[Audio Empire]

Several weeks ago, I attended a regional Hi-Fi Show. It was held in a
medium-sized hotel near the International airport. In one of the Hotel's
several ballrooms, one of the larger area stereo salons was demonstrating,
what I found to be the real-sounding audio that I have ever heard.

The speakers, are of course, what did the trick. I think that most people who
post here will stipulate that for the most part, modern, well designed
amplifiers (with the possible exception of single-ended triode tube amps)
sound more alike than different, and what differences there are are quite
subtle.

The equipment was as follows:
Digital Front end - dCS "Puccini" CD/SACD player and "Puccini" U-Clock.
Preamp - VTL TL-7.5*Series II
Amp(s) - VTL Siegfried II Tubed power amps (800 Watts/each)
Speakers - Wilson Alexandria XLFs, Wilson 'Hammer of Thor' subwoofer.
There were other music sources as well, a new German Turntable, a computer
music server, but I'm going to stick with CD/SACD playback for this
discussion. Also I paid no attention to the oil-pipeline sized speaker cables
and interconnects that were used, because, assuming that they were of
sufficiently low impedance to carry the current required to drive the
speakers, they are a "don't care" as far as I'm concerned. They're just
"bling" and serve no useful purpose. My companion said they were MIT, and
I'll take his word for it.

I took with me several recordings that I have made over the years, and one of
them was an SACD of a big jazz band that I recorded in concert several years
ago.

This jazz concert is one of the best recordings I've ever made, and clearly
the best I've ever heard. So I figured that it would really reveal just how
good this half-million dollars worth of equipment would really sound. So I
asked Bea Manley, Luke Manly of VTL's diminutive, but charming wife, to play
a couple of cuts.

I was flabbergasted. I had sat in the audience of the hall in which this
concert would be recorded for several dress rehearsals, and while I
recognized from the outset how good the recording turned out, I'd never heard
it come anywhere close to how it sounded in the hall. This , of course, was
to be expected. the science and art of audio reproduction has a long way to
go before recorded will ever sound like live.

This came closer than anything I've ever heard. The only thing that gave away
the fact that I was listening to a reproduction of a live event and not the
event itself (from a listening perspective only, of course) were the
trumpets. For the most part, the Wilson Alexandria XLFs produced, in that
large ballroom, all the power and dynamic contrasts of the real thing. I've
NEVER heard that before. Like I said, the trumpets gave it away as merely
reproduction. They didn't sound live, just nearly so. Trumpets are pretty
nigh impossible to get right. They are usually the difference between real
and reproduced. Most instruments produce very weak harmonic above about 8KHz,
and therefore the highly attenuated harmonics of those instruments are fairly
easy for a good speaker system to reproduce. But if the harmonics are strong
(a trumpet has harmonics that are equally as strong as the fundamental all
the way up to 16 KHz or so) the small 1-2 " tweeters employed by practically
all speaker systems simply cannot produce these harmonics at the volume with
which they occur live. This tells almost any listener whether a trumpet is
reproduced or live. Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human
of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard.

The Wilson Alexandria XLFs are no exception. Over most of the spectrum, the
Wilsons are pretty much nonpareil. But they fall down when it comes to
trumpets, and a few other brass instruments. Still and all, it's the best
reproduction that I've ever heard from any stereo system, irrespective of
cost. Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the
Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. The only positive here is that I don't think that
one needs a pair of $60,000 VTL Siegfried II 800 Watt monoblocs to drive
them. They are so efficient that their minimum power requirement is but 15
Watts! I'd say that 150 Watts/channel would be more than sufficient to
achieve realistic levels of performance that would run you and probably your
neighbors out of the neighborhood!

Comments? Questions? Derisive laughter?

Audio_Empire

[Doug McDonald[_6_]]

On 8/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote:

This came closer than anything I've ever heard. The only thing that gave away
the fact that I was listening to a reproduction of a live event and not the
event itself (from a listening perspective only, of course) were the
trumpets. For the most part, the Wilson Alexandria XLFs produced, in that
large ballroom, all the power and dynamic contrasts of the real thing. I've
NEVER heard that before. Like I said, the trumpets gave it away as merely
reproduction. They didn't sound live, just nearly so. Trumpets are pretty
nigh impossible to get right. They are usually the difference between real
and reproduced. Most instruments produce very weak harmonic above about 8KHz,
and therefore the highly attenuated harmonics of those instruments are fairly
easy for a good speaker system to reproduce. But if the harmonics are strong
(a trumpet has harmonics that are equally as strong as the fundamental all
the way up to 16 KHz or so) the small 1-2 " tweeters employed by practically
all speaker systems simply cannot produce these harmonics at the volume with
which they occur live. This tells almost any listener whether a trumpet is
reproduced or live. Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human
of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard.


I take it you are saying that the tweeters were actually being overdriven,
and could not reproduce the peaks. Correct assumption?

Doug McDonald

[Audio Empire]

On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 05:03:05 -0700, Doug McDonald wrote
(in article ):

On 8/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote:

This came closer than anything I've ever heard. The only thing that gave
away
the fact that I was listening to a reproduction of a live event and not the
event itself (from a listening perspective only, of course) were the
trumpets. For the most part, the Wilson Alexandria XLFs produced, in that
large ballroom, all the power and dynamic contrasts of the real thing. I've
NEVER heard that before. Like I said, the trumpets gave it away as merely
reproduction. They didn't sound live, just nearly so. Trumpets are pretty
nigh impossible to get right. They are usually the difference between real
and reproduced. Most instruments produce very weak harmonic above about
8KHz,
and therefore the highly attenuated harmonics of those instruments are
fairly
easy for a good speaker system to reproduce. But if the harmonics are strong
(a trumpet has harmonics that are equally as strong as the fundamental all
the way up to 16 KHz or so) the small 1-2 " tweeters employed by practically
all speaker systems simply cannot produce these harmonics at the volume with
which they occur live. This tells almost any listener whether a trumpet is
reproduced or live. Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human
of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard.


I take it you are saying that the tweeters were actually being overdriven,
and could not reproduce the peaks. Correct assumption?

Doug McDonald


Not really. The tweeter thing is a theory of mine. It's just that tweeters
are small out of necessity in order to be fast, but they can't move as much
air as larger drivers or as is necessary to reproduce instruments with
high-level harmonic content above 8-10 KHz, even when playing at their
absolute loudest. Most instruments can be fairly realistically reproduced,
and that is because the high-frequency harmonics that they produce are
extremely attenuated compared to their fundamentals. Few instruments have the
strong harmonic content produced by a trumpet and perhaps a few other
instruments.

