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#1
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
Several weeks ago, I attended a regional Hi-Fi Show. It was held in a
medium-sized hotel near the International airport. In one of the Hotel's several ballrooms, one of the larger area stereo salons was demonstrating, what I found to be the real-sounding audio that I have ever heard. The speakers, are of course, what did the trick. I think that most people who post here will stipulate that for the most part, modern, well designed amplifiers (with the possible exception of single-ended triode tube amps) sound more alike than different, and what differences there are are quite subtle. The equipment was as follows: Digital Front end - dCS "Puccini" CD/SACD player and "Puccini" U-Clock. Preamp - VTL TL-7.5*Series II Amp(s) - VTL Siegfried II Tubed power amps (800 Watts/each) Speakers - Wilson Alexandria XLFs, Wilson 'Hammer of Thor' subwoofer. There were other music sources as well, a new German Turntable, a computer music server, but I'm going to stick with CD/SACD playback for this discussion. Also I paid no attention to the oil-pipeline sized speaker cables and interconnects that were used, because, assuming that they were of sufficiently low impedance to carry the current required to drive the speakers, they are a "don't care" as far as I'm concerned. They're just "bling" and serve no useful purpose. My companion said they were MIT, and I'll take his word for it. I took with me several recordings that I have made over the years, and one of them was an SACD of a big jazz band that I recorded in concert several years ago. This jazz concert is one of the best recordings I've ever made, and clearly the best I've ever heard. So I figured that it would really reveal just how good this half-million dollars worth of equipment would really sound. So I asked Bea Manley, Luke Manly of VTL's diminutive, but charming wife, to play a couple of cuts. I was flabbergasted. I had sat in the audience of the hall in which this concert would be recorded for several dress rehearsals, and while I recognized from the outset how good the recording turned out, I'd never heard it come anywhere close to how it sounded in the hall. This , of course, was to be expected. the science and art of audio reproduction has a long way to go before recorded will ever sound like live. This came closer than anything I've ever heard. The only thing that gave away the fact that I was listening to a reproduction of a live event and not the event itself (from a listening perspective only, of course) were the trumpets. For the most part, the Wilson Alexandria XLFs produced, in that large ballroom, all the power and dynamic contrasts of the real thing. I've NEVER heard that before. Like I said, the trumpets gave it away as merely reproduction. They didn't sound live, just nearly so. Trumpets are pretty nigh impossible to get right. They are usually the difference between real and reproduced. Most instruments produce very weak harmonic above about 8KHz, and therefore the highly attenuated harmonics of those instruments are fairly easy for a good speaker system to reproduce. But if the harmonics are strong (a trumpet has harmonics that are equally as strong as the fundamental all the way up to 16 KHz or so) the small 1-2 " tweeters employed by practically all speaker systems simply cannot produce these harmonics at the volume with which they occur live. This tells almost any listener whether a trumpet is reproduced or live. Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard. The Wilson Alexandria XLFs are no exception. Over most of the spectrum, the Wilsons are pretty much nonpareil. But they fall down when it comes to trumpets, and a few other brass instruments. Still and all, it's the best reproduction that I've ever heard from any stereo system, irrespective of cost. Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. The only positive here is that I don't think that one needs a pair of $60,000 VTL Siegfried II 800 Watt monoblocs to drive them. They are so efficient that their minimum power requirement is but 15 Watts! I'd say that 150 Watts/channel would be more than sufficient to achieve realistic levels of performance that would run you and probably your neighbors out of the neighborhood! Comments? Questions? Derisive laughter? Audio_Empire |
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#2
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
On 8/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote:
This came closer than anything I've ever heard. The only thing that gave away the fact that I was listening to a reproduction of a live event and not the event itself (from a listening perspective only, of course) were the trumpets. For the most part, the Wilson Alexandria XLFs produced, in that large ballroom, all the power and dynamic contrasts of the real thing. I've NEVER heard that before. Like I said, the trumpets gave it away as merely reproduction. They didn't sound live, just nearly so. Trumpets are pretty nigh impossible to get right. They are usually the difference between real and reproduced. Most instruments produce very weak harmonic above about 8KHz, and therefore the highly attenuated harmonics of those instruments are fairly easy for a good speaker system to reproduce. But if the harmonics are strong (a trumpet has harmonics that are equally as strong as the fundamental all the way up to 16 KHz or so) the small 1-2 " tweeters employed by practically all speaker systems simply cannot produce these harmonics at the volume with which they occur live. This tells almost any listener whether a trumpet is reproduced or live. Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard. I take it you are saying that the tweeters were actually being overdriven, and could not reproduce the peaks. Correct assumption? Doug McDonald |
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#3
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... Several weeks ago, I attended a regional Hi-Fi Show. It was held in a medium-sized hotel near the International airport. In one of the Hotel's several ballrooms, one of the larger area stereo salons was demonstrating, what I found to be the real-sounding audio that I have ever heard. snip This came closer than anything I've ever heard. The only thing that gave away the fact that I was listening to a reproduction of a live event and not the event itself (from a listening perspective only, of course) were the trumpets. For the most part, the Wilson Alexandria XLFs produced, in that large ballroom, all the power and dynamic contrasts of the real thing. I've NEVER heard that before. Like I said, the trumpets gave it away as merely reproduction. They didn't sound live, just nearly so. Trumpets are pretty nigh impossible to get right. They are usually the difference between real and reproduced. Most instruments produce very weak harmonic above about 8KHz, and therefore the highly attenuated harmonics of those instruments are fairly easy for a good speaker system to reproduce. But if the harmonics are strong (a trumpet has harmonics that are equally as strong as the fundamental all the way up to 16 KHz or so) the small 1-2 " tweeters employed by practically all speaker systems simply cannot produce these harmonics at the volume with which they occur live. This tells almost any listener whether a trumpet is reproduced or live. Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard. The Wilson Alexandria XLFs are no exception. Over most of the spectrum, the Wilsons are pretty much nonpareil. But they fall down when it comes to trumpets, and a few other brass instruments. Still and all, it's the best reproduction that I've ever heard from any stereo system, irrespective of cost. Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. The only positive here is that I don't think that one needs a pair of $60,000 VTL Siegfried II 800 Watt monoblocs to drive them. They are so efficient that their minimum power requirement is but 15 Watts! I'd say that 150 Watts/channel would be more than sufficient to achieve realistic levels of performance that would run you and probably your neighbors out of the neighborhood! Comments? Questions? Derisive laughter? Dear AE - You probably knew you might hear from me on this. You would also be surprised to read that I agree with your observations 100%. Recall that my EEFs (Essential Elements of Fidelity) are Physical Size, Power, Waveform Fidelity in the electronic domain - (freedom from distortion and noise and flat response), and Spatial Characteristics. I, too, have noticed many times that in a large auditorium the reproduction sounds much more realistic because the acoustics and physical size of the playback space match up a lot better with the original venue and sound more like the music is being heard in a real space, because it IS being heard in a real space - a space much more like the real thing than you smaller home listening room. This magic is not due to anything that Dave Wilson did with the design, but rather in spite of it. Your remark about the horns kind of shows this. I am thinking that the problem with horn repro has less to do with the POWER of the tweeters and more to do with the radiation pattern not matching the rest of the system by the time the frequencies get up that high. There can be a disconnect when the radiation pattern narrows as frequencies go up. In fact nothing gives away the "speakery" sound as opposed to live faster than having this megaphone effect at the high freqs. Maybe if he had chosen HORN tweeters (ha ha) there would be less disparity in the acoustic power output, but I think he should also put some of them on the other faces of the speaker, especially the sides, to even out the power response throughout the spectrum. Summary, biggest factor was physical size, he had plenty of power, no problem with waveform fidelity, and mitigating factor spatial characteristics and possibly power in high frequencies. Gary Eickmeier PS - the others may not realize that I have a copy of your jazz recording, just played it yesterday (again), and it IS possibly the best I have in my collection. Thank you for that! |
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#4
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 05:03:05 -0700, Doug McDonald wrote
