| Author |
Message |
Guest
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 Posted:
Tue Dec 07, 2004 10:21 pm Post subject:
Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
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Ersatz, homogenized, blameless
Or, what the nylon shirt has to do with hi-fi
an essay by Andre Jute
We're hearing a lot of noise about plastic materials in hi-fi.
There are three good places for plastic in hi-fi. One is in film caps,
the second as insulation against high voltages, and the third (in the
specific case of Teflon) as a baseboard for very low level pickup amps.
Anywhere else the question arises, what does it do to the sound?
Engineers will have us believe it homogenizes the sound. In their
mouths homogeneity is a Good Thing.
But anyone who goes to concerts knows that the lowest common
denominator of homogeneity is overwhelmed by the individuality of
performers and instruments and performances. That doesn't stop the
meterheads insisting that amps are now perfect because they can
reproduce what is on the master tape perfectly, and plastic speakers
are heading that way too. All this is proven by vanishing THD and, if
you believe in the model, by other parameters too. It is a circular
argument with the superficial logic of all circular arguments. The key
phrase is slipped in once in a huge mess of verbiage and never
repeated.
It all hangs on the master tape. If you believe that the master tape
represents the experience in the concert hall perfectly, then amps and
speakers that you can buy on the high street are blameless. It isn't
the fault of their makers that cultured concert goers say that melted
sand amps and plastic speakers don't sound in their living room like
the concert hall. The amps and speakers did their job, they reproduced
the master tape faithfully. The circle closes, the argument is over,
tenth-rate engineering hangers-on harass dissidents.
They complete the circle by insisting it is heresy to claim that the ne
plus ultra of audio engineers, recording engineers, screwed up
massively. The recording engineers too are blameless. They watched
their VU meters constantly. The THD vanishes.
So does the pleasure of the experience when that tape comes out of the
other end of the blameless chain in your listening room.
Your average high-end emporium is full of speaker drivers made of
another reconstituted (read dead) material, medium density fibreboard,
MDF. Like plastic speaker cones, it thuds unpleasantly in the sub-bass
region when you hit it with your knuckles. Zero resonance achieved! But
music is about resonance so hi-fi should be about the control and
channeling of resonance, not its total elimination. Starting with a
dead material is another of those superficially attractive ideas like
dripdry nylon shirts. It should work. I loved the idea of MDF when I
first started in speakers. It doesn't work.
Your average good concert hall is full of wood and other natural
materials. One I like, the library of a private house, has books in it.
Any concert hall resonates like crazy. In the audience you hear the
surroundings as much as the music. The meterhead wet dream of a
symphony orchestra in an anechoic chamber to a cultured person is
simply a nightmare.
That ambience of the concert hall hardly ever makes it to the master
tape. Which is blameless, as is the chain beyond, by any reasonable or
unreasonable meterhead standard. Hi-fi is just about dead and the
meterheads killed it. Blamelessly, of course.
By the standards of hedonists, the whole sequence smells like three-day
dead fish.
Poly-coned speakers make a certain instant impression. They are clean
and blameless. But after a while you notice what is missing. And what
is missing is the charm of the music in the concert hall. Poly cones,
and other plastics, at the end of the blameless chain of engineers
whose training and professional behaviour is beyond question, have
robbed the music of its character quite as effectively as if it were
generated by a computer. Moog is God!
Paper cones are anathema to the railroad minds among the engineers, who
totally fail to understand that anyone can be so arrogant as to value
his taste higher than their received wisdom. Yet, to the sophisticated
and experienced concert-goer, quality paper cones offer so much more of
the authority and thrill of the original in the concert hall. The same
applies to correctly made ply or, even better, solid wood used for
speakers rather than MDF.
There is a fascist mindset among a large part of high-end audiophiles
which has been enabled and given a voice by the internet. Its purpose
is to level us all down, to homogenize us to unquestioning obeisance to
the master tape, the meterhead as godhead, the VU meter as the chiseled
tablet.