I don't know if you've ever had this experience before, but I have. I'm
walking a down a city street in a busy "entertainment" district of some place
like the French Quarter in New Orleans, or the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, You
pass a door to some establishment and the door opens for someone to enter of
leave. Instantly the music gets louder as you hear it through the open door.
Something tells you immediately, "that's live music playing in there!" it's
that unambiguous. There are no ifs, hesitations, or second guesses involved.
You KNOW it's live. (You pass the next door and as it opens, you think "PA
system or jukebox") No reproduction system I've ever heard can reproduce that
sensation, and after attending a seminar on how we hear music put on by
composer, musician and audio maven Tony Webber of Cary Audio, I now see why
(I've wondered about this for years) . He showed spectragraphs of various
instruments showing the frequency distribution of about a dozen instruments.
When he got to the trumpet, I had an epiphany. Most instruments he showed,
violin, flute, oboe, etc. had harmonics reaching up to above 15 KHz, but in
most instruments the high harmonics were much less than a third the amplitude
of the highest fundamental. When he put a slide up showing the trumpet, it
had high-frequency harmonics that were as loud as the fundamental all the way
to 20 KHz! That must be at least part of the reason why live music sounds the
way it way it does. Instruments with high level, high-frequency harmonic
content (cymbals, saxes, french horns, perhaps) just aren't being reproduced
by even the best of today's speakers with the harmonic content intact. Now,
perhaps they aren't being captured properly by the best microphones we can
build either, I don't know. But the next time you hear a trumpet being played
(even if it's by a mariach band in your local Mexican restaurant ) listen to
the trumpet player for harmonic content and shear PRESENCE. No stereo system
can do that. After hearing the best and most expensive speakers on the market
(Wilson Alexandria XLFs, Magico Q5s, YG Acoustics Anat III, MBL MBL
Radialstrahler 101E Mk.II, M-L CLX,) I'm convinced that this is the final
bottleneck for getting absolute audio accuracy from hi-fi equipment. I
believe that the day we can't discern the difference between a live trumpet
and a recorded one, that's the day we'll be "there"!

[Dick Pierce[_2_]]

Audio Empire wrote:
On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 05:03:05 -0700, Doug McDonald wrote
(in article ):
On 8/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote:
Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human
of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard.

I take it you are saying that the tweeters were actually being
overdriven, and could not reproduce the peaks. Correct assumption?

Not really. The tweeter thing is a theory of mine. It's just that tweeters
are small out of necessity in order to be fast, but they can't move as much
air as larger drivers or as is necessary to reproduce instruments with
high-level harmonic content above 8-10 KHz, even when playing at their
absolute loudest.

The quantity that determines how loud something is "volume
velocity," not simply volume or displacement, which is what
most people are really talking about when they say "moving air."

For a given diaphragm area and a fixed linear displacement,
the sound pressure generated goes as the square of the
frequency. Conversely, for a given diameter, the amount
of excursion needed to radiate a certain sound pressure
level goes as the inverse square of frequency.

Consider the following: a 10" woofer moving about 0.08"
at 50 Hz generates a sound pressure level of about 100 dB
1 meter away. That same woofer, if it COULD, at that
excursion, would be producing 192 dB SPL. It'd need in
the realm of several billion watts of power to do so.
This suggests the obvious: woofers do not good tweeters
make.

Now, take our lonely little, diminutive 1" tweeter. At
10,000 Hz (10 kHz, to reproduce that same 100 dB SPL
1 meter away, would have to move all of 0.0002". That's
a mere 200 millionths of an inch, or nearly 400 times
LESS than the woofer (at 50Hz) to produce the same sound
pressure level.

The reason is, again, that the amount of sound for a given
diameter and excursion, goes as the SQUARE of frequency
or, equivalently, the amount of excursion needed for a
given sound pressure level goes as the inverse square of
frequency.

10,000 Hz is 200 times the frequency of 50 Hz, and the
square of that is 40,000. But there's a factor of 100
difference in the emissive area between a 10" woofer and
a 1" tweeter. It therefore goes that a 1" tweeter
requires 100/40,000 times the excursion at 10 kHz that
a 10" woofer does at 50 Hz.

Most instruments can be fairly realistically reproduced,
and that is because the high-frequency harmonics that they produce are
extremely attenuated compared to their fundamentals.

Except that for most tweeters, the limitation in output comes
not at the HIGH end of their range, but at the LOW end.

Once again, remember that the excursion, for a given emissive
area and sound pressure, goes as the inverse square of
frequency. In order to produce that same 100 dB SPL at, say
2 kHz that it can at 10 kHz, the tweeter has to move
(10 kHz/2kHz)^2 or 25 times as much at 2 kHz as it does at
10 kHz.

So, counter to your intuition (and, for that matter, many
peoples' intuition) producing the high frequency stuff is
EASY compared to the low frequency stuff.

"Yes, but," you or someone else might say, "it's all about
how FAST the tweeter is." Well, it turns out that while that
sounds intuitively correct, it's physically wrong. For the
same sound pressure level, the linear velocity of a given
diaphragm goes as the reciprocal of frequency, NOT directly
as frequency. That means that the same tweeter that's moving
X cm/sec at 2 kHz only has to move 1/5th that speed at 10 kHz
to produce the same sound pressure level.

In fact, we can directly calculate what those velocities
are by differentiating the excursion WRT time. Doing so
gives us an equation for peak velocity of Vpk = wX,
where w is radian frequency (2 pi times F) and x is the
excursion. At 10 kHz:

Vpk = 2 pi 10 kHz * 0.0002 in
Vpk ~= 13.2 in/sec

while at 2 kHz, and the same 100 dB sound pressure level:

Vpk = 2 pi 2 kHz * 0.0053 in
Vpk ~= 66 in/sec

"But why, then" it might be asked, "don't tweeters just keep
going up and up in frequency if they have an excursion that
goes as the inverse square of frequency and a velocity that
goes as the inverse of frequency?"

Because there are other limitations that come to play at high
frequencies. The first is physical size: as the wavelengths
get shorter at high frequencies, and as they start to approach
the size of the radiating area, you now get to the point where
one point in the diaphragm is a significant portion of a
wavelength (or, at high enough frequencies, MANY wavelengths)
distant from another part. Even assuming the radiating area
was infinitely rigid (reality is FAR from that), those path
length differences would lead to cancellations.

Second is the fact that the diaphragm is anything but rigid.
At high enough frequencies, that diaphragm is doing anything
BUT moving as a rigid piston.

Third is electrical: all loudspeaker drivers exhibit elect-
rically reactive properties whose effects come to dominate
as the frequency goes higher. Actual power can only be
produced through resistive loads: a portion of the resistive
load of ANY driver of ANY kind is the reflected resistive
portion of the acoustical radiation impedance. As the series
inductive reactance of a voice coil increases with increasing
frequency, or as the shunt capacitance of an electrostatic
system decreases with increasing frequency, the effect is
an inevitable low-pass filter effect.

Few instruments have the strong harmonic content produced
by a trumpet and perhaps a few other instruments.

Look first at what made it through the air from the
bell of the trumpet to the diaphragm of the microphone (look,
specifically, at the absorptive attenuation of air above 20 kHz).
Then look at what came out the the microphones that managed
to pick up what was left. These two factors alone count for an
enormous amount of very high-frequency losses in recording.

--
+--------------------------------+
+ Dick Pierce |
+ Professional Audio Development |
+--------------------------------+

[Dick Pierce[_2_]]

Dick Pierce wrote:
Consider the following: a 10" woofer moving about 0.08"
at 50 Hz generates a sound pressure level of about 100 dB
1 meter away. That same woofer, if it COULD, at that
excursion, would be producing 192 dB SPL. It'd need in
the realm of several billion watts of power to do so.
This suggests the obvious: woofers do not good tweeters
make.

