...submitted for your...


This popped up on my phone this AM...

Now, since this has been an 'off 'n on' topic of late, Mikes' MHO vid pretty much encapsulates the general ennui expressed over B&M shops fading away, the high and rising cost of 'our level of quality equipment', and all the reasons and rationales for the SOTA becoming 'out of reach' for all except the most dedicated 'philes.

And Yes, a run-on sentence that isn't my usual terse twaddle.

So be it; lets' have fun with this, please.

If extinction is to be our lot, we can afford to be noisy about it. ;)

Rant 'n rave, dear friends.

 

128x128asvjerry

@cleeds 1+ He is also talking about a different crowd. 

Live music will never change. Having that thrill at home is very important to a significant part of the population. Not as important as a TV to everyone else. Mid Fi has morphed into Theater Fi. But Hi Fi did not go anywhere. We are still here and our younger generations know what is possible and will follow suite. My son in law is already getting started with his system and building his own subwoofers. This is anecdotal but the increasing sales of records and turntables is not.  High end Hi Fi has never been a huge market but I do not think it is going anywhere. You do not need to buy "luxury Audio" to get SOTA performance. Modern tech is bringing higher levels of performance downstream. It is never going to be cheap. If it is important enough to you, you will be able to afford it. 

My dreamed system with no cost ceiling :

 

 

Hidzs dap as a fixed battery bank for musical files low cost the size of 2 stamps... 200 $ ( i dont want computer bank because of their high noise floor level )

 

 

Choueri dac BACCH filters ( near 10,000 $ i dont remember exact cost ) ( virtual room technology dac/filters for speakers or headphones)

Berning ZOTL technology tube amplifier Around 6,000 $

Headphone ( mine are the TOP AKG K340 ) 100 $ or under 200$ used..,

 

 

Even if i was way more loose on the budget i will no go for more...

This Audio system will be anyway among the best in the world nevermind the price ... Improved better one are possible but it become ridiculous passed an optimal threshold... Trade-off exist...

The three main components were designed by three physicists/ with 2 ( dr. Choueri and Dr. Gorike, dr. Berning is a physicist who worked for Us government if i remember) who are also acousticians ( not mere electronic engineers ) who revolutionize, Dac sound processing , and tube amplification and headphone listening ...

 

Luckily i already own the 2 of these low cost one product the Hidizs dap/bank and the AKG K340 headphone from 1978 considered the best hybrid ever design3ed and anyway the best headphone i ever listen to... The others are in trashbins... 😊

 

For sure the Hidizs dap/bank is not TOP products only a convenient good one... The three others products are among the best in the world in the S. Q./low price scale...

I'm sure that his ideas are heartfelt, but he doesn't say anything that hasn't been said by others many times before; and of course, he offers no solutions.

He described very well his own experience ...

I cannot fault him for describing his experience..

And in my acoustic journey i learned that there is not ONE SINGLE EASY SOLUTION... No ready made one save if you want to pay astronomical amout for a pro acoustic room designed by an acoustician ( 100, 000 $ the last time i checked)

And anybody who felt immersiveness describe always the SAME ACOUSTIC EVENT anyway more and less good it depend of their language and acoustic abilities...Because immersiveness is a specficically very complex acoustic concept to put in place but it is an OBJECTIVELY precise concept ...technically for me it is this formula : ASW/LV ratio, the relation between the sound sources and thwe listener envelopment and position... Search acoustic articles for that...

I know because i made it myself...

Most audiophiles believe in ready made solution, we must buy the right costly speakers and all will be good... I dont think so and anyway i could not afford 20,000 bucks speakers...

When i designed my room it takes me almost 2 years , one year each day , i was retired because i could never had been able to do it...

Acoustic and psycho-acoustic done right is not easily done by RECIPE , as the one recipe ( bass trap Absorbing material or general rule to posit speakers etc ) we can read all across audio thread...

There is no recipe in reality ...Because all room differ, all acoustic content of a room differ, all components differ, and all ears needs and knowing differ too...

