Why not horns?

"Mapman, I remember there was an Ohm model that got good reviews back in the early 80's in Stereophile and maybe TAS too."

I've seen Stereophile reviews of the first and second generation Walsh 5s. Stereophile review of gen 1 directly influenced gen 2 as I recall.

That's about it though. If TAS ever addressed any Walsh designs, I am not aware.

OHM is a more "blue collar" type brand that has never specifically targeted the "High End" buying community, TTBOMK but rather just let teh pecking order of things fall out naturally over time as determined by the consumers, not those in teh media who might assume ownership of what is or is not "high end".

In real instruments and voices are very direct to point out and very small in proportion. At shows you often hear that voices become bigger and less sharp focussed. I would never choose for this. It is less realistic.

Thank YOU Al for your informative and interesting contributions to this forum.

"Julian Hirsch, Leonard Feldman, Rok2id :), Pete Azcel and about 99.99999999999% of all HUMANITY, both past and present, KNOW, that all amps sound the same. Meaning, if they are well made and engineered correctly, they have no 'sound'."

Hey Roks, no offense but don't you ever get tired of trying to convince a collective group that gather together to discuss their experiences with different audio products that they are just wrongheaded and that your light of absolute correct conciousness is going to somehow sway them to your belief system? Why do you do this and often relent to the pressures you are subject to endure? I really dig your appreciation of music but for the life of me wonder why a guy in the 99.99999999999% percent of humanity feels SO compelled to mandate the rest of us in see the errors of our experiences on a forum dedicated to this concept. BTW, when was the LAST time you compared different amplifiers in the past 5 years,(not to mention cables, I won't even bother to go there, we know, right?) Competent design indeed and indeed what do you mean by that aside from the electrical compatibility of a specific speaker to a specific amplifier aside from the room? I'll give you this, you ARE a persistent pest but I still love you man! I would however suggest you stay within that which you know unless you are willing to offer more than what you believe, your specific experiences maybe? Or is it all for your personal amusement? Inquiring minds really want to know :)

PS Why did I "go there". Well Roks, you and I have gone head to head before several years back yet you still adhere to the same balderdash yet have to date given not one example of your personal experiences. At least I havent't read it, maybe I'm mistaken. In any case, its all good, enjoy!

what is a horn?

Who invented terminology to describe what we hear?

One more entry to dispel the myth that this was anyone associated with TAS, Stereophile, or any such magazine.

Below you will read the words and phrases "auditory perspective" (I think that word describes imaging enough to suffice as an equal substitute for "imaging"); "an illusion that causes the listener to seem to hear a specific sound from the point at which it originates" (sounds like another description that fully describes imaging and focus";
"audience in Washington had no difficulty in telling just where on the Philadelphia stage the brasses, tympani, bass viols, and so on were placed" (now we see the word "placed", so the concept of "placement" is introduced.

Folks, the proceeding article was in 1933!! I think we can see we did not need modern reviewers to introduce the concepts of imaging, placement, stage, illusion, and "auditory perspective."

1933!

Now the Article:
----------------------------------------------------
NEW ELECTRICAL SYSTEM GIVES VAST TONE TO Full Orchestra on Empty Stage

Conductor, 150 Miles from Musicians, Controls Expression with Master Key

ORCHESTRAL music such as never before had been publicly heard, poured from the apparently empty stage of Constitution Hall, Washington, D. C, a few nights ago when Dr. Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, demonstrated before the National Academy of Sciences, a new electrical system of musical reproduction and transmission developed by engineers of the Bell Telephone Laboratories.

The source of the music was the stage of the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, 150 miles away. There the hundred musicians of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra played a program of standard orchestral numbers. In front of the Philadelphia stage stood three sensitive microphones, one in the center and one at each side. Each was connected separately by telephone lines with a loudspeaker that stood behind a sound-porous curtain on the stage in Washington.

In the rear of Constitution Hall sat Dr. Stokowski, before him a small oblong box, not unlike a midget radio receiver, with a front panel equipped with three dials and a pair of switches. Manipulating these devices, the conductor controlled the music of the far-away orchestra, hushing the sounds issuing from the loudspeakers until they were barely audible, and then making them swell to twenty times the volume produced by the actual orchestra.

