filter as they always feck up the bass). Early roll off combined with phase shift spoils bass texture and lessens slam quite audibly in these Quad models (they are somewhat deliberately compromised to try and avoid damage to ESL speakers to be fair), amongst others.... but I don't suppose you recognise the existence of well textured, natural bass or of slam 'cos if it says in the specs that it's flat to 20Hz then it's perfect and if it doesn't sound perfect then no doubt my ears are faulty, yes?

"I see nothing in these amps to suggest they won't be transparent" well you wouldn't as ONLY listening can tell you if an amp is transparent! "Transparency" in audio is 100% a subjective thing, usually described as a sense of great clarity and absence of any "veils" between you and the sound. For measured parameters I tend towards the Doug Self "blameless" definition/concept, ie that an amp measures well enough that no blame can be attributed to poor measured parameters in the end results.... it is completely useless as a way of predicting sound quality though. It may surprise you that I DO design for "blameless" measured results and nothing that fails to meet basic 2Hz - 50KHz FR and less than 0.05% THD with good S/N ratio etc etc gets off the drawing board (well CAD simulation anyway!) as a matter of engineering pride and best practice. An amp with blameless measured spec will at least sound "hifi" and half decent to an average listener when listened to non critically, ie it will not be obviously hissy or bass light or muffled, but all the important stuff to do with transparency, sound-staging and palpability are beyond measurement I'm afraid.... until we come up with new measurements that explain it anyway!

 

Well, there are practically no young engineers coming. I see this at the seminars I attend. There is just nobody there under 50ish these days. And when asking the distributors, they say it is the same at the companies they visit. All older engineers. Yougens these days are not interested in studying tedious stuff like electronics engineering. I think that is a contributing factor in why forums are dying everywhere.

 

Whilst I don't disagree with the above, there are other forums that manage to be busy. The WigWam before the owners destroyed it, was very active. The Maverick forum that came out of that debacle is pretty busy. PinkFish is pretty active, and the forum I participate in most, ASR, is very busy indeed. Even UK Vintage Radio forum, which caters for enthusiasts of vintage equipment of all sorts, gets some 50 or more posts a day. We don't manage 10 a week here.

We all have pretty much the same demographics, possibly ASR is a bit younger, Vintage Radio a bit older, but not so very different.

It doesn't need participants to be engineers, although the forum might avoid some of the loony-tunes posts if more were, it just needs some enthusiasm for audio technology.

It might help if the forum owner (@Shaggy) showed some interest, led some discussions, or even gave us some insights as to why he bothered to buy a Forum he seemingly has no interest in.

S.

 

Unfortunately hi fi is now run by and for the loony tunes! Look at any of the forums above and you will see that a sensible engineering based post will get maybe 6 replies but one about "does red wire have better bass than blue wire" (or similar bollox) will get maybe 120 replies!

 

If one is a real engineer and stretching the brain daily, the last thing one wants to do is continue it into playtime. It is not because there are no engineers coming through, just their priorities are different. What you said, was virtually what was said about my generation. Besides, the world doesn't function solely on audio audio engineering.

Plus, a lot of what is said is largely speaking regurgitated dross. The Bar was always popular at any seminar I attended. I have had the pleasure of working with some really talented young engineers, but beyond 9 - 5, there priorities lie elsewhere. That may be the reason, I found them so refreshing.

However this, IMHO, is not a forum which attracts too many with an engineering bent - most folks just need a "Leg - up", because they like music, but don't understand the mechanics of audio systems. They will either give up, or end up as "Sages" to the next generation.

 

Virtually all of the very few regular posters on here are engineers! It does seem to attract lots of "silly questions" from people who join just to ask the one thing and are never heard from again though.

Personally I hated the 9-5 stuff and couldn't wait to get home to do proper engineering!

 

Perhaps you should find another 9 - 5 job, that is more fulfilling. And your boss wouldn't feel "Cheated" by paying your salary, when obviously you are not pulling your weight.

On the occasions when I was into the works, for some project or another, I would "Rib" some of the guys in Development or Testing, when they went for coffee, carrying "Practical Electronics" under their arm. "Looking for clues, are we?", I would say. The number of years I got away with that, beggars belief even when some made it to senior posts - "Still reading P.E. - no wonder the company is struggling".

