Best Midrange?

[speedy.steve]

Spotify is great for searching or finding new but quality wise for serious listening I find it disappointing still.
It's fine for background / low vol level listening but detail and a little sparkle is missing. Perhaps that is the USB to optical converter I am using but I suspect not as I have the same issue with any MP3 format.

In a couple of years time it may well be sorted out I hope.

Apparently there are 13,000,000 tunes on Spotify and growing all the time. Long may it last.

 

[felix]

Oh I agree Robert; I think the 'cloud' trade off is simply that it brings a different kind of crap-shoot. Curiosuly enough, it's a kind of 'never the same thing twice' which digital was once supposed to cure.

IOW it's a very large part of the future, for sure; but not the only future.

 

[RobHolt]

Spotify is great for searching or finding new but quality wise for serious listening I find it disappointing still.
It's fine for background / low vol level listening but detail and a little sparkle is missing. Perhaps that is the USB to optical converter I am using but I suspect not as I have the same issue with any MP3 format.

I've also got some reservation with the sound of Spotify.
Even the highest quality 320k stream is often well short of CD, where if it was literally a 320k lossy version of the CD the difference should be very fine. I suspect the source files aren't always great, and if that's the case it doesn't really matter what bitrate they use to stream them.

That brings us right back to the points made by Martin and Tony regarding the quality of product offered via these new platforms.

 

[speedy.steve]

So it boils down to this

http://www.avihifi.co.uk/adm9.html

up against a pair of these



or if you you have money to burn these
http://www.cessaro-horn-acoustics.com/index.php?id=23

Hmm let me see now...

I had no idea the 2nd coming of Christ (avihifi) was so small until I googled them
Lets give the shill another go shall we? They might be fine for AV and would probably be better than what I have for accompanying the TV (I mostly watch Motorsport these days) but AV listening is not my passion, accurate and vivid music reproduction is.

This thread is not about source formats its about playback and how 'small' radiating speakers struggle and how horns (I include Tannoys in that as the HF is a horn or wave guide in some cases and backloaded bass horns in others), excel - hence many gravitating towards horns having found other solutions wanting.

Tell you what. Lets have a bake off.
Lets have some AVI adm9's or whatever's best down to my pad. Set them up in the lounge, listen for an hour, then we'll pop into my music room and hear me 5 way horns for an hour then we'll decide. I have an open mind as I am only genuinely interested in what will give me most pleasure from my music reproduction... As I am sure are the other serious Audiosmilers.

Dev / Bottleneck / some others are local enough. Joe you'd be very welcome over
All we then need is a pair of AVI's anyone?

You never know - I might be tempted to get a pair of AVI's / sub so I can hear F1 engines better than my crappy Denon, Tannoy/phillips/Yamaha current AVI setup.

Steve.

JC, remember, I've heard them! They are a nice little speaker, they sound like a nice little speaker, and they sounded like a nice little speaker with a sub when the sub was turned on. There is just no escaping using the word 'little' I'm afraid, but I'd have no hesitation in recommending them to anyone looking for such a thing. I rather liked them.

Tony.

PS no iPod exists which would hold my music collection even in crappy 128kbs format.

 

[jcbrum]

Find me a 30 year old hard drive that still holds it's data and is of a non-obsolete interface! I know all my CDs still work! CDs are trusted and reliable technology.

This is a false premise. Computer systems use backup, and redundancy, to make disc failure of no consequence at all. If your computer doesn't have this technology then you're doing it wrong. It's available off the shelf at low cost.

The whole world's data storage runs on computer storage systems and is very resilient.
Far more so than decidedly unreliable CDPs.

According to the BPI downloads only amount to around 17.5% of the market, so CD is very far from dead!

Every publisher seems to have conflicting data on this, but there is no doubt that CDs are not available in the retail establishments like they were even two or three years ago. The shops are disappearing at an ever increasing rate due to lack of sales.

The Apple iTunes store alone states they have achieved over 12 billion paid for music sales so far and rising, accounting for nearly a third of all types of music sales from all vendors in the US. They are now generally accepted to be the No 1 music retailer.

