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In Reply to: RE: Nakamichi PA5 and PA7, opinions posted by Crazy Dave on January 27, 2008 at 12:45:01
I used to sell the full Nakamichi line during my 12-year tenure as a HiFi salesman. Our brands also included McIntosh, a/d/s/, B&W, B&O, and DENON.
My opinions about sound are based on long experience and deep inner conviction, with no commercial incentive. I have been off the retail sales floor since 1996, and have never had any financial connection with any audio manufacturer.
My life experience is that most people listen to badly clipped music from digital sources most of the time. There are several reasons:
1. People have been listening to overdriven amplified music all their lives -- for 3 or 4 generations.
2. Live, unamplified acoustic music is becoming ever more rare.
3. Digital sources (generally used to) have a higher peak-to-average ratio than analog sources (until the CD-mastering loudness wars of the last decade or more brought average pop-music levels up to less than -10 dBFS in some cases).
4. An amplifier that can drive real speakers to realistic levels in real rooms (say for pop music or large orchestral works) without ANY peak clipping costs far more than most people are aware or are prepared to commit to.
I used a reductionistic technique to sell amplifiers:
I would play a musically-demanding recording on a CD player (such as a good pop tune by Bonnie Raitt or The Dirty Dozen Brass Band featuring a sousaphone or a tuba), use a medium-sized pair of high-grade speakers of typical "efficiency" or "sensitivity" (around 89 dB @ 1 meter with 2.8V of pink noise) and turn it up until the music started to distort noticeably.
I would then turn it down until it was truly clean, showing the customer repeatedly where the "knee" of the distortion curve was on the volume control. "If it sounds better when you turn it down, it was too loud before."
On nearly all Asian-based brands of audio gear, the volume knob could never get beyond the 9:00 to 9:30 position without excessive distortion (using typical CD recordings and CD player output levels).
The customer would ask why you couldn't use the great majority of the volume control range. I said it was to make the unit seem powerful on the sales shelf. ("We barely cracked the volume knob, and that sucker really honked on! It must be some powerful unit!")
After establishing the "maximum musical delivery" of the amplifier in this context, I would point out that it wasn't loud enough to enjoy the music properly. Especially with wide-range symphonic material, you couldn't even hear the sobbing solo violin after turning the fortissimo crescendo down to within the limit.
Leaving each amplifier set to its "maximum usable volume," I would leave the music playing while switching from one amplifier to the next.
Using this test, even expensive amplifiers would fall flat next to my favorites, the McIntosh amplifiers.
The entire non-cassette deck Nakamichi lineup around 1990, from the OMS-1A, OMS-2A, and OMS-3A CD players, the ST-7A tuner, through the CA-5A and CA-7A preamps and the PA-5A and PA-7A power amps, was beautifully-built, vastly-overpriced, thin and crispy-sounding equipment.
I couldn't sell a Nak CD player when we had a Denon in the same store. The ST-7A tuner had nearly as raw a high end as the OMS-1A (truly a nasty-sounding CD player if ever there was one). I'm convinced that the poor sonics of this lineup was the demise of Nakamichi. If they couldn't figure out how to make their fancy stuff sound right, they weren't going to make it in the audiophile market.
They finally did manage some acceptable-sounding CD players with the MusicBank line, which introduced the now-ubiquitous "internal cartridge" CD changer concept. These were reliable as well, and, along with their later receivers, helped Nakamichi hang on for a while longer.
The McIntosh MAC4275 receiver (rated at 75W RMS/ch @ 8 ohms) would walk all over the Nakamichi PA-7A, rated at 200W RMS/ch. It also cost less, had a truly wonderful AM-FM stereo tuner, and featured the incredibly-valuable (and patented) McIntosh Power Guard circuit that prevents clipping and blown speakers. This was the most budget-oriented model McIntosh produced during this era! Any of the bigger McIntosh models, particulary the amplifiers with the output autotransformers, are simply in a class by themselves (in my experience).
The Denon POA-1500 and POA-1500II didn't do any better than the Nakamichi power amplifiers against the McIntosh models, but at least they were reasonably priced.
Nakamichi tried to recover with the PA-5AII and the PA-7AII, but they still sucked and Nak couldn't sell these gutless wonders any more than their predecessors. Nelson Pass's "Stasis" design apparently lost something in translation.
Why the PA-5 and PA-7 still attract attention on the Web mystifies me. I guess they really weren't any worse sounding than many other competing products. It's just that when you find something that works for you (in my case, one pair of floor-standing full-range dynamic speakers with soft-dome tweeters, driven by solid-state McIntosh power), everything else pales by comparison. Lovers of horn speakers driven by single-ended triodes have a similar passion.
Quixotically, after the lackluster reception of the SR-2A, SR-3A, and SR-4A series of receivers, the California-based designers in the Nakamichi receiver division saw the need for bottom-line, bread and butter on the table. They cranked out several series of receivers that had the most awesome bang-for-the-buck musical delivery of anything I knew of, all through the first half of the 90's.
The TA-1A, TA-2A, TA-3A, and the incredible TA-4A, the Receiver1, Receiver2, and Receiver3, and so on were the greatest things you could get to run an affordable music-lover's system. I would show the 80-watt Nakamichi receiver blowing away the 200-watt Denon separate preamp and power amp, for half the price.
The problem with the Nakamichi receivers was that their thermal design was not up to the same standards as their audio design. Several of the models had inadequate internal ventilation and suffered from internal "hot spots" that contributed to a less-than-ideal repair record.
People either loved me or hated me, because I had no regard for their misconceptions. Here was the proof! I would refuse to sell to them unless they fixed their speaker placement. The ones who wanted real music became loyal fans and good friends. Just about everybody now in my life came along via my involvement in the stereo business.
Over the years, I had the chance to try a number of amps in the store. The Perreaux solid-state amps of 1989 were heinous -- gritty sounding, ran hotter than a pistol, were wispy-wimpy as all get out, and had a reputation for blowing up (this despite their hand construction and gold-plated circuit boards). I have no idea if they have improved.
I liked the Quad solid-state amps of 1989 very much, but the spectrum-tilt tone controls on the excellent preamp were really intended for the Quad ESL series of electrostatic speakers. We got to try the ESL-63 speakers with the Quad electronics. It was a very credible combination. The ESL-63s were cool -- lightning fast, and with amazing imaging. The bass was fast but lean, which can be OK, but the upper midrange was too harsh.
