What IsAn Audiophile?

[fix it shop]

15 hours ago, WD-40 said:

Way back I installed a 31 band equalizer,  test the system with a Electro Voice RE 20 mic, Shure Sm-57 mic, Heil PR-20 mic - sounds great - FM transmitter was great too

Futher input - electronics was a hobby way back in elementary school , alot later got a job at a TV repair shop then in Radio Shack in sales then in a local stereo shop . The owner sold JBL Pro gear speakers if you wanted to build your own speaker system , use a Dynaco stereo 70 Amp modified with 6550 output tubes , Dual turntable w/ Audio Technica cartridge ,speakers were a JBLParagon to listen to - it was great but I didn't get myself too focus around it .

[fix it shop]

On 11/4/2017 at 6:27 AM, Qapla said:

I know exactly what you are talking about.

 

When I was young my parents had a collection of 78's. Most of them were things like Hank Snow, Hank Williams and the like with some Benny Goodman and that style thrown in.

 

Back then, all the teachers knew how to play the piano and we HAD to have music. Only thing is, I cannot sing. Never could. I was given a new Silvertone guitar in 1960. I couldn't play it. I tried but just couldn't seem to get it. I came to the conclusion that, since I couldn't sing, I just wasn't musical.

 

When I was about 11 or 12 we went on a field trip to the University. They had a huge pipe organ. We got to hear the pipe organ being played by someone who really knew how to play it. We also got to hear the live orchestra accompany the pipe organ. Once you hear a live orchestra - well, what can I say! There is nothing that can match that sound - NOTHING!

 

Since I grew up in the 60's, I was there for the "British Invasion". Rock and roll changed to "Rock" and many of the kids I went to school with learned the guitar and drums and started bands. Even though that kind of music was not my favorite, I liked Country, I did enjoy hearing some of them play - again, live music! It has no match.

 

As we got into High School, some of them even started playing "gigs" and making money with their bands, One of the things that became somewhat popular among those with the bands was using "storage units" to practice in. My Brother and I used to go listen to some of them on occasion. When I got my license and was able to drive myself around, I still went and listened to some of them play. There was this one group that practiced quite often in a storage unit that was easily accessible, so I was able to listen to them fairly regularly - that is, until they decided to practice elsewhere ... and then they moved away. That particular band was Tom Petty

 

When I was a senior in High School I was in a school play. One of the other guys in the play played the guitar. I told him about my guitar ans how I could not play it - after all, I couldn't sing either. He told me that, just because I can't sing, doesn't mean I am not musical and had me bring my guitar to school so he could see it. When I did, he tried to pay it. He said the reason I couldn't play was because the string were too far off the neck and made them too hard to hold down. He told me to put nylon string on my guitar. He told me where to get them and exactly what to get. He had me bring my guitar back in and he showed me how to put the nylon strings on.

 

Seems he was right. I ended up learning to play the guitar. I never really played "lead", I played rhythm. I later got an electric guitar and a 12 string Hofner acoustic. I still have all three of those guitars.

 

I also got an electric bass.

 

I helped an inactive Sister I had gone to school with get back active. She played the clarinet. She helped me learn to read music. I also got an alto sax and a trumpet. I learned to play them both and how to transpose the music. I never got all that good on the trumpet. I was able to play the sax and the bass in the orchestra for Circuit Assemblies and District Conventions.

 

One particular DC I attended, I did not play in that orchestra but I was the attendant for the orchestra, had a large orchestra complete with a set of drums and kettle drums. It also had a chorus. We also had a Brother who really knew how to conduct both at the same time. Again, There Is Nothing That Can Match LIVE Music!!!

 

I used to take my 12 string to get togethers. Another Brother and I (I studied with him through his baptism and taught him to play the guitar - he could sing) used to play together and he would sing John Denver songs. It was well liked at the gatherings. But, alas, my body has gotten much older and my fingers no longer work as they once did so I have trouble playing the guitar

 

I used to have a very nice Hi-Fi system back in the 70's. I even had a really nice Hi-Fi headset! That was extremely nice. But, now that, not only do my fingers not work like they used to, I cannot hear as well as I once did.

 

I still like live music!

 

 

 

I might add, You commented, "But where and when I grew up, if you played anything but a guitar, drums, or electric organ you'd get laughed at" - where I lived, since the University had a large marching band and so did the HS I attended, there was not so much peer pressure to play rock or nothing. Those who could play other instruments were still appreciated. After all, our HS band was one of the tops in the state. It had nearly 200 people in it.

