| Columns Retired Columns & Blogs |
March 9, 2009 - 5:21am
#1
Anything but stereo.
| Loudspeakers Amplification Digital Sources | |
Analog Sources Accessories Featured | |
Music Columns Retired Columns | |
Show Reports | |
Features Latest News Community | |
Resources Subscriptions |
© 2024 StereophileAVTech Media Americas Inc., USA
All rights reserved
LOL, after all, this is "Stereo" phile. Yes, at this site, it's mostly two-channel geeks.
Dave
dc is right, most of us get warm and fuzzy from just 2 speakers.
I've yet to get excited by "Neo" anything. If you need a phase shifted, processed signal to get your jollies, you need to work on your system or your musical selections.
I used to have a 5.1 Onkyo home theater system.There was a setting called "All Channel Stereo". I always listend in this mode. Now I have given the Onkyo system to my friend and have a nice 2 channel system. I will never own a multi channel system. 2 channel does all the magic for me.
Well, I can understand that if you always listened in "All Channel Stereo," a format suitable only for parties or when the listener is in some state of altered consciousness.
Kal
Haha...right on, when you said "suitable only for parties". I used to be at school at that time. Either we were partying on Friday nights or my friends in a small band called "Param" were jamming/rehearsing Indian light music in my basement room, ...and music did elevate our consciousness
.
All stereo for me, all the time.
I dont recall any instance where I was sitting in the middle of the musicians at a concert.
Stereo is capable of wonderful things, assuming the engineer knows what he/she is doing.
Dont remember seeing any 5.1 vinyl.
2 ears=stereo.. the M-CH heads can keep it.
Normally a 2 chanel guy too, some decent quad recordings and a few decent 5.1 live DVD mixes. But, to have LaScalas across the front and KipschHorns for rears is something I'd love to hear
. You might to get some decent amplification, not many receivers are high-end and that might be reducing your enjoyment. Stereo will always give the most natural playback.
Cheers,
Ian
You guys are right about stereo. I hear people talk about how much they enjoy music in surround. Not me, stereo just sounds right. Soundtracks do sound good with the rear Klipschorns. I have a Harmon Kardon 7200 reciever. It weighs 60 pounds and is pretty powerful. The Klipschorns sound better than the Lascalas but they hide really well in the rear corners. Not to stir anything up but I recently hooked up my turntable. It had been in storage for several years. It is an old Technics and I am using a cheap phono pre amp. I forgot how live a turntable can sound compared to cd. I know this isn't the best an lp can deliver but it's still pretty good.
I don't have much experience of surround music only systems other than on this set-up :- http://aca.gr/pop_coulson.htm
I've spent several 'audiophool' evenings listening to a variety of multi channel players and recordings and found only a very small fraction of those recordings were made in a manner I'd call anything like natural. But when it is done right it sure is impressive. What I can't stand though, and this applies more to Jazz & Rock recording etc, not classical, is when the recording engineers make an instrument suddenly jump out at you from behind for no logical reason. Like early stereo I suppose, the idiots can't resist the temptation to play with the medium.
Funnily on this system the most impressive surround sound in my opinion was achieved by feeding a number of 2 channel recordings through an Audio Research processor that adds rear and side channels with a degree of user control permitted during playback. I can't remember the model number of that magic little box and I think it's now out of production. Shame.
The Horns and the LaScalas are the same speakers down to the last quarter octave. They should sound virtually identical on most material.
The Klipschorn has a 3 fold bass horn where the Lascala has a 2 fold horn. The tweeter and midrange are the same. The bass on the Klipschorn goes deeper. The Khorn is considerably larger and requires a corner which acts as an extension of the horn and the lascala can be placed anywhere.
The K'horn is considerably taller nowdays than the LaScala or Belle Klipsch. The old "Short Horn" K'horn wasn't so much. The actual length of the first two folds of the K'horn's enclosure are approximately the same length as the LaScala or Belle Klispch. Remember, the K'horn enclosure is truncated as it moves toward the back of the cabinet while the LaScala and Belle Klipsch are squared off.
The extra (third) fold and the corner placement reinforcement account for the last (approximately) quarter octave extension in the bass response of the Horn. It will take the dual fold LaScala's rolloff from about 40Hz and provide an additional 5-8Hz extension depending on the room and the actual placement of the K'horn. If the K'horn isn't fitted tightly against the corner - no moulding at the base of the wall and at least four feet of solid wall to each side - the Horn has about the same extension as the double folded LaScala. The K'horn's bass extension is totally dependent upon the room and the speakers' placement within those corners. The original K'Horn was designed for a room construction that was very different from what Fox and Jacobs introduced a decade later.
The plywood LaScala and the furniture grade Belle Klipsch were designed for those buyers who didn't have two adjacent corners available or they didn't have a room that would otherwise faithfully accomodate the K'horns needs due to room length, shape or layout. They were designed to provide virtually identical performance to the more costly but highly constricting K'horns in these situations.
The LaScala and Belle can be placed anywhere in the room simply because they need not be placed tightly in a corner as you must with the K'horn. This idea that the LaScala and the Belle can be placed anywhere is a common misconception among Klipsch owners simply because they see the K'horn as the only speaker that demands a specific placement. However, if you were using either of these speakers as your main L/R pair, P.K.'s intention was they would be placed in the corners and use the reinforcement of the room in a fashion similar to the K'horn's design. Like Roy Allison a few years later, Klipsch was a fan of predeterining the position of his speakers within the room and therefore knowing what support and which constrictions would be provided by the room.