On the CDs themselves; one area I really don't think you understand in the slightest is that a lot of people care a lot about the actual mastering. As music replay becomes ever-more dumbed-down and home audio becomes ever smaller, less full-range and less capable of reproducing dynamic contrasts music is being remastered and re-issued in an ever more compressed and brick-walled manner. As usual the collector markets reflect this with many specific CD masterings / pressings of even quite popular titles already being worth into the £hundreds (e.g. Led Zep 'targets'). People are prepared to pay good money for the best sounding issue,

Of course I understand that Tony, it's why I have a record collection, and why I am very choosy about the accuracy and fidelity of my HiFi system, and it's use to provide me with digital transcriptions of really good recordings, and the ability to play them properly.

The poor quality and compression evident in many CDs has nothing to do with the media itself, - it has everything to do with the aims of the producers. It is not a consequence of digital technology as such, - merely that it's easy to achieve it using that technology. There are many fine digital recordings, and recent vinyl uses them as a master source.

On the subject of sound quality, a digital file has better facilities, snr, dynamic range, frequency response, and channel separation, than any equipment in the analogue domain ever did, including vinyl and magnetic tape.

Given a really good recording, an iPod will re-play it to a fidelity, and sound quality, which is far above anything a TT can achieve.

Given that the recording engineers did their job properly, and it wasn't ruined by the producers, - all you need is a good DAC, good amps, and really good speakers.

If you happen to like big ones, fair enough, but most people don't, and not just because of their size.

JC

 

[jcbrum]

p.s. I've been out / still catching up on this thread.

 

[RobHolt]

This thread is not about source formats its about playback and how 'small' radiating speakers struggle and how horns (I include Tannoys in that as the HF is a horn or wave guide in some cases and backloaded bass horns in others), excel - hence many gravitating towards horns having found other solutions wanting.

I think 'Struggle' is meaningless without context though.
If super low colouration and point source imaging precision are more important than unfettered dynamics, the goalposts move considerably.

I used Impulse H2s for many years which while not massive are certainly considered a large speaker system with horn loaded mid driver and a quasi horn bass.
Stunning on large scale pieces and pretty balanced overall on most material but they suffered from the phasey and indistinct quality that comes from multiple drivers spread over a wide area, when compared to a speaker that is really excellent in that area. You also tend to get the magnifying glass effect with many large speakers where, for example, mouths get stretched, violins assume abnormal proportions and that tiny triangle in the orchestra starts to sound more like the school bell.
Perpective distortion in other words, and of course it can work the other way with a small speaker.

 

[RobHolt]

I think we might need a thread split - into three
Lets see how it goes.

 

[TonyL]

Every publisher seems to have conflicting data on this, but there is no doubt that CDs are not available in the retail establishments like they were even two or three years ago. The shops are disappearing at an ever increasing rate due to lack of sales.

The source I used was the BPI. They are the types to get their figures right. Sorry the reality doesn't fit your argument.

The reason the high street shops are closing is that they can't compete with Amazon, Play etc. This is partly to do with scale, partly to do with off-shore tax legislation (basically Amazon can sell new CDs cheaper than dealers like me could buy them from the record labels / distributors etc).

Of course I understand that Tony, it's why I have a record collection, and why I am very choosy about the accuracy and fidelity of my HiFi system, and it's use to provide me with digital transcriptions of really good recordings, and the ability to play them properly.

.....

The poor quality and compression evident in many CDs has nothing to do with the media itself, - it has everything to do with the aims of the producers. It is not a consequence of digital technology as such, - merely that it's easy to achieve it using that technology.

I do realise this. I've a fair amount of experience of how the music industry functions given I worked in it's nether regions for well over ten years! I know a fair bit about mastering too, what with having records cut by George Peckham (Porky) and at Townhouse. I've done the whole thing personally right from learning to play through to hawking the finished product round the shops / getting it on the radio. Every single step. I even owned and ran a small commercial (analogue and digital) recording studio FFS!

