The 'warmth' of vinyl.
- Thread starter catman
- Start date
I posted the following about a year ago, but it seems to fit the conversation here. The Shure isn't flat either in the treble or bass, but a re-reading of an old article has me thinking that maybe that's why it somehow sounds right to me.
J. Gordon Holt, in his 1985 article "Down with Flat," expressed the opinion that speakers that measure flat in the high end sound bright or tilted up, and he found that a 4 dB slope from 2 kHz to 10 Khz, then extending flat beyond that, made things sound more natural (which he accomplished with two resistors and a capacitor per channel between the preamp and power amp). Oppositely, at the low end, speakers that measured flat sounded thin to him, and it took a low-end rise to actually sound flat.
Looking at Werner Ogiers measurements on the M97xE at TNT Audio, we see that this cartridge, at its standard loading recommendations, is pretty flat between 500 Hz and 2 kHz, but shows a 3 dB droop between 2 kHz and 6 kHz (extending flat past that point to about 16 kHz before dropping away) and also has a mild boost below 500 Hz of about 2 dB. Not an exact match, but pretty similar to what JGH found sounded more natural to him.
I happen to find the M97xE a very natural-sounding transducer. It's easy to relax with the music because the presentation seems more real to me, with instruments sounding more like what I hear live, than with other cartridges I've used (its great tracking, warp-handling, and lack of congestion/compression on musical peaks doesn't hurt, either). Maybe its mild deviations from flat are a help in this regard.
You wrote this in response to the same quote from Catman I posted above. It's an interesting comment, and invites the question, rolled off compared to what? I greatly prefer unamplified, live acoustic music, and am privileged to live near small colleges that often present such recitals at modest cost. Since I'm simply hearing the instruments in a music hall as they naturally sound in that venue from my seating position, I think of that as "natural," what things should sound like, and in no way "rolled off." But if I heard a close-miked recording of that same performance, maybe what I heard live would sound rolled off in comparison. Is this close to what you had in mind, or is it something else altogether?
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slippers-on
Music...let it move you!
Well thank you kind sir!
Dont get me wrong....im not saying I want a distorted, colored sound that mucks up the transparency. I think the gear should get out of the way of the music. We should hear sound in audio, as we hear them in the natural world. Its really not as much about highs, lows and mids...tho us audio hobbyist tend to focus on that more. what we seasoned audio hobbyist learn to focus on is the tonality of the music. To much tone is to distort...to little is to make it thin. A piano should sound like a piano when it strikes the key and the string plucks, and a drum should sound like a real drum when struck, as if its in real time...like what we hear out in the real world. Now I believe every body has a little distortion...low distortion and resonance as low as possible. But that is not really the problem with emotion and romance in listening to music through audio. In my opinion...and I have been seriously listening from the late 70's...is the transparency of the music. It has to be there to get not only out of the way, but not out of the way to the point of taking the meat of the bones....taking the flesh away from the body as to white wash the entire sound. this is when the performance puts me to sleep. this is where I believe a little color is need to pass on that emotion and romance rather than white wash and give a thin performance with no life....that is what I call sterile.
As far as audio gear. I too like German engineering. Thus Canton and Vincent. Both are transparent but not to the point sterile. Both can pass on the emotion in bunches...and yes, I've put on music and shed a tear or two from the emotion:yes: (Yeah I manned up and said it
)....if you've heard Canton and liked it, then you and I are talking the same language, but describe it differently.:thmbsp:Also about the Rotel amp....ArtK said something a while back about the Rotels are grey. I thought not until I got a threshold amp and compared them side by side. the Rotel was not a transparent as the Threshold but neither amp was totally Sterile and both passed on the emtion. That was a perfect example of distortion but still transparent.
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slippers-on
Music...let it move you!
The Builder of the system told us personally he built it to be free of any coloration whatsoever. His speakers where huge Klipsch Horns with that extra tweeter sitting on top. We heard the system at moderate levels and ear bleed levels. It was sterile as can be to my ears and to the guy who was with me.
I suppose if it was recorded form tape other than analog tape, or recorded for CD's it will sound like Cd's. I was surprised one time when a friend took a simple CD that he recorded from his TT. when I popped it into my CDP I could hear that it sounded like a record, but not as dynamic.
This is really subjective...and yes, i'm one of those that thinks records sound more natural.
slippers-on
Music...let it move you!
Clearaudio...German...nice! which table do you have?
robgmn
Super Member
It's kind of tough to get my point across, but what I meant was that his attempt at a lack of coloration doesn't factor in the sound of the original environment (if one existed when the recording was made. i.e.-live music in a club, studio recording, etc.).
Take a flower that looks absolutely beautiful outside in your sunny garden and put it in a vase in your kitchen under incandescent lighting. The color of the flower is identical to the original, heck it IS original, but what you SEE is not going to be the same.
Take a Grand Piano and play it in a concert hall, then play it in your living room.
The notes may be identical, but the sound will be anything but (maybe the reason you were left unimpressed by the "perfect" system).
Maybe it was EQ'd to be too "flat", disregarding the natural high-end rolloff mentioned earlier (smae reason why THX re-EQ is needed for home environment- the theater size provides that natural rolloff).
Lots of possibilities.
dnewma04
The Healer
That was my reaction, as well. It's like setting out to win Le Mans and starting with a 3/4 ton truck as your vehicle.
The other shocker was finding a system including Klipschorns to sound sterile. It must be possible, since that's what he heard, but those speakers have always sounded very involving to me. Maybe the extra tweeters sitting on top and the lack of a turntable were partly to blame.
They may not be free of coloration, but the classic Klipsch speakers can sure make some nice music.