It's bullshit. I was at the concert. I know what the reproduced music
should sound like. Those guys haven't delivered it, so I have learned
how to do better. If that's arrogance, it is born of the desperation
of trying to get fascist idiots to understand that they have no right
to tell me what I should like, that I make up my own mind. My taste and
experience of the end product is vastly superior to theirs, of course,
but that hardly matters in the scale of a bunch of jumped-up
technicians trying to reduce my freedom of choice.
A matter of culture should never descend to where this one has
descended to, where weakminded meterheads deny culture has any rights
in reproduced music, and the strongest-minded of the hedonists lose
patience and say, It's my money, I won't spend it with you jerks,
and if you can't or won't give me what I want I will do the job
myself.
Plastics in hi-fi are like nylon shirts. They drape well, they drip
dry, they last a long time, they are cheap for all these advantages.
They also look like shit. Worse, they make the owner hot and sweaty and
soon they cause him to stink like three-day old fish.
Enthusiasm for nylon shirts marks out the sort of anorak you want to
avoid on pain of a wrinkled nose.
Copyright © Andre Jute 2004
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TubeGarden
Guest
|
| Posted:
Tue Dec 07, 2004 10:21 pm Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
|
|
Hi RATs!
I don't hear squat about plastic in hi-fi. Must hang out on the wrong street
corners, huh?
Repo-reduced music has nothing to do with live music.
It is always the same. Live is never the same.
Some folks like to belittle others.
Some like to play audio geek.
I am a pretty happy audio geek - well, for a crippled old nerd.
You are occasionally humorous, when you aren't busy noticing the wretched
foibles of others.
Campari may make the ruthless nature of your text seem astute to you. It is
just assinine to me.
Lighten up. We are all dying for no good cause :)
Even engineers.
Even handsome engineers with pretty young wives.
Even me.
Happy Ears!
Al
PS I have 417A and Au grid 2A3 and transformers and all, but, not enough juice
to hook them up, so I listen to these old eBay treasures and take my meds and
try to maintain some semblence of humanity among my fellow inmates.
Sam Tellig doesn't like plastic speakers much, neither. I like some I have
heard. Sometimes.
I am a tasteless slob ;)
Paper works well, but, it is not news and does not move magazines ... see any
irony there?
Sigh.
Alan J. Marcy
Phoenix, AZ
PWC/mystic/Earhead |
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Jon Yaeger
Guest
|
| Posted:
Tue Dec 07, 2004 10:21 pm Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
|
|
in article 1102450362.384321.251470@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com,
fiultra@yahoo.com at fiultra@yahoo.com wrote on 12/7/04 3:12 PM:
| Quote: | Ersatz, homogenized, blameless
Or, what the nylon shirt has to do with hi-fi
an essay by Andre Jute
We're hearing a lot of noise about plastic materials in hi-fi.
There are three good places for plastic in hi-fi. One is in film caps,
the second as insulation against high voltages, and the third (in the
specific case of Teflon) as a baseboard for very low level pickup amps.
Anywhere else the question arises, what does it do to the sound?
Engineers will have us believe it homogenizes the sound. In their
mouths homogeneity is a Good Thing.
But anyone who goes to concerts knows that the lowest common
denominator of homogeneity is overwhelmed by the individuality of
performers and instruments and performances. That doesn't stop the
meterheads insisting that amps are now perfect because they can
reproduce what is on the master tape perfectly, and plastic speakers
are heading that way too. All this is proven by vanishing THD and, if
you believe in the model, by other parameters too. It is a circular
argument with the superficial logic of all circular arguments. The key
phrase is slipped in once in a huge mess of verbiage and never
repeated.
It all hangs on the master tape. If you believe that the master tape
represents the experience in the concert hall perfectly, then amps and
speakers that you can buy on the high street are blameless. It isn't
the fault of their makers that cultured concert goers say that melted
sand amps and plastic speakers don't sound in their living room like
the concert hall. The amps and speakers did their job, they reproduced
the master tape faithfully. The circle closes, the argument is over,
tenth-rate engineering hangers-on harass dissidents.
They complete the circle by insisting it is heresy to claim that the ne
plus ultra of audio engineers, recording engineers, screwed up
massively. The recording engineers too are blameless. They watched
their VU meters constantly. The THD vanishes.
So does the pleasure of the experience when that tape comes out of the
other end of the blameless chain in your listening room.
