GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Aporia - Silbatone Acoustics speaker

Post Subject: Spelled out for the cats and other mammals in the audiencePosted by Joe Roberts on: 1/24/2009

would you accept a photograph from a camera if it didn't do "blacks" and "extreme darks"?

CRITICAL POINT 1

VISUAL PERCEPTION AND AESTHETICS ARE NOT VALID MODELING SYSTEMS FOR MUSIC

This is why imaging is a screwed up way to talk about music. The more specific it gets, the more screwed up it becomes.

CRITICAL POINT 2

LANGUAGE IS NOT A VALID MODELING SYSTEM FOR MUSIC

Linguistic semantics are entirely different than musical semantics. Tone in language is entirely different from tone in language. There is no connection in the way they signify. Just because hearing is involved does not imply that meaning works the same way in both domains.

This is why your Asian linguistics theory is bogus (although an interesting amateur attempt), because music is not referential and when it is is is based on iconicity not conventionality. BTW-Japanese and most dialects of Korean are not tone languages in a technical sense, unlike Mandarin.

CRITICAL POINT 3

Objective physics notions of sound (bandwidth, frequency response, dynamic range, etc.) do not exhaust or clearly characterize those features of musical sound that matter for subjective enjoyment of musical sound.

If it did, there could be a LCD readout musical enjoyment meter.

When I was in Nigeria, I had to ask why people like to turn up the music to where the speaker sounded like it was ripped (often it was ripped)...they responed, that the awful (to me) distortion made it sound more powerful. To them, it sounded better. Who am I to argue?

SUMMARY

MUSIC IS ITS OWN THING, NOT REDUCABLE TO OTHER SONIC PRACTICES.

Beyond that, different traditions in music can have radically different coding of meaning via sound characteristics. This is one reason the orchestra-centic view is STUPID, it is not all-inclusive.

DIIFERENT KINDS OF MUSIC ARE THEIR OWN THING.

inability to play loud and intermodulation distortion

Try listening to a WE15A compression driver "full range" with a 8 foot square mouth. It plays so freaking loud you can hear it for blocks. Not full range by modern standards (80-5000) but nearly there when listening. Yeah, Diatones don't play loud. Try something else if loud is your thing.

In my experience, most single-drivers play loud enough for me.

The Aporia played loud enough to be uncomfortable on 8W in that CES stall. With a more powerful amp, might get much louder--Mangers are rated for high power. I don't need anything louder.

The notion of intermodulation distortion is dependent on a number of factors, the most critical of which is doppler distortion caused by a moving cone. Well, the Manger does not employ in a piston cone. I mentioned that the mids do not shut down in this driver when loud bass passsages occur.

I only had a week with the Aporia/Manger so I am still learning it, but something is very different here.

Also, some of my fave fullranges don't have much cone displacement, eg. 755A, so I think that the intermod is less. Of course, they don't put out much below 60hz. It is all a question of balance and generalization is of limited utility in critique.

This makes it inappropriate for evaluating a system or a component from a technical point of view when compared to jazz band or, even better, to a symphonic orchestra which are far richer in diversity, scale or any other parameter that you can think of.

Or you can listen to circus music on the mighty Wurlizer pipe organ, Planet Drum (hate that fcking record), or the HFN&RR garage door record for bass and dynamics.

But what if like me, you really don't fire up orchestra too much. What if I mostly listen to Washboard Sam?

I can't agree that a system optimized for orchestral is automatically better for all music. Many traditions stress timbre and tonal color over scale. Even chamber music, which I prefer to grand orchestral, is better served by a speaker that does the color, texture, and sparkle right even if it can't do the cannons in 1812.

Frankly, although technically "easy" by some measures, vocal reproduction is the thing that really captivates me. Here is one area where single drivers can really deliver.

And I am sure that you will found a zillion people who report multiple orgasms and the sensation of rebirth just after they heard those plastic cone mini towers.

Amazingly, yes. I wish life was so easy that I could be happy with a pair of Totems...but his only goes to illustrate the point that one man's gourmet meal is another man's Pizza Hut 2 for 1 special.

I heard the sales pitch at CES..."Listen to that bass folks, it's clean, it's natural, It's deep, and its precise..."

It was none of the above..it was pure mud... 120hz bump like I never experienced, flabby, and fake as a Thai rolex. But it was loud and people were like "WOW! THAT'S FANTASTIC!!"

I presume that most of us are on a different island, but I'm somewhat jealous of the mid-fi crowd who can find happiness in a plastic cone mini tower.

I do not mean to sound offensive and to express the “veiled personal attacks”; it is just how I see the things and I say it openly. I think if you discover “other” interests in audio then what you currently have then you suddenly might realize that some topologies are fundamentally by dealt dead for any more of less “higher” tasks…

Of course, I recognize this is a let it rip kind of forum, so I am not witholding my insights either. I like this crazy forum, even though I disagree on many levels with the corny 80s mindset updated with better equipment...but I know what you are saying.

I mainly object to the idea that this is a "higher" task in any universal way. One or more people might see it as "higher" for them but there is no basis to assume that anyone else should agree.

I totally object to snobbery and advanced evolution as an argument tactic. I spit on the silk tie of all audio snobs. If you're not wearing a tie, then I'll spit a greenie on your shirt where the tie would be.

I believe that there is no point in arguing taste and what other people enjoy. To do so is to be a bore and, put frankly, a real dick. I like to see people happy, whatever it takes for them to get there.

And I really believe that you cant make all these decisions via logical reasoning, prior experience with similar but different equipment, or mathematical calculations. You must hear the item in question before you have anything valid to say. Even then it is only valid from a certain perspective.

In the case at hand, the Aporia, it was VERY DIFFERENT from what I expected and QUITE DIFFERENT from anything else I have heard. How could YOU know what it sounded like? How could you even guess? You can't, bro.

You seem to agree with this "to each his own" philosophy in your last post, but the other 386 posts in this thread you do a lot of the opposite.

Basically, I heard a lot of speaker systems, elaborate multi-horn to 4" single driver. I had a 10x20 foot locker full of gear. OF COURSE, I can recognize performance differences, even very slight differences because I was a picky-ass mega geek too--one of the worst. Nothing is perfect, nothing totally sucks. The question becomes what matters to me. That is the only question that I am left to answer, all that I really care about.

Who cares what matters to Harry Pearson, Romy, Jonathan Scull, or the guy selling the mini-towers? Why should you care what I think makes a valid listening system? And if you recognize that my tastes are different, does that mean that something I like automatically won't meet your standards? That is totally stupid logic.

So, as you can see by a careful reading of my posts, I don't criticize others taste. I criticize the notion that one goal is superior and I criticize the lame, worn-out, misguided rhetoric that is often used to support this reasoning.

I saw it and LIVED it all 1000 times. Remember that I was the first to promote some of these topologies as a full-time effort, so I took a lot of attempted shots. I feel like I have heard every argument on the planet and I am not getting any new intellectual challenges here.

In fact, most of what you are doing, I promoted in 1988. Glad you are taking it to the next level, likely beyond where I went with it, because I moved on to other things. And thanks for buying my PDF CD.

In this thread, I went into a bit more philosophical/academic detail than I usually do, but I am VERY SECURE in my thinking on this, because I did my fieldwork.

THE JOE-MAN

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