Bose and Sony: A short story of sucking and redemption...

[kade]

I have an old receiver that I use to play music in my garage. I usually just use an aux cable to my phone but would like to play CDs also because I have some that aren't on my phone. Any good setup suggestions for a CD player to plug up to the receiver ? Maybe this mysterious SEGA CD?

 

[hafaday]

I was always a fan of Carver and McIntosh back in the 80's. A gentleman I knew of had a pair of the old Klipschorn's mated to various different pieces of high-end equipment.. A great sound it was.

 

[kennith]

2017 to Kennith, it's called DSP now

If too many more initialisms begin to show up, I'm just going to call every source unit a VCR.

Cheers,

Kennith

 

[kennith]

LOL. CDs are one thing, but you're using EQs? SMH! You wanna know how I know you're old?

At any rate, my Dad has the real shit. An eight track player that hold 5 eight tracks. I shit you not,... an actual eight track changer. Some day I will inherit that thing.

For all the haters, I've got around 400 CDs. Average price about fifteen bucks??? WTF was I thinking? Should have listened to my parents.

What's wrong with equalization? Graphic or parametric; without one of those, as well as a noise source and DB meter, how am I supposed to compensate for a room and dial the "personality" out of a loudspeaker? How am I supposed to keep it adjusted as it ages?

The calibration toys these things come with nowadays are only a very basic beginning to sorting out a room. All they do is cut out a lot of the busy-work. You've still got to clean up after them.

Cheers,

Kennith

 

[Rob371]

I sold my pair of Altec A-7 Voice of the Theater speakers about a year ago when my wife made it abundantly clear that they were NEVER going to come upstairs from the basement. I also sold off all of my old Dynaco gear and most of my collection of other speakers - a bunch of AR's, some KLH and Dynaco speakers. I just could never resist picking up a pair of $300+ speakers at a yard sale for under $20.

Those old A-7's won a LOT of "Speaker Wars" back in the day.

You were lucky they were even allowed in the house. My Altecs reside in my own personal "sound room",...er, umm, pole barn. It's okay though. I can still rattle the windows in the house from there. At least until about ten pm when wifey starts hollering.:hammer:

It's probably a good thing we weren't neighbors.

 

[jafir]

To summarize:

A: Buy an Xbox One for your source unit (PS3 if you just hate Microsoft for some reason). Don't get a PS4.


Kennith

I don't know if this was mentioned because I stopped reading the novel when I found the summary, but the xbox one S will also do 4k bluray and hdr.

Too bad the interface is horrible. Even after the recent update to fix it.

 

[Mike_Rupp]

I was always a fan of Carver and McIntosh back in the 80's. A gentleman I knew of had a pair of the old Klipschorn's mated to various different pieces of high-end equipment.. A great sound it was.

My first set of speakers were the Klipsch Heresy IIs. I had them in my college dorm room. I kind of spent all of my money on the speakers so I barely had any $$$ left to buy the rest of the system, so I ended up getting a Zenith 55W receiver. What a fucking joke that thing was. It would get so hot that if we wanted to play the music loudly, I'd have to place a box fan next to the receiver to blow over the heat sink to keep it cool enough to play without clipping.

Anyways, after college I bought a Carver TFM25 and the Carver Preamp at the time. My goodness, what a difference. The sound was completely transformed. It had incredible detail. Then a few years after that, my boss sold me a set of his KEF Reference 4s. Let's just say that the Carver wasn't up to the challenge. The Klipschs were 8 ohm speakers and the KEFs were rated at 4 ohms, but most likely are lower than that. The carver nuked itself at moderate loudness. I never even pushed the volume much at all. I had the thing rebuilt by a guy here in Seattle who supposedly knew Bob Carver back in the day. The amp blew again. The thing is rated at 375 watts at 4 ohms, but I find that BS.

Here's the funny part. I didn't want to spend a ton of money on a different amp so I hooked up my parents old Luxman surround amp (it's one of those 3 channel amps that you use to give you 5 channel surround system). It's only a 55 watt amp, but sounds every bit as good as the Carver and has been working fine for the last ten years.

