elgrau

But 90% of folks are lucky to hear 30 Hz tone! Use your 'Virtual Test Bench' tone generator (or real one!) and be amazed as you watch your speaker cones "wabble" away at below 30 Hz (for most!) and hear NOTHING! That being said, I don't "trust" sub-woofers to be giving me a true, natural sound that the musician(s) ever intended to be there (4 sigma organ pieces excepted, but again, 90% can't hear it anyway!) and I also think that they "mess up" the bass stereo effect. But whatever; different strokes...I'd never have one and I'm happy with the 22 Hz response of my 1000's (at least 8 Hz below what I can hear). Also, that "Elements of Radio" book from 1943 I have states (in several places) that the "audible human range" of hearing is 30 to 15k Hz! Guess they were more "realistic" back then BEFORE the "audiophile" salesmen of today started conning us into thinking we needed a system good to 20 to 20k Hz!

"Evergreen Aviation uses a rotary woofer in its Titan Missile Exhibit" So this implies to be that such a sub-woofer (and sub-woofers in general?) are great for "movie sound" needs, but I may be wrong (not be a "student" of music), but is not the lowest "valid" musical note around 22 Hz? Which is (coinsidently?) the low end of my EPI 1000's? i.e., sub-woofers (like this) only "needed" for HT; not 2-channel music! Or am I wrong?

For simply pure "relaxation" I guess I'd have to say classical music for me. No lyrics to "agitate" you (or think about); no strong, loud, or fast paced notes to get your blood pressure up. Now, most of the time I want all of these things :dd , but if I just want to relax, then classical does it for me...

Hi UBG, My personal experience has been that if the replacement driver is not 100% capatable with the speakers x-over design, the other drivers' L/R/C parameters (i.e., coil windings match, wire dia match for R, etc.) then the sound from the speaks will be "lacking" and not close to 100% of what they could/should sound like. Even suspecting these kinds of deficiencies can drive you crazy.......and sound WILL be less then optimal in most cases (especially multi-driver systems where "other" un-matched driver issues can manifest). Best to bite the bullet and use ONLY 100% original replacement drivers meant for that speaker. If no longer available (new), then resort to ePrey and "cannibalize" a used set of the same model for the replacement drivers you need.

About ~100 LP's (sold a bunch to the last standing "record store" in our area about 15 years ago that I had on CD and thus "did not need" any longer! Just for the "cover art"/liner notes I wish I had kept them - except if I ever move again!). About a 100 or so "60's" 45's....lonely and pitiful these! I REALLY have to be in a fucked up nostalgic mood to drag them out! About ~300 CD's. Wish I had the energy to "organize" everything onto harddrive and fill in the "gaps" in my collection (mostly would like to have a 100% complete collection of all of the 50's and early 60's music that I "grew up with". But happy to just add a little bit here and there plus whatever new shit that comes along (Dylan has a new CD; some old country stuff that's "new to me", e.g.). For example, I just bought (from oldies.com) one of those 10 CD "history of rock" TV infomercail collections for....$23.59! Great reduction from the infomercial price of like $100! Lot of great early sixties stuff on these 10 CD's!

@Snow "You know I dont think I have ever agreed with anything you have ever wrote " "Hoping to convince you that reality is usually scoffed at and illusion is usually king, :dd but in the battle for the survival of Western civilization it will be reality and not illusion or delusion that will determine what the future will bring." (from radioliberty.com)

"Vinyl is like wine, it never lives up to its reputation. " Now that's the most untrue statement I've ever heard here! Wine is one of the greatest things God ever invented. The "high" from wine is so superior to beer, for example (yuck! Is it piss or is it beer? :dd ). Beer makes me nervous and "angry"; wine makes me mellow, content. And like hi-fi, the better the wine, the better the high/experience! I totally understand winos....it can even make being broke and living on the street seem cool and ok! :dd As to vinyl: what it has (subtle sound wise) is real and is "there" (A/B one of your favorite CD's with the original record; you will notice something "smooth" and "un-harse" there (extremely subtle tho)). But dollar for dollar I prefer CD's and also for convience, etc.

Yeah; even though his music was mostly just about pussy (nothing wrong with that of course!* :dd ), been noticing that it is also GREAT MUSIC. A lot of the stuff is very complex musically. Wonder how much (if any?) of the actual music he wrote or even the lyrics? I'm not an Elvis expert.... *for example, my old "standby" Neil Young, probably only about 50% of his music is about pussy! :dd

"......by numerous other "1st order effects" like: 1. The quality of the original recording. How well was the music recorded/engineered and stored onto master tape (or digital media?)." Along these lines has anyone else noticed how great the Sun Records (?) Elvis recordings were/are? Been listening to a lot of "The King" lately in my "oldies" section of CD's on my system and have been noticing how superior the individual drums/guitars/vocals stand out in these recordings and how SUPER clear and detailed they are! I guess if you are "The King" you demand only the absolute best (studio muscians, audio engineers, equipment) be used. And I'm sure he had access to the $'s to pay for all of this! But also that he was dedicated to his music enough to insist on this! Am I going nuts, or was he really as great as a lot of folks have been saying? :dd Never really "dug" him that much growing up; but lately....