Playing the Original Master Recordings gold Ultradisc CD of David Grisman's "Hot Dawg" on the ESL-63s, the violin was clearly too shrill. Using the Bang & Olufsen Beosystem 5000, the self-powered Beolab Penta II speakers produced a much more natural overall presentation than the Quad-ESL-63 system. The violin just sounded more real on the B&O speakers (not to mention their better dispersion, more solid bass, and freedom from placement hassles). The Beolab Penta II speakers were actually really great, albeit awfully spendy. They could kick out a "Wasted Union Blues" from the CD remaster of "It's A Beautiful Day" like very few things I have heard. B&O's groundbreaking visual designs of that period have now been widely aped, and ripoffs are easily seen from Sharper Image to Target.
I never got to spend any quality time with Mark Levinson or Krell equipment, and I would like to have done so. These brands were even more expensive than McIntosh, and did not appear to me to hold their resale value nearly as well or to have as stellar a reputation for longevity.
One brand I would still really like to check out is Bryston. Thier attitude seems to be more sincere and genuine than almost any company's, and both the product and warranty more solid, than any of the well-established specialty manufacturers.
Please forgive me for this lengthy, immpassioned, and somewhat peripheral diatribe. I hope my answer to the question is clear -- I was unimpressed with the Nakamichi PA-7A, especially for its price (altough many competing products delivered less and cost even more).
I think that a McIntosh MAC4100 later receiver, an MA6200 or later integrated amplifier, or an MC7270 or later power amplifier with a McIntosh solid-state preamp is the way to go. Unfortunately, you have to have McIntosh preamplification to make a beefy enough signal to drive a McIntosh power amplifier. Most Asian and other preamps haven't a high enough output voltage or a low enough output impedance to drive a McIntosh amplifier. That's why people who haven't matched them correctly think the Mac amps sound shrill -- they're amplifying their clipped preamp signal!
The ReVox B750 integrated amplifier I had before I got McIntosh gear was truly a great unit. I had the chance to compare it at home with a pair of the famous 60W Luxman mono tube amps. The Lux amps had a nice liquid midrange, but the power section of the ReVox was quieter, faster, more transparent, and had more solid bass. The high end of the ReVox power section was more extended and detailed than that of the Luxman monoblocks, and every bit as smooth (in my opinion). I think the B750's 40 mighty Teutonic Watts RMS per channel kick ass on anything up to 75W of McIntosh power, which kicks ass on virtually anything I know of under 300W. The B750's preamp stage is a smooth-sounding and quiet winner, too, even featuring fully-buffered record outputs (a rare and good thing, based on Studer ReVox's studio heritage).
I'd take a ReVox B750 over a Nakamichi CA-7A / PA-7A in a heartbeat, after living around both combinations for extended periods.
Follow Ups:
I have loved my Revox B77, B750mk11 but I'm 84 now and don't hear so good any more and on Social Security. I sure would like to find a good home for them, with someone who would really appreciate them.
I got out of selling audio in the latter half of the 80's but I had a similar experience to you. My sister played the violin, my mother, other sister and I played the piano and I played the clarinet. I was raised on classical music and went to my first opera when I was 10. Being a late Baby Boomer, there was a lot of folk guitar played around me too. I know what acoustic instruments are supposed to sound like, but many people do not. I would not think of buying equipment with out hearing piano and orchestra on it.
1. There are only three movie theaters in my area that I can go to because all of the other ones drive there amps into hard clipping and I cannot stand it. They should turn it down or get bigger amps.
4. This is very true, but you can also get high efficiency speakers and get the same effect.
Even though I was out of the business before 1990, what you say about Nakamichi was true in the 80's, although the sound was more dull and lifeless rather than thin and crisp. Maybe they overcompensated. Maybe we are talking about the same thing but using differnt language.
The Denon CD players killed the Nakamichis.
It is interesting what you say about the later Nakamichi receivers. Too bad about the heat issues. What you say reminds me of Tandberg receivers.
It is interesting what you say about the Pereaux amps of 89. The Pereaux amps of the earlier 80's were reliable and I thought they sounded good. I was not very fond of their preamp.
Although our store had Acoustat, when I head the QUAD ESL 63, it was clearly better. I have never heard Quad Electronics.
I did sell the only pair of Beolab Penta's that our store ever saw. There did have a nice sound, which was very surprising, considering the rest of B&O's speaker line.
I have a Dutch pressing of "It's a Beautiful Day". What a great album!
I have never had a chance to flog McIntosh, Krell, Mark Levenson or Bryston equipment, but I certainly would like to give it a try. I have used Yamaha preamps to good effect but I have never tried them with Mac. Our chain sound Mark Levenson, but we never got an amp in our store. I have heard Mark Levenson, but not enough to have a strong opinion. We did sell Revox and I was very impressed with the line. They did have a kick-ass amp!
I wonder if the Nak amps can be modded!
Dave
Dave -
As far as "thin and crispy" vs. "dull and lifeless," it's all subjective. The speaker placement the room, and the recording have even more influence than the equipment as, far as I can tell -- when driven below the clipping level -- and cables can make a big difference, too.
I don't mean in my histrionic way to be unfair to Perreaux. I think all of the early amps with high-power MOSFET output stages suffered similarly (such as the Hafler DH200) -- fast, hot, detailed, edgy, and easy to blow. It took a demanding speaker load and a heavy hand on the jolume, but people could and did crispy-critter those early MOSFET units. It's just that the New Zealand gold standard was quite dear, and not all that stable, as it were.
While frothing uncontrollably, I should give honorable mention to the Sony VFET receivers at the end of the 70's. They were great sounding, beefy, and not too easy to blow up (but hard to fix - the transistors were discontinued almost as fast as were the custom tubes for the Luxman monoblocks). The big Marantz receivers of the day were blockbusters, too.
Still, short of a contemporaneous Mac, hardly a receiver ever made could stand up to the Tandbergs. I really loved the upper models, such as the TR-4075 and the later TR-2080. They had a big, warm, smooth sound that few combination units have ever equaled - or even very many separates, for that matter. They were even better than the late Nakamichi receivers by far. Their FM tuners were absolutely top-class, the same awesome one in even the lowest models. Unlike most stereo multiplex tuners, they sounded wonderful, and had superb RF performance.
I like Mac and Denon tuners, too. The MR78 takes the cake. The highly-esteemed Onkyo TX-9090 is a raw-sounding pile in my estimation, and even the hoity-toity Accuphase T-100 is crispy at best. The Magnum Dynalab FT-101 left me cold. The old Yamaha CT-1000 was killer, and even the digital T-1000 and T-700 were wonderful and warm-sounding. Too bad Yamaha audio gear took the big dive in the mid-to-late 80s.
I ran into one of my old customers today in the grocery store. I haven't seen him in at least 15 years. He still has the Tandberg TR-4040 receiver I sold him used 20 years ago, and the ADS L880 speakers with gray Kimber Kable and the Denon DCD-810 CD player he bought new from me -- in addition to his B&O 2400 turntable. He still hasn't found anything remotely affordable to beat his setup, but the TR-4040 finally has power supply hum. It would be a matter of subbing filter capacitors, because the original ones do not exist, as far as I know.