(in article ): On 8/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote: This came closer than anything I've ever heard. The only thing that gave away the fact that I was listening to a reproduction of a live event and not the event itself (from a listening perspective only, of course) were the trumpets. For the most part, the Wilson Alexandria XLFs produced, in that large ballroom, all the power and dynamic contrasts of the real thing. I've NEVER heard that before. Like I said, the trumpets gave it away as merely reproduction. They didn't sound live, just nearly so. Trumpets are pretty nigh impossible to get right. They are usually the difference between real and reproduced. Most instruments produce very weak harmonic above about 8KHz, and therefore the highly attenuated harmonics of those instruments are fairly easy for a good speaker system to reproduce. But if the harmonics are strong (a trumpet has harmonics that are equally as strong as the fundamental all the way up to 16 KHz or so) the small 1-2 " tweeters employed by practically all speaker systems simply cannot produce these harmonics at the volume with which they occur live. This tells almost any listener whether a trumpet is reproduced or live. Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard. I take it you are saying that the tweeters were actually being overdriven, and could not reproduce the peaks. Correct assumption? Doug McDonald Not really. The tweeter thing is a theory of mine. It's just that tweeters are small out of necessity in order to be fast, but they can't move as much air as larger drivers or as is necessary to reproduce instruments with high-level harmonic content above 8-10 KHz, even when playing at their absolute loudest. Most instruments can be fairly realistically reproduced, and that is because the high-frequency harmonics that they produce are extremely attenuated compared to their fundamentals. Few instruments have the strong harmonic content produced by a trumpet and perhaps a few other instruments. I don't know if you've ever had this experience before, but I have. I'm walking a down a city street in a busy "entertainment" district of some place like the French Quarter in New Orleans, or the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, You pass a door to some establishment and the door opens for someone to enter of leave. Instantly the music gets louder as you hear it through the open door. Something tells you immediately, "that's live music playing in there!" it's that unambiguous. There are no ifs, hesitations, or second guesses involved. You KNOW it's live. (You pass the next door and as it opens, you think "PA system or jukebox") No reproduction system I've ever heard can reproduce that sensation, and after attending a seminar on how we hear music put on by composer, musician and audio maven Tony Webber of Cary Audio, I now see why (I've wondered about this for years) . He showed spectragraphs of various instruments showing the frequency distribution of about a dozen instruments. When he got to the trumpet, I had an epiphany. Most instruments he showed, violin, flute, oboe, etc. had harmonics reaching up to above 15 KHz, but in most instruments the high harmonics were much less than a third the amplitude of the highest fundamental. When he put a slide up showing the trumpet, it had high-frequency harmonics that were as loud as the fundamental all the way to 20 KHz! That must be at least part of the reason why live music sounds the way it way it does. Instruments with high level, high-frequency harmonic content (cymbals, saxes, french horns, perhaps) just aren't being reproduced by even the best of today's speakers with the harmonic content intact. Now, perhaps they aren't being captured properly by the best microphones we can build either, I don't know. But the next time you hear a trumpet being played (even if it's by a mariach band in your local Mexican restaurant ) listen to the trumpet player for harmonic content and shear PRESENCE. No stereo system can do that. After hearing the best and most expensive speakers on the market (Wilson Alexandria XLFs, Magico Q5s, YG Acoustics Anat III, MBL MBL Radialstrahler 101E Mk.II, M-L CLX,) I'm convinced that this is the final bottleneck for getting absolute audio accuracy from hi-fi equipment. I believe that the day we can't discern the difference between a live trumpet and a recorded one, that's the day we'll be "there"! |
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#5
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 07:13:56 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... Several weeks ago, I attended a regional Hi-Fi Show. It was held in a medium-sized hotel near the International airport. In one of the Hotel's several ballrooms, one of the larger area stereo salons was demonstrating, what I found to be the real-sounding audio that I have ever heard. snip This came closer than anything I've ever heard. The only thing that gave away the fact that I was listening to a reproduction of a live event and not the event itself (from a listening perspective only, of course) were the trumpets. For the most part, the Wilson Alexandria XLFs produced, in that large ballroom, all the power and dynamic contrasts of the real thing. I've NEVER heard that before. Like I said, the trumpets gave it away as merely reproduction. They didn't sound live, just nearly so. Trumpets are pretty nigh impossible to get right. They are usually the difference between real and reproduced. Most instruments produce very weak harmonic above about 8KHz, and therefore the highly attenuated harmonics of those instruments are fairly easy for a good speaker system to reproduce. But if the harmonics are strong (a trumpet has harmonics that are equally as strong as the fundamental all the way up to 16 KHz or so) the small 1-2 " tweeters employed by practically all speaker systems simply cannot produce these harmonics at the volume with which they occur live. This tells almost any listener whether a trumpet is reproduced or live. Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard. The Wilson Alexandria XLFs are no exception. Over most of the spectrum, the Wilsons are pretty much nonpareil. But they fall down when it comes to trumpets, and a few other brass instruments. Still and all, it's the best reproduction that I've ever heard from any stereo system, irrespective of cost. Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. The only positive here is that I don't think that one needs a pair of $60,000 VTL Siegfried II 800 Watt monoblocs to drive them. They are so efficient that their minimum power requirement is but 15 Watts! I'd say that 150 Watts/channel would be more than sufficient to achieve realistic levels of performance that would run you and probably your neighbors out of the neighborhood! Comments? Questions? Derisive laughter? Dear AE - You probably knew you might hear from me on this. You would also be surprised to read that I agree with your observations 100%. Recall that my EEFs (Essential Elements of Fidelity) are Physical Size, Power, Waveform Fidelity in the electronic domain - (freedom from distortion and noise and flat response), and Spatial Characteristics. I, too, have noticed many times that in a large auditorium the reproduction sounds much more realistic because the acoustics and physical size of the playback space match up a lot better with the original venue and sound more like the music is being heard in a real space, because it IS being heard in a real space - a space much more like the real thing than you smaller home listening room. This magic is not due to anything that Dave Wilson did with the design, but rather in spite of it. Your remark about the horns kind of shows this. I am thinking that the problem with horn repro has less to do with the POWER of the tweeters and more to do with the radiation pattern not matching the rest of the system by the time the frequencies get up that high. There can be a disconnect when the radiation pattern narrows as frequencies go up. In fact nothing gives away the "speakery" sound as opposed to live faster than having this megaphone effect at the high freqs. Maybe if he had chosen HORN tweeters (ha ha) there would be less disparity in the acoustic power output, but I think he should also put some of them on the other faces of the speaker, especially the sides, to even out the power response throughout the spectrum. Summary, biggest factor was physical size, he had plenty of power, no problem with waveform fidelity, and mitigating factor spatial characteristics and possibly power in high frequencies. Gary Eickmeier PS - the others may not realize that I have a copy of your jazz recording, just played it yesterday (again), and it IS possibly the best I have in my collection. Thank you for that! Well, while those Wilson Audio speakers were definitely the "best of show" Their longsuit seemed to be that they excelled at getting the dynamics of live music correct. In an unfamiliar venue such as half of a hotel ballroom, any observations that I might make about imaging and soundstage (they seemed to do that very realistically) would be tempered by my unfamiliarity with the room and the equipment. So I make no claims there. The sound was big and real-sounding from a standpoint of my familiarity with the source material and nothing else. The speakers are huge. The Alexandrias, each had two woofers, one a 13" and the other a 15". The "Thor's Hammer" subwoofers had two woofers as well, both 15". The three speaker systems moved a LOT of air and the bottom descended to 10 Hz! Thanks Gary, for the kind words about my jazz concert recording. Audio_Empire |
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#6
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
Audio Empire wrote:
On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 05:03:05 -0700, Doug McDonald wrote (in article ): On 8/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote: Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard. I take it you are saying that the tweeters were actually being overdriven, and could not reproduce the peaks. Correct assumption? Not really. The tweeter thing is a theory of mine. It's just that tweeters are small out of necessity in order to be fast, but they can't move as much air as larger drivers or as is necessary to reproduce instruments with high-level harmonic content above 8-10 KHz, even when playing at their absolute loudest. The quantity that determines how loud something is "volume velocity," not simply volume or displacement, which is what most people are really talking about when they say "moving air." For a given diaphragm area and a fixed linear displacement, the sound pressure generated goes as the square of the frequency. Conversely, for a given diameter, the amount of excursion needed to radiate a certain sound pressure level goes as the inverse square of frequency. Consider the following: a 10" woofer moving about 0.08" at 50 Hz generates a sound pressure level of about 100 dB 1 meter away. That same woofer, if it COULD, at that excursion, would be producing 192 dB SPL. It'd need in the realm of several billion watts of power to do so. This suggests the obvious: woofers do not good tweeters make. Now, take our lonely little, diminutive 1" tweeter. At 10,000 Hz (10 kHz, to reproduce that same 100 dB SPL 1 meter away, would have to move all of 0.0002". That's a mere 200 millionths of an inch, or nearly 400 times LESS than the woofer (at 50Hz) to produce the same sound pressure level. The reason is, again, that the amount of sound for a given diameter and excursion, goes as the SQUARE of frequency or, equivalently, the amount of excursion needed for a given sound pressure level goes as the inverse square of frequency. 