Your average high-end emporium is full of speaker drivers made of
another reconstituted (read dead) material, medium density fibreboard,
MDF. Like plastic speaker cones, it thuds unpleasantly in the sub-bass
region when you hit it with your knuckles. Zero resonance achieved! But
music is about resonance so hi-fi should be about the control and
channeling of resonance, not its total elimination. Starting with a
dead material is another of those superficially attractive ideas like
dripdry nylon shirts. It should work. I loved the idea of MDF when I
first started in speakers. It doesn't work.
Your average good concert hall is full of wood and other natural
materials. One I like, the library of a private house, has books in it.
Any concert hall resonates like crazy. In the audience you hear the
surroundings as much as the music. The meterhead wet dream of a
symphony orchestra in an anechoic chamber to a cultured person is
simply a nightmare.
That ambience of the concert hall hardly ever makes it to the master
tape. Which is blameless, as is the chain beyond, by any reasonable or
unreasonable meterhead standard. Hi-fi is just about dead and the
meterheads killed it. Blamelessly, of course.
By the standards of hedonists, the whole sequence smells like three-day
dead fish.
Poly-coned speakers make a certain instant impression. They are clean
and blameless. But after a while you notice what is missing. And what
is missing is the charm of the music in the concert hall. Poly cones,
and other plastics, at the end of the blameless chain of engineers
whose training and professional behaviour is beyond question, have
robbed the music of its character quite as effectively as if it were
generated by a computer. Moog is God!
Paper cones are anathema to the railroad minds among the engineers, who
totally fail to understand that anyone can be so arrogant as to value
his taste higher than their received wisdom. Yet, to the sophisticated
and experienced concert-goer, quality paper cones offer so much more of
the authority and thrill of the original in the concert hall. The same
applies to correctly made ply or, even better, solid wood used for
speakers rather than MDF.
There is a fascist mindset among a large part of high-end audiophiles
which has been enabled and given a voice by the internet. Its purpose
is to level us all down, to homogenize us to unquestioning obeisance to
the master tape, the meterhead as godhead, the VU meter as the chiseled
tablet.
It's bullshit. I was at the concert. I know what the reproduced music
should sound like. Those guys haven't delivered it, so I have learned
how to do better. If that's arrogance, it is born of the desperation
of trying to get fascist idiots to understand that they have no right
to tell me what I should like, that I make up my own mind. My taste and
experience of the end product is vastly superior to theirs, of course,
but that hardly matters in the scale of a bunch of jumped-up
technicians trying to reduce my freedom of choice.
A matter of culture should never descend to where this one has
descended to, where weakminded meterheads deny culture has any rights
in reproduced music, and the strongest-minded of the hedonists lose
patience and say, It's my money, I won't spend it with you jerks,
and if you can't or won't give me what I want I will do the job
myself.
Plastics in hi-fi are like nylon shirts. They drape well, they drip
dry, they last a long time, they are cheap for all these advantages.
They also look like shit. Worse, they make the owner hot and sweaty and
soon they cause him to stink like three-day old fish.
Enthusiasm for nylon shirts marks out the sort of anorak you want to
avoid on pain of a wrinkled nose.
Copyright © Andre Jute 2004
|
This piece is an amalgm of anosognosia and arrogance, framed by narcissism .
.. . |
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Jon Yaeger
Guest
|
| Posted:
Wed Dec 08, 2004 1:37 am Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
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|
Dr. 'Dre writes:
*** snip rant ***
| Quote: |
Plastics in hi-fi are like nylon shirts. They drape well, they drip
dry, they last a long time, they are cheap for all these advantages.
They also look like shit. Worse, they make the owner hot and sweaty and
soon they cause him to stink like three-day old fish.
Enthusiasm for nylon shirts marks out the sort of anorak you want to
avoid on pain of a wrinkled nose.
Copyright © Andre Jute 2004
|
Hmmm . . . . What media does "Hi-Fi" use?