I had a Tandberg TC-20A reel-to-reel from 1983 to 1985, and then traded it in on a DRAGON. The TC-20A is now revered as one of the very best, and rightly so. The Tandberg R-R machines were beautifully designed and constructed. The TC-20A had a record phase compensation network that could produce a reasonable record-play facsimile of a 5 kHz square wave (no easy feat with squishy magnetic particles and magnetic heads).
I don't want to succumb to old-fogeyism. I heard some brand-new NAD amplifiers on the shelf recently that seemed surprisingly musical for the money, compared with their equipment of 15 years ago and more. No doubt the original and fabled 3020 integrated amp was a nice enough little entry-level unit and a great value, but the sonic delivery with subsequent models didn't always hold together for a while there.
I heard some used Acoustats (or whatever?) around 1980. They had proprietary tube amps in their bases with cheesy early high-feedback IC op-amp input stages. The amps had some thermal instability, if I recall correctly. Like all electrostatics, as long as you locked yourself into the tiny X-marks-the-sweet-spot, they sounded fine until you started to have even a little fun, then they pooped out. Great for chamber music, but I want a speaker that can do homage to St. Francis (Zappa). I also want something that the other people in the room can hear reasonably well, too.
You're right about theaters, but I think concerts are usually worse. I can literally hardly go anywhere any more. Oh, well!
High-efficiency speakers can help. That's why I mentioned horns and single-ended triodes, the other end of the continuum from the one I occupy. I have heard some unique and interesting effects from such setups, but I'm stuck with what I like.
Some people like Macs and old Klipsches. Nothing has ever (ever!) sounded worse to me than a pair of La Scalas, or their domestic counterparts, the Cornholes (excuse me, "Cornwalls"). I hated all of them -- the big Klipschorns, the Heresies, the Fortes, and nearly ugliest of them all, the KG4s. OMG, ROTFFPMGO. Oh, and the cute little KG2s were sickening, too!.
Being able to listen to the main speakers from any angle, and sometimes even more than 90 degrees off axis, is one benefit of dome midranges and tweeters tilted in toward the center. This kind of setup covers the horizontal listening area and beyond in ways that no panel speaker I have heard can do. Sensitivity is usually a tradeoff with this approach. I didn't think the highly-efficient domes I have heard sounded very good.
My big old ADS L1530s have a 95 dB efficiency rating, so by living with a pair of 115 lb. refrigeratiors, I get the best of both worlds! With their angled midrange-tweeter panels, their spectral polar response is the most perfectly balanced I have ever heard. (Many women, including one of my cousins and several of my girlfriend's co-workers, have instantly crossed me off the list of socially-acceptable human beings at the mere sight of these monoliths! How shallow... )
I installed some OAP professional speakers with 60x90 constant-directivity horn tweeters in a local high school, and they actually amazed me with their performance and uniformity of coverage.
The little B&O RL40 and RL60 speakers were pretty lacking, but the earlier S45 - S60 - S80, and then M75 - M80 - M90 - M100 lines had been awesome. With their keen sense of interior decor, the Danes just saw sooner than anyone else that the "wife acceptance factor," or even "style acceptance factor," of big speakers was on the way out, Iron Law of Bass or no. The big Pentas were really good, but hardly anybody could afford them. Now, B&O is a mere oriental shadow of its former self, while Labtec sells knockoffs in K-mart. I think that's what you get for putting visual esthetics ahead of sound quality in audio gear. It amounts to misguided values.
Now I've really hijacked this thread, although I hope onto closely-related ground...
Let's see, modding a PA-7. With an amp, you can mess about with better small-signal parts, bigger filter capacitors, different wire -- but the design topology, the power transformer, the heat sinks, and the output stage, are mostly just what you get. Sometimes you can swap output devices, but I think that changing the inherent performance characteristics of a power amplifier significantly is difficult.
- Steve
It is true that different situations can drastically change the sound of an amp. Driving Acoutstat 2+2's, the Nak PA-7 sounded very good, with a Veludine UDL-15.
Early Mosfet amps do have their pluses and minuses. They have a lot of fans, but also a lot of detractors. I had a Niko dual mono amp and later, a VSP Trans Mosfet. They worked in my system driving ADS 990 speakers.
I have a Sony TA-2000F and a TA-3200F amp and preamp. I need to do some work but I hope to find out how good these VFET are.
I lusted after the very expensive TOL Tandberg tuner. That and a yaggi is about as good as FM gets.
I have the TX9090 but its not working righ at the time. It has the Onkyo sound, which I gather you are not that fond of. It did pull in stations well but is no where near the Tandberg and I prfer the Yamaha sound. I am currently using a Denon tuner and I like the sound.
You do have to put your head in a vice to listen to Acoustats. 2+2's or 3's can play loud with 200 watts. They are not as beamy as a single pannel but they still have a sweet spot.
A DCD-810 is my backup CD player. It just keeps on going! I also have a pair of ADS 810 speakers.
I feel Klipsch made some design compomizes that made sense when you were tying to play orchestral music through a PP 2A3 amp, but do not make sense whith modern amps. The response was far from flat. Cornh.., I mean Cornwalls and Forte's were better than most of the designes. but JBL and Altec did much better in certain models. Domes give you a nice wide disperson but horns give you much less room interaction. Both can sound excellent when used appropratly (this includes proper equalization of the horn and matching coverage angles with the crossover frequencyies). JBL pro stuff does this quite well.
We had ADS 1590's in the store for quite a while and I was very fond of them. Even though they were very effient and an easy load, they liked power. Big amps would make them sound effortless. The 1590's were not the last word in resolution but they were very coherent. Both orchetral works and Zappa sounded great!
You are right about WAF and B&O. Women loved that stuff! I was pissed when they stoped making phono cartidges. They were real sleepers. You can still get them at Sound Smith, but the price is about triple what they were. People at the Vinyl Asylum claim that they are worth it, but that is a togh pill for me to swallow.
Dom't worry about hijacking the thread. I suspect we are the only ones lest following it!
The reason I speculated about modding the PA-7 is that I have heard the Threshold Stasis amps and they sound very good. Could the problem pe parts quality? I have a Threshold CAS-1 (which is not a Stasis) and the parts quality is good for the time. There are no electrolyics in the signal path.
Dave
In case I have thoughtlessly released inappropriate vitriol, I apologize for flaming the classic Klipsch models. I got carried away.
-- Steve
Well, I should try to restrain my irrepressible nature. Still, you did encourage me about the modding! I shall attempt to confine myself to potentially meaningful observations.