What I meant to type in the second sentence was:

"That same woofer, if it COULD, at that excursion,
would be producing 192 dB SPL at 10 kHz."

Sorry for the confusion.

--
+--------------------------------+
+ Dick Pierce |
+ Professional Audio Development |
+--------------------------------+

[Audio Empire]

On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 05:53:17 -0700, Dick Pierce wrote
(in article ):

Audio Empire wrote:
On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 05:03:05 -0700, Doug McDonald wrote
(in article ):
On 8/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote:
Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a human
of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard.

I take it you are saying that the tweeters were actually being
overdriven, and could not reproduce the peaks. Correct assumption?

Not really. The tweeter thing is a theory of mine. It's just that tweeters
are small out of necessity in order to be fast, but they can't move as much
air as larger drivers or as is necessary to reproduce instruments with
high-level harmonic content above 8-10 KHz, even when playing at their
absolute loudest.

The quantity that determines how loud something is "volume
velocity," not simply volume or displacement, which is what
most people are really talking about when they say "moving air."

For a given diaphragm area and a fixed linear displacement,
the sound pressure generated goes as the square of the
frequency. Conversely, for a given diameter, the amount
of excursion needed to radiate a certain sound pressure
level goes as the inverse square of frequency.

Consider the following: a 10" woofer moving about 0.08"
at 50 Hz generates a sound pressure level of about 100 dB
1 meter away. That same woofer, if it COULD, at that
excursion, would be producing 192 dB SPL. It'd need in
the realm of several billion watts of power to do so.
This suggests the obvious: woofers do not good tweeters
make.

Now, take our lonely little, diminutive 1" tweeter. At
10,000 Hz (10 kHz, to reproduce that same 100 dB SPL
1 meter away, would have to move all of 0.0002". That's
a mere 200 millionths of an inch, or nearly 400 times
LESS than the woofer (at 50Hz) to produce the same sound
pressure level.

The reason is, again, that the amount of sound for a given
diameter and excursion, goes as the SQUARE of frequency
or, equivalently, the amount of excursion needed for a
given sound pressure level goes as the inverse square of
frequency.

10,000 Hz is 200 times the frequency of 50 Hz, and the
square of that is 40,000. But there's a factor of 100
difference in the emissive area between a 10" woofer and
a 1" tweeter. It therefore goes that a 1" tweeter
requires 100/40,000 times the excursion at 10 kHz that
a 10" woofer does at 50 Hz.

Most instruments can be fairly realistically reproduced,
and that is because the high-frequency harmonics that they produce are
extremely attenuated compared to their fundamentals.

Except that for most tweeters, the limitation in output comes
not at the HIGH end of their range, but at the LOW end.

Once again, remember that the excursion, for a given emissive
area and sound pressure, goes as the inverse square of
frequency. In order to produce that same 100 dB SPL at, say
2 kHz that it can at 10 kHz, the tweeter has to move
(10 kHz/2kHz)^2 or 25 times as much at 2 kHz as it does at
10 kHz.

So, counter to your intuition (and, for that matter, many
peoples' intuition) producing the high frequency stuff is
EASY compared to the low frequency stuff.

"Yes, but," you or someone else might say, "it's all about
how FAST the tweeter is." Well, it turns out that while that
sounds intuitively correct, it's physically wrong. For the
same sound pressure level, the linear velocity of a given
diaphragm goes as the reciprocal of frequency, NOT directly
as frequency. That means that the same tweeter that's moving
X cm/sec at 2 kHz only has to move 1/5th that speed at 10 kHz
to produce the same sound pressure level.

In fact, we can directly calculate what those velocities
are by differentiating the excursion WRT time. Doing so
gives us an equation for peak velocity of Vpk = wX,
where w is radian frequency (2 pi times F) and x is the
excursion. At 10 kHz:

Vpk = 2 pi 10 kHz * 0.0002 in
Vpk ~= 13.2 in/sec

while at 2 kHz, and the same 100 dB sound pressure level:

Vpk = 2 pi 2 kHz * 0.0053 in
Vpk ~= 66 in/sec

"But why, then" it might be asked, "don't tweeters just keep
going up and up in frequency if they have an excursion that
goes as the inverse square of frequency and a velocity that
goes as the inverse of frequency?"

Because there are other limitations that come to play at high
frequencies. The first is physical size: as the wavelengths
get shorter at high frequencies, and as they start to approach
the size of the radiating area, you now get to the point where
one point in the diaphragm is a significant portion of a
wavelength (or, at high enough frequencies, MANY wavelengths)
distant from another part. Even assuming the radiating area
was infinitely rigid (reality is FAR from that), those path
length differences would lead to cancellations.

Second is the fact that the diaphragm is anything but rigid.
At high enough frequencies, that diaphragm is doing anything
BUT moving as a rigid piston.

Third is electrical: all loudspeaker drivers exhibit elect-
rically reactive properties whose effects come to dominate
as the frequency goes higher. Actual power can only be
produced through resistive loads: a portion of the resistive
load of ANY driver of ANY kind is the reflected resistive
portion of the acoustical radiation impedance. As the series
inductive reactance of a voice coil increases with increasing
frequency, or as the shunt capacitance of an electrostatic
system decreases with increasing frequency, the effect is
an inevitable low-pass filter effect.

Few instruments have the strong harmonic content produced
by a trumpet and perhaps a few other instruments.

Look first at what made it through the air from the
bell of the trumpet to the diaphragm of the microphone (look,
specifically, at the absorptive attenuation of air above 20 kHz).
Then look at what came out the the microphones that managed
to pick up what was left. These two factors alone count for an
enormous amount of very high-frequency losses in recording.



Well, thank you for that exacting primer on how tweeters work. It was very
informative. But it would have served this discussion better to explain to us
what the mechanism is that keeps even the finest speakers from being able to
convincingly reproduce trumpets and some other instruments. Most of us know
what these instruments sound like live - even in a concert hall, or even a
band concert in the park where there is some distance between the instrument
and out ears. No speaker ever made gets it right. The fact that a $195,000.00
pair of speakers can get just about every other aspect of reproduction
correct and still not be able to come within a country mile of getting the
trumpets to sound real must have a cause, some limitation that can't be
overcome by any current transducer technology.

[Arny Krueger]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

Well, thank you for that exacting primer on how tweeters work. It was
very
informative. But it would have served this discussion better to explain to
us
what the mechanism is that keeps even the finest speakers from being able
to
convincingly reproduce trumpets and some other instruments.

Short answer - there are two rooms are involved and they create the sticking
point.

When you reproduce a recording of a horn or other musical instrument, you
don't reproduce the horn, you try to reproduce it and its effects of the
room it is in.

The exception would be a recording of a horn that was made in an anechoic
chamber, the recording then played in an anechoic chamber. Those can be made
to work fairly well and realistically, but of course nobody is interested in
that.

The horn does not just create a sound vector (intensity versus time) but
instead it creates a sound field (which may be represented by an infinitude
of vectors).

The speaker does not create just the sound of the horn, but it stimulates
the room to make a bunch of other sounds. So there are infinity times
infinity other variables, and fools that we are, we try to send them from
place to place using a small number of signals.

