Giving up on Power Race, and going SET?

Nicely said JCT:

I hope you were not talking about my statement above when you argue against the idea that "good specs equate to good sound." No one can seriously believe that and certainly not someone (like me) who listens to SETS at least part of the time.

I do believe, as I said above, that "If the measurements do not "add up" to good sound (and they do not) it means we, or at least someone, has to think about them more, not less." (this does not mean I think that all of life, let alone music or electronics, can be reduced to numbers so please no philosophical attacks)

So I agree with Unsound that walking away from engineering, a rather rigorous discipline (of which I am not a member) is walking away from what has made it possible for us to have audio and all of electronics for that matter. Ohm, Faraday, Maxwell, the folks who did the basic works in acoustics (J. Strutt , aka Lord Rayleigh), speakers (Theil/Small etc), Bell Labs and transistors. On and on… all measuremnt/number geeks.

I also agree with Brulee that you can be as into it as anybody without giving numbers/measurements a second thought. Get a good system and plug it in. I guess I disagree with him when he says that he doesn’t understand why anybody is interested.

All the audio-design folk I respect combine real technical knowledge with good ears. It is never an either-or and always the combination of the two. To demand one or the other is in logic the fallacy of the false dichotomy.

You can buy a good system with your ears but you will never design one or even incompetently dabble in it, as I do, with your ears alone. The only way you can dismiss numbers/measurements is if you equate them with marketing specs. This is a very simple headed way to look at them.

A little technical knowledge is also the first defense to the endless marketing hype that infests audio. The hype (at least to my mind) is at least a great a danger as a blind adherence to numbers.

Fittingly, the whole thing reminds me a little of music. Most of the musicians I admire have a strong background in what is essentially a kind of number theory. A part of music can only be fully understood in that way. You can enjoy a fugue if you have never heard of an interval, but you are never going to write one or fully understand it. It is almost impossible to approach some forms of music without coming to terms with this.
( John Coltrane comes to mind) . Of course, music rises above this and yet, in a fundamental way, seems to depend upon it in some way. On the other hand, to equate music with numbers is surely to miss the point. (Least I come across as a musical snob some of my favorite musicians didn’t know a hoot about it. Lightening Hopkins and John Hurt on guitar, for example. The strange thing is that these guys followed very distinct patterns in their playing (using 4ths and 5ths ) without ever understanding it at all. There was a recent article in “Science” magazine that says we are hard wired in this fashion. Who knows?

Cheers
I remain

Well said Clueless!

Amen, Clueless. Why is it again you say you generally don't desire to post at length much anymore? :-)

Probably a good analogy could be drawn between the experience of savoring food and the experience of enjoying music. I'm too lazy to do that but I favor gas cooking over electric or(God forbid) microwave. Does anyone else out there feel the same? Or have you given the matter no thought and just enjoyed your food?

What a thread! The collective intelligence of the posters is really something. I've enjoyed this a lot and NO, my tongue is not planted firmly in my cheek. It reminds me of an event in my personal life that has nothing to do with audio but it applies here none-the-less.

I spent several years constructing a car for triple duty. A street car with reasonable manners and killer good looks, a very fast quarter mile drag car and one capable of competing in the Nevada outlaw road races. All of this was to be done on 92 octane gas without nitrous or forced air induction. A change of tires would be allowed for all three types of driving.

While cutting and welding and doing all it takes for the required safety measures as well as the "looks" department I pondered all of the different ways to have the power levels needed and retain the durability demanded by such an engine. I relied heavily on technology developed by others and attempted to really do this honestly. You know, you can hang plates on a race car and install mufflers, but it's still a high maintenance race car.

I went through all the calculations projecting power output and when the motor was finished I engine dyno-ed it and after it was in the car I chassis dyno-ed again since the latter more closely duplicated acceleration in the car. Being in a rather small area here it was impossible to keep the measured results secret. Of course, there was a lot of talk behind my back and most of it was negative.

If you took the advertised power gains of the camshaft, the cylinder heads, the piston design, and all the other bits and pieces that went into this motor it would have satisfied the needs of a top fuel dragster. The computer programs predicted close to 700 horsepower. The dyno said it made 520+ hp and 495 lb/ft of torque. Was this a disappointmnet? Not in the least. It had 80% of it's power available at idle (1200 rpm). Of course, everyone knew what it actually made and my first pass at the drag strip was the talk of the track. When asked what kind of times I would run I only replied that I would run a trap speed of over 120 mph.

There were many cutting remarks made and stupid challenges offered prior to my first pass. Comments such as, "Tim has 650 hp and only goes 114 mph" and "No way, you ain't got enough power, besides, how will you hook on a 10" wide tire?" By the time I did my burnout I was depressed in spite of the confidence I had when I woke up that morning. I was wondering if this was going to be a huge disappointment.

My D.O.T. approved tires were actually little more than slicks with two grooves in them and carried a pressure of 8 lbs. The car is a manual transmission and my calculated launch rpm was 5800 rpm and the shift points were at 6200 rpm. So, I stage, come up against the launch rev limiter and when the lights came down and I released the clutch all I saw was sky. When I shifted (3/4 of a second after launch) I again was looking at sky. Guys, this was the quickest 10 seconds of my life. On a 105 degree day at a track elevation of 3500 ft. I pulled 126 mph. Later in the day as I buzzed the engine beyond the measured shift point the speeds went up. 7200 rpm shift points worked best and I approached 130 mph in 1320 ft.

The insults and the challenges came to a stop and were replaced by oohs and ahhs. When asked why my car was faster than Tim's car with 650 horsepower I replied, "My horses must be bigger than Tim's". For your consideration I offer the following: The class I ran in was comprised solely of trailer queens being full race cars. Mine was the only one driven to the track and back home and it was a small block. Nobody but a a dragster and an altered exceeded my mph.

My point is: math and measurements are important but bench racing is pointless.

Cheers,
Patrick