prk@charm.UUCP (prk) (02/19/85)
I've been reading all sorts of interesting things about equalizers on net.audio, but I am left with the following question about these and other 'outboard' items that are added to reproduction systems, in particular, 'dynamic filters' or noise-reduction units, and fancy encoder/decoders (eg, dbx) and 'ambience enhancers' (eg, Carver). Do these gadgets have negative qualitative effects on the sound? An equalizer can change the spectrum of your system very nicely, but does it caues the music to sound more (or less) like it's coming from two discrete boxes rather than from the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir, like it did when it was recorded? Frequency response and noise level are one thing, but I will live with a slight resonance in the bass if the alternative is constricted sound. I ask this because of my limited experience with one single outboard gadget, the old Phase-Linear noise-reducer/dynamic-range expander. I found that it definitely removed surface hiss from my records, which was annoying back when I could only afford headphones. When I got a real system including speakers, I didn't bother to put it back in the signal path, because noise was much less noticeable and I didn't want to muck up the sound. Shouls I put it back in? (It means cleaning up some switch contacts as well as making room - ie, a deliberate use of valuable time). In general, I'd like to hear less on net.audio about the quantitative aspects of sound reproduction and more about the qualitative side. The effects of weak aliases at 22.4 kHz have a relatively small effect on my enjoyment of music, as do the last dB or two of flatness in a frequency response and the precision of the resistors on the input of my phono preamp. It would be a lot more interesting to me if someone said that such-and-such an add-on had a noticeable effect on the aoustic ambience of his or her system. Got the idea? Of course, this could lead to arguments, but why else are we here? Besides, arguments about opinion can be so much more vindictive, personal, and interesting than arguments about fact, which seem to be the major source of pollution on this net recently ( I refer to the great 'sampling at 44.8 kHz' controversy of late). Bye-bye.
rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) (02/19/85)
[] Sorry, Charlie. I hope your efforts to stir up trouble in this newsgroup come to naught. You clearly know all about what you purport to ask. And thanks for your ultimate honesty in explaining why you ask - you want more flames and personal vituperation. It is clear to me that you understand that any field wherein a "straight-wire with gain" will engender violent subjective arguments over the diameter of the wire, its atomic structure, and its color, all of which are averred to have sweeping effects on the whole angst of the sound stage, should stick to facts whenever and wherever it can. I suggest you give us "the big U" and go rattle the bars somewhere else. -- "It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg
newton2@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA (02/21/85)
Gosh, have you *really* been reading the net? THE underlying argument, i.e., the issue which is the implicit reductio of all the *alleged* issues, is precisely *what* is a "qualitative effect". The sampling rate "controversy" wasn't (isn't) an argument "about" or between "facts" (i.e. mathematics), it's been about "what is the question to which the sampling theorem is the answer?". Let me me retreat slightly here: *some* of the persiflage has pertained to mistatements of "facts", or what is claimed (or denied) to be such.