[BBC News] Digital radio available on island

[Cambon]

Droid - The Krell KSA is a very different amp to the Evo range, yes, but your pictires whow chalk and cheese. That KSA (in black as per your picture) actually looks very disimilar to an EVO 302 in anodised black, but without the handles. Your EVO pictures are in silver as that is the current fashionable colour.

 

As for your 7.1, 5.1 rants - sure more channels in one box. So what?

 

JBL Control1 -vs- A2s - chalk and cheese? add a Sonic Impact T-amp to the JBLs, it will cost virtually the same and piss all over the A2s in every respect.

 

I love the way they call the A2s active too.

 

If you want good, cheap real active monitors try these

 

http://www.dv247.com/invt/9490/

 

They will knock your socks off.

[ai_Droid]

Droid - The Krell KSA is a very different amp to the Evo range, yes, but your pictires whow chalk and cheese. That KSA (in black as per your picture) actually looks very disimilar to an EVO 302 in anodised black, but without the handles. Your EVO pictures are in silver as that is the current fashionable colour.

 

The Evo, as in 'evolution'? You're telling me the 'evolution' amp is the one that hasn't changed in 30 years? The 'evolution amp' with the 'Advanced microprocessor control monitoring critical operational parameters, bias, load impedance, regulator output voltages and operating temperature'. This was true in the 30 year old model was it? So why did they call it a fucking 'evolution' if nothings changed?

 

As for your 7.1, 5.1 rants - sure more channels in one box. So what?

 

Right, Dolby digitalal HD is just more channels eh? No new features there, just more channels.

 

JBL Control1 -vs- A2s - chalk and cheese? add a Sonic Impact T-amp to the JBLs, it will cost virtually the same and piss all over the A2s in every respect.

 

Sure, they might, though quite how you can make that judgement when you've never actually heard the A2's?

 

That's an extra box for the amp, the A2s are tiny and match a squeezebox to make a great radio solution. That's me point, I don't really get yours.

 

If you want good, cheap real active monitors try these

http://www.dv247.com/invt/9490/

They will knock your socks off.

 

They cost twice the money, but sure, very nice speakers, lots of comparative reviews online saying they're quite similar though and that the A2's are great value for money in comparrision. Google it. What's your point linking some other active desktop speakers though?

 

I love the way they call the A2s active too.

 

Er, they are active. That simply means they're powered with a self contained amp. You smoke crack you do.

[Stu Peters]

Just for the record (pun intended) I'm not an audiophile as such, I'm just a cheap xenophobe.

 

I think there's a lot of old bollox talked about audio. Around 1977 I bought a few hi-fi mags and became sucked into the thing about expensive low-oxygen copper speaker cables with gold connectors. Strawberry Studios built their new Westlake room in the same building as our studio, and I was shocked to see them bi-wiring their huge monitor system with ordinary twin and earth. The studio manager said it was as good as anything...

 

I bought my own hi-fi gear (secondhand) in the early 80's, starting with the Tannoys and taking advice from a dealer on a suitable amp to drive them.

 

I was working for a recording studio that used JBL monitors in both studios, and went down to London once to record a famous voice. They had Tannoys in that studio off Carnaby Street and the sound was just SOOO smooth I asked the engineer about them and got a techie diatribe about co-axial drivers and physical phase coherence that I could just barely grasp.

 

Anyway, when a pair of ex-BBC Lockwood Majors came up I bought them and had the Tannoy innards rebuilt in custom boxes when I set up my own studio business. Another pair came up soon after which I bought for home, along with an old Leak amp and tuner, which also sounded grand.

 

I've heard lots of units that 'cheat' the ear by using small powered subs and tiny satellites (an early Bose system comes to mind) and they're all really impressive...but they're a bit like wearing coloured glasses to watch a 3D movie to me.

 

Droid's argument centres on useability and features - and he's completely correct. I actually have to get off my fat arse to change channels or settings on my hi-fi, which is only barely tolerable.

 

But the best advice I ever got about hi-fi is "ignore experts and reviews, listen to as many systems as you like, and buy the one you prefer". For some that will be on the basis of outright sound quality (and even THAT is subjective), for others it will be cost or feature set. It certainly isn't worth arguing about, since everybody (and nobody) is right. Having said that, give me big, hot old boxes anytime...

[ai_Droid]

I've heard lots of units that 'cheat' the ear by using small powered subs and tiny satellites (an early Bose system comes to mind) and they're all really impressive...but they're a bit like wearing coloured glasses to watch a 3D movie to me. Give me big, hot old boxes anytime...