10,000 Hz is 200 times the frequency of 50 Hz, and the square of that is 40,000. But there's a factor of 100 difference in the emissive area between a 10" woofer and a 1" tweeter. It therefore goes that a 1" tweeter requires 100/40,000 times the excursion at 10 kHz that a 10" woofer does at 50 Hz. Most instruments can be fairly realistically reproduced, and that is because the high-frequency harmonics that they produce are extremely attenuated compared to their fundamentals. Except that for most tweeters, the limitation in output comes not at the HIGH end of their range, but at the LOW end. Once again, remember that the excursion, for a given emissive area and sound pressure, goes as the inverse square of frequency. In order to produce that same 100 dB SPL at, say 2 kHz that it can at 10 kHz, the tweeter has to move (10 kHz/2kHz)^2 or 25 times as much at 2 kHz as it does at 10 kHz. So, counter to your intuition (and, for that matter, many peoples' intuition) producing the high frequency stuff is EASY compared to the low frequency stuff. "Yes, but," you or someone else might say, "it's all about how FAST the tweeter is." Well, it turns out that while that sounds intuitively correct, it's physically wrong. For the same sound pressure level, the linear velocity of a given diaphragm goes as the reciprocal of frequency, NOT directly as frequency. That means that the same tweeter that's moving X cm/sec at 2 kHz only has to move 1/5th that speed at 10 kHz to produce the same sound pressure level. In fact, we can directly calculate what those velocities are by differentiating the excursion WRT time. Doing so gives us an equation for peak velocity of Vpk = wX, where w is radian frequency (2 pi times F) and x is the excursion. At 10 kHz: Vpk = 2 pi 10 kHz * 0.0002 in Vpk ~= 13.2 in/sec while at 2 kHz, and the same 100 dB sound pressure level: Vpk = 2 pi 2 kHz * 0.0053 in Vpk ~= 66 in/sec "But why, then" it might be asked, "don't tweeters just keep going up and up in frequency if they have an excursion that goes as the inverse square of frequency and a velocity that goes as the inverse of frequency?" Because there are other limitations that come to play at high frequencies. The first is physical size: as the wavelengths get shorter at high frequencies, and as they start to approach the size of the radiating area, you now get to the point where one point in the diaphragm is a significant portion of a wavelength (or, at high enough frequencies, MANY wavelengths) distant from another part. Even assuming the radiating area was infinitely rigid (reality is FAR from that), those path length differences would lead to cancellations. Second is the fact that the diaphragm is anything but rigid. At high enough frequencies, that diaphragm is doing anything BUT moving as a rigid piston. Third is electrical: all loudspeaker drivers exhibit elect- rically reactive properties whose effects come to dominate as the frequency goes higher. Actual power can only be produced through resistive loads: a portion of the resistive load of ANY driver of ANY kind is the reflected resistive portion of the acoustical radiation impedance. As the series inductive reactance of a voice coil increases with increasing frequency, or as the shunt capacitance of an electrostatic system decreases with increasing frequency, the effect is an inevitable low-pass filter effect. Few instruments have the strong harmonic content produced by a trumpet and perhaps a few other instruments. Look first at what made it through the air from the bell of the trumpet to the diaphragm of the microphone (look, specifically, at the absorptive attenuation of air above 20 kHz). Then look at what came out the the microphones that managed to pick up what was left. These two factors alone count for an enormous amount of very high-frequency losses in recording. -- +--------------------------------+ + Dick Pierce | + Professional Audio Development | +--------------------------------+ |
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#7
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
On 08/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote:
snip Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. snip Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live performances. That would support the music, which buying the speakers does not. |
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#8
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
Dick Pierce wrote:
Consider the following: a 10" woofer moving about 0.08" at 50 Hz generates a sound pressure level of about 100 dB 1 meter away. That same woofer, if it COULD, at that excursion, would be producing 192 dB SPL. It'd need in the realm of several billion watts of power to do so. This suggests the obvious: woofers do not good tweeters make. What I meant to type in the second sentence was: "That same woofer, if it COULD, at that excursion, would be producing 192 dB SPL at 10 kHz." Sorry for the confusion. -- +--------------------------------+ + Dick Pierce | + Professional Audio Development | +--------------------------------+ |
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#9
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
In article ,
Audio Empire wrote: Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. The only positive here is that I don't think that one needs a pair of $60,000 VTL Siegfried II 800 Watt monoblocs to drive them. They are so efficient that their minimum power requirement is but 15 Watts! I'd say that 150 Watts/channel would be more than sufficient to achieve realistic levels of performance that would run you and probably your neighbors out of the neighborhood! Comments? Questions? Derisive laughter? Audio_Empire I believe that I heard that system at a recent show as well (perhaps we were at the same show). I can't say that I was too impressed with any of the huge dollar offerings. Part of that probably was that they were all played too loudly for my taste. I personally was much more impressed with, for example, the new KEF LS5s. And I admit that the price tags on these systems turn me off as well. I guess that I'm more rooted in the real financial world, as well as the world of real rooms where the system is going to be used. I've recently been on a speaker quest and I ordered a pair of Magnepan 1.7s, and I believe that I'm going to be very happy with them. Lots of sonic "bang for the buck" with excellent musical values that are important to me. -- www.jennifermartinmusic.com |
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#10
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 05:53:17 -0700, Dick Pierce wrote
(in article ): Audio Empire wrote: On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 05:03:05 -0700, Doug McDonald wrote (in article ): On 8/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote: Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard. I take it you are saying that the tweeters were actually being overdriven, and could not reproduce the peaks. Correct assumption? Not really. The tweeter thing is a theory of mine. It's just that tweeters are small out of necessity in order to be fast, but they can't move as much air as larger drivers or as is necessary to reproduce instruments with high-level harmonic content above 8-10 KHz, even when playing at their absolute loudest. The quantity that determines how loud something is "volume velocity," not simply volume or displacement, which is what most people are really talking about when they say "moving air." For a given diaphragm area and a fixed linear displacement, the sound pressure generated goes as the square of the frequency. Conversely, for a given diameter, the amount of excursion needed to radiate a certain sound pressure level goes as the inverse square of frequency. Consider the following: a 10" woofer moving about 0.08" at 50 Hz generates a sound pressure level of about 100 dB 1 meter away. That same woofer, if it COULD, at that excursion, would be producing 192 dB SPL. It'd need in the realm of several billion watts of power to do so. This suggests the obvious: woofers do not good tweeters make. Now, take our lonely little, diminutive 1" tweeter. At 10,000 Hz (10 kHz, to reproduce that same 100 dB SPL 1 meter away, would have to move all of 0.0002". That's a mere 200 millionths of an inch, or nearly 400 times LESS than the woofer (at 50Hz) to produce the same sound pressure level. The reason is, again, that the amount of sound for a given diameter and excursion, goes as the SQUARE of frequency or, equivalently, the amount of excursion needed for a given sound pressure level goes as the inverse square of frequency. 10,000 Hz is 200 times the frequency of 50 Hz, and the square of that is 40,000. But there's a factor of 100 difference in the emissive area between a 10" woofer and a 1" tweeter. It therefore goes that a 1" tweeter requires 100/40,000 times the excursion at 10 kHz that a 10" woofer does at 50 Hz. Most instruments can be fairly realistically reproduced, and that is because the high-frequency harmonics that they produce are extremely attenuated compared to their fundamentals. Except that for most tweeters, the limitation in output comes not at the HIGH end of their range, but at the LOW end. Once again, remember that the excursion, for a given emissive area and sound pressure, goes as the inverse square of frequency. In order to produce that same 100 dB SPL at, say 2 kHz that it can at 10 kHz, the tweeter has to move (10 kHz/2kHz)^2 or 25 times as much at 2 kHz as it does at 10 kHz. So, counter to your intuition (and, for that matter, many peoples' intuition) producing the high frequency stuff is EASY compared to the low frequency stuff. "Yes, but," you or someone else might say, "it's all about how FAST the tweeter is." Well, it turns out that while that sounds intuitively correct, it's physically wrong. For the same sound pressure level, the linear velocity of a given diaphragm goes as the reciprocal of frequency, NOT directly as frequency. That means that the same tweeter that's moving X cm/sec at 2 kHz only has to move 1/5th that speed at 10 kHz to produce the same sound pressure level. In fact, we can directly calculate what those velocities are by differentiating the excursion WRT time. Doing so gives us an equation for peak velocity of Vpk = wX, where w is radian frequency (2 pi times F) and x is the excursion. At 10 kHz: Vpk = 2 pi 10 kHz * 0.0002 in Vpk ~= 13.2 in/sec while at 2 kHz, and the same 100 dB sound pressure level: Vpk = 2 pi 2 kHz * 0.0053 in Vpk ~= 66 in/sec "But why, then" it might be asked, "don't tweeters just keep going up and up in frequency if they have an excursion that goes as the inverse square of frequency and a velocity that goes as the inverse of frequency?" Because there are other limitations that come to play at high frequencies. The first is physical size: as the wavelengths get shorter at high frequencies, and as they start to approach the size of the radiating area, you now get to the point where one point in the diaphragm is a significant portion of a wavelength (or, at high enough frequencies, MANY wavelengths) distant from another part. Even assuming the radiating area was infinitely rigid (reality is FAR from that), those path length differences would lead to cancellations. Second is the fact that the diaphragm is anything but rigid. At high enough frequencies, that diaphragm is doing anything BUT moving as a rigid piston. Third is electrical: all loudspeaker drivers exhibit elect- rically reactive properties whose effects come to dominate as the frequency goes higher. Actual power can only be produced through resistive loads: a portion of the resistive load of ANY driver of ANY kind is the reflected resistive portion of the acoustical radiation impedance. As the series inductive reactance of a voice coil increases with increasing frequency, or as the shunt capacitance of an electrostatic system decreases with increasing frequency, the effect is an inevitable low-pass filter effect. Few instruments have the strong harmonic content produced by a trumpet and perhaps a few other instruments. Look first at what made it through the air from the bell of the trumpet to the diaphragm of the microphone (look, specifically, at the absorptive attenuation of air above 20 kHz). Then look at what came out the the microphones that managed to pick up what was left. These two factors alone count for an enormous amount of very high-frequency losses in recording. Well, thank you for that exacting primer on how tweeters work. It was very informative. But it would have served this discussion better to explain to us what the mechanism is that keeps even the finest speakers from being able to convincingly reproduce trumpets and some other instruments. Most of us know what these instruments sound like live - even in a concert hall, or even a band concert in the park where there is some distance between the instrument and out ears. No speaker ever made gets it right. The fact that a $195,000.00 pair of speakers can get just about every other aspect of reproduction correct and still not be able to come within a country mile of getting the trumpets to sound real must have a cause, some limitation that can't be overcome by any current transducer technology. |
