The meaning of measurements

[RogerD]

repeat after me

"I will never buy another amp or preamp. For those who have heard the ML3 understand how amazing it is.

It can always get better.... But as I always say if it makes you laugh and cry....don't change a thing.

 

[Bruce B]

Don't the latter blow up occasionally?

It probably does but you get a sense of euphoria before the meltdown!

 

[Steve Williams]

What I'm getting at is that there's a difference between deep bass from a sub and dynamic bass that a powerful SS amp delivers. Otherwise, Fremer would have emulated Steve's setup. Instead, he has been sacrificing the midrange of tubes for "slam" and the other benefits of monster SS amps.

FWIW my room size has resulted in far better bass than I would ever have expected, so much so that my subs provably could be removed. They are used mainly for rock. There is no doubt in my mind that subs are not necessary in my room with XLF's as well as my X2's

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Seems a little unrealistic to say that only 2 companies can offer to reproduce piano and female vocals "perfectly".

 

[Steve Williams]

From what I've heard Fremers room is smaller than mine.

 

[caesar]

FWIW my room size has resulted in far better bass than I would ever have expected, so much so that my subs provably could be removed. They are used mainly for rock. There is no doubt in my mind that subs are not necessary in my room with XLF's as well as my X2's

Sure, but what if you picked up a pair of the Lamm SS monoblocks for those rock listening sessions?

 

[Bruce B]

Seems a little unrealistic to say that only 2 companies can offer to reproduce piano and female vocals "perfectly".

I'm sure there are many more out there. I'm only going by what "I" have heard.... I can't comment on what I haven't heard like so many people seem to do!

 

[RogerD]

Seems a little unrealistic to say that only 2 companies can offer to reproduce piano and female vocals "perfectly".

Gee, I'm glad I have the 3rd....

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

I'm sure there are many more out there. I'm only going by what "I" have heard.... I can't comment on what I haven't heard like so many people seem to do!

I've not had the pleasure of hearing either of the units you mentioned...maybe one day!

Gee, I'm glad I have the 3rd....

It's all about having confidence!

 

[garylkoh]

Crispy squid tentacles for dinner.

 

[DaveyF]

On the occasion that I heard Steve's system, I would have to say that he certainly didn't need bass re-enforcement in his room. I felt that the Alex 2's were more than capable of supplying plenty of bottom end heft. The Lamm's therefore were able to deliver as much bass as needed. I never felt that the system was in any way lacking in it's drive ability when driven by just the Lamm's. IMO, the purity of sound was in fact more to my liking without Steve's subs in the mix. That's IMHO.

 

[NorthStar]

It's not easy at all to perfectly balance external sub(s) with the mains, no matter what.

 

[j_j]

It's not easy at all to perfectly balance external sub(s) with the mains, no matter what.

Unless your crossover point is below 40Hz, you need 2 subs for a stereo system, and 3 for a 5.x system, at minimum, so the problems go far, far beyond balancing the response.

Physics works.

 

[KeithR]

Interesting review....seems to me the Lamm ML2.2 measured better than the ML3 reading both stereophile reviews (less distortion in the bass). It would be fun to hear them both in the same room.

i think the more egregious set of measurements was for the B&W 804 which has noted frequency response issues, but was given a clean bill of health.

 

[Steve Williams]

Interesting review....seems to me the Lamm ML2.2 measured better than the ML3 reading both stereophile reviews (less distortion in the bass). It would be fun to hear them both in the same room.

i think the more egregious set of measurements was for the B&W 804 which has noted frequency response issues, but was given a clean bill of health.

Hi Keith


I heard the ML 2.1 (which I owned) with the ML3 shortly after Vlad released it in my sound room. There is a "magic" about the ML3 that the 2.1 didn't have. It's a very holographic image. Keith you were planning to hear my ML3 with a buddy of yours. Let me know when.

 

[RogerD]

Hi Keith


I heard the ML 2.1 (which I owned) with the ML3 shortly after Vlad released it in my sound room. There is a "magic" about the ML3 that the 2.1 didn't have. It's a very holographic image. Keith you were planning to hear my ML3 with a buddy of yours. Let me know when.

I have never quite figured out what makes a holographic image possible,but when you hear and see it,and I do mean see,it is very special. I hate the description synergy,but the sum of the parts,seem to play a important part. I would say the speaker are most important,followed by the amplifier. There is also different degrees of it and it always can get better.

 

[NorthStar]

Methinks that amplification is an integral part of the electrical/mechanical music reproducer (the loudspeaker with its drivers and crossover).

* I love that word: Holographic ...image.

 

[DaveyF]

I have never quite figured out what makes a holographic image possible,but when you hear and see it,and I do mean see,it is very special. I hate the description synergy,but the sum of the parts,seem to play a important part. I would say the speaker are most important,followed by the amplifier. There is also different degrees of it and it always can get better.

