REL Quake

Sure Merlin, bullshit us as you please...

 

Come on Antonio, you must have some experience surely? After posting that well thought out thesis you must have done some kind of practical experimentation to come to those conclusions?

Or have you just read about it

Just for your information phase is of course adjustable and any effect can be corrected by judicious EQ if neccessary. Time alignment is also fairly easy, simply measure the distances to the drive unit centres. Resonances ,I presume you mean room modes, really impact only with the 1st and 2nd harmonics, so in a normal room will have little effect above 100hz. Now if you'd mentioned off axis lobing you might have given me the impression you knew what you were talking about

 

Joel,

Pretty much anything with front ports is a no,no in the room, even if you move em half way in the room, Its that 38hz point, the monitors just excitied the fook out it., as did the kefs etc
The speakers don't use the rear wall for reinforcement, they are 34" and 38" in the room.
They are transmission lines, by their very nature, tend to produce tighter/cleaner & more articulate bass, though a lot of them are deemed slow, the Shearwaters are not
Dunc, they are rear ported (very small 40mm port, about 7 inches from the floor) transmission lines, not the large rolled flared open mouth ports that most of mainstream manufacturers use that chuff as they've designed the cabinet/port volume/driver area to mismatch status .
Also at other listen locations the M/larks are streets ahead of anything in holding it all together cohesively dept., recently had back to back with some Tannoy TD8's, in a much bigger/more open room, same source/amps, the TD8's had a greater room filling capicity (not by much though) and more neutral sound, but just couldn't do the articulation, control or sheer togetherness and groove they do, oddly enough they wern't as open either?
If you were fortunate enough to a decent sized room, I'd try the Ospreys, front ported , though very low down, superb sound.
Implementation is the key in any set-up

 

Hello,

Sorry to come in late on this debate.

I have ATC SCM 50A's and do not used a sub with them having tried both a Quake and a Strata 2. Even my Active 10's provide a better sound without.

For music (even thrash metal) with a decent pair of full range speakers, sub-woofery is a myth. For cinema stuff a bit of crash, bang, grumble is fun. However, my bastard DVD player has packed-up. Anyone want to buy a quake?

John

 

In answer to your questions, try using these search terms in the forum's search engine (hint: show results as posts).

Toole
Gannon
Sean Olive
Lipshitz
Leventhal

(for that last one you might want to look at my rebuttal of Stereophile's twisted interpretation of Leventhal's http://www.zerogain.com/forum/showpost.php?p=52488&postcount=216 ).

And I would counter that the evidence that we have that Mana does work is of highly questionable nature. In the absense of appropriate evidence, we can only state that the evidence for Mana working is inconclusive.

If your train of thought is now "the evidence is inconclusive, so therefore it must work", then I have a bottle of snake oil that I will sell you for a very reasonable price.

 

Wow Datty, you've had them all around to your house? Excellent.

Is the first named a relative by any chance?

Tip, get a mind of your own, do some experiments yourself, then come back here and report to us.

 

Dat Don't know if you have enough people to claim any statistical significance, there may be differences but the confidence interval would be too low, also the tests would not be done to exacting conditions (like you claim Bub show you), these people could all be you, masquerading under a different name hardly a trial in the "medical sense" with regard to the confidence interval, how sure are you that the results are repeatable. What statistical analysis have you done, your evidence against Sir is as good as James' evidence for, ie purely anecdotal in nature.

Finally we are getting somwhere as none of you can provide proof of your argument can we all agree to disagree then, as I have said I don't know if Mana works or not, do I care, do I care that you both have different views on it, no. But I always try to keep an open mind, and don't attack soething that I haven't tried for myself, have you tried mana yet?

It's good that you both oppose each other as it means that someone may try it and discover (as bub has ) that it is one route to their audio nirvana, and others will notice no difference and will save money in the process, so can you two kiss and make up and agree to disagree, after all we all have a bigger common ground thatn what equipment is best, we all like what hifi does for our music and there are enough naysayers outwith us enthusiasts, without us arguing with each other.

Oh and if you are such a sceptic, where did you buy the snake oil you think i might be interested in

Paul

 

I have posted a summary of the evidence (provided by Bub and the Mana site), and I've questioned whether that evidence is strong enough to assert that Mana works.

We can (of course) prove what Bub can and can't hear by testing him.

Would you prefer the experience of a Charlatan or a reasoned examination of the facts?

Maybe it's my lack of "experience"

Frequency response, noise, distortion, loudness - those are the 4 major things anyone can hear. Phase is audible under what might be reasonably called extreme circumstances.

Electrical Engineers are not blessed at birth with superior hearing, and again there is plenty of evidence that "golden ears" do not exist. Chances are your designer's hearing is good but not perfect and his own sense aren't particularly trustworthy. Moreover, if "it's your baby" you likely to be quite deluded about how good it sounds (every mother thinks their child is beautiful afterall).

The other danger is that if the designed has any hearing loss (eg age related) they'll end up building a prosthesis - which may work out OK, if you the customer have the same hearing loss.

If you want to "listen" to your design, then use proper double blind evaluation with several (or many) subjects.

Yep, it's here. Floyd Toole has written several AES papers about how they can measure loudspeakers and predict how they will work in any given room.

Moreover, he has a model for correlating subjective listener preference with loudspeaker measurements.

