AR LST speakers

[soundminded]

"....at the BSO, the SFS, Harvard's Carpenter Center, the BBC Orchestra, etc...."

Based on the fact that he found my assertions about the way sound reproduction systems distort music so incomprehensible that they couldn't even be discussed, apparantly for whatever services he rendered these organizations, all he took away from them in return was some of their money. Too bad, that was the least valuable thing they had to offer.

[ar_pro]

"I am hoping that Ken's powers of insight improve

through the forced withdrawal of external stimuli such as

Soundminded and yourself."

Godspeed, Ken, we're all hoping like heck for your recovery. No, really.

"Ken publically performed Cage's "26 1.1499'" for a

string player with Charlotte Morman on a few occasions when

Nam June Paik was unavailable for the part. This was in the

late 70's and early 80's."

"Publically performed Cage's "26 1.1499'" - what a hoot!

Did Ken "play" the noisy radio, the shuffling shoes, or the gun?

Wait a minute!! I "publically performed" with an M-16 on a few occasions in 1969 & '70...where the heck was John Cage when I needed him?!?

"Alas, Ken always wanted people to aim high. He tried to bring

up the level of mid-priced audio in his own small way, as well

as promoting new and independent music."

Well, he could always design & build a better speaker than the AR-9 or LST...that would be a good start.

Microtonally Yours,

ar_pro

(Finally, off to Vermont for skiing - yippee!)

[roundhome]

Let me try this in a vary strange way first as plain as posible

I don't think its the speakers falt you can't heir what you should its more the recordings and the equipment to reproduce that tone or combination of tones

1 Music is sound

2 sound travels in all directions and is reflecded from every thing to some extent obsorbed be some objects

3 sound blends with other sounds.making it clearer or muddy

4 some sounds compliment others

5 sound travels at diferents speads for diferent tones

6 in a concert hall there are many different reflections a directions for the sound to travel

7 the instriments creat a sound as the sound moves forward they blend with the other instriments extenting them up and down and giving off harmonics

8 the forward sound reaches the listener with a piticulure timing some is reflected by the things right around you other are obsorbed by them.

this is only a small part of the origanl sound it has been streched and added to in its travel

9 next the sound that is reflecded from the rear of the stage wich has blended with the other sounds going back is refleced out into the lisener..

10 this reaches the listener at slower timing then the forward sound

11 giving the sound it reachness and fullnes

this is a simple example there are many other reflections and timmings involved.

Now a good speakers is capable of reproducing these sounds but it is not able to reproduce something that was not captured and put on tape .

You would have to record it at the listeners space then break it down from all the reflected directions and then send this to diferent speakers angled at diferent directions so that the sounds would reach the listener at the same time as the live did

thus we don't have a speaker problem we have a recording and playback problem

all good ideas start with solving a problem

now there are probly not that many peaple that think about all that when listening to a live concert. but the ones getting every thing to sound the way they want it to for a live music show do, and the few that go (why does it not sound the same on my) I paid to much for it system? you need reflections to make the music sound real all the tones base, mids and highs they compliment each other.

I'm not a vary good speller or big words but I understand sound from some speacial training if you step on a twig in the woods I can shot you from that one sound in the dark not that I care to do that anymore

now maybe we all can pick this a part and come up with a salution to the sound being correct to our ears compared to live.

and sombody can get rich not me I don't care

it's all about the music MAN

Just think how long winded I would be if I had a education

have fun

[soundminded]

You have put your finger right on the heart of the problem of making a recording which sounds like you are at a concert. Someone rather clever had an interesting idea. He said, why don't I put a dummy's head where someone in the audience would sit, put a pair of small microphones inside where their eardrums would be, and record that sound. Then play it back through headphones and I will hear from the recording what I would have heard at the live concert. And it works perfectly...with one glaring exception. And that is as soon as you turn your head even slightly while you are listening, your brain comes to the immediate conclusion that the music is coming from inside your head. This is because the sound turns with your head. In the real performance, the different sounds come from different fixed directions which do not change when you move your head with respect to them. They have both amplitude and direction. Each of the sounds in the recording only have amplitude. The first are called vectors, the second scalars. BTW, this is called a binaural recording which although it is a two channel recording is different from a stereophonic recording, the kind we are used to. In those recordings, the microphones are placed much closer to the musicians capturing mostly the direct sound and very little of the reverberant sound, and of course little of its "vector" nature at that. Some people have proposed that a series of binaural recordings be made on multiple tracks where each set has the microphones in slightly different positions in the head and that the headphones somehow switch from one to another as you turn your head by sensing its motion using accelerometers on the headphones. I don't know of anyone who has tried it and made it work though. So we are stuck for the time being with what we have. BTW, the sound which comes directly from the instruments to you without reflection when played through speakers is where the speaker problem we've been discussing comes in. Sorry but that's still trouble too.

