Stay the fuck out of my music thread!

[Leto729]

I like Black Sabbath Myself.

[DirtDawg]

Starting with some Rammstein. After the kids are on the bus, there willl be a live concert in my living room.

[duncvis]

Wooyay

[DirtDawg]

Disturbed, "Beilieve"

I don't care if they are "nu  metal", or whatever - I like them!

[duncvis]

Meh, nu metal wasn't all shite - there are one or two bands which would probably have been classed as nu metal I still like (Deftones, Spineshank, Ill Nino) Btw, if by some chance you haven't heard White Pony by Deftones, do.

Currently playing: Killing Joke - Brighter Than A Thousand Suns :rock:

[DirtDawg]

Audio geek site. Nice theoretical articles on technical concepts.

Illusion Engines

What do audio systems do? At the most basic level, they are Illusion Engines. I'll repeat that: a hi-fi system is really an Illusion Engine, a type of mechanical contrivance that hypnotizes the audience into thinking musicians are somehow present (or at least nearby). If the contrivance fails in this, it fails utterly, just as a magic trick entertains or it doesn't.

Re-framed in this context, "accuracy" simply doesn't apply. It's like rating a dream, or a hallucination, on an imaginary "accuracy" scale, although the mainstreamers have come up with a series of incantations, body postures (jaw-dropping, pants-flapping, cojones, etc) and audiophile-approved test discs that purport to accomplish this feat.

Check this one out, too.

Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity: Hypersonic Effect

There are two factors that may have some bearing on this issue. First, it has been suggested that infrasonic exposure may possibly have an adverse effect on human health (Danielsson and Landstrom 1985), suggesting that the biological sensitivity of human beings may not be parallel with the "conscious" audibility of air vibration. Second, the natural environment, such as tropical rain forests, usually contains sounds that are extremely rich in HFCs over 100 kHz. From an anthropogenetic point of view, the sensory system of human beings exposed to a natural environment would stand a good chance of developing some physiological sensitivity to HFCs. It is premature to conclude that consciously inaudible high-frequency sounds have no effect on the physiological state of listeners.

In the present study, therefore, we addressed this issue by using quantifiable and reproducible measurements of brain activity. To measure human physiological responses to HFCs, we selected two noninvasive techniques: analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) and positron emission tomography (PET) measurements of the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). These methods have complementary characteristics. EEG has excellent time resolution, is sensitive to the state of human brain functioning, and places fewer physical and mental constraints on subjects than do other techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This is of special importance because some responses might be distorted by a stressful measurement environment itself. On the other hand, PET provides us with detailed spatial information on the neuroanatomical substrates of brain activity. Combining these two techniques with psychological assessments, we provide evidence herein that inaudible high-frequency sounds have a significant effect on humans.

[DirtDawg]

Meh, nu metal wasn't all shite - there are one or two bands which would probably have been classed as nu metal I still like (Deftones, Spineshank, Ill Nino) Btw, if by some chance you haven't heard White Pony by Deftones, do.

Currently playing: Killing Joke - Brighter Than A Thousand Suns :rock:

I love, Ill Nino!

Going with a touch of death metal, today. Some amazing bass sounds pour out during this one.

Demilich, "Nespithe"

[duncvis]

If that excerpt means what I think it does I have to agree, as it seems to endorse my own view on stereo equipment 'good enough will fucking do' - the dealbreaker for me is tinny. if there is half decent resonance and sufficient clarity to actually hear the music everything else is irrelevant to me. 

[DirtDawg]

Exactly. He has a "realist" view of all this audiophile nonsense, which I try to keeep, also. I am also intrigued by the journey to remove one last non-musical resonance from my system, so I back slide a bit, at times, into further exploring those "illusions", with technology. It seeems that what ever I do, I ride on alternating waves of good and bad, success and failure, brilliance and stupidity, courage and cowardice ...

[DirtDawg]

Alvin Lee an Ten Years After, "Pure Blues"

Good stuff!

[ASpHole]

Exactly. He has a "realist" view of all this audiophile nonsense, which I try to keeep, also. I am also intrigued by the journey to remove one last non-musical resonance from my system, so I back slide a bit, at times, into further exploring those "illusions", with technology. It seeems that what ever I do, I ride on alternating waves of good and bad, success and failure, brilliance and stupidity, courage and cowardice ...

Uh-oh...You're not one of those guys that spent $300+ for an IEC  power cable because it sounds better, are you?

[DirtDawg]

Exactly. He has a "realist" view of all this audiophile nonsense, which I try to keeep, also. I am also intrigued by the journey to remove one last non-musical resonance from my system, so I back slide a bit, at times, into further exploring those "illusions", with technology. It seeems that what ever I do, I ride on alternating waves of good and bad, success and failure, brilliance and stupidity, courage and cowardice ...

Uh-oh...You're not one of those guys that spent $300+ for an IEC  power cable because it sounds better, are you?

Uh, no.
I just meant that litttle waves of successses usually come after many waves of failures. I can't seem to "catch a wave" of brilliance or success and ride it. I don't consider most pricey cabling to be an excersize in advancing technology, but rather a way to extract hard earned money from uneducated, yet, blindly hopeful audiophools.

I'm a DIY guy. I made up my own braided and shielded IEC cables, from high grade seventy five ohm signal cable. I have learned that it is more important which direction, relative to the polarity of the lines of flux surrrounding the power transformer, the cables leave or enter the most dense part of the field. That holds true for signal cables as well as the power cables. I get that idea shot down, by people with more time on their hands than brains, quite often, though.

I have not found that to be true of speaker cables, however. Twisted speaker cables do seem to sound better, though, as long as they are copper. I really don't like the sound of silver speaker cables. Silver in the signal cables is not too bad, but they are definitely more crispy up top. Not to my liking, at all. Silver power cables are just a joke. I get plenty of rejection with the shielded cables. My amp is connected directly to the wall and the other items alll ground through the amp chassis. That means that the other signal cables all have lifted grounds at one end or the other, depending on the flow path to ground. The only continuous ground path, betweeen the equipment, is through the power cables.

[ASpHole]

That's cool, I tend to prefer O2 free cables like Mogami myself. My stereo setup is actually a pathetic joke at this point, but at some time, I think it would be cool to have a Bryston Power Amp, with home built speaker boxes. --There's a LOT of MDF available at work when I choose to make the boxes. Finding a nonresonant glue with a very low damping factor for the butcherblock construction will be a bit more problematic.

[DirtDawg]

Metallica, "Kill Them All" There first album, re-titled, from "Metal Up Your Ass", because no distributors would touch a name like that, in the early eighties.

[DirtDawg]

That's cool, I tend to prefer O2 free cables like Mogami myself. My stereo setup is actually a pathetic joke at this point, but at some time, I think it would be cool to have a Bryston Power Amp, with home built speaker boxes. --There's a LOT of MDF available at work when I choose to make the boxes. Finding a nonresonant glue with a very low damping factor for the butcherblock construction will be a bit more problematic.

My best cables are MIT. I haven't tried Mogamis.

If you plan on using MDF, why would you neeed to make a butcher block? Does the MDF, you have access to, have a grain structure? I don't quite understand.

If there is no grain, you should be fine with an alephetic resin and increased mass to keep the individual panel resonant frequencies as low as practical. The only problem I have ever had with MDF is rigidity, when used for a low frequency enclosure.


MODDED:
The highly regarded NCMS Soft Glue (available through North Creek Music Systems), I have not tried. It is considered by many to be this best speaker enclosure glue around.