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#41
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
"Sonnova" wrote in message
... snip Anyway, I credit this excellent (for the era) arm/cartridge combo for the good shape in which many of my older records have traversed the years. You are absolutely right. During the mid-sixties I installed a 10" Thorens TT and an wooden, low-mass gimbaled ADC "Pritchard" arm combined with the original ADC One or Model 25 (can't remember which came first as of now). The damn thing tracked perfectly at 1.1grams. Records were wiped before use. Later (early seventies) when Last came out I discovered it not only made records sound much better, but also added to their longevity. So virtually my entire collection post '65 can be played today with few clicks or pops and very low "stickchen" distortion (one of the things Last seems to do). I know a lot of people don't go back that far, or couldn't afford the gear I had back then. But...the "rules" for taking care of records were well known and well publicized, and even without such quality equipment, people who did so (like several musician friends that took my advice seriusly) have record collections that are also in good shape. Accordingly, I get a bit impatient with audiophiles who diss records as always being full of pops, clicks, and noise. Careless handling, leaving records out of their jackets, setting tracking forces too high (or too low) and not cleaning the records (with a cloth or brush, no fancy machine) are to blame, not the medium itself. |
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#42
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
On Feb 20, 1:13*pm, Iordani wrote:
3. A producer could choose to make a CD as both a CD version *and* an LP version. *Just produce one perfect LP copy and transfer this to digital and sell this CD as the (more expensive?) LP-version  Except that the vinylphile set would prefer to pay *even more* for an actual LP that will suffer wear from its first playing. bob |
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#43
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:42:10 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ): "Sonnova" wrote in message On Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:27:01 -0800, wrote (in article ): On Feb 19, 10:23 am, Peter Wieck wrote: I agree with you that *some* modern speakers are designed to principles unknown 30 years ago. An example, please? I sure can't think of any. Electrostatics? No, they're more than 30 years old. Maybe the sputtered metalized Mylar used in their diaphragms - But that's materials technology not speaker technology, per se. Planar magnetics? No, again, this idea is more than 30 years old (but only just). Horn speakers? Granted that modern horns are a far cry from their ancestors, but, again, horns are among the earliest of speaker technologies. Acoustic suspension harks back to the late 1940's as does the concept of mass-loaded ports. using carbon fiber and Kevlar for cones is, again, materials technology and not new speaker "principles". Ribbons go back to the dawn of speaker development and the concept of "Time-Alignment" or phase coherence in driver arrangement was patented by E.M. Long in the early seventies, so that's more than 30 years old. Can anybody else come up with truly "new" speaker principles that were developed after 1979? I can't. Mr. Pierce is a wily old critter who has had his fingers on the heart of loudspeaker issues just about forever. His choice of 1979 is pretty strategic, if he backed off a decade, there might be a chance. Maybe the Heil Air Motion Transformer might fit if we went back to 1969, maybe not. Maybe constant-directivity horns, maybe not. While the principles haven't changed the application of materials surely has. Your example of aluminized mylar doesn't wash because the real truth is that the stuff that fell out of the sky in Roswell in the late 40s was made out of aluminized mylar. Actually, I said metalized Mylar, not aluminized. I was thinking specifically of the thin "sputtered" metallic coatings found on the diaphragms of modern electrostatic speakers. You know, the coatings so thin that one can still see through the Mylar? That's a fairly recent (20 years?) innovation in material technology and even though aluminized Mylar was a product of WWII and indeed was used in the envelopes of the "Project Mogul" balloons (your Roswell reference), it was certainly not used in electrostatic speakers (which could easily be attested to by anyone who has ever seen an original Quad electrostatic speaker or a KLH Model 9 taken apart.) until the vacuum sputtering process was invented (which came from semiconductor manufacturing). The most important materials upgrades for speakers have been in the areas of glues and varnishes and how to use them. That and materials with a very high stiffness to mass ratio like Kevlar and carbon fiber as well as laminated woods and ceramics Heck, even treated paper can still be SOTA! Yep. Surprisingly enough, the newer stuff that seems high tech, like ceramics and aerogels haven't done a lot for performance, at least not yet. Hard to tell. Speakers with exotic materials technologies and manufacturing methodologies tend to use those things as marketing points to justify a high price tag. What I've found is that above a few thousand dollars a pair, there seems not to be a strong correlation between price and performance. I've a friend with a pair of Belgian speakers (Kharma CRMs) for which he paid more than $60,000. Their claim to fame is that they use drivers that incorporate ceramic in the midrange drivers and tweeters which are either impregnated with, or covered with diamond dust (I dunno which). They sound fine. But they certainly aren't any better than my Martin-Logans which are a hybrid electrostatic/ paper cone system which cost less that 1/10th the price. |
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#44
