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In Reply to: RE: Yes, "The High End" is a marketing segment created by peddlers, not engineers or scientists posted by Tony Lauck on March 03, 2011 at 10:33:02
...in the early 1970s, High End were the manufacturers who were focused on producing "musically accurate" audio reproduction equipment.
Like Magneplanar, Marantz, Citation, Audio Research, Quad, Infinity and Levinson to name a few.
As opposed to the mass market Japanese rack systems, if you recall.
The early days of solid state electronics were no friend to music.
Perhaps today your comment might be more applicable.
Follow Ups:
My old Kef 104 speakers came out in 1973, I believe. the year TAS began. I can't see that HP and other reviewers had much to do with it. It was one of the speakers using computer aided designs.
Which is part of my point. I can't see that HP and most other equipment reviewers had much of anything to with advances in audio. Julian Hirsch at least encouraged manufacturers to provide accurate specifications for electronics.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
Correct. HP reviewed in in issue 8 and found its upper midrange peak unbearable, despite being non-boxy sounding and having good imaging. Computer analysis can as quickly create problems when you make the wrong assumptions as it can provide solutions. Early integrated circuits such as the LM301 were also computer designed - and horrible sounding!
rw
That proves HP didn't know what he was talking about-either that or you misidentified the speaker as Kef had later speakers which have 104 in the designation, such as 104.2, etc. Aside from several reviewers and myself, let's see what Paul Barton had to say about it."Barton: Yes. I would definitely agree with that. Can I talk about other speakers? It's one that no longer exists, but the original KEF R104aB was very flat on-axis. But they crossed the tweeter over way too high. If you put a pair in a room that had reflections, it was a very laid-back speaker. Very distant-sounding. Very pleasant.
Atkinson: Because of the lack of presence-region energy in the room?
Barton: Because the total energy wasn't there. The 104 was a very well-respected loudspeaker, and quite frankly worked well in a dead-end/live-end situation, which was at that time the way KEF designed loudspeakers. But it was very room- and placement-sensitive."
I agree with Barton's remarks on the Kef 104aB (and the earlier version, the 104). Upper midrange peak my foot!
-----
"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
Edits: 03/03/11
as Kef had later speakers which have 104 in the designation, such as 104.2, etc.
You're entirely correct. After the original 104, next came the 104ab. Let's review your comments to which I responded:
My old Kef 104 speakers came out in 1973
You referred to the 104. I too, referred to a review in 1976 of the 104. We both refer to the 104.
"Barton: Yes. I would definitely agree with that. Can I talk about other speakers? It's one that no longer exists, but the original KEF R104aB was very flat on-axis.
You and I spoke of the 104 while Barton speaks of a later revision called the 104ab. Was there any difference?
It would appear that the change involved the crossover. Apparently, they realized their earlier error.
I agree with Barton's remarks on the Kef 104aB
Ok, if that is the case (as opposed to what you originally wrote), then you and HP are referring to different revisions of the speaker. Did that clarify your confusion?
rw
The difference between the Kef 104 and Kef 104aB is the crossover. After 17 nor 18 years, one of the crossovers capacitors went, so I had the distributor put in the 104aB crossover. I am quite familiar with both versions of the speaker. I certainly don't need HP to tell me how they performed.
The Kef 104 and Kef 104aB versions had a mid-range control, plus or minus 2 dB. The crossover was at 3 kHz. This of course means that the off axis is not as flat as with many modern speakers.
With the Kef 104, I turned the midrange control down to the -2 position. With the Kef 104aB, I turned it up to the +2 position, which Richard C. Heyser considered to give the flattest response. I couldn't compare them directly, of course, but I think I preferred the older 104.
If HP said there was a peak in the upper midrange of the Kef 104, I can only say he didn't know what he was talking about. The original Kef 104 was very flat in the listening window, no peak in the upper midrange. Indeed, peakiness in the upper midrange is something I particularly dislike. It was a somewhat distant sounding speaker, but I like that. If HP thought the sound was too forward, he could have turned the midrange control down.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
...everybody has their own opinions.
And that's what I believe this forum was set up to discuss.
I watched the videos of HP's Keynote addresses to RMAF 2009 and heard him expound on observational listening, something you have never managed to explain. If E-stat's remarks accurately reflect HP's review of the Kef 104, it didn't work all that well.