"In a contradiction of received wisdom, it turns out that some of the classic horn loudspeakers show much greater musical integrity, judged in terms of natural pace and dynamics, than do the majority of low-sensitivity, low-coloration systems now produced. Come back, Klipsch and Voigt, all is forgiven! Those designers' belief in outright sensitivity, and the qualities of linearity and uncompressed dynamics which this single factor confers, are still not properly valued by the high-end industry." http://www.stereophile.com/content/pace-rhythm-dynamics-page-3
slippers-on
Music...let it move you!
slippers-on
Music...let it move you!
Oh I understand you perfectly well. I just wish you could have been there.
Pio1980
AK Member
I've owned "classic" period Klipsch and they are anything but neutral sounding whether amplitude-sweep-flat or not. The pulse response of these things is also a mess and I long ago left them for speakers less prone to imprint their personality on the sound and with far better time and phase response. A "standard" of anything but amplitude response efficiency they are most definitely not.
slippers-on
Music...let it move you!
This was a few years ago, this is what I remember of his gear...the CDP was a very expensive Esoteric...and I do remember Jeff Rowland.. the cable was Cardas Clear XLR interconnects cables and Cardas clear speaker cables.
I think that's the point a couple of us were making, that we found it somewhat strange that someone would choose to use Klipschorns when the goal was "to have no coloration what so ever," (and Slippers-on defined "sterile" as being, in part, free of any coloration whatsoever). I used Klipsch La Scala for a couple decades, and no, it's not a low-coloration speaker, but it was able to play music that drew me into the performance and was far from lifeless.
Perhaps you'd be kind enough to define your terms:
amplitude-sweep-flat
pulse response
time and phase response
amplitude response efficiency
How do those characteristics relate to the virtues of natural pace and uncompressed dynamics that Martin Colloms attributed to the classic horn speakers in the quoted excerpt that I assume you were responding to?
slippers-on
Music...let it move you!
Oh its possible...very possible. The Horns where placed in the corners and each had a tweeter sitting on top. He played low volume and nice low level detail. Then he cranked it up...those things are like 105 db. We had ear bleed after it was over....felt like I had been in a loud rock concert. You can have the Horns....not my cup of tea. I know they where originally made to give all the emotion of a live performance at home....well there was a live performance in his house that day, but the emotion was missing....and I had front row seats.
Pio1980
AK Member
Those factors relate to sonic accuracy aside from efficiency, otherwise look up pretty much anything on speaker testing by Ed Long. Martin Collums has his priorities, Ed Long and I have ours and while pure dynamic efficiency is a lovely thing, a messy & colored sounding speaker system with just that going for it is not.
Amplutide-sweep-flat; Measured "flat" as most folk understand the term, regardless of phase and timing anomalies.
Pulse response; Perhaps the most pertinent measurement of a driver and/or speaker system one can make. It determines how 'fast' a driver's response is, whether it rings, and how the drivers in a system integrate with each other regarding whether they deliver a signal in coordinated time and in phase from the individual drivers at the listening position or not. An impulse to the speaker at the listening position should show a single combined impulse in the same polarity with minimal ringing from all of the drivers at once. This shows time and phase response of the system.
Amplitude response efficiency; The amount of signal drive energy vs the acoustic output level as measured at a specific distance. A high ratio of output-to-drive is desirable but can be difficult to achieve with many non-horn-loaded systems, which is their signature advantage. So-called "direct" drivers tend to fare worse, some far worse and require a lot of clean drive power to sound right. Horn drivers work well with inefficient single-ended class-'A' tube amplifiers and can make for a very sonically and emotionally engaging minimalist low-powered system regardless of the obvious faults with the speakers and the amp's typical relatively high total harmonic distortion.
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Thanks for all the great information. I haven't found a lot by Ed Long, yet, but was intrigued by this short excerpt:
Before we embark on any discussions concerning studio loudspeakers, a few ground rules are necessary. Edward M. Long, of Oakland, Calif.-based E.M. Long Associates/Calibration Standard Instruments, originally coined the phrase near-field monitor and holds the trademark on the phrase time-align. “The word ‘monitor’ comes from the Latin word ‘monare,’ to warn,” notes Long, “and the difference between a monitor and a consumer loudspeaker is in the design goal. A monitor should allow an engineer to hear bad things in a recording so he can fix them. Since consumers can’t do anything about a bad recording, their loudspeakers should make bad recordings sound at least acceptable." http://mixguides.com/studiomonitors/products_features/audio-studio-monitors-889/
I'll keep looking. It will be interesting to find more details on what goes into designing a speaker that helps ameliorate bad recordings.
I also saw a brief account of his "time alignment" crossover. Would you say that his goals in this area are similar to Vandersteen's? Or maybe never mind--it's possible I'm going a bit off-topic for this thread.
james73_2010
Well-Known Member
Since 1997, I've been using the Creek OBH-8 MM Phono Pre-Amp (with OBH-2 PSU).
Does it sound warm? Yes and no. At the tiime I bought it, I was given the option to "road test" this unit directly against the Rotel RQ970 Phono Pre-amp - the Rotel sounded "warmer" but did it sound "better"? No, it didn't. The Creek box reproduced a much more detailed mid-range and top-end.
The Creek unit has a built-in sub-sonic (warp) filter which lended a somewhat "lighter" bass sound - however, the mid-range detail from the Creek unit blew the Rotel box totally out of the water.
Warmer = rounder = fuller?? What does any of this mean?
I'm confident that the choice I made in 1997 was the correct one. I wont give up my wee Creek OBH-8 box lightly, that's for sure....
James H