As though I was a high potentate of tweako. I'm a hobbyist. I advocate
DIY and the restoration of old equipment when appropriate and the
return to better technologies when they have been "superceded" for
reasons of economics and not quality. I've never bought a single foot
of tweako wire or a single tweako unit new. I've always said audio was
a hobby-unless you are in the studio business-and should be treated as
such. It's Ferstler who advocates buying new technology because it's
there and listening to people who are disgruntled old wrecks.

Two channel audio with classic large efficient speakers and moderately
powered amplifiers worked pretty good when John Kennedy was president
and still does. It's discontented people like Ferstler, Krueger, and a
couple of other cranks who are not happy if people are content with the
classic way of doing things and have to drop a log in our pool from
time to time. Buy whatever you find best by your own standards, but go
away and leave us regular people alone.

wrote:

Two channel audio with classic large efficient speakers
and
moderately powered amplifiers worked pretty good when John
Kennedy
was president and still does.

Of course it does, unless you are bound and determined to
use amplifiers and speakers that were also designed and
built when Kennedy was president. Believe it or not, the
technology of amplifiers and speakers has made some progress
in the past 40-odd years.

While it was not as well-understood 40 years ago as it is
now, there has long been an iron rule of speaker design that
says that size, bass extension and efficiency must be
traded-off.

Another relevant rule is the rule of practicality, which
means that not many people are able to spare the space that
Klipsch horns or Conwalls take out of one's listening room.

40 years ago amplifier power was a relatively dear resource,
and not at all a commodity much above 30-60 wpc. This year
good amplifiers run well under $0.50 per watt. Therefore,
sacrificing amplifier power for low frequency extension and
size makes a lot more sense than it did, 40 years ago.

It's discontented people like Ferstler,
Krueger, and a couple of other cranks who are not happy if
people are
content with the classic way of doing things and have to
drop a log
in our pool from time to time.

Dropping a log in your pool Cal would be a redundant
operation because there are already plenty of logs festering
away in it, given the way it looks and smells.

Buy whatever you find best by your own
standards, but go away and leave us regular people alone.

Cal, you're delusional if you think that your Luddite
anti-progress, anti-technology viewpoint represents that of
regular people. You obviously need to get out more.

Altec, Mcintosh and several others offered amplifiers well above 60
wpc long before the solid state devolution. Some of them such as the
Altec 260 and Mac MI200 are actually fairly decent amps even now (if
restored properly).

Personally I never thought the Heresy or Cornwall were all that
successful. The K-horn takes a big block of space, but are your rooms
that small you need that space for something besides more furniture
anyway? Do you live in a doublew....uhh, never mind. Well, for you
perhaps bookshelves are best.

I just sold my LaScalas to a 70-year old guy who lives in a late-50s
small preburban tract house and they are going in his living room-he's
using Mac MC40's and an Empire table and a homebrew tuner he built in
the 50s with a HRO National dial drive (I have to get a schematic and
photos!). His small living room holds the stereo stuff, a Hammond C2, a
Leslie, and a upright piano...and is still comfortable.

Arny Krueger wrote:

wrote:

Buy whatever you find best by your own
standards, but go away and leave us regular people alone.

Cal, you're delusional if you think that your Luddite
anti-progress, anti-technology viewpoint represents that of
regular people. You obviously need to get out more.

I don't know about Luddite. He sounds more like a Menonite to me.

wrote:

Altec, Mcintosh and several others offered amplifiers well
above 60
wpc long before the solid state devolution. Some of them
such as the
Altec 260 and Mac MI200 are actually fairly decent amps
even now (if
restored properly).

Cal, your response is so disconnected from my post that
there's no point in me trying to reconstruct one.

wrote:

Two channel audio with classic large efficient speakers and moderately
powered amplifiers worked pretty good when John Kennedy was president
and still does. It's discontented people like Ferstler, Krueger, and a
couple of other cranks who are not happy if people are content with the
classic way of doing things and have to drop a log in our pool from
time to time. Buy whatever you find best by your own standards, but go
away and leave us regular people alone.

Ignorance is bliss.

Howard Ferstler

Schizoid Man wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:

wrote:

Buy whatever you find best by your own
standards, but go away and leave us regular people alone.

Cal, you're delusional if you think that your Luddite
anti-progress, anti-technology viewpoint represents that of
regular people. You obviously need to get out more.

I don't know about Luddite. He sounds more like a Menonite to me.

There is a lot to be said for some aspects of the good old
days, but progress has occurred, particularly in the realm
of ultra-deep bass reproduction (subwoofers), surround
sound, and signal processing. CDs are also smaller than LPs,
meaning that storage is not as much of a problem as in the
past. The CDs also sound better, too, of course.

And of course prices are lower than ever in some areas.