I think HP's keynote speeches were best on marketing and reaching out to those using the new digital technologies.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
...observational reviewing from my past posts about it, then you haven't been paying attention.
I've always described it as being an objective process, comparing what you hear to a reference - live music - and describing the differences.
Then adding a subjective component to it - whether it fits with your personal listening biases or not, i.e. do you like how it sounds.
I haven't seen that clip of HP in a couple of years, so I don't recall what he said about it.
Still the best advice in audio. How a component is supposed to sound pales in comparison to how it actually sounds.
"How a component is supposed to sound pales in comparison to how it actually sounds."
Who says otherwise?
Wilma Cozart Fine was talking about making recordings, not reviewing equipment. I have no idea what sort of controls she used to remaster the old Mercury recordings for CD or whether she ever used blind testing. I suspect any differences she was concerned with were well above thresholds.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
I was referring to HP's speech that you linked. If the measurements crowd claim that a component should sound like one thing and it sounds like another, there's a problem with the measurements somewhere.
Sorry - how did Wilma Cozart Fine enter into the discussion? If you made an earlier point about her, I missed it.
HP quoted Wilma Cozart Fine in one of the Keynote addresses.
Measurements by themselves do not say anything about audibility. To do that, they must be correlated with controlled listening tests to find some sorts of thresholds.
-----
"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
Went back and caught that the second time around.
> Measurements by themselves do not say anything about audibility. To do that, they must be correlated with controlled listening tests to find some sorts of thresholds. <
Aside from our definitions of "controlled", we agree.
...encouraged manufacturers to provide accurate specifications for electronics.>
Unfortunatley the measurements at that time had very little to do with the way the components sounded playing music.
There is only a little more correlation today.
The top reviewers of the day never claimed to advance audio technology and design - only to identify the equipment which was able to sound the most like music and describe their positive traits and shortcomings with terms we have come to take for granted today.
HP coined "soundstaging" and "dynamic contrasts" among many other terms.
His reviews were very influential in the design of high end products - manufacturers took his criticism and modified their equipment to do a better job of reproducing music.
And as he has mentioned, he helped Marantz and Dahlquist voice the DQ-10 loudspeaker in his room.
A classic speaker and my first entry into high end.
" And as he has mentioned, he helped Marantz and Dahlquist voice the DQ-10 loudspeaker in his room."
That would explain why TAS has always gushed over the DQ-10, going so far as to rate it one of "The 12 Most Significant Loudspeakers of All Time" (TAS 205). A bit self-serving, don't you think?
> > TAS has always gushed over the DQ-10, going so far as to rate it one of "The 12 Most Significant Loudspeakers of All Time" (TAS 205). A bit self-serving, don't you think? < <
I think that the DQ-10 was deserving of the award. On the other hand there were several choices that were obviously self-serving. (Speaker-of-the-month-club choices from Jonathan "Sticky Fingers" Valin that needed a little more bolstering than just his pandering reviews.)
...with the DQ-10s.I had never heard of TAS in 1977 when I was shopping for a new pair of speakers.
I probably listened to 10 different ones in my price range but nothing really impressed me - even with a lot of the stores using "Time" from the DSOM, which was the "in" demo record.
Someone told me about a new speaker, the Ohm (Model A?), which was at a local Federated Store (big box).
So I went there to hear it and was let into their expensive equipment room.
A pair of Dahlquist DQ-10s sitting there had been left playing some Latin percussion music - it was coming from behind and in between the speakers there in space - it sounded like the instruments were right there in front of me. I'd never heard anything like it.
The guy went on to demo the Ohms and while they had a lot of bass, it was the DQ-10s I ended up buying.
Easily one of the 12 most significant loudspeakers of all time and a classic. There is still a lot of interest in them on the used market over 30 years later.
Self-serving, nah - while HP gave them a hand in voicing the speaker in his room, he did the exact same thing with every review he wrote, whether the manufacturer took his advice or not.
Edits: 03/04/11
As I’ve pointed out on here before, I owned the DQ-10s for eleven years and purchased the speakers over the strenuous objections of the stereo shop’s owner who was a Bose 901 devotee.
...I would have guessed you were more of a Bose guy.