Billy Woodman (ATC's designer) was interviewed in a Widescreen Review article and asked if "he listened to his designs" his (paraphrased) response was "we used to, but now we just measure them". [Sorry, I threw the mag in the bin, so I can't accurately quote him..]

 

Slight digression here, Isn't Paul miller supposed to be able to 'prodict' the sound of CDP's after he's measured them on his Hi-q Rig?, I've seen this written a few times and in stereophile too? Isn't J/A a good mate? (as long as he doesn't ring him (PM) before 10am in the morning)
I'm not saying I go along with this, just though as its been mentioned in this thread, you could pull this one apart 2 ?

 

No, those are names of real people:

Floyd Toole works at Harman
Gannon works at Dolby
Sean Olive works at Harman
Stanley Lipshitz is a Professor at Waterloo
Leventhal is a professor of Statistics

I suggested you search the archive here to see the previous "fun" you missed out on

 

I'd be surprised. "These people" are regularly published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature - if they're all dat19 there's some weird conspiracy stuff going on with the principal author correspondence addresses...

And merlin, 'having a mind of your own' doesn't preclude being well read - in fact an awareness of what's previously been done in the field you're interested in is considerably more often a help than a hindrance.

 

Pete,

Yes a valid point however sometimes re-evaluation of this data with a new point of view because of advances in the field, is also some times called for, and more often that not, the 'Text book' so to speak is well and turely thrown out the window
I'm not neccessarly saying in this instance, however it DOES happen

 

Fair enough, and that's happened to me more than once. You can't re-evaluate the data if you hadn't read it in the first place though.

 

I will read tommorow dat, but have you yourself conducted any tests, scientific or otherwise, (ie have you tried mana?, you've yet to answer this?) If so could you please use these as your argument and just because the clever people you mentioned, support your(?)argument(?) I am sure there will be others who could contradict them, science (inc medicine) is full of contradictions and differing viewpoints, ever see a couple of young doctors arguing over a "poster" ? yet hear each individually and each has a plausible explanation of their findings.

It is unfair of you to quote scientific fact for what is clearly a subjective viewpoint, when you seem to be unableto offer this conclusion your self, if you have listened to it and think the results were that there were no differences other than in position of speakers (ie height) then say so and continue the argument on that basis, most of us have not the time nor inclination, to go scouring through the net insearch of answers to support our scepticism, and find it much more rewarding to try things out for ourselves, so go on try it for yourself Dat, then come back to the argument armed with subjective views, then you could later on use the expert measurement to support your findings then we will take you more seriously, as it is you are charlatan spouting other peoples views, if i described how something tasted to you, do you think you would really know what it taste like, so come on Dat why not taste some man first, just alittle lick will do, then we might start to believe you

 

Thanks for that Peter, had dat qualified it, then i would have had a better idea, not my field you see, I'm not arguing for or against mana BTW, my beef is the manner in which Dat is conducting his argument, without having tried it for himself, ar at least that is the immpression he is giving, by keeping stumpf, when asked directly.

 

dat, I'm sure your mother loves ya, baby.

How about some 'proof' for your earlier assertion that I should ditch the World's best CD player and the NAC 52 in favour of your crap alternatives?

And have you tried Mana or not? Have you ever even seen a Mana stand, apart from photos?

 

Well, I have some direct "experience" to call on. I've owned a CDS2 it's in the photo below.. along with a Levinson 390S, a Camelot Uther (highly thought of in the US, I'm not sure if it's available in the UK) and a Lexicon MC1.. [Merlin, see, I do experiment ]

And yes, that is Hutter - which I have compared favourably with Ikea Corras.

Frankly, you haven't been able to convince me it's worth trying

 

Well, if the CDS2 didn't slaughter all others, then it wasn't set-up properly: an elementary error from an arrogant novice who appears to have no idea at all. At least you compared the Hutter with something else. After that, there is obviously no need for you to try Mana.

"Highly thought-of in the US" is just a polite way of saying "sh!te", btw. The less said about Levinson, the soonest mended.

I have not the slightest desire to convince you of anything: you quite clearly think that you know it all already, and don't need any help at all.

 

I've heard this bollocks before - at the naim forum and then some. eg:

it's not set up properly
it's not on the right stand
try a different interconnect
Burndy versions/ cable dressing
"do" your mains

Lot's and lots of hot air - to cover the fact that there isn't anything really special about the CSD2.

Ah, I see, so now I've tried something I'm a novice.. and my experience qualifies as "no idea at all".

Whereas you are a "high priest" tutored in the ways of CDS2 set up? I haven't heard you bang on about mains spurs - wouldn't they let you into that cult? Or did your bullshit meter go off at that point?

These are just your narrow brand prejudices showing. A summary of your posts appears to be that everything that isn't naim or Mana is sh!te and ATC speakers are crap unless they are on Mana.

Let me be clear about this: I never wanted your help.

I started arguing with you mostly to show folks that you've run roughshod over that you're a paper-tiger: you huff and puff, hurl insults pretty well, and pound the table harder than most in the hope that you will win. But when it really comes down to it, you can't argue logically, and that your proclamations are boldly stated opinions rather than facts. I hope some of the people you've been rude to had a bit of fun watching.

It's been great, we should do this again sometime. I'll now bugger off so that analoguekid can explain to Merlin how you called me a motherfcuker.

 

Do me a favour. In whose opinion? Yours? It obviously must be true then