Despite shooting off my figurative mouth like an idiot (including the section concerning the Onkyo tuner), I did manage to avoid blithering about things about which I know nothing, such as the Threshold CAS-1.
How Nakamichi fell somewhat short in its execution of the Stasis design is also something about which I have no specific knowledge. I do not think it is as simple as parts quality. I think it is a matter of design. I really have no specific clue in what way.
My general impression is that the Nakamichi engineers were so concerned about addressing minutiae that had previously been considered either insignificant, or insurmountable, or both, that they often missed the forest for the trees.
Hearing that their digital audio gear wasn't good sounding, they seemingly became obsessed with things like digital timing glitches and interference from airborne and structural vibration. They must have read some underground audio rags to try to figure out how to meet the expectations of their potential customers, or something.
They had some hermetically-sealed double-isolated CD players (one was for the car), and so on. Digital sections were put in separate enclosures or compartments, then subdivided and shielded again -- all with individually filtered power. This became bulky, inconvenient, and expensive.
The epitome of the trend was the Model 1000 DAT machine of 1988, a multiple-chassis affair costing $10,000. Seeking to reprise their original technological tour-de-force, the 1000 cassette deck, they threw everything they had at the new DAT machine. Unlike cassettes, DAT wasn't already established, and the astronomical price (combined with delays and problems with the recording industry over the new recordable digital technology) killed the new 1000 DAT.
I heard one for several hours at another dealership with B&W 801Fs and some amp I don't remember. We had the big B&Ws at our store, too. I thought the 1000 DAT was quite good-sounding, though huge and gaudy. The remote looked like a small laptop of today, and all sparkly. It was clearly designed as a glitzy 80s showpiece.
The problem appeared to be bringing the sky-high gee-whiz factor down to earth, as Nak had successfully done with their cassette decks. (They did it with the later receivers, but the reliability issues ate them up.)
There was supposedly a batch of the receivers whose boards went through a defective solder bath. Those were a headache. My boss hated me for selling them over the Denons (which had lost some beef by the early 90's), because the one group of them kept coming back. I thought Nakamichi deserved the support to work through it, which they did. The designed-in heat problem remained, though, slowly baking parts and crystallizing solder. I certainly didn't know about that at the time.
I did learn something when McIntosh adopted the Nakamichi Music Bank mechanism for their MCD7008 CD changer. It was the best changer mechanism they could get (rated by Nak at 5000 hours), but they were concerned, because that was only half that of the Phillips professional single-disc transport they had been using.
It was incredibly traumatic for Mac to go to the Nak MusicBank mechanism, because it wouldn't fit in their standard faceplate. They had to change their beloved traditional appearance to survive, because they were simply being murderd on the sales floor by not having a CD changer with a matching (expletive deleted) remote control. That took them right out of consideration, despite the fact that their products delivered the most music, for the longest time, with the most consistent quality, and the lowest overall service cost, of anything you could get. I know I sound like a shill, but I really believed the shtick. I hope they are keeping it up. I mourn the transition to snobbery in the audio marketplace, but music lovers don't buy stuff once they're satisfied (like my friend with his ancient Tandberg receiver).
The new Mac CD changers strangely (but not, to me, surprisingly) sounded better than the Nakamichi versions with the same transport, chips, and main board! Nakamichi was mystified, flabbergasted, and even a bit crestfallen.
What did Mac know that Nakamichi didn't? What did Nelson Pass know that they didn't? Many people have asked both of these questions over the years.
McIntosh finally released a page of scoop to their dealer network, describing the changes they had made. One of them was to test the low-level linearity in the D-to-A converters, and then to reject about 40% of the finished CD player main boards. That's right, 40%! This was consistent with the McIntosh policy of testing every incoming part and subassembly (as well as the finished product), and rejecting anything they didn't think was good enough.
They also added gain to the laser RF amp, and added their own digital outputs. They put in additional digital logic to allow full functionality from the front-panel control buttons (a commitment I respect utterly to this day).
I really don't remember for sure, but I think that McIntosh added their own audio output ciruit with associated power supply section, and a nice solid headphone output driven by that, too. Reference to the service manual ought to answer that.
It is my concrete supposition that the combination of the selected Nakamichi main boards with improved low-level linearity, better data integrity from the additional RF gain at the laser, and a McIntosh-designed power supply and audio output stage, was in fact responsible for the notable superiority of the McIntosh MCD7008 over the Nakamichi MusicBank1.
There, I finally spat it out!
The B&W 801Fs were the power-suckingest speakers I ever did see, and sort of inert or overdamped sounding, too. There was hardly an amp or an AC outlet that could feed them. OK, there really wasn't an amp that could feed them adequately, in my concerted whatever, everyone's got one.
The later Matrix series was more lively, and more efficient, and more expensive. The 808s -- them are some dandy lautsprechers, yes siree! They were 91 dB efficient vs. 86 dB for the old 801Fs, if memory serves. 5 dB is almost 6 dB, or 4 times less power needed to run the 808s. They had twice the woofer area, and lots of cabinet. And they were sweet! My second favorite speakers ever when tri-wired with McPower, despite some admitted diffraction from the large front baffle.
They had dynamic delivery second to nothing I have ever heard, including Dead concerts. Jimi Hendrix playing "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock from the OMR CD boxed set was indelibly seared into my CNS by the B&W 808s, powered by an MC2500 on the bass, an MC7270 on the midranges, and the power amp section of a MAC4300V on the tweeters!
I used Kyung-Wha Chung playing the Tschaikovsky Violin Concerto to sell tthem to a doctor. I wanted some, too.
I also liked the Matrix 3 Series 2 tower speakers, which had nice real walnut finish. Bi-wired to a Mac 4300 receiver with a Denon CD player, the Matrix 3 Series 2s made a real system for music lovers. In 1993 or so, for $7250 retail plus wiring, that was heaven for me. They were a little bright on top if the room was live.
Though I do like B&W speakers in general, I still don't generally prefer metal domes, given the ultimate choice. Even when assured that all of the resonance and breakup modes are outside the operating frequency range, I still think soft domes sound better.
Too bad Dr. Godehard Guenther of ADS (truly a great genius) was reputedly such a difficult guy to work for. He was said to have lost his best people to Canton in Germany, Boston Acoustics in America, and (according to scuttlebutt) had his tooling repeatedly sabotaged by some who remained. Supposedly, this was responsible for the wildly oscillating quality of the original M9 - M10 - M12 - M15 series. That -- along with heavy R&D and Product Development speculation in consumer video equipment -- about did him in at a/d/s/, which has been under new ownership since the early 90's.
Enough already!