You need to look deeper and grasp why these mastering decisions are being made, and IMHO that is down to a combination of marketing to folk iPod listening on a noisy tube train with cheap crappy earbuds, in the car, and on crappy home stereos with speakers that don't even have a bloody bass unit, just a mid and a tweeter. 'Lifestyle' audio, as they say. That's what's killing things - dumbing down / marketing to the lowest common denominator.

 

[RobHolt]

You need to look deeper and grasp why these mastering decisions are being made, and IMHO that is down to a combination of marketing to folk iPod listening on a noisy tube train with cheap crappy earbuds, in the car, and on crappy home stereos with speakers that don't even have a bloody bass unit, just a mid and a tweeter. 'Lifestyle' audio, as they say. That's what's killing things - dumbing down / marketing to the lowest common denominator.

Didn't that start long ago though?
I remember reading complaints in the audio press decades ago about music being mastered to sound decent on portable radios (in those days) and also car audio systems where compression is definitely a good thing.

The way the BBC use different compression ratios across their radio network and have done for donkey's years illustrates the point. Radio 1 has always had the most compression because the output will likely get played on portable radios, cars systems and low grade 'all in one' systems. Radios 2 and 4 got less because the listening environment was different, and Radio 3 got the least because it was shown that people tended to listen on better systems.
So I think the problem has always existed, although at least here the original recording remains intact.

it would be interesting to take some samples from say Spotify or iTunes store and compare the compression applied with a known good CD issue. Across a good sample size of different genres just to get a feel for the problem as it currently stands.

 

[TonyL]

Didn't that start long ago though?
I remember reading complaints in the audio press decades ago about music being mastered to sound decent on portable radios (in those days) and also car audio systems where compression is definitely a good thing.

It's existed since the year dot in certain music, e.g. Motown singles were compressed to sound good on Dansettes etc, plus the whole 60s thing of concentrating on the mono mix long after stereo was invented, and there has always been a desire to make things sound loud and punchy so your record sounded good on the radio, though in many ways this was a false premise as the radio station limiters just knocked everything down to the same level regardless of how much effort you spent f***ing it up in the studio! It is however only recently that this stuff has started to appear on 'serious' / adult music like jazz, classical, folk etc where the assumption was always that the purchaser had a better class of audio system. Don't get me wrong, there is some truly great sounding stuff out there these days too, but also a lot of stuff squashed to a pulp. I say this as an ex-compressor owner - I can spot the things with ease! I hate the way radio stations use them most of all as they just don't care in the slightest. The easy way to spot them is to listen to a sustained organ or synth chord, if it dips when a drum is hit / other transient occurs then the engineer is an idiot. I find this infuriating on 6 Music, it just drives me nuts!

As to Spotify vs. CD I'm pretty sure the former has a fair bit of dynamic compression or limiting added somewhere, not to the 6 Music level, but still pretty squished. I've often been happily surprised by just how much better the CD sounds when it turns up than the same title on Spotify, and I'm talking current indie / electronica etc here where there is only one mastering, not some vintage jazz title that may exist in a bewildering multitude of masterings. I'm on about dynamic range compression here, not just the difference between 128kbs and my usual rip quality of 256kbs VBR or CD, that's a qualitative thing not a dynamic thing. I'm not on the premium Spotify, just the fiver a month version without ads, I'd be curious to know if there is any difference in dynamic compression / limiting between these too tariffs. I doubt I'd pay the extra to be honest as I only use it as a 'try before I buy' thing at present.

 

[Joe Petrik]

Steve,

Joe you'd be very welcome over

Thanks, man, but it's a bit of a swim.

[/IMG]

Joe

 

[speedy.steve]

I agree it is the right solution for the right application.
You need to be far enough away from large setups and they must be integrated properly. It's amazing how many off the shelf horn solutions don't pay attention to time alignment (some don't even believe in it - Goto for example as can be seen on their website), and back to the fact that 2 or 3 drivers is asking too much of them. Your school bell example just smacks poor implementation.