Agree, agree...Peace! Nice talk, RichP! :dd

"Sample 1Khz with a million amplitude steps and you'll get a fair approximation (sample). Sample 1Khz with 100 amplitude steps and you'll get a staircase sample." And (like I said) this "issue" is resolved by throwing $'s at it (higher sampling rate and larger byte size of SACD?, e.g. = more $'s). Plus, this sampling is all "geared" to be "enough" to do the "audible" (reality!) frequency band (20 to 20K max and more like 30 to 13k for most folks/systems!). Yes, cost is a factor (as in analog systems/players), but just as in analog, the more you spend, the better you get! I liked an article that your arch nemisis (pardon me!) F1nut posted a while ago (even a blind pig sometimes finds the acorn! I kid, F1, I kid :dd ). It explained how PERHAPS digitals main "problem" was one of timing: the properly sampled data is there, it's just not being "played" at PRECISELY the exact instant in time that it needs to be (extremely small timing errors lead to "audible" errors - as in "digital harshness"?). Analog records/tapes essentially "freeze out" these timing errors (especially relative to one instant to the next) and effectively do away with the time dimension (as long as you spin the record at 331/3 RPM, all of these random (in the digital world) timing issues go away (even if you are spinning it at 33.334 RPM, the relative time between the "waves" is fixed (forever!). I think these "timing" issues are the real "achilles heal" of digital. Not samples per second (adequate) or bits per sample (dynamic range already better then analog records!).

"and the info on disc IS stair-stepped". Nope, I disagree. The info on the disk are SAMPLES of the original musical signal and never intended to be converted back to analog in a "stairstep" fashion (although that might define the most basic of DAC's!). These samples are used (with a lot of higher order math and signal processing technology) to RECONSTRUCT the original analog signal to the DAC's best ability (obviously a function of the DAC's cost!). Yes, fidelity is lost as you get down in the noise floor, but this is true for "analog" as well! I still maintain these are issues that are common to ANY system and they are "resolved" in both worlds by the common "solution" of throwing more $'s at these "2nd order" problems (which are still overshadowed by any of the 8 "1st order" issues I listed earlier). mahalo!

@radioeng "The 10K digital guy will spend that several times trying to ride the new technology and all the updates trying to get it up to a listenable level. Whereas the analog guy will spend it and set back and just enjoy it! Watch the digital guy adjust the volume...and again, change to the next track (cause it's easy and not for the analog guy), jump up and change to something more impressive. The analog guy sets back and gets lost in the music and too quickly the whole side is over. But the big grin doesn't fade so quick...." I have roughly $5k invested in my "used"/vintage system (not counting the countless hours invested in building my two main speaker systems - EPI 1000's and AOS's. And, BTW, the AOS's sound so good - especially at lower listening levels! that I honestly would not take $10k for these one of a kind "EPI heritage" speakers!). You're characterization of "Mr. Digital" could not be further from me! And since my source is a digital (thru Entech DAC) 300 disk player, I can relax on my sectional for literally hours (and I do!) and listen to my entire musical collection (about ~2 weeks of continuous play! Try that with a TT || ). I intend to see just how long I can listen some day when I'm retired. 24 hours? 48 hours? With these crystal clear, extremely detailed speakers with no hint of "harshness" and that famous "tube-like" Carver 42 sound, I've never yet reached a point of "listener fatique" with them!). Now that's my kind of "smile"! Just pure musical bliss (and since CD player is in the next room, I seldom bother to skip to the next random track even if I don't particulary like it - which is rare since every/any track can sound nice on a "nice" system! (except for poorly recorded stuff - that sucks on any system!). So don't think you have me "pigonholed", radioeng (and I'll afford you the same courtesy!). I've designed/built my system for one purpose and one purpose only: maximum listening pleasure and high fidelity per buck (which is ONE reason I'm not a tube/analog/TT guy: too much hassle! (record changing, tube "rolling"/replacing, etc.)). But different strokes for different folks.....

I was right (of course :dd ): From Wikki: "A DAC converts an abstract finite-precision number (usually a fixed-point binary number) into a concrete physical quantity (e.g., a voltage or a pressure). In particular, DACs are often used to convert finite-precision time series data to a continually-varying physical signal. A typical DAC converts the abstract numbers into a concrete sequence of impulses that are then processed by a reconstruction filter uses some form of interpolation to fill in data between the impulses. Other DAC methods (e.g., methods based on Delta-sigma modulation) produce a pulse-density modulated signal that can then be filtered in a similar way to produce a smoothly-varying signal." Not sure what Sir Rich was showing (perhaps the "concrete sequence of impulses", but it obviously not what I was referring to (analog output from a DAC)!

Is that a trace of the sample levels (bytes) or output from the DAC? I did say audio signal. Hard for me to believe that is the analog output from a DAC (a cheap one?). Does not a DAC "smooth out" or "curve fit" the samplings to end up with nice smooth analog output? If not, then I stand corrected! But what is the time scale? If that whole trace is a few milliseconds, then it would obviously look a lot smoother in a more compressed time scale.

