Natural Sound
- Thread starter PeterA
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Please watch the recent Romy the cat video (I recommemend it to all members) about 6 month (3600 hours) time and effort for designing SET amplifier Horn speaker. If you get lush puffy sound from SET the problem is not SET. The problem is the non matching impedance.
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I never listened to Lamm hybrid but other hybrids were not good, I listened to Gobel Riviera and I think Riviera was the best hybrid I heard. I never had Riviera in my home to have better judgment.
I guess finding good hybrids is not easy.
Peter, this problem comes from marketing.
Manufactures tune the camera zoom for maximum sale not better sound and introduce us many reasons that X is better than Y, actually X is not better than Y.
Check Wilson Speakers after 2010, they reduced efficiency over 7db just for more sale not better sound.
if you check measurements the older Lamm products had less feedback. I think the market less efficient speakers force manufactures to use more feedback.
I did not compare ML2.2 vs ML2 but I do not think ML2.2 is as awful as bad SS amplifiers.
Next stop... Thorens TD-124 or Garrard 301...
I have a nice Denon direct drive turntable should I ever want a second system? I’ve already got all the Lamm electronics so it’s just a matter of what speakers to get. They would have to be very high efficient.
Yes, a mono recording and mono cartridge. I have not yet tried it.
I had the M1.1 hybrid monos in my system for a while with my old Magico speakers. They sounded excellent with the rest of the Lamm electronics. They were the best I ever heard the Magico speakers sound. I made some videos.
I and a few others have asked: what real progress has audio achieved since the 1950s-1960s? Speaker footprint and width has gone down while prices have soared. Sound and the listening experience, that is the question for me.
I think the most/biggest advancements for the hobby is not so much on the equipment but more on the importance and focus on room acoustics/proper speaker setup, electrical and vibration control.
That is an interesting comment. These set up variables can certainly make a difference to the presentation and listening experience. Wires and cords are also a big change in focus.
If you look at ML2 measurements it becomes clear that it is the same concept. Harmonic distortion decreases exponentially with increasing harmonic order.
That's unlikely... All amps have distortion- its literally the sonic signature of any amp!
Huh? You're always going to get lush sound from any SET owing entirely to its distortion signature.
FWIW Dept.: we don't sell a direct drive turntable. This assertion as it relates to me is false.
I am correct in that. Any properly functioning reel to reel tape machine produces a 3rd harmonic and I don't see anyone including you that objects to its distortion signature (not that I've not mentioned this to you before...). Recording studios use reel to reel as an effect these days for precisely this reason. You might want to drop this notion as it is fictitious. Otherwise you're flying the face of all recordings made up until sometime in the very late 1970s when the first 3M digital machine first appeared here in the Twin Cities.
Cartridges and tonearms are vastly improved- able to handle greater modulation in the grooves without mistracking. Testing and lab reports of the 1960s as any reference as to what the LP is capable of aren't really accurate on this account. Bandwidth is wider too- by the mid 1970s most cartridges were capable of 30KHz and the better ones past 40KHz. Cartridges of the 50s didn't have a prayer of this and those of the 60s struggled at best.
Technics developed the first DD turntable, the SL1100, in the early 1970s. They have led the way in direct drive and while belt drive did quite well against other direct drive brands, never really was up to beating the higher end Technics. Of course Technics has widened that gap in the last 5-6 years.
Tuntables have improved a lot compared to the fare of the 1950s and 60s, just in terms of speed stability and vibration control, whether an idler drive, belt drive or DD. While the Garrad 301, Thorens 124, Empire 208 and a few others are nice machines, they are a lot nicer when given a proper plinth and the like, courtesy of a few decades of experience.
There is actually materials science that has produced better platter pads too, something that no-one thought about the 1950s, 60s, or 70s. We now know that controlling resonance in the vinyl as its being played is essential; the first step of a 1,000 mile journey.
We have seen far better speaker cables too. If you're running a single-ended audio path, RCA cables have gotten better since Robert Fulton founded in the high end cable industry in the late 1970s.
Semiconductors are vastly improved. Opamps were invented in the 1950s and first marketed by Philbrick Research (and were all-tube). Solid state opamps came along in the 1960s and by the end of the 1960s made musical synthesizers practical as well as a variety of effects pedals to the music industry. By the mid 1970s they were common in solid state stuff, but during this time they really weren't 'high end'. That's changed now- you can get really good opamps for $3-$4.00 that are excellent in every way. If you don't demand too much gain of them (20dB being a very practical limit) they are extremely neutral with no harshness at all. Of course there are better discrete semiconductors too which has made class D practical and a real force to be dealt with in high end audio- to the point that there are plenty of people finally retiring their SETs for class D amps and not looking back.
Loudspeakers have gotten better too. Computer optimization of horn tapers has resulted in lower distortion horns, and materials science has led to diaphragms that lack many of the breakups seen in vintage designs. So speakers have gotten more revealing and smoother at the same time. In addition, the way standing waves affect bass in a room is better understood and so subwoofer solutions to break up standing waves (and powered subs themselves) are a big step forward.
Amps, even SETs, are now lower distortion which translates directly to greater transparency.
I know digital audio is a thing of controversy, but its here to stay and if set up properly, excellent.
How the sound interacts in the room is much more accessible and controllable now than it was in 1960! The understanding of how our ears react to short term reflections was unknown in the 1950s. The research on the human hearing rules in the last 60 years has really helped!
I genuinely hope so. That will leave more NOS tubes for me to buy.
No. That is ridiculous. No manufacturer decreases sensitivity on purpose (efficiency is not exactly the same, and there is no rating given to the public).
YOU may think it was not for an improvement in sound, but Wilson would disagree. They change drivers and crossover design to push the evolution of sound quality. Some thought older tweeters were harsh at different times but the new ones do not get that criticism. Guess what driver typically is easier to tame from ringing but at the cost of sensitivity? Tweeters without acoustical gain are a somewhat finicky device that basically determines every speakers sensitivity. All the other drivers can have limits but in other frequency range you can multiply the drivers to increase it or limit the bandwidth and adjust the driver. Tweeters on the other hand already only play a select region, and you cannot add more of them without causing horrific problems. The best you can do is have a line shape with no breaks in it (tiny braces do not affect it), without any sort of forced directivity. Sometimes the answer is very minor acoustic gain from a tiny amounts of directivity to get them to match other drivers to save some sensitivity - this is because a tweeter can have high sensitivity in a range you cannot cross to so it inherently has to be brought down if the mid cannot go high enough in hz to meet it.
There is no benefit to reduced sensitivity in itself. No one is making a speaker and just trying to reduce it for arbitrary reasons. In fact you cannot just insert a resistor without changing the shape of all the responses from all the drivers. It is extra work that is just unnecessary. They typically lose plenty to make a speaker work from the start and none of them want to be pigeon holed to a tiny subset of amplifiers.
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Everyone benefitsI genuinely hope so. That will leave more NOS tubes for me to buy.
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