Records = vinyl = PLASTIC
CDs = polycarbonate = PLASTIC
TAPE = mylar = PLASTIC |
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R
Guest
|
| Posted:
Wed Dec 08, 2004 6:13 am Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
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"Ruud Broens" <broensr@wanadoo.nl> wrote in news:41b666d2$0$8918$abc4f4c3
@news.wanadoo.nl:
| Quote: | Copyright © Andre Jute 2004
Amongst other things, what in essence you question:
does the 'technically perfect' reproduction
equate with
the esthetically, 'experienced' best reproduction ?
is certainly a question that is worth giving some thought :)
nice,
Rudy
|
You would be amazed at the huge variances in what various audiophiles
consider excellent reproduction. Plastics are not the villian IMHO, it is
the differences in what is considered excellence in sound reproduction.
One cannot even get the recording companies to agree on how to record live
music so how can one expect the reproduction system to mirror a live
performance? One can tune and tinker with a sound system until a certain
recording does indeed sound very close to live, but as soon as another
recording from another company is played, it all vanishes and you are back
to where you were or worse. There are other variables to be sure, but
rest assured that plastics are just one miniscule part of a much larger
problem in reproduction accuracy.
r
--
Nothing beats the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with DLT tapes. |
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Ruud Broens
Guest
|
| Posted:
Wed Dec 08, 2004 6:14 am Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
|
|
Copyright © Andre Jute 2004
Amongst other things, what in essence you question:
does the 'technically perfect' reproduction
equate with
the esthetically, 'experienced' best reproduction ?
is certainly a question that is worth giving some thought :)
nice,
Rudy |
|
| Back to top |
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Stewart Pinkerton
Guest
|
| Posted:
Wed Dec 08, 2004 8:04 am Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
|
|
On 7 Dec 2004 12:12:42 -0800, fiultra@yahoo.com wrote:
| Quote: | Ersatz, homogenized, blameless
Or, what the nylon shirt has to do with hi-fi
|
That would be, sod all.
| Quote: | an essay by Andre Jute
|
Actually, just more bombastic and ignorant tub-thumping.
| Quote: | We're hearing a lot of noise about plastic materials in hi-fi.
There are three good places for plastic in hi-fi. One is in film caps,
the second as insulation against high voltages, and the third (in the
specific case of Teflon) as a baseboard for very low level pickup amps.
|
Indeed, and there are plenty of good places for paper, too. After all,
everything has to be packaged................
| Quote: | Anywhere else the question arises, what does it do to the sound?
Engineers will have us believe it homogenizes the sound. In their
mouths homogeneity is a Good Thing.
|
Engineers will tell you no such thing.
| Quote: | But anyone who goes to concerts knows that the lowest common
denominator of homogeneity is overwhelmed by the individuality of
performers and instruments and performances. That doesn't stop the
meterheads insisting that amps are now perfect because they can
reproduce what is on the master tape perfectly, and plastic speakers
are heading that way too. All this is proven by vanishing THD and, if
you believe in the model, by other parameters too. It is a circular
argument with the superficial logic of all circular arguments. The key
phrase is slipped in once in a huge mess of verbiage and never
repeated.
It all hangs on the master tape. If you believe that the master tape
represents the experience in the concert hall perfectly, then amps and
speakers that you can buy on the high street are blameless. It isn't
the fault of their makers that cultured concert goers say that melted
sand amps
|
What, you mean those big glass bottles made from melted sand?
| Quote: | and plastic speakers don't sound in their living room like
the concert hall. The amps and speakers did their job, they reproduced
the master tape faithfully. The circle closes, the argument is over,
tenth-rate engineering hangers-on harass dissidents.
|
It's been my experience that those who deride others as 'tenth-rate',
are so dim that they don't even know why they're wrong...........
| Quote: | They complete the circle by insisting it is heresy to claim that the ne
plus ultra of audio engineers, recording engineers, screwed up
massively. The recording engineers too are blameless. They watched
their VU meters constantly. The THD vanishes.
|
Actually, most audio engineers of my acquaintance readily ackowledge
that 90% (being generous) of modern recordings are pretty massively
screwed up. This is unlikely to be repairable in the home..........
| Quote: | So does the pleasure of the experience when that tape comes out of the
other end of the blameless chain in your listening room.