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#11
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On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 05:53:32 -0700, cjt wrote
(in article ): On 08/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote: snip Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. snip Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live performances. That would support the music, which buying the speakers does not. Well, you see, the fact is, that most people who could afford speakers that expensive (not to mention the ancillary equipment to go with them) probably does attend live concerts as well. One does not exclude the other. There are a large number of people in this world who have so much money, that the price of a $195,000 dollar pair of speakers, or a half-million dollar automobile, for that matter, is just pocket change. |
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#12
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On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 08:22:26 -0700, Jenn wrote
(in article ): In article , Audio Empire wrote: Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. The only positive here is that I don't think that one needs a pair of $60,000 VTL Siegfried II 800 Watt monoblocs to drive them. They are so efficient that their minimum power requirement is but 15 Watts! I'd say that 150 Watts/channel would be more than sufficient to achieve realistic levels of performance that would run you and probably your neighbors out of the neighborhood! Comments? Questions? Derisive laughter? Audio_Empire I believe that I heard that system at a recent show as well (perhaps we were at the same show). I can't say that I was too impressed with any of the huge dollar offerings. Part of that probably was that they were all played too loudly for my taste. I personally was much more impressed with, for example, the new KEF LS5s. And I admit that the price tags on these systems turn me off as well. I guess that I'm more rooted in the real financial world, as well as the world of real rooms where the system is going to be used. I've recently been on a speaker quest and I ordered a pair of Magnepan 1.7s, and I believe that I'm going to be very happy with them. Lots of sonic "bang for the buck" with excellent musical values that are important to me. Well, you won't be disappointed with the Magnepans. They do sound superb. The latest incarnation of Winey's audiophile lineup (MG1.7s, MG 3.7, MG20.7) are by far the best speakers that this company has ever made and as a former Maggie enthusiast (MG2, Tympany ID, Tympany IIIC, MG3.2) That's saying something. However, to my ears the latest Martin-Logan electrostatics are better. I've had a pair of M-L Vistas since they came out, and see (hear?) no reason to change them. |
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#13
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In article ,
cjt wrote: Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live performances. That would support the music, which buying the speakers does not. I used to attend live jazz concerts. Then they started to amp them up. The sound at home became better than the sound in the hall. What really irritated me was the hall was fairly small and didn't need any amplification. I've had similar experiences with musicals so I stopped going. So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think it is only a matter of time. |
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#14
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On Aug 27, 5:53*am, cjt wrote:
On 08/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote: snip Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. snip Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live performances. *That would support the music, which buying the speakers does not. What makes you think it's an either/or proposition? Besides you get two very different experiences from attending concerts and listening to stereo at home. And different individuals' situations are, well, different. Going to concerts may not be very practical for some folks even if they can easily afford to do so. With that said I would certainly like to see more money donated to the various symphonic orchestras around the USA. There is a real need there. Attendance doesn't seem to be a major issue. Plenty of people already going to classical concerts. Classical music is a patron art. It can not pay for itself by the live gate alone. It doesn't even come close. |
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#15
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On Aug 28, 7:03=A0am, Robert Peirce wrote:
In article , =A0cjt wrote: Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live performances. =A0That would support the music, which buying the speaker= s does not. I used to attend live jazz concerts. =A0Then they started to amp them up. The sound at home became better than the sound in the hall. =A0What reall= y irritated me was the hall was fairly small and didn't need any amplification. I've had similar experiences with musicals so I stopped going. So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think it is only a matter of time. I wouldn't worry so much about classical music being amplified. There has been a wonderful movement in modern concert hall design and in the past 10 years there have been a substantial number of new concert halls all over the world that offer new levels of excellence in acoustics. |
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#16
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Scott wrote:
On Aug 28, 7:03 am, Robert Peirce wrote: So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think it is only a matter of time. I wouldn't worry so much about classical music being amplified. There has been a wonderful movement in modern concert hall design and in the past 10 years there have been a substantial number of new concert halls all over the world that offer new levels of excellence in acoustics. That's excellent news! I can now take the quarter million dollars I don't have to spend on wicked expensive speakers and instead not have it to spend traveling to all these new conceert halls all over the world that offer new levels of excellence! Oh, for the smiley challenged: :-( -- +--------------------------------+ + Dick Pierce | + Professional Audio Development | +--------------------------------+ |
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#17
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On Aug 28, 9:42=A0am, Dick Pierce wrote:
Scott wrote: On Aug 28, 7:03 am, Robert Peirce wrote: So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think i= t is only a matter of time. I wouldn't worry so much about classical music being amplified. There has been a wonderful movement in modern concert hall design and in the past 10 years there have been a substantial number of new concert halls all over the world that offer new levels of excellence in acoustics. That's excellent news! I can now take the quarter million dollars I don't have to spend on wicked expensive speakers and instead not have it to spend traveling to all these new conceert halls all over the world that offer new levels of excellence! Oh, for the smiley challenged: =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 :-( Well, for those interested in live classical music it is excellent news. Yeah it's a big world and not many of us are going to go on world tours of concert halls but the real world effect of these new halls is very important for classical music. As a Los Angeles resident I have had the pleasure of going to concerts in the new Performing Arts center at Soka University. http://www.soka.edu/about_soka/our_c...ts-Center.aspx And I will be attending concerts at two other new facilities between now and March in the Bay Area and in Las Vegas. between these three facilities and of course our treasured state of the art home of the L.A. Phil, Disney Hall I have access to an unprecedented quantity of top quality live classical concerts. And I am going to all these concerts for far less than a quarter of a million dollars. http://www.starkinsider.com/2012/05/...d-santa-rosa-= symphony-partner-with-carnegie-hall.html http://www.thesmithcenter.com/about/ The fact is the more of these state of the art concert halls we have around the world the better it will be for the health and well being of classical music as living art form. Trickle down economics so to speak. It's not all that hard to figure out. It's all part of the infrastructure needed to facilitate the existence of great classical music. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how this has helped facilitate the amazing levels of great classical music those of us here on the west coast have enjoyed over the past 10 years or so. I speak of my experience here in L.A. because that is where I live. But this phenomenon has not been limited to L.A. or the west coast. It is happening all over the world. And it is a good thing. And of course the real reason it does not cost me a quarter million dollars to enjoy all this amazing live classical music is due to the folks who donate massive amounts of money to these programs. |
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#18
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"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... Well, thank you for that exacting primer on how tweeters work. It was very informative. But it would have served this discussion better to explain to us what the mechanism is that keeps even the finest speakers from being able to convincingly reproduce trumpets and some other instruments. Short answer - there are two rooms are involved and they create the sticking point. When you reproduce a recording of a horn or other musical instrument, you don't reproduce the horn, you try to reproduce it and its effects of the room it is in. The exception would be a recording of a horn that was made in an anechoic chamber, the recording then played in an anechoic chamber. Those can be made to work fairly well and realistically, but of course nobody is interested in that. The horn does not just create a sound vector (intensity versus time) but instead it creates a sound field (which may be represented by an infinitude of vectors). The speaker does not create just the sound of the horn, but it stimulates the room to make a bunch of other sounds. So there are infinity times infinity other variables, and fools that we are, we try to send them from place to place using a small number of signals. |
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#19