Roger, i think to what you said, you need to add the most important factor....the room. Great speakers in a poor room and I don't think you will get the desired result. IMHO, we can put in order of importance in creating the illusion of a holographic image the following:
1) the room 2) the room 3) the room...and then a distant 4th) The speakers and then 5th) the front end ( I would have NO problem replacing this as 4th and the speakers as 5th). 6th) The preamp, 7th) the amp, 8th) the cabling and everything else slightly lower. Naturally, YMMV.

 

[j_j]

Roger, i think to what you said, you need to add the most important factor....the room. Great speakers in a poor room and I don't think you will get the desired result.

You need, more particularly, a set of speakers that match the room they are in. Now, I do not mean that a particular set of speakers can rescue a bad room, sorry, no, nothing but treatment or worse will fix a bad room. Electronic correction does not fix bad rooms to any great extent, the best use for it is making a pretty good room great.

But in addition to that, you need a set of loudspeakers with an off-axis radiation pattern that works with the room, and with the listener's expectations and tastes. This is, by itself, one of the reasons that there are so many loudspeakers and so much argument about them, in short, what somebody wants in speakers is in part personal taste. And personal preference is just that, personal. No more, no less.

Finally, the idea of "holographic sound" from 2 speakers is only going to work in a very limited sense with a small number of recordings, again of the listener's expectation and taste, with a particular setup of a system in a particular room with particular speakers. The important parts are room, speakers, recording, and then everything else about 2 orders of magnitude or more down the scale in importance, and notice that of the 3 most important, all of them are affected intensely by personal taste.

I hope my point is starting to come out by now, yes?

The idea of true holography is called "wave field synthesis", which is in fact something that people do work on. It's kind of expensive, requires very, very custom recordings with very custom systems in a custom designed room and something like a minimum of 128 channels for the desired effect. At low and mid-frequencies, these systems do something akin to holography. They sound quite real, I've heard a few of them. The problem is that they sound, sometimes, too real, do you really want to know about the problems in the recording space? No, probably not.

There are systems, including one I've invented and worked with (there are a few, mind you, not just that) that attempt to capture perceptual cues, as opposed to soundfield (analytic) cues. They suffer from the same problem, in particular, they suffer from being too accurate sometimes. Somewhere out there, you can see some of the reviews for the system I worked on, but I don't have them at my fingertips at the minute. Good reviews. BUT they also require changing the whole production chain, and require 5.0 (i.e. 5 full range speakers) playback, or better 7.0. Not a bunch of little speakers and a couple of big ones, full ranged matched speakers all around.

But the real problem is production, either of concert captures (i.e. classical in-situ), or of synthetic studio production.

There is myth that ensures it won't work (i.e. don't use the center speaker, when it is in fact the most important, as shown in 1933 by some very basic work in soundfield perception), there are cinema production rules (which are right for cinema, Holman is a smart guy, but they are terribly wrong for home theatre or for hi-fi use), and a persistence of the "phantom center" which ensures that the most important features of multichannel of any sort can not work.

The sad part is that work before 1940 showed quite a bit of this, and convincingly, but we're still doing things in the modern way. (Yes, that is intentional irony.)

We have people arguing, for instance, that using time-delay panning as well as amplitude panning doesn't work, based on some older work that used time delays of 5, 10, 15, 20 milliseconds, which obviously won't work unless your head is 5, 10, ... FEET across.

So, there is a lot known about how to establish a good, convincing synthetic soundfield using perceptual principles, or doing it the hard way, and actually reproducing, at least in a 2-d way, the actual soundfield, but the market penetration is going to be a very, very tough issue, because it requires revising every step of a chain fraught with both science and myth, as well as what seems to me to be some deliberate misinformation here and there.

 

[RogerD]

Roger, i think to what you said, you need to add the most important factor....the room. Great speakers in a poor room and I don't think you will get the desired result. IMHO, we can put in order of importance in creating the illusion of a holographic image the following:
1) the room 2) the room 3) the room...and then a distant 4th) The speakers and then 5th) the front end ( I would have NO problem replacing this as 4th and the speakers as 5th). 6th) The preamp, 7th) the amp, 8th) the cabling and everything else slightly lower. Naturally, YMMV.

Davey

Maybe you are right and maybe I have the exception. I have owned these speakers since 1979 and they have been in 3 houses,different rooms and the have always produced a holographic image. The related equipment used didn't seem to matter either. Now my house I built in 1981 had the best sound no doubt.....it was spooky. The present room is nothing great as I haven't done a thing to it,but in certain areas it produces the image as well as the rest. IIRC the amplifiers I have used are a Hafler modified 500,a Accuphase P300, VAC 70/70,VAC 140 and Agtron Platinum Mono blocks. The VAC's were magical,but my Agtron's are solid state and in some respects are better. Preamps used have been ParAcas dual mono,Accuphase C200, Ampex 350, and MR70 and some others. I must say good clean power and mechanically sound grounding play an important role too. All n All I would say it's the speakers and their crossover design,if they don't image well off the bat I would look further. That's just my take.

p.s. I guess I should mention my speakers are ParAcas Satellites built and designed by Carl Staub of Agtron LLC in Reno. Carl and me updated the spearkers in 1990 replacing Morel drivers with Dynaudio and the crossover was modified to fit the Dyn's parameters.