At no time was there any suggestion of distortion, nor any hint, in the quality of the music, of the electrical transfer it had undergone. For the new apparatus (”microphones, amplifiers, electrical filters, transmission lines, and loudspeakers”reproduces with absolute fidelity all sounds that the normal human ear is capable of hearing.

Moreover, the location of the microphones in reference to the source of sound and the placing of each loudspeaker in a position that corresponds with that of the particular microphone with which it is connected brings about an effect that the Bell Telephone engineers call “auditory perspective,” that is, an illusion that causes the listener to seem to hear a specific sound from the point at which it originates. For example, the audience in Washington had no difficulty in telling just where on the Philadelphia stage the brasses, tympani, bass viols, and so on were placed. Hum and the other noises are only one three-hundredth of those heard from moving-picture theater sound equipment.
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This took me 5 minutes to find on the computer. Guaranteed I could come up with a reference to "depth" and the other concepts that folks, listening to HP's self-reporting, believe he invented.

I remind you, this article was a full FOUR DECADES before TAS was founded.

Who invented the terminology: more evidence it was not who you think it was.

One of HP's favorite words/concepts, which he claimed he coined, and wrote a long essay about: "Transparency."

From 1960, a Shure ad: "Shure announces a stereo arm and cartridge that recraates sound with an incredible fidelity, transparency,....."

There goes another concept and word that did not need inventing.
--------------------------------------------------
Then listen to any of the 5 Fischer stereo perfectionist systems and you will hear hitherto unattainable tonal purity, STEREO DEPTH (my caps) and realism, a PANARAMIC SWEEP (my caps) of living sound......"

There we have both depth and width imaging concepts clearly described, 13 years before the founding of TAS.

--------------------------------------------------

Go to this video and forward to 12 minutes 30 seconds and you will hear the phrase "....to create an illusion of depth and width....."

There we have it: the concepts of imagine, but going by the name "illusion"...I would submit that this is as good a word as "maging". But further, the words "width" and "depth": all that is needed to describe imaging. I suspect that I will also find the words "focus" and "space" used if I search a bit more.

The date of this video: 1957!!!!!

-----------------------------------------------

The above is simply to support my original premise that it was not any individual reviewer who invented the concepts and vocabulary, about stereo, and to show that the concepts and vocabulary to describe depth, imaging, transparency, "closest to the live event" were in use before the 70's, when the magazines many think of as having defined high end stereo were founded.

The language and concepts were being developed decades before most readers of this forum assume.

Thanks for the info Kiddman.

I was never under the impression that HP or JGH ever claimed that they were the first to use these terms, I felt that they were the ones who picked them up and started using them consistently and made efforts to let us know how they were using them and if HP ever bragged about it, it wasn't about inventing the terms, it was about using them consistently in his reviews. In other words, they were the first who started drilling into the readers a point of view stating "hey, here's how we listen to equipment and these are the terms and definitions of the words we use."

There is no question in my mind that people were talking about image placement or soundstage concepts before the first issue of Stereophile or TAS. I remember being a kid and my father playing records and pointing out the placements of the different sections of the orchestra while the record was playing.

Before JGH and HP, I can't remember any reviewer who was consistently describing what they were hearing from audio equipment in terms imaging, depth, soundstaging and transparency and if there was someone consistently reviewing this way before HP and JGH, then they should be given credit.

My memory of reviewing before HP/JGH back then was that it was all about how everything measured on the bench and then at the end of the review there's be a few generic sentences about how the sound was clean and fine, just as it measured, or if their was an anomaly in the measurements, a statement about the sound to support that anomaly.

What do you think; were HP and JGH the first mainstream writers to consistently review this way, or were others reviewing like this earlier?

Some of the criticism of Peter Aczel in this thread is overblown. In a changing environment for someone to alter their position can be considered a sign of an inquiring/flexible mind. "All amplifiers sound the same" is not an accurate statement of his position, it should read "all amplifiers should sound the same". If amplifiers are designed to be accurate to the input signal, then they should sound very much alike. Stereophile considered this issue when they put a Cary 805 tube amp on the cover with a Krell and asked, "If either of these amplifiers is RIGHT...the other is WRONG." Aczel believes that he had a methodology for determining if an amplifier was "right". Whether or not his methodology was correct or even useful is a tangent I won't pursue, but at least he was asking the question about accuracy. I believe that the real legacy of HP and his followers is that we are no longer concerned with high fidelity reproduction, or accuracy, but instead pursue good sound. The end result of this type of thinking is that we now talk about "the sound" of fuses, outlet covers, resistors and binding posts.