No. That would be true only if that knowledge had been made common AND if TAS (or HP) had some stake in the success of the speaker. Neither criteria is met. Go back to the issue and review who made the recommendation. Hint: it wasn't HP. Seems to me that even thirty years later, you were unaware of that involvement. FWIW, I know of at least three other stories of designers trying out and refining designs at Sea Cliff. I suspect there are many more. The public is simply unaware of them. Which is just as well.
What's to complain about when the outcome is improved product refined through the feedback of truly discriminating ears observing the results on a truly discriminating system?
rw
The king paints his masterpiece and his subjects like it; a prudent policy in every kingdom. In fairness, Stereophile was also somewhat complimentary, listing the DQ-10 #92 in its “Hot 100 Products,” a 40 year retrospective of what JA termed the “most important” products. Of course, Sterophile’s compilation is dated November 2002 while TAS’s “top 12” speaker survey *appears* to be dated Sept. 2010. Long live the king!
The concept of the sound stage had, I think, a huge positive effect on speaker design. Before HP called attention to it, we treated stereo as essentially a lateral phenomenon, despite the fact that the enhanced reproduction of depth is discussed in Blumlein's original patent. Such imaging as occurred was almost accidental, what with enclosure diffraction, asymmetrical driver arrangements, poor speaker placement and acoustics, and bad polar response. And yet when I first heard it, imperfectly realized in a friend's KLH-9's, I realized right away that an entire dimension had been missing from my listening. There followed a period of frantic and ultimately failed experimentation in an attempt to get my own speakers, a pair of AR-11's, to do the same trick.
So much for the measurements of the time! It was an important lesson in what counts.
My old high school audio buddy, J. Peter Moncrief, had a pair of KLH-9's at his apartment in Boston in the 60's and I was amazed at the depth. But getting good imaging was nothing new, we used to take our KLH-6's to the chapel and play prerecorded tapes (around 1960). We couldn't get enough volume though to match a large orchestra in this room that would seat several hundred people. But the quiet portions were pretty realistic if you didn't mind tape hiss.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
AFAIK, good imaging did happen, as evidenced by Blumlein's original patent, but it seems to have been a pretty much hit-or-miss affair. Forex, I gather the KLH-6's were symmetrical two-ways, but my AR-11's were asymmetrical -- midrange and tweeter side by side, but not mirror imaged. Which caused problems with crossover lobes, too, something that wasn't understood until a few years later. Also, I don't think the deleterious effect of early reflections on imaging was understood. Loudspeakers were regularly placed against walls, when pulling them only a few feet out into the room would have improved things dramatically. I also suspect that edge diffraction and symmetry issues are less deleterious at a significant distance, as in a large hall.
As I recall, the tweeters weren't exactly above the woofers when the speakers were sitting on the floor (woofer down). But I could be mistaken about this.
In this time frame (early 60's) KLH had another model that had two tweeters, but I was suspicious of this one (heard it only in the store) as I had already experienced the bad results from running two KLH-6's side by side for each channel, with obvious comb filtering of the treble. That summer three roommates, E. Brad Meyer, Clark Johnsen and myself, had a lot of KLH-6's betweem us. At one point we had a fifth KLH-6 running an A + B center channel. When we were running only three speakers with the center channel we got good imaging on our Mercury Living Presence prerecorded tapes.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Sounds like you had fun! Were the tapes discrete three channel recordings, or the two channel mixes?
They were commercially stereo recordings.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I can assure that my old Kef 104 speakers,which came out in 1973, could do plenty of depth of image, and indeed, there is an LP I have somewhere called "Depth of Image" on Opus 3.
-----
"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
...before HP no one talked about "soundstaging".
He identified it and gave it a name.
Did Hirsch mention it or imaging?
Ever?
How about the other publications and reviewers you mention circa 1973.
How about you - did you say in 1973 - "Wow, my KEFs image and throw a soundstage like a mfer!"
"...before HP no one talked about "soundstaging".
He identified it and gave it a name."
HP may have given it a name that stuck, but he was hardly the first to identify it. Lot's of us were familiar with the effects possible with a properly set up system and true stereo recordings. We may not have used HP's terms, but we certainly were looking for the same effects and knew how to fine tune a system to achieve them. This goes back to the early 1960's in my experience. And of course, Blumlein was familiar with these effects in the 1930's.