Your average high-end emporium is full of speaker drivers made of
another reconstituted (read dead) material, medium density fibreboard,
MDF. Like plastic speaker cones, it thuds unpleasantly in the sub-bass
region when you hit it with your knuckles. Zero resonance achieved!
|
Indeed, that would be the aim of any sensible loudspeaker designer.
| Quote: | But
music is about resonance so hi-fi should be about the control and
channeling of resonance, not its total elimination.
|
Utter, ignorant, bullshit.
| Quote: | Starting with a
dead material is another of those superficially attractive ideas like
dripdry nylon shirts. It should work. I loved the idea of MDF when I
first started in speakers. It doesn't work.
|
Sure it does, although ther are even better materials around these
days, which will shatter your knuckles in complete silence! :-)
| Quote: | Your average good concert hall is full of wood and other natural
materials. One I like, the library of a private house, has books in it.
Any concert hall resonates like crazy. In the audience you hear the
surroundings as much as the music.
|
Absolutely - and *those* are the resonances you want to hear at home,
not loads of additional ones from incompetent SET amps and horribly
ringing speakers.
| Quote: | The meterhead wet dream of a
symphony orchestra in an anechoic chamber to a cultured person is
simply a nightmare.
|
Just another typical Jute lie, in lieu of a substantive argument.
| Quote: | That ambience of the concert hall hardly ever makes it to the master
tape.
|
More bullshit. I have dozens of live recordings which pretty well
convey the true acoustic of the hall space. Of course, with your wood
and paper speakers, you may well not be aware of this...........
| Quote: | Which is blameless, as is the chain beyond, by any reasonable or
unreasonable meterhead standard. Hi-fi is just about dead and the
meterheads killed it. Blamelessly, of course.
|
Just another typical Jute lie, in lieu of a substantive argument.
| Quote: | By the standards of hedonists, the whole sequence smells like three-day
dead fish.
|
Visit your holiday destination of choice, the Hedonism resorts, and
you'll realise from whence that smell really originates...........
BTW, surely hedonists don't actually *have* standards, that being the
whole point?
| Quote: | Poly-coned speakers make a certain instant impression. They are clean
and blameless. But after a while you notice what is missing. And what
is missing is the charm of the music in the concert hall. Poly cones,
and other plastics, at the end of the blameless chain of engineers
whose training and professional behaviour is beyond question, have
robbed the music of its character quite as effectively as if it were
generated by a computer. Moog is God!
|
Utter nonsense! The cleanest and clearest sounds I have ever heard
from loudspeakers have come from composite drivers, allowing you to
hear right into the heart of the recording, past the smearing typical
of paper and wood.
If you were referring only to Bextrene, I might agree with you, but
nobody has used that material in a decade. Your ignorance of modern
methods and materials is very obvious.
| Quote: | Paper cones are anathema to the railroad minds among the engineers, who
totally fail to understand that anyone can be so arrogant as to value
his taste higher than their received wisdom.
|
I value my taste *far* above the puffed-up ramblings which are all
we've ever seen of your 'wisdom'.
| Quote: | Yet, to the sophisticated
and experienced concert-goer, quality paper cones offer so much more of
the authority and thrill of the original in the concert hall.
|
Not to this sophisticated and experienced concert-goer, it doesn't!
| Quote: | The same
applies to correctly made ply or, even better, solid wood used for
speakers rather than MDF.
|
Typically arrogant posturing from a terminally ignorant old egomaniac.
Aside from a few Italian makers of what is basically furniture, no
top-class speaker cabinet is made from unprocessed wood. Plywood, yes,
but very rarely, and with lots of plastic damping applied, to minimise
those resonances you so ignorantly prefer.
| Quote: | There is a fascist mindset among a large part of high-end audiophiles
which has been enabled and given a voice by the internet. Its purpose
is to level us all down, to homogenize us to unquestioning obeisance to
the master tape, the meterhead as godhead, the VU meter as the chiseled
tablet.