 

[HiSPL]

Bunch of old men yelling at the clouds.


Big, old, and heavy doesn't mean things are better. There's been improvements in audio over the last decade that are orders of magnitude over what took place the previous 50 years. Mostly due to digital modeling and measurement. I'd imagine thats why Blose was able to get their wacky ideas to work now. You. Otice they aren't making 802 style boxes anymore! They probably modeled it and saw what a comb-filtering nightmare those things are.

 

[Rob371]

Bunch of old men yelling at the clouds.


Big, old, and heavy doesn't mean things are better. There's been improvements in audio over the last decade that are orders of magnitude over what took place the previous 50 years. Mostly due to digital modeling and measurement. I'd imagine thats why Blose was able to get their wacky ideas to work now. You. Otice they aren't making 802 style boxes anymore! They probably modeled it and saw what a comb-filtering nightmare those things are.

I'm trying to remember, was it the Bose 901s? I'd like to find a pair of those to pair up with my altecs. At least I think so anyway.

I'd put the Altecs up against anything new. Clean, crisp, and rich at any level. The sansui at 90 watts per channel does a nice job for power. It doesn't matter what genre it is. I don't have to touch anything and it all sounds good. I've been in the sound rooms at some top end audio dealers. I just shake my head and wonder why stuff costs so much.

I wish I could fit the altecs in my boat. I've been building and rearranging that system for several years. Things are getting silly now. I just added a pair of kicker dual voice coil 15s running at one ohm off an 800 watt rms mono block amp. Existing is a rockford punch 12 inch powered by a kenwood 400 watt rms also a set of pioneer 3 ways and a set of pioneer four ways powered by a jbl 65 watt rms four channel amp. I've got an alpine for a head unit. I call it the heinz 57 stereo because it has all the brands. Maybe frankenstereo would apply. Kids always buy this stuff new and sell it dirt cheap when they need money. I'm an opportunist.

I'm gonna get rid of all the pioneers though. I plan to put in some component speakers so I can mount the tweeters and get the highs up where they should be. All the pioneers are mounted too low because of location restrictions. What's nice is the market is so flooded that there is some really nice product available at reasonable prices.

 

[kennith]

I don't know if this was mentioned because I stopped reading the novel when I found the summary, but the xbox one S will also do 4k bluray and hdr.

Too bad the interface is horrible. Even after the recent update to fix it.

Yeah, it's a little cluttered right now because they tried the Oneguide thing. I thought it was stupid as hell, but then I began to set up this other system, and realized it's a pretty brilliant idea; just not for me.

What's problem number one with any cable or satellite box? They are slow to respond. Microsoft figured if they offloaded all the thinking to the Xbox, they could wrap it all up together with your streaming choices and speed things up. It does indeed work. It just ought to be something that can be moved out of the way if you don't use it.

Microsoft really amped up the capabilities of this thing, and gave us pretty much everything we wanted. Now it's time to clean the interface back up. The great thing is, Microsoft listens. All it needs is an option for customization, which is something that can be done. Obviously they'll have to work on it a while and roll out tests, but it'll come.

The day of release, the UI was essentially perfect, in my opinion. It didn't do all the things it does now, though. It's going to be a bit of a bear to simplify it again while giving everyone a taste of what they personally want.

Cheers,

Kennith

 

[kennith]

My first set of speakers were the Klipsch Heresy IIs. I had them in my college dorm room. I kind of spent all of my money on the speakers so I barely had any $$$ left to buy the rest of the system, so I ended up getting a Zenith 55W receiver. What a fucking joke that thing was. It would get so hot that if we wanted to play the music loudly, I'd have to place a box fan next to the receiver to blow over the heat sink to keep it cool enough to play without clipping.