Cool ! 

[Lem]

On 11/2/2017 at 8:07 PM, Cool Cat said:

Quote

Unfortunately I don’t have the time, or money to be an audiophile. 

 

It`s all been said.  

 

I have a high ohm headphones pair, a mini tube amp and Apple music. I did my part. 

[Tronora]

On 11/25/2017 at 4:43 PM, thebluebaron said:

Firstly, I love the thread and listening to some of your backgrounds!

 

I would consider myself an audiophile but not having the means to buy the gear.

 

I love listening to a radio station called ClassicFM.  Very often I will excuse myself to the bedroom, lay down in the dark and just listen.  No lights or sounds, just allowing the radio to take me places.

 

Just recently, Sinfonia Antarctica by Vaughan Williams had an unnerving effect on me.

 

I started listening to Sinfonia Antartica right now 🙂 Thanks for the tip! I am an audiophile. NAD amplifier. DC-12 Cerwin Vega speakers.

[fix it shop]

1 minute ago, Tronora said:

 

I started listening to Sinfonia Antartica right now 🙂 Thanks for the tip! I am an audiophile. NAD amplifier. DC-12 Cerwin Vega speakers.

Hoping to get my 31 band equizier, mono or stereo Amp,  12 to 15 in speaker for bass , proper crossover network for my big Electro Voice CDP PA horn (midrange) ,music or program by my Samsung tablet . So I am a poor man's audio connusuier. 

[Pabo]

I would class myself as an audiophile, not just with the equipment I use, but also I would listen to entire albums, pick out little gems in the songs, or even background noises that were accidentally got recorded.

 

My wife too likes music and usually plays it loud! You definately know when she is home, "when the house is a-rocking, there's no bother knocking," as she would not hear you. But I wouldn't call her an audiophile, just a music lover.

 

We currently has an Yamaha A-S300 amplifier and Yamaha CD-603 5 CD carousel, connected to a switch box that I had made myself which allows us to switch between either the 4 Studio Acoustics 5" 150W speakers either that are installed outside of our house (as below) or the other 4 x Studios Accoustics that are installed inside the house (sorry no picture). I do have a speaker balancer that did allow us to pconnect all 8 speakers to the amplifier, however, the amplifier at times used to trip itself out at times, as the current draw was too much.

 

 

My wife did used to own a Realistic brand sound system made up of the following components that she purchased back in the late 70's. I have an copy of a Radio Shack catalouge which has some of the components she had. Those prices are US$, so back here in Australia at that time, you could double that in AU$, and in today's value of 45 years of inflation, you could easily triple/quadruple it.

 

STA-2100 Amplifier Tuner. Sadly, the amplifier gave up the ghost and it sent direct power to the speakers, which then had smoke coming out of the cones of the speakers.

 

 

Optimus T-200 Speakers. We still have these speakers boxes - although they need new speakers and crossovers after she blew her amp up.

 

 

LAB-400 Turntable - I am not sure whether we still have this.

 

 

She also had a cassette tape deck, but it was disposed of as it showed its age of being worn out when we evetually threw out her amplifier. However, I don't have a picture of this.

 

We did have a Pioneer amplifier and Pioneer 5 CD carousel player before we purchsed the Yamaha components, but her son now has these "on loan", and also a set of Bowers & Wilkins 603 series speakers that my wife was given to her by one of her clients that she had cleaned for. The speakers needed some cosmetic repairs which I did, and they look just as new.

 

I had an Hitachi HTA-07 amplifier/tuner, which died some years after we replaced my wife's Realistic amplifier. I found this in a car boot that a friend had just bought as a wrecked for spare parts he wanted off it, but it didn't work. So he gave it to me and I replaced the power transformer in it and it worked fine.

 

 

I had some old PYE wooden box speakers that I got off my father when I was a teenager, which I replaced the old original 8" twin horn cardboard speakers (15W) with 10" 75W polypropylene speakers (I did not enlarge the speaker opening) and added a 1" ceramic dome tweeter with a capacitor as a crossover, also added thicker insulation inside the speaker box. I don't have a picture, but I still have them and they are in storage.

 

I had originally a Phillips CD-582 CD player, then eventually moved a Pioneer PD-M406 6 CD stacker which I still have, albeit it is being used in the shed with another surround sound amplifier that my brother passed onto me.

 

 

 

A Marantz SD-555 dual tape deck. My stepson is using in his Hi-Fi setup alos "on loan".

 

 

Lastly, a GenExxa (Radio Shack product) 10-Band Stereo Equalizer with IMX Expander (which is now sitting in storage).   