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On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 07:03:38 -0700, Robert Peirce wrote
(in article ): In article , cjt wrote: Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live performances. That would support the music, which buying the speakers does not. I used to attend live jazz concerts. Then they started to amp them up. The sound at home became better than the sound in the hall. What really irritated me was the hall was fairly small and didn't need any amplification. I've had similar experiences with musicals so I stopped going. So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think it is only a matter of time. Here we are in complete agreement. Why go to hear "live musicians" when all you are listening to is a set of PA speakers. If I want to listen to speakers, I'll stay home where my listening chain (amps, speakers) is far better than those of even the most elaborate of public address systems. I have attended so-called live concerts where I've turned around and left because I saw a bevy of microphones on stage and stacks of speakers near by. And you're right, it's only a matter of time before the PA craze hits symphony orchestras too. In fact is some locals, it probably already has. Bah! |
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#20
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On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:03:41 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ): On Aug 28, 7:03am, Robert Peirce wrote: In article , cjt wrote: Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live performances. That would support the music, which buying the speakers does not. I used to attend live jazz concerts. Then they started to amp them up. The sound at home became better than the sound in the hall. What really irritated me was the hall was fairly small and didn't need any amplification. I've had similar experiences with musicals so I stopped going. So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think it is only a matter of time. I wouldn't worry so much about classical music being amplified. There has been a wonderful movement in modern concert hall design and in the past 10 years there have been a substantial number of new concert halls all over the world that offer new levels of excellence in acoustics. I don't think that matters. I've been in wonderful sounding venues that absolutely had no NEED for sound reinforcement, but used it anyway because "it was there" (with pop and rock, with their electronic instruments it's essential because much of what they do doesn't exist in real space). Because most modern pop recordings that one buys are acoustically, horribly compressed, it is assumed that what the listener wants to hear is music that has no dynamic range and is the same level (loud) all the time. So to make the "live" event sound more like a recording concert organizers and performers insist on gain riding sound reinforcement. I once attended a concert by a jazz quartet that was NOT amplified. As we were leaving I heard some young attendee remark to his companion, "It was a good concert, but I wished it had been louder. Why didn't they use sound reinforcement". IOW, this youngster EXPECTED it and was disappointed that it was not employed. |
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#21
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On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:03:38 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ): On Aug 27, 5:53am, cjt wrote: On 08/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote: snip Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. snip Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live performances. =A0That would support the music, which buying the speakers does not. What makes you think it's an either/or proposition? Besides you get two very different experiences from attending concerts and listening to stereo at home. And different individuals' situations are, well, different. Going to concerts may not be very practical for some folks even if they can easily afford to do so. With that said I would certainly like to see more money donated to the various symphonic orchestras around the USA. There is a real need there. Attendance doesn't seem to be a major issue. Plenty of people already going to classical concerts. Classical music is a patron art. It can not pay for itself by the live gate alone. It doesn't even come close. Also, I've noticed that when I attend the SF Symphony and Silicon Vallye Symphony concerts, that the audience seems to be a sea of gray and silver hair. There seem to be fewer and fewer young people attracted to classical music every year. That is partially the fault of our failing educational system. They cut music appreciation out of most grammar and high school curricula long ago with the result that most youngsters have never been exposed to great music. This isn't a new thing either. It's been going on since the late 1960s in US schools. So not only were the present generation of kids deprived of exposure to great music, so were their parents, and so were their grandparents! who were, for the most part, all rockers. But if you go back a previous generation or so, and you will find pop music MADE from classical melodies ('Tonight We Love' - Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, 'Full moon and Empty Arms' - Tchiakovsky's Piano Concerto #1 in B minor, etc). And pop songs where the singer likens his lament of lost love to the plight of Verde's clown, Pagliacci. If Snoop Dog made a reference to Pagliacci in one of his rap "songs" his listeners wouldn't even know what he was talking about. But at one time in this country, and not that long ago either, most people were at least familiar enough with the character to recognize the reference. Why this is, in my humble opinion criminally negligent on the part of educators is because they underestimate the importance of great music in the education of our young. When cutting curricula to the bone to save costs, do they cut US literature or English literature from the program? No, but they say that few people grow-up liking classical music. Well few people grow up being Shakespeare fans either, or Melville fans. Few are encouraged by having to read "Silas Mariner" or "Moby Dick" to further explore the works of Georges Sand and Herman Mellville, but a few are, and all at least know what great literature is about. Is being exposed to Bach, Beethoven, or Tchaikovsy any less important to one's education? I don't think so. Neither is exposure to Reubens, Da Vinci, or Van Gough. Yet art appreciation and music appreciation is almost unheard of in today's schools both provate and public. but there was a time when they were just part of going to school. And out of every class for all of the above; literature, music, and art, there were always two or three youngsters who found that they LIKED culture, and from them stem the future art lovers, symphony orchestra attendees and literature afficianados. Where do today's young music lovers come from? (it's a rhetorical question). Sorry for the soapbox, but our endless crops of generations of unaware youth is a personal bee in the bonnet with me. Audio_Empire |
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#22
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On Aug 28, 4:03=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote:
On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:03:41 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): On Aug 28, 7:03am, Robert Peirce wrote: In article , cjt wrote: Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending liv= e performances. That would support the music, which buying the speakers does not. I used to attend live jazz concerts. Then they started to amp them up. The sound at home became better than the sound in the hall. What reall= y irritated me was the hall was fairly small and didn't need any amplification. I've had similar experiences with musicals so I stopped going. So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think = it is only a matter of time. I wouldn't worry so much about classical music being amplified. There has been a wonderful movement in modern concert hall design and in the past 10 years there have been a substantial number of new concert halls all over the world that offer new levels of excellence in acoustics. I don't think that matters. I've been in wonderful sounding venues that absolutely had no NEED for sound reinforcement, but used it anyway becaus= e "it was there" (with pop and rock, with their electronic instruments it's essential because much of what they do doesn't exist in real space). it isn't there in any of the Halls I mentioned. And there is pretty much no chance of it being there anytime in the future. Because most modern pop recordings that one buys are acoustically, horrib= ly compressed, it is assumed that what the listener wants to hear is music t= hat has no dynamic range and is the same level (loud) all the time. So to mak= e the "live" event sound more like a recording concert =A0organizers and performers insist on gain riding sound reinforcement. How on earth is this going to affect the classical concert going audiences? I once attended a concert by a jazz quartet that was NOT amplified. As we were leaving I heard some young attendee remark to his companion, "It was= a good concert, but I wished it had been louder. Why didn't they use sound reinforcement". IOW, this youngster EXPECTED it and was disappointed that= it was not employed. Clearly it wasn't at Disney Hall. And that is part of the point. These state of the art facilities are the perfect cure for any demands for sound reinforcement. Not that I see many classical concert goers making such demands. |
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#23
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On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:01:00 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... Well, thank you for that exacting primer on how tweeters work. It was very informative. But it would have served this discussion better to explain to us what the mechanism is that keeps even the finest speakers from being able to convincingly reproduce trumpets and some other instruments. Short answer - there are two rooms are involved and they create the sticking point. When you reproduce a recording of a horn or other musical instrument, you don't reproduce the horn, you try to reproduce it and its effects of the room it is in. The exception would be a recording of a horn that was made in an anechoic chamber, the recording then played in an anechoic chamber. Those can be made to work fairly well and realistically, but of course nobody is interested in that. The horn does not just create a sound vector (intensity versus time) but instead it creates a sound field (which may be represented by an infinitude of vectors). The speaker does not create just the sound of the horn, but it stimulates the room to make a bunch of other sounds. So there are infinity times infinity other variables, and fools that we are, we try to send them from place to place using a small number of signals. Sorry, I don't buy that. Were that the case, one would think that at least some rooms would make these instruments sound more realistic than in others. Sometimes trumpets are close-miked in a studio and room interaction on the capture side is nil. They still don't sound like live trumpets. But live trumpets sound like live trumpets in any venue, any room, even outdoors. |
