How many audiophiles are there that regular this place?
Are you a budding AP, practicing, or old hat?
Well, today I just purchased some Paradigm Monitor 7’s for my new stereo. I like audio products but am not a “lets try a 200 dollar power cable to see how it affects the sound” I have a NAD 314, Soney CA703s cd changer and now Paradigm monitor 7s.
Cool, thats one.
My system to date.
Hales Design Group Transcendence 8’s main speakers.
Definitive Tech for Center and Rear Surround
McCormick DNA-2 LAE main amp
Adcom GFA5503 surround amp (center and rears)
Rotel RSP-985 preamp/processor
Tip if you decide you do need to know about the $200 power cables, etc… say this, “Let me take this home for weekend… I’ll be it if it works.” They usually are pretty cooperative.
Soney! Doh! I mean Sony.
ducks and covers
I thought about going planar. Don’t forget they have their downside too. Generally, accuracy they have in spades, but are week dynamically.
Good for “The Four Season”, not good for “Symphonic Dances”.
I have found one company that breaks that rule so far. Genesis, but at a huge price… If I ever have the spare $35k for a pair of these, I will be there in a minute. 350SE
can someone explain to me what a PLANAR TRANSDUCER is??
A planar transducer is what the car in “Back To The Future” worked on. It needed 1.21 gigawatts to be activated.
Hey, wait, that was something else …
Certainly.
The speakers most people are familiar with are called dynamic speakers. They, as you probably know, have electromagnet coil sitting in a large permenant magnet. The coil is attached to the speaker cone. When an applied electric current goes through the coil, it wants to move in relation to the static magnetic field of the permenant magnet, and takes the cone along with it.
(You are probably wondering why by now, that I am describing what you are already familiar with, but hang with me a second)
These speakers have a couple of engineering hurdles to clear for really decent sound.
- The cone and voice coil have significant mass. This mass has to be started and stopped rapidly for follow a musical signal. This mass(inertia) tends to make the speaker cone not follow music perfectly.
- Driving the whole surface of a cone by pushing a little spot at the center (where the voice coil connects) tends to make the cone bend under heavy acceleration.
So, ideally, you want a speaker with a perfectly stiff cone and zero mass. Obviously, the ideal will never be achieved, but there have been some effective solutions.
Now (finally) on to planar speakers.
Planar speakers work by placing a super thin and lightweight conductive film in a strong magnetic or electostatic field. The music signal is then applied directly to this film. The film then tries to move within the magnetic or electrostatic field.
Generally, a fairly large piece of film is used (think very thin semi reflective window tint film).
This solves to two main problems of dynamic speakers nicely.
- The film generally weighs quite a bit less then the air that it will be moving. So, very little inertia problems.
- The film is flimsy, but it doesn’t matter. The force that is moving it is applied uniformly across its surface.
In terms of pure transparency, especially in the vocal ranges, they are generally superb.
But, this technology raises problems of its own.
- They tend to not to have specatular dynamic range because it is hard to really get alot of movement out of the film.
- To do bass at all, the panels need to be HUGE or rely on dynamic drivers for bass
- As the panels are fairly large anyway, they tend to have dispersions problems (remember beam width of radiating surface is governed by the ratio of the wave length to the linear size of the radiating surface).
here is a picture of a typical electrostatic speaker.
Note, the big area that you can see through is actually the speaker.
Electrostatics are very nice, but as said, they do not have much in the field of dynamics, but if one listens to string quartets or guitar solos alot, electrostatic speakers are the way to go. They require alot of wattage to produce sounds (not effiecent) so you, alas, can’t use beloved single stage triode amps. BTW, how many dopers use Tube versus solid State. I am 18 and can’t afford the money for them (also tubes are not good for dorm rooms, my dad told me about the poor little Mcintosh that went boom!) Also what sites do you frequent on the internet? I like http://www.audioasylum.com the best.
Thanks,
Ben
I run solid state here.
Again tubes and solid state each have their own advantages.
I will submit, though, McCormicks have soooo much of the smoothness of tubes and retain all of the punch associated with solid state.
I have B&W 6XX series speakers, with the kevlar cones. I would have bought better, but I was 21 at the time. The best sound I have ever heard through them was running a regular sony single tray cd player directly through an ADCOM amp to speakers. No preamp…nothing. It was the first time I think i have really been able to sit on the couch and point out where Cannonball Adderly was sitting in the studio. My moment of epiphany as far as stereo imaging goes.
I’ve recently entered the “real world” (read: I graduated from college a year ago), and would like to put together a respectable home theater system. (Recent events have put the kibosh on this little plan of mine, but there’s always tomorrow, as the saying goes.)
Right now I have a hodgepodge of components and speakers, though my cables are on the above average side (I’d like to hope), consisting of VideoQuest for my digital coaxial, Straight Wire for my component video cables, and Monster for the rest.
That being said, I have no flippin’ clue what the graphs in Stereophile mag mean, and would welcome any advice from you all on what to buy.
(Thankfully I’m not the biggest music fan, so I get to be blissfully unaware of the whole SACD/DVD-Audio controversy. :D)
And, Scott, I am looking forward to picking your brain on speakers. I’ll find the time, just you wait. 
Great thread…does anybody know if plasma speakers are made anymore? i hear that they offer the best reproduction of sound. Another question…I understand that after age 20, your ability to hear higher frequency sounds (say above 15 KHz0 declines ; at what point does it pay to forget being an audiophile?
Jeez, you guys are SERIOUS!
I bought some Klipsch Horns 5 years ago and last year replaced an old Macintosh with Yamaha’s beefiest amp/receiver. Have got Klipsch surrounds & center for home theater and it’s all I need
(or so I thought).
Well, the first thing to say is that there is very little music above 15khz. Get a tone generator some time and find out just how high that is. By the way, I am a 32 yo male, and still here to slight beyond 20k. On average though women here the far upper registers better than most men, but not this one I guess.
Still, getting the midrange (vocal and violin area) really right can be truly satifying. Those freqencies are between say 800hz and maybe 3500hz.
Rotel, Marantz, NAD, Harmon-Kardon - All good “entry-level audiophile” brands. I’m partial to Rotel myself, though I don’t currently own a single one of their components ( I do own Marantz and NAD pieces ). But YMMV - Not everyone likes the “Rotel sound”. But all of the above are worth listening to at a good stereo store.
- Tamerlane
You’ve got no idea, really I think it is an illness.
I would be surprising if you didn’t get better sound out of the old Mac… probably just not nearly as much power is all. I can’t say that definitively without knowing the exact model and year of each component and being familiar with them. But, it would not surprise me.
I would call myself a budding semi-audiophile. Main problem is the funds. I’m not interested in spending $10,000 for speaker cable, which is good, because I would be disemboweled upon entering the house.
Right now I have a Rega P3 turntable and a Marantz Cd player. Running them through an old JVC amp that I’m looking to replace, with a pair of KEF C95’s. Obviously, not a world class set-up, but it sounds better, to my ears, than most of my friend’s setups. Everything on a quadraspire rack, which doesn’t really give me enough isolation, which I’m also looking into. Looking at the mana racks, which seem very nice, but not as aesthetically pleasing.
I hope to build my own monoblocks and preamp this winter. I’ll have to invest in a phono pre-stage as well.
Perpetual dissatisfaction.