Struggling to hear improvements with upgrades

[Frank Harvey]

I think most CD players from all manufacturers incorporate some sort of buffering and error correction, even cheap DVD players.

To differing degrees of success.

 

[chebby]

What I personally found inherently superior earlier this spring was chucking 3 fully working CD players in the bin.

Don't you have charity shops where you live?

 

[Vladimir]

What I personally found inherently superior earlier this spring was chucking 3 fully working CD players in the bin.

Don't you have charity shops where you live?

None unfortunatly. Charities only want money, they don't open businesses as a sustainability model.

I had 6 CDPs to get rid off. Gifted 3 to people and the rest I left next to the bin. Pretty sure someone will take those as well. Now when I threw a dual well cassette deck, that was next to the bin for weeks. Eventually got picked up by scrap metal guys.

 

[matt49]

There are times when I would swear that you are my old english master giving me a hard time over a lack of clarity is my essays.

Guilty as charged, your honour.

The point is, as you suggest in your third paragraph, that an awful lot of modern speakers, particularly in the budget and mid-fi categories distort 'in the same way' as they are use the same design criteria and similar drive units. Inexpensive oem 5 or 6 inch bass mid units will have similar amounts of linear travel, will break up in much the same way, produce time smear due to their ported design etc, etc. Similarly many tweeters have similar characteristics one to another.

I did not mean that the differences are 'trivial' as you put it, just that they will be swamped by the deliberately engineered voicing of the speaker undetaken to make it conform to the designers wishes. It is this voicing that gives such a speaker it's characteristic sound and is the difference that most people will hear.

It is my argument that such differences are largely presentational, ie more/less bass, brighter/darker balance for example. Such differences will not only vary with the room and with speaker placement, but they are the kind of differences that are quite easy for the buyer to adapt to through the process known in hi-fi circles as 'running in'.

Good clarification, but some questions left unaddressed. My old history teacher would have given it a β+?+ (his go-to grade.)

Don't you think the issue of FR is different from matters of time smear, break-up etc? To put it another way, one could imagine a hypothetical speaker that didn't suffer from time smear, break-up etc, due to the excellent engineering of its drivers and crossovers, but still had a characteristic voicing (FR profile). I can see that the latter (voicing of FR) could be described as "presentation". But the former (time smear, break-up etc) is surely just distortion. Though I grant the design of dynamic speakers is a whole mess of compromises.

Not wanting to be awkward; just trying to be precise.

Now listening to Brahms 3 (Abbado/Berlin Phil) through the Dev + Montis in our new living room. Aside from some problems with slap echo (not enough soft furnishings), the sound is darn good.

Matt

 

[steve_1979]

A nice lump of SSD storage would be great in a CD player. (It needn't be very big.) It would make the struggle with 'iffy' CDs easier than the usual 'on the fly' / best efforts corrections. A half-way house between ripping a CD and playing a CD. It would mean the mechanism could slow down and retry - when necessary - without the 'reservoir' emptying and speed up when no errors are detected to fill the 'tank' again.

That's what a PC/Mac does when playing a CD.

It's pointless spending thousands on a hifi CD player when you can just plug a cheap DAC into a computer and get technically better results (I doubt you'd hear any difference though).

 

[davedotco]

There are times when I would swear that you are my old english master giving me a hard time over a lack of clarity is my essays.

Guilty as charged, your honour.

The point is, as you suggest in your third paragraph, that an awful lot of modern speakers, particularly in the budget and mid-fi categories distort 'in the same way' as they are use the same design criteria and similar drive units. Inexpensive oem 5 or 6 inch bass mid units will have similar amounts of linear travel, will break up in much the same way, produce time smear due to their ported design etc, etc. Similarly many tweeters have similar characteristics one to another.

I did not mean that the differences are 'trivial' as you put it, just that they will be swamped by the deliberately engineered voicing of the speaker undetaken to make it conform to the designers wishes. It is this voicing that gives such a speaker it's characteristic sound and is the difference that most people will hear.

It is my argument that such differences are largely presentational, ie more/less bass, brighter/darker balance for example. Such differences will not only vary with the room and with speaker placement, but they are the kind of differences that are quite easy for the buyer to adapt to through the process known in hi-fi circles as 'running in'.

Good clarification, but some questions left unaddressed. My old history teacher would have given it a β+?+ (his go-to grade.)

