MF 1 - Naim 0

nope i aint got 1 programe for doing this,ive at least 4 possible a few more lurking on the hard drive :shame: my favorite is winisd and em im not in the domestic audio buissness

 

its true...that is how they do it...you can download many off the net, they are all the same, winisd is superb...

they all use these parameters of the drive units, in the old days it was worked out by maths, now thats all in a program...I AM not in the industry, just read a bit...but don't make them into something they are not..true lots of clever people, but any child could now design a good speaker....that's not naive, its the way it is....
..ahhh but it must be more to it than that, after all there is some black art, some mystique...not to making a box...its all in the figures, you just pick a few and build em....

ok...here goes...I have this company..I buy all my stuff cheap, cables £1 a metre, put some posh plugs on, and charge a fortune cos its in some nice packing

I did an hnd in electronic engineering 10 yrs ago, but I don't bloody understand electronic design properly...the people that really do this stuff are geniuses....esp. the older ones who worked on the theory...but I probably know more than most about the basics of designs...etc..what I say is thro my own experience of stuff, and I have owned quite a bit...and have a fair idea about the design of the stuff...bit geeky, yes I was curious...

its when you get stuff that has this hierarchy of hifi .....ie single ended zero feedback class a triode, or similar, all talked up, you pay a fortune, get it back, and find you like a transistor amp more that is class B, push pull, evil transistors, cheap nasty...it makes you question stuff...all the stuff that's written in mags. the hype, the hard marketing saying this is best...when you find out a class A only has 8 watts out of 40 in class A, when you find a class B amp sounds better, when you see a naim circuit diagram that has no magic, no weird circuit that no-one knows about, gotten from an american manual, 30 years ago, its just a cheap circuit it makes you wonder why they charge so much, and ask why they have this religous following, tho' it does sound good...that's what makes me think this whole thing arises by a kind of accident, that you can't really design in a sound. After all, all you do is get the transistors to work properly. I have heard big psus sound wimpy in the bass, I have heard a 12 watter outpunch a naim for drive...its all random..I think
I have taken apart valve amps and put in some posh components..paper in oils costing £15 each...they were barely if at all better than some £1 orange drop caps., built my own silver cables, preferred some cheap copper, some people would say this is tantamount to a disaster sonically...its barely discernable, and I do have good ears...that's what makes you think some things are a money spinner..esp when you hear something with crap caps beat something with very expensive ones...

...when an audionote valve dac with no digital filter doens't sound any better than a cheap audio alchemy or midiman
tho it does very nice vocals, makes you question the makers statements about the superioriy...

..when valve amps have big capacitors in the signal path, use old hat technology, and miles of copper and magnetsim in the output transformer, makes you question why transistors with direct coupling don't sound as good GENERALLY.


incidentally, the best sound I ever had was some modded leak tl12s, driving some sensitive speakers of no given name! trouble is, my brother made me sell them

I have the circuit diagrams of a couple of musical fidelitys, pioneer a400, a300, I drew the circuit of icon audios amp, and lims valve amp which I think miffed him seriously...dunno why..big deal..,
I know tom evans work like the back of my hand, I have his iso circuit diagram-the groove is identical!!, got loads of valve info., a couple of naim circuits, some proaudio circuits, the crossover diagrams for proacs(they are all VERY similar), living voice auditoriums and avatars, that pissed him off...I asked what were the changes in the mark 2s., and he didn't reply as I knew the design, I find that a little rude..., why can you not discuss the design with someone?something to hide..like its cheap and you charge a bomb and you don't want this to get out?
audio-note stuff: valve dac, ongakus...


not sure why I bother sometimes, tho, its only a bit of music to listen to, it has this odd compulsion tho' like a drug...

 

Interesting post Data.

Raises an interesting point about so called "audio" grade circuit components. If DIY and "modding" is the way to build affordable hi-fi which outperforms commercial offerings, then things would be quite clear cut. But it seems that even when buying the requiste basic building blocks, that even there, there is marketing hype and dressing up of items sold even at that level.

I know nothing about electronics myself, nor have I dabbled, save for the very elementary stuff taught in secondary school physics lessons. But have heard it is possible to buy say capacitors from Maplins which are of equivalent spec to so called "audio" grade ones which are priced at several times the price of the Maplins ones. The thing is, is to make people aware of what the cheaper alternatives are.

 

Interesting. Is that really true? (Genuine question.)