The Fortes were the smoothest-sounding speakers ever in the historic Klipsch line. I've nver heard the big Klipschorns properly set up and fed, it's also true. With a problem room setup and my friend's unclean vinyl, his mid-level Sony integrated amp was not very kind to them. I have heard active multiway pro JBL gear sound very good. My friend's MC2300 and JBL L300s really do the job.
I loved the B&O cartridges, which were of excellent quality. I got mad when I realized that the new short B&O linear tracking tonearms did not play the tracking test record as well as the B&O pivoting tonearms. I drilled B&O about it, they stonewalled me, and I sold their pivcoting arms thereafter. It's too bad that fads and herd consciousness rule the hifi business, and manufactures live or die by pandering to it.
Ta ta, must run!
Don't worry about the Onkyo! I was in the business long enough to know that people process sound differently and what sounds fine to one person, does not necessarily sound good to another. Onkyo has a house sound that is not everyone’s cup of tea.
The minutiae orientation of Nakamichi has been the downfall of more than one Japanese product. It can get very expensive with a significant sonic improvement. On the flip side, it did lead to their dominance in cassette decks and the very interesting Dragon turntable. I also think this obsession was instrumental in producing the great tone arms and cartridges that came out of Japan.
That was very interesting about the CD changers. Go old American distrust, which is at the heart of our political system, enabled us to produce a better CD changer with mostly the same parts.
I sold B&W in the early 80's. That was long before the Matrix speakers. They did sound very good but a lot of them were very inefficient. I guess I cannot point a finger because I am currently using Spendor BC-1 speakers. They are inefficient and have low power handling capacity. However, I do have some high efficiency speakers that I can switch to when I want to go high volume.
In the 80's most metal dome speakers would have me running out of the room. I have not heard many of the new ones. Surpisingly, JBL had some good ones.
I like ADS a lot. ADS also had the first CD player that I could stand to listen to. A Genius can be hard to work with. I have read that Fritz Reiner was quite the taskmaster.
When I sold Fortes, I liked to set them up with a Denon 25 watt integrated amp. Bigger amps did not should as good. Tubes or a Class A transistor would have been better but we did not carry either.
Dave
Dave --
Thank you for being gracious about my poorly-considered expressions!
I have spent many years trying to overcome my habit of expressing gratuitous negative opinions (especially about other people's preferences, or things they hold dear) because it tends to put a damper on things. ("Rule No. 14: Omit needless words!")
Trying to keep keep my communication to a helpful emotional tone has been much of the subject of my life. Blazing with subjective passion, replete with Adult ADHD, skirmishing with lurking Asperger syndrome, and struggling against latent OCD, I may yet fall short of incipient Tourette's!
I forgot to correct myself on the Tandberg TC-20A. It was actually, of course, the TD-20A.
You are right about horns being less susceptible to room interactions (in the midrange and above) because of controlled or limited dispersion.
About the 1590s not being the last word in resolution: it's true that the upper midrange could get a bit hard and glaring, but using the biamping feature greatly mitigated this tendency. The additional bass "whack" that you get by eliminating the series woofer inductor is incredible, too. The matching (and rare!) ADS C2000 electronic crossover had switch positions for models L1230, L1530, and L2030, plus a programmable one set by an internal DIP switch.
The L2030s were pretty amazing, with huge dual 14" Stifflite woofers and four 2" dome midranges each, plus the 18,000 Gauss samarium-cobalt 1" tweeter... They had some in the store before I worked there, but they had been semi-permanently wired in with the C2000 crossover and the 2 biggest models of Yamaha power amps -- which sounded quite good until you hit the wall. Having to stop just when it was starting to feel good was unbearable to me, but I actually did prefer the slightly more agile 10" woofers of the L1530s (which still went deep enough, with -3 dB at 25 Hz, and -5 dB at 18 Hz!).
Speakers with the most perfect resolution may not always have a desirable balance of other qualities, such as bass, power handling, dynamic impact, dispersion, or whatever else. Having electronic bi-amplification along with the traditional ADS virtues of bandwidth, dispersion, and impact, really gives what I think is the best compromise between a pair of Magneplanars, say, and a pro JBL PA system. One of my friends told me 20 years ago that what I had was "indoor PA." Perhaps, but I run it below the clipping level!
The ADS C2000 was built in the good ol' USA, and had enough poop to drive McPower -- I have one, and it really makes the difference with the L1530s. The C2000 could be modified for the L1090 - L1290 - L1590 series by changing capacitors on the PC board. I did this for a couple of my customers. The L1090 and up series still had the biamping terminals and switch, although ADS never marketed an electronic crossover to match them.
Dr. Guenther devised nearly every one of the most important speaker packaging developments of the 70s and 80s: aluminum box mini-speakers (the L200), automotive plate speakers (the 300i), separate car woofers and tweeters (the 320i), and floor-standing column speakers (the L1090, L1290, and L1590). As previously noted, his wonderful L1230s and L1530s took enormous flak from the feminine sector, so he came up with the tower concept (which I believe Chris Browder may have taken with him when he went to B&W).
I was able to set a couple of my other L1530 and L1590 customers up with active biamplification. Lacking availability of the long-gone C2000, and needing to run McIntosh power, I was compelled to use a pair of Furman professional crossovers with studio line-level outputs in a each of these systems -- which worked extremely well. The Furman crossovers were surprisingly smooth and natural-sounding, and they had the necessary boeuf.
I had discovered that consumer line level (100mV, ~10K output impedance, 50K input impedance) was completely inadequate to run Mcintosh power amps, but studio line level (+4 dBm = 1.23V, low output impedance, 600 Ohm input impedance) got the job done with professional smoothness.
Most of the McIntosh separate power amps used to require a 1.4V drive signal. Later ones have a full sensitivity of 0.75V, and a swith or a volume control that can match the 1.4V level. Unfortunately, all or nearly all of the McIntosh integrated amplifiers and receivers have had a 2.5V input level at the power amp section. This is true of the MA5100, MA6100, MA6200, MAC1500, MAC1700, MAC1900, MAC4100, MAC4200, MAC4300V, MAC4275, and MAC4280, and is still true, even up to the newest MA6900.
2.5V is a lot, a full 10 dB (actually 10.45 dB) above the 0.75V sensitivity of the separate amps. It's hard enough to run the separate amps off something else when they require 17.5 dB more drive than the average bear, but when you add another 10.45 dB, you get a total of 27.95 dB of additional drive to go from consumer line level at 0.1V to the Mac receiver's power section input at 2.5V. This constitutes a legitimate difficulty. (What's only 30 dB, right?)