 

Agree, there's a lot of bass cheating going on with cheap active speakes and subs. That's not true of the A2's though, they've not even got a bass box. They're wooden hand built cabinets and stuff too, a nice bridge between traditional hi-fi and active PC speakers where a separate amp box isn't really needed or justified. They're not cheap plastic PC speakers that Cambons writing them off as, they're amazing little speakers.

 

Droid's argument centres on useability and features - and he's completely correct. I actually have to get off my fat arse to change channels or settings on my hi-fi, which is only barely tolerable.

 

Having your media on a server really free's it up. I've encoded my dvd's to h264 so they're all accessable from the 360 quickly from a little menu accessed via a wireless remote. My music is on a upnp server that'll serve up to a bunch of devices including a media player/internet radio thing, and to the 360 and a chipped xbox in another room. I've even got a web server that streams up my vids and music so I can actually listen to them while I'm at work. It basically means it all gets listened to/watched rather than sat on a shelf. Sure, you make some compromises, but in my book the music you listen to is better quality than the music you dont.

 

Now what I really want is proper affordable wireless internet, then I can stream all my gear to my blackberry on the fly and ditch the ipod

 

And yes, listen to this stuff! I remember spending hours in Mike Myers shop in marown listening to biwired speakers off gold connectors blah blah, and I bought into a lot of it too....but that guys hearing was so buggered he barely knew the things were switched on. Crazy! These days, it all sounds so good, thatI worry more about what's playing rather than getting an absolutely perfect setup.

[Cambon]

Agree, there's a lot of bass cheating going on with cheap active speakes and subs. That's not true of the A2's though, they've not even got a bass box. They're wooden hand built cabinets and stuff too, a nice bridge between traditional hi-fi and active PC speakers where a separate amp box isn't really needed or justified. They're not cheap plastic PC speakers that Cambons writing them off as, they're amazing little speakers.

 

 

Actually droid, I am not writing them off as cheap plastic PC speakers, but to call them active speakers is not technically correct. They are powered speakers, but only one has the built in amp (unless I miss read the spec.). active speakers work independantly of each other. Active speakers generally have individual amplifiers for each driver. They are actively crossed over at pre-amp level which allows the power amps to work more efficiently. The A2s don't do that as the Alesis do.

 

As for the Krells, They are very different beast, yes, but at the end of the day they are massive power supplies and transistor banks whose job is to take a signal and inclease it by both voltage and current without adding or taking away anything else. That is what has not changed.

[Cambon]

Stu,

Ah!, Strawberry Studios, those were the days. I remember there was a little hifi shop just around the corner down the hill before you gat to Comet. I cannot remember the name. That was the first time I became aware of how important a good amplifier is. The guy demonstrated the Naim Nait to me. I was blown away that an amp of so few watts could control speakers so much better than the many of the amps that claimed to be powerful.

 

I agree on the twin and earth to. Good speaker cable is very important but it's purpose is to carry current at low voltages. This requires a cable of large cross section, not the thin bell wire type.

 

I also agree with you on the Tanny dual concentrics - brilliant stuff. I recently have been listening to BBC LS3/5a speakers with a similar sort of affection. The thing is the amount of development that went in to getting those old speakers to sound that good was not technological advancement but a very high level of knowledge and a virtually bottomless budget. My argument is that these days, due to pen pushers, that does not happen.

[ai_Droid]

Actually droid, I am not writing them off as cheap plastic PC speakers, but to call them active speakers is not technically correct. They are powered speakers, but only one has the built in amp (unless I miss read the spec.). active speakers work independantly of each other. Active speakers generally have individual amplifiers for each driver. They are actively crossed over at pre-amp level which allows the power amps to work more efficiently. The A2s don't do that as the Alesis do.

 

Er, no, wrong yet again. What you're talking about is bi-amped. Active speakers are a pair of speakers that are powered and don't require an amp. Most active speakers only have one amp. The ones you linked, monitor speakers, have two amps, doesn't make them the only active speakers in the world.

 

Sorry, you called the A2's "a computer nerds toy and nothing more". They aren't that at all, they're great hand made but bloody tiny speakers that don't cheat in bass production like many others in that size range, well respected by reviewers, and you've written them off without even listening to em.

 

As for the Krells, They are very different beast, yes, but at the end of the day they are massive power supplies and transistor banks whose job is to take a signal and inclease it by both voltage and current without adding or taking away anything else. That is what has not changed.

 

Heh, you're unreal. Apart from the fact that they're smaller for more power? Krells own garbage speaks about how far this process has come over their 25 years. They lying?

