Mike Reed
pfm Member
I'll almost echo that, except inasmuch as I've never needed anything remotely like it in 55 years.
Nostalgia vs R&D
- Thread starter Conan
- Start date
I'll almost echo that, except inasmuch as I've never needed anything remotely like it in 55 years.
Mike Reed
pfm Member
The Ravensbourne preceded the Stereo 70 I believe, but remember buying the latter for my college disco room and I think it was about £30, but maybe that was wholesale. Is £30/£40 really equivalent to around £800 today? I had a few amps during that period (Pioneer, Quad, Revox, Stereo 30, Marantz etc.) and do agree that modern equivalents would probably improve on those both sonically and in power. Valved amps excepted.
davidsrsb
pfm Member
There is nothing wrong with that, it is an effect like tone controls. The HiFi market would have far less room for different products if strict accuracy was the only goal.
It is annoying when the manufacturer or owner gets so angry when the effect is pointed out
It seems to be a bit more nuanced than that. Studies of people's preference (e.g. Harman) in direct back-to-back comparisons show that pretty much everybody regardless of their levels of interest in hifi or music tends to prefer conventional high fidelity sound (some mild qualifications). So why do such a large proportion of audiophiles reject high fidelity sound in favour of booming rooms, missing and or waffly bass, directivity sound effects, uneven frequency responses, added resonances, etc... Is it preference or perhaps a lack of familiarity with high fidelity sound? Training the brain perhaps to accept various distortions as normal? A low interest in sound quality? A high interest in sound effects or other factors? Etc... I don't know but find the subject interesting.
As I have mentioned before, a visit to an audio shows and then talking to other visitors and/or looking at forum posts from other visitors will demonstrate the large variation in what audiophiles consider to be "good" sound. What is causing this variation given the results of studies like Harman's?
SteveG
pfm Member
Do they? Or is that just misguided shite spouted by some hi-fi snobs, engineers with cloth ears, the hi-fi press and others with vested interests?
Tony L
Administrator
There is clearly a religious fervour around room correction at present, I actually hoofed someone off the forum yesterday for getting so trolling and aggressive. FWIW my guess is those with horrible sounding systems or hopelessly compromised rooms/speaker/listening positions that have tried it get such a huge, huge benefit they assume their experience is universal and become evangelical/crusaders. It is turning into yet another tedious cyclic forum argument. As ever if you genuinely like the sound and presentation of your system as-is across multiple genres of music you almost certainly don’t need it, if not it may be worth trying. Basically if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
mansr
Objectionist
Any system in any room, no matter how good to begin with, will be improved by DSP correction. Why forgo the last bit of sound quality? Granted, if you already have a purpose-built room with no expense spared, then it might not be worth the extra trouble. For anyone else, digital correction is a cheap, non-intrusive way of getting better sound within whatever constraints (space, budget, etc.) may apply.
Certainly as a visit to an audio show will demonstrate. The question is why given the results of studies like the Harman ones. There is of course nothing wrong with audiophiles adopting a wide range of sounds that deviate significantly from what might be considered high fidelity. The question is why?
There is certainly plenty of shite spouted by audiophiles and some of it will no doubt be adopted other audiophiles. I can see it possibly leading to a few audiophiles perhaps claiming to prefer sounds they don't really. It is hard to believe it is a leading factor though but then again I don't really have a handle on what is going on.
One of the things that came out of the Harman studies was that cloth ears didn't seem to be a significant factor. Ditto for claims of golden ears. Indeed I seem to recall in one of their earlier studies you could see in the anonymised results that at least one of the people in the golden ear group was also in the hearing impaired group. Has anyone got a link?
The hifi press I am fairly sure has had a substantial role to play in promoting non-high fidelity sounds as good sound. It's role though must be reducing these days as it's reach diminishes.
Quite true. Nothing to do with religious fervor, imho.
I wonder if the room correction sceptics find it somehow threatening to their deeply held beliefs about what matters in sound reproduction. Perhaps the main fault in room correction is that it is actually based on scientific understanding of acoustics and digital technology. Another huge problem is that it actually works, after years of faffing around with green pens, esoteric cables and various flat earth philosophies.
Mike Reed
pfm Member
A vaguely allied thought could be' It's fine to laugh at adversity but maybe not if you're a grief counsellor'.