 

 

 

 

Edited October 16 by Pabo

[jdcarlson]

I also think of myself as an "auiophile." 

It started in the 1950s when just about every week my parents would have a group of brothers and sisters in the congregation over to listen to jazz on their "hi fi" (monaural Magnavox) as they were called then.

When I was pioneering (1960s) I built kit amps and tuners. I finally got a Girrard changer, and thought I was really "up there!"

Over the years the equipment I have used has changed. In the 1960s I discovered McIntosh components. They may be the only company to build their comonents in the US. Their factory is in Binghamton, New York. They have a reputation for high quality components that last a long time. In 1964 they built a 75 watt per channel stereo amp (MC275) that sold for $444. You can still find used one on internet auction sites. McIntosh has built sever "re-issues" of that amp. But, if you can find an original MC275 expect to pay $3,000 to $9,000 depending on condition.

I could not afford new McIntosh gear. But, I got a little "carried away" with the auction sites. A year ago I had 15 McIntosh power amps, and about 8 more components (pre-amps, tuners, cd players, moving coil amps, etc.). In early 2024 I sold most of the equipment. I have kept just what I need to run the system I now have.

I use electrostatic speakers, specifically a pair of KLH Model Nines. These were originally designed about 1960 (when 100 watts per channel was considered a lot). I bought a pair on an internet website and used them in my office system until I quit going to the office. Then I brought them to the apartment. I made a mistake in the apartment. I had a pair of McIntosh MC2500s (500wpc stereo, 1,000 watts mono). I was feeding each Model Nine with a MC2500 in mono mode (1,000 watts). I discovered the hard way that I should not run 1,000 watts into a speaker designed when 100 watts was considered "high end." I blew out bass panels on one speaker. I had them totally re-built by David Janszen (son of the original designer) earlier this year. The Model Nines have a very unusual shape. They are six feet tall, two feet wide, and three inches deep. The first time I heard a pair of these speakers was about 1970. I was in a stereo shop. They were playing a tape of a live recording of a jazz quintet at a supper club. The tape deck was a Crown Deck, I do not remember the electronics, but knowing the dealership, they were probably Fisher. Anyway, through the Model Nines I could hear the customers silverware clinking on their plates.

At age 19 I wanted to be a jazz musician. But after two or three "gigs" I learned I needed a day job if I wanted to eat and sleep in a dry place. So, I ended up as a Certified Public Accountant.

But, even though I only did less than four "gigs" as a musician, I can still remember the sound of customers silverware on their plates from my attempts a live performances. I have not heard that level of clarity and definition from any other speaker. 

KLH Model Nines have not been made for several decades. Presently Magnapan and Martin Logan are the main electorstatic manufactures. In the past Quad (a British company) built electorstatic speakers, but I do not know if they still do. Since I had mine totally re-built a few month ago I believe they are representative of the latest electrostatic speakers from other companies.

If you grew up with 105db concerts, the Model Nines will not do the job for you. 

If you grew up with jazz groups and string quartets, you will love the model nines. With a chorus you hear individual voices. You can tell the difference between a violin and a viola, between an alto sax and a tenor sax. It all depends on what you are accustomed to listening to.

Right now I have most music stored digitally. Much of it at 192k, 24bit taken from LPs. At my office I had three 400 CD Sony changers (1,200 CDs in total). These have been transferred to a 5tb usb drive at 44.1k, 16bit FLAC (44.1k, 16bit, is the audio CD recording standard, unless one gets to SACD, or some other esoteric medium).

I have my computer feeding a 77" Sony OLED tv through hdmi. The tv sends the hdmi to a McIntosh Mac 3 digital/analog converter, which feeds a McIntosh MX130 tuner/amp, then to a McIntosh MEN220 (room equalizer with active crossover) then to two McIntosh MC2205s (200 wpc stereo, or 400 watts mono). The MC2205s feed the KLH Model Nines and Velodyne subwoofers.

I am in a 1200 sq ft two bedroom apartment in a retirement complex (my wife is in the Alzheimers' ward here). For the small space I have the Model Nines give all the volume I need. If I had a larger listening space, I might want more. 

In one audio forum, one man said he had three pairs of the Model Nines. That wold be six speakers, at two feet wide each it would take up 12 feet of wall space just for the speakers. That would have to be a BIG room.

