Amazing Synchronicities In Hi-Fi and AV?

Some of the other hi-fi and audio-video enthusiasts out there had been doing this for more than 20 years, but have you ever noticed the growing number of “amazing synchronicities”?

By: Ringo Bones 

About 20 or so years ago when serious hi-fi enthusiasts who are “mere mortals” can finally afford DVD players that can seamlessly hook-up into their hi-fi rigs. They began experimenting on what they’ve found out on the internet that if you start Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album at just the right moment while watching The Wizard of Oz, amazing synchronicities occur between what’s on the screen and what’s heard in the lyrics and music. I and countless others who have tried it during the past 20 years swear that it works. Since then, this specific hi-fi phenomenon has since been dubbed “Amazing Synchronicities” and has ever since fostered various websites and discussion posts on the internet since the 21^st Century began. When it comes to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album and The Wizard of Oz – “who knows witch is which….” Indeed. But did you know that there are other “startling coincidences” and “amazing synchronicities” that every hi-fi and AV enthusiasts can test out on their own systems? 

Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and Blade Runner also eerily synchs up like a music video. And also at the end of Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey where a 22-minute sequence titled “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” eerily synchs up with Pink Floyd’s Echoes, which is also 22-minutes long. Although Kubrick’s original score in “Jupiter” is already as good as it is. My stumbled upon favorite on You Tube was a video reenactment of the September 16, 2007 Nisour Square Massacre – that notorious Blackwater Security Consulting’s unwarranted shooting of unarmed Iraqi civilians where Tori Amos’ Precious Things (track number 5 of her Little Earthquakes album) eerily syncs in with the carnage - although this piece has been since taken out from You Tube. Maybe the maker didn't pay Tori Amos royalties and got a cease and desist order. And I bet every hi-fi enthusiasts the world over had tried probably almost anything since 1995 after discovering their first “amazing synchronicities” between Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album and The Wizard of Oz movie. 

Is Your Audio System Cat-Friendly?

While early high fidelity audio systems got notoriety for “scaring away the horses” – is your current audio set-up cat-friendly?

By: Ringo Bones 

Maybe we should blame cellist David Teie for this given that his Kickstarter funded research into feline-centric / species-appropriate music that recently got scientific verification by a recent independent study conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and published in Applied Animal Behavior. Also, Teie’s Music for Cats compositions recently got scores of positive testimonials by early purchasers who tested Teie’s cat music recordings on their own cats noting that it actually had a relaxing effect on their own pets. 

Cello player David Teie comes from a long line of musicians, composers and professional instrumentalists. Since 2014, he has been the conductor and music director of Washington D.C.’s premier chamber orchestra – the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra – and currently serves on the faculty at the University of Maryland’s School of Music. Teie’s career has spanned performing as a soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra under Russian maestro Mstislav Rostropovich. And also as the acting principal cellist of the San Francisco Symphony where Teie performed as cellist on Metallica’s 1999 album S&M. His research has been published in the Royal Society Biology Letters and in Evolution of Emotional Communication. His invention of species-specific music was described by the New York Times as the number one idea of 2009. 

According to cellist David Teie, cats were our first choice because they’re widely kept as pets which allowed us to easily share music with them. Given that cats can hear audio frequencies way above the human hearing frequency limit of 20,000-Hz, can cats even appreciate those upper octaves of Teie’s music given that most entry-level audio systems have trouble playing at significant volume – never mind proper phase linearity – of audio signals above 20,000-Hz? 

With the relatively wide availability and relative affordability of audio components and recordings capable of producing cleanly audio signals above 20,000-Hz – i.e. 24-Bit 192-KHz sampled PCM DVD Audio files and Super Audio CD recordings that can produce notes above 100,000-Hz and some moving coil cartridges like the Dynavector 17D2MkII Karat Diamond whose shorter 1.7-mm diamond cantilever allow it to have a high-frequency extension above 100,000-Hz and diamond coated tweeters that can cleanly play 100,000 Hz or higher audio frequencies – then it is now relatively easy to upgrade your audio system that can produce sounds that even cats, dogs and even bats can clearly hear. 