Anyways, after college I bought a Carver TFM25 and the Carver Preamp at the time. My goodness, what a difference. The sound was completely transformed. It had incredible detail. Then a few years after that, my boss sold me a set of his KEF Reference 4s. Let's just say that the Carver wasn't up to the challenge. The Klipschs were 8 ohm speakers and the KEFs were rated at 4 ohms, but most likely are lower than that. The carver nuked itself at moderate loudness. I never even pushed the volume much at all. I had the thing rebuilt by a guy here in Seattle who supposedly knew Bob Carver back in the day. The amp blew again. The thing is rated at 375 watts at 4 ohms, but I find that BS.

Here's the funny part. I didn't want to spend a ton of money on a different amp so I hooked up my parents old Luxman surround amp (it's one of those 3 channel amps that you use to give you 5 channel surround system). It's only a 55 watt amp, but sounds every bit as good as the Carver and has been working fine for the last ten years.

Klipsch has a hell of a history, and that dude was one bad motherfucker in his industry. He might have been the world's best crotchety old man.

My favorite quote of his: "The HELL I cant!" :rofl:

It's on the site now, I think.

They've made some of the cleanest, flattest, and most acoustically transparent loudspeakers ever created. Right alongside Altec Lansing, in that regard. The guys behind Altec blazed the trail into talking cinema, and Klipsch drove it all home. We have the origins of those two companies to thank for HI-FI and home theater. Push it to the car, and it's Motorola that gave us the industry.

Interestingly, each of the entities in play were grown right here in the United States of America. There are several reasons I keep JBLs as my primary loudspeakers, but one of them is absolutely James B. Lansing.

My computers have been running Klipsch since around 1998, I think; barring temporary builds. I'd love to still use some of their larger units, but I don't need to be keeping all that stuff around.

Cheers,

Kennith

 

[kennith]

Bunch of old men yelling at the clouds.


Big, old, and heavy doesn't mean things are better. There's been improvements in audio over the last decade that are orders of magnitude over what took place the previous 50 years. Mostly due to digital modeling and measurement. I'd imagine thats why Blose was able to get their wacky ideas to work now. You. Otice they aren't making 802 style boxes anymore! They probably modeled it and saw what a comb-filtering nightmare those things are.

You can't cheat physics. It takes a certain amount of energy to make a sound happen, and there's no skating away from the fact. One simply cannot move air with magic. A given volume of gas must be excited to move one way or another. You can use driver area, linear excursion; hell, use plasma if you want. The requirement does not change.

You want a big sound? You have to move big air; doesn't matter how, but you have to do it. There is no other way. Bose has reached the limit of what their technology can produce with this sound bar, and they did it by using larger drivers and traditional speaker design. Aside from the processing, everything inside is based on the idea of big, old, and heavy.

It's as if Klipsch, Kicker, JL, and Alexey Pajitnov got together to see how much gear they could cram into that little box. It's an achievement in packaging, more than anything else, but it's still an achievement. Aside from the processing and connectivity, there really isn't anything inside that didn't exist when Mr. Klipsch himself started telling the competition to get off his lawn.

Tradition isn't everything, but when it comes to making noise, you just can't get away from it. You're always doing the same thing they were right from the start: Moving air.

Amplifiers, though... Now that's a different story. Big can of worms there, and everyone in the argument is at least a little bit right.

Cheers,

Kennith

 

[JackW]

You can't cheat physics. It takes a certain amount of energy to make a sound happen, and there's no skating away from the fact. One simply cannot move air with magic. A given volume of gas must be excited to move one way or another. You can use driver area, linear excursion; hell, use plasma if you want. The requirement does not change.

You want a big sound? You have to move big air; doesn't matter how, but you have to do it. There is no other way. Bose has reached the limit of what their technology can produce with this sound bar, and they did it by using larger drivers and traditional speaker design. Aside from the processing, everything inside is based on the idea of big, old, and heavy.

Tradition isn't everything, but when it comes to making noise, you just can't get away from it. You're always doing the same thing they were right from the start: Moving air.


