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Old 9th Oct 2020, 8:38 pm   #1961
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

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"diminished 7th, augmented 4th..."
If I ever find his card I only have to go through, on average, 50 combinations to get the money! What is the zeroth chord called?

Vaguely back on topic, I am watching "Randall and Hopkirk (deceased)" the theme tune is distorted, it works a treat.
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Old 9th Oct 2020, 9:11 pm   #1962
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

The Garrard 301, on the other thread, reminded me of the time I put one on ebay. I had given it a full service and said as much in the description. Some chap in France bought it, so off it went. Several weeks later I received a rather nice email from the guy. He had taken it to a top notch Garrard specialist in Paris who declared it 'the quietest 301 he had ever encountered'. Not only that but it sounded fantastic. They wanted to know which lubricants I had used on the motor and especially the lubricant for the main bearing. I'm afraid I had to inform him that due to being commercially involved in the restoration of classic turntables the type of lubricant had to remain a secret.
It has now been well over 15 years, so I do feel at liberty to give everyone a clue. It began with three and ended in one.
At least it didn't cost more than the finest French champagne, not per ml. A lot of that snake oil does!
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Old 9th Oct 2020, 10:29 pm   #1963
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

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Back to reality (in this thread?) I bought a "sound bar" for my wife's telly* as I found the TV's sound awful. The thing is only 2"x3"x18" and it makes a very good show of itself, not quite hifi, bloomin' close though. How on earth is that done in such a small box?
I could have a go at that (if your question wasn't just rhetorical!), having been involved in designing slightly-less-rubbish-plastic-things-which-radiate-music a while back. The main new-ish thing is a proliferation from China of small drivers with proper suspension (spider and roll surround) designed for quite long excursion with fairly linear suspension and motor behaviour. That means you can use more velocity at LF, where the pressure drops off with f and means you normally have to compensate with cone area instead. Ideally you get some idiot (me) to do a proper job on the enclosure, rather than just make a nice looking plastic thing with holes all over it in unfortunate places. Those small Bose things (for example) are often vented cabinets which use a Helmholtz resonance to stretch the bass response down a little more, and which then have to be designed not to leak air in unwanted places, at all, if this is to work properly. It's no more expensive really than making a crap one, but someone has to think about it.

Sorry, you did ask
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Old 9th Oct 2020, 10:37 pm   #1964
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

Thinking seems to be very expensive, seeing the length some firms go to to avoid it. Still, I haven't yet seen thinking described by managers as "Not a core competency" that really is the kiss of death.

David
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Old 9th Oct 2020, 11:24 pm   #1965
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

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On one occasion I was helping at at a stand for an old friend and musician who was ill advisedly was in the loudspeakers business. This show was for UK manufacturers only.

Unusually I had persuaded my wife to come along. We walked into one room in which a CD of Marc Cohn was being played, which was a piece we knew extremely well.

It sounded to dire ("as if someone was scratching the back of my eyeballs") that my wife started to laugh out loud. I ushered her out, and explained that company had worked very hard indeed to make something that sounded so awful.

Craig
I had numerous similar reactions, mostly a bit milder than yours, at an international hi-fi exhibition in 1989. High-end kit sounding harsh, thin, strident, 'boxy'. There was only one setup which I would buy (if I ever had the funds!): a Harman Kardon stack of gear driving floor-standing JBL speakers. A different system driving Wharfedales came second.

Perhaps relevantly, I was working in radio at this time and our monitors were JBLs.

A year or 2 later, I visited a hi-fi emporium in the UK and heard their best system in action. A minimalist CD player and a valve amp, driving two electrostatic speakers of about 7ft height. The reproduction was eerily clear; no noise, no discernable colouration. The system was 'transparent'. Nonetheless, I rated it beneath the Harman Kardon & JBLs setup cited above! Perhaps I am an audiophilistine.
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Old 9th Oct 2020, 11:29 pm   #1966
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

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What is the zeroth chord called?
DC!

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Old 10th Oct 2020, 1:05 am   #1967
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

You can have fun at hifi demos at shows, but only on the pretentious stands. Listen very intently for several minutes. Move around a little. Rotate head a bit. When someone comes over say that there is something.... you're not sure but you think they have one of their speaker cables the wrong way round, the amp end to the speaker and the speaker end to the amp, but you can't quite hear just which one It's affecting the phasing, the two directions have different velocity factors, you know..... or make up some equal twaddle. This should sow seeds of doubt quite well. If it's all bi-wired, it'll take them even longer playing around to decide where the problem lies.

Then slope off to the Quad stand and tell them what you've done.