It's bullshit.
|
You're right, it's bullshit.................
| Quote: | I was at the concert. I know what the reproduced music
should sound like. Those guys haven't delivered it, so I have learned
how to do better. If that's arrogance, it is born of the desperation
of trying to get fascist idiots to understand that they have no right
to tell me what I should like, that I make up my own mind.
|
No, it's born of stupidity and ignorance, married to an ego the size
of the Kalahari - and with as much sustenance.
| Quote: | My taste and
experience of the end product is vastly superior to theirs, of course,
but that hardly matters in the scale of a bunch of jumped-up
technicians trying to reduce my freedom of choice.
|
You seem to have the taste and manners of a docker, and very little
experience of high-fidelity music reproduction. Nobody is reducing
your freedom to make total fool of yourself, that much is obvious. And
if you want paper-coned drivers, there are lots of them on the market,
also lots of nicely resonant wooden cabinets for them. They're not
even expensive, apart from Lowthers.
| Quote: | A matter of culture should never descend to where this one has
descended to, where weakminded meterheads deny culture has any rights
in reproduced music, and the strongest-minded of the hedonists lose
patience and say, It's my money, I won't spend it with you jerks,
and if you can't or won't give me what I want I will do the job
myself.
Plastics in hi-fi are like nylon shirts. They drape well, they drip
dry, they last a long time, they are cheap for all these advantages.
They also look like shit. Worse, they make the owner hot and sweaty and
soon they cause him to stink like three-day old fish.
|
Not argued at all, which is why I wear Egyptian cotton or silk. Of
course, that wouldn't be very good for speakers (aside from tweeter
domes, and you need viscous plastic added into the mix there!). One
should use appropriate materials for all tasks. While paper is cheap,
and can provide quite good results when used with care, it is not the
material of choice for the very best speaker drivers. IME, that would
be composites such as the Focal W glass/foam/glass sandwich.
| Quote: | Enthusiasm for nylon shirts marks out the sort of anorak you want to
avoid on pain of a wrinkled nose.
|
Enthusiasm for paper cones marks out the sort of ignorant jerk you
want to avoid on pain of bleeding ears........
| Quote: | Copyright © Andre Jute 2004
|
Who the hell would want to plagiarise this load of stinking fish?
--
Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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Ruud Broens
Guest
|
| Posted:
Wed Dec 08, 2004 9:47 pm Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
|
|
"R" <spmaway@ylhoo.com> wrote in message
news:Xns95B8E75AC954Fmc2500183316chgoill@10.232.1.1...
: "Ruud Broens" <broensr@wanadoo.nl> wrote in news:41b666d2$0$8918$abc4f4c3
: @news.wanadoo.nl:
:
: > Copyright © Andre Jute 2004
: >
: > Amongst other things, what in essence you question:
: >
: > does the 'technically perfect' reproduction
: > equate with
: > the esthetically, 'experienced' best reproduction ?
: >
: > is certainly a question that is worth giving some thought :)
: >
: > nice,
: > Rudy
: >
: >
:
: You would be amazed at the huge variances in what various audiophiles
: consider excellent reproduction. Plastics are not the villian IMHO, it is
: the differences in what is considered excellence in sound reproduction.
: One cannot even get the recording companies to agree on how to record live
: music so how can one expect the reproduction system to mirror a live
: performance? One can tune and tinker with a sound system until a certain
: recording does indeed sound very close to live, but as soon as another
: recording from another company is played, it all vanishes and you are back
: to where you were or worse. There are other variables to be sure, but
: rest assured that plastics are just one miniscule part of a much larger
: problem in reproduction accuracy.
:
: r
:
: --
: Nothing beats the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with DLT tapes.
Rich observation :)
Rudy |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mick
Guest
|
| Posted:
Wed Dec 08, 2004 10:13 pm Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
|
|
On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 21:42:59 +0000, TubeGarden wrote:
Hi Al!
| Quote: | I don't hear squat about plastic in hi-fi. Must hang out on the wrong
street corners, huh?
Repo-reduced music has nothing to do with live music.
It is always the same. Live is never the same.
|
Amen Brother!
| Quote: | Some folks like to belittle others.
Some like to play audio geek.
I am a pretty happy audio geek - well, for a crippled old nerd.
You are occasionally humorous, when you aren't busy noticing the wretched
foibles of others.
Campari may make the ruthless nature of your text seem astute to you. It
is just assinine to me.
Lighten up. We are all dying for no good cause :)
Even engineers.