Kennith

A friend of mine had an even bigger set of Altecs that had two 15" woofers in one cabinet - now that pair of speakers could move some air - and some passages in certain songs that descended into fuzz even on his JBL 100's were clear as a bell on the big Altecs. The thing that made the Altecs really great was they were from an era where power outputs of amplifiers was relatively low by modern standards. 10 to 20 watts could provide an incredible amount of sound. Physics really works when making sound waves.

Klipschorns are one of the great gifts from the speaker gods.

 

[kennith]

A friend of mine had an even bigger set of Altecs that had two 15" woofers in one cabinet - now that pair of speakers could move some air - and some passages in certain songs that descended into fuzz even on his JBL 100's were clear as a bell on the big Altecs. The thing that made the Altecs really great was they were from an era where power outputs of amplifiers was relatively low by modern standards. 10 to 20 watts could provide an incredible amount of sound. Physics really works when making sound waves.

Klipschorns are one of the great gifts from the speaker gods.

Indeed they are.

You take a small, extremely low mass driver that can be controlled with great precision, and passively crank the immortal fuck out of it with century old science. Horns simply cannot be beaten; at any price.

There is no other reasonable way to control that much gas volume. It can be done, but the cost would be stratospheric and entirely unreasonable. Plasma tweeters are the closest to an improved, cost-effective type of driver, and those were around before loudspeakers. Stick them in a cabinet, and you end up needing a horn anyway; and that's ignoring the dangerous levels of ozone production.

One might suspect I'd still be using Klipsch loudspeakers, but I'm saving that until I actually build a full-on cinema room; chairs, projector and all. I just can't be bothered to do it right now. I'm also quite pleased with my JBLs as things are.

Cheers,

Kennith

 

[kennith]

I have an old receiver that I use to play music in my garage. I usually just use an aux cable to my phone but would like to play CDs also because I have some that aren't on my phone. Any good setup suggestions for a CD player to plug up to the receiver ? Maybe this mysterious SEGA CD?

Just get something a little older. New, nice CD players are outrageously expensive, and you don't want the budget crap. If you have a display in there, a halfway decent DVD or Bluray player will work just fine. Some don't even need a display, as they'll function with no video output. Pretty much any disc-based game console aside from the PS4 will play audio CDs as well; though some older units only fit minidiscs.

The Sega CD actually isn't half bad, but it's big, and you need a Sega Genesis to use it. They did make an all in one unit, but it's hard to find and collectors go for them. It's actually one of the very rare devices to feature Q Sound on-board. To this day it's impressive as hell.

Cheers,

Kennith

 

[kk88rrc]

The Sega CD actually isn't half bad, but it's big, and you need a Sega Genesis to use it. They did make an all in one unit, but it's hard to find and collectors go for them. It's actually one of the very rare devices to feature Q Sound on-board. To this day it's impressive as hell.

Cheers,

Kennith

I think I still have my old Sega Genesis sitting in a box somewhere.

 

[pinkytoe69]

The Sega CD actually isn't half bad, but it's big, and you need a Sega Genesis to use it. They did make an all in one unit, but it's hard to find and collectors go for them. It's actually one of the very rare devices to feature Q Sound on-board. To this day it's impressive as hell.

Yup I had the original that piggybacked on the Genesis. I think it made the Genesis 32-bit iirc? The games were largely garbage...the extra space CD provided was often mainly used to add early-cellphone-porn-quality-video content rather than graphics or gameplay.

It was a victim of my parents house getting ransacked and I used my little chunk of the insurance cash for a Panasonic 3DO. That was an awesome system for the time.

What is this Q-sound of which you speak?

 

[hafaday]

My first set of speakers were the Klipsch Heresy IIs. I had them in my college dorm room. I kind of spent all of my money on the speakers so I barely had any $$$ left to buy the rest of the system, so I ended up getting a Zenith 55W receiver. What a fucking joke that thing was. It would get so hot that if we wanted to play the music loudly, I'd have to place a box fan next to the receiver to blow over the heat sink to keep it cool enough to play without clipping.