Don't you think the issue of FR is different from matters of time smear, break-up etc? To put it another way, one could imagine a hypothetical speaker that didn't suffer from time smear, break-up etc, due to the excellent engineering of its drivers and crossovers, but still had a characteristic voicing (FR profile). I can see that the latter (voicing of FR) could be described as "presentation". But the former (time smear, break-up etc) is surely just distortion. Though I grant the design of dynamic speakers is a whole mess of compromises.

Not wanting to be awkward; just trying to be precise.

Now listening to Brahms 3 (Abbado/Berlin Phil) through the Dev + Montis in our new living room. Aside from some problems with slap echo (not enough soft furnishings), the sound is darn good.

Matt

I didn't mention frequency response specifically as I thought the points made about tonal balance (more/less bass, dark/light etc) covered that.

I do consider this to be presentational, very much so. This is so easy to do that the 'smiley face' response has become the norm for mass market speakers. This is now so endemic that those few speakers without hyped bass are considered bass light and do not seem very popular.

The point I am making is that the in room response will vary depending on the room acoustics and positioning, but these variations are on top of an already manufactured response, ie the room is simply varying the amount of the hype.

To really improve a speaker requires better drive units, better crossovers and in some cases a lower overall sensitivity. As a direct consequence better speakers are more expensive, appeal to a smaller market, require better amplification and are more critical in terms of setup.

PS. Listening to 'Punk Jazz'.

 

[Vladimir]

It took me a package of cotton to get rid of the midbass hump. Not that expensive.

 

[davedotco]

It took me a package of cotton to get rid of the midbass hump. Not that expensive.

And almost certainly changed the loading on the bass driver at the same time. i appreciate that the market is saturated with 'hyped' speakers, but surely there are some that are not. Small ATCs perhaps, you might even have enough power, maybe.....

 

[Vladimir]

It took me a package of cotton to get rid of the midbass hump. Not that expensive.

And almost certainly changed the loading on the bass driver at the same time. i appreciate that the market is saturated with 'hyped' speakers, but surely there are some that are not. Small ATCs perhaps, you might even have enough power, maybe.....

Lost under a decibel of efficiency, not a horror show. Inside they had no stuffing material, just thin sponge lining. The port is very important to stay open because it does all the loading itself without damping material. Adding fluffed up cotton or rockwool in the cabinet is not the same as pluging the port shut. Much more forgiving tweaking that can be finely calibrated (by ear haha). It's important to increase the "viscosity" of the chamber, not reduce it's volume with solid chunks or plug the port. B&W supplies foams to plug the port by half or completely. The results are by far less pleasing than just adding a bit of cotton or wool.

Live and learn. Getting me proper studio gear next time.

 

[davedotco]

It took me a package of cotton to get rid of the midbass hump. Not that expensive.

And almost certainly changed the loading on the bass driver at the same time. i appreciate that the market is saturated with 'hyped' speakers, but surely there are some that are not. Small ATCs perhaps, you might even have enough power, maybe.....

Lost under a decibel of efficiency, not a horror show. Inside they had no stuffing material, just thin sponge lining. The port is very important to stay open because it does all the loading itself without damping material. Adding fluffed up cotton or rockwool in the cabinet is not the same as pluging the port shut. Much more forgiving tweaking that can be finely calibrated (by ear haha). It's important to increase the "viscosity" of the chamber, not reduce it's volume with solid chunks or plug the port. B&W supplies foams to plug the port by half or completely. The results are by far less pleasing than just adding a bit of cotton or wool.

Live and learn. Getting me proper studio gear next time.

I thought you had just bunged the port, shouldn't assume.

Adjusting the filling of the cabinet will affect the sound, I remember doing tests aeons ago, at EMI in Hayes. Buggered if I can remember the results though, we were optimising the bass response for their new monitors.

We gave them a pre-production pair and let them tell us what they wanted. I think they preferred a little more damping to the standard US model, which became the norm for all units shipped to europe.

 

[Vladimir]

Adding stuffing wasn't enough for the speaker stuck in a corner. Stuffing to the point where there was no boom, significantly disbalanced the rest of the sound. So I DIYed a big bass trap in that corner to take the beating and kept lesser amount of cabinet stuffing. Sore on the eyes but it really helped.

Look Ma! No DSP!