The biggest complaint hear about "full range" electrostatics is they do not produce sufficient bass. Good bass require moving a lot of air. In a cone speaker I have seen models with over 1" (or more) cone movement. The element of an electorstatic speaker will probably move 1/16th of an inch. The designer of the Model Nine tried to compensate by making the speaker larger, thus there is more surface to move air. Just having been rebuilt (and updated for crossover components not available in 1960) mine do a reasonable job on ordinary acoustic music. And it suits my taste, especially considering the clarity and definition.

At age 80 I sometimes scare myself when driving. I do not drive at night. On Sundays I can make it to the Kingdom Hall with the sun out. But midweek meetings have to be on ZOOM.

AND - it is a lot more fun to watch the ZOOM programs on a 77" screen rather than my laptop screen. And the high end sound system doesn't hurt.

 

Anyway, that is enough of my ranting for now.

 

Thanks for listening (or reading)

 

Jim

 

[Pabo]

@jdcarlson I would say those KLH Nines would sound awesome for jazz and strings, as you say, they are not really designed for bass. And being such big speakers in a apartment of that size, you could be using them as wall partitions.

 

And what were you thinking connecting those spreakers to such a powerful amp? Experience is a great teacher, but it does send in some horrific bills.

 

I have only heard electrostatic speakers used once, and that was a long time ago when I was a kid (so in the 80's). The sound they did reproduce was very crisp and clear. However, they did compliment the bass flaws by using a using a 16" cone speaker where it only congigured to work only below 600hz. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album really sounded awesome that was being played.

[jdcarlson]

As to running 1,000 watts into old speakers, I just was not paying attention. And, it was an expensive lesson. It was NOT cheap to have them rebuilt. I paid more for the re-building than I spent buying them on the internet audtion site.

 

In talking with David Janszen (son of the original designer, Arthur Janszen) and then doing some testing with a VOM, I believe there was a voltage output problem on the channel the blew out the speakers. David Janszen has his own speaker company and markets a series of speakers. However, he has gone the route of many others in putting cone type woofers in his speakers in addition to the electrostatic midrange and treble. He also has a triving business rebuilding the original KLH Model Nines in addition to building his speakers.The MC2500s have meters on the front. The meeters never showed anything over 50 watts. I believe the problem was a malfunction in the amp. That amp was manufactured from 1980 to 1990. So the amp was between 25 and 35 years old. I should have known to have it checked out before I plugged it in. But, the MC2500 weighs 135 pounds. I have a local technician who has worked on McIntosh amps for over 40 years and is very familiar with them. But he, like me, is 80. We just cannot pick up an amp that heavy. 

 

I had used those amps in my office system driving a pair of Legacy Signature IIIs for quite some time, and not a hint of a problem. But, the Legacy line uses cone type speakers, without the extra electronics electrostatics use. Also, the Legacy line is of much more recent design, that can handle higher power.

 

I sold the MC2500s to Audio Classics earlier this year, along with seven other McIntosh power amps  (four MC2255s, two MC7270s, and a MC2505 - as well as a bunch of eleven other items - some reasonably good, the rest "floobydust" as Tom Manley calls them). They arranged for a trucker to come pickup everything so I did not have to worry about picking anything up myself.

 

I spent several years in charge of the orchestra back when the Society had live music at the assemblies. I enjoyed that privilege immensley. But 1977 was the last year for live music at assemblies and conventions. I spent many hours with the orchestra, especially several days rehearsal before each assembly or convention. I have a good memory of what acoustic instruments sound like in their normal (i,e, unamplified) environment. With the Model Nines, you do not hear one chorus, you hear individual voices. you do not hear a string section, you hear individual violins and violas. Sometimes you can tell the difference between a grand piano and an upright piano.  The Model Nines are absolutely NOT forgiving to variations in the recording process. You can tell if the instruments are close miked, or distance miked. If there is any electronic manipulation anywhere in the process of making the recording you can tell it is not "pure." There are some tracks (especially Art Van Damme - a jazz accordionist in the 60s) that I thoroughly enjoyed on older speaker systems, but cannot stand to hear them through the Model Nines. I am searching for new sources for those tracks to see if somehow I messed up when I digitized them.

