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In Reply to: RE: Not true then... posted by Pat D on March 03, 2011 at 13:34:21
...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.
Follow Ups:
" 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.
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