I think 'Struggle' is meaningless without context though.
If super low colouration and point source imaging precision are more important than unfettered dynamics, the goalposts move considerably.

I used Impulse H2s for many years which while not massive are certainly considered a large speaker system with horn loaded mid driver and a quasi horn bass.
Stunning on large scale pieces and pretty balanced overall on most material but they suffered from the phasey and indistinct quality that comes from multiple drivers spread over a wide area, when compared to a speaker that is really excellent in that area. You also tend to get the magnifying glass effect with many large speakers where, for example, mouths get stretched, violins assume abnormal proportions and that tiny triangle in the orchestra starts to sound more like the school bell.
Perpective distortion in other words, and of course it can work the other way with a small speaker.

 

[speedy.steve]

Yeah I know - but you'd be welcome anyway

Steve,


Thanks, man, but it's a bit of a swim.

[/IMG]

Joe

 

[Tenson]

and back to the fact that 2 or 3 drivers is asking too much of them.

I guess by this you mean that 2 or 3 way speakers ask too wide a bandwidth from each driver?

You might have an argument there but of course driver integration is the other side of that coin. No amount of time alignment and other such things will completely fix the fact that, for example, the high-mid and tweeter are 50cm apart.

On the other hand, what do you think about the approach of simply using multiple drivers over the same wider bandwidth to reduce their workload in the SPL dimension instead? I'm thinking of large line sources here. They can be integrated quite well since driver to driver spacing doesn't need to be huge as with horns, and by spreading the ranges over say, 6 woofers, 12 midranges and 24 tweeters, distortion is incredibly low. You also get great dynamic capability, high sensitivity and controlled directivity in the vertical domain.

 

[Joe Petrik]

Thanks for the invite, Steve.

One of these days I'm going to come to the UK to meet all these decent blokes I've been corresponding with virtually over the past decade.

Joe

 

[jcbrum]

We'll be waitin' for ya Joe ........... (High Noon music plays) .....




JC

 

[kt66]

57s everytime.

Harbeth 40.1 has the best mid range for a box speaker
and the Rogers LS5/9 is much better than the 3/5a

 

[speedy.steve]

They kind of work but still don't couple the source of sound (diaphragm / cone) well with the air through which we hear the music. To do that you need a horn. That is what releases the efficiency / detail and accurate sound (if implemented properly). That is why so many who go further and further up the speaker chain in search of good sound seem to end up at horns. Space and wife considerations aside.
Incidentally my upper mid and tweeter are but 20cms apart. The tweeter, upper mid and mid are all within less than 50cm so no big deal. As wavelength increases and placement becomes less of a concern the fact that the mid bass is below in the stack is not an issue.
In many ways the increased size gives a dimension and space and feeling of openness and scale.
That is what Tony is on about with small speakers sounding small and small speakers with a sub sounding like small speakers with sub...
How many un-amp'd bands have you heard that have a single sound source - yeah right none! Your brain deals with it - it's not really an issue.
A vertical stack is the best I have found for imaging and coherence. Some systems do not use this, the good ones do.

You cannae change the laws of physics capt'n.

I guess by this you mean that 2 or 3 way speakers ask too wide a bandwidth from each driver?

You might have an argument there but of course driver integration is the other side of that coin. No amount of time alignment and other such things will completely fix the fact that, for example, the high-mid and tweeter are 50cm apart.

On the other hand, what do you think about the approach of simply using multiple drivers over the same wider bandwidth to reduce their workload in the SPL dimension instead? I'm thinking of large line sources here. They can be integrated quite well since driver to driver spacing doesn't need to be huge as with horns, and by spreading the ranges over say, 6 woofers, 12 midranges and 24 tweeters, distortion is incredibly low. You also get great dynamic capability, high sensitivity and controlled directivity in the vertical domain.

 

[Joe Petrik]

JC,

We'll be waitin' for ya Joe ........... (High Noon music plays) .....

Joe