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#1
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Here I am again.
Most communists are green. The only real communists are members of the communist party. In those countries where the communist party has some power, the ecosystem has not seemed, at least to outsiders, a high priority until now, when the Chinese party has promised it's own people, amidst such brouhaha, a greener future. Now nearly all communists are green, and quite possibly most greens are communists. So, in the post Beijing, socialist universe, what's the future of the valve amplifier? On the bright side, we might expect the cost/performance ratio of guitar amps to improve. Socialism encourages cultural pursuits and valves are part of the instrument. It seems likely that the trade-off between culture and ecosystem would be in our favour, assuming electric guitars remain popular in a socialist society. Domestic audio amplifiers may present more of a problem. If the champions of received wisdom have their way, and continue to argue that a domestic valve amp is not part of a musical instrument, then we will lose that cultural high ground which we might expect to be valued in a socialist world. If you think you want green reproduction, SS is the way to go. Can anyone think of a justification for a domestic valve amp that will impress the Party? I have argued, forlornly, that it *is* part of a musical instrument, but it's been impossible to convince the audio proletariat that the issue must be examined properly, in the context of the history of music. In an ignorant world, the easiest propaganda tends to hold sway; the reproductionist's case is dead simple, and I get tired of my lonely furrow. Perhaps the superior universal education of socialism offers some hope for the future. Incidentally, to all those who have compared the rise of Chinese industrial production to that of Japan, perhaps the greatest show of culture, endeavour and organisation the earth has ever seen may at last have led you to suspect that the history of socialist China is Something Else, and maybe big enough to warrant a little more Thought? Finally, does that Chinese music have the same harmonic structure? Could this be significant to amplifier design? cheers, Ian |
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#2
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Forgive the top-posting. Please note the interpolations.
All written with tongue thoroughly in cheek. On Sep 9, 9:21*pm, "Ian Iveson" wrote: Here I am again. Most communists are green. The only real communists are members of the communist party. In those countries where the communist party has some power, the ecosystem has not seemed, at least to outsiders, a high priority until now, when the Chinese party has promised it's own people, amidst such brouhaha, a greener future. Now nearly all communists are green, and quite possibly most greens are communists. Apart from the several false premises - and thereby the justification of such a discussion: As long as China makes almost no oil of its own and as long as it slaughters its rivers and burns lignite for electricity and transportation (steam locomotives are still in extensive (but lessening) use in China), clean air and clean water is not going to happen. As long as the "West" is willing to pay to maintain its supplies of gasoline, clean(er) air in China is not going to happen. And as long as China wishes to catch up with the "West" it cannot happen. So, in the post Beijing, socialist universe, what's the future of the valve amplifier? About what it is now. A niche use for a infinitesimally tiny fraction of the well-heeled population with an interest in ancient and obsolete technologies. On the bright side, we might expect the cost/performance ratio of guitar amps to improve. Socialism encourages cultural pursuits and valves are part of the instrument. It seems likely that the trade-off between culture and ecosystem would be in our favour, assuming electric guitars remain popular in a socialist society. Mpffff... Again, count the number of tube guitar amplifiers existing. Then those in actual use. Then those actually being produced now. A good many of those in 'current production' come from China. And were the Central Authority to rule for SS for domestic Chinese use, it would become the instant standard - and all the residual tube amps would be sent to the "West" to waste *their* power. Of course, consider the actual consumption of all the tube amps in use at any given time as the numerator, and the total power produced at that same time as the denominator... draw your own conclusion. Domestic audio amplifiers may present more of a problem. If the champions of received wisdom have their way, and continue to argue that a domestic valve amp is not part of a musical instrument, then we will lose that cultural high ground which we might expect to be valued in a socialist world. If you think you want green reproduction, SS is the way to go. In the Audio World, the amplifier should be a means to listening and musical reproduction, not a contributor to it. In the Making of Music World the amplifier is very much part of the instrument. They are almost mutually (and musically) exclusive applications. To this: it is my personal belief that a musical amplifier should be capable of absolute neutrality - then "color added" by choice. But that is only me. Can anyone think of a justification for a domestic valve amp that will impress the Party? The Party, as with any other rigidly monotheistic oligarchy, is interested in maintaining its primacy and making money towards maintaining its primacy. Show it a way to achieve both and it will be all over it like a cheap suit. I have argued, forlornly, that it *is* part of a musical instrument, but it's been impossible to convince the audio proletariat that the issue must be examined properly, in the context of the history of music. In an ignorant world, the easiest propaganda tends to hold sway; the reproductionist's case is dead simple, and I get tired of my lonely furrow. Perhaps the superior universal education of socialism offers some hope for the future. Plow away. Make guitar amps - *they* are instruments. Audio amps are only instruments to the extent that they fail to reproduce the signal fed into them. Whether that failure is by omission or addition, it is still a failure. Of course, there is an alternative to this that will allow you a foot firmly planted in both worlds. A long and difficult one, but a way nonetheless: Produce a series of recordings designed to be reproduced on tube-based equipment. Possibly even equalize it for particular designs and philosophies. So, Andre may have his Gregorian Chant carefully recorded and "enhanced" to be played back on SET equipment into single- driver horn speakers. A tough road to hoe, but you are a committed fellow... . Incidentally, to all those who have compared the rise of Chinese industrial production to that of Japan, perhaps the greatest show of culture, endeavour and organisation the earth has ever seen may at last have led you to suspect that the history of socialist China is Something Else, and maybe big enough to warrant a little more Thought? China has the capacity within itself to consumer 100% of the world's total annual energy production from all sources right now and still not be anywhere near the per-capita consumption in the US or Europe. That is about all the thought as may be necessary when considering a "green" future as it applies to us, to China and to the rest of the world in general. Finally, does that Chinese music have the same harmonic structure? Could this be significant to amplifier design? Does it matter? The amplifier should be neutral to what is fed into it, or tailored by choice to color it as chosen. Perhaps make that Ideal Amplifier capable of both? Y'all have a lot to do! Get on with it! Cheers, indeed! Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA |
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#3
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Ian Iveson wrote: Here I am again. Most communists are green. Green with envy that they cannot manage to do as well as capitalists, who marry better looking shielas. The only real communists are members of the communist party. Isn't the phrase "real communist" an oxymoron? Commies are all unreal about how they think, and in denial about human nature. In those countries where the communist party has some power, the ecosystem has not seemed, at least to outsiders, a high priority until now, when the Chinese party has promised it's own people, amidst such brouhaha, a greener future. Now nearly all communists are green, and quite possibly most greens are communists. Not necesarily so at all. In fact, your'e bull****ting. So, in the post Beijing, socialist universe, what's the future of the valve amplifier? Business as usual, flog **** as hard as possible. On the bright side, we might expect the cost/performance ratio of guitar amps to improve. Socialism encourages cultural pursuits and valves are part of the instrument. It seems likely that the trade-off between culture and ecosystem would be in our favour, assuming electric guitars remain popular in a socialist society. Domestic audio amplifiers may present more of a problem. If the champions of received wisdom have their way, and continue to argue that a domestic valve amp is not part of a musical instrument, then we will lose that cultural high ground which we might expect to be valued in a socialist world. If you think you want green reproduction, SS is the way to go. Can anyone think of a justification for a domestic valve amp that will impress the Party? I suggest you travel to Bejing, and talk to the members of the Party Faithful and then tell us what the Chinese really think, and what they are allowed to enjoy etc. I have argued, forlornly, that it *is* part of a musical instrument, but it's been impossible to convince the audio proletariat that the issue must be examined properly, in the context of the history of music. In an ignorant world, the easiest propaganda tends to hold sway; the reproductionist's case is dead simple, and I get tired of my lonely furrow. Its a dirty old duck that waddles around tinthe same muddy puddle. Perhaps the superior universal education of socialism offers some hope for the future. Only if they allow us to educate them. There is so much we have to say about how they are doing it all wrong..... Incidentally, to all those who have compared the rise of Chinese industrial production to that of Japan, perhaps the greatest show of culture, endeavour and organisation the earth has ever seen may at last have led you to suspect that the history of socialist China is Something Else, and maybe big enough to warrant a little more Thought? Chinese display at the Olympics is all huff and puff, and its a paper power. Imagine if all that modern building is the same standard as Chinese tube amps. Once built, their great leap forward will need a lot of maintenance. Finally, does that Chinese music have the same harmonic structure? Could this be significant to amplifier design? Perhaps your'e the only one wondering about this. Patrick Turner. cheers, Ian |
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#4
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Ian Iveson wrote:
Here I am again. Most communists are green. The only real communists are members of the communist party. In those countries where the communist party has some power, the ecosystem has not seemed, at least to outsiders, a high priority until now, when the Chinese party has promised it's own people, amidst such brouhaha, a greener future. Now nearly all communists are green, and quite possibly most greens are communists. So, in the post Beijing, socialist universe, what's the future of the valve amplifier? On the bright side, we might expect the cost/performance ratio of guitar amps to improve. Socialism encourages cultural pursuits and valves are part of the instrument. It seems likely that the trade-off between culture and ecosystem would be in our favour, assuming electric guitars remain popular in a socialist society. Domestic audio amplifiers may present more of a problem. If the champions of received wisdom have their way, and continue to argue that a domestic valve amp is not part of a musical instrument, then we will lose that cultural high ground which we might expect to be valued in a socialist world. If you think you want green reproduction, SS is the way to go. Can anyone think of a justification for a domestic valve amp that will impress the Party? I have argued, forlornly, that it *is* part of a musical instrument, but it's been impossible to convince the audio proletariat that the issue must be examined properly, in the context of the history of music. In an ignorant world, the easiest propaganda tends to hold sway; the reproductionist's case is dead simple, and I get tired of my lonely furrow. Perhaps the superior universal education of socialism offers some hope for the future. Incidentally, to all those who have compared the rise of Chinese industrial production to that of Japan, perhaps the greatest show of culture, endeavour and organisation the earth has ever seen may at last have led you to suspect that the history of socialist China is Something Else, and maybe big enough to warrant a little more Thought? Finally, does that Chinese music have the same harmonic structure? Could this be significant to amplifier design? cheers, Ian The commies will have to pry my tubes from my cold dead hands. |
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#5
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
PhattyMo wrote: Ian Iveson wrote: Here I am again. snip, Finally, does that Chinese music have the same harmonic structure? Could this be significant to amplifier design? cheers, Ian The commies will have to pry my tubes from my cold dead hands. They won't bother. They come to you before you die, and offer you a cheap amp, very nice looking, maybe branded Behringer, who have tried to closely control the chinese labour quality of their products. But those Chinese made amps made without the dedicated euro control are bleedin awful, and there's no after sales service. No tubes in the Behringer $399 combo amp though. All minature printed circuit boards and transistors. Lots and lots of effects and features. And $399 is the local shop price here; shop mark up is 50%, and so working backwards from the shop price i think the Chinese make the amp for $50 max at their factory gate. For many people who buy such an amp which is 20dB cheaper than a bloomin Mesa Boogie, its money well spent on commies, who deserve a medal IMHO, because they do what western nation lazy fat arses won't, ie, work hard for long hours and for peanuts, and don't have an SUV, and pedal a bicycle to work. Patrick Turner. |
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#6
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Phatty wrote:
The commies will have to pry my tubes from my cold dead hands. Would that be to defend your amp, or to spite the commies? Would you equally die to uphold your right to operate a valve amp in the face of a ban by your own current government? This is a serious problem of what is still rather fancifully called "liberal democracy"...the kind where you only get to vote every few years to decide between parties who are all going to behave the same way anyway, regardless. No matter what the majority decides, there's always a bunch of defiant me-me party-poopers threatening martyrdom. In a real socialist democracy, of course, once a decision is made through due democratic process, it is enforced, because it is the job of the Party to carry out democratic decisions, come hell or high water. You would be unlikely to get the chance to be a martyr. You'd just get locked up with minimum necessary force until you stopped threatening democracy. Bearing in mind that one of the key steps of a socialist revolution is for the government to take control of the banks, you may be wondering what direction you're own political system is heading. Anyway, the real issue for me here is *why* would you die for your valve amp? What qualities in particular do you hold so dear? Or is it somehow a symbol of freedom, like an American gun? cheers, Ian |
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#7
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Ian Iveson wrote:
Phatty wrote: The commies will have to pry my tubes from my cold dead hands. Would that be to defend your amp, or to spite the commies? Would you equally die to uphold your right to operate a valve amp in the face of a ban by your own current government? This is a serious problem of what is still rather fancifully called "liberal democracy"...the kind where you only get to vote every few years to decide between parties who are all going to behave the same way anyway, regardless. No matter what the majority decides, there's always a bunch of defiant me-me party-poopers threatening martyrdom. In a real socialist democracy, of course, once a decision is made through due democratic process, it is enforced, because it is the job of the Party to carry out democratic decisions, come hell or high water. You would be unlikely to get the chance to be a martyr. You'd just get locked up with minimum necessary force until you stopped threatening democracy. Bearing in mind that one of the key steps of a socialist revolution is for the government to take control of the banks, you may be wondering what direction you're own political system is heading. Anyway, the real issue for me here is *why* would you die for your valve amp? What qualities in particular do you hold so dear? Or is it somehow a symbol of freedom, like an American gun? cheers, Ian Tubes just kick ass.There need be no other reason! If I have to power my tubes with solar power,to make the 'greenies' happy,or even go 'underground' if tubes are banned outright,I'll do it. |
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#8
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
The Chinese are no threat except to the degree Western drive and capital