[Gary Eickmeier]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...
Several weeks ago, I attended a regional Hi-Fi Show. It was held in a
medium-sized hotel near the International airport. In one of the Hotel's
several ballrooms, one of the larger area stereo salons was demonstrating,
what I found to be the real-sounding audio that I have ever heard.

snip

This came closer than anything I've ever heard. The only thing that gave
away
the fact that I was listening to a reproduction of a live event and not
the
event itself (from a listening perspective only, of course) were the
trumpets. For the most part, the Wilson Alexandria XLFs produced, in that
large ballroom, all the power and dynamic contrasts of the real thing.
I've
NEVER heard that before. Like I said, the trumpets gave it away as merely
reproduction. They didn't sound live, just nearly so. Trumpets are pretty
nigh impossible to get right. They are usually the difference between real
and reproduced. Most instruments produce very weak harmonic above about
8KHz,
and therefore the highly attenuated harmonics of those instruments are
fairly
easy for a good speaker system to reproduce. But if the harmonics are
strong
(a trumpet has harmonics that are equally as strong as the fundamental all
the way up to 16 KHz or so) the small 1-2 " tweeters employed by
practically
all speaker systems simply cannot produce these harmonics at the volume
with
which they occur live. This tells almost any listener whether a trumpet is
reproduced or live. Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a
human
of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard.

The Wilson Alexandria XLFs are no exception. Over most of the spectrum,
the
Wilsons are pretty much nonpareil. But they fall down when it comes to
trumpets, and a few other brass instruments. Still and all, it's the best
reproduction that I've ever heard from any stereo system, irrespective of
cost. Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the
Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. The only positive here is that I don't think
that
one needs a pair of $60,000 VTL Siegfried II 800 Watt monoblocs to drive
them. They are so efficient that their minimum power requirement is but 15
Watts! I'd say that 150 Watts/channel would be more than sufficient to
achieve realistic levels of performance that would run you and probably
your
neighbors out of the neighborhood!

Comments? Questions? Derisive laughter?

Dear AE -

You probably knew you might hear from me on this. You would also be
surprised to read that I agree with your observations 100%.

Recall that my EEFs (Essential Elements of Fidelity) are Physical Size,
Power, Waveform Fidelity in the electronic domain - (freedom from distortion
and noise and flat response), and Spatial Characteristics. I, too, have
noticed many times that in a large auditorium the reproduction sounds much
more realistic because the acoustics and physical size of the playback space
match up a lot better with the original venue and sound more like the music
is being heard in a real space, because it IS being heard in a real space -
a space much more like the real thing than you smaller home listening room.

This magic is not due to anything that Dave Wilson did with the design, but
rather in spite of it. Your remark about the horns kind of shows this. I am
thinking that the problem with horn repro has less to do with the POWER of
the tweeters and more to do with the radiation pattern not matching the rest
of the system by the time the frequencies get up that high. There can be a
disconnect when the radiation pattern narrows as frequencies go up. In fact
nothing gives away the "speakery" sound as opposed to live faster than
having this megaphone effect at the high freqs. Maybe if he had chosen HORN
tweeters (ha ha) there would be less disparity in the acoustic power output,
but I think he should also put some of them on the other faces of the
speaker, especially the sides, to even out the power response throughout the
spectrum.

Summary, biggest factor was physical size, he had plenty of power, no
problem with waveform fidelity, and mitigating factor spatial
characteristics and possibly power in high frequencies.

Gary Eickmeier

PS - the others may not realize that I have a copy of your jazz recording,
just played it yesterday (again), and it IS possibly the best I have in my
collection. Thank you for that!

[Audio Empire]

On Sun, 26 Aug 2012 07:13:56 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...
Several weeks ago, I attended a regional Hi-Fi Show. It was held in a
medium-sized hotel near the International airport. In one of the Hotel's
several ballrooms, one of the larger area stereo salons was demonstrating,
what I found to be the real-sounding audio that I have ever heard.

snip

This came closer than anything I've ever heard. The only thing that gave
away
the fact that I was listening to a reproduction of a live event and not
the
event itself (from a listening perspective only, of course) were the
trumpets. For the most part, the Wilson Alexandria XLFs produced, in that
large ballroom, all the power and dynamic contrasts of the real thing.
I've
NEVER heard that before. Like I said, the trumpets gave it away as merely
reproduction. They didn't sound live, just nearly so. Trumpets are pretty
nigh impossible to get right. They are usually the difference between real
and reproduced. Most instruments produce very weak harmonic above about
8KHz,
and therefore the highly attenuated harmonics of those instruments are
fairly
easy for a good speaker system to reproduce. But if the harmonics are
strong
(a trumpet has harmonics that are equally as strong as the fundamental all
the way up to 16 KHz or so) the small 1-2 " tweeters employed by
practically
all speaker systems simply cannot produce these harmonics at the volume
with
which they occur live. This tells almost any listener whether a trumpet is
reproduced or live. Tweeters just can't move the volume of air that a
human
of trumpet player can, and the difference cane be easily heard.

The Wilson Alexandria XLFs are no exception. Over most of the spectrum,
the
Wilsons are pretty much nonpareil. But they fall down when it comes to
trumpets, and a few other brass instruments. Still and all, it's the best
reproduction that I've ever heard from any stereo system, irrespective of
cost. Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the
Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. The only positive here is that I don't think
that
one needs a pair of $60,000 VTL Siegfried II 800 Watt monoblocs to drive
them. They are so efficient that their minimum power requirement is but 15
Watts! I'd say that 150 Watts/channel would be more than sufficient to
achieve realistic levels of performance that would run you and probably
your
neighbors out of the neighborhood!

Comments? Questions? Derisive laughter?

Dear AE -

You probably knew you might hear from me on this. You would also be
surprised to read that I agree with your observations 100%.

Recall that my EEFs (Essential Elements of Fidelity) are Physical Size,
Power, Waveform Fidelity in the electronic domain - (freedom from distortion
and noise and flat response), and Spatial Characteristics. I, too, have
noticed many times that in a large auditorium the reproduction sounds much
more realistic because the acoustics and physical size of the playback space
match up a lot better with the original venue and sound more like the music
is being heard in a real space, because it IS being heard in a real space -
a space much more like the real thing than you smaller home listening room.

This magic is not due to anything that Dave Wilson did with the design, but
rather in spite of it. Your remark about the horns kind of shows this. I am
thinking that the problem with horn repro has less to do with the POWER of
the tweeters and more to do with the radiation pattern not matching the rest
of the system by the time the frequencies get up that high. There can be a
disconnect when the radiation pattern narrows as frequencies go up. In fact
nothing gives away the "speakery" sound as opposed to live faster than
having this megaphone effect at the high freqs. Maybe if he had chosen HORN
tweeters (ha ha) there would be less disparity in the acoustic power output,
but I think he should also put some of them on the other faces of the
speaker, especially the sides, to even out the power response throughout the
spectrum.

Summary, biggest factor was physical size, he had plenty of power, no
problem with waveform fidelity, and mitigating factor spatial
characteristics and possibly power in high frequencies.

Gary Eickmeier

PS - the others may not realize that I have a copy of your jazz recording,
just played it yesterday (again), and it IS possibly the best I have in my
collection. Thank you for that!



