The "Ultra-Fi" movement consists of people who build extremist tube
amplifiers using big pretty tubes and nifty looking chassis and big
efficient HORN speakers. They don't measure their units at all or very
little. Their equipment sounds, well, it sounds the way they like it.
They seem to be having a lot of fun though.

On the other hand there is the mighty Kroomel. He does not appear to
be having any fun. He seems to be determined to not let anyone else
have any fun either. He also has a lot of sound equipment and there's
no doubt his is louder. It also sounds, well, it sounds the way he
likes it to sound.

Now if the goal is to have fun, which group is more successful? It's
enough to make everyone build a WE91.

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The "Ultra-Fi" movement consists of people who build extremist tube
amplifiers using big pretty tubes and nifty looking chassis and big
efficient HORN speakers. They don't measure their units at all or very
little. Their equipment sounds, well, it sounds the way they like it.
They seem to be having a lot of fun though.

That would be the Luddite, sentimentality-over-good-sound approach.

Ultra fidelity in the 21st century involves nifty goodies like subwoofers
that are so large that they are essentially modifications to the house, such
as Tom Nousaines, or ultra-compact but rather inefficient subwoofers that
fit nicely in a living room, but require power amps that is powered by the
kind of 208 volt outlet normally used with electric clothes dryers.

Ultra fidelity in the 21st century also includes both bodacious car stereos
and ultra-portable digital music players with sophisticated in-ear-monitors
that equal the acoustic stimulation of a large audio system.

Wake up Cal, contrary to your apparent belief, there has been technical
progress in audio since 1935.

And you would be wrong, since the goal for most of these people is to
build something nifty looking that makes a recognizable sound rather
than true perfection of audio fidelity. nonetheless some, maybe most,
of these things do work and much better than their dismal measurements
would suggest at that.

As you know the 220 dryer/range/air conditioner outlet is in my
opinion the preferred way to go from a current availability and noise
standpoint.

As far as portable music players and in-ear monitors, bull****. I own
both an iPod and one of the brand new Delphi MyFi XM pocket radios. XM
is impressive technology for the car, but the audio is not even CD
quality. It's not good or even halfway good vinyl quality. It's better
than most of the commercial FM that's been Orbanned up the ass (some of
the channels are) and better than Sirius. MP3's are another flawed
sub-CD format. Not only are these compressed formats lossy but the DAcs
and analog sections of these little items are just very limited. They
have to be tiny, cheap, and pull very little ccurrent. There are
tradeoffs here.

said:

And you would be wrong

He who starts out post by preaching comes off like preacher.

I refer to Arny's statement that it is a sentimentality-over-good sound
approach. IMO in most cases audio performance is not really the goal:
the opportunity to build a nifty gizmo is. but you are correct, and I
didn't mean to preach.

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As far as portable music players and in-ear monitors, bull****.

As your post unfolds Cal, it is quite clear that you don't know to use it to
its full potential.


I own both an iPod and one of the brand new Delphi MyFi XM pocket radios.

Cal, your iPod can handle uncompressed .wav or .aiff files Cal. It's
basically CD quality. I'm sorry that you don't know about this and keep
ranting mistakenly about MP3s.

XM is impressive technology for the car, but the audio is not even CD
quality. It's not good or even halfway good vinyl quality. It's better
than most of the commercial FM that's been Orbanned up the ass (some
of the channels are) and better than Sirius.

Agreed. It started out sounding pretty good, but they upped the number of
distinct channels, thereby vastly decreasing sound quality. Of course my
post did not mention XM, so this is an entirely gratuitous inclusion on your
part, Cal.

That's true. But XM is the next step in music delivery technology.
It's inevitable DRM and bill-to-store will become features, they have
acknowledged this already.