Those torturing US bastards...
 

"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 17:39:11 -0500, JohnH wrote:

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:18:21 GMT, Shortwave Sportfishing

wrote:

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 15:38:13 -0500, JohnH wrote:

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 20:19:49 GMT, Shortwave Sportfishing

wrote:

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 20:15:46 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

"Reggie Smithers" Reggie( is my first name) Smithers wrote in
message
...
JohnH,
I think the word you are looking for is "haunting".


Check out Evanescence (Amy Lee). Same quality, but not quiet as
high
pitched.

I get chills listening to her sing.

There's always the Joni Mitchell "Clouds" album.

NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's like listening to Joan Baez sing "for Tookie's life!!"

Put this in your CD player and turn the volume *way* up!

Camille Saint-Saëns, Symphony #3 "Organ" in C minor, Op. 78/Telarc
CD-80051
Michael Murray (organ), Eugene Ormandy/Philadelphia Orchestra

Pah - the key of C minor is for lazy composers and those who have no
talent.

Go back to bed, troll!

NO!!!

Speaking of musical oddities, being in a band has exposed me to some
interesting musicians over the past month or two:

1) A drummer answered our ad. Had a nice talk on the phone with him about
the kind of music we're playing. He then said that he didn't have drums, and
wondered if we happened to have some. Can't fault him for asking, I guess,
but what a long shot! Then, he asked where we practice. We use our
guitarist's place, about 20 minutes out of the city. At this point, the
drummer announced he didn't have a car. I told him maybe we'd talk some
other time....

2) We might want a 2nd guitarist. I ran into one at a jam session. He played
great. We talked about my band. Showed him a song list, which includes the
key for each song. He said "I like the songs, but I notice they're all in
different keys. I'm an E man - I play everything in E". Oh boy....

3) Same jam session: I finished playing, and an excellent 80 year old
pianist who was next on the list to sit in with the house band. He had just
one problem: He only knew how to play things in C.

4) Our first drummer said he loved playing blues. After playing with him
twice, the guitarist and I mentioned that we were going to a jam session at
a local club, in case he wanted to join us that evening. The drummer said he
wasn't comfortable with places like that. "Places like what?", we asked
repeatedly. The club's really nice, the crowd's wonderful. The drummer
finally explained that he's not comfortable around black people. Bye bye
drummer. We figured he would've gotten himself into a fist fight at some
point, and we'd be playing without a drummer. We accelerated the removal.

Those torturing US bastards...
 

"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
Doug Kanter wrote:
"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
How's it sound? When I was in the biz, Bose speakers were mainly
attractive
to guys who wore backwards Caterpillar hats 24x7, and listened to
nothing
but ZZ Top at full volume.
I'm no longer a Bose fan. They're too 'bassy' for me. But, my hearing
is not all that
great, so I need the treble boosted way up.

The only adjustment for bass and treble is on the subwoofer. I'd never
recommend the
set to anyone. But, it will play the Organ symphony loud enough to get
the neighbors
out of bed!
Part of the problem is that most production speakers are built for
moer bass response than is absolutely necessary. Bose speakers are
built with broader frequency response than most production speakers,
so I find that comment interesting.

Crappy ones are. Decent speakers should at least have the potential to
create nice, tightly controlled bass that doesn't sound out of proportion
to the rest of the sound. The problem is that there are too many lousy
salespeople out there. A customer walks into the stereo store and says
"According to Consumer Reports, my brother who's a shmexpert, or some
dice I rolled on my kitchen table, I don't need more than 20 or 30 watts
for my living room". The lousy salesman is too lazy or dumb to explain
reality to the customer, so he yesses the customer, and another
underpowered system goes out the door. Just enough power to make the
woofers move, but nowhere near enough to stop them tightly. So, they
sound fat and puky.

At the store where I worked, part of the interview process was a group
meeting with new candidates. First, we'd try and find out if they really
understood things like damping factor. If not, the next step was to try
and determine if they were spongy enough to absorb and understand a lot
of information really fast. If not, we'd politely reject them and suggest
that they apply at Lechemere or some other big box store, so they
wouldn't pollute any of the other stores like ours.


Bose speakers sound too "bassy"? Bose? If they do, it must be an
artificial electronic kind of bass, because there's nothing "speakerwise"
in those tiny little speakers that can reproduce the low tones. Bose
speakers have to be the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the low-end
audiophile market. Well, wait, there's always that $1200 plastic table
radio with CD player Bose is pushing on TV these days.