are pumped in. Left alone they would live as they did for 3000 years. The Chinese masses know full well they will never have the Western living standard nor Western concepts of government. Tariff Western companies' products made there to equal costs, and the transformation of China will end overnight. -- Message posted using http://www.talkaboutaudio.com/group/rec.audio.tubes/ More information at http://www.talkaboutaudio.com/faq.html |
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#9
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:21:19 +0100, Ian Iveson wrote:
Here I am again. Most communists are green. The only real communists are members of the communist party. In those countries where the communist party has some power, the ecosystem has not seemed, at least to outsiders, a high priority until now, when the Chinese party has promised it's own people, amidst such brouhaha, a greener future. Now nearly all communists are green, and quite possibly most greens are communists. So, in the post Beijing, socialist universe, what's the future of the valve amplifier? snip Forgetting the communism angle for the moment, and even the Chinese, valve amps do have something going for them. They are usually relatively easy to keep going & repair. Even the dead ones can often be recycled far more easily than any solid state amps. That means fewer "end of life" disposal problems and less land-fill. Surely that qualifies them for a "green" label of some sort? ;-) -- Mick (Working in a M$-free zone!) Web: http://www.nascom.info http://mixpix.batcave.net Filtering everything posted from googlegroups to kill spam. |
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#10
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Mick wrote:
Forgetting the communism angle for the moment, and even the Chinese, Socialism, please. Communist parties govern socialist states. A communist state would have no government. valve amps do have something going for them. They are usually relatively easy to keep going & repair. Even the dead ones can often be recycled far more easily than any solid state amps. That means fewer "end of life" disposal problems and less land-fill. Surely that qualifies them for a "green" label of some sort? ;-) Thanks, that would be a defence worth exploring: total cost to the planet per Watt.Hour of music, maybe. Demand to see the all the sums. That'll keep the Party busy for a while. Or you could join and get yourself elected onto the Ecology Policy Committee. We could all join and form a caucus. If we don't organise we'll be defeated before we can get our act together, like the British Filament Light Bulb Defence League, which could have used a similar argument, had it not already been too late. cheers, Ian |
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#11
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Patrick Turner wrote:
PhattyMo wrote: Ian Iveson wrote: Here I am again. snip, Finally, does that Chinese music have the same harmonic structure? Could this be significant to amplifier design? cheers, Ian The commies will have to pry my tubes from my cold dead hands. They won't bother. They come to you before you die, and offer you a cheap amp, very nice looking, maybe branded Behringer, who have tried to closely control the chinese labour quality of their products. But those Chinese made amps made without the dedicated euro control are bleedin awful, and there's no after sales service. No tubes in the Behringer $399 combo amp though. All minature printed circuit boards and transistors. Lots and lots of effects and features. And $399 is the local shop price here; shop mark up is 50%, and so working backwards from the shop price i think the Chinese make the amp for $50 max at their factory gate. For many people who buy such an amp which is 20dB cheaper than a bloomin Mesa Boogie, its money well spent on commies, who deserve a medal IMHO, because they do what western nation lazy fat arses won't, ie, work hard for long hours and for peanuts, and don't have an SUV, and pedal a bicycle to work. The Chinese are where the Japs were in the middle 60's making cheap and chearful stuff. A Jap 6 transistor radio had about a pound of solder in it and most of the joints were dry. Didn't take them too long to learn to do it properly though. Keith |
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#12
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
On 12 Sep, 14:27, Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote: PhattyMo wrote: Ian Iveson wrote: Here I am again. snip, Finally, does that Chinese music have the same harmonic structure? Could this be significant to amplifier design? cheers, Ian The commies will have to pry my tubes from my cold dead hands. They won't bother. They come to you before you die, and offer you a cheap amp, very nice looking, maybe branded Behringer, who have tried to closely control the chinese labour quality of their products. But those Chinese made amps made without the dedicated euro control are bleedin awful, and there's no after sales service. No tubes in the Behringer $399 combo amp though. All minature printed circuit boards and transistors. Lots and lots of effects and features. And $399 is the local shop price here; shop mark up is 50%, and so working backwards from the shop price i think the Chinese make the amp for $50 max at their factory gate. For many people who buy such an amp which is 20dB cheaper than a bloomin Mesa Boogie, its money well spent on commies, who deserve a medal IMHO, because they do what western nation lazy fat arses won't, ie, work hard for long hours and for peanuts, and don't have an SUV, and pedal a bicycle to work. The Chinese are where the Japs were in the middle 60's making cheap and chearful stuff. A Jap 6 transistor radio had about a pound of solder in it and most of the joints were dry. Didn't take them too long to learn to do it properly though. Keith- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - I sort of agree, I have seen and worked on some Chinese vacuum presses (for rubber mouldings eg. o-rings) and they are of really good quality all the castings are excellent, the seals for the main ram are total ****e. And the PLC control systems are nothing short of weird and amazing. It seems the Chinese are good at heavy industry and we know from history where that leads because we have all been through the same process, maybe 150-200 years ago, but hey we were poluting the **** out of everything we touched and still are. |
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#13
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
bigwig wrote:
The Chinese are where the Japs were in the middle 60's making cheap and chearful stuff. A Jap 6 transistor radio had about a pound of solder in it and most of the joints were dry. Didn't take them too long to learn to do it properly though. I sort of agree, I have seen and worked on some Chinese vacuum presses (for rubber mouldings eg. o-rings) and they are of really good quality all the castings are excellent, the seals for the main ram are total ****e. And the PLC control systems are nothing short of weird and amazing. It seems the Chinese are good at heavy industry and we know from history where that leads because we have all been through the same process, maybe 150-200 years ago, but hey we were poluting the **** out of everything we touched and still are. Germany, for one example, is still good at heavy stuff, but that doesn't mean its stuck in the 19th century. They do other stuff too. Do the control systems work efficiently and reliably? I gather some Chinese electrics can appear quirky and haphazard, but at the same time can be effective, efficient, innovative, and cheap. What was the problem with the seals? Material or manufacture? Industrial procurement departments in China must be having a hell of a time keeping up to date with who supplies what, considering the pace of change. Incoming QC must be a nightmare. As a state, China can do pretty much anything, including cheap and reliable satellite launchers and sophisticated military stuff. Like everyone else, they beg, steal, borrow, or do their own thing as appropriate. Also like any other first-world industrial state, some factories make good quality stuff and some don't. Altogether, the place is so big and developing so quickly that you can find examples of whatever you want, to demonstrate whatever point you wish to make. I guess they haven't yet developed large-scale highly-integrated factory organisation sufficiently to make good conventional cars. Perhaps they will never need to. Such organisations can't be developed quickly because they are too complicated to plan from scratch...they have evolved over a long time. All the same point remains that they are not simply a rerun of someone else's development history. China is big enough to be qualitatively different from anything else, it is socialist, and has been its own story for longer than any other civilisation. China is something new. What's more, the Chinese are suddenly seen, here in the UK at least, as a proud, friendly, keen and highly organised people, instead of a miserable downtrodden resentful population of victims. Indian political commentators are switching from fear to admiration. Our Boris, mayor of London, tried to belittle their achievement and merely made a complete fool of himself. He's the one who's got to meet the challenge of that closing song, "Surpass it". Pretty much everyone has been wrong-footed by China, in one way or another. cheers, Ian |
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#14
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Keithr wrote: Patrick Turner wrote: PhattyMo wrote: Ian Iveson wrote: Here I am again. snip, Finally, does that Chinese music have the same harmonic structure? Could this be significant to amplifier design? cheers, Ian The commies will have to pry my tubes from my cold dead hands. They won't bother. They come to you before you die, and offer you a cheap amp, very nice looking, maybe branded Behringer, who have tried to closely control the chinese labour quality of their products. But those Chinese made amps made without the dedicated euro control are bleedin awful, and there's no after sales service. No tubes in the Behringer $399 combo amp though. All minature printed circuit boards and transistors. Lots and lots of effects and features. And $399 is the local shop price here; shop mark up is 50%, and so working backwards from the shop price i think the Chinese make the amp for $50 max at their factory gate. For many people who buy such an amp which is 20dB cheaper than a bloomin Mesa Boogie, its money well spent on commies, who deserve a medal IMHO, because they do what western nation lazy fat arses won't, ie, work hard for long hours and for peanuts, and don't have an SUV, and pedal a bicycle to work. The Chinese are where the Japs were in the middle 60's making cheap and chearful stuff. A Jap 6 transistor radio had about a pound of solder in it and most of the joints were dry. Didn't take them too long to learn to do it properly though. There is little evidence that the Chinese will lift quality like the japs did with electronics, cameras and auto products, unless they are led by the nose all the way forcefully during joint venture productions with western nation companies that rely on quality as a key reason for sales. I think Behringer work up that they couldn't compete if they used German labour, but could if they used Chinese labour, AND kept the quality high. Quad was bought by IAG, a Chinese owned consortium, no?, and the amps are made in China and owning the right kind of reverred name AND maintaining quality but keeping labour costs at a pittance is like successfully printing your own 100 dollar bills at a cost of $2 each. Only a few makers of Chinese origin will "get it", ie, realize that quality can compete with quantity.... But western nations have been turning east for labour for a very long time. I once bought a Linear Design am-fm integrated receiver designed on Oz by some minor electronics company now long gone, BJD Electronics, and they had their design made in Sth Korea. It ws 1/2 the price of a Marantz unit with the same specifications, and less than Yamaha so I bought it, being poor myself. $200, when wages here were $150 a week. Where is Korean expertise now? Oz people think their lives are so marvellous, but working hours have increased, and it takes 8 years average yearly wages to buy an average house, and you'd think there was plenty of room in such a huge country with so few people for cheap nice housing. 32 years ago in 1976, when I bought my house, it took 3.5 years of wages to buy a house, and it had a greater land area and possible potential to divide that land into 2 blocks and build another small house on it. The land you by in a housing package now has shrunk right down. There is oficial inflation, and unofficial inflation. I digress though. The Chinese are highly motivated by human greed and other motivations like everyone else, and want to have a better life. They are opening one huge coal fired power station each week. Everyone will in China will have a better standard of living, and their bicycles will be only for emergency transport soon. There'e building a few hospitals too, to cope with the ills of road accidents and modern ailments. The demand for goods and services including audio gear is utterly immense within China itself, so their imperative is to make goods for each other to consume, rather than solely rely on profits by selling to foreigners in the west. So because of the huge internal demand, there is tremendous pressure to make things cheaply as possible. Tremendous competition amoung themselves as well, with each audio company cutting its costs to lower prices more than the next guy. State controls have been reliquished on such industry. I think Chinese domestic demand determines the quality. The temptation to give people a taste of the good life with cheap crap is overpowering. The population of China has no generational long term awareness about consumer item quality. They are sititng ducks for the guy selling cheap amps that smoke or break if you cough near them. Some of this **** is exported to us, sold online by the smart arses in China who have figured out how to bypass obscenely greedy western middle men and western hi-fi shops who together make what sells for $100 in China into something selling for $2,000 in the hi-fi shop. But the Chinese are generous, not too greedy, that amp costing $100 at their factory gate is sold to you for $500, plus freight, and its a deal at least 12dB cheaper than buying from a rapacious hi-fi shop near you. So one has to forgive the Chinese quality if its 12dB less than Quad standards. AFAIK, there was no way I could have bought a Japanese transistor radio directly from a seller i Japan and have it air freighted to me at 1/4 the local shop price in 1960. Western nations would love to see China clean up their gigantic CO2 emissions and woeful environmental damage, but we won't pay a cent to them to do it. Prices of all Chinese junk should rise 12dB so they could then employ 1/2 their workforce to change to alternative energy sources and fix up the mess. It won't happen, human greed will make sure it won't. So, when you buy a chinese amp, be preapred to strip out the whole ****ing mess inside and re-wire it during rainy sunday afternoons or during a week off work that most Chinese could never have. When the OPTs fail within 10 years, no worry, buy a pair of Hammond. The Chinese PT designed to run off 220V often works without overheating much here where I regularly measure 250V mains voltages. I add series resistors to heater supplies, and make other changes to PS to lower the B+ to where it should be. After 10 years, the product is thus dragged up in quality. Send a thankyou note to China for their cheap metal work. India is also undergoing a huge surge, but we never hear what they are up to. The Chinese sure grabbed a lot of medals at the Olympics, but how many did the Indians get? There seems to be a difference in the personal competiveness of the two huge nations. Ther's an Indian company wanting to find land to build a factory for production of a car for under $3,000. I will be about ready to buy one when they are set up, and it sure beats the hell out of dealing with Toyota, Ford, GM, let alone Mercedes. But wherever industrialists go in India, hordes of angry farmers shoo them away. Indians make very fine Enfield motorcycles. You'd have to think their friends and relatives coud make a good tube, or a good OPT, but alas it just isn't so. Patrick Turner. Keith |
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#15
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The post-Beijing amplifier
On Sep 13, 4:03*am, Patrick Turner wrote:
I digress though. Hold that thought, Patrick! Andre Jute The patient will be rewarded with a nurse |
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#16
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Andre Jute wrote: On Sep 13, 4:03 am, Patrick Turner wrote: I digress though. Hold that thought, Patrick! Andre Jute The patient will be rewarded with a nurse I could've sworn I read, "The patient will be forwarded in a hurse" I think I need a bicycle ride. I feel a pedal coming on. Patrick Turner. |
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#17
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Patrick Turner wrote:
The Chinese are where the Japs were in the middle 60's making cheap and chearful stuff. A Jap 6 transistor radio had about a pound of solder in it and most of the joints were dry. Didn't take them too long to learn to do it properly though. There is little evidence that the Chinese will lift quality like the japs did with electronics, cameras and auto products, unless they are led by the nose all the way forcefully during joint venture productions with western nation companies that rely on quality as a key reason for sales. What do you base that on? Admittedly the Chinese do not have the hive mind mentality that the Japs do, but they are entrepreneurs, and sooner or later a bunch of them will cotton on to the fact that there is a better profit to be made in quality goods I recently bought a Pic programmer. I could have paid around $150 for a locally purchased US built one, bit I bought one from a Chinese dealer for about $60 including shipping. There is nothing wrong with it, it does the same job and is decently constructed. I think Behringer work up that they couldn't compete if they used German labour, but could if they used Chinese labour, AND kept the quality high. Quad was bought by IAG, a Chinese owned consortium, no?, and the amps are made in China and owning the right kind of reverred name AND maintaining quality but keeping labour costs at a pittance is like successfully printing your own 100 dollar bills at a cost of $2 each. Only a few makers of Chinese origin will "get it", ie, realize that quality can compete with quantity.... But western nations have been turning east for labour for a very long time. I once bought a Linear Design am-fm integrated receiver designed on Oz by some minor electronics company now long gone, BJD Electronics, and they had their design made in Sth Korea. It ws 1/2 the price of a Marantz unit with the same specifications, and less than Yamaha so I bought it, being poor myself. $200, when wages here were $150 a week. Where is Korean expertise now? It is the same all over the east. Start with making cheap crap, then move up market and allow the dirty crap jobs to move on to other producers. The Japs used to have huge steel plants all along the inland sea, then they found that they didn't that grief any more so they exported the business to Korea, sold them the gear to do it too. Now that work has moved on to China, eventually, they will export it somewhere else. 10 years ago, Korean electronics was though of as the dregs, and their cars laughable, now LG and Samsung are respected names in the business, and their cars are beginning to be thought of as reasonable. The Taiwanese started out copying IBM PCs, now they own the motherboard business although they have sent the actual labour of building them to the mainland, good profit and you don't need to get your hands dirty either. Oz people think their lives are so marvellous, but working hours have increased, and it takes 8 years average yearly wages to buy an average house, and you'd think there was plenty of room in such a huge country with so few people for cheap nice housing. 32 years ago in 1976, when I bought my house, it took 3.5 years of wages to buy a house, and it had a greater land area and possible potential to divide that land into 2 blocks and build another small house on it. The land you by in a housing package now has shrunk right down. There is oficial inflation, and unofficial inflation. I digress though. The Chinese are highly motivated by human greed and other motivations like everyone else, and want to have a better life. They are opening one huge coal fired power station each week. Everyone will in China will have a better standard of living, and their bicycles will be only for emergency transport soon. There'e building a few hospitals too, to cope with the ills of road accidents and modern ailments. The demand for goods and services including audio gear is utterly immense within China itself, so their imperative is to make goods for each other to consume, rather than solely rely on profits by selling to foreigners in the west. So because of the huge internal demand, there is tremendous pressure to make things cheaply as possible. Tremendous competition amoung themselves as well, with each audio company cutting its costs to lower prices more than the next guy. State controls have been reliquished on such industry. I think Chinese domestic demand determines the quality. Not necissarily, if they find a profitable overseas market for the good stuff then they will fill it. At the moment, the west is happy to take any old crap as long as it is cheap. The temptation to give people a taste of the good life with cheap crap is overpowering. The population of China has no generational long term awareness about consumer item quality. They are sititng ducks for the guy selling cheap amps that smoke or break if you cough near them. I do not expect that 1 in 10 million chinese wants a tube amp, I'll bet that 99.999% of that production is exported. Some of this **** is exported to us, sold online by the smart arses in China who have figured out how to bypass obscenely greedy western middle men and western hi-fi shops who together make what sells for $100 in China into something selling for $2,000 in the hi-fi shop. But the Chinese are generous, not too greedy, that amp costing $100 at their factory gate is sold to you for $500, plus freight, and its a deal at least 12dB cheaper than buying from a rapacious hi-fi shop near you. So one has to forgive the Chinese quality if its 12dB less than Quad standards. AFAIK, there was no way I could have bought a Japanese transistor radio directly from a seller i Japan and have it air freighted to me at 1/4 the local shop price in 1960. I first went to Japan in 1980, electronics there was about 1/3rd the price that the same item sold for in Australia. I came back loaded with the stuff. Australian importers must have been having a field day. Western nations would love to see China clean up their gigantic CO2 emissions and woeful environmental damage, but we won't pay a cent to them to do it. Prices of all Chinese junk should rise 12dB so they could then employ 1/2 their workforce to change to alternative energy sources and fix up the mess. It won't happen, human greed will make sure it won't. So, when you buy a chinese amp, be preapred to strip out the whole ****ing mess inside and re-wire it during rainy sunday afternoons or during a week off work that most Chinese could never have. When the OPTs fail within 10 years, no worry, buy a pair of Hammond. The Chinese PT designed to run off 220V often works without overheating much here where I regularly measure 250V mains voltages. I add series resistors to heater supplies, and make other changes to PS to lower the B+ to where it should be. After 10 years, the product is thus dragged up in quality. Send a thankyou note to China for their cheap metal work. India is also undergoing a huge surge, but we never hear what they are up to. The Chinese sure grabbed a lot of medals at the Olympics, but how many did the Indians get? There seems to be a difference in the personal competiveness of the two huge nations. India is going a slightly different route, capitalising on their excellent education system, importing skilled jobs that do not require huge capital to set up like software development, and support. Ther's an Indian company wanting to find land to build a factory for production of a car for under $3,000. I will be about ready to buy one when they are set up, and it sure beats the hell out of dealing with Toyota, Ford, GM, let alone Mercedes. But wherever industrialists go in India, hordes of angry farmers shoo them away. Indians make very fine Enfield motorcycles. I believe that they still build the Morris Major, but probably not for too much longer, soon they will be riding around in Jaguars. You'd have to think their friends and relatives coud make a good tube, or a good OPT, but alas it just isn't so. No profit there, tube audio is a miniscule business. Its products are undesired by the vast majority of the world's population, so there is little incentive to tool up for it. Keith |
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#18
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Keithr wrote: Patrick Turner wrote: The Chinese are where the Japs were in the middle 60's making cheap and chearful stuff. A Jap 6 transistor radio had about a pound of solder in it and most of the joints were dry. Didn't take them too long to learn to do it properly though. There is little evidence that the Chinese will lift quality like the japs did with electronics, cameras and auto products, unless they are led by the nose all the way forcefully during joint venture productions with western nation companies that rely on quality as a key reason for sales. What do you base that on? Recent history. Quad, Behringer etc. When and if the results of the one child per couple policy develop any originality and independance in their thinking, then maybe they'd show us westerners some better ways of building things, including vacuum tubes and amplifiers. Admittedly the Chinese do not have the hive mind mentality that the Japs do, but they are entrepreneurs, and sooner or later a bunch of them will cotton on to the fact that there is a better profit to be made in quality goods I think the Chinese have every bit of "hive" the Japs or anyone else ever had. Its China Unlimited right now. But they are merely trying to catch up after 50 years of great communist leap forwards which historical analysis might reveal were not well conceived by the leaders in China until 20 years ago. Give 'em more time man. I can't buy a decent OPT as a single item, made in China. There is no maker in China presenting a similar range of iron wound components to the world equal to Hammond Engineering. I recently bought a Pic programmer. I could have paid around $150 for a locally purchased US built one, bit I bought one from a Chinese dealer for about $60 including shipping. There is nothing wrong with it, it does the same job and is decently constructed. Chinese shirts, shoes, trousers, and many other products are great value due to the peanut wages paid in China. I think Behringer work up that they couldn't compete if they used German labour, but could if they used Chinese labour, AND kept the quality high. Quad was bought by IAG, a Chinese owned consortium, no?, and the amps are made in China and owning the right kind of reverred name AND maintaining quality but keeping labour costs at a pittance is like successfully printing your own 100 dollar bills at a cost of $2 each. Only a few makers of Chinese origin will "get it", ie, realize that quality can compete with quantity.... But western nations have been turning east for labour for a very long time. I once bought a Linear Design am-fm integrated receiver designed on Oz by some minor electronics company now long gone, BJD Electronics, and they had their design made in Sth Korea. It ws 1/2 the price of a Marantz unit with the same specifications, and less than Yamaha so I bought it, being poor myself. $200, when wages here were $150 a week. Where is Korean expertise now? It is the same all over the east. Start with making cheap crap, then move up market and allow the dirty crap jobs to move on to other producers. The Japs used to have huge steel plants all along the inland sea, then they found that they didn't that grief any more so they exported the business to Korea, sold them the gear to do it too. Now that work has moved on to China, eventually, they will export it somewhere else. Gee, not many places left who could do all that heavy donkey work..... 10 years ago, Korean electronics was though of as the dregs, and their cars laughable, now LG and Samsung are respected names in the business, and their cars are beginning to be thought of as reasonable. The Taiwanese started out copying IBM PCs, now they own the motherboard business although they have sent the actual labour of building them to the mainland, good profit and you don't need to get your hands dirty either. Marvels of supply and demand.... Oz people think their lives are so marvellous, but working hours have increased, and it takes 8 years average yearly wages to buy an average house, and you'd think there was plenty of room in such a huge country with so few people for cheap nice housing. 32 years ago in 1976, when I bought my house, it took 3.5 years of wages to buy a house, and it had a greater land area and possible potential to divide that land into 2 blocks and build another small house on it. The land you by in a housing package now has shrunk right down. There is oficial inflation, and unofficial inflation. I digress though. The Chinese are highly motivated by human greed and other motivations like everyone else, and want to have a better life. They are opening one huge coal fired power station each week. Everyone will in China will have a better standard of living, and their bicycles will be only for emergency transport soon. There'e building a few hospitals too, to cope with the ills of road accidents and modern ailments. The demand for goods and services including audio gear is utterly immense within China itself, so their imperative is to make goods for each other to consume, rather than solely rely on profits by selling to foreigners in the west. So because of the huge internal demand, there is tremendous pressure to make things cheaply as possible. Tremendous competition amoung themselves as well, with each audio company cutting its costs to lower prices more than the next guy. State controls have been reliquished on such industry. I think Chinese domestic demand determines the quality. Not necissarily, if they find a profitable overseas market for the good stuff then they will fill it. At the moment, the west is happy to take any old crap as long as it is cheap. But it isn't cheap at all. Jolida costs a bomb, yet is very basic quality, and its because the American joint venture partners do not know how to ensure quality controls are high. Chinese amps are made for maybe 1/10 of the hi-fi shop prices charged in the west, and to ensure better quality might only raise the low cost of production by 10%. It just doesn't happen though, everyone is too lazy and greedy. The temptation to give people a taste of the good life with cheap crap is overpowering. The population of China has no generational long term awareness about consumer item quality. They are sititng ducks for the guy selling cheap amps that smoke or break if you cough near them. I do not expect that 1 in 10 million chinese wants a tube amp, I'll bet that 99.999% of that production is exported. I'm not so sure. But you don't have to have a big % of 1 billion ppl to comprise fair number of upper middle class who might like a tube amp. Some of this **** is exported to us, sold online by the smart arses in China who have figured out how to bypass obscenely greedy western middle men and western hi-fi shops who together make what sells for $100 in China into something selling for $2,000 in the hi-fi shop. But the Chinese are generous, not too greedy, that amp costing $100 at their factory gate is sold to you for $500, plus freight, and its a deal at least 12dB cheaper than buying from a rapacious hi-fi shop near you. So one has to forgive the Chinese quality if its 12dB less than Quad standards. AFAIK, there was no way I could have bought a Japanese transistor radio directly from a seller i Japan and have it air freighted to me at 1/4 the local shop price in 1960. I first went to Japan in 1980, electronics there was about 1/3rd the price that the same item sold for in Australia. I came back loaded with the stuff. Australian importers must have been having a field day. They still do have a field day. Asian made stuff is bought for a low pittance, and sold high. the major cost component of the price the public in Oz pay is the western nation profit, handling and distribution once it leaves Asia. Western nations would love to see China clean up their gigantic CO2 emissions and woeful environmental damage, but we won't pay a cent to them to do it. Prices of all Chinese junk should rise 12dB so they could then employ 1/2 their workforce to change to alternative energy sources and fix up the mess. It won't happen, human greed will make sure it won't. So, when you buy a chinese amp, be preapred to strip out the whole ****ing mess inside and re-wire it during rainy sunday afternoons or during a week off work that most Chinese could never have. When the OPTs fail within 10 years, no worry, buy a pair of Hammond. The Chinese PT designed to run off 220V often works without overheating much here where I regularly measure 250V mains voltages. I add series resistors to heater supplies, and make other changes to PS to lower the B+ to where it should be. After 10 years, the product is thus dragged up in quality. Send a thankyou note to China for their cheap metal work. India is also undergoing a huge surge, but we never hear what they are up to. The Chinese sure grabbed a lot of medals at the Olympics, but how many did the Indians get? There seems to be a difference in the personal competiveness of the two huge nations. India is going a slightly different route, capitalising on their excellent education system, importing skilled jobs that do not require huge capital to set up like software development, and support. Ther's an Indian company wanting to find land to build a factory for production of a car for under $3,000. I will be about ready to buy one when they are set up, and it sure beats the hell out of dealing with Toyota, Ford, GM, let alone Mercedes. But wherever industrialists go in India, hordes of angry farmers shoo them away. Indians make very fine Enfield motorcycles. I believe that they still build the Morris Major, but probably not for too much longer, soon they will be riding around in Jaguars. Nope, morris cars will continue until they wear out, and only a small % could afford a Jag type of car, but totally new much cheaper designs of cars for India are going to become available. You'd have to think their friends and relatives coud make a good tube, or a good OPT, but alas it just isn't so. No profit there, tube audio is a miniscule business. Its products are undesired by the vast majority of the world's population, so there is little incentive to tool up for it. If it wasn't for guitar amps, audio tube production may have stalled permanently. Patrick Turner. Keith |
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#19
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Patrick Turner wrote:
Keithr wrote: Patrick Turner wrote: The Chinese are where the Japs were in the middle 60's making cheap and chearful stuff. A Jap 6 transistor radio had about a pound of solder in it and most of the joints were dry. Didn't take them too long to learn to do it properly though. There is little evidence that the Chinese will lift quality like the japs did with electronics, cameras and auto products, unless they are led by the nose all the way forcefully during joint venture productions with western nation companies that rely on quality as a key reason for sales. What do you base that on? Recent history. Quad, Behringer etc. When and if the results of the one child per couple policy develop any originality and independance in their thinking, then maybe they'd show us westerners some better ways of building things, including vacuum tubes and amplifiers. Maybe they will if they ever see a profit in it. Lets face it, it isn't exactly a big or growing market. I'd have thought that you of all people should realise that. Admittedly the Chinese do not have the hive mind mentality that the Japs do, but they are entrepreneurs, and sooner or later a bunch of them will cotton on to the fact that there is a better profit to be made in quality goods I think the Chinese have every bit of "hive" the Japs or anyone else ever had. Nope, I have worked with both for extensive periods, the Chinese are far more independent that the Japs. Its China Unlimited right now. But they are merely try analysis ing to catch up after 50 years of great communist leap forwards which historical might reveal were not well conceived by the leaders in China until 20 years ago. Give 'em more time man. I can't buy a decent OPT as a single item, made in China. There is no maker in China presenting a similar range of iron wound components to the world equal to Hammond Engineering. How about power transformes as opposed to OPTs I recently bought a Pic programmer. I could have paid around $150 for a locally purchased US built one, bit I bought one from a Chinese dealer for about $60 including shipping. There is nothing wrong with it, it does the same job and is decently constructed. Chinese shirts, shoes, trousers, and many other products are great value due to the peanut wages paid in China. Not even close to the same thing, this has a well designed and constructed PCB modern surface mount components well soldered. Every bit as good as the US product. I think Behringer work up that they couldn't compete if they used German labour, but could if they used Chinese labour, AND kept the quality high. Quad was bought by IAG, a Chinese owned consortium, no?, and the amps are made in China and owning the right kind of reverred name AND maintaining quality but keeping labour costs at a pittance is like successfully printing your own 100 dollar bills at a cost of $2 each. Only a few makers of Chinese origin will "get it", ie, realize that quality can compete with quantity.... But western nations have been turning east for labour for a very long time. I once bought a Linear Design am-fm integrated receiver designed on Oz by some minor electronics company now long gone, BJD Electronics, and they had their design made in Sth Korea. It ws 1/2 the price of a Marantz unit with the same specifications, and less than Yamaha so I bought it, being poor myself. $200, when wages here were $150 a week. Where is Korean expertise now? It is the same all over the east. Start with making cheap crap, then move up market and allow the dirty crap jobs to move on to other producers. The Japs used to have huge steel plants all along the inland sea, then they found that they didn't that grief any more so they exported the business to Korea, sold them the gear to do it too. Now that work has moved on to China, eventually, they will export it somewhere else. Gee, not many places left who could do all that heavy donkey work..... There is a whole unexplored continent in Africa and plenty of areas in South America with enough poverty to provide cheap labour. 10 years ago, Korean electronics was though of as the dregs, and their cars laughable, now LG and Samsung are respected names in the business, and their cars are beginning to be thought of as reasonable. The Taiwanese started out copying IBM PCs, now they own the motherboard business although they have sent the actual labour of building them to the mainland, good profit and you don't need to get your hands dirty either. Marvels of supply and demand.... Oz people think their lives are so marvellous, but working hours have increased, and it takes 8 years average yearly wages to buy an average house, and you'd think there was plenty of room in such a huge country with so few people for cheap nice housing. 32 years ago in 1976, when I bought my house, it took 3.5 years of wages to buy a house, and it had a greater land area and possible potential to divide that land into 2 blocks and build another small house on it. The land you by in a housing package now has shrunk right down. There is oficial inflation, and unofficial inflation. I digress though. The Chinese are highly motivated by human greed and other motivations like everyone else, and want to have a better life. They are opening one huge coal fired power station each week. Everyone will in China will have a better standard of living, and their bicycles will be only for emergency transport soon. There'e building a few hospitals too, to cope with the ills of road accidents and modern ailments. The demand for goods and services including audio gear is utterly immense within China itself, so their imperative is to make goods for each other to consume, rather than solely rely on profits by selling to foreigners in the west. So because of the huge internal demand, there is tremendous pressure to make things cheaply as possible. Tremendous competition amoung themselves as well, with each audio company cutting its costs to lower prices more than the next guy. State controls have been reliquished on such industry. I think Chinese domestic demand determines the quality. Not necissarily, if they find a profitable overseas market for the good stuff then they will fill it. At the moment, the west is happy to take any old crap as long as it is cheap. But it isn't cheap at all. Jolida costs a bomb, yet is very basic quality, and its because the American joint venture partners do not know how to ensure quality controls are high. Chinese amps are made for maybe 1/10 of the hi-fi shop prices charged in the west, and to ensure better quality might only raise the low cost of production by 10%. It just doesn't happen though, everyone is too lazy and greedy. Look to the greedy locals and the fools that buy overpriced crap from them. If the markup was "Only" 100% then the Chinese could make a better product. The temptation to give people a taste of the good life with cheap crap is overpowering. The population of China has no generational long term awareness about consumer item quality. They are sititng ducks for the guy selling cheap amps that smoke or break if you cough near them. I do not expect that 1 in 10 million chinese wants a tube amp, I'll bet that 99.999% of that production is exported. I'm not so sure. But you don't have to have a big % of 1 billion ppl to comprise fair number of upper middle class who might like a tube amp. Some of this **** is exported to us, sold online by the smart arses in China who have figured out how to bypass obscenely greedy western middle men and western hi-fi shops who together make what sells for $100 in China into something selling for $2,000 in the hi-fi shop. But the Chinese are generous, not too greedy, that amp costing $100 at their factory gate is sold to you for $500, plus freight, and its a deal at least 12dB cheaper than buying from a rapacious hi-fi shop near you. So one has to forgive the Chinese quality if its 12dB less than Quad standards. AFAIK, there was no way I could have bought a Japanese transistor radio directly from a seller i Japan and have it air freighted to me at 1/4 the local shop price in 1960. I first went to Japan in 1980, electronics there was about 1/3rd the price that the same item sold for in Australia. I came back loaded with the stuff. Australian importers must have been having a field day. They still do have a field day. Asian made stuff is bought for a low pittance, and sold high. the major cost component of the price the public in Oz pay is the western nation profit, handling and distribution once it leaves Asia. Western nations would love to see China clean up their gigantic CO2 emissions and woeful environmental damage, but we won't pay a cent to them to do it. Prices of all Chinese junk should rise 12dB so they could then employ 1/2 their workforce to change to alternative energy sources and fix up the mess. It won't happen, human greed will make sure it won't. So, when you buy a chinese amp, be preapred to strip out the whole ****ing mess inside and re-wire it during rainy sunday afternoons or during a week off work that most Chinese could never have. When the OPTs fail within 10 years, no worry, buy a pair of Hammond. The Chinese PT designed to run off 220V often works without overheating much here where I regularly measure 250V mains voltages. I add series resistors to heater supplies, and make other changes to PS to lower the B+ to where it should be. After 10 years, the product is thus dragged up in quality. Send a thankyou note to China for their cheap metal work. India is also undergoing a huge surge, but we never hear what they are up to. The Chinese sure grabbed a lot of medals at the Olympics, but how many did the Indians get? There seems to be a difference in the personal competiveness of the two huge nations. India is going a slightly different route, capitalising on their excellent education system, importing skilled jobs that do not require huge capital to set up like software development, and support. Ther's an Indian company wanting to find land to build a factory for production of a car for under $3,000. I will be about ready to buy one when they are set up, and it sure beats the hell out of dealing with Toyota, Ford, GM, let alone Mercedes. But wherever industrialists go in India, hordes of angry farmers shoo them away. Indians make very fine Enfield motorcycles. I believe that they still build the Morris Major, but probably not for too much longer, soon they will be riding around in Jaguars. Nope, morris cars will continue until they wear out, and only a small % could afford a Jag type of car, but totally new much cheaper designs of cars for India are going to become available. You'd have to think their friends and relatives coud make a good tube, or a good OPT, but alas it just isn't so. No profit there, tube audio is a miniscule business. Its products are undesired by the vast majority of the world's population, so there is little incentive to tool up for it. If it wasn't for guitar amps, audio tube production may have stalled permanently. God bless rock and roll. Keith |
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#20
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Keithr wrote: Patrick Turner wrote: Keithr wrote: Patrick Turner wrote: The Chinese are where the Japs were in the middle 60's making cheap and chearful stuff. A Jap 6 transistor radio had about a pound of solder in it and most of the joints were dry. Didn't take them too long to learn to do it properly though. There is little evidence that the Chinese will lift quality like the japs did with electronics, cameras and auto products, unless they are led by the nose all the way forcefully during joint venture productions with western nation companies that rely on quality as a key reason for sales. What do you base that on? Recent history. Quad, Behringer etc. When and if the results of the one child per couple policy develop any originality and independance in their thinking, then maybe they'd show us westerners some better ways of building things, including vacuum tubes and amplifiers. Maybe they will if they ever see a profit in it. Lets face it, it isn't exactly a big or growing market. I'd have thought that you of all people should realise that. Rising real wages means there are increasing middle classes with more income to spend on everything available. Admittedly the Chinese do not have the hive mind mentality that the Japs do, but they are entrepreneurs, and sooner or later a bunch of them will cotton on to the fact that there is a better profit to be made in quality goods I think the Chinese have every bit of "hive" the Japs or anyone else ever had. Nope, I have worked with both for extensive periods, the Chinese are far more independent that the Japs. Maybe, but in asia the group is everything, the individual is nothing. This will change with education and wealth, and reforming more towards to our ideas of independance. Most Chinese are group oriented, and very tied up with family. Its China Unlimited right now. But they are merely try analysis ing to catch up after 50 years of great communist leap forwards which historical might reveal were not well conceived by the leaders in China until 20 years ago. Give 'em more time man. I can't buy a decent OPT as a single item, made in China. There is no maker in China presenting a similar range of iron wound components to the world equal to Hammond Engineering. How about power transformes as opposed to OPTs I've never wanted to buy anything iron wound from China. I see the Jolidas here which should run with 220V, but have no tap for Oz to allow 240 or the 250 I measure here often. Maybe that will change in time. I recently bought a Pic programmer. I could have paid around $150 for a locally purchased US built one, bit I bought one from a Chinese dealer for about $60 including shipping. There is nothing wrong with it, it does the same job and is decently constructed. Chinese shirts, shoes, trousers, and many other products are great value due to the peanut wages paid in China. Not even close to the same thing, this has a well designed and constructed PCB modern surface mount components well soldered. Every bit as good as the US product. Surface mount board with 3 layers are essential for modern electronics with so many features running at high F with digital. That's become easy now for anyone to do. But often I see where the Chinese have tried, but in the rush they forget quality control... I think Behringer work up that they couldn't compete if they used German labour, but could if they used Chinese labour, AND kept the quality high. Quad was bought by IAG, a Chinese owned consortium, no?, and the amps are made in China and owning the right kind of reverred name AND maintaining quality but keeping labour costs at a pittance is like successfully printing your own 100 dollar bills at a cost of $2 each. Only a few makers of Chinese origin will "get it", ie, realize that quality can compete with quantity.... But western nations have been turning east for labour for a very long time. I once bought a Linear Design am-fm integrated receiver designed on Oz by some minor electronics company now long gone, BJD Electronics, and they had their design made in Sth Korea. It ws 1/2 the price of a Marantz unit with the same specifications, and less than Yamaha so I bought it, being poor myself. $200, when wages here were $150 a week. Where is Korean expertise now? It is the same all over the east. Start with making cheap crap, then move up market and allow the dirty crap jobs to move on to other producers. The Japs used to have huge steel plants all along the inland sea, then they found that they didn't that grief any more so they exported the business to Korea, sold them the gear to do it too. Now that work has moved on to China, eventually, they will export it somewhere else. Gee, not many places left who could do all that heavy donkey work..... There is a whole unexplored continent in Africa and plenty of areas in South America with enough poverty to provide cheap labour. The world will not be short of have nots, but which make the best workers with the most talent and give the least labour troubles is another thing. 10 years ago, Korean electronics was though of as the dregs, and their cars laughable, now LG and Samsung are respected names in the business, and their cars are beginning to be thought of as reasonable. The Taiwanese started out copying IBM PCs, now they own the motherboard business although they have sent the actual labour of building them to the mainland, good profit and you don't need to get your hands dirty either. Marvels of supply and demand.... Oz people think their lives are so marvellous, but working hours have increased, and it takes 8 years average yearly wages to buy an average house, and you'd think there was plenty of room in such a huge country with so few people for cheap nice housing. 