Howard Ferstler

"Howard Ferstler" wrote in message
...
wrote:

Two channel audio with classic large efficient speakers and moderately
powered amplifiers worked pretty good when John Kennedy was president
and still does. It's discontented people like Ferstler, Krueger, and a
couple of other cranks who are not happy if people are content with the
classic way of doing things and have to drop a log in our pool from
time to time. Buy whatever you find best by your own standards, but go
away and leave us regular people alone.

Ignorance is bliss.


It seems to me that with your Allison speakers, you have landed squarely
among the "ignorant". It is just hard to believe that you would ever have
the courage to critique yourself.

Cheers,

Margaret

Howard Ferstler said:

There is a lot to be said for some aspects of the good old
days, but progress has occurred, particularly in the realm
of ultra-deep bass reproduction (subwoofers), surround
sound, and signal processing. CDs are also smaller than LPs,
meaning that storage is not as much of a problem as in the
past. The CDs also sound better, too, of course.


While I can appreciate your fondness of ultra-deep bass in light of
your age, let's not forget that for most of us, audible content above
4 kHz does matter as well.

--

"Audio as a serious hobby is going down the tubes."
- Howard Ferstler, 25/4/2005

The SACD and DVD-A probably sound even better. The CD does not, in
some instances.

wrote:

The SACD and DVD-A probably sound even better. The CD does not, in
some instances.

SACD and DVD-A, ignoring for the moment the obvious
advantages of the three additional channels (see below about
those), have only two advantages over the conventional CD:
extended bandwidth into the high-frequencies and a wider S/N
ratio. The first makes no sense, given the bandwidth
limitations of even the healthiest humans and the second
makes no sense, given the noise of amps, microphones,
mixers, and typical home-listening environments. The second
makes even less sense when we consider the limited dynamic
range of the pop music that most people listen to.

I have maybe a hundred SACD and DVD-A releases (most having
been reviewed or being reviewed for publication) and have
compared some of them to the CD versions. I have also
measured in some cases, and when per-channel (the left and
right mains) sounded different it was because of frequency
response differences in the audible range. To me, this says
that the SACD and DVD-A versions were simply equalized
differently from the CD versions. This is not uncommon,
because Sony engineers did similar things with their
"Super-Audio" CD re-releases a few years ago. David Ranada
even outlined the equalization tricks in a Stereo Review
article.

OK, so why is this diddling being done? Well, those
companies need to sell recordings, and one way to do it is
to engineer overkill products (SACD and DVD-A releases with
high-frequency extension and S/N ratios that work into the
realm of the absurd) that capture the imaginations of both
consumers and naive recording engineers. Make any
equalization changes to a new release and someone,
somewhere, will claim that the differences involve superior
digital technology. With reviews like that, some enthusiasts
will rush out to the record stores with checkbooks or charge
cards in hand.

Finally, regarding the obvious advantages of surround sound,
I have compared the DVD-A tracks to the alternate DD or DTS
tracks on some recordings and found no subjective advantages
to the the first. Yes, there have been equalization and
level differences, but those vary considerably from release
to release, meaning that they are dialed in the the remixing
guys and not inherent in any of the technologies.

Indeed, I have compared some SACD and DVD-A surround
recordings to a number of two-channel CD releases after the
latter were given some in-house ambiance simulation (Yamaha
7-channel DSP or Dolby Pro Logic II) and often found that in
terms of surround-sound realism the DSP or DPL II
manipulated CD versions actually sounded better than the
SACD and DVD-A versions.

Howard Ferstler

"Howard Ferstler" wrote in message
...
wrote:

Two channel audio with classic large efficient speakers and moderately
powered amplifiers worked pretty good when John Kennedy was president
and still does. It's discontented people like Ferstler, Krueger, and a
couple of other cranks who are not happy if people are content with the
classic way of doing things and have to drop a log in our pool from
time to time. Buy whatever you find best by your own standards, but go
away and leave us regular people alone.

Ignorance is bliss.

How ironic. I recently got a free trial issue of Audiophile Voice. I see
it has an article in it by you. I won't be subscribing. (I like how you
highly recommended a pair of speakers since they can get close to high-end
sound for not much money, provided you buy a subwoofer and an equalizer to
go along with them..)

jeffc wrote:

"Howard Ferstler" wrote in message
...
wrote:

Two channel audio with classic large efficient speakers and moderately
powered amplifiers worked pretty good when John Kennedy was president
and still does. It's discontented people like Ferstler, Krueger, and a
couple of other cranks who are not happy if people are content with the
classic way of doing things and have to drop a log in our pool from
time to time. Buy whatever you find best by your own standards, but go
away and leave us regular people alone.

Ignorance is bliss.

