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In Reply to: RE: What were your big leaps in audio posted by airtime on August 22, 2014 at 17:09:26
OMG, I have to answer this.
#1. Reading the review of the KLH Model 20 Compact System. It brought home the point that the collection of pieces is a system, and needs to be engineered as a SYSTEM, not a collection of pieces. The principles of Systems Engineering take precedence here over cost, reviews, etc.
#2. An hour spent in a hotel bar with Chuck McShane (the uncle of our McShane)who was the Director of Research for AR at the time. He was the featured speaker at our professional society meeting, and I went early and prevailed on him pre-meeting. It took us half an hour for me to un-learn all the things I though I knew. His patience with me was wonderful, and I thank him to this day for his kindness and the insights he gave me.
#3 The Bose 14 page brochure for their 1801 amplifier. In there was an expression for the effect of amplifier & cable impedance on speaker frequency response. I transformed that into a real equation and saw that amplifier output impedance and cable impedance interact with the modulus of speaker impedance to shift frequency response.
#4 Some experiments run on the audibility of low frequencies with and without the effect of room surface and seating vibration induced by the speakers.
#5 Roy Allison's experiments and papers on room boundary effects on speakers.
There were others, of course; but those are the most important, and they are listed in order of importance to me.
What, and how you, learned about the science and practice of audio has a major effect on how good your system sounds.
Jerry
Follow Ups:
Jerry,
That is SO kind of you to mention your get together with Chuck. He was a wonderful Uncle, a great speaker designer, and a damn good person. I miss him a LOT since he passed away last year.
Thank you for your thoughts.
Jim,
Thank you for the reply. I really imposed on him; but he was so kind about the whole thing. I did pick up the bar tab; but it was a very small thing compared to what he did for me. When the meeting finally started; he did a great presentation.
Our group was the new England chapter of the Institute of Environmental Sciences (the IES). We had nothing to do with ecology or the natural environment; but we were focused on environmental testing, like vibration, shock, acceleration, sand and dust, humidity, fungus, and acoustical noise, mostly related to the aerospace industry. A number of budding "environmentalists" (i.e. ,tree huggers) came to our meetings and went away totally confused. The vibration, acoustic noise and shock testing were closely related to audio, and most of our members were interested in home hi-fi; so Chuck's talk was well attended and very well received.
My own role was as the Manager of a vibration and shock testing lab. We had 7 moving coil shakers, and five large vacuum tube amps. Four at 45 KVA, and a smaller, 1 KVA tube amp for the accelerometer calibration shaker. Shock was done on the shakers with a shaped pulse input.
Jerry
After unpacking my stuff in the college dorm (TD150/Rabco/XLM/Mac C26/Sony TA3120F/double Advents) my new roommate said, "Here, try this," handing me a beat-to-s**t Dyna PAS 3 with no faceplate or knobs.
*Oh.*
That's when I started listening and learning - September 1973.
WW
"A man need merely light the filaments of his receiving set and the world's greatest artists will perform for him." Alfred N. Goldsmith, RCA, 1922
I did not linked you with Chuck. I knew him during the Teledyne days. An amazing fellow with fantastic speaker knowledge.
Don Brian Levy, J.D.
Toronto ON Canada
I agree with you. But, even the most gifted audio designers are learning new things all the time....
The physics of sound reproduction and architectural acoustics are pretty well known, though still evolving; but I think another major part is psychoacoustics, and that has a ways to go yet. Dr. Floyd Toole, Jr., made a lot of headway with that when he was the director of the Canadian Research group, and he has continued that work in his position with Harmon International (JBL, H-K, and Infinity); but I don't think everything in that area has been found. And, of course, there are still personal preferences and the effort one needs to put in to get the system matched up and tuned, and the room treated.
Jerry
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