People have forgotten what "audio quality" is

Plenty of people build good speaker systems when they are doing home recording or other electronic music making activities. They usually don't get Hi-Fi gear but studio monitors instead.

Many of them also know that good monitors without room treatment are not very effective. Myself I have studio monitors but I rent, so I don't want to treat the room. Maybe when I have my own house again.

I mainly use headphones.
 
Micski said:
If it's any comfort, I have always listened to music on a legendary set of massive floor speakers with corresponding amps and lossless audio. It's fantastic. You might to change that "no-one" to "one". :)
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I like the sound of "legendary massive floor speakers" 😁 IMF's?

In england we had a company called TDL that made some very nice floorstanding transmission line speakers in the '80s, for example:-
View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4KHJzOCUC2I

I am a big fan of lowther speakers from manchester, I have an old pair of their mini monitors, sadly their new speakers are a bit ouf of my price range! 😂
www.kronosav.com

Lowther TP2 Floorstanding Loudspeaker

Enquire below for your personal quote. The new Lowther TP2 is a step closer to perfection from the original TP1. We have made some changes to the original TP1 design and improvements not only to the build quality, but to all the materials used in the construction of this fabulous corner horn...
www.kronosav.com www.kronosav.com
 
cracauer@ said:
Plenty of people build good speaker systems when they are doing home recording or other electronic music making activities. They usually don't get Hi-Fi gear but studio monitors instead.

Many of them also know that good monitors without room treatment are not very effective. Myself I have studio monitors but I rent, so I don't want to treat the room. Maybe when I have my own house again.

I mainly use headphones.
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Where does one start? At the output or the input? Both are valid.
The output (speakers/headphones) really just "impedence match" to minimize loss at the output, but everything from the input needs to support the output.

And for the record, well designed massive floor speakers are incredible/wonderful/OMG the best thing since sliced bread. If the output media is optimized, then improvements in the upstream chain will be heard.
 
mer said:
A little off topic of this "off topic" but this has been one of the most interesting threads I've participated in on these forums.
Stuff that mattered to me a long time ago, the science of accurately reproducing "frequencies", all the different ways you can get from source to "ear".
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Also off-topic a bit. But have you ever wondered what about music and frequencies that makes the human brain enjoy music?
 
loveydovey said:
Also off-topic a bit. But have you ever wondered what about music and frequencies that makes the human brain enjoy music?
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That is a very interesting area. There is definitely something about valves. I remember hearing led zep playing on an old valve radio in a fish shop once and it sounded incredible. Maybe they mixed it for that kind of gear, either way it sounded much better than on transistors. Just... alive. And there are some interesting effects like harmonizers. Timing in music is also of the essence. Psychoacoustics.

And then we have the phenomenon of 'frisson'.
en.wikipedia.org

Frisson - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

It's very interesting.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZFFwy5fwYI
 
recluce said:
I admit that audio/music and home theatre are more than a casual hobby to me and that my audio system cost more than some nice small cars (at least new, I bought some components used). It is a 14 channel system (9.1.4) and the main amplifier (there are four mono blocks in addition) does require 240V power (which is very unusual in North America). The system is made in the US and the speakers are made in Canada. I do have a Thorens turntable (TD-126 MK III, IIRC) which I barely ever user. Sure, digital has the loudness wars, but analog records have severe dynamic restrictions, bad stereo separation and high noise. Not even close on a high end system, except for "vinyl nostalgia".

So I am all digital, all lossless. Mostly I am going with CD and DSD (converted to 192kHz/24 bit) audio, all converted to flac audio and stored on my FreeBSD home server. Playback is over HDMI to the audio processor from a FreeBSD HTPC using bit perfect audio (so the computer has nothing to do but get the digital information unaltered to the processor). The same setup also handles passthrough of all surround formats (up to and including DTS:X and TrueHD/Atmos). Everything is OSS only, Pulseaudio is not necessary or beneficial in this context.

Btw, DSD is not inherintly superior to PCM, it all depends on PCM bitrates and sampling.
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Very interesting. Out of interest, what audio processor did you use?
 
blackbird9 said:
Me too, I built all kinds of amps, preamps, effects etc over the years, also got involved in bands PA work for a while many years ago. My very first amp was built with ILP audio modules, namely 2-off HY-5 preamps and 2-off HY50 bipolar power amps, back around 1978. These modules were pretty well known in the UK and you could make a nice amplifier with them. Soon after that I started using the hitatchi power mosfets that had just come out, that gave very good results with a relatively simple circuit (and no thermal compensation!). Well.. I've made lots of other stuff, op-amp audio circuts, you know how it goes. I used to build elektor projects too, they had some nice designs. And of course I studied electronics... :-)

Sadly they don't make these ILP modules any more, I think the firm finally folded up a few years ago, but for many years both RS and Farnell used to stock the updated versions of these modules. For a while they had some nice class A mosfet ones, I seem to remember they were called SMOS, I'm not sure whose mosfets they used.

View attachment 24437
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That’s great to read — we clearly walked very similar paths 🙂

Those ILP modules were indeed quite popular back then, and for good reason. I remember how accessible and practical that approach was, especially at a time when building something solid and musical didn’t necessarily mean extreme complexity.

The early Hitachi MOSFETs were also a big step forward — simple, stable, and very “forgiving” to work with, yet capable of excellent sound. I went through a similar journey myself: solid-state, op-amps, various projects, repairs, experiments… you know how it goes.

Lately I’ve been enjoying going back to basics again, focusing more on output stages, transformers, and power supplies, and letting the sound speak for itself rather than piling on stages.

Since I had already mentioned this EL84 project earlier in the thread, I felt it was only fair to follow through on that promise and finally share a small glimpse of it. I even took the opportunity to wake up a long-quiet channel, as this exchange felt like the right moment for it to come alive again.

I recently posted a short experimental audio demo of a Class A push-pull EL84 amplifier I’m currently working on — still very much a work in progress, but it gives a good idea of the direction. A more solid technical description of the project is included below the video, so I won’t repeat it here.


Always nice to meet someone who’s been through the same maze of twisty little passages 🙂
 

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