my first time!

[Chambermusicnut]

Hello hifi heads. being a new boy to this forum, I've been asked to say a few words about my music & hifi life. As a teen back in the 70s I was an avid record collector & was encorouged by my dad to get some decent kit to play my collection of prog noodlings on. (he built his own huge transmission line speakers: KEF drive units, chip board & formica finish!) I picked up a second hand Thorens TD150, SME series 3 & Shure M97HE, Cambridge Audio A60 & KEF Codas. A happy lad I was. The discovery of girls led to my first CD player experience. Only the purchase of a Marantz top-loader in 1983 could sooth this broken heart! CD reproduction was often critisized in the early days for being hard & sharp. I've come to the conclusion that the amps of the time (& many today) couldn't cope with the enormous dynamic range of the digital source. Analogue sources are highly compressed in comparison & present little challenge to an amp. A friend recently lent me his Rega Elicit (original) & I was astounded at the ability to cope with piano or orchestra with no strain whatsoever. No glare, no hardness. Happily, I have other comittments outside this obsession so no Elicit activities for me, I'm afraid. Except, that is for my liking for the canadian power trio, Rush. I also love Beethoven, The Beatles & a million other wonderous noises so calm yourselves!

My modest set-up: Sony DVP-NS900P SACD player. Harman Kardon HK1200 (with dodgy switching & volume pot). Mission 774s (with dodgy cone surrounds, repaired with electrical tape!). Sennheiser HD595.

Bye for now.

PS: My choices for hifi shop demo discs (as a change from Dark side of the Moon or Brothers in Arms):
Sade's new album, Soldier of Love. Makes any system sound nice.
Joe Jackson: Body & Soul. Recorded using simple mic'ing, on a stage. Sounds like a real band.
Lisa De La Salle plays Mozart & Prokofiev. Wonderous piano playing from young french woman. Piano sound unusually realistic.

[MartinT]

he built his own huge transmission line speakers: KEF drive units, chip board & formica finish!

Hi Andrew and welcome to AoS. Were they the Hi-Fi Answers transmission line designs, by any chance? I seem to remember the formica finish being recommended to reduce panel resonances.


Analogue sources are highly compressed in comparison & present little challenge to an amp

LOL - you're going to be made to justify that remark here :rfl:

[prestonchipfryer]

Hello Andrew. Welcome to the AoS. Enjoy it.

John

[The Grand Wazoo]

Hello Andrew,
Welcome to the old place from me too. And thanks for an excellent introductory post.
Cheers!

[Spectral Morn]

Welcome top AOS Andrew.


Regards D S D L

[Chambermusicnut]

Thanks for you replies. Yes, the home-made transmission lines were from one of the hi-fi rags of the time, when DIY hi-fi was all the rage. I attempted to build a John-Lindsley-Hood MOSFET integrated amp when I was a youngster. Never finished it. Doh!

Justifiation: Analogue source material has to be highly compressed for it to fit
onto the carrier. For instance an LP groove physical size is pretty limiting. The RIAA curve in the phono stage artificially helps with the bass by boosting the low frequencies (like a tone control will) but the accuracy of this is pretty poor so the frequency responses of phono stages vary wildly from one to another. The dynamic range of a CD player, of , say 90dB is at least 40dB greater than a record player. 40dB (being a logerithmic measure) equates to a requirement of about 8 times the electrical power. The power amp stages seem to be able to cope with this by compression without too much aural nastiness but the input stages often clip, hardening the sound. Whether the CD player's amplification can cope is another matter & may explain why so many sound horrid, especially when trying to reproduce that hi-fi beter, the piano (enormous transient dynamic range). Hope Im not boring you!

PS. I would like to replace my Iffy Harman HK1200 amp with the one that was posted for sale on this site recently. Is it still up for sale?

[MartinT]

Justifiation: Analogue source material has to be highly compressed for it to fit onto the carrier.

I understand the numbers game and I've seen all the dynamic range arguments many times before ;)

The reality is somewhat different; I have an extremely capable CD/SACD player and I can tell you that my turntable gives it more than a run for its money, often beating it for sheer transient power and attack. The amount of detail locked in those grooves is astonishing and the lack of surface and phono amp noise when everything is optimised and well shielded is impressive.

Always good for a discussion, the digital v analogue debate!

[MikeMusic]

Welcome Andrew
Almost as old as me !
The way I found out my LP12 was sick recently was because CD sound better !
Thanks to David at Radlett Audio LPs have taken back their top slot

[DSJR]

Thanks for you replies. Yes, the home-made transmission lines were from one of the hi-fi rags of the time, when DIY hi-fi was all the rage. I attempted to build a John-Lindsley-Hood MOSFET integrated amp when I was a youngster. Never finished it. Doh!