32 years ago in 1976, when I bought my house, it took 3.5 years of wages to buy a house, and it had a greater land area and possible potential to divide that land into 2 blocks and build another small house on it. The land you by in a housing package now has shrunk right down. There is oficial inflation, and unofficial inflation. I digress though. The Chinese are highly motivated by human greed and other motivations like everyone else, and want to have a better life. They are opening one huge coal fired power station each week. Everyone will in China will have a better standard of living, and their bicycles will be only for emergency transport soon. There'e building a few hospitals too, to cope with the ills of road accidents and modern ailments. The demand for goods and services including audio gear is utterly immense within China itself, so their imperative is to make goods for each other to consume, rather than solely rely on profits by selling to foreigners in the west. So because of the huge internal demand, there is tremendous pressure to make things cheaply as possible. Tremendous competition amoung themselves as well, with each audio company cutting its costs to lower prices more than the next guy. State controls have been reliquished on such industry. I think Chinese domestic demand determines the quality. Not necissarily, if they find a profitable overseas market for the good stuff then they will fill it. At the moment, the west is happy to take any old crap as long as it is cheap. But it isn't cheap at all. Jolida costs a bomb, yet is very basic quality, and its because the American joint venture partners do not know how to ensure quality controls are high. Chinese amps are made for maybe 1/10 of the hi-fi shop prices charged in the west, and to ensure better quality might only raise the low cost of production by 10%. It just doesn't happen though, everyone is too lazy and greedy. Look to the greedy locals and the fools that buy overpriced crap from them. If the markup was "Only" 100% then the Chinese could make a better product. The temptation to give people a taste of the good life with cheap crap is overpowering. The population of China has no generational long term awareness about consumer item quality. They are sititng ducks for the guy selling cheap amps that smoke or break if you cough near them. I do not expect that 1 in 10 million chinese wants a tube amp, I'll bet that 99.999% of that production is exported. I'm not so sure. But you don't have to have a big % of 1 billion ppl to comprise fair number of upper middle class who might like a tube amp. Some of this **** is exported to us, sold online by the smart arses in China who have figured out how to bypass obscenely greedy western middle men and western hi-fi shops who together make what sells for $100 in China into something selling for $2,000 in the hi-fi shop. But the Chinese are generous, not too greedy, that amp costing $100 at their factory gate is sold to you for $500, plus freight, and its a deal at least 12dB cheaper than buying from a rapacious hi-fi shop near you. So one has to forgive the Chinese quality if its 12dB less than Quad standards. AFAIK, there was no way I could have bought a Japanese transistor radio directly from a seller i Japan and have it air freighted to me at 1/4 the local shop price in 1960. I first went to Japan in 1980, electronics there was about 1/3rd the price that the same item sold for in Australia. I came back loaded with the stuff. Australian importers must have been having a field day. They still do have a field day. Asian made stuff is bought for a low pittance, and sold high. the major cost component of the price the public in Oz pay is the western nation profit, handling and distribution once it leaves Asia. Western nations would love to see China clean up their gigantic CO2 emissions and woeful environmental damage, but we won't pay a cent to them to do it. Prices of all Chinese junk should rise 12dB so they could then employ 1/2 their workforce to change to alternative energy sources and fix up the mess. It won't happen, human greed will make sure it won't. So, when you buy a chinese amp, be preapred to strip out the whole ****ing mess inside and re-wire it during rainy sunday afternoons or during a week off work that most Chinese could never have. When the OPTs fail within 10 years, no worry, buy a pair of Hammond. The Chinese PT designed to run off 220V often works without overheating much here where I regularly measure 250V mains voltages. I add series resistors to heater supplies, and make other changes to PS to lower the B+ to where it should be. After 10 years, the product is thus dragged up in quality. Send a thankyou note to China for their cheap metal work. India is also undergoing a huge surge, but we never hear what they are up to. The Chinese sure grabbed a lot of medals at the Olympics, but how many did the Indians get? There seems to be a difference in the personal competiveness of the two huge nations. India is going a slightly different route, capitalising on their excellent education system, importing skilled jobs that do not require huge capital to set up like software development, and support. Ther's an Indian company wanting to find land to build a factory for production of a car for under $3,000. I will be about ready to buy one when they are set up, and it sure beats the hell out of dealing with Toyota, Ford, GM, let alone Mercedes. But wherever industrialists go in India, hordes of angry farmers shoo them away. Indians make very fine Enfield motorcycles. I believe that they still build the Morris Major, but probably not for too much longer, soon they will be riding around in Jaguars. Nope, morris cars will continue until they wear out, and only a small % could afford a Jag type of car, but totally new much cheaper designs of cars for India are going to become available. You'd have to think their friends and relatives coud make a good tube, or a good OPT, but alas it just isn't so. No profit there, tube audio is a miniscule business. Its products are undesired by the vast majority of the world's population, so there is little incentive to tool up for it. If it wasn't for guitar amps, audio tube production may have stalled permanently. God bless rock and roll. Indeed. It don't mean I have to listen to it. Patrick Turner. Keith |
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#21
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Peter Wieck wrote:
Most communists are green. The only real communists are members of the communist party. In those countries where the communist party has some power, the ecosystem has not seemed, at least to outsiders, a high priority until now, when the Chinese party has promised it's own people, amidst such brouhaha, a greener future. Now nearly all communists are green, and quite possibly most greens are communists. Apart from the several false premises - and thereby the justification of such a discussion: As long as China makes almost no oil of its own and as long as it slaughters its rivers and burns lignite for electricity and transportation (steam locomotives are still in extensive (but lessening) use in China), clean air and clean water is not going to happen. ***Don't worry. The Party has spoken. Didn't you hear the man say "green"? At every level throughout China, the ecosystem is now being scrutinised and discussed. Green will be unstoppable, and the Party is obliged to begin an Historic Cleanup.*** As long as the "West" is willing to pay to maintain its supplies of gasoline, clean(er) air in China is not going to happen. And as long as China wishes to catch up with the "West" it cannot happen. ***Details, details. As unknowable as the drift of history is unstoppable. It could be that in your terms we end up as poor as China, which might not be so poor, if you take the "social wage" into account. Also, wealth is increasingly defined by products requiring less physical resources. I understand that China has just equalled the USA for harmful emissions, but they have one or two more people, so footprint per capita is much smaller. The Chinese seemed happy enough on the TV.*** So, in the post Beijing, socialist universe, what's the future of the valve amplifier? About what it is now. A niche use for a infinitesimally tiny fraction of the well-heeled population with an interest in ancient and obsolete technologies. ***A little hyperbolic, but I can't disagree.*** On the bright side, we might expect the cost/performance ratio of guitar amps to improve. Socialism encourages cultural pursuits and valves are part of the instrument. It seems likely that the trade-off between culture and ecosystem would be in our favour, assuming electric guitars remain popular in a socialist society. Mpffff... Again, count the number of tube guitar amplifiers existing. Then those in actual use. Then those actually being produced now. A good many of those in 'current production' come from China. And were the Central Authority to rule for SS for domestic Chinese use, it would become the instant standard - and all the residual tube amps would be sent to the "West" to waste *their* power. ***But they wouldn't make a ruling for SS guitar amps. They've got Culture, and value it. If the West keeps nationalising its banks at this rate, then it will be West only in a geographic sense.*** Of course, consider the actual consumption of all the tube amps in use at any given time as the numerator, and the total power produced at that same time as the denominator... draw your own conclusion. ***Culture it is, then.*** Domestic audio amplifiers may present more of a problem. If the champions of received wisdom have their way, and continue to argue that a domestic valve amp is not part of a musical instrument, then we will lose that cultural high ground which we might expect to be valued in a socialist world. If you think you want green reproduction, SS is the way to go. In the Audio World, the amplifier should be a means to listening and musical reproduction, not a contributor to it. In the Making of Music World the amplifier is very much part of the instrument. They are almost mutually (and musically) exclusive applications. To this: it is my personal belief that a musical amplifier should be capable of absolute neutrality - then "color added" by choice. But that is only me. Can anyone think of a justification for a domestic valve amp that will impress the Party? The Party, as with any other rigidly monotheistic oligarchy, ***Oi! Less of your cold war blether. Atheistic and democratically centralist. please. Everyone can join the Party, and everyone can have an equal say in decisions through the Party structure. The most important difference between that and our very incomplete democracy is that, once those decisions are made, they must be carried out. Decisions are bottom-up, implementations are top-down.*** is interested in maintaining its primacy and making money towards maintaining its primacy. Show it a way to achieve both and it will be all over it like a cheap suit. ***The Party isn't primary. Historically, the people came first, and will always be primary. Party members are not generally wealthy, and development tends to be towards social wealth. Party officials I have met have always been fervent social engineers. However, times change and it will be interesting to see how the future of socialism unfolds.*** I have argued, forlornly, that it *is* part of a musical instrument, but it's been impossible to convince the audio proletariat that the issue must be examined properly, in the context of the history of music. In an ignorant world, the easiest propaganda tends to hold sway; the reproductionist's case is dead simple, and I get tired of my lonely furrow. Perhaps the superior universal education of socialism offers some hope for the future. Plow away. Make guitar amps - *they* are instruments. Audio amps are only instruments to the extent that they fail to reproduce the signal fed into them. Whether that failure is by omission or addition, it is still a failure. Of course, there is an alternative to this that will allow you a foot firmly planted in both worlds. A long and difficult one, but a way nonetheless: Produce a series of recordings designed to be reproduced on tube-based equipment. Possibly even equalize it for particular designs and philosophies. So, Andre may have his Gregorian Chant carefully recorded and "enhanced" to be played back on SET equipment into single- driver horn speakers. A tough road to hoe, but you are a committed fellow... . ***My circumstances are different from the studio when the musicians heard what they sounded like. The important criterion for me is: "Would the musician be disappointed to hear my presentation?"*** Incidentally, to all those who have compared the rise of Chinese industrial production to that of Japan, perhaps the greatest show of culture, endeavour and organisation the earth has ever seen may at last have led you to suspect that the history of socialist China is Something Else, and maybe big enough to warrant a little more Thought? China has the capacity within itself to consumer 100% of the world's total annual energy production from all sources right now and still not be anywhere near the per-capita consumption in the US or Europe. That is about all the thought as may be necessary when considering a "green" future as it applies to us, to China and to the rest of the world in general. Finally, does that Chinese music have the same harmonic structure? Could this be significant to amplifier design? Does it matter? The amplifier should be neutral to what is fed into it, or tailored by choice to color it as chosen. Perhaps make that Ideal Amplifier capable of both? ***It may matter to the extent that systems are never perfectly neutral, which raises the question of whether some departures from neutrality sound better in Chinese, and some in Western music.*** Y'all have a lot to do! Get on with it! ***I just do the arguing.*** Cheers, indeed! ***It's really time you took a look at the dialectic, before it's too late. I recall that you have a grasp of classical formal logic, but don't recognise its more modern counterpart as a logic of equal validity. Music is a dynamic that may serve as an illustration of how an inkling of the dialectic can be of practical use. Consider a song, which we might take to be a unit of music. It requires a singer and a listener in order to exist, and there is a sense in which singer and listener are opposites. Now, the logic of dialectics would lead us to expect that a dynamic would arise from these opposites that would develop over time: that a history of music would follow from that first song. Think like Holy Trinity...singer, listener, music. You may note in passing that, although singer and listener are both necessary, and therefore of equal importance, the singer in some way has a primary role. Primacy is of key importance in dialectical analysis, which is one reason why history is so crucial. Hence we know that the cold war, for example, was a defensive posture by the USSR, because NATO existed before the Warsaw Pact. NATO was always the aggressor. We would also expect that this dynamic would lead to diremption: the continuing splitting of the system into nested subsystems. A musical instrument, in the normally accepted sense (which I will call the Commonly-termed Musical Instrument, or CMI) which excludes voice or ensemble, is one product of that diremption. Part of my argument is that, in the absence of an alternative general word for a "thing that plays music", I will reject that false distinction, and use "musical instrument" to also include voice and ensemble. Further, in this category I would put all the gubbins that studios use these days up to the point where the final song is committed to its media. The issue at stake here is whether the domestic audio system that plays that media is also part of the musical instrument. I say yes, you say no, apparently. I expect it to be because it would be logical for it to be so, according to my inkling of the dialectic. On my side is much evidence of another product of diremption: alienation. As the emerging subsystems interpose themselves between singer and listener, the one feels more estranged from the other. So the old folks say "Stop that noise" or "They don't make music like they used to", etc. perhaps because they see it as a product of industry rather than of people, perhaps because they have failed to embrace the social machinations that the music has arisen from, lost possession somehow: the distance becomes a "generation gap". Actually the social is simply taking possession of the individual, and we tend not to like how that feels. Certainly modern popular music tends to be lacking any sense of intimacy...it seems to be more about social movements, sub-culture differentiation, whatever. The history of music and of musical instruments is convoluted. There are periods of linear development, and times of more fundamental change. Voice, choir, CMI, orchestra: two axes of development, one multiplies in parallel, the other in series. It's the series development, through which musical instruments are interposed between player and listener, that is of particular interest to me here. As music has developed, it has continued to reflect social change: it has become more sophisticated, and as social units have grown, its methods of propagation and distribution have also evolved. Musical instruments have enabled progress in both of these directions. They have enabled music to carry further, and to become more complex. The electric guitar is an obvious modern example, having a much wider palette and being much louder than an acoustic. But pretty much all CMIs have made similar contributions, each in their time. Adam and Eve could sing appropriately simple songs to each other, and now a multitude of musicians can play appropriately sophisticated arrangements to several billion listeners. My point is that there is good reason to include the last stage of propagation and distribution, the media you procure and the system you use to play it, in the category of musical instrument. There is no good reason not to. It may be a revolutionary development, but the domestic stereo system is nonetheless just another series link amongst many other machines that connect you, the listener, to the performers, the singer. We should expect that some of the design criteria properly applicable to one instrument to be similar to others, and some aspects to be very different...maybe the exact opposite, although the identification of opposites is not often simple. We should also expect that each instrument is a product of its own history. None are purely products of engineering, but rather they have evolved through skilled craftsmanship and careful listening. Throughout the history of its development, rules governing the manufacture of each are developed and passed down through history. No successful musical instrument has ever been designed from blue sky to finished article by process of engineering alone. The instrument comes first, and the rules follow in the wake of its development. Making up rules in advance for how a domestic stereo system should perform is an approach alien to musical instruments. You can have an idea, of course, but valid ideas are those informed and modified by history, not just mathematics. The musicians play your audio system in your room. You make it your own by paying for the media, and by ensuring that your system is appropriate for your particular space. There is not much opportunity to dispel alienation, so you should grasp whatever you can. Making your own system, or at the very least making your choice of system seriously by auditioning many candidates, restores some of that lost intimacy. We shouldn't procure a system merely on the strength of its performance data. Neither should we design merely to engineering specifications.*** Ian |
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#22
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Please forgive the top-posting. Please note the interpolations.
