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65.19.76.104
In Reply to: RE: Mysteries.... posted by grhughes on January 13, 2009 at 08:04:45
IMO, the introduction of Dolby in professional recording and later in consumer versions was the beginning of the end for good sound. Things went further downhill with early digital, especially RBCD.
Once artificial artifacts were added to the music, it was only matter of time before these got twisted into a necessary part of consumer expectations. The sheep buy what they are sold, and the result was history. Technology has corrupted the process of producing music, not just reproducing music.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Tony, GR, Fly.... I just wanted to say that your series of posts were the most thought-provoking I've come across on the Asylum in the New Year. I graduated H.S. in 75, college in '79, but remember "getting the use of" a R2R back in 1973 (borrowed from a friend's brother), FOR JUST ONE EVENING. The only tape I had to play on it was somebody's live Wayne Newton stuff. Of course, I was fully not interested in W.N., but was floored at the sound quality, so much that I remembered that brief experience to this day.
I had already appreciated non-solid state FM radio output, as I had my grandmother's 1947 Zenith to listen to early 70s FM as a teen (when the FM DJs had creative freedom and the commercial interests weren't so demanding as to be largely in control).
Unfortunately, as the 70s progressed, I got blindly swept up in the portability / "acceptability" of cassette, up to the point that I ended up with close to 1000 home-records from the period of the mid-70s through today (sourced mostly from vinyl or FM).
I got to hand it to cassettes in one small regard though: My friends and I would mail-exchange creative mix tapes and themed tapes, (sometimes interspersed with comedy bits). Living several states apart in the West, we would rendezvous at a central point, such as the Grand Tetons in WY for camping/hiking, but we'd have pre-sent each other "road tapes" for the journeys out in 60-cent mail pouches. EVEN SO, what I would give to experience some of, say, some of my favorite live Van Morrison, or King Biscuit Flour Hour recordings on R2R equipment ! ! !
I just wish I had that "first intro" to R2R that you guys had, and thusly would have gone out and collected and cherished said equipment, instead of funds going into my '66 Mustang. Audiophonically, I was born about 6 to 8 years too late. My hope these days is to keep my eyes open for an estate sale that maybe includes equipment once owned by a true audiophile, at a price I can justify amid the other normal expenses of life. Then, without delay, selecting / recording music on that format would become my new addiction.
One brief point on Dolby, I always disliked the audio loss, and since I was always a "question the direction of the herd kid", I never toggled on the Dolby for recording or playback, happily accepting some tape noise, but categorically rejecting any loss of detail. I wanted to hear Leo Kottke's fingers sliding on the guitar strings, or every bit of a playful, energetic, "outside of the lines" Hammond B performance on a Jimmy Smith album.
Thanks for your comments! Be thankful that you latched onto the best of the best for your ears. Even if you momentarily got distracted from it, you're back to it obviously. So, I am a bit envious of you guys flourishing within that great R2R subset.
I graduated from high school in 1966. My band made a LP record that year and invited a professional recording studio (CENTURY) to record it. The guy showed up in a Ford Econoline van totally equipped with Ampex tube (351-2) and a MX35 mixer and three Sony C37 condenser microphones with miles of cable on two garden hose winches. The experience made quite an impression on all the guys interested in hi-fi in the band. Those students whose parents could afford it went out and bought Roberts 770 or 720s (the poor man's Ampex) and two microphones and many of us got very serious about recording our own stuff. Mostly choirs and a buddy and me actually made a record of an aspiring folk group who wrote a song that THE KINGSTON TRIO picked up and recorded. My listening amplifier was a KNIGHT KIT twin 25 watt power amp with a KNIGHT KIT preamp that I assembled myself with the watchful eye of my cousin who worked for AT&T long lines. I also built my speakers from JENSEN components. I greatly enjoyed listening but as an avid hi-fi enthusiast was engrossed in the literature, AUDIO MAGAZINE and Edward Tatnal Canby's reviews.
The audio world was converting to solid state and this conversion was the first "bad moon on the rise" . Listening was FUN! I listening joyfully to this KNIGHT KIT tube system all through college. but was intent on converting to solid state. Why, the reviews in these magazines were all touting it. It must be better. A company in Texas was selling a solid state amplifier called the SUPER TIGER featured in POPULAR ELECTRONICS magazine that bragged about almost un-measurable distortion. So I sold my KNIGHT KIT system and bought two SUPER TIGERS that I assembled. BAD MISTAKE! These things could not stop oscillating at some super sonic frequency. A PhD in Electrical Engineering could not stop them from oscillating. This same PhD also had purchased the same brand of amplifiers and was intent on making them work which wound up being a ten year quest. They eventually worked but something was missing. Listening was no longer fun but fatiguing after about the playing of one album. You wanted to turn it off and do what needed to be done. Something was going on in this solid state un-measurable distortion amplifier that obviously could not be measured.
At the time I collected pre-recorded tapes and played them on my Roberts 770. Then suddenly all tapes converted over to 3 3/4 ips and suddenly that joy was gone. Hi-frequencies became attenuated and I never bought another tape. Back to the LP, now everything was going QUAD. Two more speakers and amplifiers were added and a SQ matrix converter and a Dolby B noise reduction system. But the joy didn't return. Sound quality to my ears was getting worse not better.
Technology stirs the pot and seems to be never satisfied with a calm standard. Someone is always trying to sell something new and it seems to me IMHO that this rush to make a profit supersedes everything else in our society.
So I went back to electron tube amplifiers and the joy returned. My PhD friend concluded that " you must like to listen to distortion." No I don't think that is true. I think engineers have not served us very well. I'm not an engineer, my degree is in Journalism. I'm a music lover and I want my listening experience to be enjoyable not fatiguing. In short, I don't think you can cut the frequency spectrum up into zones a la Class B or Class AB class C or Class D or anti-aliasing filters with digital and then re-constitute it back together without injecting some artificial artifacts into the music. I think engineers are a little too practical and are enamored with themselves that they can do this. The rest of us have to live with it and may times it is not very pleasant.
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture." Frank Lloyd Wright
What you say is true.
My experiences closely paralleled yours, except I graduated HS in 1974. I started out with SS equipment but fortunately discovered a place 4 hours away in Champaign, Illinois, when I went to the CES in Chicago in 1976. At the show, they had set up a tube based system that was quite apart from all the other stuff I had experienced up to that time, including quite a bit of high-end gear at the CES. Music became a joy to listen to, and I got off the component-of-the-month merry-go-round that so many become addicted to. These guys were a voice in the wilderness, selling tube gear in the mid to late 70s.
I remember the magazine ads for Southwest Technical Products amplifiers back then, too.
Best regards,
Mike
nt
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture." Frank Lloyd Wright
Damn good point! It doesn't really eliminate noise. It psycho-acoustically masks noise at the expense of attenuating dynamics. Ray
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture." Frank Lloyd Wright
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