Aczel criticism overblown? I don't know that this would be possible.

Here's a guy who never published a particular issue, but write a bogus review for Carver saying that Carver had exactly duplicated the sound of a well known, very expensive amplifier. Nice little arrangement, Carver reprinted the excerpt from the non-existent issue and supplied them by the load to Carver dealers. Nice little bit of fraud on both sides. The amp, by the way, was very poor sounding compared to one Aczel said it was identical to, and took out many a tweeter of relatively easy to drive speakers at way less than its stated output power.

Seikosha,
Nicely put! I don't intend to overstate the influence of HP and JGH but they did bring subjective opinion/reviewing to a wide audience of readers. They weren't "all knowing gurus" but I'll give them their due credit.
Charles,

My point is that folks were using the terms, so whether they were in reviews or not they were in the lexicon. Therefore, they most certainly would have been used in reviews even if there were never an HP. Actually, first piece I quoted was a news story, not an ad, so we can say that the press indeed used the concepts and words in the 30's. And that press piece compared the sound of the hi-fi to that of a symphony....which is "real, live, unamplified instruements".

So there we go: words and concepts, including using unamplified instruments, goes right back to the 30s.

03-06-14: Kiddman
Aczel criticism overblown? I don't know that this would be possible.

Here's a guy who never published a particular issue, but write a bogus review for Carver saying that Carver had exactly duplicated the sound of a well known, very expensive amplifier. Nice little arrangement, Carver reprinted the excerpt from the non-existent issue and supplied them by the load to Carver dealers. Nice little bit of fraud on both sides. The amp, by the way, was very poor sounding compared to one Aczel said it was identical to, and took out many a tweeter of relatively easy to drive speakers at way less than its stated output power.

The aforesaid review was in fact eventually published, in Issue 10 in 1987. That was the first issue Aczel published following the nearly seven year hiatus I referred to earlier. The 1983 review "preprint" to which you refer was extracted from what Aczel indicated in Issue 10 had been an almost complete, mostly set in type issue which was not published due to the hiatus, which occurred for unrelated reasons. Carver requested and was granted permission to issue the preprint.

Also, I recall some seemingly credible speculation that the close transfer function match between the aforesaid amplifier, the Carver M400t, and the transfer function of the Mark Levinson ML2 it was designed to emulate, may not have been maintained in production to anywhere close to the same degree as the match that was measured by Aczel on Carver's prototype.

Also, I'll mention that I owned an M400t for about 20 years, alternating it with other much more expensive amplifiers. It sounded surprisingly good, driving 90 db speakers having easy to drive impedance characteristics. (Its predecessor model which I VERY briefly owned, the M400a, which pre-dated Carver's attempt to match the transfer function of the ML2, did sound very poor). The M400t had no trouble whatsoever cleanly producing 100 to 105 db peaks at my 12 foot listening distance playing classical symphonic music on labels such as Telarc, Sheffield, and Reference Recordings. It never clipped once in my extensive experience listening to those kinds recordings having exceptionally wide dynamic range. The amplifier, btw, is still going strong in the home of a relative, after 30 years.

Regards,
-- Al

Correction to my previous post: Looking at Issue 10 of "The Audio Critic" I am reminded that the Carver amplifier which was the subject of the preprint was the M-1.5t. The M400t was released subsequently, and was claimed to have been similarly matched to emulate the transfer function of the ML2, but was not the subject of Aczel's preprint.

Regards,
-- Al

The 1.5t was nowhere near the ML2 (itself not my favorite amp)and making "transfer function matches" between 2 totally different amps with different components and topologies is entirely preposterous.

This was "an inside job", nothing less. Should surprise nobody familiar with the Fourier shenanigans.

Yes, nicely put Seikosha. Clearly, listeners were speaking about what they heard before TAS and Stereophile came along; it would be silly to think that they weren't. As I said in an earlier post, even if Kiddman's premise is correct, so what? As you say, it was HP/JGH and others who actually consistently put their thoughts in writing and were able to get many who were new to the hobby excited about it; in no small part, because they related this terminology to the music in a vivid way. I, likewise, don't recall these individuals taking credit for "inventing" the terminology. To the extent that they are given credit for it, I don't think that this "transgression" can't be forgiven for the credit that they do deserve. I just don't get the general tenor of these criticisms as if these individuals were somehow guilty of some great sin when the truth is that they brought a lot of interest to the hobby.

