I like to think of analog and digital in lighting terms.

Digital = Flourescent

Analog = Incandescant

Digital --LED, modern efficient, less waste
Analog------CANDLES, inefficient, poor abilitys to give optimum.

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Digital --LED, modern efficient, less waste
Analog------CANDLES, inefficient, poor abilitys to give optimum.

Yup, nothin' better than a LED lit romantic dinner for two, then sitting by an LED image of a fire.

Yeah, candles just don't hold a candle to LED's when it comes to 'optimum.'

Different strokes, or at least different 'optimums,' I guess.

I was really just referring to the fact that flourescent lights have a flicker rate and incandescent is continuous.

Flourescent lighting relies on holding a flicker rate that is supposed to be so high that we do not see the discontinuities of its performance. That seems apropos for how digital works, fundamentally.

I'm sorry to see you don't like candles, man.

At home, I also have a fondness for incandescent - I like the light better.

Go figure, I'm analog for lighting, too.

Actually with high efficiency electronic ballast they are so high in freq, there is no flicker at all, you musta' been looking at some old crap.....as a matter o' fact I have some LED CANCLES, they look and flicker exactly like candles for that effect. Philips had em and I've seen em at the restaurant in AC House of blues, you wouldn't know it's NOT a candle untill you realize it ain't hot, and if it's knocked over it doesn't start a fire. Score anotehr one for MODERN electroncis over obsolte crap. Hig freq ballasts ain't got no flicker, and teh powders used in T8 and T5 are so much better than early old, T12. Phosphurs have improved big time, to work with teh heavier loading of teh high freq and smaller diamter tubes, much more efficient, much better color rendering....Score 2 for modern electronics. Using old T12 F40 is like listening to some old Large Advents thinking that's as good as it gets, I've been there, used em, move on up to modern materials and designs....Anything else you think old is better than teh modern replacement. LED will begin replacing incandescanet in GL applications as the prcie comes down down down, and tehy get better and better, Philips bought Genlyte for that reason LED is being the next wave Incandesccents are being banned in several years, due to their low lumer/watt. Philips is now owning Lightolier, and about 35 otehr popluar brands here under teh Genlyte umbrella, cus they can now implement LED in it's fixture div of all the brands under Genlyte....things move and and get better, old stereo gets replaced with new better stuff....ya gotta not living in teh past with old being better, if it was, they would still make 1952 Buicks...just like old tube amps with high THD is obsolete like vinyl

No, Buddha, your recollection is correct. It was Stereophile, and it was Velodyne, venturing away from their strengths in the subwoofer genre and trying to market a full-range speaker. The review was formatted as a comparison between the Velodyne DF-661 ($2,400 a pair) and the B&W Silver Signature ($8,000 a pair). Velodyne made extravagant claims about technical breakthroughs in distortion measurement technology, based on computer modeling. In some areas, the Velodynes measured better than the B&W's, in others, not. Velodyne claimed less than .1% THD, but didn't specify frequencies, so our very own John Atkinson did some measurements and some listening. He didn't like the sound of the Velodyne pair, and thus generated quite a fuss with the people at Velodyne.

This was all chronicled in the June, 1994 issue (Vol. 17, #6). I have it, if you want it. You'll have to contact me via this site and tell me where to mail it (I have a new e-mail address, which I will gladly give you, but I'm not so sure I want others to have it...).

Happy tunes. Nobody ever got off listening to or watching numbers. Or even painting by them. I suppose they have their uses, especially in the area of quality control (unit-to-unit consistency), but they are ultimately cold and detached, when you need somebody to keep your feet warm.

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There was an old analog tape recorder that used analog pre-distortion to get more head room out of analog tape, this was the subject of an AES article.

Yes, it's a valid technique, and here's my take on that:

Pre-Distortion Techniques

--Ethan

Nice work Ethan, many people find pre-distortion unintuitive since taken alone each stage adds distortion but in cascade they reduce it. Seems impossible from a frequency domain perspective, and makes perfect sense from an input-output transfer function perspective.

Interesting history here:
http://www.ethanwiner.com/music.html

I'm (PB2 at this link) covering quite a bit of background on speaker design in this thread, and distortion in particular in this post; it is the subject of this thread after all:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1587982#post1587982

Pete B.

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Also for a vinyl/tube person the A/D to D/A part is unacceptable.

Why? A/D/A is audibly transparent these days, so it seems unlikely you'd even notice that part. Especially if you're starting with vinyl and tubes where distortion and other artifacts are much higher to begin with. Even when someone prefers the sounds of tubes and vinyl, modern digital can capture that exactly. So it's a win-win for everyone.

--Ethan

I design my own clocking systems from scratch, Ethan. And they are good. damned good. World class good. Beating the best there is - kind of good.

I apply them to highly modified digital systems.

And I'm telling you, flat out..that A/D/A sucks.

Under the best of circumstances.

One concession, or point to be given. A/D/A is 'transparent', if you are not talking about 'the best there is, that is humanly available.

If we are talking about extreme high end, or even high end in general, it does bite the big one. No contest.

Analog=Better.

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One concession, or point to be given. A/D/A is 'transparent', if you are not talking about 'the best there is, that is humanly available.

Benchmark claims that you can run music through their ADC, turn it back into analog with their DAC, and do this some unimaginable number of times and the output is the same as the original.

I'd love to listen to the original and then to the oft-manipulated version. I can't imagine that the music gets a bit obscured.

I admit I don't have the patience to do run the process myself.

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One concession, or point to be given. A/D/A is 'transparent', if you are not talking about 'the best there is, that is humanly available.

Benchmark claims that you can run music through their ADC, turn it back into analog with their DAC, and do this some unimaginable number of times and the output is the same as the original.

I'd love to listen to the original and then to the oft-manipulated version. I can't imagine that the music gets a bit obscured.

I admit I don't have the patience to do run the process myself.

If you pour cheap Walmart vodka through a Brita filter 6 times, it becomes 'as good' as Jewel of Russia vodka; so I see no problem with Benchmark's claims.

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If you pour cheap Walmart vodka through a Brita filter 6 times, it becomes 'as good' as Jewel of Russia vodka;

Now this I have the patience to try!

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If you pour cheap Walmart vodka through a Brita filter 6 times, it becomes 'as good' as Jewel of Russia vodka;

Now this I have the patience to try!

In one of the best blind trials I have witnessed, Anthony Diaz Blue tried this experiment.

He blind tasted "good" vodka, and samples of cheap vodka that had been passed through the filter once, twice, etc...all the way to six filterings.

Not only was he able to identify the good vodka vs. the unfiltered stuff, he then proceeded to correctly identify each sample by how many times it had passed through the filter - all based on his purely subjective experience.

I'm sure this enraged other subjective vodka tasters, who insist that blind tasting inhibits one's tasting abilities.

Re: Loudspeaker distortions:
Jack Hidley, VP of Engineering at NHT replies to my previous posts concerning driver BL linearity and saturation distortion in powdered iron core inductors:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1589360#post1589360

Pete B.