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#24
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"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... Why this is, in my humble opinion criminally negligent on the part of educators is because they underestimate the importance of great music in the education of our young. When cutting curricula to the bone to save costs, do they cut US literature or English literature from the program? No, but they say that few people grow-up liking classical music. Audio_Empire My daughter plays the cello. Her grade school, middle school, and now high school all have orchestras and bands for the students to learn string instruments or band instruments. They play classical and jazz, and are pretty good at it. I'm talking public school system, not performing arts schools, and they have county wide competitions for best orchestras and bands. My daughter attends Strings Workshop every summer, a two week resident course taught at the local college by the local symphony personnel, including the conductor. She also plays in the Youth Orchestra at First Methodist, under the baton of the same symphony conductor. She is always second chair in all of these orchestras, first chair going to the conductor's daughter, same age and quite a prodigy. All of this is going on in central Florida, not New York or San Francisco. The stories of our schools' demise are premature. Gary Eickmeier |
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#25
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On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:53:25 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... Why this is, in my humble opinion criminally negligent on the part of educators is because they underestimate the importance of great music in the education of our young. When cutting curricula to the bone to save costs, do they cut US literature or English literature from the program? No, but they say that few people grow-up liking classical music. Audio_Empire My daughter plays the cello. Her grade school, middle school, and now high school all have orchestras and bands for the students to learn string instruments or band instruments. They play classical and jazz, and are pretty good at it. I'm talking public school system, not performing arts schools, and they have county wide competitions for best orchestras and bands. My daughter attends Strings Workshop every summer, a two week resident course taught at the local college by the local symphony personnel, including the conductor. She also plays in the Youth Orchestra at First Methodist, under the baton of the same symphony conductor. She is always second chair in all of these orchestras, first chair going to the conductor's daughter, same age and quite a prodigy. All of this is going on in central Florida, not New York or San Francisco. The stories of our schools' demise are premature. Gary Eickmeier You misunderstand my point, I think. I'm not talking about music programs like school bands, glee clubs or orchestras, I'm talking about musical appreciation classes, I.E. classes where ordinary kids get exposed to great music, the same way middle school and high school english classes expose ordinary kids to US literature and English literature, and in some cases World literature. These classes don't teach these kids to write great literature, or how to perform Shakespeare, but rather they are merely exposed to the stuff. Out of every literature class, some kids come away with a lifelong interest in literary culture. And when schools taught music appreciation, some kids come away with a lifelong interest in great music, and even those who don't will at least have been EXPOSED to it. Where do they get that opportunity today? BTW, I'm a product of a high school music appreciation class. I'm one of those who came away from that class with lifelong love that started me on a journey of discovery that isn't finished yet. When I was young and MOST public schools had music appreciation classes, it was said that 10% of the US population bought classical recordings. The last time I saw any figures on it was probably 20 years ago when it was down to quite a bit less than 1%. |
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#26
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In article ,
"Gary Eickmeier" wrote: "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... Why this is, in my humble opinion criminally negligent on the part of educators is because they underestimate the importance of great music in the education of our young. When cutting curricula to the bone to save costs, do they cut US literature or English literature from the program? No, but they say that few people grow-up liking classical music. Audio_Empire My daughter plays the cello. Her grade school, middle school, and now high school all have orchestras and bands for the students to learn string instruments or band instruments. They play classical and jazz, and are pretty good at it. I'm talking public school system, not performing arts schools, and they have county wide competitions for best orchestras and bands. My daughter attends Strings Workshop every summer, a two week resident course taught at the local college by the local symphony personnel, including the conductor. She also plays in the Youth Orchestra at First Methodist, under the baton of the same symphony conductor. She is always second chair in all of these orchestras, first chair going to the conductor's daughter, same age and quite a prodigy. All of this is going on in central Florida, not New York or San Francisco. The stories of our schools' demise are premature. Gary Eickmeier Gary, everyone should be very happy that your daughter is having that experience, and you're correct: music education is still doing very well in a variety of places in this country. But as a professional who travels a great deal working with elementary through professional ensembles, I can tell you that music education (both music appreciation type of humanities classes, and public performance orientated programs) is in a serious state of decline, on average. There is no denying it. Programs are being slashed. It is, in my view, a tragic situation. Everything in school curricula that teaches beauty, aesthetics, personal reflection through timeless works of art...is being cut at alarming rates. It's difficult to measure it, after all. Our society will (and perhaps already is) suffer due to this. Read Howard Gardner. Those concerned about this should write, call, email, call again your state and local representatives. Quickly. -- www.jennifermartinmusic.com |
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#27
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Audio Empire wrote:
Here we are in complete agreement. Why go to hear "live musicians" when all you are listening to is a set of PA speakers. Because it's a social experience. You're there, along with many other people and the musicians. It's all about the relationship between performers and audience, regardless of the presence of sound reinforcement: the musicians want to delight, and the audience want to be delighted. Andrew. |
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#28
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On Wed, 29 Aug 2012 05:45:54 -0700, Jenn wrote
(in article ): call, email, call again your state and local representatives Nice Idea. Unfortunately, no one will pay the slightest attention to you. They'll mumble platitudes, yes. "Thank you for your concern." We share your concerns, but.... Nothing will be done because it's a matter of money. The world has become so greedy and revenues have lagged so far behind costs over the last half-century, that all schools can do is cut programs, slash budgets, and layoff teachers. These "non-essential" programs like music appreciation go first. They can't cut athletics because they actually bring-in money to the schools (football games, basketball games, baseball games, track and field meets, swimming competitions, etc). But they can cut the arts. And we raise another generation of kids who are never even introduced to the finer things in life. No wonder symphony orchestra concert venues and high-definition broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera at movie theaters are a sea of gray, silver and blue hair. |
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#29
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:01:00 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote (in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... Well, thank you for that exacting primer on how tweeters work. It was very informative. But it would have served this discussion better to explain to us what the mechanism is that keeps even the finest speakers from being able to convincingly reproduce trumpets and some other instruments. Short answer - there are two rooms are involved and they create the sticking point. When you reproduce a recording of a horn or other musical instrument, you don't reproduce the horn, you try to reproduce it and its effects of the room it is in. The exception would be a recording of a horn that was made in an anechoic chamber, the recording then played in an anechoic chamber. Those can be made to work fairly well and realistically, but of course nobody is interested in that. The horn does not just create a sound vector (intensity versus time) but instead it creates a sound field (which may be represented by an infinitude of vectors). The speaker does not create just the sound of the horn, but it stimulates the room to make a bunch of other sounds. So there are infinity times infinity other variables, and fools that we are, we try to send them from place to place using a small number of signals. Sorry, I don't buy that. Doesn't matter. Were that the case, one would think that at least some rooms would make these instruments sound more realistic than in others. They do exist, it is just that they are outside of your personal experience. Sometimes trumpets are close-miked in a studio and room interaction on the capture side is nil. If you believe that you can close-mic trumpets so that there is no audible influence from the room, then that again says something about what is inside and outside of your personal experience. It also suggests some lack of knowlege of mic pickup patterns. They still don't sound like live trumpets. But depending on the room in which the recording is made, how the recording is made, the room the recording is played back in, and the type and orientation of the speakers, the degree of liveness can vary over a tremendous range. But live trumpets sound like live trumpets in any venue, any room, even outdoors. But the same trumpets don't sound the same in every real world context. |
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#30
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
On Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:41:14 -0700, ScottW wrote