Even handsome engineers with pretty young wives.
Even me.
Happy Ears!
Al
PS I have 417A and Au grid 2A3 and transformers and all, but, not enough
juice to hook them up, so I listen to these old eBay treasures and take my
meds and try to maintain some semblence of humanity among my fellow
inmates.
Sam Tellig doesn't like plastic speakers much, neither. I like some I have
heard. Sometimes.
I am a tasteless slob ;)
Paper works well, but, it is not news and does not move magazines ... see
any irony there?
Sigh.
|
Wow Al, this *must* be one of the longest posts that I've seen from you!
All good stuff though... Keep up the good work, friend! :-)
--
Mick
(no M$ software on here... :-) )
Web: http://www.nascom.info
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mick
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Dec 08, 2004 10:13 pm Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
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On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 12:12:42 -0800, fiultra wrote:
| Quote: | Ersatz, homogenized, blameless
Or, what the nylon shirt has to do with hi-fi an essay by Andre Jute
We're hearing a lot of noise about plastic materials in hi-fi.
There are three good places for plastic in hi-fi. One is in film caps, the
second as insulation against high voltages, and the third (in the specific
case of Teflon) as a baseboard for very low level pickup amps.
Anywhere else the question arises, what does it do to the sound?
Engineers will have us believe it homogenizes the sound. In their mouths
homogeneity is a Good Thing.
snip |
Thanks, I enjoyed reading that but come off it, Andre. you don't really
believe that do you? You've got your best S**T stirring kit on again
haven't you? ;-)
At the end of the day, the whole point of the exercise is what?
a) To reproduce the concert hall experience as closely for the listener as
possible.
or
b) To make a lot of money by appearing to do (a) but making sure that the
equipment (and media) can be made very widely available and hence maximise
profits.
Note that only answer (a) will select the best materials for the job; only
answer (b) will make a long-term profit. If you want to use answer (a)
then forget about using just about *any* commercially available materials
or components as they are simply not designed for your purposes and you
will *have* to accept compromises.
--
Mick (getting very cynical nowadays...)
(no M$ software on here... :-) )
Web: http://www.nascom.info
Web: http://projectedsound.tk |
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Ian Iveson
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Dec 09, 2004 4:51 am Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
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"R" <spmaway@ylhoo.com> wrote
| Quote: | You would be amazed at the huge variances in what various
audiophiles
consider excellent reproduction. Plastics are not the villian
IMHO, it is
the differences in what is considered excellence in sound
reproduction.
One cannot even get the recording companies to agree on how to
record live
music so how can one expect the reproduction system to mirror a
live
performance? One can tune and tinker with a sound system until a
certain
recording does indeed sound very close to live, but as soon as
another
recording from another company is played, it all vanishes and you
are back
to where you were or worse. There are other variables to be sure,
but
rest assured that plastics are just one miniscule part of a much
larger
problem in reproduction accuracy.
Records are plastic. So is tape. So are CDs. So are two of my |
speaker cones (eek!)
There are thousands of different kinds of plastic, for almost any
purpose you can think of.
Slowly, the singer and the listener define a common understanding of
what they expect from each other. The argument is part of the
process of making music.
Modern popular music is no different, but the link between listener
and singer is removed to a global social plane from which the
individual listener may feel alienated. But people buy systems that
they believe suit their music best, and they buy songs that suit
their systems best and, after much statistical analysis, Sony gets
the message.
Audiophiles are people who fret about the way the global song is
going. They want to dig their heels in, make a stand for something.
But what?
DIY valve audiophiles are at the extreme end of a protest against
homogeneity, we may feel. Really we have just been deselected by the
global server.
We may be rejects, and we are certainly deviant, but at least we are
not plastic.
cheers, Ian |
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Stewart Pinkerton
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Dec 09, 2004 6:49 am Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
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On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 23:51:20 GMT, "Ian Iveson"
<IanIveson.home@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
| Quote: | Audiophiles are people who fret about the way the global song is
going. They want to dig their heels in, make a stand for something.
But what?
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As you say, whaaaaat? Or should that be, what rubbish............