When you want to shop for speakers, bring along some pipe organ music on a
CD, especially pipe organ music with tones in the low pedal registers,
preferably being played in a cathedral. No cheesy MP3s recorded at 22,050
Hz, please.

To reproduce really big sound, you need really big speakers. The laws of
physics have not been repealed. You want some old Klipschorns,
Altec-Lansings, or some large electrostatics and a top-drawer subwoofer
with a serious adjustable crossover network. Little speakers=little
sounds.

It's not quite that simple. First of all, there are so many instruments that
make bass, that it's difficult to design any speaker that will properly
reproduce all of them. Just within the category of upright or electric bass,
there are a myriad of sounds to be dealt with. Listen to a handful of albums
with Ron Carter, the jazz acoustic bassist, and you'll notice that he
created lots of different sounds, depending on how he was playing, and which
bass he was using at the time. If the music required playing in the upper
registers of the instrument, a speaker which makes wonderful low bass (below
the open A, for instance) will often muddy the higher registers, which means
it's also going to sound off with cello, bassoon and a segment of a piano's
range.

Then, the mind either helps or hinders what you hear. My bass guitar cabinet
has two 10" speakers, and there's plenty of power behind it, but in some
rooms, it's still challenged because there are harmonics getting lost
somewhere, and they're necessary for the mind to complete the picture of
what you're hearing. Sometimes, what helps is totally counterintuitive:
Turning up the treble.

As far as speaker size, that's not exactly true. If you're able to see (from
where you're sitting) what electric bassists are using nowadays, you'll
notice they're mostly using arrays of 8", 10" or 12" speakers in smaller
boxes. 15" drivers aren't so popular any more. The goal is to move a certain
amount of air. It doesn't really matter how you do it.

Those torturing US bastards...
 

"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 12:59:50 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

3) Same jam session: I finished playing, and an excellent 80 year old
pianist who was next on the list to sit in with the house band. He had
just
one problem: He only knew how to play things in C.

Which is exactly my point - C is the easiest key to compose in and the
easiest to build around.

Real skill and creativity is needed to work beyond C which is why I
said what I said.

We have to work around the vocalist and the particular song. Otherwise, we
could accomodate some of these people. Even so, it would be deathly boring
to play everything in the same key. And, some songs need a certain effect
from the bass or the guitar. Maybe the rhythm really needs to have a certain
note in order to move it along. In one of our songs, it's an open E on the
bass that seems to make the thing work. Nothing else does the trick.

Those torturing US bastards...
 

On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 08:03:48 -0500, Harry Krause wrote:

Doug Kanter wrote:
"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
How's it sound? When I was in the biz, Bose speakers were mainly
attractive
to guys who wore backwards Caterpillar hats 24x7, and listened to nothing
but ZZ Top at full volume.
I'm no longer a Bose fan. They're too 'bassy' for me. But, my hearing is
not all that
great, so I need the treble boosted way up.

The only adjustment for bass and treble is on the subwoofer. I'd never
recommend the
set to anyone. But, it will play the Organ symphony loud enough to get the
neighbors
out of bed!
Part of the problem is that most production speakers are built for
moer bass response than is absolutely necessary. Bose speakers are
built with broader frequency response than most production speakers,
so I find that comment interesting.

Crappy ones are. Decent speakers should at least have the potential to
create nice, tightly controlled bass that doesn't sound out of proportion to
the rest of the sound. The problem is that there are too many lousy
salespeople out there. A customer walks into the stereo store and says
"According to Consumer Reports, my brother who's a shmexpert, or some dice
I rolled on my kitchen table, I don't need more than 20 or 30 watts for my
living room". The lousy salesman is too lazy or dumb to explain reality to
the customer, so he yesses the customer, and another underpowered system
goes out the door. Just enough power to make the woofers move, but nowhere
near enough to stop them tightly. So, they sound fat and puky.

At the store where I worked, part of the interview process was a group
meeting with new candidates. First, we'd try and find out if they really
understood things like damping factor. If not, the next step was to try and
determine if they were spongy enough to absorb and understand a lot of
information really fast. If not, we'd politely reject them and suggest that
they apply at Lechemere or some other big box store, so they wouldn't
pollute any of the other stores like ours.




Bose speakers sound too "bassy"? Bose? If they do, it must be an
artificial electronic kind of bass, because there's nothing
"speakerwise" in those tiny little speakers that can reproduce the low
tones. Bose speakers have to be the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the
low-end audiophile market. Well, wait, there's always that $1200 plastic
table radio with CD player Bose is pushing on TV these days.