(in article ): On Aug 28, 7:46pm, Audio Empire wrote: On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:01:00 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote (in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... Well, thank you for that exacting primer on how tweeters work. It was very informative. But it would have served this discussion better to explain to us what the mechanism is that keeps even the finest speakers from being able to convincingly reproduce trumpets and some other instruments. Short answer - there are two rooms are involved and they create the sticking point. When you reproduce a recording of a horn or other musical instrument, you don't reproduce the horn, you try to reproduce it and its effects of the room it is in. The exception would be a recording of a horn that was made in an anechoic chamber, the recording then played in an anechoic chamber. Those can be made to work fairly well and realistically, but of course nobody is interested in that. The horn does not just create a sound vector (intensity versus time) but instead it creates a sound field (which may be represented by an infinitude of vectors). The speaker does not create just the sound of the horn, but it stimulates the room to make a bunch of other sounds. So there are infinity times infinity other variables, and fools that we are, we try to send them from place to place using a small number of signals. Sorry, I don't buy that. Were that the case, one would think that at least some rooms would make these instruments sound more realistic than in others. Sometimes trumpets are close-miked in a studio and room interaction on the capture side is nil. They still don't sound like live trumpets. But live trumpets sound like live trumpets in any venue, any room, even outdoors. My kid used to play a small drum kit in my listening room. I've never heard my system (or any other) able to reproduce that sound of a snare drum in my room and for that...I am thankful. ScottW I certainly understand that, but a drum kit - in the context of the music using it adds quite a bit. It would be nice to be able to reproduce those drums accurately, Not the kit playing in your listening room (by your kid), but playing in the venue in which the whole ensemble was recorded and bring THAT into your listening room. Drum whacks, pistols firing, these are more things that simply cannot be accurately reproduced by modern technology. Like I said to the previous poster. Trumpets (and drum kits) sound from speakers are not real sounding, because technology can't do that...yet. Make no mistake, the previous poster's allegation that it's the two rooms involved that make trumpets (and drums among other musical instruments) not sound real holds no water. because these instruments heard LIVE always sound right, no matter where they are heard. |
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#31
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
On Wed, 29 Aug 2012 16:00:59 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:01:00 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote (in article ): "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... Well, thank you for that exacting primer on how tweeters work. It was very informative. But it would have served this discussion better to explain to us what the mechanism is that keeps even the finest speakers from being able to convincingly reproduce trumpets and some other instruments. Short answer - there are two rooms are involved and they create the sticking point. When you reproduce a recording of a horn or other musical instrument, you don't reproduce the horn, you try to reproduce it and its effects of the room it is in. The exception would be a recording of a horn that was made in an anechoic chamber, the recording then played in an anechoic chamber. Those can be made to work fairly well and realistically, but of course nobody is interested in that. The horn does not just create a sound vector (intensity versus time) but instead it creates a sound field (which may be represented by an infinitude of vectors). The speaker does not create just the sound of the horn, but it stimulates the room to make a bunch of other sounds. So there are infinity times infinity other variables, and fools that we are, we try to send them from place to place using a small number of signals. Sorry, I don't buy that. Doesn't matter. Were that the case, one would think that at least some rooms would make these instruments sound more realistic than in others. They do exist, it is just that they are outside of your personal experience. Complete Balderdash. I have probably heard more speaker systems than you even know to exist, Arny. Sometimes trumpets are close-miked in a studio and room interaction on the capture side is nil. If you believe that you can close-mic trumpets so that there is no audible influence from the room, then that again says something about what is inside and outside of your personal experience. It also suggests some lack of knowlege of mic pickup patterns. I said that the room effects were NIL, not non-existent. And I'd be willing to pit my knowledge of microphones against yours any day of the week. They still don't sound like live trumpets. But depending on the room in which the recording is made, how the recording is made, the room the recording is played back in, and the type and orientation of the speakers, the degree of liveness can vary over a tremendous range. Yes, and without ever coming within a country mile of sounding like a real trumpet either, again bringing into focus what lies both inside and outside of your experience with the sound of live music vs reproduced music. But live trumpets sound like live trumpets in any venue, any room, even outdoors. But the same trumpets don't sound the same in every real world context. Nobody ever intimated that they do. However that "something" that tells a listener that he/she is hearing a live instrument vs a reproduced one is maintained irrespective of the venue, the trumpet, or the player. This is that quality that cannot be reproduced (yet), by even the finest transducers in the world. If this makes no sense to you, or you still insist that I am wrong, then it speaks volumes about your musical perceptions and explains much. |
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#32
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... Here we are in complete agreement. Why go to hear "live musicians" when all you are listening to is a set of PA speakers. If I want to listen to speakers, I'll stay home where my listening chain (amps, speakers) is far better than those of even the most elaborate of public address systems. I have attended so-called live concerts where I've turned around and left because I saw a bevy of microphones on stage and stacks of speakers near by. And you're right, it's only a matter of time before the PA craze hits symphony orchestras too. In fact is some locals, it probably already has. Bah! Good point. Someone took me to a concert of *name* artists. The alleged concert was composed of live segements, karoke segments and video segments. In no case was the sound or video as good as my home stereo which is itself not elaborate. |
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#33
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
On Aug 30, 5:37*am, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Audio Empire" wrote in message ... Here we are in complete agreement. Why go to hear "live musicians" when all you are listening to is a set of PA speakers. If I want to listen to speakers, I'll stay home where my listening chain (amps, speakers) is far better than those of even the most elaborate of public address systems. I have attended so-called live concerts where I've turned around and left because I saw a bevy of microphones on stage and stacks of speakers near by. And you're right, it's only a matter of time before the PA craze hits symphony orchestras too. In fact is some locals, it probably already has. Bah! Good point. Someone took me to a concert of *name* artists. The alleged concert was composed of live segements, karoke segments and video segments. In no case was the sound or video as good as my home stereo which is itself not elaborate. Was this a classical concert? If not then this is nothing new. Rock and pop concerts have suffered from bad sounding PAs since the beginning of the genres. Fans don't go to these concerts to hear better sound. They go to *see* the artists, who are often celebrities, in the flesh perform what will hopefully be a unique live experience. It's a lot different than the live classical music experience. Well, not including concerts at The Hollywood Bowl or other such venues. |
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#34
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
"Scott" wrote in message
... On Aug 30, 5:37 am, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... Here we are in complete agreement. Why go to hear "live musicians" when all you are listening to is a set of PA speakers. If I want to listen to speakers, I'll stay home where my listening chain (amps, speakers) is far better than those of even the most elaborate of public address systems. I have attended so-called live concerts where I've turned around and left because I saw a bevy of microphones on stage and stacks of speakers near by. And you're right, it's only a matter of time before the PA craze hits symphony orchestras too. In fact is some locals, it probably already has. Bah! Good point. Someone took me to a concert of *name* artists. The alleged concert was composed of live segements, karoke segments and video segments. In no case was the sound or video as good as my home stereo which is itself not elaborate. Was this a classical concert? No. If not then this is nothing new. Rock and pop concerts have suffered from bad sounding PAs since the beginning of the genres. Since open mics are part and parcel of a sound reinforcment system, it is impossible for them to sound as good as a comparable reproduction-only system. However, it is possible for a large scale reproduction system to sound very good. One benchmark is the ability to play a recording of a performance in a way that is roughly indistinguishable from the actual performance. This can be accomplished. Fans don't go to these concerts to hear better sound. They go to *see* the artists, who are often celebrities, in the flesh perform what will hopefully be a unique live experience. Perhaps so. I am reminded of my favorite sport: NASCAR. If you want to watch the race and see the most details, watch NASCAR on TV. If you want to experience the excitement and color of NASCAR, go to the race! If you want to watch the performance and see and hear the most details - play a well-made AV presentation at home with a good AV system. If you want to experience the excitement and color of the performance and the crowd: go to the concert. It's a lot different than the live classical music experience. Well, not including concerts at The Hollywood Bowl or other such venues. My classical concert going expereinces involved venues such as used by symphony orchestras in Chicago, Detroit, and NYC. |
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#35