Well, while those Wilson Audio speakers were definitely the "best of show"
Their longsuit seemed to be that they excelled at getting the dynamics of
live music correct. In an unfamiliar venue such as half of a hotel ballroom,
any observations that I might make about imaging and soundstage (they seemed
to do that very realistically) would be tempered by my unfamiliarity with the
room and the equipment. So I make no claims there. The sound was big and
real-sounding from a standpoint of my familiarity with the source material
and nothing else. The speakers are huge. The Alexandrias, each had two
woofers, one a 13" and the other a 15". The "Thor's Hammer" subwoofers had
two woofers as well, both 15". The three speaker systems moved a LOT of air
and the bottom descended to 10 Hz!

Thanks Gary, for the kind words about my jazz concert recording.

Audio_Empire

[Gary Eickmeier]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

Well, while those Wilson Audio speakers were definitely the "best of show"
Their longsuit seemed to be that they excelled at getting the dynamics of
live music correct. In an unfamiliar venue such as half of a hotel
ballroom,
any observations that I might make about imaging and soundstage (they
seemed
to do that very realistically) would be tempered by my unfamiliarity with
the
room and the equipment. So I make no claims there. The sound was big and
real-sounding from a standpoint of my familiarity with the source material
and nothing else. The speakers are huge. The Alexandrias, each had two
woofers, one a 13" and the other a 15". The "Thor's Hammer" subwoofers had
two woofers as well, both 15". The three speaker systems moved a LOT of
air
and the bottom descended to 10 Hz!

I'm beginning to agree with your idea about the dynamics of the high freqs.
I read Dick Pierce's explanation, which was great, but again maybe neither
of you is taking power response into the equation. Maybe the speakers were
voiced with a microphone at 1 meter on axis etc etc, and so in a large room
the high freqs lose oomph and power compared to the more omnidirectional
lower freqs. Just a guess. Thinking about a typical ribbon tweeter a'la
Magnepan, how does that delicate little fellow have the kind of dynamics
required for live sound?

But what I really have to contribute to the discussion is the headphone
solution. How about finding a pair of the best electrostatic headphones (or
other highly respected transducers) and listening to the horns and
everything else through those, and seeing if something gets lost, frequency
wise or dynamics wise, by listening to speakers? No, it won't tell you
anything about stereo imaging, or bigness of the soundstage and similar, but
just to see if the horn problem resides in the tweeters or in the recording.

Jenn's remark about not being impressed with anything at the show may be due
to not having your recording at hand, which is more food for thought.

Gary Eickmeier

[Dick Pierce[_2_]]

Gary Eickmeier wrote:
I'm beginning to agree with your idea about the dynamics of the high freqs.
I read Dick Pierce's explanation, which was great, but again maybe neither
of you is taking power response into the equation.

I was describing total acoustic power out as a function of
frequency, emissive area and excursion within the piston
region of operation (in essence, wavelengths longer than
the dimensions of the diaphragm). That, by definition, is
power response.

--
+--------------------------------+
+ Dick Pierce |
+ Professional Audio Development |
+--------------------------------+

[Audio Empire]

On Fri, 31 Aug 2012 03:51:52 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

Well, while those Wilson Audio speakers were definitely the "best of show"
Their longsuit seemed to be that they excelled at getting the dynamics of
live music correct. In an unfamiliar venue such as half of a hotel
ballroom,
any observations that I might make about imaging and soundstage (they
seemed
to do that very realistically) would be tempered by my unfamiliarity with
the
room and the equipment. So I make no claims there. The sound was big and
real-sounding from a standpoint of my familiarity with the source material
and nothing else. The speakers are huge. The Alexandrias, each had two
woofers, one a 13" and the other a 15". The "Thor's Hammer" subwoofers had
two woofers as well, both 15". The three speaker systems moved a LOT of
air
and the bottom descended to 10 Hz!

I'm beginning to agree with your idea about the dynamics of the high freqs.
I read Dick Pierce's explanation, which was great, but again maybe neither
of you is taking power response into the equation. Maybe the speakers were
voiced with a microphone at 1 meter on axis etc etc, and so in a large room
the high freqs lose oomph and power compared to the more omnidirectional
lower freqs. Just a guess. Thinking about a typical ribbon tweeter a'la
Magnepan, how does that delicate little fellow have the kind of dynamics
required for live sound?

According to Pierce's explanation (which seemed to make sense physics and
maths-wise) it doesn't need to. But obviously, something's missing. speakers
simply cannot reproduce that sense of "aliveness" that is imparted on the
listener by live instruments. If one can walk down a street, pass a venue
where real music is being played, and be able to TELL INSTANTLY as one
passes, from a momentarily open door, that a real band is playing unamplified
music inside, then it's obvious that speakers are missing something in their
attempt to reproduce a musical waveform.

But what I really have to contribute to the discussion is the headphone
solution. How about finding a pair of the best electrostatic headphones (or
other highly respected transducers) and listening to the horns and
everything else through those, and seeing if something gets lost, frequency
wise or dynamics wise, by listening to speakers? No, it won't tell you
anything about stereo imaging, or bigness of the soundstage and similar, but
just to see if the horn problem resides in the tweeters or in the recording.

Interesting thought. I see where you're coming from, but I've tried that too.
Headphones, even the most expensive Stax, while they sound very good, don't
produce any more of a realistic rendering of instruments like brass and
drum-kits than do speakers. So, that doesn't seem to work either.

Jenn's remark about not being impressed with anything at the show may be due
to not having your recording at hand, which is more food for thought.

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

Gary Eickmeier

[Gary Eickmeier]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crank it up.

Gary Eickmeier

[Jenn[_2_]]

In article ,
Audio Empire wrote:

On Fri, 31 Aug 2012 03:51:52 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ):

Jenn's remark about not being impressed with anything at the show may be due
to not having your recording at hand, which is more food for thought.

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

Oh, I wouldn't say that I'm jaded at all. I heard things that impressed
me at the shows, but they weren't the huge buck systems, which were more
often that not, playing way too loudly for my taste. The KEF Blades
were indeed wonderful, and as I mentioned, I loved the little LS5s. I'm
encouraged by what can be had for really reasonable money these days
(including in the analogue area), but I'm also concerned about where the
prices are on the upper end these days.

--
www.jennifermartinmusic.com

[cjt]

On 08/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote:
snip Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the
Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. snip

Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live
performances. That would support the music, which buying the speakers
does not.

[Audio Empire]

On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 05:53:32 -0700, cjt wrote
(in article ):

On 08/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote:
snip Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the
Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. snip

Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live
performances. That would support the music, which buying the speakers
does not.

Well, you see, the fact is, that most people who could afford speakers that
expensive (not to mention the ancillary equipment to go with them) probably
does attend live concerts as well. One does not exclude the other. There are
a large number of people in this world who have so much money, that the price
of a $195,000 dollar pair of speakers, or a half-million dollar automobile,
for that matter, is just pocket change.

[Robert Peirce]

In article ,
cjt wrote:

Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live
performances. That would support the music, which buying the speakers
does not.

I used to attend live jazz concerts. Then they started to amp them up.
The sound at home became better than the sound in the hall. What really
irritated me was the hall was fairly small and didn't need any
amplification.

I've had similar experiences with musicals so I stopped going.