The 2.5V input needed by the power amplifier sections of McIntosh receivers and integrated amplifiers is actually 6.2 dB more than the 1.23V level specified by the +4 dBm studio line level. However, most studio equipment has at least 20 dB of headroom over the stated output level (rockers are known to have a heavy hand). For this reason, you can drive any Mac power section from a studio line level source.
Why McIntosh continues to do this (except to lock you into their product line) I may never know. It makes it virtually impossible to interface Mac gear (especially receivers and integrated amps) with any other preamps or line-level equipment, especially surround decoders. I think it is an accident of history that has proven convenient for the sale of McIntosh surround units.
I ran into endless trouble with my boss and customers because of this invisible but real snafu. When the Mac preamp would get sold out of the store display, the Nakamichi CA-7AII that hung about like an albatross would get stuck into its place. I would have to stop using the McIntosh power amps in the display until we got another matching preamp, because the CA-7A just couldn't drive the Mac power -- nor could the Denon PRA-1000, or any of the Rotel equipment we had at the time.
There were some rather sticky discussions between me and my employer concerning this. He wanted me not to rock the boat, to proceed as usual, to act as if nothing was wrong. I doubt that anyone would be surprised that I held my ground. The hard-cash loyalty of my devotees was sufficient to earn their spiritual preceptor a certain grudging tolerance!
Two maxims of selling apply here:
1. Never underestimate your opponent.
2. You can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin it once!
I put together a system in 1994 with an existing MAC4100 receiver and a new Lexicon digital surround decoder (only the best, right?). The Lexicon didn't have enough volume to drive the Mac receiver to full output. You had to juggle all of the adjustments right to their limits even to get the system to work.
However, the real bottleneck in the system was the excellent ADS powered subwoofer (a P12?), which just wasn't big enough to fill the cavernous room with large fundamental pressure waves all by itself. (It came in with a fried woofer a few months later.)
I contacted both Lexicon and McIntosh about it immediately. Lexicon said they were aware of the issue, and were beefing up the output level on the next upcoming model. Sidney Corderman at Mac told me they were "working on it." Apparently, they still are. Of course, the simple answer is to pony up for the McSurround full-meal deal (nice work if you can get it!).
Recently, I heard from a friend who has a reasonably good-sounding NAD surround receiver wih a pair of Mac power amplifiers to biampliy his bi-wired main speakers. (The reciever's power runs the center and the rears, and he has a nice 12" B&W powered subwoofer.) He could never get the setup to sound right on good stero music through the main speakers. It was too thin, edgy, and harsh, and he wanted it to be full, smooth, and liquid, but with full impact, accuracy, and detail.
After a great deal of extremely typical hand-wringing and wildly inflammatory (but, may I emphasize, ultimately effective!) rhetoric on my part, I got him to install an Aphex 124A studio line-level interface amp. I assure you that this was far from easy. Far. (Far!)
I PREVAILED upon him to move the subwoofer to a point somewhat between the main speakers, instead of outside the left one. I also had him insert the line-level crossover in the subwoofer into the signal path, using the output of the subwoofer's internal electronic crossover to feed the Aphex 124A, which now ran both McIntosh power amps above around 75 Hz. To get alignment at the passive crossover point of the main speakers, I set the Mac power amps to matching output voltages at their speaker terminals, with the speakers disconnected and the same test tone input.
The problems with the system were now solved completely, after we got an "incompatible" cable that was spoiling the party out of the signal path. ("I will NOT spew about cables! I will NOT spew about cables!" They are quite system-dependent, after all.)
My friend was so pleased with his newly-satisfying system that he found a used but recent McIntosh surround preamp-tuner and took the real leap. Now, he's really happy. If I had not literally forced him to learn firsthand what was wrong with his sytem by making it work correctly, he would never have been confident enough about his upgrade path to take the big leap to the matching McIntosh surround-processing preamp.
I loved the ADS CD player, too. It really was one of the first truly good-sounding, beautifully-engineered CD players. The Atelier cassette deck was really good too, and the integrated amp and receiver were truly fabulous, definitely in Tandberg - ReVox territory (geographically as well as otherwise!). The innovative rail-switching amplifier design actually worked, and was both musical and highly authoritative. The receiver controls were too small and fiddly, some of them cramped into a tilt-down panel, but they weren't used much. One of those receivers or integrated amps and a pair of the later L810s with the metal grilles, rounded corners, and solid wood corner inserts, was pretty hard to beat.
It's too bad the that Atelier system just didn't sell. We saw it as an attempt to adopt some of B&O's visual design ideas and to make something slim and elegant. My boss's personal theory (reinforced by my experience on the sales floor) was that the funny green power buttons were just too dorky looking, and that women wouldn't go for them. I'm convinced that he was right. I also think that the black case and knobs looked too purposeful, maybe almost "military." Ironically, Dr. Godehard's vaunted Teutonic design and ergonomics were defeated in the marketplace by the color sensibilities of the very American female was the target of his efforts!
We ran into that with the Mcintosh gear, too. The CD player had a blue fluorescent display, and the FM dial readouts were orange LEDs. The front-panel backlighting was blue-green. McIntosh told me that they were compelled to use the best available display components, whether they had matching colors or not! The cosmetics of McIntosh gear have always been something of a male province, it seems.
Oh, the Dragon turntable. We had one or two. They sounded truly fabulous and were very close to the last word. I coudn't stand the fluid damping trough, though. You had to keep from spilling the silicone damping fluid into the tonearm bearings -- oops! That meant you couldn't really move the unit after setting it up. Sort of an impracticality. I go for the Denon DD tables and servo tonearms: top performance, neutral sonics, no belts to break, no fluids to spill! (I know there is a mild range of opinion on this topic... )
-- Steve
Just to add one more thing about the Onkyo. I think I only paid $35 for the thing so I don't have much financially or emotionally invested in it. Aside from public radio, this singals around here have such poor quality that any problems with the sound of a tuner would be masked by the much greater problems of the signal.Just to add one more thing about the Onkyo. I think I only paid $35 for the thing so I don't have much financially or emotionally invested in it. Aside from public radio, this signals around here have such poor quality that any problems with the sound of a tuner would be masked by the much greater problems of the signal.
It is best to keep things calm. I have seen some heated confrontations on the various Asylums.
I never head the ADS with true bi-amping but I have heard what it did for other speakers. It is the way to go! I wish I would have had a chance to hear 2030's but I can only dream! I do like what ADS did. I have owned ADS L500, 990 and still own 810 speakers.
ADS amps and speakers were the best sound I ever heard in a car, period!
That was quite an interesting read about Mac gear. Mac is the only company I am aware of that still makes a full-function preamp, so if I ever by new, they would be high on this list. Fortunately, my stereo and my TV are in different rooms. If I do go Mac, it looks like I need to go all the way. Of course you never know what will show up on the thrift store shelves. Your frend was lucky to have someone guiding him through the setup. Knowledgeable salesman are going the way of the dinosaur.
