[Audio Empire]

On Fri, 31 Aug 2012 20:12:34 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

Well, I can't say that. There were rooms playing some fairly impressive
stuff
(with or without my jazz recording playing). I was impressed by the new
Magico S5, the MBL-101s (again, as usual), the big YG acoustics speakers,
the
biggest Focal speakers (don't recall the model numbers) and the KEF
"Blades".
And of course, the most jaw dropping of all, the aforementioned Wilson
Alexandria XLFs. All showed me that at least at the "cost-is-no-object"
end
of the spectrum, speakers are improving. I heard cone speakers (virtually
all
of the speakers mentioned were cone designs) especially, are now doing
things
that 20 years ago, I would have bet money that come speakers could NEVER
do.
Maybe Jenn's jaded. It does happen.

Preface, you guys aren't going to believe much of this, because you just
hate Bose 901s, but here is my story and I'm sticking to it.

I was just playing the Sheffield Creme de la Creme album because it contains
one cut from the Harry James Version album, Corner Pocket, which is terrific
and has some great horns in it. They sounded fine, so I nudged the gain up a
bit, and they sounded even finer. But they still didn't pierce the air over
all the other instruments like they do live, so I nudged it a little more,
then more yet - and I sat astonished at the liveness that these little
beasties can pump out. It wasn't long before the bass was thumping my chest,
the drum kit was kicking and tingling the air like no other percussion
instrument can, except maybe piano wihich is also superb on my system, and
the horns were still fine and beginning to pierce on out there.

Brought a couple of thoughts to bear on AE's question. How can my 901s do
such a show of dynamics? Well, most speakers have but one little 1 inch dome
tweeter, maybe one or two midranges. I have NINE - on each box (the dust cap
behaves like a tweeter at the highest freqs), and I have
two up front plus two for surround plus a center speaker that has two
drivers, but is also pretty good on dynamics. It harkened me back to the
early days at Pecar Electronics in Detroit, when I had one of AE's "that HAS
to be live music in there" moments, only it wasn't, it was one stupid pair
of 901s hanging from chains in front of a reflective wall and playing some
rock music like LOUD. I have in my current system those four 901s plus the
Velodyne F-1800 sub, and the main speakers are driven by Carver m1500s to
the tune of 600 watts per channel. Bose says these speakers can take any
amount of power that you want to shove in them, and I think I have just
proved it.

Second thought, so the name of the game is DYNAMICS pure and simple. Forget
my descriptions above if you are Bose Bashers and not paying attention any
more because you don't believe any of it.

OK, so, dynamics. Digital is capable of much greater dynamics than analog
ever was, but as recording engineers you know well that it is really hard to
catch all of the dynamics without overloading at some point, and the high
frequencies are the scariest part, because they will drive the needles over
the top in a heartbeat, so you give yourself a little headroom and hold the
gain down, back off a little from the instruments, raise the mikes in the
air to get a more even balance from front to back, a lot of things so that
you don't get the dread digital clipping.

Live music doesn't have that problem. It can just get louder and louder and
the dynamics are sometimes a major part of the enjoyment. They take great
pleasure in "shocking" you with a riff here and there that you weren't
expecting.

Anyway, hard to catch in a pure digital recording, but these Sheffield discs
started out life as analog recordings - very good analog, maybe tape maybe
direct to disc, but carefully made. THEN, to transfer these to CD, they
already know precisely how loud each part of each section is going to be,
and they can master a more dynamic digital track than if it was live digital
recording. If the horns are the limiting factor in setting the gain, so be
it, but they can be mastered at max levels without distorting and if your
system can handle that, there is no reason you can't have live sounding
music at home.

Crank it up.

Gary Eickmeier




You've brought-up a good point. When recording digitally, you just don't
want to come too close to that MSB. While a pro analog tape machine can go
over the 0 Vu mark occasionally with little or no consequences, you never
want to do so in digital. Of course, that means that you can set the gain low
so that peaks never exceed -3 or so on the meters, and if an analog recording
engineer were watching over your shoulder, he might accuse you of recording
down in the "mud". Of course digital's wide dynamic range essentially means
that, especially with 24-bit or DSD, that "down in the mud" comment really
hasn't any meaning. as, even in 16-bit, the "mud" is about 30dB below the
level or magnetic tape. But the dynamic range of an actual musical
performance can exceed even the the range of DSD or 24 or 32-bit PCM.
Whether this has anything to do with reproduced music never being able to
fool you into thinking it's real, I don't know.

On the Bose 901 front. I have to admit that I haven't heard a pair of 901s
since the early 'Seventies. What I heard then, I didn't like. That
artificially boosted bass (with tape-loop control box), the lack of decent
highs (no tweeters) and the lack of image specificity, really turned me off.
I suspect that Bose has continued to develop the 901s, and for all I know
they might have improved considerably in the ensuing years. I must make a
point to give the latest ones another listen. So any comments I make about
Bose speakers are about the early generations of these speakers, not the
later models.