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Post by pedrocols on Feb 17, 2016 11:30:45 GMT -5
I personally think that anybody that is so hung up on measurements and accuracy is going to always be bias about any electronics that does not or does meet his or her "measurements expectations" regardless of how does it sounds. Humans can only hear distortion to a certain degree. However, some will still argue that the amp with THD of .001% is more accurate than the amp with THD of .100% even if nobody in the word can distinguish the level of THD by ear.
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Post by 509Paul on Feb 17, 2016 11:59:28 GMT -5
With two speakers at 9-10 ft distance one needs about 256 watts to output 105 dB's. In this specific example I would get the XPA-2 instead of a pair of XPA-1 monoblocks, as doing that would allow me to spend the extra money on better speakers instead, i.e. better than the Polk. I am already running an XPA-2 Gen 2 in my setup for the fronts and was mainly curious what adding more power accomplishes other than more output. Does adding a ton of excess power improve the quality of average listening volumes or is it only the dynamic impact that benefits from the amp reserves? Using a subwoofer which has an insanely powerful amp for 80hz and below also takes away a lot of power demand on the amp for the fronts doesn't it? As for the Polk Rti A9 speakers, I only paid $375 each brand new from Polk so I am very happy with how they sound for that price and the curved real cherry wood laminate cabinets look great. Ultimately I would love to have a pair of upper end B&W or Martin Logan speakers but you can only eat Top Ramen for so long while trying to pay off the bank loan those speakers require. |
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Post by lionear on Feb 17, 2016 12:57:07 GMT -5
Again, agreed - at least for many people (although, if some surround recordings are to be believed, some people prefer to be sitting inside the orchestra  ). However, there is one huge practical consideration there. Unless you're using headphones, or are willing to turn your living room into a real anechoic chamber, your living room IS going to contribute its own room acoustics to the mix. This puts you in the situation of trying to project a picture, not onto a perfectly blank screen, but onto a wall with a mural painted on it already. Unless you can ABSOLUTELY eliminate every contribution from your living room, and EXACTLY reproduce every contribution from the original venue, then you're stuck with a mix of the two. To pick just one point... If your original was recorded in a huge symphony hall, but your living room is only 20 feet square, then you have two sets of "reflections" - those from your living room walls 20 feet behind you AND those from the back of the concert hall 100 feet away. In a surround sound system, you may seek to MINIMIZE this dissonance by playing the original reflections from your surround speakers loudly enough to audibly overpower the reflections from the back of your living room, and you can use absorbers to reduce the first reflections, and diffusers to make the reflections less "specific", but you will never be 100% successful. Likewise, you have what might be called "second order effects"; not only will you hear that perfectly reproduced reflection from the rear wall of the concert hall, which is 100 feet away, but you'll also hear the reflections OF THAT REFLECTION, from your living room walls, which are only 20 feet away. In short, you're always going to have at least some "information" that doesn't agree with whatever you're attempting to achieve. About the only hope you've got of even a reasonably accurate reproduction of the original is with a well-recorded binaural recording and headphones. Therefore, if you have the choice, it might sound better to "move the orchestra into your living room" rather than listen to the audio equivalent of a double exposure. Note that I'm not suggesting that there is any perfect solution here - other than binaural recordings and headphones - or actually making your listening room into an anechoic chamber. But of course!!!! I want the living room to magically disappear and be transported to the concert hall. If the recording was in Carnegie Hall, I want to be there. If it was somewhere else, I want to be there. Not sit on the conductor's lap, though - that's too close. The mics would be at a spot which recreates the experience of the orchestra between row E to row H. This has been the Holy Grail of High End audio since the 80's. True, the playback system in my house will not be able to recreate the original image because of a host of things. If the speakers are small 2-way models, the soundstage will be small. If I had a Genesis 1, it would be a lot bigger - right up to full-size. And, true indeed, the room will have an effect. Anechoic chambers have been actually been tried - and if that was all we needed, then it would have been easy - we'd have an objective standard for the room, and we'd have a very easy way to measure speakers in a way that had a direct correlation to desired performance. Alas, the results were not good. It would seem that we need some room effects for audio to sound real - may be we should call it the "Bose Effect"? I believe we don't have to worry too much about the room - it's easy to over-correct, and our brain actually does very well at focusing its attention on important sound cues. And it's not about flat frequency response - it's something far more complicated. (I think the focus on flat frequency response is only because that's something that can be adjusted relatively easily - either via tone controls, graphic equalizers, parametric equalizers, or via software.) Binaural recordings never created a realistic soundstage. What's interesting is that the 3-mic recording techniques used in the 1950's and 1960's do work - extremely well. So it's not that we don't know how to do it. And some of us believe that one needs to stick to analog recording and analog playback. (And even use tube amps!) That is not a perfect process, and there are things that are added and things that are removed. But some of us believe that there are also some cues that somehow survive, and those are key things that have a big effect on "enjoyment". If people have figured out how to measure these cues - they're not telling. |
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Post by yves on Feb 17, 2016 17:05:25 GMT -5
In this specific example I would get the XPA-2 instead of a pair of XPA-1 monoblocks, as doing that would allow me to spend the extra money on better speakers instead, i.e. better than the Polk. I am already running an XPA-2 Gen 2 in my setup for the fronts and was mainly curious what adding more power accomplishes other than more output. Does adding a ton of excess power improve the quality of average listening volumes or is it only the dynamic impact that benefits from the amp reserves? Using a subwoofer which has an insanely powerful amp for 80hz and below also takes away a lot of power demand on the amp for the fronts doesn't it? As for the Polk Rti A9 speakers, I only payed $375 each brand new from Polk so I am very happy with how they sound for that price and the curved real cherry wood laminate cabinets look great. Ultimately I would love to have a pair of upper end B&W or Martin Logan speakers but you can only eat Top Ramen for so long while trying to pay off the bank loan those speakers require. If the extra power never gets used on anything, i.e. if you can't get more than just a few LEDs to light up on the peak meter of the XPA-2, then IMO upgrading to a pair of XPA-1 monoblocks will be almost a pure waste entirely, i.e. it will be more of a sidegrade rather than a real upgrade. My XPA-2 Gen 1 drives my (180 watts RMS, 340 watts nominal/music power handling, 88.5 dB speaker sensitivity) Canton Vento 890.2 DC speakers so loudly and cleanly that (and BTW... this is *without* using a subwoofer!) I have no other choice but to COMPLETELY approve the XPA-2 here. |
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Post by audiobill on Feb 17, 2016 19:05:04 GMT -5
Yes, vneal, but can you "accurately" reproduce the spl of a 747 taking off in your kitchen? That seems to be the focus here, lol.
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