How ironic. I recently got a free trial issue of Audiophile Voice. I see
it has an article in it by you. I won't be subscribing. (I like how you
highly recommended a pair of speakers since they can get close to high-end
sound for not much money, provided you buy a subwoofer and an equalizer to
go along with them..)

Small speakers like those (BG models, incidentally) cannot
be expected to deliver low bass. It would be silly to say
that such designs, no matter who built them, would be
adequate for full-bandwidth sound reproduction.
Consequently, a subwoofer is not a bad item to add to the
mix. In my review, I paired the speakers with a small,
low-priced Hsu sub.

As for equalization, I pointed out that with small
satellites located on stands away from room boundaries
(floor and adjacent walls) it is also often necessary to
flatten notches that result from suckout cancellations. An
equalizer can work to solve this problem if the user cannot
relocate the speakers to minimize the artifacts.

The review explains what these quarter-wavelength
cancellation artifacts are (some call them the "Allison
Effect") and how they exist with ANY small speakers located
away from room boundaries. Get that? You place any speakers,
no matter how good, in a typical stand-mounted configuration
and you will compromise the middle-bass performance. It has
nothing to do with the speakers and everything to do with
positioning. If repositioning will not be possible,
equalization is the second resort.

Overall, the speakers were quite good, particularly the
upper midrange and treble performance. They were also
blessed with very well finished cabinets.

Howard Ferstler

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 15:46:21 -0400, Howard Ferstler
wrote:

jeffc wrote:

"Howard Ferstler" wrote in message
...
wrote:

Two channel audio with classic large efficient speakers and moderately
powered amplifiers worked pretty good when John Kennedy was president
and still does. It's discontented people like Ferstler, Krueger, and a
couple of other cranks who are not happy if people are content with the
classic way of doing things and have to drop a log in our pool from
time to time. Buy whatever you find best by your own standards, but go
away and leave us regular people alone.

Ignorance is bliss.

How ironic. I recently got a free trial issue of Audiophile Voice. I see
it has an article in it by you. I won't be subscribing. (I like how you
highly recommended a pair of speakers since they can get close to high-end
sound for not much money, provided you buy a subwoofer and an equalizer to
go along with them..)

Small speakers like those (BG models, incidentally) cannot
be expected to deliver low bass. It would be silly to say
that such designs, no matter who built them, would be
adequate for full-bandwidth sound reproduction.
Consequently, a subwoofer is not a bad item to add to the
mix. In my review, I paired the speakers with a small,
low-priced Hsu sub.

It doesn't matter, since Howard believes that only vintage AR speakers
can reproduce the aura of a live performance, and that's all that
apparently matters.

Now, he has several sets of "inferior speakers" that wouldn't be able
to stand up to Villchur's rigorous road show, so one must conclude
that he keeps them for vanity purposes. Sounds like a "high end
tweako" to me.

dave weil wrote:

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 15:46:21 -0400, Howard Ferstler
wrote:

jeffc wrote:

"Howard Ferstler" wrote in message
...
wrote:

Two channel audio with classic large efficient speakers and moderately
powered amplifiers worked pretty good when John Kennedy was president
and still does. It's discontented people like Ferstler, Krueger, and a
couple of other cranks who are not happy if people are content with the
classic way of doing things and have to drop a log in our pool from
time to time. Buy whatever you find best by your own standards, but go
away and leave us regular people alone.

Ignorance is bliss.

How ironic. I recently got a free trial issue of Audiophile Voice. I see
it has an article in it by you. I won't be subscribing. (I like how you
highly recommended a pair of speakers since they can get close to high-end
sound for not much money, provided you buy a subwoofer and an equalizer to
go along with them..)

Small speakers like those (BG models, incidentally) cannot
be expected to deliver low bass. It would be silly to say
that such designs, no matter who built them, would be
adequate for full-bandwidth sound reproduction.
Consequently, a subwoofer is not a bad item to add to the
mix. In my review, I paired the speakers with a small,
low-priced Hsu sub.

It doesn't matter, since Howard believes that only vintage AR speakers
can reproduce the aura of a live performance, and that's all that
apparently matters.

Go read the review, as well as some of the speaker reviews
in the other magazine I have written reviews for, The
Sensible Sound. Then judge.

Now, he has several sets of "inferior speakers" that wouldn't be able
to stand up to Villchur's rigorous road show, so one must conclude
that he keeps them for vanity purposes. Sounds like a "high end
tweako" to me.

Actually, I think that a number of good, conventional
speakers would be able to do fine live-vs-recorded demos, at
least if the speakers were equalized a tad to handle
response anomalies. Speakers have gotten pretty darned good
over the past decades. Even Dunlavy did a few
live-vs-recorded demos on a small scale, I believe.

Also, some speakers can do things in home-listening
environments that I rather like, even though they may not
conform entirely to my ultimate requirements for a perfect
speaker. Actually, I am notorious for cutting assorted
speaker designs a lot of slack in my reviews.