When you want to shop for speakers, bring along some pipe organ music on
a CD, especially pipe organ music with tones in the low pedal registers,
preferably being played in a cathedral. No cheesy MP3s recorded at
22,050 Hz, please.

To reproduce really big sound, you need really big speakers. The laws of
physics have not been repealed. You want some old Klipschorns,
Altec-Lansings, or some large electrostatics and a top-drawer subwoofer
with a serious adjustable crossover network. Little speakers=little sounds.



You have to remember, loss of high-frequency hearing may have a big impact on what I
*think* speakers sound like. When adjusted the way I like, others wonder why there's
no bass!
--
John H

**** May your Christmas be Spectacular!****
*****...and your New Year even Better!*****

Those torturing US bastards...
 

"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 13:30:11 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:


"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
Doug Kanter wrote:
"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
How's it sound? When I was in the biz, Bose speakers were mainly
attractive
to guys who wore backwards Caterpillar hats 24x7, and listened to
nothing
but ZZ Top at full volume.
I'm no longer a Bose fan. They're too 'bassy' for me. But, my hearing
is not all that
great, so I need the treble boosted way up.

The only adjustment for bass and treble is on the subwoofer. I'd
never
recommend the
set to anyone. But, it will play the Organ symphony loud enough to
get
the neighbors
out of bed!
Part of the problem is that most production speakers are built for
moer bass response than is absolutely necessary. Bose speakers are
built with broader frequency response than most production speakers,
so I find that comment interesting.

Crappy ones are. Decent speakers should at least have the potential to
create nice, tightly controlled bass that doesn't sound out of
proportion
to the rest of the sound. The problem is that there are too many lousy
salespeople out there. A customer walks into the stereo store and says
"According to Consumer Reports, my brother who's a shmexpert, or some
dice I rolled on my kitchen table, I don't need more than 20 or 30
watts
for my living room". The lousy salesman is too lazy or dumb to explain
reality to the customer, so he yesses the customer, and another
underpowered system goes out the door. Just enough power to make the
woofers move, but nowhere near enough to stop them tightly. So, they
sound fat and puky.

At the store where I worked, part of the interview process was a group
meeting with new candidates. First, we'd try and find out if they
really
understood things like damping factor. If not, the next step was to try
and determine if they were spongy enough to absorb and understand a lot
of information really fast. If not, we'd politely reject them and
suggest
that they apply at Lechemere or some other big box store, so they
wouldn't pollute any of the other stores like ours.


Bose speakers sound too "bassy"? Bose? If they do, it must be an
artificial electronic kind of bass, because there's nothing
"speakerwise"
in those tiny little speakers that can reproduce the low tones. Bose
speakers have to be the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the low-end
audiophile market. Well, wait, there's always that $1200 plastic table
radio with CD player Bose is pushing on TV these days.

When you want to shop for speakers, bring along some pipe organ music on
a
CD, especially pipe organ music with tones in the low pedal registers,
preferably being played in a cathedral. No cheesy MP3s recorded at
22,050
Hz, please.

To reproduce really big sound, you need really big speakers. The laws of
physics have not been repealed. You want some old Klipschorns,
Altec-Lansings, or some large electrostatics and a top-drawer subwoofer
with a serious adjustable crossover network. Little speakers=little
sounds.

It's not quite that simple. First of all, there are so many instruments
that
make bass, that it's difficult to design any speaker that will properly
reproduce all of them. Just within the category of upright or electric
bass,
there are a myriad of sounds to be dealt with. Listen to a handful of
albums
with Ron Carter, the jazz acoustic bassist, and you'll notice that he
created lots of different sounds, depending on how he was playing, and
which
bass he was using at the time. If the music required playing in the upper
registers of the instrument, a speaker which makes wonderful low bass
(below
the open A, for instance) will often muddy the higher registers, which
means
it's also going to sound off with cello, bassoon and a segment of a
piano's
range.

Then, the mind either helps or hinders what you hear. My bass guitar
cabinet
has two 10" speakers, and there's plenty of power behind it, but in some
rooms, it's still challenged because there are harmonics getting lost
somewhere, and they're necessary for the mind to complete the picture of
what you're hearing. Sometimes, what helps is totally counterintuitive:
Turning up the treble.