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Old 10th Oct 2020, 8:04 am   #1968
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

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What is the zeroth chord called?
DC!

Craig
Or the chord heard in Cage's four minutes thirty-three seconds
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Old 10th Oct 2020, 8:33 am   #1969
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

DC being a 0Hz sound pressure level of about 1013 hectoPascals.

Was it specified in Cage's score, or the 'lawsuit'? Mike Batt might have been able to get off if the QNH was different on the day and place of his performance.

It's a shame 4minutes 33 seconds is over the 3 minutes mark, I'm certain this limits its airplay, so it's never become as popular as it deserved. Good test record!

David
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Old 10th Oct 2020, 1:42 pm   #1970
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

I only asked because a PIN may have zero in it.
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It's a shame 4minutes 33 seconds is over the 3 minutes mark
I play mine a a hyperbaric chamber, saves waiting too long for the end.
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Old 10th Oct 2020, 1:49 pm   #1971
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I have had a revelation, because we can't get negative pressure it must follow that all air based audio is distorted. That could make "absolute phase" a real phenomenon.
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Old 10th Oct 2020, 5:52 pm   #1972
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

Yeah! The air itself is 'Single-ended' That concept alone ought to make a lot of audiophiles very very happy. A revelation indeed.


But there's more. Holes don't exist. Like caves don't exist, only the rock around them exists... so that means the single ended thing sort of applies to semiconductors as well! Maybe they aren't the spawn of the devil? They were just faking it.

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Old 10th Oct 2020, 9:03 pm   #1973
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Caves (dents) and holes (toriods) do exist on earth, the air/water defines the shape the rock surrounding is merrily a simple way of not having a vacuum around it with the attendant problems of leakage etc.. 'aint nature wonderful!

I have had a (nearly) life long love of topology ever scince my dear Granddad got me a book (some of it was rather high maths) about it when I was seven or eight.
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Old 10th Oct 2020, 10:08 pm   #1974
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

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Then slope off to the Quad stand and tell them what you've done.

Who? Me? Evil? read the strapline!
If you only knew how close to the truth your joke is.

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Old 10th Oct 2020, 11:36 pm   #1975
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

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Originally Posted by merlinmaxwell View Post
Quote:
"diminished 7th, augmented 4th..."
If I ever find his card I only have to go through, on average, 50 combinations to get the money! What is the zeroth chord called?
I was kind of simplifying it using my rudimentary knowledge of musical theory, certainly to the level that my mate knows it. And since you have ten fingers to produce a chord on a piano, and 88 notes to chose the chord from, the combinations are considerably more than 50. If it were chords on a guitar you might stand a fighting chance

Craig
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Old 11th Oct 2020, 12:20 am   #1976
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

Air! Has anyone considered that inferior air filled with dust, and other particles and uncontrolled water vapour emissions from exhalations and God forbid - flatulance will degrade the sound quality. Those hi-fi shows held conference suites only filled with non audiophile grade common or garden air in the room. Only the purest air collected in the Amazon rain forest, liquefied, shipped and then slowly released into the listening chamber and allowed to stabilise 24 hours before listening commences is a must. The Audiophile elephant in the room!
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Old 11th Oct 2020, 9:53 am   #1977
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

As anyone who's set up a room to demonstrate an audio system knows, one particular additive (strictly 'addition', I suppose, as the two aren't miscible) to the air in a room makes a huge difference - bodies. A room with people in can sound dramatically different from one without.

Cheers,

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Old 11th Oct 2020, 10:03 am   #1978
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

Indeed. That is why concert hall acoustic design is a tricky thing. The effect of an audience on the acoustics is a major effect.

Craig
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Old 11th Oct 2020, 10:24 am   #1979
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

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He said that he could play for forty hours straight from memory, not counting the operas he played at during rehearsals (including 15 hours of the Ring alone) - so why could he not remember a four digit number.
Craig
I had a similar experience in London. I was convinced I knew the number. Tried twice and the machine rejected it so I thought I'd try a different machine knowing that the first machine would swallow my card on the third try. I tried a different bank and it swallowed the card on the first go. Only then did it occur to me that it wasn't the number that I remembered but the key sequence and the key pads were arranged differently to those I was used to. Sorry for the short OT deviation.

Peter
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Old 11th Oct 2020, 11:25 am   #1980
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Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

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Originally Posted by GrimJosef View Post
As anyone who's set up a room to demonstrate an audio system knows, one particular additive (strictly 'addition', I suppose, as the two aren't miscible) to the air in a room makes a huge difference - bodies. A room with people in can sound dramatically different from one without.

Cheers,

GJ
Yes and the clothing too. In winter with heavier clothing, more damping.
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