Maybe it was due to the fact that he hanged out with Metallica for a relatively long time during rehearsals in comparison to us mere fans back in 1999 or whether he is already a Metallica fan back when bassist Cliff Burton was still alive that got me wondering how much Metallica was an influence to cellist David Teie upon hearing of Cozmo’s Air – one of the tracks of his Music for Cats – that it reminded me of the ambient into of Metallica’s Damage, Inc. – the last track on the Master of Puppets album. Well, at least Teie managed to make his “cat music” also interesting to hear for us human music lovers which will probably give Pet Sounds a whole new meaning to audiophiles around the world. 

Transmission Line Loudspeakers: The Ultimate Domestic Hi-Fi Loudspeakers?

Given its ability to produce unbelievable amounts of bass for its size, are transmission line loudspeakers qualify as the ultimate domestic hi-fi loudspeakers?

By: Ringo Bones

As of late, there has been discussion on how come hi-fi audio designer Arthur Radford’s electronics – especially his EL34 based audio power amplifiers like the Radford STA25 - get more recognition in comparison to his transmission line loudspeakers which despite being manufactured 50 or so years ago can still manage to hold its own in a side-by-side comparison to more recently manufactured hi-fi loudspeakers. Arthur Radford did a lot of work, both theoretical and practical, on transmission line loudspeaker design during the 1960s.The Radford Studio 90 which was also sold in the U.S. in kit form during the late 1960s as the Audionics TL90 – a ¼ wavelength 3-way transmission line loudspeaker equipped with Radford sourced drivers and crossover circuit. The Radford Studio 90 was the first commercially manufactured hi-fi transmission line loudspeaker based on A.R. Bailey’s papers and there are even larger models based on the same design. Even though they were a bit pricey when they first entered the market, enough of them were sold in the United States to establish a “cult following” of this legendary loudspeakers. Despite their excellent subjective sound quality, why are transmission line loudspeakers relatively rare in comparison to competing designs? But first, here’s an introduction on the theoretical and practical principles of transmission line loudspeakers. 

Then and now, designers of closed-box / acoustic suspension and vented / bass reflex loudspeaker systems have long been able to make heavy use of computers, while transmission line systems had been designed by cut-and-try methods. Transmission line loudspeaker systems are more complicated to design because of their inherent distributed-parameter nature. By way of comparison, sealed / acoustic suspension and vented / bass reflex loudspeaker systems can be treated as a much simpler, lumped-parameter acoustic systems. Also, there is still a dearth of research literature regarding transmission line loudspeaker design to guide the prospective designer. But to those adventurous enough, they should check out Quick & Easy Transmission Line Speaker Design by Larry D. Sharp and those “white papers” published online by John Wright of TDL. 

Transmission line loudspeakers are known for their deep, powerful bass and the way they grip a room, filling it with a full scale performance. But they have their downsides too, notably the difficulty of tuning the line, which appears to be the blackest of arts in the audio engineering world. A practical transmission line has two main effects that are advantageous to loudspeaker design. Firstly, the sound venting from the end of a quarter-wavelength transmission line is 90-degrees out of phase with the signal from the back of the cone which drives the line, which itself is 180-degrees out of phase with the front radiation. This ensures that sound radiation at lower frequencies is progressively moving into phase and it will add, rather than subtract, to the forward low frequency response. Also a practical transmission line loudspeaker is lined with acoustic felt and wool, so that a majority of upper bass and midrange energy is absorbed before it reaches the end of the line and the outside world. Lower frequency bass energy gets through, making low bass apparent. In electrical engineering terms, a transmission line port is a low pass filter with a 270-degrees plus phase shift. 

An area where transmission line loudspeakers receive criticism is midrange coloration. To overcome this, various transmission line loudspeaker designers over the years adapted a number of sensible design features. If the transmission line vent length is made exactly ¼-wavelength in length, it tends to act like a tuned pipe which introduces coloration. Making the transmission line slightly shorter, a technique later adapted by John Wright of TDL during the late 1960s, reduces this coloration without adversely affecting bass quality.

In some transmission line loudspeaker designs where the line is folded quickly behind the cone, the strongly reflected sound wave from the cabinet wall can give that “clatter-type” coloration in the midrange. For this reason, in newer transmission line loudspeaker designs, the rear wall of the cabinet is kept as far back as possible and fitted with a generous covering of soft, absorbent carpet felt. 