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:51:26 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ): On Aug 30, 5:37am, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... Here we are in complete agreement. Why go to hear "live musicians" when all you are listening to is a set of PA speakers. If I want to listen to speakers, I'll stay home where my listening chain (amps, speakers) is far better than those of even the most elaborate of public address systems. I have attended so-called live concerts where I've turned around and left because I saw a bevy of microphones on stage and stacks of speakers near by. And you're right, it's only a matter of time before the PA craze hits symphony orchestras too. In fact is some locals, it probably already has. Bah! Good point. Someone took me to a concert of *name* artists. The alleged concert was composed of live segements, karoke segments and video segments. In no case was the sound or video as good as my home stereo which is itself not elaborate. Was this a classical concert? If not then this is nothing new. Rock and pop concerts have suffered from bad sounding PAs since the beginning of the genres. Fans don't go to these concerts to hear better sound. They go to *see* the artists, who are often celebrities, in the flesh perform what will hopefully be a unique live experience. It's a lot different than the live classical music experience. Well, not including concerts at The Hollywood Bowl or other such venues. Well, I have yet to hear a "sound reinforcement augmented" symphony concert but I have seen classical chamber music concerts so augmented. It's just not necessary. I've been to the Hollywood Bowl and heard chamber music played on stage. The acoustics of the place made them easily heard in the proverbial back row. Back in the 40's and 50's night clubs would feature bands playing and the only "PA" might be the announcer or perhaps the band singer. The musicians playing instruments needed no such crutches. A few years ago I went with some friends to a Brazilian nightclub in San Francisco. They had a great brazilian jazz band playing all the familiar samba favorites from that country, along with Bossa Nova, Lambada as well as selections that I had never heard before. They were using this huge PA system and playing it so loudly that patrons had to cup their hands around the ears of those next to them and yell at the top of their lungs into those cupped hands to make themselves heard. It looked like there was a war going on between the band, who wanted to be heard, and the patrons who wanted to talk. Before the current sound reinforcement craze, people would go to night spots and listen to unamplified music playing while they politely whispered to one another. Now the band turns up the volume on their sound reinforcement in order to be heard over the talk and the people talk louder in order to be heard over the sound reinforcement. Loudness wars. OTOH, you are correct about rock and some other forms of pop. These performances were created in the studio where they were recorded, and essentially only exist as an electronic waveform. For recordings, this waveform is "cut" to some physical media and is not a performance again until it emanates from the listener's speakers. To have this "performance" occur as a "live concert", the studio conditions must be reproduced. The difference between the concert and the recording is that the middle man, the physical media, is eliminated and the output of the "studio" electronics is fed directly into large scale speakers designed to play loud and cover a large group of people. While not my cup of tea, that is a legitimate reason and use for sound reinforcement because, without it, the performance couldn't exist. |
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#36
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
"Audio Empire" wrote in message
... Well, while those Wilson Audio speakers were definitely the "best of show" Their longsuit seemed to be that they excelled at getting the dynamics of live music correct. In an unfamiliar venue such as half of a hotel ballroom, any observations that I might make about imaging and soundstage (they seemed to do that very realistically) would be tempered by my unfamiliarity with the room and the equipment. So I make no claims there. The sound was big and real-sounding from a standpoint of my familiarity with the source material and nothing else. The speakers are huge. The Alexandrias, each had two woofers, one a 13" and the other a 15". The "Thor's Hammer" subwoofers had two woofers as well, both 15". The three speaker systems moved a LOT of air and the bottom descended to 10 Hz! I'm beginning to agree with your idea about the dynamics of the high freqs. I read Dick Pierce's explanation, which was great, but again maybe neither of you is taking power response into the equation. Maybe the speakers were voiced with a microphone at 1 meter on axis etc etc, and so in a large room the high freqs lose oomph and power compared to the more omnidirectional lower freqs. Just a guess. Thinking about a typical ribbon tweeter a'la Magnepan, how does that delicate little fellow have the kind of dynamics required for live sound? But what I really have to contribute to the discussion is the headphone solution. How about finding a pair of the best electrostatic headphones (or other highly respected transducers) and listening to the horns and everything else through those, and seeing if something gets lost, frequency wise or dynamics wise, by listening to speakers? No, it won't tell you anything about stereo imaging, or bigness of the soundstage and similar, but just to see if the horn problem resides in the tweeters or in the recording. Jenn's remark about not being impressed with anything at the show may be due to not having your recording at hand, which is more food for thought. Gary Eickmeier |
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#37
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
Gary Eickmeier wrote:
I'm beginning to agree with your idea about the dynamics of the high freqs. I read Dick Pierce's explanation, which was great, but again maybe neither of you is taking power response into the equation. I was describing total acoustic power out as a function of frequency, emissive area and excursion within the piston region of operation (in essence, wavelengths longer than the dimensions of the diaphragm). That, by definition, is power response. -- +--------------------------------+ + Dick Pierce | + Professional Audio Development | +--------------------------------+ |
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#38
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
On Aug 30, 8:17*pm, Audio Empire wrote:
On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:51:26 -0700, Scott wrote (in article ): On Aug 30, 5:37am, "Arny Krueger" wrote: "Audio Empire" wrote in message ... Here we are in complete agreement. Why go to hear "live musicians" when all you are listening to is a set of PA speakers. If I want to listen to speakers, I'll stay home where my listening chain (amps, speakers) is far better than those of even the most elaborate of public address systems. I have attended so-called live concerts where I've turned around and left because I saw a bevy of microphones on stage and stacks of speakers near by. And you're right, it's only a matter of time before the PA craze hits symphony orchestras too. In fact is some locals, it probably already has. Bah! Good point. Someone took me to a concert of *name* artists. The alleged concert was composed of live segements, karoke segments and video segments. In no case was the sound or video as good as my home stereo which is itself not elaborate. Was this a classical concert? If not then this is nothing new. Rock and pop concerts have suffered from bad sounding PAs since the beginning of the genres. Fans don't go to these concerts to hear better sound. They go to *see* the artists, who are often celebrities, in the flesh perform what will hopefully be a unique live experience. It's a lot different than the live classical music experience. Well, not including concerts at The Hollywood Bowl or other such venues. Well, I have yet to hear a "sound reinforcement augmented" *symphony concert but I have seen classical chamber music concerts so augmented. It's just not necessary. I've been to the Hollywood Bowl and heard chamber music played on stage. The acoustics of the place made them easily heard in the proverbial back row. We must be talking about two entirely different Hollywood Bowls. The one I know always uses sound reinforcement and is my sole exposure to symphony orchestras that regularly play under such conditions. I think chamber music at the bowl would hardly be heard in the front row without sound reinforcement much less the "proverbial" back row. I would guess the "proverbial" back row is no where near as far from the stage as the "actual" back row at the bowl. The Hollywood Bowl seats something like 18,000 people! I don't know about the "proverbial" back row but the "actual" back row at the bowl is probably close to 1,000 feet away from the stage. If not it sure seems like it. The place is huge! this web page should give anyone an idea of just how big the bowl really is. http://www.answers.com/topic/hollywood-bowl |
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#39
Posted to rec.audio.high-end
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
Scott wrote:
Well, I have yet to hear a "sound reinforcement augmented" symphony concert but I have seen classical chamber music concerts so augmented. It's just not necessary. I've been to the Hollywood Bowl and heard chamber music played on stage. The acoustics of the place made them easily heard in the proverbial back row. We must be talking about two entirely different Hollywood Bowls. The one I know always uses sound reinforcement and is my sole exposure to symphony orchestras that regularly play under such conditions. I think chamber music at the bowl would hardly be heard in the front row without sound reinforcement much less the "proverbial" back row. I would guess the "proverbial" back row is no where near as far from the stage as the "actual" back row at the bowl. The Hollywood Bowl seats something like 18,000 people! I don't know about the "proverbial" back row but the "actual" back row at the bowl is probably close to 1,000 feet away from the stage. If not it sure seems like it. The place is huge! this web page should give anyone an idea of just how big the bowl really is. http://www.answers.com/topic/hollywood-bowl Looking at high-resolution satellite imagery of the Hollywood bowl, the distance from the edge of the stage to the current last row is about 320 feet. Even to the last row of what appears to be the legacy seats is on the order of 150 feet. Notice that the orchestra pit is NOT under the shell, thus does not benefit from the directional reinforcement of the shell. While it's not 1,000 feet, 320 feet is WAY far away. Best case you're going to get from the cheel is on the order of 6 dB or so of gain. The "natural ampitheater" better suits visual sighting than the acoustics. Remember that the ancient Greek ampitheaters with there legended acoustics were TINY compared to the Hollywood Bowl. Recall that Wayne Newton is not quite THAT old to require a large venue 2300 years ago. Also recall that "legended" is not the same as "actual." What's interesting is that from 150 miles in altitude, the number of sound towers and speakers is, well, humbling. -- +--------------------------------+ + Dick Pierce | + Professional Audio Development | +--------------------------------+ |
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#40
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Speakers That Sound Like Music
OTOH, you are correct about rock and some other forms of pop. These
performances were created in the studio where they were recorded, Obviously only true of studio recordings. Rock and pop groups still give regular live performances, and still distribute recordings of those live performances. and essentially only exist as an electronic waveform. The same can be said of even minimal-miced orchestral performances. |
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