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
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#46
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:42:13 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ): "Iordani" wrote in message Sonnova wrote: It sure doesn't make a lot of sense, though. Digital should be perfect. Hell, digital IS perfect, but it doesn't sound as much like music as does a good LP. Don't ask me why........ And if you compare the LP with the same one transferred to a digital media by yourself and without any 'enhancing'. How does that come out? Some people are doing this experiement and posting the results on the web - listen for yourself: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=69601 Sorry about the choice of turntables, but that's where the mainstream vinyl market seems to be these days. First of all, The 'table and choice of cartridge don't really instill in me any confidence that enough of the LP's information is being gleaned from the record to make a valid comparison. The rule of thumb has always seemed to be that a CD sounds better than a cheap, mass market record player, but a high-end turntable/arm/and cartridge combo can beat the pants off of a CD. This setup is a cheap, mass market record player. If there is a significant (or even noticeable) difference between an LP of a performance and a CD of the same performance, that setup isn't going to reveal it. Secondly, the music used is rock-and-roll. While I don't belittle the artists or the performances themselves, I certainly question their usefulness for this test. I would have thought that classical or other acoustic music, played in a real space would have been better. I certainly can tell nothing from the sample presented. |
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#47
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
On Feb 20, 7:58*pm, Sonnova wrote:
Actually, I said metalized Mylar, not aluminized. I was thinking specifically of the thin "sputtered" metallic coatings found on the diaphragms of modern electrostatic speakers. You know, the coatings so thin that one can still see through the Mylar? That's a fairly recent (20 years?) innovation in material technology and even though aluminized Mylar was a product of WWII , it was certainly not used in electrostatic speakers (which could easily be attested to by anyone who has ever seen an original Quad electrostatic speaker or a KLH Model 9 taken apart.) until the vacuum sputtering process was invented (which came from semiconductor manufacturing). * One thing this post and this thread in general clearly highlights is my long-term assertion that the high-end audio industry is SO insular and SO out-of-touch with twhat's going on in the rest of the world. Nearly every assertion in the above quote is wrong. Take just one example: that the deposition of thin metal films by sputtering is a fairly recent invention of the semiconductor industry. Well, sorry, but it's not. I am sitting here looking at my copy of John Strong's "Procedures in Experimental Physics," which has an entire chapter on the topic (chapter IV: Coating of Surfaces: Evaporation and Sputtering). This chapter does not concern itself with some theoretical considerations but in fact tells the practitioner how to do it. And the date of this book? Try 1938, a good quarter century BEFORE the semiconductor industry got rolling. (and I have a "late" copy from the 15th printing in April of 1949). So it would seem that it was maybe a mature process by then, as evidenced by the fact that reference is made to W. R. Grove's article describing the sputtering process as published in an 1852 article in Philosophical Transactions. Further references can be found in Compton et al (Rev Modern Physics, 1930), Fruth (Physics 1932) and Mierdel (Handb. der Exp Physik, 1929). As a side note, Strong and any number of other authors consistently relate how aluminum is among the WORST metals for sputtering. That and materials with a very high stiffness to mass ratio like Kevlar and carbon fiber as well as laminated woods and ceramics Again, you're way out of touch not only with the time frame, but with the actual physical reality. Let's note that the B&W 6 used Kevlar midranges of their own manufacture, and that was 1975. Let's also not that Kevlar is NOT very stiff: it has a relatively high tensile strength, but a very low stiffness. And let's further note that the laminated wood codes have a raft of extremely poor properties for loudspeakers and, despite the wild claims of their makers and proponents, show no evidence of any remarkable degree of mechanical stiffness. Heck, even treated paper can still be SOTA! Only in an industry as naive and out-of-touch as high-end audio. |
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#48
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
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#49
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
Sonnova wrote:
Maybe so. But I was in the semiconductor industry for years and the first time I saw equipment that allowed vacuum sputtering was in the mid seventies when the company for which I then worked bought one for their advanced fabrication lab. Perhaps the process was decades old, but that begs the question, where was it being used? The aluminized Mylar use in balloon skins and thermal blankets in WWII and after was not vacuum sputtered but was rather a coating procedure AFAIK. The first audio use I'm aware of was the gold sputtering process to make wax records conductive so that they could produce copper matrices by electroplating. That was around 100 years ago. Peter. -- |
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#50
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:02:57 -0800, Peter Irwin wrote