Good point doggy. The minute differences between "pure analog" and "digitized analog" are far out weighed (IMHO) by numerous other "1st order effects" like: 1. The quality of the original recording. How well was the music recorded/engineered and stored onto master tape (or digital media?). 2. How well it was transferred from master to "mass media". 3. How good of a "player" (analog or digital) you have. 4. How well your "wires" transfer the musical signal in it's long journey to your speakers. 5. How well your amps faithfully blow this signal up to voltage levels necessary to drive speakers. 6. How well your speakers transform that high voltage signal back into sound waves that perfectly mimic this signal. 7. How well does your listening room interact with your speaker output. 8. How well does your "personal microphone" (i.e., your ears) pick up these "pristine" sound waves and convert them BACK into electrical impulses that your brain then magically interprets as "sound". And in my experience some days one's brain does a much better job of this then other days. Some days it seems to just say "fuck it. I don't care about doing this job. try another time." When that happens, no matter how great your "system" is (analog, digital, whatever), it will sound like crap. Other days it will sound so heavenly, you will almost cry... This effect can really mislead folks into stuff like "burn in periods", attributing system improvements to things that have no effect, etc., etc. As my Chinese PHd. engineer friend says: It's complicate. All of these are more important then "analog" vs "digital" issues. And radioeng: please show me a graph/trace of your imaginary "stair step" "digitized" audio signal. You'll find it to be a figment of your imagination/lack of understanding of "digital music". A "stair step" signal (that you imagine) would sound like pure crap. In reality, if you were to overlay a "pure analog" audio signal with the same "digitized" source signal they would lay right on top of each other and be 100% visually indistinguable (sp?) from one another.

So where are the conclusions, points, "get off the stage" message? Lot of graphs and arm waving, but what's the point/message?

No offense, Radioeng, but your last post is (to me) a garbled rambling incomprehensible mass of goobly-gook (and I challenge anyone to make sense of it!). Kind of wish people would stop worshiping (and assigning "magical" properties to) old technology just because it is old. Like BillD said, the analog signal cut into a record groove can only contain what the mic picks up (and few mikes are good to anything close to 20K!). Ergo, vinyl cannot be any better at capturing "higher harmonics" than digital. That being said, there is perhaps aspects of "pure analog" that "sound better" then "digitized analog" (as even digital samples are converted into analog before amplification. And as an aside, the "stairstep" analogy you used to describe digital representation is bogus. The digititized signal is not "flat" over the "stairstep" and then jumps to the next level or "stairstep". Instead, the signal is sampled at discrete intervals and from this sampling, a DAC reconstructs the (very smooth) analog frequency content/signal). But let's stick to reality (as to why CERTAIN aspects of "pure analog" vinyl might sound better (or WORSE in some areas, e.g., dynamic range) than CERTAIN digital methods of recording music). I let a lot of bogus and un-scientific stuff slide on this forum* (as it is just a forum afterall), but at some point the shit just gets too deep! As a recent example, someone recently posted that because their niece or whatever commented how much better a song sounded on the member's system as opposed to their own MP-3 player, that that was "proof" the "tweak" to their system that they had recently added was indeed the cause of this noticed difference in high fidelity(not the much more likely case that the niece was simply noticing that a full blown Carver powered system sounds much better than an MP-3 player!....). Please....simple logic, please. add: went back and re-read your post just to make sure I did not miss anything....I can kind of see where you were coming from here and there, so perhaps my original critique was a bit too "harsh"; but the jist of my criticisms still stand. Too much of people's love of vinyl is more nostalga and worship of the past (as in old cars) than reality. Let's face it, unless you have over $10k to invest in analog systems/media like records, CD's (with the help of a good DAC or SACD, etc.) beat "records" hands down (everyone was gaga over CD's when they first came out - no more pop/crackle/snap and incredible dynamic range, etc.). But it's no longer in fashion to go gaga over CD's anymore. Too passe! *should have said this forum and the "other" Carver forum, as I'm not sure which contained said example!

"Maybe the higher harmonics of naturally recorded music produce beat notes and actually add to the realism of sounds when present. The 16 bit digital, with its cut off, would lack those. " Never really followed or agreed with that statement. The "beat notes" from the "higher harmonics" are in the audible range, correct? (As in the first harmonic of 24,000 Hz would be a 12,000 Hz "beat note"). So that is what is presented to the recording mike in the recording studio: the audible band of frequencies (including any "beat notes" from the higher frequencies of the musical instruments). So these "beat notes" would be present in 16 bit digital recording because (e.g.), 16 bit digital adequately samples a 12,000 hz "beat note" (or 1st harmonic of the 24,000 Hz HF "note")? No? Just because the 12,000 Hz "beat note" came from a harmonic of the 24,000 Hz "note" does not mean that digital media/recording with a c/o frequency of say 20,000 Hz would not pick it up (since the actual "beat note" is at 12,000 Hz). Now if you mean the actual 24,000 Hz "note" as having some subtle effect on what you hear (even if your hearing does not "register" any sounds above say 13,000 Hz), then that's a different (albeit most likely bogus) issue. But that's not what you seem to be saying.