One great thing about a transmission line loudspeaker is that once the cabinet dimensions have been optimized and fixed, it can be subtly tuned to give the bass quality you want in your listening room just by altering the amount and density of long hair wool in the line. This makes transmission line loudspeakers extremely versatile for home constructors, which combined with their subjective performance explains why they’ve been making a comeback since the 1990s hi-fi boom. 

Another great advantage, or possibly the greatest advantage, of transmission line loudspeakers – and probably why they’ve returned during the 1990s in conjunction with the zero negative feedback single-ended-triode audio amplification Renaissance of the period - is their highly damped impedance curve. Impedance varies little across the entire audio spectrum – especially in the upper bass and lower midrange region in comparison with vented / bass reflex and closed box / acoustic suspension loudspeakers. This makes transmission line loudspeakers much, much easier to drive with zero negative feedback single-ended triode audio amplifiers and other low feedback vacuum tube audio amplifier designs. 

Phono Cartridge Stylus And Cantilever Construction Materials: What’s Best?

Given that your phono cartridge has an overwhelming influence on the fidelity of the reproduction quality of your hi-fi rig, would the bits that make the first contact on the vinyl disc – the stylus and the cantilever have the most influence on sound quality? 

By: Ringo Bones

For more than a decade and a half into the 21^st Century, it seems that the vinyl record had managed to hold its own as the playback medium that is better than Redbook CD – or those downloadable digital music on the internet – by a significantly wide margin in terms of sound quality. Despite being introduced a few years ago, three popular entry-level turntables: the Project Carbon Debut DC, the Pioneer PL-30-K and the Onkyo CP-1050 Direct Drive Turntable are still selling strong. But what about phono cartridges – has there technological progress being made since the early 1990s vinyl record revival? 

Any phono cartridge faces a major problem: how to cover the full three-decade-wide bandwidth (20Hz to 20,000Hz) needed for high fidelity audio playback. High frequency resonances seems pretty well inevitable and mid-band “glitches” are difficult to avoid, too, as the frequency-response and vertical / lateral crosstalk sweeps with the use of test records showed. Not surprisingly, the success with which these are controlled is very closely linked to the cartridge’s overall sound quality.   

Phono cartridge stylus and cantilever construction have significantly – even radically - improved since those osmium phonograph needles used during the introduction of electrically / electronically recorded records to the market back in November 1925. During the post World War II period that lead to the Golden Age of Stereo, stylus dimensions got smaller and smaller to better track the microscopic grooves of the vinyl long-paying record introduced by Peter Goldmark. First it was made of sapphire – a gem quality form of corundum with a hardness of 9 on the Mohs’ scale which was later replaced by micro-profiled elliptical diamond stylus for better sound quality reproduction. While during the Golden Age of Stereo – the material of choice for high quality phono cartridge cantilevers is the most rigid alloy of aluminum that is commercially available, which during the 1950s is typically aircraft / aerospace grade aluminum. 

Then and now, the moving coil phono cartridge – despite of its low signal output - has been considered as the best when compared to its moving magnet counterparts due to its lack of frequency response problems in the upper midband and high frequencies. Traditionally, moving coil phono cartridges have had relatively incompliant cantilever hinges in comparison to its moving magnet counterpart which resulted in poor low frequency tracking. Anyone looking to preserve their record collection find this alarming. Remember those early Decca London phono cartridges with their tip resonances that are notorious for doing damage to vinyl records? So tip resonance control is also a factor in choice of materials in stylus and cantilever construction. 

Ideally, the stylus should be constructed from the same materials to consistently control the inevitable resulting resonances. Given that the microscopic-dimensioned stylus is barely visible to the unaided naked eye and a modern phono cartridge stylus measures around 7.5-mm long or 5/16 of an inch long and 0.5 –mm thick or 1/32 of an inch thick constructing one from a single artificial produced diamond should not carry a prohibitive price premium. Dynavector’s 17D2 Mk. II diamond cantilever MC cartridge is one such beast. With a hardness of 10 on the Mohs’s Scale, solid diamond is the hardest possible material and supreme for cantilever use. And given that diamond is a good heat conductor, any heat friction generated during vinyl playback can easily be dissipated by the stylus and cantilever assembly because they are made of the same material. But since its introduction in the early 1990s, many competing phono cartridge makers have managed to create better sounding cartridges using both more exotic and tried and true materials. 