A friend, a serious radio ham, would spend hours every night on prototype designs which were worth nothing outside his hobby. "It compensates for my abject boredom during the day", he said. Pity he didn't use his talent on something more beneficial to him and his company. He was very good, but there seemed little point in him devoting years on a degree as he never fulfilled his potential, which is a shame. And yes, we were and remain good friends, despite all those years of chivvying.

As for me - waking at 0230hrs, sitting bolt upright in a hotel room in Doha, switching on the light and jotting down some notes for further tests, to figure out why a Prototype Drive was continually tripping the P.A. - before flying off into the Gulf to a Gas Exploration Rig, on which the transmitter and peripherals were installed, seemed like a normal day for me. Years of long days, 12 - 16 hours were the price one paid for being half decent at my job. And, when that was resolved, off to some other S--t---e in the World to repeat the exercise, albeit on different systems. I haven't seen a lot of the World, but I certainly have worked it.

 

If I may answer for Jez, he IS the boss! He's been operating his design and repair business for some years, so presumably happy with his life.

In my pre-retirement life, I was very lucky that I actually looked forward to Mondays as my job was interesting, satisfying, and adequately paid. It all went to rat-shit towards the end when so many of the 'old-time' experienced engineers were retired/laid-off and replaced by young IT whizz-kids that wouldn't know an XLR from a wooden leg. (or a resistor from a radish, to quote Jez's wonderful phrase)

Previous loyalties and gentlemens' agreements went for nothing, it was all about the price and not the value. Concepts like life-time Cost of Ownership were replaced by up-front purchase price (nevermind that they would have to spend twice as much on spares and service personnel for cheaper unreliable products)

Hobbies are fine, especially in retirement.

S.

 

It was forever thus - and by the way, I'm not having a dig at Jez, it's just Pythonesque Humour.

However, each departing generation thinks the World is coming to an end with the next generation driving it. Perhaps it would not seem such a disaster, if more was done by the departing generation, that spawned the latest, devoted more to ensuring their contribution wasn't lost. There is still a reluctance on the part of many to be open with their peers, let alone the next generation.

The way companies function always perplexes me - "Chaos is Cash", as the saying goes. And if it is always "Tax - deductible", it will never change.

I remember the Nimrod/Comet/AWAC fiasco. So much money had been spent trying to make the Radar work, that the Government was pulling the Plug. It was reported at the time, G.E.C. were willing to put £2Billion into it keeping it going - was this money from this failing project, which they had hidden by way of creative accounting? Anyway, it didn't work - the Government scrapped it.

Yes, I agree about companies "Knowing the Price of Everything and the value of Nothing". However, that is the way companies are driven - for profit, regardless, for their share holders, many who are members of the same society, that bellyache about it. However, that is not an excuse for us as individuals, which sadly seems to be a trend whereby we appear to be following the same ethos.

 

Owner last seen 13 May so looks like it's not going anywhere...

 

Makes you wonder doesn't it.... I'm sick of having to say NO to advertising cookies etc on a pretty much weekly basis here FWIW and wonder if there is some "scam" involving this which makes it profitable to snap up old forums etc....

Are those SD Acoustics speakers in your avatar BTW?

 

Sadly, that's how it looks to me too. I've messaged the owner, and addressed posts to him, but never had a reply. Can't understand why he took it on, unless as Jez says, it's part of some scheme, maybe tax avoidance, maybe harvesting credentials, maybe pushing advertising. I can't believe he paid much for it, as it wasn't going anywhere before.

S.

 

Ah yes, dear old Steen Doessing. What a nice man.

Sold a few of his 'speakers in the 1980s. They sounded great, but were rather fragile, and people tended to blow tweeters. Particularly liked the three-way SD1s, with the ribbon tweeter.

He's been doing some superb art photography since leaving the HiFi industry.

S.

 

I remember the SD1's yes and spent a fair bit of time playing with them years back. I'm afraid I wasn't impressed.... It was a long time ago so memory may be suspect here but I recall that Visiton tweeter sounding odd and poor integration between the drive units.
I rented part of the basement of Neat at the time and ran a repair business from it when Bob was selling S/H hi fi and Derek of Kudos worked for Bob hence I had access to all their stock and listening room etc, which was nice. They had in Spendor SP1's and Mordaunt Short Signifers around the same time and both of these were in a different league IMHO (how I wish I'd taken up the offer of SP1's for £250-300 a year or two later from several friends who were selling them! Still, I have my BCII's which are very similar and not that far behind the SP1).