(in article ): Sonnova wrote: Maybe so. But I was in the semiconductor industry for years and the first time I saw equipment that allowed vacuum sputtering was in the mid seventies when the company for which I then worked bought one for their advanced fabrication lab. Perhaps the process was decades old, but that begs the question, where was it being used? The aluminized Mylar use in balloon skins and thermal blankets in WWII and after was not vacuum sputtered but was rather a coating procedure AFAIK. The first audio use I'm aware of was the gold sputtering process to make wax records conductive so that they could produce copper matrices by electroplating. That was around 100 years ago. Peter. Sorry. That's a plating process not a sputtering process. |
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#51
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
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#52
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
"Sonnova" wrote in message
On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:02:57 -0800, Peter Irwin wrote (in article ): Sonnova wrote: Maybe so. But I was in the semiconductor industry for years and the first time I saw equipment that allowed vacuum sputtering was in the mid seventies when the company for which I then worked bought one for their advanced fabrication lab. Perhaps the process was decades old, but that begs the question, where was it being used? The aluminized Mylar use in balloon skins and thermal blankets in WWII and after was not vacuum sputtered but was rather a coating procedure AFAIK. Sputtering is a subset of the set called "coating procedures". However, a literature search shows that two different technques have been used for coating mylar with metal. The older methodology involved evaporation of metal in a vacuum by means of electrical heating of the metal. Sputtering is the newer, faster methodology that differs in the means that is used to evaporate the metal. The point is that both methods produce products that are very similar in terms of substrate, coating, and thickness of the coating. Sputtering is merely faster and therefore less expensive. It is a more economical production technique that facilitates the use of a certain material for producing cost-sensitive commodity products like bags for storing food. A high end audio product such as electrostatic speakers could be produced using either means. Therefore, the use of sputtering is not a technological advance related to speakers, but merely a cost-cutting technique for making a commodity material that may be used for building certain kinds of loudpseakers. The first audio use I'm aware of was the gold sputtering process to make wax records conductive so that they could produce copper matrices by electroplating. That was around 100 years ago. Agreed. This process is specifically mentioned on this detailed timeline of the history of metal coating methodologies: http://www.svc.org/HistoryofVacuumCo...ating.cfm#1600 Sorry. That's a plating process not a sputtering process. The reference says "1902 Patent for sputter deposition of seed-layer of gold on phonograph cylinders (Edison)" A conductive substrate facilitiates plating. The 1902 Edison patent specifically mentions using sputtering to add a conductive substrate of gold for that purpose. |
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#53
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
On Feb 22, 12:40*am, Sonnova wrote:
On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:02:57 -0800, Peter Irwin wrote (in article ): Sonnova wrote: Maybe so. But I was in the semiconductor industry for years and the first time I saw equipment that allowed vacuum sputtering was in the mid seventies when the company for which I then worked bought one for their advanced fabrication lab. Perhaps the process was decades old, but that begs the question, where was it being used? The aluminized Mylar use in balloon skins and thermal blankets in WWII and after was not vacuum sputtered but was rather a coating procedure AFAIK. The first audio use I'm aware of was the gold sputtering process to make wax records conductive so that they could produce copper matrices by electroplating. That was around 100 years ago. Peter. Sorry. That's a plating process not a sputtering process. They're all plating processes. You have electroplating, you have chemical reduction plating, you have vacuum vapor plating, and so on. |
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#54
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
On Feb 21, 4:12*pm, Sonnova wrote:
On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 09:05:18 -0800, wrote (in article ): On Feb 20, 7:58*pm, Sonnova wrote: Actually, I said metalized Mylar, not aluminized. I was thinking specifically of the thin "sputtered" metallic coatings found on the diaphragms of modern electrostatic speakers. You know, the coatings so thin that one can still see through the Mylar? That's a fairly recent (20 years?) innovation in material technology and even though aluminized Mylar was a product of WWII , it was certainly not used in electrostatic speakers (which could easily be attested to by anyone who has ever seen an original Quad electrostatic speaker or a KLH Model 9 taken apart.) until the vacuum sputtering process was invented (which came from semiconductor manufacturing). * One thing this post and this thread in general clearly highlights is my long-term assertion that the high-end audio industry is SO insular and SO out-of-touch with twhat's going on in the rest of the world. Nearly every assertion in the above quote is wrong. Take just one example: that the deposition of thin metal films by sputtering is a fairly recent invention of the semiconductor industry. I didn't say that the process was new, per se. I said that it was a material;s technology that was NEW to speakers in the last 20 years or so Actually, your sentence is: "You know, the coatings so thin that one can still see through the Mylar? That's a fairly recent (20 years?) innovation