[Guest Doctor Philharmonic]

>"Publically performed Cage's "26 1.1499'" -

>what a hoot!

>Did Ken "play" the noisy radio, the shuffling shoes,

>or the gun?

Ken played the part of the cello.

>Well, he could always design & build a better speaker than

>the AR-9 or LST...that would be a good start.

My question to you, ARPro, is why do you expect everyone to aim so low?

Dr. Philharmonic

http://tinyurl.com/36c7jy

[Guest Doctor Philharmonic]

Soundminded,

With Mr. Kantor's untimely passing, several hours have opened up in my patient calendar. I would recommend a course of sessions designed to assist you with your issues of poor self-esteem and obsessional envy. If it helps, I work on a sliding scale, and can offer you a discount if you promise not to talk.

Dr. Philharmonic

http://tinyurl.com/36c7jy

[Guest Doctor Philharmonic]

Soundminded,

I am sure Mr. Kantor would have agreed with many of the ideas espoused in your recent post. However, he would certainly have asked why you are not giving any credit to many, many others who have voiced these exact thoughts over the last several decades. For example, let me quote John Atkinson in the 7/03 issue of Stereophile:

"The science of audio engineering is very much better understood these days. That science, however, gets you only so far. Back in the mid-1990s, speaker designer Ken Kantor (then with NHT) gave a talk to San Diego's Music and Arts Guild. "What's all the fuss about these compression schemes like AC3?" Stereophile's Lonnie Brownell reported Ken as saying. 'Recording is an act of compression, where you take a roomful of sound and try to capture it in this tiny microphone diaphragm.'"

Perhaps your disregard for academia and the printed word has led you to a place of intellectual isolation. Of course, if you think the modern world all stinks and nothing of value has been achieved in audio technology or music composition over the past 20 years, you are free to keep talking to yourself. I would urge you to avoid the use of newfangled computers.

Dr. Philharmonic

http://tinyurl.com/36c7jy

[Guest Doctor Philharmonic]

Bret,

Most regretably, Ken Kantor has been exiled by the audiophile elite to a foreign power which condones the use of torture. He is unable to respond to your messages personally. I am his attorney, and former therapist, in absentia.

Despite the slanderous rumours to the contrary, Mr. Kantor never equated popularity with quality. He merely expressed the belief that speaker companies who developed products intended to appeal only to cult hobbyists (ie- classical music purists) were courting failure.

Perhaps that constituted biting the hand that fed him the occasional snack. He was known to bite his nails, too.

I will do everything in my power to assure Mr. Kantor's safe and speedy return. In the meantime, I hope he can take comfort with the cover of this month's Car Audio magazine.

http://www.caraudiomag.com/toc/thismonth/

Dr. Philharmonic

http://tinyurl.com/36c7jy

http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/dc/user_files/1880.jpg

[rrcrain]

I visited the local Barnes and Noble last night while my wife was grocery shopping and was stunned by what I saw. Literally one entire wall of the music department was dedicated to classical music. This very wall previously was dedicated to fold, bluegrass and country will classical inhabiting a relatively small part of the premises.

Either the buyer made one hell of a mistake or more people in Peoria, IL. are buying classical than I ever thought possible.

[soundminded]

Psychoanalyst....heal thyself.

[soundminded]

I've had more than one exchange with John Atkinson. I'm still waiting for a rational explanation from him as to how he justifies laboring at a work station tweaking a 64 band graphic equalizer to within 0.1 db of perfection to his satisfaction for each band when he makes a recording but will not so much as tweak a bass or treble control for even the most badly out of balance recordings when he listens to one. Obviously I'm not holding my breath any longer waiting for that answer. Needless to say, I hold him in even lower esteem than I hold his magazine.

[soundminded]

The unanswered question posed by John Cage is what is music, or more appropriately, what isn't. One neat thing about performing John Cage's compositions is that the audience most likely would never know if the performer made a mistake by playing a wrong note, and considering that a lot of it is performed in the Bay area (I lived there myself for five years so I know this first hand) most of the audience is likely stoned anyway and wouldn't care even if they knew. In fact, the term wrong notes may be entirely superfluous as much of his compositions are deliberately specified as random sounds. I couldn't make this stuff up folks, if you don't believe it, look at this link in Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage

This is known as aleatoric music

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatoric_music

If you wanted to play the cello in one of his compositions, it wouldn't matter, in fact it might even help if you had never seen, heard, or come in physical contact with one before. In fact you could get a cello and play on it or hold cello strings taught between your fingers and toes and have someone else pluck and bow you, whichever floats your boat. Listen to some of the links at the bottom of the Wikipedia article. 4'33" is an interesting one. The staff of the Guardian newspaper in Britain is the performer, and they probably didn't even know it at the time of the recording. I know someone who having been inspired by John Cage is writing a sonata...for electric toothbrush and garbage disposal unit.