I admit to being a total sceptic; not to the odd occasions when disappointing sonic situations can be improved upon this way, but that ANY system in ANY location can be improved. I just love room interactions from speakers bouncing the sound around and creating an involving soundstage; I always have, regardless of house, room or speakers. Accuracy? Couldn't care less as long as it gets me off. How can that be improved by the assistance of DSP?
There is clearly a religious fervour around most kinds of audiophile hardware (dacs, valves, record players, cables, etc...) and to expect otherwise for room correction (just electronic boxes or all forms of controlling the sound of the room?) seems unwise.
I have stood next several people with what to me was a horrible sounding system (well significantly compromised) that I genuinely believe they considered to have good sound. It was baffling. Were they appreciating something I couldn't hear (e.g. coherent sound) or perhaps the reverse?
Low frequency room boom is present in acoustically untreated rooms and is particularly problematic in small ones. If you are denying this to be the case then that would be odd. Treating the room (by whatever means) to even out the low frequency reverberation time and bring it down to be roughly in line with that for higher frequencies is an audibly significant change which I have yet to find anyone describe as detrimental. This obviously doesn't mean all "room treatment" is beneficial but it is a pretty safe bet that reducing low frequency room boom will be.
Should audiophiles stop seeking to improve the sound (by whatever criteria they choose to judge) when they reach "good"? That would seem to be rather against the spirit of the hobby for many.
Tony L
Administrator
Of course I’m not denying it, and as a bass player who plays by ear I am very critical of poor system bass performance. I trust my ears sufficiently to know when it is, or is not a problem and need no crutch or religion. I certainly don’t need to be lectured by anyone, not even by Harman’s marketing rhetoric (even though I do very much like some of the more high-end modern JBL horn systems).
No, of course not, but the endless evangelical proclamations (and shilling) from people so arrogant they think the rest of us have no experience of what they are describing does grate after a while!
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
I think the Leak was before the Rogers but not by much. They were market rivals with similar specs and price. There was a later version of the Ravensbourne with some restyling and extra power. They were both around £60 and yes that equates to around £800 according to online calculators of such things. I can't help feeling that there's "a rabbit away" with these calculators or something not being taken into account though. It seems a little hard to believe that so many people payed that kind of money for such gear! They are still available for nearly now't today as just so many of them were made... they seem much more commonly available than even the likes of NAD 3020 etc which started out at £68 ish!
I had an immaculate minter later type Ravensbourne with IIRC 35WPC and it was pretty impressive actually and much better than a Leak Stereo 70. I may be able to get it back cheaply at some future point as well
davidsrsb
pfm Member
Fortunately few listening rooms are as bad for acoustics as the average HiFi show demo room. Usually big speakers from the range with everything very bright to show off detail, played at far higher volumes than most of us do at home. I presume many HiFi demonstrators have serious hearing damage from repeated exposure to these levels.
davidsrsb
pfm Member
The upper middle class was far more numerous in the 60s, so many bank managers etc and they earned a lot more money than the masses back then. Not many other things to spend the salary on either.
The reference I use is colour televisions, which were about £300 in 1967 (average salary was £900 pa then) and stayed at exactly the same price for many decades.
Darth Vader
From the Dark Side
The reference that easily comes to mind is that around 1961 on a Sunday evening at the local bar with friends I could have 3 pints of bitter, a packet of 10 Senior Service and some cockles when the shellfish man came around out of a ten shilling note and a few pennies left for the Salvation Army tin when it came around. The calculator I use says that that ten bob note is now inflated to around £11.50.
Cheers,
DV
Cheers,
DV
That will be the KoB album recorded on a faulty tape recorder so most of Side A is played back at the wrong speed, will it? Yet it's a reference point for recording, you say. I'm not sure that it can't be improved upon. Playing the right speed, for a start.
my Dad started teaching in 1972. His salary was less than £1000. We had a party when it topped £1k after a year or so. A starter teacher is now about £27k, aiui. So teachers ' salaries have gone up ~ 27x in the intervening years. 30x 27 = 810. So £30 then is almost certainly £800 now.
Hip-Priest
Not hip. Not a priest.
Yes, I do say. I’m not quite sure why you opted to take such an arsey tone, but I suppose the initially interesting thread has started degenerating into the usual shitshow of twats shouting opinions on the internet - so why not I guess.
Anyway, the general point being that for an album that was recorded (so badly
) 60-odd years ago to sound as fantastic as it still does today makes one wonder how far recording and studio technology and techniques have really got us when all is said and done.