| Tell us about YOUR insecurities [message #49327] |
Sun, 16 April 2006 18:07  |
Bill Epstein
Messages: 1088
Registered: May 2009
Location: Smoky Mts. USA
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Illuminati (2nd Degree) |
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I've done this tweaking, experimentation and conditioning. I have the best amplification I may ever have, and all the other components are as good as I can afford. The speaker designer is a genius and the implementation and individual components: driver and crossover are among the best.
So how come every time I think voices are now perfectly natural and the second strings are clearly playing along (or not) with the first's I get a chill and lose faith?
I was down at Speakerman's yesterday with Zincman and we listened to his latest horn combination and crossover: Altec GPL 399 with 800 Hz Edgar Horn. The Edgars always strike me as being pure and clean with aplomb at high volume, but more than a bit "vintage'ish".
This morning I wanted to verify that my own system sounded at least as good albeit with a very different character. The ringing of the water tank was heard in Deems Taylor's commentary on the recording of the cannon shots. The massed trumpets were if anything, brighter and brasher going into the coda of Cappricio Italien
But the damned Oboe sounds like a furshtinkener KAZOO! SHIT!
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| Re: Tell us about YOUR insecurities [message #49330 is a reply to message #49327] |
Mon, 17 April 2006 10:50  |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18791
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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To tell the truth, I always spend all my critical listening time on the front end. When a design is first coming together, I tend to listen to the machine and not to the music. You can really get crazy, listening for every nuance, but be careful to listen to source material you know. Some material has flaws that can throw you off, making a bad speaker sound good or a good speaker sound bad. So I never evaluate using new material, and instead use music I am very familar with.My design efforts sometimes require months of modeling, prototyping and testing and that's when I get most critical. But after they're done, and they test well and sound good, I don't listen to them the same way again. After a design is finished, I begin to listen to the music and not to the machine.
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| Re: Tell us about YOUR insecurities [message #49331 is a reply to message #49328] |
Mon, 17 April 2006 11:01 |
spkrman57
Messages: 522
Registered: May 2009
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Illuminati (1st Degree) |
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Bill, If everything was a plug and play then it would be to easy and none of us would bother to mess around with it all. My system still has bugs to work out yet and hope to have better sound when it goes in the basement where there is more room to let the horns breathe properly. The Edgar round tractix horns are hard to beat if you have the room for them to integrate. Ron
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| Re: Tell us about YOUR insecurities [message #49342 is a reply to message #49327] |
Mon, 17 April 2006 19:31 |
GarMan
Messages: 960
Registered: May 2009
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Illuminati (2nd Degree) |
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I'm continuously tweaking and changing components in my system too. Almost 90% of the time, I would mistakenly think the change made my system sound better. "Mistakenly" because it's too easy to confuse "different" with "better". For me, it takes a long time to tell if something is better or just different. Maybe all those other system you're comparing isn't really better, just different.
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| Re: Tell us about YOUR insecurities [message #49343 is a reply to message #49342] |
Tue, 18 April 2006 06:10 |
Manualblock
Messages: 4973
Registered: May 2009
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Illuminati (13th Degree) |
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I'm with G-Man. What a relief settling down with the Valencias and simple tube units. Then I can play with the GC's and such. But the point is; there is no better sound; just a little different. And it seems for every so-called improvement there is a deficiency that comes along with it. Those old tube guys knew something.
I maintain there is nothing that is sounding significantly more musical than a good design from the 50's.
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