So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think it
is only a matter of time.

[Scott[_6_]]

On Aug 28, 7:03=A0am, Robert Peirce wrote:
In article ,

=A0cjt wrote:
Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live
performances. =A0That would support the music, which buying the speaker=
s
does not.

I used to attend live jazz concerts. =A0Then they started to amp them up.
The sound at home became better than the sound in the hall. =A0What reall=
y
irritated me was the hall was fairly small and didn't need any
amplification.

I've had similar experiences with musicals so I stopped going.

So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think it
is only a matter of time.

I wouldn't worry so much about classical music being amplified. There
has been a wonderful movement in modern concert hall design and in the
past 10 years there have been a substantial number of new concert
halls all over the world that offer new levels of excellence in
acoustics.

[Dick Pierce[_2_]]

Scott wrote:
On Aug 28, 7:03 am, Robert Peirce wrote:
So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think it
is only a matter of time.

I wouldn't worry so much about classical music being amplified. There
has been a wonderful movement in modern concert hall design and in the
past 10 years there have been a substantial number of new concert
halls all over the world that offer new levels of excellence in
acoustics.

That's excellent news!

I can now take the quarter million dollars I don't
have to spend on wicked expensive speakers and
instead not have it to spend traveling to all these
new conceert halls all over the world that offer
new levels of excellence!





Oh, for the smiley challenged:

:-(


--
+--------------------------------+
+ Dick Pierce |
+ Professional Audio Development |
+--------------------------------+

[Scott[_6_]]

On Aug 28, 9:42=A0am, Dick Pierce wrote:
Scott wrote:
On Aug 28, 7:03 am, Robert Peirce wrote:
So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think i=
t
is only a matter of time.

I wouldn't worry so much about classical music being amplified. There
has been a wonderful movement in modern concert hall design and in the
past 10 years there have been a substantial number of new concert
halls all over the world that offer new levels of excellence in
acoustics.

That's excellent news!

I can now take the quarter million dollars I don't
have to spend on wicked expensive speakers and
instead not have it to spend traveling to all these
new conceert halls all over the world that offer
new levels of excellence!

Oh, for the smiley challenged:

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 :-(


Well, for those interested in live classical music it is excellent
news. Yeah it's a big world and not many of us are going to go on
world tours of concert halls but the real world effect of these new
halls is very important for classical music. As a Los Angeles resident
I have had the pleasure of going to concerts in the new Performing
Arts center at Soka University.

http://www.soka.edu/about_soka/our_c...ts-Center.aspx

And I will be attending concerts at two other new facilities between
now and March in the Bay Area and in Las Vegas. between these three
facilities and of course our treasured state of the art home of the
L.A. Phil, Disney Hall I have access to an unprecedented quantity of
top quality live classical concerts. And I am going to all these
concerts for far less than a quarter of a million dollars.

http://www.starkinsider.com/2012/05/...d-santa-rosa-=
symphony-partner-with-carnegie-hall.html

http://www.thesmithcenter.com/about/

The fact is the more of these state of the art concert halls we have
around the world the better it will be for the health and well being
of classical music as living art form. Trickle down economics so to
speak. It's not all that hard to figure out. It's all part of the
infrastructure needed to facilitate the existence of great classical
music. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how this has helped
facilitate the amazing levels of great classical music those of us
here on the west coast have enjoyed over the past 10 years or so.

I speak of my experience here in L.A. because that is where I live.
But this phenomenon has not been limited to L.A. or the west coast. It
is happening all over the world. And it is a good thing.

And of course the real reason it does not cost me a quarter million
dollars to enjoy all this amazing live classical music is due to the
folks who donate massive amounts of money to these programs.

[Audio Empire]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:03:41 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ):

On Aug 28, 7:03am, Robert Peirce wrote:
In article ,

cjt wrote:
Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live
performances. That would support the music, which buying the speakers
does not.

I used to attend live jazz concerts. Then they started to amp them up.
The sound at home became better than the sound in the hall. What really
irritated me was the hall was fairly small and didn't need any
amplification.

I've had similar experiences with musicals so I stopped going.

So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think it
is only a matter of time.

I wouldn't worry so much about classical music being amplified. There
has been a wonderful movement in modern concert hall design and in the
past 10 years there have been a substantial number of new concert
halls all over the world that offer new levels of excellence in
acoustics.


I don't think that matters. I've been in wonderful sounding venues that
absolutely had no NEED for sound reinforcement, but used it anyway because
"it was there" (with pop and rock, with their electronic instruments it's
essential because much of what they do doesn't exist in real space).

Because most modern pop recordings that one buys are acoustically, horribly
compressed, it is assumed that what the listener wants to hear is music that
has no dynamic range and is the same level (loud) all the time. So to make
the "live" event sound more like a recording concert organizers and
performers insist on gain riding sound reinforcement.

I once attended a concert by a jazz quartet that was NOT amplified. As we
were leaving I heard some young attendee remark to his companion, "It was a
good concert, but I wished it had been louder. Why didn't they use sound
reinforcement". IOW, this youngster EXPECTED it and was disappointed that it
was not employed.

[Scott[_6_]]

On Aug 28, 4:03=A0pm, Audio Empire wrote:
On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:03:41 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ):









On Aug 28, 7:03am, Robert Peirce wrote:
In article ,

cjt wrote:
Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending liv=
e
performances. That would support the music, which buying the speakers
does not.

I used to attend live jazz concerts. Then they started to amp them up.
The sound at home became better than the sound in the hall. What reall=
y
irritated me was the hall was fairly small and didn't need any
amplification.

I've had similar experiences with musicals so I stopped going.

So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think =
it
is only a matter of time.

I wouldn't worry so much about classical music being amplified. There
has been a wonderful movement in modern concert hall design and in the
past 10 years there have been a substantial number of new concert
halls all over the world that offer new levels of excellence in
acoustics.

I don't think that matters. I've been in wonderful sounding venues that
absolutely had no NEED for sound reinforcement, but used it anyway becaus=
e
"it was there" (with pop and rock, with their electronic instruments it's
essential because much of what they do doesn't exist in real space).

it isn't there in any of the Halls I mentioned. And there is pretty
much no chance of it being there anytime in the future.


Because most modern pop recordings that one buys are acoustically, horrib=
ly
compressed, it is assumed that what the listener wants to hear is music t=
hat
has no dynamic range and is the same level (loud) all the time. So to mak=
e
the "live" event sound more like a recording concert =A0organizers and
performers insist on gain riding sound reinforcement.

How on earth is this going to affect the classical concert going
audiences?


I once attended a concert by a jazz quartet that was NOT amplified. As we
were leaving I heard some young attendee remark to his companion, "It was=
a
good concert, but I wished it had been louder. Why didn't they use sound
reinforcement". IOW, this youngster EXPECTED it and was disappointed that=
it
was not employed.

Clearly it wasn't at Disney Hall. And that is part of the point. These
state of the art facilities are the perfect cure for any demands for
sound reinforcement. Not that I see many classical concert goers
making such demands.

[Audio Empire]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 07:03:38 -0700, Robert Peirce wrote
(in article ):

In article ,
cjt wrote:

Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live
performances. That would support the music, which buying the speakers
does not.