 

The thing is the amount of development that went in to getting those old speakers to sound that good was not technological advancement but a very high level of knowledge and a virtually bottomless budget. My argument is that these days, due to pen pushers, that does not happen.

 

The home entertainment market is huge now, and it's not just about audiophiles fwapping over their huge cones, it's about movies, games and music, the budgets are big and the advances in terms of convergence, price and size versus quality are pretty clear to the unbiased looking at their old gear with misty eyes. Bang for buck you can buy a shitload more now than you ever could.

[Cambon]

Er, no, wrong yet again. What you're talking about is bi-amped. Active speakers are a pair of speakers that are powered and don't require an amp. Most active speakers only have one amp. The ones you linked, monitor speakers, have two amps, doesn't make them the only active speakers in the world.

 

Sorry, you called the A2's "a computer nerds toy and nothing more". They aren't that at all, they're great hand made but bloody tiny speakers that don't cheat in bass production like many others in that size range, well respected by reviewers, and you've written them off without even listening to em.

 

Most active speakers only have one amp? You need two amps to have stereo. The reason most active have an amp per speaker is so that they don't have to depend on each other. It makes setting up 5.1, 7.1, etc. much easier. Had you read my post thoroughly you would have seen the word GENERALLY when I mentioned active crossovers.

 

Ok, they are a computer nerds toy. They do cheat bass by using harmonics. All small to mid sized speakers to. That is why the subwoofer came along. No i don't particularly like subwoofer.

 

Heh, you're unreal. Apart from the fact that they're smaller for more power? Krells own garbage speaks about how far this process has come over their 25 years. They lying?

 

Gosh isn't Krells sales and marketing department good. Have you put in your order yet droid?

 

The current amps are capable of up to 4000-5000wpc into one ohm, just like the KSAs were.

 

The home entertainment market is huge now, and it's not just about audiophiles fwapping over their huge cones, it's about movies, games and music, the budgets are big and the advances in terms of convergence, price and size versus quality are pretty clear to the unbiased looking at their old gear with misty eyes. Bang for buck you can buy a shitload more now than you ever could.

 

It never was just about audiophiles. And you are totally right about shitloads. But the quality stuff still cost.

[Lurkah]

I would take a Pioneer SX1980, SX1250, SX1280, Marantz 2500 and a number of other '70s vintage receivers over any receiver available today, and most components too. The reason is simple. They were state of the art products in their time and state of the art then meant quality without compromise.

 

I have a bit of a soft spot for that viewpoint because I started out repairing high quality oldeIr hi-fi gear. Everything was repairable. Little corners were cut in the way of saving pennies here and there, and it was a genuine delight to pop the covers and experience the craftmanship in that old gear.

 

However I can categorically state that if anyone believes that old gear is even a patch on the performance of vastly cheaper mainstream gear today, they simply don't know much about how electronics has moved on. At about the mid 80s some of the component manufacturers moved from making integrated op-amps into integrated power amplifier components.

 

I, and everyone else in the trade, turned their nose up. Now if our back-end mosfets blew they were in a sealed package and the whole 50-pin jobby needed to be replaced. Which seemed, well was, wasteful. But the thing is, these packages contained pretty advanced well-matched analog amplifier designers which were about the same as you saw in the best gear, they were just cheaper and integrated into handy little packages.

 

But still, for a period, the matched component discreet stuff was better. Unfortunately the integrated stuff sailed past it. The distortion and noise off these parts dropped way down. The components were better matched, thermally compensated, better insulated from RFI and many more features such as very high-Q filters for doing EQ and that sort of thing. It wasn't long before many of the top brands were basically using the same modules. Meaning the only real difference between products, a lot of the time, was build quality of the case, what sort of ins/outs were on them and quality of the power supply.

 

And of course it wasn't just amps either. Radio receiver chips started doing some vastly sophisticated things to improve performance which discreet circuits simply couldn't do. Such as basically doing a bunch of stuff in the digital domain. And because of the same sort of reasons as above, sensitivity, noise, channel separation etc just leapt past what was possible. It's really at the point where the chip that's in a cheap ass walkman now offers dramatically better performance than some old ridiculously expensive 70-80s big-knob receiver.

 

Here's the thing. You get your big big expensive hi-fi gear today and take the case off. Guess what, it's all air. There's nothing in it. There's a small board up front hooked up to the big knobs and a bunch of ICs on the board. Because that's all you need to do.