[soundminded]

>>"Publically performed Cage's "26 1.1499'"

>-

>>what a hoot!

>>Did Ken "play" the noisy radio, the shuffling

>shoes,

>>or the gun?

>

>Ken played the part of the cello.

Did he hold the strings taught horizontally between the hands of his outstretched arms or vertically between his teeth and his feet?

>

>

>>Well, he could always design & build a better speaker

>than

>>the AR-9 or LST...that would be a good start.

>

>My question to you, ARPro, is why do you expect everyone to

>aim so low?

>

In his case, we have to take into account the modest nature of his talents and knowledge.

[Guest Doctor_Philharmonic]

Lest we forget,

It is of the upmost importance to recall that despite his overbearing modesty, dearest [a href=http://www.aural.org/graphics/people_places_things/its_good_to_be_short_sometimes.html]Ken[/a] brandished a staggeringly monumental talent of the type seldom seen ever before and most unlikely to be seen again, in many many disparate fields of creative and intellectual endeavor. The internet is completely awash, indeed overflowing, with countless examples of his unbridled genius, in areas far outside of his specialist discipline, from his ground-breaking thoughts on many diverse aspects of [a href=http://www.aural.org/essays/essays.htm]culture[/a], from his beautifully articulate and eloquent [a href=http://www.aural.org/art/poetry/poems_01.htm]poetry[/a] and his extremely competent skill in [a href=http://www.aural.org/art/visual_art/paint_2001_asparagus.html]painting[/a] to his cutting-edge-aesthetically-charged [a href=http://www.aural.org/audio/products/goldstar_televisions.html]product design[/a] proving what a polymath, nay, a pantomath, he truely was.

Incidentally, in his last precious moments he revealed that he was not only an avant-garde cellist, but also a highly accomplished trumpet player. Luckily we had some tarnished old-brass close at hand (our music-therapy department has a closet full of such dust-covered antiquated instruments) but alas he declined to play an instrument belonging to another, his last words being "I only like to blow my own".

Oh how I miss his sweet giggling!

Dr. Philharmonic

http://tinyurl.com/36c7jy

[soundminded]

I heard he is being considered for the first Nobel Prize in Speakerology and that he may be invited to address a plenary session of the United Nations General Assembly on the topic of achieving world peace through better woofer integration.

[soundminded]

Ken, when do we get the link to the article in the AMA Journal which proves that listening to the NHT 3.3 cures cancer?

[Carlspeak]

>We’ve been speaking in different languages so I will try one

>last time in a language you may be more familiar with. This

>is not rocket science, there are no tricks, this is

>straightforward out of the back of the chapter problem

>solving. Why it isn’t obvious is beyond me. The total

>acoustic energy transfer function between a source of acoustic

>energy and a point of listening, a directed or mapping

>function is defined for a source coordinate X,Y,Z, and a

>receiving coordinate x,y,z , is dependent on boundary values,

>the shape and absorption/reflection properties of the surface

>of the enclosure, conditions of state, temperature, humidity,

>and barometric pressure, and the normalized solid geometrical

>spectral radiating function of the source whether that source

>is a musical instrument or a loudspeaker system. The answer

>is a triple integral over an enclosed surface centered at the

>reception (listeners) coordinate, over all audible

>frequencies, and over time from zero to infinity. The

>collection of all such relationships within the enclosed

>surface is by definition the acoustics of the contained space.

> It can best be visualized as a series of graphs, each one for

>an arriving vector component passing through an infinitesimal

>surface area dS where each graph has three axes, time,

>frequency, and amplitude. The graph consist of a series of

>curves, each curve being an arriving echo and the shape and

>amplitude of the curve being the relative spectral transfer

>and relative amplitude to the normalized transfer of the

>direct field.

>

>For a sound reproducer to be accurate for reproducing the

>source in the sense that I have defined as [1] in my other

>posting on this thread, both the direct and reflected transfer

>functions from the direction of the loudspeaker must be

>spectrally flat. This means that if the combination of the

>loudspeaker and the room acoustics result in reflections which

>are not flat, supplemental energy of the correct frequency and

>amplitude must be radiated which will make them flat. This

>almost invariably means additional indirect high frequency

>energy because of the usual inherent limitations of the power

>radiating characteristics of the speaker and the frequency

>selective absorption properties of the listening room

>boundaries.