If you didn't have the correct corner for a K'horn, Klipsch provided plans for a short false corner you would construct to support the final fold of the K'horns bass horn. The alternative as suggested by Klipsch would be to purchase the LaScala or Belle Klipsch. These two speakers didn't have the strict placement requirements of the K'horn but benefitted equally from corner placement. You got the reinforcement of the corner and the mid and high frequency horns were placed on the diagonal of the room which gave smoother response from off axis listening and long reflection times in almost any room that could fit a pair of refrigerator sized speaker enclosures. If you do not fit the LaScala into a corner, you will probably notice a distinct early roll off at about 45Hz in most rooms - this may not be all that easy to notice given the rather dominant bass thump of the Klipsch bottom end in most modern rooms. This 45Hz extension is still considered by many to be more than adequate bass reach with the majority of program material. With corner placement the LaScala and the Belle Klipsch should provide sufficient bass extension for all but the most demanding material - this according to the original Klispch factory. That is afterall the idea of a back loaded horn coupled to a 15" driver.
That leaves the low, mid and high frequency drivers and the two upper frequency horns which are identical between the three speakers (actually the Belle Klispch had a slightly larger midrange horn for a somewhat sweeter voice that P.K. felt was more like his wife's). It was certainly P.K.'s intent that these three speakers sound virtually identical to each other as the LaScala - and most especially the Belle Klipsch (named after Paul's wife) - should serve as a center channel speaker in a three speaker front array anchored by a pair of K'horns in the corners.
Room issues aside, if you have speakers from roughly the same time period, your speakers should all sound very much alike and they certainly should be almost indistinguishable on most material from about 500Hz on up.
Actually, ncdrawl, if you're a fan of Blumlein, I'm surprised you don't recall his early experiments in "multi-channel" or those that revolved around three channels across the front (possibly with some derived ambient information to the sides and rear from your DynaQuad hookup). You might want to go back and read up on just what those crossed pairs were supposed to be picking up.
There were quite a few mono and early two channel releases (check the Mercury Living Presence and RCA Living Stereo recordings which are still considered benchmarks) made with the intent they would be released as three channel open reel tapes.
"Stereo" has nothing to do with "two channel" and it has nothing to do with "two ears" other than what the industry has made it conform to. "Binaural" refers to "two ears" when you're recording or playing back.
You're right they do sound very similar but on some music I can definately hear and feel the lower end extension. I am building a room downstairs it won't be music exclusive but I will listen to music there. What do you guys think about subwoofers and music? I am considering an IB sub. Anyone heard one of these and what did you think?
I am quite familiar with his experiments, Jan. I love his mic techniques, admire his breadth of knowledge... but I still dont care for multi-channel.
Some of the Living Stereo recordings were two channels only, with no center channel at all..
Your stating the obvious is a bit offensive, Jan. Maybe you mean well, and if no harm intended, I apologize.
In the early DIY days of the K'horn and before Vilchur and Kloss changed speaker design, IB "subs" were the thing to have. You would place a huge drver in an unused fireplace, in a closet door or in the floor to fire its backwave into the chimney, a wad of clothes or the basement.
As with all things audio, there are definite benefits and definite disadvantages. The biggest drawback for most people is the loss of the back wave and therefore the need for more drivers and lots more power.
Then you must realize Blumlein never imagined two channel reproduction as the ideal.
Put "Cozart-Fine" into a search engine, ncdrawl, and read about the early recordings for Mercury Living Presence. The earliest mono and two channel releases were all done with the intent they would be released as three channel tapes. The industry however moved away from the tape format toward the more convenient LP format when the "45/45" stereo cutting techniques were established.
The original three channel mixes were finally released some fifty years after the fact when multi-channel SACD's made the orignal mixes available for the first time as they were intended by the artists/producers/engineers to be heard. Cozart-Fine put her stamp of approval on the recordings when the SACD's were released. If you have the capacity for a three across the front set up, you should listen to these recordings as they were intended. You won't be such a big fan of two channel afterwards IMO.
There were plenty of "two channel" Living Presence and Living Stereo releases once the names had been relegated to cash cows for the studios. Most of the later discs in these two series were largely undistinguished releases that relied on the emerging multi-channel recording techniques along with splices and overdubs. The original three channel recordings of symphonic works had been deemed too expensive due to the exacting nature of pre production set ups and the strict quality control (one take, start to stop, direct to master tape) which made the earliest recordings the gems they remain. If you're interested in recording, ncdrawl, you could do much worse than to read the history of these recordings.
ncdrawl, you're the one who equated stereo with two channels and with two ears. Why get pissed at me? "Stereo" doesn't have anything to do with two channels.
Jan, I am not pissed.
I have the RCA Bible(damn hard to find now!) and an in-depth booklet on the Living Stereo process. Ill dig it up and see if I can take you to task on any of your thoughts.
Bible? Did someone say "bible?" Doesn't that belong in another thread???
Kal
I guess so!
Bible is off limits. Only mpingo, shun mook, and astral dynamic teleportation allowed
You'd be much better off starting with the Mercury Living Presence recordings and Cozart-Fine. RCA largely copied what Mercury was doing at the time due to the financial success of the early Mercury recordings during a time when signing high value symphony orchestra was much bigger business than it is today.
The RCA techniques were never the innovative equal of the Mercury team in the opinion of many historians. As an example, to my immediate recollection, RCA never made any recordings onto 35MM film, only Mercury used a recording media that offered effective tape speed increases, tape thickness and track width over the audio tape standard of the day which was before Ray Dobly got into the act of noise reduction.
And you very well may find something with which to take me to task, it's been a long time since I've read the story of the Mercury recordings.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&...0fine&type=
You'll also find the most prized Mercury L.P. recordings were mastered with all tube electronics and the cutting lathe was driven by modified McIntosh tube amplifiers.
ja, ive got that link bookmarked, but I have a booklet that is about 100 pages or so that describes the process in great detail. it was done in the 80s, so maybe I can scan it and post it somewhere..