On Sep 20, 2:01*am, "Ian Iveson" wrote: ***Don't worry. The Party has spoken. Didn't you hear the man say "green"? At every level throughout China, the ecosystem is now being scrutinised and discussed. Green will be unstoppable, and the Party is obliged to begin an Historic Cleanup.*** What utter horsecrap. Stating something as "fact" does not make it so, unless (like Mr. Jute) you are a fan of the Bellman's Proof. As long as China continues to dam its rivers, burn lignite in massive quantities (and build about 30% of its economy around lignite) and eschew significant investments in (relatively) clean nuclear power there will be either one of two things - an ecological clean-up... OR a screaching halt to economic expansion. Which do you think they will choose? As long as the "West" is willing to pay to maintain its supplies of gasoline, clean(er) air in China is not going to happen. And as long as China wishes to catch up with the "West" it cannot happen. ***Details, details. As unknowable as the drift of history is unstoppable. It could be that in your terms we end up as poor as China, which might not be so poor, if you take the "social wage" into account. Also, wealth is increasingly defined by products requiring less physical resources. I understand that China has just equalled the USA for harmful emissions, but they have one or two more people, so footprint per capita is much smaller. The Chinese seemed happy enough on the TV.*** c.f. "Bellman's Proof above. The devil is in the details and it is the details that make things either go or not go. Antigravity is easy 'if' (supply necessary details here). FTL travel is perfectly possible 'if' (supply necessary details here). "Seem" - does not support any level of discussion as it is -SO- silly an offer of support for any sort of position. So, in the post Beijing, socialist universe, what's the future of the valve amplifier? About what it is now. A niche use for a infinitesimally tiny fraction of the well-heeled population with an interest in ancient and obsolete technologies. ***A little hyperbolic, but I can't disagree.*** On the bright side, we might expect the cost/performance ratio of guitar amps to improve. Socialism encourages cultural pursuits and valves are part of the instrument. It seems likely that the trade-off between culture and ecosystem would be in our favour, assuming electric guitars remain popular in a socialist society. Mpffff... Again, count the number of tube guitar amplifiers existing. Then those in actual use. Then those actually being produced now. A good many of those in 'current production' come from China. And were the Central Authority to rule for SS for domestic Chinese use, it would become the instant standard - and all the residual tube amps would be sent to the "West" to waste *their* power. ***But they wouldn't make a ruling for SS guitar amps. They've got Culture, and value it. If the West keeps nationalising its banks at this rate, then it will be West only in a geographic sense.*** They may have "culture" but as with _every_ other aspect of their ruling philosophy, it is exactly as it needs to be, when it needs to be so. It is absolutely _not_ an independent, self-supporting entity in and of itself. The Cultural Revolution is an absolute example of the power of Government over Culture, common sense, and good intentions. Of course, consider the actual consumption of all the tube amps in use at any given time as the numerator, and the total power produced at that same time as the denominator... draw your own conclusion. ***Culture it is, then.*** Wishful thinking, more like it. Domestic audio amplifiers may present more of a problem. If the champions of received wisdom have their way, and continue to argue that a domestic valve amp is not part of a musical instrument, then we will lose that cultural high ground which we might expect to be valued in a socialist world. If you think you want green reproduction, SS is the way to go. In the Audio World, the amplifier should be a means to listening and musical reproduction, not a contributor to it. In the Making of Music World the amplifier is very much part of the instrument. They are almost mutually (and musically) exclusive applications. To this: it is my personal belief that a musical amplifier should be capable of absolute neutrality - then "color added" by choice. But that is only me. Can anyone think of a justification for a domestic valve amp that will impress the Party? The Party, as with any other rigidly monotheistic oligarchy ***Oi! Less of your cold war blether. Atheistic and democratically centralist. please. Everyone can join the Party, and everyone can have an equal say in decisions through the Party structure. The most important difference between that and our very incomplete democracy is that, once those decisions are made, they must be carried out. Decisions are bottom-up, implementations are top-down.*** Not hardly "cold war blather" but an absolutely accurate description of "Communism" as it is practiced in China today. The "god" is the state, and all is subject to it. Rigid as no deviation is tolerated unless it creates a more powerful state - and that devolves to the ruling elite (oligarchy). Given the displacement of quite literally MILLIONS for the Olympics, both entirely without compensation and entirely without replacement housing "bottom up" decision making is not only wishful thinking, but complete and utter bull****. is interested in maintaining its primacy and making money towards maintaining its primacy. Show it a way to achieve both and it will be all over it like a cheap suit. ***The Party isn't primary. Historically, the people came first, and will always be primary. Party members are not generally wealthy, and development tends to be towards social wealth. Party officials I have met have always been fervent social engineers. However, times change and it will be interesting to see how the future of socialism unfolds.*** In China, life has always been cheap. And getting cheaper by the day. The "people" are grease for the gears, coal to be burnt, grist for the mill. They are valuable only to the extent that they secure the primacy of the ruling elite. And you _REALLY_ need to distinguish between China and *ANY* definition of Socialism. What is going on in China has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Socialism by any measure or viewpoint. I have argued, forlornly, that it *is* part of a musical instrument, but it's been impossible to convince the audio proletariat that the issue must be examined properly, in the context of the history of music. In an ignorant world, the easiest propaganda tends to hold sway; the reproductionist's case is dead simple, and I get tired of my lonely furrow. Perhaps the superior universal education of socialism offers some hope for the future. Plow away. Make guitar amps - *they* are instruments. Audio amps are only instruments to the extent that they fail to reproduce the signal fed into them. Whether that failure is by omission or addition, it is still a failure. Of course, there is an alternative to this that will allow you a foot firmly planted in both worlds. A long and difficult one, but a way nonetheless: Produce a series of recordings designed to be reproduced on tube-based equipment. Possibly even equalize it for particular designs and philosophies. So, Andre may have his Gregorian Chant carefully recorded and "enhanced" to be played back on SET equipment into single- driver horn speakers. A tough road to hoe, but you are a committed fellow... . ***My circumstances are different from the studio when the musicians heard what they sounded like. The important criterion for me is: "Would the musician be disappointed to hear my presentation?"*** On what system - which gets back to your original point. Would they be disappoined hearing it on a Tube system, SS system, SET system - for crissakes, define your $%^$%^&( terms! Incidentally, to all those who have compared the rise of Chinese industrial production to that of Japan, perhaps the greatest show of culture, endeavour and organisation the earth has ever seen may at last have led you to suspect that the history of socialist China is Something Else, and maybe big enough to warrant a little more Thought? China has the capacity within itself to consume 100% of the world's total annual energy production from all sources right now and still not be anywhere near the per-capita consumption in the US or Europe. That is about all the thought as may be necessary when considering a "green" future as it applies to us, to China and to the rest of the world in general. Finally, does that Chinese music have the same harmonic structure? Could this be significant to amplifier design? Does it matter? The amplifier should be neutral to what is fed into it, or tailored by choice to color it as chosen. Perhaps make that Ideal Amplifier capable of both? ***It may matter to the extent that systems are never perfectly neutral, which raises the question of whether some departures from neutrality sound better in Chinese, and some in Western music.*** Again, what utter, undiluted bull****. "Departure from neutrality" = distortion of the input signal. Pure and simple. Occam's Principle of the Excluded Middle applies. What is good for one "culture" will be as good for any other. Similarly, what is "bad". If what goes in is not an accurate representation of what comes out, to the extent that it is not accurate, it has failed. Y'all have a lot to do! Get on with it! ***I just do the arguing.*** Cheers, indeed! ***It's really time you took a look at the dialectic, before it's too late. I recall that you have a grasp of classical formal logic, but don't recognise its more modern counterpart as a logic of equal validity. Spare me. What is a false premise, or what is circular reasoning, or what is leaping to conclusions, or what is post hoc, ergo propter hoc, and so forth remains so whether it is of a 2000+ year old system or a 2+ hour old system. Attempting to justify any of the "seven classical fallacies" based on some sort of "modern adaptation (dialectic in your terms) is about as valid as ebonics as a valid interpretation of the English Language. Just fine if you do not care about clarity and accuracy. And very much given to sloppy thinking and the 'feel-good' results of same. Music is a dynamic that may serve as an illustration of how an inkling of the dialectic can be of practical use. Music is certainly dynamic (Last I looked, "dynamic" was not a noun). But if butchering meanings of words is a "practical" use of "the dialectic", then I will stay back with the Greeks and actual logic - not its mutated, red-headed step-children. Consider a song, which we might take to be a unit of music. It requires a singer and a listener in order to exist, and there is a sense in which singer and listener are opposites. Now, the logic of dialectics would lead us to expect that a dynamic would arise from these opposites that would develop over time: that a history of music would follow from that first song. Think like Holy Trinity...singer, listener, music. Uh.... my BS detector is ringing at full amplification. A "song" *requires* only its creator. Listeners are accidental, at best. That some artists wish for feedback is (also) only accidental to the act of creating art. A good friend, just last night, defined the difference between a good artist and a great artist - a "good" artist provides and wishes to provide pleasuer for others. A "great" artist couldn't give the proverbial tinker's dam for the audience - and would work the art with or without feedback. The word "couldn't" chosen specifically. You may note in passing that, although singer and listener are both necessary, and therefore of equal importance, the singer in some way has a primary role. Primacy is of key importance in dialectical analysis, which is one reason why history is so crucial. Hence we know that the cold war, for example, was a defensive posture by the USSR, because NATO existed before the Warsaw Pact. NATO was always the aggressor. Wishful babble. Artists exist independently of reality - and as an historical fact, that has been proven ad-infinitum. You are also "leaping to conclusions" as well as being pretty much perpetually prone to "false premises". We would also expect that this dynamic would lead to diremption: the continuing splitting of the system into nested subsystems. A musical instrument, in the normally accepted sense (which I will call the Commonly-termed Musical Instrument, or CMI) which excludes voice or ensemble, is one product of that diremption. Part of my argument is that, in the absence of an alternative general word for a "thing that plays music", I will reject that false distinction, and use "musical instrument" to also include voice and ensemble. Further, in this category I would put all the gubbins that studios use these days up to the point where the final song is committed to its media. The issue at stake here is whether the domestic audio system that plays that media is also part of the musical instrument. I say yes, you say no, apparently. GAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaG!! Um... at this present moment, I have five (5) active audio systems in operation. Two are tube, two are solid-state, one is hybrid. NONE of them sound exactly the same as the other. ALL of them sound pretty good to me. I would posit that NONE of them reaches the exalted status of "musical instrument" by even the furthest stretch of the most fevered imagination. I expect it to be because it would be logical for it to be so, according to my inkling of the dialectic. On my side is much evidence of another product of diremption: alienation. As the emerging subsystems ... You need to freshen up your acquaintance with "formal logic". It is very much like Newtonion Physics - for daily driving, it is as- yet unsurpassed. For Schrodinger's Cat it may be a different story. However, your premise does not even approach that level. Show me that cat, I might be willing to engage in discussions at the level you suggest - but we had better have some extra time ahead of said discussions dedicated to defining terms. rest snipped Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA |
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#23
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Peter Wieck wrote
***Don't worry. The Party has spoken. Didn't you hear the man say "green"? At every level throughout China, the ecosystem is now being scrutinised and discussed. Green will be unstoppable, and the Party is obliged to begin an Historic Cleanup.*** What utter horsecrap. Stating something as "fact" does not make it so, ***He wasn't stating a fact, but rather an intention. Belittlement is a repost, not a refutation.*** unless (like Mr. Jute) you are a fan of the Bellman's Proof. As long as China continues to dam its rivers, burn lignite in massive quantities (and build about 30% of its economy around lignite) and eschew significant investments in (relatively) clean nuclear power there will be either one of two things - an ecological clean-up... OR a screaching halt to economic expansion. Which do you think they will choose? ***They are choosing now, and because they are not stupid they will choose green, and the Party has no choice but to deliver, so it must work through the details. Having been equally involved in the policy-making, everyone in China will join in the clean-up. Once they agree what to do, they are duty-bound to support the decision and will risk prison if they don't.*** As long as the "West" is willing to pay to maintain its supplies of gasoline, clean(er) air in China is not going to happen. And as long as China wishes to catch up with the "West" it cannot happen. ***Details, details. As unknowable as the drift of history is unstoppable. It could be that in your terms we end up as poor as China, which might not be so poor, if you take the "social wage" into account. Also, wealth is increasingly defined by products requiring less physical resources. I understand that China has just equalled the USA for harmful emissions, but they have one or two more people, so footprint per capita is much smaller. The Chinese seemed happy enough on the TV.*** c.f. "Bellman's Proof above. ***Why?*** The devil is in the details and it is the details that make things either go or not go. Antigravity is easy 'if' (supply necessary details here). FTL travel is perfectly possible 'if' (supply necessary details here). ***Is this an attack on all hope for the environment? Is cleaning up the same kind of thing as antigravity? I don't think so. For the one, we know what to do but can't decide to do it, whereas for the other, we would decide to do it if only we knew how. Environmental damage can be minimised if you can persuade everyone to play his part, and that won't be as hard in China as it is in most Capitalist states, in spite of its huge population. Persuading everyone to defy gravity won't defeat it.*** "Seem" - does not support any level of discussion as it is -SO- silly an offer of support for any sort of position. ***That remark seems like twaddle to me. You would need a good argument, rather than a fit of pique, to make so light of seeming. The position needs no support since it is a statement of fact: so it seems to me. You may not be interested in how things seem to me, which is a shame because I would be enthralled, of course, to know how things seem to you. I can do your logic as well as you can, so as long as you stick to it there is very little of interest to me in what you say. So, tell me how it seems, I want to know your feelings. I'm looking for a prophet, not a dictionary.*** So, in the post Beijing, socialist universe, what's the future of the valve amplifier? About what it is now. A niche use for a infinitesimally tiny fraction of the well-heeled population with an interest in ancient and obsolete technologies. ***A little hyperbolic, but I can't disagree.*** On the bright side, we might expect the cost/performance ratio of guitar amps to improve. Socialism encourages cultural pursuits and valves are part of the instrument. It seems likely that the trade-off between culture and ecosystem would be in our favour, assuming electric guitars remain popular in a socialist society. Mpffff... Again, count the number of tube guitar amplifiers existing. Then those in actual use. Then those actually being produced now. A good many of those in 'current production' come from China. And were the Central Authority to rule for SS for domestic Chinese use, it would become the instant standard - and all the residual tube amps would be sent to the "West" to waste *their* power. ***But they wouldn't make a ruling for SS guitar amps. They've got Culture, and value it. If the West keeps nationalising its banks at this rate, then it will be West only in a geographic sense.*** They may have "culture" but as with _every_ other aspect of their ruling philosophy, it is exactly as it needs to be, when it needs to be so. It is absolutely _not_ an independent, self-supporting entity in and of itself. The Cultural Revolution is an absolute example of the power of Government over Culture, common sense, and good intentions. ***I'm struggling with "absolute example", er...I think I've grasped the syntax but I'm still short of meaning. In what way can a government have absolute power over culture? Now of course all this depends on what you mean by culture. Did you see the Games opening ceremony, where the history of China was portrayed in a series of scrolls? Now, following your argument, it might seem that the Party is on your side, because the time of the Cultural Revolution was played down, perhaps recognising that it was not a cultural high point? As for culture as an independent entity, you made that one up with no thought at all so I'll give you another chance to say whatever you think you mean in some way that makes sense.*** Of course, consider the actual consumption of all the tube amps in use at any given time as the numerator, and the total power produced at that same time as the denominator... draw your own conclusion. ***Culture it is, then.