I did like the looks of the ADS Atelier system but you are right about the controls. They did sound very good.
If you want to talk about damping fluid, I have a J.A. Michell Hydraulic Reference! It is a pain to setup, but it is beautiful, and with some stiffening of the arm board, sounds quite good. My LP12 has taken over for the most part though.
Dave
It is best to keep things calm. I have seen some pretty headted confrontains on the varous Asylums.
I never head the ADS with true biamping but I have heard what it did for other speakers. It is the way to go! I wish I would have had a chance to hear 2030's but I can only dream! I do like what ADS did. I have owned ADS L500, 990 and still own 810 speakers.
ADS amps and speakers were the best sound I ever heard in a car, period!
That was quite an interesting read about Mac gear. Mac is the only company I am aware of that still makes a full-function preamp, so if I ever by new, they would be high on this list. Fortuneatily, my stereo and my TV are in different rooms. If I do go Mac, it looks like I need to go all the way. Of course you never know what will show up on the thrift store shelves. Your frend was lucy to have someone guiding him through the setup. Knowledgable salesman are going the way of the dinosaur.
I did like the looks of the ADS Atelier system but you are righ about the controles. They did sound very good.
If you want to talk about daming fluid, I have a J.A. Michell Hydsraulic Reference! It is a pain to setup, but it is beautful, and with some stifining of the armboard, sounds qute good. My LP12 has taken over for the most part though.
Dave
Dave -
Ah, the Mac full-function preamp. It's true that useful controls and switches can get dirty and all, but it sure is nice to be able to do this or that when you NEED to.
My old buddy who was the first way-out audiophile nut I knew back in 1982 used to say "yeah, ADS is the best thing you can get for the car." He had 300is in his 1976 BMW 2002tii.
I must be sensitive to feel this dismissal. Oh well, I've dished out far worse already right here! My old boss used to tell me "Steve, people are fragile. Everyone is fragile in a different way." Boy, ain't it the truth! Make that "different ways." I did learn a few really important things from the old buzzard.
My audiophile friend was an intersting cat, who had a Spatial Coherence preamp, a Dahlquist electronic crossover, a pair of Rogers LS3/5a dudes sitting on Satterberg subwoofers made to match, with the Lux tube monos and a Radford solid-state amp driving the stereo subs. He had an LP12 with a Unipivot arm and a Grodo (excuse me, "Grado") Signature 6+ cartilage*. (I'm in a mood, can you TELL?!) The Grado actually sounded just fine, although God forgive for not understanding about what all the fuss is about.
I had the opportunity to compare his setup with mine, piece by piece (for our mutual edification). I had a Yamaha P850 turntable with an ADC XLM-III cartridge and a Platter Matter mat, the ReVox B750 integrated amp, and my ADS 810 speakers on the matching F400 stands (about 6" high and angled back). I was using the original Kimber 4PR speaker cable and Teac Professional Series interconnects at the time. I was using a Discwasher D2 and the SC2 stylus cleaner, with LAST Recpod Preservative.
He used to demonstrate the sonic impact of playing cards placed upon the speakers. Oh, bother!
Not to say that a certain audio rep named George didn't mockingly ape my ritual of minutely adjusting the speakers for perceived phase reinforcement over critical frequency ranges... He certainly wasn't hearing it, and had no belief that I did, either.
Both piece by piece and overall, our systems weren't far apart -- but I had paid a lot less for mine. The Satterbergs were a little muddy. I noticed that moving the very good Rogers satellites back and forth on top of the subs caused a very noticeable phase-frequency interaction. How do you get it right and keep it right? What a pain. I like built-in voofers, please. At least he had stereo bass.
The idea that you can't hear where the bass is coming from is completely wrong in my universe. It must originally have come from the fact that records have no left and right bass. Everything below 250 Hz goes down the center of the groove, or else you'd never be able to track it. One of the best things about digital sound is left-and-right bass (sadly often lost in this deeply misguided era of subwoofage).
*One of my cust-O-mers once told me "It has a brand-new cartilage!" Another woman said, "I was told I should ask to hear the Erotica symphony." I tried to keep a straight face, saying I thought I had a copy of Beethoven's 3rd. She said, "I want to hear it on a tangenital tonearm." I said, "We have the B&O tangential-tracking tonearm." I thought the B&O turntable (and, inevitably cartridge) sounded pretty good playing Beethoven, one of my real favorites.
Can you BELIEVE it, though? The "Erotica" symphony on a "tangenital" tonearm?
"Let's see, I've got one of those right here!"
I have played with subwoofers myself and for the reasons you have stated, I prefer biamp setups like the ADS 1290 etc. At our store, we did get a Velodyne UDL 15 to work with Acoustats 2+2, but you had to cross it very low and there still was some transition. Still, Saint-Saens Organ sounded quite impressive.
The Rodgers LS35A was quite a good speaker and even with it's anemic base, could make a good showing for itself. I also liked the hopped up Jim Rodgers version, the JR 149. JR had a matching sub that did a better job than most integrating. You still had some of the same problems so it still may not be enough for you.
I got an M&K sub very cheap ($30) so I am going to give it a try with my BC-1's, but I am skeptical. If it doesn't work, it will go to my planned home theater setup with all vintage speakers! I never heard the Satterbergs.
At my age, I have a lot of friends who would like a brand new cartilage. I had quite a few customers ask for an eek-alizer! I am with Alex in A Clockwork Orange. All Beethoven's symponies are erotica! I am not sure that I'd want to see a "tangenital" tonearm.
B&O was sexy equipment though. You take a B&O setup, a bottle of wine and pretty girl and you might wind up with a tangenital tonearm!
Dave
Dave --
I sent you an E-mail at the address that popped up from your username -- dunno if it's current.
I had some great old times demoing the Telarc pressing of the Saint-Saens Organ symphony, too! What a fun piece of music. When asked by an interviewer why he used ADS L1530s for his monitors, Jack Renner of Telarc said something so iconically pithy I'll never forget it: "They take power. They go deep. They play loud."
He had rewired his, something I've never had the temerity to attempt, even though I've been holding on to the wire for that purpose for about 15 years!
I haven't had the chance to hear any Spendors. Those and the Harbeths seem very interesting. The Velodynes are pretty nice subs, and B&Ws, ADSs, and I think the Sunfire subs can be good -- among others.
I talked one of my former coworkers into setting up his home theater system with a stereo pair of the Sunfire subwoofers, and making sure he had matching crossover points on the subs and the front speakers. Even though his room geometry wasn't spot-on, it wasn't bad, and I heard the best materialistic mainstream home movie setup I've encountered yet.