 

And this only scratches the surface of the hi-fi nonsense I hear these days. People banging on about how sound quality is better in x versus y because it's got a better DAC etc - which in fact they both have exactly the same DAC. The list goes on and on. As ever, unlike IT stuff, audio stuff is subjective. So if you put something in a nice box and charge a shit load of money for it, some guy out there is going to swear it sounds 'warmer' on the 4th symphonies than anything else.

 

And there's not a lot you can say to it except say, righty oh pal. It's your wallet.

[Lurkah]

Ballaghbiker - DAB antennae are generally mounted vertically so you can receive the best signal from the "loudest" transmitter. If there is only one transmitter in your area it *MAY* be worth trying it horizontally and aligned at that transmitter to improve the overall FM signal that is the carrier of the digital data.

 

Alright, I've kept quiet about this long enough. Virtually nothing you've said on this subject is true.

 

DAB is vertically polarised. Always. It has nothing to do with mounting antennas vertically to get the best signal from the loudest transmitter.

 

Also, FM is not used as a carrier for digital data. That's absurd. The modulation scheme is OFDM using 1500-odd parallel quadrature phase-shift keyed modulated channels. It's about as far removed from FM as you could possibly be!

[sarahc]

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!

[Frances]

Sarah : do you really want a technical description of OFDM ? though it may transfiorm your life.

[Cambon]

And of course it wasn't just amps either. Radio receiver chips started doing some vastly sophisticated things to improve performance which discreet circuits simply couldn't do. Such as basically doing a bunch of stuff in the digital domain. And because of the same sort of reasons as above, sensitivity, noise, channel separation etc just leapt past what was possible. It's really at the point where the chip that's in a cheap ass walkman now offers dramatically better performance than some old ridiculously expensive 70-80s big-knob receiver.

 

Here's the thing. You get your big big expensive hi-fi gear today and take the case off. Guess what, it's all air. There's nothing in it. There's a small board up front hooked up to the big knobs and a bunch of ICs on the board. Because that's all you need to do.

 

And this only scratches the surface of the hi-fi nonsense I hear these days. People banging on about how sound quality is better in x versus y because it's got a better DAC etc - which in fact they both have exactly the same DAC. The list goes on and on. As ever, unlike IT stuff, audio stuff is subjective. So if you put something in a nice box and charge a shit load of money for it, some guy out there is going to swear it sounds 'warmer' on the 4th symphonies than anything else.

 

And there's not a lot you can say to it except say, righty oh pal. It's your wallet.

 

AS much as I agree with most of what you are saying the chipset used is still only one of the parts and the performance is often more than the sum of the parts. For example, if you were to build two amplifiers with identical ICs and identical components and layouts, but you were to mount the components in one amp the traditional way, the other you surface mount, the two amplifiers will have different caractoistics and sound different.

 

The chip sets you talk of are grerat for run of the mill applications but the top end leading edge still used matched components, big power supplies and transistor banks. That is a fact.

 

Now I am off to enjoy some nice music, on a fantastic sounding system that was worth every penny of the thousands I paid for it (second hand of course).

 

 

 

Merry Christmas to all

[pongo]

what about those wonderful looking modern valve amps that hifi buffs always seem so keen on? Aren't they supposed to deliver outstanding sound?

 

[My ears aren't that good anymore. I can no longer even hear those anti cat devices which used to set my teeth on edge. So I probably can't hear the difference anymore anyhow]

[ai_Droid]

Most active speakers only have one amp? You need two amps to have stereo.

 

Oh don't be a cock. You don't buy two bloody separate amps to do stereo if you have separates. Most active speakers have the amp/power in one speaker and the separate speaker as a slave. The A2's are active speakers.

 

The reason most active have an amp per speaker is so that they don't have to depend on each other. It makes setting up 5.1, 7.1, etc. much easier. Had you read my post thoroughly you would have seen the word GENERALLY when I mentioned active crossovers.

 

Utterlu incorrect bullshit. Google active speakers and see how many have more than one speaker with an amp in it.

 

Ok, they are a computer nerds toy. They do cheat bass by using harmonics. All small to mid sized speakers to. That is why the subwoofer came along. No i don't particularly like subwoofer.

 

Huh, they don't have subs. I meant they don't cheat bass like other cheap active speakers.

 

Gosh isn't Krells sales and marketing department good. Have you put in your order yet droid?

 

You brought them up mate, not me. You're saying your example of an amp that hasn't changed is from a company who lies?

 

It never was just about audiophiles. And you are totally right about shitloads. But the quality stuff still cost.

 

The point is, you get much more for your money now. Reasonably priced stuff now outperforms expensive stuff from 30 years ago.