Howard Ferstler

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 16:39:41 -0400, Howard Ferstler
wrote:

Now, he has several sets of "inferior speakers" that wouldn't be able
to stand up to Villchur's rigorous road show, so one must conclude
that he keeps them for vanity purposes. Sounds like a "high end
tweako" to me.

Actually, I think that a number of good, conventional
speakers would be able to do fine live-vs-recorded demos, at
least if the speakers were equalized a tad to handle
response anomalies.

That's EXACTLY what I said, but you took issue with it.

Glad you've changed your mind.

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 16:39:41 -0400, Howard Ferstler
wrote:

Also, some speakers can do things in home-listening
environments that I rather like, even though they may not
conform entirely to my ultimate requirements for a perfect
speaker. Actually, I am notorious for cutting assorted
speaker designs a lot of slack in my reviews.

Quads, anyone?

dave weil wrote:

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 16:39:41 -0400, Howard Ferstler
wrote:

Now, he has several sets of "inferior speakers" that wouldn't be able
to stand up to Villchur's rigorous road show, so one must conclude
that he keeps them for vanity purposes. Sounds like a "high end
tweako" to me.

Actually, I think that a number of good, conventional
speakers would be able to do fine live-vs-recorded demos, at
least if the speakers were equalized a tad to handle
response anomalies.

That's EXACTLY what I said, but you took issue with it.

Glad you've changed your mind.

Remember, I was talking about the early 1960s. Back then,
the AR-3 was probably the only serious game in town. Later
on, we had the AR-3a and then the LST, giving us three
games.

Howard Ferstler

dave weil wrote:

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 16:39:41 -0400, Howard Ferstler
wrote:

Also, some speakers can do things in home-listening
environments that I rather like, even though they may not
conform entirely to my ultimate requirements for a perfect
speaker. Actually, I am notorious for cutting assorted
speaker designs a lot of slack in my reviews.

Quads, anyone?

Still, I do require flat response at the listening position,
be it dominated by the direct-field performance or the
reverberant-field performance. That is my main, "get into
the ball park" criteria.

Howard Ferstler

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 17:02:56 -0400, Howard Ferstler
wrote:

dave weil wrote:

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 16:39:41 -0400, Howard Ferstler
wrote:

Now, he has several sets of "inferior speakers" that wouldn't be able
to stand up to Villchur's rigorous road show, so one must conclude
that he keeps them for vanity purposes. Sounds like a "high end
tweako" to me.

Actually, I think that a number of good, conventional
speakers would be able to do fine live-vs-recorded demos, at
least if the speakers were equalized a tad to handle
response anomalies.

That's EXACTLY what I said, but you took issue with it.

Glad you've changed your mind.

Remember, I was talking about the early 1960s. Back then,
the AR-3 was probably the only serious game in town.

Quad anyone?

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 17:06:11 -0400, Howard Ferstler
wrote:

dave weil wrote:

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 16:39:41 -0400, Howard Ferstler
wrote:

Also, some speakers can do things in home-listening
environments that I rather like, even though they may not
conform entirely to my ultimate requirements for a perfect
speaker. Actually, I am notorious for cutting assorted
speaker designs a lot of slack in my reviews.

Quads, anyone?

Still, I do require flat response at the listening position,
be it dominated by the direct-field performance or the
reverberant-field performance. That is my main, "get into
the ball park" criteria.

Except when "equalization is needed", right?

dave weil wrote:

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 17:06:11 -0400, Howard Ferstler
wrote:

dave weil wrote:

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 16:39:41 -0400, Howard Ferstler
wrote:

Also, some speakers can do things in home-listening
environments that I rather like, even though they may not
conform entirely to my ultimate requirements for a perfect
speaker. Actually, I am notorious for cutting assorted
speaker designs a lot of slack in my reviews.

Quads, anyone?

Still, I do require flat response at the listening position,
be it dominated by the direct-field performance or the
reverberant-field performance. That is my main, "get into
the ball park" criteria.

Except when "equalization is needed", right?

While I never equalize when reviewing speakers, I have
equalized all of the front speakers in my three systems, as
well as the standard-surround and back-surround speakers in
my main system. Issues 94 and 95 of The Sensible Sound have
articles by me that show why equalization can help even the
very best systems, due to room artifacts.

In none of my systems is more than 4 dB of equalization used
at any frequency. Applying any more will cause problems with
the direct-field and reverberant-field balances.

Howard Ferstler

"Howard Ferstler" wrote in message
...

Actually, I am notorious for cutting assorted
speaker designs a lot.

Howard Ferstler

We already know that!!!



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Yeah, a speaker is good when you go out and buy a Manley Massive
Passive to make it "sound just right".