There was a great article in Stereopile in 1975 about the Infinity Servo-Statik I's: http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/845/index.html
The term "subwoofer" was apparently not yet in wide usage. The article goes on about the problems with the "bass commode" (speaking of tangenital tonearms!). I think that's the most perfect nomenclature ever devised -- flush!
They couldn't get seamless bass. They had to adjust the electronics and the placement all the time.
I moved into the house my friend who had the LS3/5as was vacating. We actually shared it for 2 weeks or so. (That's a story in itself.) He left behind his RH Labs Larger Subwoofer, a huge cabinet with a down-firing 10" woofer. I borrowed another Dahlquist crossover from a kindly local shop where I never bought anything, and hooked it up with my system.
By this time, I had traded the awesome ReVox B750 in on the even greatly superior McIntosh MA6200 (which I purchased on Thursday, November 7, 1982 -- a banner day in my life). I had the ADS L810-IIs, and had upgraded my ADC XLM-III to a ZLM by getting a better stylus. I had gotten my girlfriend to buy a used MAC1500 receiver to take home with her when she graduated from college the following Spring :-( ... She was close to her family and lived a thousand miles away, and I wasn't going to uproot.
I lashed up a system using the preamp outputs on the MA6200 to drive the Dahlquist crossover, fed the HF outputs to the auxiliary input on the MAC1500, and used one channel of the MA6200's power amp section to drive the subwoofer. (I didn't know about the interface level issues with the Mac, but the Dahlquist XOVR was able to drive the bass OK. It wasn't a problem going into the AUX inputs of the MAC1500 because the preamp section of the receiver did the rest.)
The MAC1500's tube output section did sound pretty shweet through the L810-IIs, but I had no trouble preferring the solid-state outputs of the MA6200.
I found that the subwoofer had to be front and center within a quarter of an inch -- no, make that a quarter of a millimeter! (Both left-right AND front-back.) I ultimately realized it should also be centered VERTICALLY between the satellites, too, but you'd need a prtty wild custom build to allow for that.
I liked a crossover point of 80 Hz. The Dahlquist was a 2nd order (12 dB/octave) design. Once I finally got it sounding OK on John Entwistle's bass with my Japanese pressing of "Who's Next," I played Beethoven symphonies -- and had to go through it all over again.
I came to the inexorable truth that if I kept this setup, I would spend the rest of my life messing with the crossover and the sub placement for every piece of music, and would never be satisfied. I wanted to set it up and leave it working. I wanted it to work for every kind of music.
I kissed subwoofers goodbye forever (or so I thought). On February 5th, 1983, I traded the L810-IIs in on the L1530s (yaaaayyy!). Much to my later sorrow, I continued to use the big piece of furniture my friend hadn't wanted to ship back East (the RH Labs sub) as an equipment stand. I've always lived a little too close to the edge, and I had no furniture budget. My listening room was lined with cork bulletin board squares, surplus hippie tapestries from the 70s, and my childhood sleeping bag on one wall.
I discounted stories that you shouldn't have any non-working speakers in the room, or they'll interact. I found out later that this can be true, and that the unhooked subwoofer was making the bass response uneven, with a weird resonant mode around 250 Hz that followed me from room to room for years. When I finally watched the darn thing go over the edge into the town dump, it was another great day!
In 1976, Ultralinear speakers had developed the tilted-back front panel for their speakers, with the new idea of "time-alignment." They had a really cool demo setup in one of the downtown shops, with a dome midrange unit in a sealed tube, and a similar dome tweeter. They were both mounted on coiled cords. You could listen to pink noise on the two drivers while holding them in your hands and moving them back and forth to hear the phase change.
That was the most impressive demo I've ever heard in my life. It explained what I later heard with the subwoofer. You can imitate the demo pretty well with a boom box and detachable speakers by tuning in FM interstation hiss. As you move the speakers back and forth and toe them in and out, ANYBODY with 2 functioning ears can hear and experience the difference. This is the fundamental basis of my customer education program: square one.
In reality, the stereo image really is a hologram in the truest sense of the word. It stores a 3-dimensional image by recording phase relationships between 2 sources (the microphones), and reproduces it by replicating the phase relationships with 2 other sources (the speakers).
Given that there are ideally only 2 microphones, getting the most similar reproduced wave front is only going to happen with 2 speakers. If you divide out the bass and put it over there, it's over. Can't get there from here! No way. That's why we have point-source nuts. But I want bottom end with clean left and right bass...
My doctrine was formed: 2 mics, 2 speaker, 2 ears -- and no signal processing!
There should be an imaginary broomstick between each mic and its corresponding speaker, causing the speaker to follow perfectly the displacement of the mic (within the contraints of its drivers and crossover). The more perfectly rigid the broomsticks, the more perfectly accurate the sound. Any signal processing is analogous to a rubbery link from the microphone to the speaker, or a floppy broomstick. (This wouldn't sound nearly so Freudian if we hadn't already discussed the tangenital tonearm!!!)
I like both the Telarc records and CDs. I used Alexander Nevsky, the Battle on Ice for an impressive demo also. I still play that CD now and again. I buy the Telarc records when ever I come across them, usually at $1 a pop.
My stereo room is full of non working speakers. I am getting a good sound. Maybe I would be getting a better sound without them!
That is not very encouraging about the subwoofer but I have nothing to lose by giving it a try. There always is a little bit of luck in getting things right.
I have shared your experience with signal processors. I guess that is why people keep giving them to me. I have a DBX and a Carver Sonic Hologram but I have yet to hook them up.
Dave
Sounds like I'm heading for a pair of Lowthers, doesn't it? But I do need those symphonic fortissimos and other complex, heavily-modulated passages.
When I want full-range phase linearity, I use electrostatic headphones. The Stax SR-Sigma electrostatic headphones with the SRD-7 transformer adapter box, hooked up to the speaker outputs of McIntosh solid-state power, are the most perfect transducers I have ever heard. The ones with the Stax driver electronics were too crispy on top for me in the old days, but I haven't heard any recent models.
I tried the AKG K1000s when they were pretty new. The upper midrange was way too hard and forward for me. I couldn't take it. The advice of the inmate who wrote that the K1000s like SET power sounds right on.
It sure would have been fun to try the Sennheiser Orpheus headphones!
Full range speakers can sound very nice on certain types of music, but if you like full orchestra, I can't see how they can cut it. I do find the idea of using a wide-range drive, agmented at both ends to have promis. I plan to give it a try. You can use a full range in this type of stup, but I remain suspicious of wizzers.
Stax are where it's at when it comes to headphones! I never tried AKG. The pro guys seem to like them. Grado headphones are not bad for the money but the are not the most comfortable.
Dave
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