Anyways, after college I bought a Carver TFM25 and the Carver Preamp at the time. My goodness, what a difference. The sound was completely transformed. It had incredible detail. Then a few years after that, my boss sold me a set of his KEF Reference 4s. Let's just say that the Carver wasn't up to the challenge. The Klipschs were 8 ohm speakers and the KEFs were rated at 4 ohms, but most likely are lower than that. The carver nuked itself at moderate loudness. I never even pushed the volume much at all. I had the thing rebuilt by a guy here in Seattle who supposedly knew Bob Carver back in the day. The amp blew again. The thing is rated at 375 watts at 4 ohms, but I find that BS.

Here's the funny part. I didn't want to spend a ton of money on a different amp so I hooked up my parents old Luxman surround amp (it's one of those 3 channel amps that you use to give you 5 channel surround system). It's only a 55 watt amp, but sounds every bit as good as the Carver and has been working fine for the last ten years.

Nice on the Hersey's. The Carver was never bought, but did like 'em for the made in America at the time. My company had one which turned me on to them.

I was a simple guy with simple money back then. An old Technics receiver and Cerwin Vega's for speakers. CV's were loud and great for party time. Marantz came in later for me.

My sister used to have a Nakamichi receiver (Navy at the time). running behind the Polk M10's.

I fell out of the highend stuff later on because price. did have a subscription to "Stereo review" From high school thru my early 20's.

 

[hafaday]

Not to derail/high-jack the thread..

Thought's on tube amplifiers, and Ribbon speakers?

A lot of old named equipment in here. I like it.

 

[kennith]

Yup I had the original that piggybacked on the Genesis. I think it made the Genesis 32-bit iirc? The games were largely garbage...the extra space CD provided was often mainly used to add early-cellphone-porn-quality-video content rather than graphics or gameplay.

It was a victim of my parents house getting ransacked and I used my little chunk of the insurance cash for a Panasonic 3DO. That was an awesome system for the time.

What is this Q-sound of which you speak?

QSound (I was spelling it wrong with the dash) is a virtual surround technology that creates an almost binaural experience when listening to any media with more than one channel on at least two speakers (or headphones). They're still around, and the tech still works, but they've been on life support for years.

You can embed it in the audio for play on any device, or embed it in the device for use with any audio.

Set your speakers up pointing in the proper directions for this, and don't use headphones:

Small Demos:

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5QMA2Q9bP4&ab_channel=roschler

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtQ6jNjIONI&ab_channel=jasonteknut

Music mixed with Qsound processing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocR8IaX6s8c&ab_channel=YouCan%27tDownloadVinyl

These guys showed up at least a decade before anyone notable got in the game; and that includes beating out Dolby Headphone and Virtual Speaker... While handily producing just as good a sound field with any two stereo speakers; no headphones required!

They just showed up too early. There wasn't anyone around to buy it. Didn't even fly in radio. Perfect tech for laptops equipped with good stereo speakers, but by the time such laptops were developed, Qsound was already fading. Now they'd do very well in phones and tablets with front-facing stereo speakers.

I just don't think they know how to market themselves. They never have; games were great, but that's not where they needed to focus. I get the feeling they're just sitting around waiting to lock the doors. If it wasn't an innovation that could be stored in a fortune cookie, they'd have been gone years ago.

Should this tech be used for everything? Absolutely not. It's perfect for small devices and limited home theaters, though. Any person with any two speakers already has what they need.

The Sega CD wasn't actually 32 bit, unfortunately. You needed to add the 32X as well for that capability, which turned it into a bit of a bear to position in the home. Still, the Sega CD gave us "Lunar: The Silver Star". Can't ask much more out of three black boxes than that.

Check the attachment to see what they look like decked out for 32 bit. Just a shot I grabbed off the net, but mine's set up that same way, with the first-gen console, the additional support with top loading drive, and the 32X uncomfortably growing out of the top. For the record, that was a perfect description of the Sega CD video quality. :rofl:

Believe it or not, that all came down to the color palate. Nintendo always had them beat there.

Cheers,

Kennith