*** Wishful thinking, more like it. ***Wishful and confident, with good reason for both.*** Domestic audio amplifiers may present more of a problem. If the champions of received wisdom have their way, and continue to argue that a domestic valve amp is not part of a musical instrument, then we will lose that cultural high ground which we might expect to be valued in a socialist world. If you think you want green reproduction, SS is the way to go. In the Audio World, the amplifier should be a means to listening and musical reproduction, not a contributor to it. In the Making of Music World the amplifier is very much part of the instrument. They are almost mutually (and musically) exclusive applications. To this: it is my personal belief that a musical amplifier should be capable of absolute neutrality - then "color added" by choice. But that is only me. Can anyone think of a justification for a domestic valve amp that will impress the Party? The Party, as with any other rigidly monotheistic oligarchy ***Oi! Less of your cold war blether. Atheistic and democratically centralist. please. Everyone can join the Party, and everyone can have an equal say in decisions through the Party structure. The most important difference between that and our very incomplete democracy is that, once those decisions are made, they must be carried out. Decisions are bottom-up, implementations are top-down.*** Not hardly "cold war blather" but an absolutely accurate description of "Communism" as it is practiced in China today. The "god" is the state, and all is subject to it. Rigid as no deviation is tolerated unless it creates a more powerful state - and that devolves to the ruling elite (oligarchy). ***Socialism, not Communism. Communism has no government. No state has ever claimed to be Communist, as far as I'm aware.*** ***Oligarchies are unelected and unaccountable and you may like the word but it simply doesn't apply to China. The best word for the Chinese system is the one they are happy we use, is most accurate, and which successfully distinguishes it from other political systems. The word is socialist. Anyone can join the Party and have the same discussion and voting rights, so it is not elitist. The state is not regarded as a god, but as a society. Can you show me any example of a Chinese official, or even any Chinese person, who actually has written or said that the state is god. Go on...you made that one up on the spur of the moment, didn't you?*** Given the displacement of quite literally MILLIONS for the Olympics, both entirely without compensation and entirely without replacement housing "bottom up" decision making is not only wishful thinking, but complete and utter bull****. ***About as real as your pollution scare, when you said it would slow everyone down. One aspect of true democracy that requires careful management and broad understanding is that 1.299 billion games supporters outvotes 1 million removees. But collectively they have more sense and compassion than that, following much experience of the cost of creating disgruntled minorities. Same in most democracies. Do you really think there are millions of displaced people wandering about homeless. I really hope you aren't quite so stupid.*** is interested in maintaining its primacy and making money towards maintaining its primacy. Show it a way to achieve both and it will be all over it like a cheap suit. ***The Party isn't primary. Historically, the people came first, and will always be primary. Party members are not generally wealthy, and development tends to be towards social wealth. Party officials I have met have always been fervent social engineers. However, times change and it will be interesting to see how the future of socialism unfolds.*** In China, life has always been cheap. And getting cheaper by the day. The "people" are grease for the gears, coal to be burnt, grist for the mill. They are valuable only to the extent that they secure the primacy of the ruling elite. And you _REALLY_ need to distinguish between China and *ANY* definition of Socialism. What is going on in China has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Socialism by any measure or viewpoint. ***Blether again. Truth and invective aren't the same thing no matter how much you shout.*** I have argued, forlornly, that it *is* part of a musical instrument, but it's been impossible to convince the audio proletariat that the issue must be examined properly, in the context of the history of music. In an ignorant world, the easiest propaganda tends to hold sway; the reproductionist's case is dead simple, and I get tired of my lonely furrow. Perhaps the superior universal education of socialism offers some hope for the future. Plow away. Make guitar amps - *they* are instruments. Audio amps are only instruments to the extent that they fail to reproduce the signal fed into them. Whether that failure is by omission or addition, it is still a failure. Of course, there is an alternative to this that will allow you a foot firmly planted in both worlds. A long and difficult one, but a way nonetheless: Produce a series of recordings designed to be reproduced on tube-based equipment. Possibly even equalize it for particular designs and philosophies. So, Andre may have his Gregorian Chant carefully recorded and "enhanced" to be played back on SET equipment into single- driver horn speakers. A tough road to hoe, but you are a committed fellow... . ***My circumstances are different from the studio when the musicians heard what they sounded like. The important criterion for me is: "Would the musician be disappointed to hear my presentation?"*** On what system - which gets back to your original point. Would they be disappointed hearing it on a Tube system, SS system, SET system - for crissakes, define your $%^$%^&( terms! ***On my system, of course, in my room, with a cup of tea and a cheap bourbon biscuit to dunk. I said my circumstances. We could take it in turns to sit in the best chair.*** Incidentally, to all those who have compared the rise of Chinese industrial production to that of Japan, perhaps the greatest show of culture, endeavour and organisation the earth has ever seen may at last have led you to suspect that the history of socialist China is Something Else, and maybe big enough to warrant a little more Thought? China has the capacity within itself to consume 100% of the world's total annual energy production from all sources right now and still not be anywhere near the per-capita consumption in the US or Europe. That is about all the thought as may be necessary when considering a "green" future as it applies to us, to China and to the rest of the world in general. Finally, does that Chinese music have the same harmonic structure? Could this be significant to amplifier design? Does it matter? The amplifier should be neutral to what is fed into it, or tailored by choice to color it as chosen. Perhaps make that Ideal Amplifier capable of both? ***It may matter to the extent that systems are never perfectly neutral, which raises the question of whether some departures from neutrality sound better in Chinese, and some in Western music.*** Again, what utter, undiluted bull****. "Departure from neutrality" = distortion of the input signal. Pure and simple. Occam's Principle of the Excluded Middle applies. What is good for one "culture" will be as good for any other. Similarly, what is "bad". If what goes in is not an accurate representation of what comes out, to the extent that it is not accurate, it has failed. ***Well yes, I knew what you think because you've said it before along with loads of other people and together you have turned it into an act of faith which you recite at every opportunity. But where is the wisdom? Is it a moral imperative, or an epistemological axiom? Anyway, let me help you grasp the point. Some distortion products are more acceptable, or at least more euphonic, than others. Which are euphonic, and which are not, is related to the harmonic structure of the music. So music with a different harmonic structure might be more or less tolerant of each order of harmonic distortion. Seemed worth a thought, in passing.*** Y'all have a lot to do! Get on with it! ***I just do the arguing.*** Cheers, indeed! ***It's really time you took a look at the dialectic, before it's too late. I recall that you have a grasp of classical formal logic, but don't recognise its more modern counterpart as a logic of equal validity. Spare me. What is a false premise, or what is circular reasoning, or what is leaping to conclusions, or what is post hoc, ergo propter hoc, and so forth remains so whether it is of a 2000+ year old system or a 2+ hour old system. Attempting to justify any of the "seven classical fallacies" based on some sort of "modern adaptation (dialectic in your terms) is about as valid as ebonics as a valid interpretation of the English Language. Just fine if you do not care about clarity and accuracy. And very much given to sloppy thinking and the 'feel-good' results of same. ***Hmm, I see you still haven't tried to find out what dialectical logic is. It's like now you've discovered toast you can't be arsed to look for the marmalade. Have an impoverished breakfast, see if I care.*** Music is a dynamic that may serve as an illustration of how an inkling of the dialectic can be of practical use. Music is certainly dynamic (Last I looked, "dynamic" was not a noun). ***Looked where? I'm a prophet, not a dictionary.*** But if butchering meanings of words is a "practical" use of "the dialectic", then I will stay back with the Greeks and actual logic - not its mutated, red-headed step-children. ***Words change their meanings as understanding develops. Pedants are just slow learners, or obstinate fools.*** Consider a song, which we might take to be a unit of music. It requires a singer and a listener in order to exist, and there is a sense in which singer and listener are opposites. Now, the logic of dialectics would lead us to expect that a dynamic would arise from these opposites that would develop over time: that a history of music would follow from that first song. Think like Holy Trinity...singer, listener, music. Uh.... my BS detector is ringing at full amplification. A "song" *requires* only its creator. Listeners are accidental, at best. That some artists wish for feedback is (also) only accidental to the act of creating art. ***You're not thinking...and indeed it is becoming apparent that you may never have thought. How far would singing have got if there were no listeners? Music is social. Isn't that patently obvious? Are you so blinded by hate that you can't even see simple things clearly?*** A good friend, just last night, defined the difference between a good artist and a great artist - a "good" artist provides and wishes to provide pleasuer for others. A "great" artist couldn't give the proverbial tinker's dam for the audience - and would work the art with or without feedback. The word "couldn't" chosen specifically. ***I guess after a whisky or two, you thought that was profound? And where does the great artist get his idea of music from? Thin air? Has he never heard any music other than his own? Do great artists sing only for money? Is that the only reason they sing for an audience? It would be silly for me to sing and play for myself because I can do much more sophisticated and engaging stuff in my head. But I soon get bored and want to either listen to someone else, or perform my music to others. I don't particularly care whether they like it or not...I just think they should hear what I mean. Other musicians may want to be popular, but all musicians want to be heard. Music is a social thing, there would be no singers without listeners.*** You may note in passing that, although singer and listener are both necessary, and therefore of equal importance, the singer in some way has a primary role. Primacy is of key importance in dialectical analysis, which is one reason why history is so crucial. Hence we know that the cold war, for example, was a defensive posture by the USSR, because NATO existed before the Warsaw Pact. NATO was always the aggressor. Wishful babble. Artists exist independently of reality ***er...what?*** - and as an historical fact, that has been proven ad-infinitum. ***Citations? er...quite a lot of citations to make that one stick.*** You are also "leaping to conclusions" as well as being pretty much perpetually prone to "false premises". ***Leaping is what dialectics does best. Analytical logic can't leap. The one is for jumping, the other for running, in a world where both are necessary for progress. Everyone is prone to false premises, and I might welcome correction were you to offer it positively.*** We would also expect that this dynamic would lead to diremption: the continuing splitting of the system into nested subsystems. A musical instrument, in the normally accepted sense (which I will call the Commonly-termed Musical Instrument, or CMI) which excludes voice or ensemble, is one product of that diremption. Part of my argument is that, in the absence of an alternative general word for a "thing that plays music", I will reject that false distinction, and use "musical instrument" to also include voice and ensemble. Further, in this category I would put all the gubbins that studios use these days up to the point where the final song is committed to its media. The issue at stake here is whether the domestic audio system that plays that media is also part of the musical instrument. I say yes, you say no, apparently. GAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaG!! Um... at this present moment, I have five (5) active audio systems in operation. Two are tube, two are solid-state, one is hybrid. NONE of them sound exactly the same as the other. ALL of them sound pretty good to me. I would posit that NONE of them reaches the exalted status of "musical instrument" by even the furthest stretch of the most fevered imagination. ***What a shame. All those resources and you still can't make the music your own.*** I expect it to be because it would be logical for it to be so, according to my inkling of the dialectic. On my side is much evidence of another product of diremption: alienation. As the emerging subsystems ... You need to freshen up your acquaintance with "formal logic". ***My analytical logic is fine, thanks. Dialectical logic is also formal; but there is none so blind as one who refuses to look.*** It is very much like Newtonion Physics - for daily driving, it is as- yet unsurpassed. For Schrodinger's Cat it may be a different story. However, your premise does not even approach that level. Show me that cat, I might be willing to engage in discussions at the level you suggest - but we had better have some extra time ahead of said discussions dedicated to defining terms. ***I don't ask you to define the terms of analytical logic, so why should your ignorance give you any right to demand that I explain dialectics. I have tried to share an inkling, in case you or anyone else might be interested enough to find out. Other than that I have pursued a dialectical argument in support of a point of view. Obviously if you don't find out what dialectics means, then you may not be able to follow. Of course, being belligerent and obstreperous doesn't help.*** ***It was a great and truly inspiring Games, it seems to me...*** rest snipped Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA |
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#24
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Peter Wieck wrote: Please forgive the top-posting. Please note the interpolations. On Sep 20, 2:01 am, "Ian Iveson" wrote: ***Don't worry. The Party has spoken. Didn't you hear the man say "green"? At every level throughout China, the ecosystem is now being scrutinised and discussed. Green will be unstoppable, and the Party is obliged to begin an Historic Cleanup.*** What utter horsecrap. Stating something as "fact" does not make it so, unless (like Mr. Jute) you are a fan of the Bellman's Proof. As long as China continues to dam its rivers, burn lignite in massive quantities (and build about 30% of its economy around lignite) and eschew significant investments in (relatively) clean nuclear power there will be either one of two things - an ecological clean-up... OR a screaching halt to economic expansion. Which do you think they will choose? "Hahso, first get rich, then clean up environment, hahso, china way, ya?" And pigs will fly before they ever become so idealistic and altruistic to address issues of CO2 emissions and environmental damage. They'll try to burn all the coal they've got. We are somewhat responsible because we won't pay them more for the cheap goods we buy from them, and we don't insist they clean up their act as a condition to us paying them more. So if we trade with China, we become responsible for results that are unpleasant, like accomplices for environmental vandalism. snip, They may have "culture" but as with _every_ other aspect of their ruling philosophy, it is exactly as it needs to be, when it needs to be so. It is absolutely _not_ an independent, self-supporting entity in and of itself. The Cultural Revolution is an absolute example of the power of Government over Culture, common sense, and good intentions. We are seeing the rise of the children from the one child families, and spoiled nationalistic kids they are. If they begin to ger food shortages in 20 years they'd be tempted to invade rich countries close by, and by then the US power may have waned, so watch out everyone. Culture is really not a big deal although often refered to by polititians to make themsleves look better than the mere survivalists that they are. So Culture is more about how you make a cup of tea or make movies for entertainment than about how a nation survives in a world on a national scale. People the world over have the same make up. We are all human, and the seven vices and virtues are involved with all of us. snip, Not hardly "cold war blather" but an absolutely accurate description of "Communism" as it is practiced in China today. The "god" is the state, and all is subject to it. Rigid as no deviation is tolerated unless it creates a more powerful state - and that devolves to the ruling elite (oligarchy). Given the displacement of quite literally MILLIONS for the Olympics, both entirely without compensation and entirely without replacement housing "bottom up" decision making is not only wishful thinking, but complete and utter bull****. In times to come China will change, but maybe not to more democracy. They all might become more wealthy, and drive instead of riding a billion bicycles, but also might become less democratic. Look at Germany after WW1. Hitler got allthe people motivated to betterment, but then look what happened. It seems democracy is only an affordable luxury when it can be afforded.... is interested in maintaining its primacy and making money towards maintaining its primacy. Show it a way to achieve both and it will be all over it like a cheap suit. ***The Party isn't primary. Historically, the people came first, and will always be primary. Party members are not generally wealthy, and development tends to be towards social wealth. Party officials I have met have always been fervent social engineers. However, times change and it will be interesting to see how the future of socialism unfolds.*** In China, life has always been cheap. And getting cheaper by the day. The "people" are grease for the gears, coal to be burnt, grist for the mill. They are valuable only to the extent that they secure the primacy of the ruling elite. And you _REALLY_ need to distinguish between China and *ANY* definition of Socialism. What is going on in China has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Socialism by any measure or viewpoint. Hmm, I ain't an expert in social studies. Are you? I snip the last lot because I cannot reply to it. Patrick Turner. |
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#25
Posted to rec.audio.tubes
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The post-Beijing amplifier
Same: Top posting/interpolations.