I used to attend live jazz concerts. Then they started to amp them up.
The sound at home became better than the sound in the hall. What really
irritated me was the hall was fairly small and didn't need any
amplification.

I've had similar experiences with musicals so I stopped going.

So far classical music seems to have remained unamplified but I think it
is only a matter of time.


Here we are in complete agreement. Why go to hear "live musicians" when all
you are listening to is a set of PA speakers. If I want to listen to
speakers, I'll stay home where my listening chain (amps, speakers) is far
better than those of even the most elaborate of public address systems. I
have attended so-called live concerts where I've turned around and left
because I saw a bevy of microphones on stage and stacks of speakers near by.
And you're right, it's only a matter of time before the PA craze hits
symphony orchestras too. In fact is some locals, it probably already has.
Bah!

[Andrew Haley]

Audio Empire wrote:

Here we are in complete agreement. Why go to hear "live musicians"
when all you are listening to is a set of PA speakers.

Because it's a social experience. You're there, along with many other
people and the musicians. It's all about the relationship between
performers and audience, regardless of the presence of sound
reinforcement: the musicians want to delight, and the audience want to
be delighted.

Andrew.

[Arny Krueger]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

Here we are in complete agreement. Why go to hear "live musicians" when
all
you are listening to is a set of PA speakers. If I want to listen to
speakers, I'll stay home where my listening chain (amps, speakers) is far
better than those of even the most elaborate of public address systems. I
have attended so-called live concerts where I've turned around and left
because I saw a bevy of microphones on stage and stacks of speakers near
by.
And you're right, it's only a matter of time before the PA craze hits
symphony orchestras too. In fact is some locals, it probably already has.
Bah!

Good point. Someone took me to a concert of *name* artists. The alleged
concert was composed of live segements, karoke segments and video segments.
In no case was the sound or video as good as my home stereo which is itself
not elaborate.

[Scott[_6_]]

On Aug 30, 5:37*am, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Audio Empire" wrote in message

...

Here we are in complete agreement. Why go to hear "live musicians" when
all
you are listening to is a set of PA speakers. If I want to listen to
speakers, I'll stay home where my listening chain (amps, speakers) is far
better than those of even the most elaborate of public address systems. I
have attended so-called live concerts where I've turned around and left
because I saw a bevy of microphones on stage and stacks of speakers near
by.
And you're right, it's only a matter of time before the PA craze hits
symphony orchestras too. In fact is some locals, it probably already has.
Bah!

Good point. Someone took me to a concert of *name* artists. The alleged
concert was composed of live segements, karoke segments and video segments.
In no case was the sound or video as good as my home stereo which is itself
not elaborate.

Was this a classical concert? If not then this is nothing new. Rock
and pop concerts have suffered from bad sounding PAs since the
beginning of the genres. Fans don't go to these concerts to hear
better sound. They go to *see* the artists, who are often celebrities,
in the flesh perform what will hopefully be a unique live experience.
It's a lot different than the live classical music experience. Well,
not including concerts at The Hollywood Bowl or other such venues.

[Scott[_6_]]

On Aug 27, 5:53*am, cjt wrote:
On 08/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote:
snip Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the

Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. snip

Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live
performances. *That would support the music, which buying the speakers
does not.

What makes you think it's an either/or proposition? Besides you get
two very different experiences from attending concerts and listening
to stereo at home. And different individuals' situations are, well,
different. Going to concerts may not be very practical for some folks
even if they can easily afford to do so.

With that said I would certainly like to see more money donated to the
various symphonic orchestras around the USA. There is a real need
there. Attendance doesn't seem to be a major issue. Plenty of people
already going to classical concerts. Classical music is a patron art.
It can not pay for itself by the live gate alone. It doesn't even come
close.

[Audio Empire]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:03:38 -0700, Scott wrote
(in article ):

On Aug 27, 5:53am, cjt wrote:
On 08/24/2012 10:13 PM, Audio Empire wrote:
snip Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the
Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. snip

Anybody with $100K for speakers should spend that money attending live
performances. =A0That would support the music, which buying the speakers
does not.

What makes you think it's an either/or proposition? Besides you get
two very different experiences from attending concerts and listening
to stereo at home. And different individuals' situations are, well,
different. Going to concerts may not be very practical for some folks
even if they can easily afford to do so.

With that said I would certainly like to see more money donated to the
various symphonic orchestras around the USA. There is a real need
there. Attendance doesn't seem to be a major issue. Plenty of people
already going to classical concerts. Classical music is a patron art.
It can not pay for itself by the live gate alone. It doesn't even come
close.


Also, I've noticed that when I attend the SF Symphony and Silicon
Vallye Symphony concerts, that the audience seems to be a sea of gray
and silver hair. There seem to be fewer and fewer young people
attracted to classical music every year. That is partially the fault
of our failing educational system. They cut music appreciation out of
most grammar and high school curricula long ago with the result that
most youngsters have never been exposed to great music. This isn't a
new thing either. It's been going on since the late 1960s in US
schools. So not only were the present generation of kids deprived of
exposure to great music, so were their parents, and so were their
grandparents! who were, for the most part, all rockers. But if you go
back a previous generation or so, and you will find pop music MADE
from classical melodies ('Tonight We Love' - Rachmaninoff's Second
Piano Concerto, 'Full moon and Empty Arms' - Tchiakovsky's Piano
Concerto #1 in B minor, etc). And pop songs where the singer likens
his lament of lost love to the plight of Verde's clown, Pagliacci. If
Snoop Dog made a reference to Pagliacci in one of his rap "songs" his
listeners wouldn't even know what he was talking about. But at one
time in this country, and not that long ago either, most people were
at least familiar enough with the character to recognize the
reference.

Why this is, in my humble opinion criminally negligent on the part of
educators is because they underestimate the importance of great music
in the education of our young. When cutting curricula to the bone to
save costs, do they cut US literature or English literature from the
program? No, but they say that few people grow-up liking classical
music. Well few people grow up being Shakespeare fans either, or
Melville fans. Few are encouraged by having to read "Silas Mariner"
or "Moby Dick" to further explore the works of Georges Sand and Herman
Mellville, but a few are, and all at least know what great literature
is about. Is being exposed to Bach, Beethoven, or Tchaikovsy any less
important to one's education? I don't think so. Neither is exposure to
Reubens, Da Vinci, or Van Gough. Yet art appreciation and music
appreciation is almost unheard of in today's schools both provate and
public. but there was a time when they were just part of going to
school. And out of every class for all of the above; literature,
music, and art, there were always two or three youngsters who found
that they LIKED culture, and from them stem the future art lovers,
symphony orchestra attendees and literature afficianados. Where do
today's young music lovers come from? (it's a rhetorical question).

Sorry for the soapbox, but our endless crops of generations of unaware
youth is a personal bee in the bonnet with me.

Audio_Empire

[Gary Eickmeier]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

Why this is, in my humble opinion criminally negligent on the part of
educators is because they underestimate the importance of great music
in the education of our young. When cutting curricula to the bone to
save costs, do they cut US literature or English literature from the
program? No, but they say that few people grow-up liking classical
music.