Around 1960 I was first introduced to stereo at a demonstration in the art gallery of Philips Exeter Academy. Brad Meyer was a student there (one year ahead of me) and a friend of Bill Bell who ran a Hi-fi store in Wellesley, Massachusetts called The Music Box. Brad arranged for a demo, and Bill Bell brought a huge Ampex 350-2 and a pair of Klipschorns, plus some microphones. The gallery had a grand piano and some local musicians provided the source material. As I recall, results with the piano were unsatisfactory until Brad's "condenser" microphone, a Neumann, was used instead of the the other microphones, which I believe were dynamics. Another student who heard this demo was J. Peter Moncrief. We noted the depth of field as well as left right positioning in this demonstration.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
...I could tell you stories.
He was managing an apartment building in Berkeley, writing his first couple of booklike editions of IAR when a couple of friends and I started the Northern California Audio Society in 1979.
"...I could tell you stories."
I'm sure you can. :-) Perhaps we'll get together some day and tell our tales...
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
E-Stat just mentioned that, it seems that HP praised their imaging in Issue 8 of TAS. But I don't think that affects my point, which is that before HP came on the scene, speakers weren't designed with the reproduction of depth in mind. Even if they'd wanted to do that, they wouldn't have known how. Clearly, though, Blumlein had observed the phenomenon back in the 30's, so there were speakers that did it.
I watched a demo stereo film made by Blumlein at a SMPTE presentation once, and the imagining was spectacular, even in a commercial movie theater. He was walking around on a stage, and you could hear not just his lateral position, but his distance from you.
Julian Hirsch touted equipment that sounded like crap. I credit him with playing a role in my own audio education, but measurements aren't all: the sound quality of the equipment I bought took a quantum leap when I discovered first Stereophile and then The Absolute Sound (with Issue 2: HP sent you the first issue too when you subscribed).
I never even auditioned anything based on a TAS review. My dealer had Kef 104 speakers, which sounded better than just about anything else in town, and I read a couple of British reviews who liked them. One of them supplied some measurements, though nothing like those supplied nowadays by Soundstage and Stereophile. I followed the methods laid out by Julian Hirsch, who suggested auditioning speakers with a good variety of familiar recordings. At the time, I discovered I had no really good choral recordings.
Before I got the Quad ESL-63's, I had auditioned them several times over the years. I also had read a number of reviews, including Dick Heyser's not so favorable one in Audio, with measurements, of course, and quite favorable reviews in Stereo Review and High Fidelity. So I have experienced a lot of room placement issues with dipoles.
Several years ago, I went to wide dispersion forward radiating speakers and haven't looked back.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
It was through TAS and Stereophile that I learned about the Tympani 1-D's, surely the most fulfilling audio purchase I ever made. They were, for all their flaws, light years ahead of any box then made, and in one area at least -- midbass reproduction -- remain unsurpassed, all these years later. Amount paid? $700, used, to a guy in New Jersey. They go for more today.
I hadn't heard them when I bought them. I can't think of many critics whose ears I'd trust to that extent. In fact, while it may be a function of the fact that I don't follow this stuff the way I used to, I can think of only one: HP.
"The early days of solid state electronics were no friend to music."
Can you think of anything whose early days WERE a friend to music?
I can't off-hand. It usually takes a good three generations before a truly new technology gets debugged enough to start delivering on it's original hype.
Actually I'm still not all that impressed with stereo, I'd rather have hi-res binaural.
Rick
I was pretty well out of audio during the 1970's, after being in it throughout the entire 1960's, so I can't speak about that time period. I didn't buy any new equipment (just more LPs and a few prerecorded tapes) through this period. I was content with my Marantz 7T and MAC 275 that I inherited from my grandfather.
It was only after the CD vs. LP debate heated up in the 80's that I started getting new equipment, starting with an infamous Sony CDP-101, which was still working a few years ago when I last recall powering it up. Well made, but sounded like s***. In the 80's I also started to read TAS. And yes, I agree the early rack systems were pretty horrible on those occasions that I heard them.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I've still have mine moldering away in the basement and a service manual for them. You really should start a collection...
Rick
Unfortunately, I sold the MAC-275. Big mistake. :-(
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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