Yes, and Walmart is filled to the rafters with CNC made, CAD designed, robot produced... crap. Point is that there still has to be someone with a pulse left to make a product great. Just because we have eliminated the "human error" from it makes not a guarantee of superiority.
Mid Fi to Hi Fi threshold
- Thread starter M1chael
- Start date
DaveVoorhis
Addicted Member
Please read what I wrote. I wrote that "there is much engineering being done to make things cheaper" -- which is exactly you're referring to -- but in the same sentence, I also wrote, "equally there is much engineering to make things better quality" -- which is absolutely true.
darkblue94
The Devil made me do it.
Bill, you can certainly count me in that number.
Well on reflection I have to agree with that. Funny thing is that I think the best speakers out there are new to a large degree, but certainly not in every instance. Once in a while something great was lucked apon and forged out of those anvils of the past.
Still, I doubt any speaker parts require .002 tolerance to sound good..
Lets add to the formula that many of the materials that made really hi tech drivers of the past are now almost impossible to achieve due to environmental concerns, case being Beryllium drivers, and remember those old Sony drivers that use micro biocellulose driver material cutting edge stuff. And just as with Beryllium we see due to the huge cost of safety and containment concerns with regard to environmental issues the reluctance to widespread usage. Even Boron used for stylus cantilevers seem to be in regression due to their costly environmental issues. Technology is great but many manufacturing processes of the past are not able to achieve today using many of the materials used in the past. Alternatives to these materials are often not always their equal, and in many cases very expensive, and less effective.
As for vintage speakers testing with flat response I can reassure you that some of my vintage speakers test very flat and excellent specs.
As for vintage speakers testing with flat response I can reassure you that some of my vintage speakers test very flat and excellent specs.
Last edited:
chicks
Lunatic Member
Transducers, no matter how precisely manufactured, will never be perfectly linear. Current SOTA speaker systems take advantage of motion feedback and DSP to correct the nonlinearities. Along with active crossovers, room correction and backwave cancellation of bass frequencies, modern self-powered speakers can indeed outperform older technologies at reduced cost. See the Kii Three for example.
I would agree with this.
And Infinity has been doing this using their methods of feedback and/or measuring speaker response and comparing it to source amp signals and then making instant corrections. It all comes down to a case by case example of what specific unit your comparing items to. The Betas use drivers that measure actual movement of the drive and compared it to the signal to correct it. The RS-1b's used the crossover divider to accomplish the same thing using feedback correction all in the very early 80's.
chicks
Lunatic Member
Yeah, Philips had motion feedback bass drivers way back in the 70s. It's only been the past few years though that DSP and Class D amps have become practical enough to build mass produced speaker systems that are very, very good at quite low cost, like the ELAC range Andrew Jones is designing.
darkblue94
The Devil made me do it.
One can only but hope that this proves to be true.
One can only but hope that this proves to be true.
Dark! now now.
darkblue94
The Devil made me do it.
Sorry, my impulse control modulator failed me once again.
Lesterbest
Super Member
Sheesh, I remember growing up as a kid, made in Japan was thought of as cheap tin s**t. Whether one cares for new gear is irrelevant. Cost & quality wise, there's more bang for the buck today.
Boutique gear is not included in my observation. Water seeks it's own level.
Boutique gear is not included in my observation. Water seeks it's own level.
Curious if you are comparing new prices to what vintage sold for new, inflation adjusted, or new prices v what used prices are for vintage in todays market. There can be quite a spread in vintage for some, not so much for brands like JBL and a few others that carry a loyal fan base.
I think mid-fi and hi-fi are really non-relative terms. In my opinion, mid-fi is a gear level, and the next step up is hi-end. Hi-fi is the goal for both gear levels, and that is relative. Mid-fi, you spend more than you need to, but less than you could, to get what you want, because you're not satisfied with mass-market sound. If you're buying gear that you really don't need, but it's different, and you can afford it(unlike 96% or so of the rest of us), when you're searching for that last 3% of perfection regardless of cost, that's hi-end.
In my opinion.
In my opinion.
Lesterbest
Super Member
Allowing for inflation of course.
Thank you. The BilletCore cone material is machined down to a .008 thickness and while not .002, is pretty damned incredible. It must sound amazing as well but will never have the opportunity as I see one of the models, the Sonja is going for around $107K, which I consider a place where high end even ends and one enters the rarefied air held exclusively for those with serious cash at their disposal. I wonder how many on this forum would have the means to consider this level of speaker?
lini
just me...
Yup, always depends on what one picks to watch - though some entertainment in the mix in my view doesn't harm either...
Anyway, Dave, I guess you'd like our TV over here, as we have several good stations that provide interesting content you'd probably enjoy. One of my favourites is ARD alpha (formerly BR alpha), which even broadcasts quite a few interesting university-level lectures including quite a few of the Münchner Wissenschaftstage as well as the Nobel prize laureate meetings in Lindau. I mean, what more could one demand from educational TV than lectures by science Nobel prize winners? Also nice is their new "series", Campus TALKS, in which various scientists have ca. 15 minutes each to present an overview on their field of research. And then there's of course the already classic "alpha-Centauri", a series of 15 minute episodes, in which Prof. Harald Lesch covers all kinds of space/astronomy related topics, like for example what a magnetar is or a brown dwarf - or how one would measure distances in space, which took him three episodes to cover the development.
And on a side note: My hat off to many of those Nobel laureates for their often self-ironic humour and humorous way of presentation.
Greetings from Munich!
Manfred / lini
Poultrygeist
Lunatic Member
Why do folks outside the US spell humor with an extra u but drop the u when spelling humorous? An inquiring mind needs to know. 