more fundamentalism

'just ran through [a bunch] some mails regarding cones, dacs or how was it phrased?, wrong-planet nonsense trying to come to speed as a newcomer...

Oh well, I lived with Celestion's SL600 copper unit happily for years, then delved into Infinity's EMITs for awhile (both fantastic) and meanwhile landed with QLN that use "I don't care" doped cloth-based cones...

In forty years I have spent too much time and wasted too much money on running off to audition "what's new." I have good [let's say "brass, maybe silver;" certainly not gold] ears but I moreso, have an exceptional memory. I 'hear' sonic blueprints from concerts and auditionings from way back, e.g., in the 60's. My friends appreciate this.

What I want to impress is that untill I finally got my head right as to 'priorities' in an "illusionary reproduction chain" (I have a psychologist friend who literally writes-off his hifi with the taxman under this heading - to the tune, for hardware, of Euro 80,000), I was spinning my wheels.

I grew up under the fallacy that the speakers (i.e., "end" of the audio reprodcution 'chain') were 'most' important - read in Audio mag, USA, ca 1960 that I sort of believed for about five years. Then I spent close to 20 years thinking it was "the source...." Meanwhile I think it is the amplifier, where I am today. I'll not go further into detail unless asked to, that is, "why" I belive this so,...

Whatever resembles "the real thing" most is 'right.' I thought I knew this when auditioning a stereo valve amp ('no way I'm going to say which) that gave me goose pimples all the time. I remembered the 'mono' check and noticed that a mono signal gave a great stereo sound and there I was, back to transistors... I'm generalizing here. Remeber the HiFi-trade-fair joke?: The hifi system or the original and the original came in 2nd place...

Meanwhile I have a playback system that resembles "sort of" a non-flashy performance, depending upon the recording. Unfortunately I have no "absolute phase" toggle switch - THERE is, in my opinion, whether CD or LP, a very important ingredient in "getting back to Molly...," as a bluesman might phrase it.
Cheers!
John

 

Cos metal cones are too coloured to be used in their designs ?

 

I don't know... their designs are too coloured for me.

 

OUCH!!! that must have hurt

Hitting below the belt or what?

 

Well, my DAC64 didn't sound "as hard as nails" in my system (or any other system I've heard it in apart from BD's). I've also heard the amp BD had at the time (MF A1000) in another system and it's anything but hard as nails so, process of elimination reveals it must be the speakers

As it happens, the Yammy NS1000s are well known for being as hard as nails. Even their strongest advocate, David Price of HFW, says "partner carefully unless you want your ears to bleed"

Michael.

 

Yes, the Yammies take no prisioners...

That is because they didn't take care of eddy-currents...

 

Time and frequency are intrinsically inter-related.

We can recognise voices easily over the phone because the phone system covers all of the neccassary frequencies of the spoken voice. ie 300hz - 4khz.
There is no usefull information in the spoken human voice outside this range.

I wouldn't bother trying to argue with me on this point by the way because I'm a Telecoms engineer and I know the history behind the reason this frequency range was chosen. All I will say is that far more capable engineers and scientists were involved in the choice than anyone here could possibly argue against.


GTM

 

Barry White, may he rest in peace, might have had something to say about that.

 

Possiby. You'll be surprised how low 300hz is as far as the human voice is concerned though


GTM

 

It's in the top octave of the tenor range, which, fair enough, would be where you'd expect most male speech to be. Rachmaninov's Vespers, notoriously, requires the basses to go down to the B flat a little below 60Hz - most people capable of singing that (there aren't too many ) would have a speaking voice a long way below 300Hz I'd have thought. Or Barry White, for that matter.

 

Strange then... because I do much prefer my girlfriend's voice live than through the phone, anyTIME...

Can you explain me that, Mr. Telecoms engineer?

 

That's cos your phone system is crap

 

BD stop being so silly. It's quite obvious that GTM meant "useful" for understanding what a person is saying.

 

No he didn't. There was no point in saying that.

Michael, wake up...

 

There was every point in saying it, wake up yourself

 

What's to wake up to? Let me explain it to you again: When GTM said "There is no usefull information in the spoken human voice outside this range" (300Hz - 4kHz) it's quite clear that what he meant by "useful" was "useful for the the purpose of communication by speech".

This is clear from earlier in the same post where he said "all of the neccassary frequencies of the spoken voice. ie 300hz - 4khz." (the bold is mine). ie he meant all those frequencies necessary for speech communication and voice recognition.

He was responding to your question of "how can we recognize a friend's voice through the phone so easily?". The answer is because all the necessary information for that is in the 300Hz to 4kHz range.

You brought up the whole phone thing as a rather silly way of suggesting that frequency response was not as important as time domain resspone, which is of course complete rubbish.

Michael.

 

Sorry guys, I'm getting confused here. Who's supposed to wake up and who can stay asleep?

 

Steve

Ill stay asleep
You can wake up (if you need to)

BD can go home

 

I love this place

Wish I had found it sooner

 

It means you've got loads of really great threads to go through all at once though. There was rather a good one entitled 'REL Quake' as I recall