in material technology. Before it was applied to Quad and others. And, oh by the way, their diaphragms were not sputtered: they were essentially applied by hand. So it would seem that it was maybe a mature process by then, as evidenced by the fact that reference is made to W. R. Grove's article describing the sputtering process as published in an 1852 article in Philosophical Transactions. Further references can be found in Compton et al (Rev Modern Physics, 1930), Fruth (Physics 1932) and Mierdel (Handb. der Exp Physik, 1929). Maybe so. But I was in the semiconductor industry for years and the first time I saw equipment that allowed vacuum sputtering was in the mid seventies when the company for which I then worked bought one for their advanced fabrication lab. Perhaps the process was decades old, but that begs the question, where was it being used? Well, it WAS used long before YOU encountered it, and it was used in the semiconductor industry, by the way. I should also note that my father held a patent first issued in the late 1940's on a sputtering process used in the semiconductor industry. The fact that YOU were unaware of it is not my fault. But the processes most surely existed well prior to their use in the high-end audio industry, AND substantially prior, it seems to your becoming aware of it. The aluminized Mylar use in balloon skins and thermal blankets in WWII and after was not vacuum sputtered but was rather a coating procedure AFAIK. It also should be noted that your use of the term "vacuum sputtering" is a self-condradiction, as spttering can not occur in a vacuum, rather it only occurs in the presence of an ionizing glow discharge, usually in some non-oxidizing gas. Pulling a vacumm, in fact STOPS the sputtering process dead. There is a completely different process called vacuum vapor deposition which is what's used for such esoteric and out-of-the-ordinary processes such as high-precision reflecting surfaces, aluminized mylar and, uhm, compact disks and DVD's. Completely different process than sputtering in that it does require a high vacuum, and where the metal to be deposited has to be heated to its boiling point. * *As a side note, Strong and any number of other * *authors consistently relate how aluminum is * *among the WORST metals for sputtering. Possibly, but, again, I don't recall that aluminized Mylar was a product of vacuum sputtering. Now, it's typically made by vacuum vapor deposition. An episode of "How it's Made" on the Science channel, showed a huge roll of Mylar film being passed under nozzles which sprayed a metalized coating onto the film. There are, I am sure you are aware, better sources than "How it's made." That and materials with a very high stiffness to mass ratio like Kevlar and carbon fiber as well as laminated woods and ceramics Again, you're way out of touch not only with the time frame, but with the actual physical reality. Let's note that the B&W 6 used Kevlar midranges of their own manufacture, and that was 1975. And let's further note that the laminated wood codes have a raft of extremely poor properties for loudspeakers and, despite the wild claims of their makers and proponents, show no evidence of any remarkable degree of mechanical stiffness. Again, I made no claims for wood other than to point it out as an alternative material example to paper. Please explain, then how one should parse your sentence: "That and materials with a very high stiffness to mass ratio like Kevlar and carbon fiber as well as laminated woods and ceramics to mean something other than lumping "laminated woods" in the category of "materials with very high stiffness to mass ratio." Heck, even treated paper can still be SOTA! Only in an industry as naive and out-of-touch as high-end audio. I did not mention paper. Never claimed you did. Did you read the sentence I began my post with: "One thing this post and this thread in general clearly highlights is my long-term assertion that the high-end audio industry is SO insular and SO out-of-touch with what's going on in the rest of the world." Especially the part about: "this thread in general." This comment was added by another poster. |
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#55
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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FM stations boosting bass?
On Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:22:33 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ): "Sonnova" wrote in message On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:02:57 -0800, Peter Irwin wrote (in article ): Sonnova wrote: Maybe so. But I was in the semiconductor industry for years and the first time I saw equipment that allowed vacuum sputtering was in the mid seventies when the company for which I then worked bought one for their advanced fabrication lab. Perhaps the process was decades old, but that begs the question, where was it being used? The aluminized Mylar use in balloon skins and thermal blankets in WWII and after was not vacuum sputtered but was rather a coating procedure AFAIK. Sputtering is a subset of the set called "coating procedures". However, a literature search shows that two different technques have been used for coating mylar with metal. The older methodology involved evaporation of metal in a vacuum by means of electrical heating of the metal. Sputtering is the newer, faster methodology that differs in the means that is used to evaporate the metal. Sputtering is more precise and allows for the atoms-thick, transparent metalization that characterizes modern electrostatics like Martin-Logans, Innesounds, Sound Labs, etc. It is this process which finally tamed the electrostatic speaker diaphragm's tendency to have the HV charge migrate to to it's high point when distended and has virtually eliminated arcing in modern designs (according to Gale Saunders of M-L, anyway). |
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