Justifiation: Analogue source material has to be highly compressed for it to fit
onto the carrier. For instance an LP groove physical size is pretty limiting. The RIAA curve in the phono stage artificially helps with the bass by boosting the low frequencies (like a tone control will) but the accuracy of this is pretty poor so the frequency responses of phono stages vary wildly from one to another. The dynamic range of a CD player, of , say 90dB is at least 40dB greater than a record player. 40dB (being a logerithmic measure) equates to a requirement of about 8 times the electrical power. The power amp stages seem to be able to cope with this by compression without too much aural nastiness but the input stages often clip, hardening the sound. Whether the CD player's amplification can cope is another matter & may explain why so many sound horrid, especially when trying to reproduce that hi-fi beter, the piano (enormous transient dynamic range). Hope Im not boring you!

PS. I would like to replace my Iffy Harman HK1200 amp with the one that was posted for sale on this site recently. Is it still up for sale?

PLEASE will you take some advice from someone who's been here with the above in the past. You'll meet with loads of resistance because "We can't measure all we hear......."

With decent masterings of iffy material, little aural tricks, such as a properly used Fairchild style compressor in the past, can make the sound far more punchy. Whether the "cd's lacking punch" are actually truer to the source material (and sound fine on huge studio monitors) is a moot point and not really to be followed here unless you want a royal battle on your hands.. I hear exactly what you're saying, but it won't go down well ;)

Sorry, no offence to anyone, but vinyl lovers insist that their way of doing things is better than the digitally mastered version, and bearing in mind that many classic recordings until the mid 80's were mixed and mastered with the vinyl end product in mind.........................................

[MartinT]

LOL - poor Andrew, I didn't mean to start a fight. Honest :lol:

[Chambermusicnut]

I should have known better. Can't help myself though! What brought this on was a recent affair with my freind's Rega Elicit (original). I want her for my own. Can't agree on a price though, anyone have any ideas as to it's value?

[synsei]

There's an Elicit in Canada on a BIN for £1,106 on ebay but I couldn't tell you if that is representative of its value. If it is and you like the Rega sound then you'd probably be better off going for a Rega Brio r which sell for under 500 quid new and are highly regarded by some on AoS ;)

[DSJR]

Original Elicits may be in dire trouble by now, depending on usage, because they crammed a heck of a lot into that small case and many components became "thermally tired" over years of enthusiastic use. T'was a very restrained sounding amp, especially compared to Olive Naim, but was a goodie.

You know, a Clamshell Mira may give you 90% of the original Elicit and they're much more common and reliable..............

If you can get an original, get it thoroughly serviced (by Rega themselves?)...

[Reid Malenfant]

Hi Andrew, welcome to AoS from me as well, & good luck hunting down that elusive bit of kit :D

[Alex_UK]

Hi Andrew, welcome to AoS from me too - hope you enjoy the forum.

[Chambermusicnut]

Thanks for the warm welcomes folks. It becomes rather addictive this, doesn't it? Before I know it, I'll be frantically networking on Twitterbook keeping the world up to date with every one of my fascinating daily activities.

Here's a thought that occurs to me every now & then. Sound reproduction is entirely an illusion. Sadly, I don't actually host a singing Kate Bush standing in front of the Curtains in my living room. Instead, I have a couple of wooden boxes with cones of paper flapping about. It's my brain, my mind's ear that tricks me into thinking it's Kate yelping away rather erotically about incest (when she was 18) or Snowflakes (these days). Isn't technology wonderful?

[The Grand Wazoo]

Ah yes, but Kate Bush isn't standing in front of your curtains because you have the wrong curtains.
You need to make your way over to the AoS Soft Furnishings Dept. & get yerself some advice from Alex_'Our Man in Chintz'_UK

[Chambermusicnut]

I knew I shouldn't have let my wife choose the curtains. I'm considering ditching them & installing some Venetians. Then I can enjoy some blind listening tests. Do AoS have a crap jokes Stazi?

[Alex_UK]

I knew I shouldn't have let my wife choose the curtains. I'm considering ditching them & installing some Venetians. Then I can enjoy some blind listening tests.

:lol:

[The Grand Wazoo]

Do AoS have a crap jokes Stazi?

Of course we do!
And if you don't make your quota of a minimum of one a month, yer out on yer ear sonny-Jim.
.........I've got my eye on you.

[synsei]

Doctor, Doctor..... Dammit, I can't be arsed... :D