>

>For a sound system to be accurate in the sense I have defined

>as [2], it must reproduce the time delays which arrive at the

>listener from the same relative directions, with the same

>delay times, relative amplitudes and each one having the same

>relative spectral change G(jw) with respect to the direct

>field as is experienced by the listener in a concert hall.

>Furthermore, for either scheme, if the spectral transfer from

>the microphone to the signal to the loudspeaker is not flat

>due to variables of recording technique, it must be made flat

>through equalization. No sound reproducing systems in the

>world I am aware of comes close to meeting the performance

>criteria for either definition of the problem.

>

>Give this more than 33 seconds of your consideration. It lies

>at the crux of what high fidelity sound reproduction is about.

> If you still dismiss it, then I give up, communication

>between us is hopeless.

>

Soundminded.

I've found an article today that I believe will make you both happy and sad. It's in this weekend's issue of the WSJ. It was written by world renoun classical pianist Byron Janis. Now we have the professional musician's perspective.

He details his struggles with acoustics both in the concert hall and recording studio. It's quite pertinent to some opinions you've shared and, for me, quite enlightening. He write about another dozen or so variables in the acoustics of recorded music equation I wrote about in an earlier post. I suspect now we are up to some astronomical number of permutations and combinations of ambience, tone, etc. etc. etc that, in themselves negate any attempt to design the perfect loudspeaker for; not matter how far the paradigm gets shifted.

After reading the article, I've come to the conclusion that your quest for concert hall and instrument realism is fruitless, simply because there are WAY too many variables to control. Give it up.

My suggestion is that you consider purchasing (if you haven't already) a good RTA and TEF analyzer and a 60 band graphic equalizer so you can analyze and adjust for each recording until it matches YOUR perception of what the recording SHOULD or, should I write, MUST sound like. You may also want to supplement this gear with an echo chamber and/or a reverb chamber to optimize those early, not so early,late and really late reflections your speaker and listening room cannot accomodate.

Or, better yet - just enjoy the music rather than focusing so much on the sound of the music.

It's all about the music

Carl

Carl's Custom Loudspeakers

[soundminded]

Thanks for the reference and thanks for he advice. Byron Janis' comments are common to all serious performing artists, they all struggle with it. As for you suggestion, I'm afraid that just wouldn't be enough but thanks anyway. BTW, IMO, Byron Janis was a superb pianist. If you can get your hands on a recording called "The Reiner Sound" reissued as an RCA CD 09026-61250-2, listen to his performance of Liszt's Totentanz (dance of death.) Spectacular playing, a very exciting piece of music, and it will give your sound system quite a workout. I know it gives my AR9s a workout.

[Pete B]

Not my best work, and something got lost in the translation to a legal document, for what it's worth ...

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?...er+AND+IN/basel

[Guest Doctor Philharmonic]

Only on the Internet could a nameless nobody wander the virtual halls taking on accomplished professionals as sparring partners!

You are a one man peanut gallery, tossing water ballons at everyone form John Cage to John Atkinson, Stereophile to Car Audio. Then you jump out of the ring when someone like Kantor politely asks for references or discussion.

What you REALLY don't understand, you pathetic creature, is that he was doing you a favor. No one else, and I mean no one, even cares at all what you think or say. Not the big guys you trash because they have done more than you. Not the little guys who watch this theater of surrealistic comedy.

That sir, is my professional psychiatric opinion. No doubt, you have accumulated "33 years" of grandiose, meaningless, bilious opinions on psychiatry, too, and I will hear them now.

Doctor Philharmonic

[Pete B]

I see it over and over, a pro being told by lay people "How It Is". It is like the twilight zone. Do you think pro's are going to come back to boards like this?

It is said people do not value what they do not pay for, and it is so very true here. Do you really think that professionals are going to continue to visit? A few here spoil it for the entire board.

Ken, I find this board to be moderated so that this sort of thing is not allowed, it is a pleasant place:

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=22

I think this sort of interaction is an interesting reflection on the sad state of our culture.

[dynaco_dan]

Hi Pete;

A well chosen and truthful write-up, thank you.

I for one do not want anyone to leave this site but to continue to contribute.

[soundminded]

I recall you sang a very different tune a few years ago when you wanted to discuss reverse engineering AR9 with modern components and a professional named Tom Tyson told you that there was no justification for duplicating someone else's efforts, that the only justification for a design was to solve a new problem. As I recall you were quite adamant and had a rather heated exchange with him about it. And to think I defended you. That's gratitude for you.

[Guest Doctor Philharmonic]

Thank you, Pete. I shall pass that along to Mr. Kantor.

(He does enjoy the occassional brawl, though. It is good theater.)

Dr. Philharmonic

http://tinyurl.com/36c7jy

[soundminded]

Doctor Phil, in #55 you said he was dead. Do you talk to the dead too or were reports of his death greatly exaggerated?