The 'global song' may in one sense be going to MP3, which may cause
some fretting, but true audiophiles should rejoice in the availability
of DVD-A, as they did rejoice when CD replaced vinyl. Lest we forget,
the 'vinyl backlash' (such as it is) didn't happen until the '90s, and
appears more of a nostalgia thing than anything to do with audiophiles
who are seeking 'the closest approach to the original sound'. Some
audiophiles are actually progressive, y'know, and want to dig their
toes in!
--
Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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Iain M Churches
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:18 pm Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
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"Stewart Pinkerton" <patent3@dircon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:u3tfr0pkd0tm4umui6m7332re401ak6ntf@4ax.com...
(snip)
| Quote: | Lest we forget,
the 'vinyl backlash' (such as it is) didn't happen until the '90s, and
appears more of a nostalgia thing than anything to do with audiophiles
who are seeking 'the closest approach to the original sound'.
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(snip)
| Quote: | Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering
|
"Vinyl backlash" seems such an inappropriate term
"vinyl renaissance" sounds a lot better in every sense:-)
Cordially,
Iain |
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Ian Iveson
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Dec 09, 2004 2:18 pm Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
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"Stewart Pinkerton" <patent3@dircon.co.uk> wrote
| Quote: | The 'global song' may in one sense be going to MP3, which may
cause
some fretting, but true audiophiles should rejoice in the
availability
of DVD-A, as they did rejoice when CD replaced vinyl. Lest we
forget,
the 'vinyl backlash' (such as it is) didn't happen until the '90s,
and
appears more of a nostalgia thing than anything to do with
audiophiles
who are seeking 'the closest approach to the original sound'. Some
audiophiles are actually progressive, y'know, and want to dig
their
toes in!
|
What original sound? Early last century perhaps?
The last 50 yrs was spent developing the Krell. Once it was perfect
people realised that it isn't what we want. So we are rummaging
through history to see where we went wrong. I blame RDH.
Interaction is essential to the idiom and part of the art. You can't
just engineer it.
Once Sony produce all the music and make all the home sound systems,
they will be the sole authority on what is correct. Only they will
have heard the "original". They can perform whatever transforms they
like and your argument will be a foolish quirk of history. They will
be the global performer, and the "original sound" will be born
again, direct from your Sony speakers, indubitably authentic and
untouched.
cheers, Ian |
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Patrick Turner
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Dec 09, 2004 2:18 pm Post subject:
Re: Ersatz, homogenized, blameless |
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Ruud Broens wrote:
| Quote: | "R" <spmaway@ylhoo.com> wrote in message
news:Xns95B8E75AC954Fmc2500183316chgoill@10.232.1.1...
: "Ruud Broens" <broensr@wanadoo.nl> wrote in news:41b666d2$0$8918$abc4f4c3
: @news.wanadoo.nl:
:
: > Copyright © Andre Jute 2004
:
: > Amongst other things, what in essence you question:
:
: > does the 'technically perfect' reproduction
: > equate with
: > the esthetically, 'experienced' best reproduction ?
:
: > is certainly a question that is worth giving some thought :)
:
: > nice,
: > Rudy
:
:
:
: You would be amazed at the huge variances in what various audiophiles
: consider excellent reproduction. Plastics are not the villian IMHO, it is
: the differences in what is considered excellence in sound reproduction.
: One cannot even get the recording companies to agree on how to record live
: music so how can one expect the reproduction system to mirror a live
: performance? One can tune and tinker with a sound system until a certain
: recording does indeed sound very close to live, but as soon as another
: recording from another company is played, it all vanishes and you are back
: to where you were or worse. There are other variables to be sure, but
: rest assured that plastics are just one miniscule part of a much larger
: problem in reproduction accuracy.
|
Yes, but sometimes there are recordings that seem like gems that shine
when surrounded by mullock heaps of dull recordings.
They must have fluked a good run... great artist, good recording venue,
good engineers, good gear, no mistakes, nice tape, reasonable digital
techniques,
and a final good replay system which allows the brilliance to shine right on
down.....
Put it this way, I could give you half my recording collection, and not feel
too generous....
Patrick Turner.
| Quote: |
:
: r
:
: --
: Nothing beats the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with DLT tapes.
Rich observation :)
Rudy |
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