What utter horsecrap. Stating something as "fact" does not make it so, ***He wasn't stating a fact, but rather an intention. Belittlement is a repost, not a refutation.*** Let's parse it, then - just a bit. ***Don't worry. The Party has spoken. Didn't you hear the man say "green"? At every level throughout China, the ecosystem is now being scrutinised and discussed. Green *will* be unstoppable, "Will" as used this way has a single meaning. And China cannot be "green" and maintain economic growth within the limitations of their resources and what is available to them from the rest of the world for purchase. Now, if you are working on the 500-year plan, then we as a species will be either more-or-less green or more-or-less dead. But as far as the youngest poster here is concerned in his/her expected lifetime - if China wishes to continue to grow and also to continue to manage its economy as it does now, "green" by the simple standards of the "west" is not possible. and the Party is obliged to begin an Historic Cleanup.*** unless (like Mr. Jute) you are a fan of the Bellman's Proof. As long as China continues to dam its rivers, burn lignite in massive quantities (and build about 30% of its economy around lignite) and eschew significant investments in (relatively) clean nuclear power there will be either one of two things - an ecological clean-up... OR a screaching halt to economic expansion. Which do you think they will choose? ***They are choosing now, and because they are not stupid they will choose green, and the Party has no choice but to deliver, so it must work through the details. Having been equally involved in the policy-making, everyone in China will join in the clean-up. Once they agree what to do, they are duty-bound to support the decision and will risk prison if they don't.*** You keep writing this - and why I keep citing the Bellman's Proof - I suggest you look it up, and/or read The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll. But the statement and the actuality requires a touching leap of faith in the good intentions of the Chinese Government. As long as the "West" is willing to pay to maintain its supplies of gasoline, clean(er) air in China is not going to happen. And as long as China wishes to catch up with the "West" it cannot happen. ***Details, details. As unknowable as the drift of history is unstoppable. It could be that in your terms we end up as poor as China, which might not be so poor, if you take the "social wage" into account. Also, wealth is increasingly defined by products requiring less physical resources. I understand that China has just equalled the USA for harmful emissions, but they have one or two more people, so footprint per capita is much smaller. The Chinese seemed happy enough on the TV.*** c.f. "Bellman's Proof above. ***Why?*** Why? Because you keep repeating something without any basis in fact as if it were an absolute truth not requiring any support. The devil is in the details and it is the details that make things either go or not go. Antigravity is easy 'if' (supply necessary details here). FTL travel is perfectly possible 'if' (supply necessary details here). ***Is this an attack on all hope for the environment? Is cleaning up the same kind of thing as antigravity? I don't think so. For the one, we know what to do but can't decide to do it, whereas for the other, we would decide to do it if only we knew how. Environmental damage can be minimised if you can persuade everyone to play his part, and that won't be as hard in China as it is in most Capitalist states, in spite of its huge population. Persuading everyone to defy gravity won't defeat it.*** Not hardly an attack on all hope for the Environment. But for any rigidly monotheistic oligarchy to alter an article of faith takes more than good intentions. The actual individuals "in charge" in China have a single ambition - which is to remain so. Whatever is most convenient to that will become the "practice" of the land even if in direct conflict with the "laws" of the land. At the present time and into the foreseeable future, China cannot "go green" without a massive displacement in their economy. Sure - a very few Potemkin's Villages will spring up here and there as fodder for Western sensitivities - but unless and until they un-dam their rivers, stop burning lignite, stop dumping chemical wastes willy-nilly, stop putting melamine in infant formula (dog and cat food was bad enough, but that affected only bourgoise luxuries - pets), the list is pretty much endless and what we see here is only that which escapes censorship. "Seem" - does not support any level of discussion as it is -SO- silly an offer of support for any sort of position. ***That remark seems like twaddle to me. You would need a good argument, rather than a fit of pique, to make so light of seeming. The position needs no support since it is a statement of fact: so it seems to me. You may not be interested in how things seem to me, which is a shame because I would be enthralled, of course, to know how things seem to you. I can do your logic as well as you can, so as long as you stick to it there is very little of interest to me in what you say. So, tell me how it seems, I want to know your feelings. I'm looking for a prophet, not a dictionary.*** "Seem" is a fine word and quite useful. But it has no place as a basis for discussion - Best to find out the actuality and discuss that vs. the "seem". Fish under water "seem" larger than they are. Many animals put on a display to "seem" dangerous (and the really dangerous ones often tend to be quite subtle about it). So, I would prefer to be a little bit more acquainted with the actuality before I make decisions on how things "seem". This, of course, is not always possible - but when making life-altering decisions it is very dangerous to work only from how things 'seem'. So, in the post Beijing, socialist universe, what's the future of the valve amplifier? About what it is now. A niche use for a infinitesimally tiny fraction of the well-heeled population with an interest in ancient and obsolete technologies. ***A little hyperbolic, but I can't disagree.*** On the bright side, we might expect the cost/performance ratio of guitar amps to improve. Socialism encourages cultural pursuits and valves are part of the instrument. It seems likely that the trade-off between culture and ecosystem would be in our favour, assuming electric guitars remain popular in a socialist society. Mpffff... Again, count the number of tube guitar amplifiers existing. Then those in actual use. Then those actually being produced now. A good many of those in 'current production' come from China. And were the Central Authority to rule for SS for domestic Chinese use, it would become the instant standard - and all the residual tube amps would be sent to the "West" to waste *their* power. ***But they wouldn't make a ruling for SS guitar amps. They've got Culture, and value it. If the West keeps nationalising its banks at this rate, then it will be West only in a geographic sense.*** They may have "culture" but as with _every_ other aspect of their ruling philosophy, it is exactly as it needs to be, when it needs to be so. It is absolutely _not_ an independent, self-supporting entity in and of itself. The Cultural Revolution is an absolute example of the power of Government over Culture, common sense, and good intentions. ***I'm struggling with "absolute example", er...I think I've grasped the syntax but I'm still short of meaning. In what way can a government have absolute power over culture? Now of course all this depends on what you mean by culture. Did you see the Games opening ceremony, where the history of China was portrayed in a series of scrolls? Now, following your argument, it might seem that the Party is on your side, because the time of the Cultural Revolution was played down, perhaps recognising that it was not a cultural high point? As for culture as an independent entity, you made that one up with no thought at all so I'll give you another chance to say whatever you think you mean in some way that makes sense.*** During the Cultural Revolution, China slaughtered a significant portion of its ruling elite, destroyed a significant amount of its art, legacy, ancient symbols and made a direct head-on run at its ancient cultural underpinnings. That some of it remained has more to do with accident and shear volume than intent. You need to understand that the Show they put on for the Olympics has about as much to do with the actual day-to-day sausage-making as is required to run the country as the previously mentioned Potemkin's Village had do do with life in Russia at the time. Of course, consider the actual consumption of all the tube amps in use at any given time as the numerator, and the total power produced at that same time as the denominator... draw your own conclusion. ***Culture it is, then.*** Wishful thinking, more like it. ***Wishful and confident, with good reason for both.*** And those reasons would be? They are still unstated. Domestic audio amplifiers may present more of a problem. If the champions of received wisdom have their way, and continue to argue that a domestic valve amp is not part of a musical instrument, then we will lose that cultural high ground which we might expect to be valued in a socialist world. If you think you want green reproduction, SS is the way to go. In the Audio World, the amplifier should be a means to listening and musical reproduction, not a contributor to it. In the Making of Music World the amplifier is very much part of the instrument. They are almost mutually (and musically) exclusive applications. To this: it is my personal belief that a musical amplifier should be capable of absolute neutrality - then "color added" by choice. But that is only me. Can anyone think of a justification for a domestic valve amp that will impress the Party? The Party, as with any other rigidly monotheistic oligarchy ***Oi! Less of your cold war blether. Atheistic and democratically centralist. please. Everyone can join the Party, and everyone can have an equal say in decisions through the Party structure. The most important difference between that and our very incomplete democracy is that, once those decisions are made, they must be carried out. Decisions are bottom-up, implementations are top-down.*** Not hardly "cold war blather" but an absolutely accurate description of "Communism" as it is practiced in China today. The "god" is the state, and all is subject to it. Rigid as no deviation is tolerated unless it creates a more powerful state - and that devolves to the ruling elite (oligarchy). ***Socialism, not Communism. Communism has no government. No state has ever claimed to be Communist, as far as I'm aware.*** Fine. Socialism then. Still a rigidly monotheistic oligarchy. ***Oligarchies are unelected and unaccountable and you may like the word but it simply doesn't apply to China. The best word for the Chinese system is the one they are happy we use, is most accurate, and which successfully distinguishes it from other political systems. The word is socialist. Anyone can join the Party and have the same discussion and voting rights, so it is not elitist. The state is not regarded as a god, but as a society. Can you show me any example of a Chinese official, or even any Chinese person, who actually has written or said that the state is god. Go on...you made that one up on the spur of the moment, didn't you?*** VOTING RIGHTS??? Well, in the words of Josef Stalin it is not the people who vote that count, it is the people who count the votes. Given the displacement of quite literally MILLIONS for the Olympics, both entirely without compensation and entirely without replacement housing "bottom up" decision making is not only wishful thinking, but complete and utter bull****. ***About as real as your pollution scare, when you said it would slow everyone down. One aspect of true democracy that requires careful management and broad understanding is that 1.299 billion games supporters outvotes 1 million removees. But collectively they have more sense and compassion than that, following much experience of the cost of creating disgruntled minorities. Same in most democracies. Do you really think there are millions of displaced people wandering about homeless. I really hope you aren't quite so stupid.*** Not quite wandering about just homeless. But wandering about homeless, jobless, and without prospects as their entire economic infrastructure was removed. Pretty much in camps and "relocation areas" and on the street. http://preciousmetal.wordpress.com/2...-40000-jailed/ http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/...advocates.html Many other articles to the same end. is interested in maintaining its primacy and making money towards maintaining its primacy. Show it a way to achieve both and it will be all over it like a cheap suit. ***The Party isn't primary. Historically, the people came first, and will always be primary. Party members are not generally wealthy, and development tends to be towards social wealth. Party officials I have met have always been fervent social engineers. However, times change and it will be interesting to see how the future of socialism unfolds.*** The "Party" may not be primary, true. It is the functional equivalent of the deity - the force that colors every aspect of life. Much as "God" is seldom primary even amongst those who claim to be believers - but more-or-less a hedged bet. Dialectic - again, last I looked it had to do with logical discussions. - any formal system of reasoning that arrives at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments - a contradiction of ideas that serves as the determining factor in their interaction; "this situation created the inner dialectic of American history" - of or relating to or employing dialectic; "the dialectical method" - A process of reasoning involving thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis: GWF HEGEL; loosely, any form of reasoning, logic, or discourse that uses dialog and questioning to arrive at truth. Somehow "truth" sneaks into the definition after all the rest of it. Now, despite the term "truth" having fallen out of favor of late as it has this awful way of limiting choices and demanding responsibility, it typically is based on actual facts and actual conditions and actual actions - real, not imagined, wished or desired. The reality on the ground in China is very much different than what they would have us believe - and certainly nothing like the show they put on recently. You might think I am cynical - I am hardly that. But I also have no use at all for Pollyanna in Politics. Democracy in any form exists only where there is massive wealth, and even then can be very spotty - Women did not get the right to vote in the US until the 20th century. And one might argue that universal suffrage did not occur until the 1960s with the Voting Rights Act. Switzerland did not give women the vote until 1971. And Socialism cannot exist in an environment where the greatest and least of the people are not within shouting distance of each other. Lots-O-Lip-Service but very damned little actual practice. China is about a socialist a society as are cats and mice. As long as the mice understand that their purpose is to provide for the cats, all is well and everyone is happy. That Uncle Harry or Great Aunt Esmerelda has been unavoidably and permanently detained is simply a natural part of life. In the truly immortal words of Solid Mahogany - The shortages will be divided among the peasants. Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA |
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