-- Ian

 

yes,..its a linear technoloy 1028 on the input for low noise, and a ne5532 with lf411 for a bit more gain and a dc servo, eq is passive between the 1028 and 5532...

groove is the same TOPOLOGY, although the opamps are probably newer, it is on 2 circuit boards, and has oooh about £30 worth of bits called the lithos psu, all for a cool
£2k....





this is the basic microgroove, groove is the same expect on 2 pcbs...
notice is says tom evans '92...I had an iso and an iso hr and they are identical....just the opamps are newer...

the 2 channels are there...go from top to bottom, top opamp is the input, lowere is the extra gain and this funny feedback loop, and the one immediately to the right is the servo, which just gets rid of dc...ie does a blocking caps job...

this is duplicated on the rhs, the things on the left are linear technology voltage regulators...lt317, the riaa circuit is in between the first 2 opamps...

 

Just think, if you do it properly Ian, will only cost you about another £100 might even get it to sound good too
The lithos PSU is er well a bit antiquated still it does sell well in the states

 

get gf to put some ncs on it wm

 

Takes a bit more than that, to get it good, as you well know

 

can't be done with that sort of stuff...flawed design

 

Pehaps you and JC could throw one together, that would be interesting
Problem is, nearly all the kit is a flawed design all compromises Peter for Paul and all that) all you know, life is more than a handful of Oscons and Opa 606's.
Even Dcs & Wadia have there own set of compromises, all down to that magic stuff money, manufacturing volumes etc
Why worry, just build your own, it's more satisfying whatching the big money boys Grimice

 

Er, dude, I haven't got a Groove or an ISO, no intention of getting one either.

Interesting stuff nevertheless.

-- Ian

 

Ian, sorry Mate Wrong Ian (Data)

 

Sorry about the question regarding if you were in the industry data!

An interesting post about component quality and modification. Ive just built my first ever DIY component (a valve pre) so I'll have some fun in the future finding out which caps/resistors etc make a nice difference ... just got to get the bloody thing working first !!!! haha

Chris

 

Hi,

Some interesting comments about MF. I have owned a pair of MC2 loudspeakers many moons ago & owned a X24 dac. I have used a fair bit over the years. Either borrowing to try or selling. I have worked in the industry.

I do think that in the last 10 years they have tried to saturate the market with products. A number weren't any better than what they replaced. By having a lot products out means that you are always in the press & getting reviews. There has been the A series, the B series, E series, F series, Elektra series, X series, the 300 series, the Nuvistas, trivistas MC series etc.

Some of these have sold very well. Some items were, IMO, not so good but people like them. The main reason was that they had heard about them in the press. But the bottom line is that anyone who buys them should like the product.

Hi Merlin,

This is a good idea. This does happen with consumer goods. Which magazine goes out & buys the items that it tests from retail outlets. The mag is paid for via subscription & not advertising. It would be hard to get on mag like this fully covering hifi but could be interesting.

On to some other points

Hi data once again,

Seemed to set up the Voyd turtable Ok when I heard the at his & my place in the past. If you know the Voyd, it's a bugger to get the belt on. I have seen him change a cartridge quite easely. The VPI he used at the Bristol show was performing great IMO.

Blimey! You seen have got it in for Kevin Scott. As the man in charge of Living Voice he is responsible for his speakers. I agree he wouldn't have done all the design himself. He has picked thing up as he gone along. I am a aware a number of people were involved. People such as Guy Sargent & the Vitavox company were involved. David Young of Vitavox did a lot of the development to the Air Partners. The reason Vitavox were involved was the fact that kevin Scott & co came across some Vitavox PA speakers on his travels & found interesting info on them.

The Dali 104 loudspeaker were a speaker that Kevin Scott liked. At the time, his normal speaker at around this price point (Snell) were no longer around. There was a newer version which didn't sound as good.

The Dali 104 with a few mods sounded very good with the stuff he sold at the time. Having gained experience with the big horns, his company set about producing a design modeled on them.

i can't fully comment on how similar they sound. I have heard a pair of dali 104s years ago sounding good. It would be interesting to hear the together. As for measuring the same, measurements for amps only take aboard certain parameters. You can get two items that appear to measure the same but may sound different.

In the current issue of HiFi Choice, Paul Messinger reviews a pair of Living Voice Auditorium as part of a group test. There were 8 sets of speakers. The Auditoriums were the cheapest. They also produced the lowest distortion figures.

They came out quite well overall. If you think these are poor value for money what about the B&W Signature 805 at £2500 & the Totem Forest @ £2390. These two got the Editor Choice & Best Buy. There was not much (few %) between the speaker on the test. The bottom line was each speaker had a good array of strengths. Somebody else doing the review would have place the the speakers in a different order.

The net contains loads of info on many area of design & theory. design programmes can take a lot of the boring legwork out of design but I agree with Merlin, you still need to build & fine tune. You can get a fancy mathematical model & a very powerful computer to do the design work. You could look at every single parameter on the model & computer. This would require a lot of research, development & time & cost.

I will talk some more later.

SCIDB