Solid-boron-rod cantilevers constructed from the crystalline allotrope of the element boron that has a hardness of 9.5 on the Mohs’s Scale has been extensively used for moving coil phono cartridge construction during the latter half of the 1990s due to its subjectively better sound quality when compared to diamond. Used on the Van Den Hul Frog with a specially shaped Type 1S diamond stylus, this cartridge has the highest cantilever compliance and the lowest recommended tracking weight of all the commercially available cartridges and is notable for its ability to ignore vinyl scratches which is very important if you frequently purchase vinyl LPs and 45 RPM singles from used record shops. While the Clearaudio Signature uses a hollow boron cantilever variant.       

  

Cantilevers made of sapphire or corundum – which has a hardness of 9 on the Mohs’s Scale - was also tried as far back as the late 1970s. The most famous example of these is the Bang & Olufsen MMC 20CL phono cartridge – which a diamond stylus is attached to a sapphire crystal cantilever that resulted in the elimination of audible tip resonance and thus eliminating distortion in music reproduction and it also means it won’t be destroying your precious vinyl records every time you play them. Enthusiasts back in 1981 praised its life-like ability to reproduce choral recordings like never before and it is probably the first cartridge that started the exotic materials construction wars.  

As a go to material for phono cartridge cantilever construction, aluminum has held its own since the Golden Age of Stereo. The mid 1990s era Ortofon Rohman uses a tapered aluminum cantilever and still manages to gain converts unimpressed by the newfangled solid-boron-rod cantilever construction of competing cartridges. While the Lyra Parnassus DCt uses a more exotic diamond-coated, ceramic-reinforced aluminum cantilever said to be stiffer than ordinary aluminum alloys previously used in cantilever construction.  

Sound quality wise, audiophiles weaned on the “dreaded” compact disc tend to gravitate towards boron cantilevered phono cartridges largely due to its wider perceived bandwidth in comparison to ones using aluminum alloy as a cantilever. While those Iron Maiden and Judas Priest fans who extensively listen to vinyl during the early part of the 1980s say that aluminum cantilevered phono cartridges are more neutral sounding in comparison to their boron, diamond or sapphire / corundum counterparts. 

Are Light Emitting Diodes Too Noisy For High End High Fidelity Use?

Though it has become ubiquitous as a power on indicator of consumer electronics since its introduction back in the 1960s, are light emitting diodes just too noisy for high end hi-fi use? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Ever since I started my audio equipment and musical instrument modifying business back in the early 1990s, I’ve noted that some audio equipment – especially very high gain solid state moving coil cartridge phono preamplifiers – will improve its noise floor when you replace the red or green LED power on indicator or light emitting diode power on indicator with a miniature tungsten filament power on indicator light bulb often used in older audio equipment. In my experience, the main beneficiaries from such moddings are vacuum tube based moving coil phono preamplifiers that use the ECC88 / 6DJ8 / 6922 small-signal vacuum tube and those iconing solid-state moving coil phono preamplifiers that use FETs and transistors or a mix of both like the DNM 3B and the Michell Iso and Michell Argo. 

During the first decade of the 21^st Century, I also discovered that organic LEDs are noisier than their plain vanilla LED counterparts. Even though the invention of organic LEDs made possible those relatively affordable and indispensable part of 21^st Century home theater unnecessarily large video monitors, blue LEDs that had become fashionable add-ons of power conditioners like the MIT Z-Center, produce an audible buzz when used with critical high gain moving coil phono preamplifiers. 

What’s weird about organic LEDs – even those green ones that emit a more vivid green light than their plain vanilla counterparts is that they can be as noisy as their blue colored counterparts. Weirder still, when viewed through a diffraction grading – either a CD or DVD surface – organic LEDs lack the monotonicity of their plain-vanilla counterparts. Ordinary green and red LEDs produce a pure green or and red light when viewed through a diffraction grating while their organic LED equivalents produced a distinctive rainbow streak. Though it is only noticeable in practice, do LEDs – organic and plain vanilla ones – produce more noise when compared with those tiny tungsten filament power on indicator lamps because LEDs are solid-state semiconductor devices and in the solid-state semiconductor world, noise is directly proportional to operational current?