Acoustic is not about buying acoustic panels, it ia about learning how to listen to sound and soundfield ...

if you read my post you will see i cannot give specific advice ,i only wrote to MOTIVATE people, anyway specific very precise advice are easy to read on the net, but the way i experimented with my room i cannot reproduce it exactly in an another room... i will be in the obligation to listen to this other room for a year and begin again the incremental long but fun tuning process ...( i will not do it again though, learning something the first time is fun but be in the obligation to doing it again, with 6 months full time listening instead of one year, it isw too long for me now to be fun to be frank)

i dont have any other solution...

 

 

There is two part in acoustic of small room :

The known part the necessary material passive treament of the room with a balance between diffusion, reflection and absorption, the right ratio balance for this room and his content and these component for some specific listening location ONLY...

 

 

Then the hard part if you want IMMERSIVENESS :

The modification at the right place of the distribution of zone pressures in the room...

The guiding of direct waves and the indirected and reflected one ( the ratio of timing is crux) from the speakers for our two ears, each one of them... because there is in a way 4 speakers in a room ... Two real one and two virtual one because our ear A will hear speaker no1 and speaker no 2 , and the ear B will hear these two speakers also but with not the same time delay then the art of acoustic for me is to help the room and the speakers to give the right ratio between the sound sources for our brain to compute by playing with these 4 speakers location and surrounding content the two real one and the two virtual one created by the brain...

i used one hundred mechanically tunes Helmholtz resonators and even many other devices, ( ionizator and cheap tuned Schumann generators, and a foldable screen use as a diffruser and as a lens behind my listening position...

Thats all i did if i sketch it but how can anyone can imitate that without working a year full time to do it?

There is no speed easy solution only a very fun intense set of listenings experiments...

Most people even with very costly component have no experience of immersiveness...

You can buy speakers, you cannot buy acoustic, you must learn it by experiments...

Anyway there is no other way to learn how to listen...

Buying high end component and listening to them in comparison is fun BUT it is not acoustic and it is USELESS almost to recreate immersiveness..

Then do you undertstand why i appreciated his post and his good will and cannot say anything negative ?

I hate to say negative thing if people had good will...

My very best to you my good friend...

 

 

 

I will add that recreating immersiveness with headphone is very hard too if we want "out of the head" soundfield and "a speaker like" soundfield, but i was lucky with the right headphone, not many headphone  are able to do the job, but anyway it takes me 6 months of listening experiments with 6 modifications in the headphone or around it... it is not and could not be a plug and play...There is no simple recipe for creating immersiveness..

Oups! My dear friend speaking about my experience i forgot to say that THERE EXIST AN EASY READY MADE SOLUTION...But it is too costly for me to afford it and i know about this solution only in the last 2 months then i forgot to say it in this post...

 

Search for Dr. Choueri BACCH filters articles and products... It is a plasma physicist who work acoustic as a hobby all his life..  This is the most revolutionnary product on the market, forget any other costly upgrade.. And no need to learn acoustic anymore... This is the good news...It is the only device i will buy if i could afford it ...

I am happy right now read me right... But the optimal S. Q.  threshold of acoustic is not the minimal threshold where i am now... The minimal S. Q.  threshold is enough, most people dont even expeerience it .. But the device of Choueri give the optimal at a relatively low price...this is the solution i say do not exist in the beginning of my post because i was focussing in my experience only ... I apologize.. 😁😉😊

 

I’m sure that his ideas are heartfelt, but he doesn’t say anything that hasn’t been said by others many times before; and of course, he offers no solutions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I watched this happen in my own life. Four friends and I would gather to talk and listen to music almost every night in the '70's. Of course, now we have gone our separate ways, but even long before that happened, all of them put music and their modest systems on the back burner and listening for its own sake became a thing of the past. I found it sad and hard to accept for a while, but then I just adjusted to it and felt fortunate that I still had my system and love of music.

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