Audio_Empire

My daughter plays the cello. Her grade school, middle school, and now high
school all have orchestras and bands for the students to learn string
instruments or band instruments. They play classical and jazz, and are
pretty good at it. I'm talking public school system, not performing arts
schools, and they have county wide competitions for best orchestras and
bands. My daughter attends Strings Workshop every summer, a two week
resident course taught at the local college by the local symphony personnel,
including the conductor. She also plays in the Youth Orchestra at First
Methodist, under the baton of the same symphony conductor. She is always
second chair in all of these orchestras, first chair going to the
conductor's daughter, same age and quite a prodigy.

All of this is going on in central Florida, not New York or San Francisco.
The stories of our schools' demise are premature.

Gary Eickmeier

[Audio Empire]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:53:25 -0700, Gary Eickmeier wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

Why this is, in my humble opinion criminally negligent on the part of
educators is because they underestimate the importance of great music
in the education of our young. When cutting curricula to the bone to
save costs, do they cut US literature or English literature from the
program? No, but they say that few people grow-up liking classical
music.

Audio_Empire

My daughter plays the cello. Her grade school, middle school, and now high
school all have orchestras and bands for the students to learn string
instruments or band instruments. They play classical and jazz, and are
pretty good at it. I'm talking public school system, not performing arts
schools, and they have county wide competitions for best orchestras and
bands. My daughter attends Strings Workshop every summer, a two week
resident course taught at the local college by the local symphony personnel,
including the conductor. She also plays in the Youth Orchestra at First
Methodist, under the baton of the same symphony conductor. She is always
second chair in all of these orchestras, first chair going to the
conductor's daughter, same age and quite a prodigy.

All of this is going on in central Florida, not New York or San Francisco.
The stories of our schools' demise are premature.

Gary Eickmeier




You misunderstand my point, I think. I'm not talking about music programs
like school bands, glee clubs or orchestras, I'm talking about musical
appreciation classes, I.E. classes where ordinary kids get exposed to great
music, the same way middle school and high school english classes expose
ordinary kids to US literature and English literature, and in some cases
World literature. These classes don't teach these kids to write great
literature, or how to perform Shakespeare, but rather they are merely exposed
to the stuff. Out of every literature class, some kids come away with a
lifelong interest in literary culture. And when schools taught music
appreciation, some kids come away with a lifelong interest in great music,
and even those who don't will at least have been EXPOSED to it. Where do they
get that opportunity today? BTW, I'm a product of a high school music
appreciation class. I'm one of those who came away from that class with
lifelong love that started me on a journey of discovery that isn't finished
yet. When I was young and MOST public schools had music appreciation classes,
it was said that 10% of the US population bought classical recordings. The
last time I saw any figures on it was probably 20 years ago when it was down
to quite a bit less than 1%.

[Jenn[_2_]]

In article ,
"Gary Eickmeier" wrote:

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...

Why this is, in my humble opinion criminally negligent on the part of
educators is because they underestimate the importance of great music
in the education of our young. When cutting curricula to the bone to
save costs, do they cut US literature or English literature from the
program? No, but they say that few people grow-up liking classical
music.

Audio_Empire

My daughter plays the cello. Her grade school, middle school, and now high
school all have orchestras and bands for the students to learn string
instruments or band instruments. They play classical and jazz, and are
pretty good at it. I'm talking public school system, not performing arts
schools, and they have county wide competitions for best orchestras and
bands. My daughter attends Strings Workshop every summer, a two week
resident course taught at the local college by the local symphony personnel,
including the conductor. She also plays in the Youth Orchestra at First
Methodist, under the baton of the same symphony conductor. She is always
second chair in all of these orchestras, first chair going to the
conductor's daughter, same age and quite a prodigy.

All of this is going on in central Florida, not New York or San Francisco.
The stories of our schools' demise are premature.

Gary Eickmeier

Gary, everyone should be very happy that your daughter is having that
experience, and you're correct: music education is still doing very
well in a variety of places in this country. But as a professional who
travels a great deal working with elementary through professional
ensembles, I can tell you that music education (both music appreciation
type of humanities classes, and public performance orientated programs)
is in a serious state of decline, on average. There is no denying it.
Programs are being slashed. It is, in my view, a tragic situation.
Everything in school curricula that teaches beauty, aesthetics, personal
reflection through timeless works of art...is being cut at alarming
rates. It's difficult to measure it, after all. Our society will (and
perhaps already is) suffer due to this. Read Howard Gardner. Those
concerned about this should write, call, email, call again your state
and local representatives. Quickly.

--
www.jennifermartinmusic.com

[Jenn[_2_]]

In article ,
Audio Empire wrote:

Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the
Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. The only positive here is that I don't think that
one needs a pair of $60,000 VTL Siegfried II 800 Watt monoblocs to drive
them. They are so efficient that their minimum power requirement is but 15
Watts! I'd say that 150 Watts/channel would be more than sufficient to
achieve realistic levels of performance that would run you and probably your
neighbors out of the neighborhood!

Comments? Questions? Derisive laughter?

Audio_Empire

I believe that I heard that system at a recent show as well (perhaps we
were at the same show). I can't say that I was too impressed with any
of the huge dollar offerings. Part of that probably was that they were
all played too loudly for my taste. I personally was much more
impressed with, for example, the new KEF LS5s. And I admit that the
price tags on these systems turn me off as well. I guess that I'm more
rooted in the real financial world, as well as the world of real rooms
where the system is going to be used. I've recently been on a speaker
quest and I ordered a pair of Magnepan 1.7s, and I believe that I'm
going to be very happy with them. Lots of sonic "bang for the buck"
with excellent musical values that are important to me.

--
www.jennifermartinmusic.com

[Audio Empire]

On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 08:22:26 -0700, Jenn wrote
(in article ):

In article ,
Audio Empire wrote:

Too bad the speakers are $195,000/pair and another $28,000 for the
Hammer-of-Thor subwoofers. The only positive here is that I don't think
that
one needs a pair of $60,000 VTL Siegfried II 800 Watt monoblocs to drive
them. They are so efficient that their minimum power requirement is but 15
Watts! I'd say that 150 Watts/channel would be more than sufficient to
achieve realistic levels of performance that would run you and probably
your
neighbors out of the neighborhood!

Comments? Questions? Derisive laughter?

Audio_Empire

I believe that I heard that system at a recent show as well (perhaps we
were at the same show). I can't say that I was too impressed with any
of the huge dollar offerings. Part of that probably was that they were
all played too loudly for my taste. I personally was much more
impressed with, for example, the new KEF LS5s. And I admit that the
price tags on these systems turn me off as well. I guess that I'm more
rooted in the real financial world, as well as the world of real rooms
where the system is going to be used. I've recently been on a speaker
quest and I ordered a pair of Magnepan 1.7s, and I believe that I'm
going to be very happy with them. Lots of sonic "bang for the buck"
with excellent musical values that are important to me.



Well, you won't be disappointed with the Magnepans. They do sound superb. The
latest incarnation of Winey's audiophile lineup (MG1.7s, MG 3.7, MG20.7) are
by far the best speakers that this company has ever made and as a former
Maggie enthusiast (MG2, Tympany ID, Tympany IIIC, MG3.2) That's saying
something. However, to my ears the latest Martin-Logan electrostatics are
better. I've had a pair of M-L Vistas since they came out, and see (hear?) no
reason to change them.