 

There was one interesting thing when the Society started to use pe-recorded music at assemblies. The first assembly without the orchestra in my area was in the New Orleans Superdome. I do not know if you have ever been in the Superdome. It is HUGE.  Supposedly the Houston Astrodome would fit inside the New Orleans Superdome, with space to spare. The Superdome has a large pod of speakers hung at the very top of the ceiling in the very center. The place is so large, that if you are right under the speaker pod on the playing field, you hear the sound from teh pod before the audience in the seats around the playing field hears it from the pod. For the 1978 Convention the Speaker's platform was in the middle of the playing field right under the speaker pod. Even though the Society had pre-recorded the music for singing, they still wanted someone to conduct the singing. Another brother and I shared this privilege on alternating days. But, the speed of sound differential would mean that if I conducted the music in time with what I heard (standing directly under the speaker pod), I would be conducting ahead of what the audience could hear for singing. Brothers with speaking parts had the same problem. The sound department had to find a digital delay, along with a separate amplifier, and put monitor speakers on the platform so that I (or anyone on the platform) could time what we did with the time the audience heard the sound.

 

The common reaction to Electrostatics is they have no bass.

 

I have done some investigation on this in the past. There are several internet sites showing frequency range of various instruments. The lowest note naturally generated by normal instruments is the bottom "A" on an 88 keyboard piano. That note is 27.5hz. My KLH Model Nines (as big as they are) are fairly flat down to 30hz. that is pretty close to the bottom note on a piano.

 

The only acoustic instrument going lower is a pipe organ with a 32 foot pipe. That will generate a 16hz note. That is down in the range where you feel the sound waves hitting your chest more than you hear a sound. Some internet sites mention an exted range piano with keys higher and lower than the 88 key piano. In 70 years around music, I have never seen one of these.

 

In all the time I have been around music, I have yet to work with a musical score (either for a single instrument, or a master score for an orchestra) that went all the way down to the lowest "A" on the piano keyboard.

 

The only time I have heard a note in that range was about 20 or more years ago when Roger Whittaker gave a concert in Pensacola. One of his numbers was the main song from Phantom of the Opera that starts out with three or four VERY DEEP introductory notes.

 

When working with the Orchestra for assemblies, we played that venue. I saw everything backstage. There is no pipe organ there, let alone no 32 foot pipe. Those notes had to be electronically generated with a huge subwoofer system.

 

In addition to working with the Orchestra at the assemblies, I gave music lessons at Ludwig Music House when I was pioneering. In an effort to sell more instruments, they wanted to have a band. They asked me if I had played in a band. I said yes. Then they asked do you know what the conductor has to do? I said yes. So, at age 18 they put me in charge of the band program. That gave me even more experience listening to instruments in their normal acoustic enviornment.

 

AS you mentioned, electrostatic speakers are outstanding in their clarity and definition. That is why I love mine.

 

I think the reason electrostatics excell in definition and clarity is the relative mass of driven elements vs driving elements.

 

In a normal cone speaker you have the voice coil (which is like a glorified toilet paper tube) with wire wrapped around it. That is inside a round magnet. One end of the cone is attached to the cone of the speaker. The + and - signals are sent to the two ends of the wire. teh + and- signals from the power amplifier applied to the wires, cause the wires (and the tube around which they are wound) to move back and forth. So the mass of the driving element (the wires around the coil) is less than the mass of the driven element (the cone attached to one end of the coil). It takes a very powerful magnet, and a lot of watts applied to the wires, to properly control the speaker cone that generates the sound by vibrating.

 

An electrostatic speaker turns that around. The driven element is a sheet of mylar (measured in microns of thickness). The driving element is the screens in front and in back of the mylar. The driving elements have much greater mass than the driven elements. The + and - signals are applied to the screens in front of and behind the mylar. In a true electrostatic arrangement the mylar has to be electrically charged to respond to the + and - signals from the front and back screens. Thus, my KLH Model Nines have a transformer at the back of the base. This must be plugged into the wall to charge the element. Sound can be heard without the mylar's electrical charge, but at a MUCH reduced volume. It is this huge increase in the mass of the driving element (metal screens) compared to the mass of the driven element (microns of mylar) that gives the clarity and definition. But, that is also the weakness of the electrostatic system. The driving element moves about 1/16th of an inch. I have seen cone speakers (especially woofers) moving over an inch back and forth. So, creating volume, or moving enough air for good bass, is very hard to achieve. That is hard to do control over a large expanse of mylar. Even though my speakers are six feet tall and two feet wide, it is not just one huge piece of mylar hanging in the middle. There are eight sections in each speaker. So these smaller pieces of mylar are much easier to control. But they all work in phase with each other, thus giving reasonable bass response.

 

Just to let you know I am not a total nut, I also have three sets of cone type speakers in the apartment. None are currently in use. I am thinking about hooking up a surround sound system. But that may be "a little much" for a 1200 ft two bedroom apartment in a retirement community.

 

Thanks,

 

Jim