****I believe that the real legacy of HP and his followers is that we are no longer concerned with high fidelity reproduction, or accuracy, but instead pursue good sound.****

Really?! Read these comments (in the context of the entire story) from Kiddman's post:

****At no time was there any suggestion of distortion, nor any hint, in the quality of the music, of the electrical transfer it had undergone. For the new apparatus (”microphones, amplifiers, electrical filters, transmission lines, and loudspeakers”reproduces with absolute fidelity all sounds that the normal human ear is capable of hearing.****

****From 1960, a Shure ad: "Shure announces a stereo arm and cartridge that recreates sound with an incredible fidelity, transparency,....." ****

Are you kidding me?! Those comments put a lot of this in context and demonstrate the state of "hi-fi" back then. Do you really think that those comments would hold up to scrutiny by most knowledgable audiophiles today? If those comments are an indication of the level of sophistication of the average audio aficionado (and equipment) of the day, then I think much is left to be desired.

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++++The truth is that I don’t know everything. No reviewer does. And we all can miss things and sometimes do. Now there is the key. What I did from the very start of TAS [The Absolute Sound] was invite multiple commentaries on things because no one person has the perfect insight- not me, not anybody else. If you think I’m full of you-know-what… comment. It is the internal dialog that sets up the truth that will reflect the variety of opinions you get from people exploring the equipment. Perspective is the word. And you have to know what that perspective is. That is what I tried to identify with the absolute sound by asking: What is your perspective? How do you look at things? You know how I look at it, I try to compare it to live music. And if I fail on that… comment. If I do a really good job… comment.

{{Are you hoping to provide a sense of illumination as a writer?}}

Yes, but not only that. Illuminating is the first step of the process. What I am trying to do is help people create a passion for that which is eternal. And that which is eternal is music. Take the Tagore quote: “music fills the infinite between two souls.” That is what music does. And if I can turn that passion on or show people the way to that passion… I am a guide, I am not the end. I am to be looked at as a guide. Not as a final authority. What happens, is that a person’s life is enriched to an extent that they will be ever thankful, not to me, but for the enrichment. For the music. See I am not here to teach people what HP says. That’s bullshit. What HP says is bullshit comparatively to what they can find out on their own. But if I can kick their ass into starting… that is the goal. ++++ - HP (interview in High End Report)

++++ I think the explosion of designs in the High End are symptomatic of the health of a field that others have said is dying. This is the most creatively stimulating period for designers since the early Seventies and there are more interesting and good electronic designs out there at once than there have been in a quarter of a century.++++ - HP (interview in TNT Audio.)

http://www.stereophile.com/reference/50

Al, I was under the impression that the Carver was supposed the emulating the sound of a conrad-johnson amplifier?

I think the m4.0t was the one mirroring a CJ amp maybe?

I ran a 4.0t for a long time up until a few years back. It was definitely a unique sounding beast. I would say that it did tend to match up best with speakers that were more tube amp friendly by nature, my Maggies at the time and my Triangle Titus's. Went loud but fell flat with more difficult loads, like B&W and Dynaudio and also OHM but to a lesser extent.

Hi Unsound,

That was an emulation attempt that occurred a bit later during the 1980's, with a different Carver amplifier model, that was written up in Stereophile and therefore drew more widespread awareness. Remarkably (or perhaps not), Stereophile's writeup of Carver's effort to emulate the CJ tube amp made no mention and reflected no awareness of his earlier effort to emulate the solid state ML-2 with some of his other models.

Best regards,
-- Al

Ah, thanks for the follow Al.

OK, back to the horn thing. I just got a pair of Altec 19s a few weeks ago and they are sounding great. Less efficient than my Cornwalls and less forward as well, but they have fantastic impact. I feel like I am in that Maxell ad every time I turn them on (I know, our younger members are asking, "What's a Maxell?", time moves on.).

people who may have spent upwards of $10k per pair for their speakers,, and do not have some kind of horn set-up, probably haven't really heard a good set of horn-based speakers. 

Horns are the best jump on a pair asap.