As far as speaker size, that's not exactly true. If you're able to see
(from
where you're sitting) what electric bassists are using nowadays, you'll
notice they're mostly using arrays of 8", 10" or 12" speakers in smaller
boxes. 15" drivers aren't so popular any more. The goal is to move a
certain
amount of air. It doesn't really matter how you do it.

Geek.

Yeah, but my bass sounds mighty fine. :-) I learned from Phil Lesh's setup
at Watkins Glen.

Those torturing US bastards...
 

"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
Shortwave Sportfishing wrote:
On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 13:30:11 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
Doug Kanter wrote:
"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
How's it sound? When I was in the biz, Bose speakers were mainly
attractive
to guys who wore backwards Caterpillar hats 24x7, and listened to
nothing
but ZZ Top at full volume.
I'm no longer a Bose fan. They're too 'bassy' for me. But, my
hearing is not all that
great, so I need the treble boosted way up.

The only adjustment for bass and treble is on the subwoofer. I'd
never recommend the
set to anyone. But, it will play the Organ symphony loud enough to
get the neighbors
out of bed!
Part of the problem is that most production speakers are built for
moer bass response than is absolutely necessary. Bose speakers are
built with broader frequency response than most production speakers,
so I find that comment interesting.
Crappy ones are. Decent speakers should at least have the potential to
create nice, tightly controlled bass that doesn't sound out of
proportion to the rest of the sound. The problem is that there are too
many lousy salespeople out there. A customer walks into the stereo
store and says "According to Consumer Reports, my brother who's a
shmexpert, or some dice I rolled on my kitchen table, I don't need
more than 20 or 30 watts for my living room". The lousy salesman is
too lazy or dumb to explain reality to the customer, so he yesses the
customer, and another underpowered system goes out the door. Just
enough power to make the woofers move, but nowhere near enough to stop
them tightly. So, they sound fat and puky.

At the store where I worked, part of the interview process was a group
meeting with new candidates. First, we'd try and find out if they
really understood things like damping factor. If not, the next step
was to try and determine if they were spongy enough to absorb and
understand a lot of information really fast. If not, we'd politely
reject them and suggest that they apply at Lechemere or some other big
box store, so they wouldn't pollute any of the other stores like ours.

Bose speakers sound too "bassy"? Bose? If they do, it must be an
artificial electronic kind of bass, because there's nothing
"speakerwise" in those tiny little speakers that can reproduce the low
tones. Bose speakers have to be the biggest scam ever perpetrated on
the low-end audiophile market. Well, wait, there's always that $1200
plastic table radio with CD player Bose is pushing on TV these days.

When you want to shop for speakers, bring along some pipe organ music
on a CD, especially pipe organ music with tones in the low pedal
registers, preferably being played in a cathedral. No cheesy MP3s
recorded at 22,050 Hz, please.

To reproduce really big sound, you need really big speakers. The laws
of physics have not been repealed. You want some old Klipschorns,
Altec-Lansings, or some large electrostatics and a top-drawer subwoofer
with a serious adjustable crossover network. Little speakers=little
sounds.
It's not quite that simple. First of all, there are so many instruments
that make bass, that it's difficult to design any speaker that will
properly reproduce all of them. Just within the category of upright or
electric bass, there are a myriad of sounds to be dealt with. Listen to
a handful of albums with Ron Carter, the jazz acoustic bassist, and
you'll notice that he created lots of different sounds, depending on how
he was playing, and which bass he was using at the time. If the music
required playing in the upper registers of the instrument, a speaker
which makes wonderful low bass (below the open A, for instance) will
often muddy the higher registers, which means it's also going to sound
off with cello, bassoon and a segment of a piano's range.

Then, the mind either helps or hinders what you hear. My bass guitar
cabinet has two 10" speakers, and there's plenty of power behind it, but
in some rooms, it's still challenged because there are harmonics getting
lost somewhere, and they're necessary for the mind to complete the
picture of what you're hearing. Sometimes, what helps is totally
counterintuitive: Turning up the treble.

As far as speaker size, that's not exactly true. If you're able to see
(from where you're sitting) what electric bassists are using nowadays,
you'll notice they're mostly using arrays of 8", 10" or 12" speakers in
smaller boxes. 15" drivers aren't so popular any more. The goal is to
move a certain amount of air. It doesn't really matter how you do it.

Geek.


I suspect Doug listens to music entirely different from 90% of what I
choose. It's easy enough to select some serious music that fully tests the
abilities of sound reproduction equipment to play back almost all of what
you might hear in a live performance, and that is my criteria.

If I had been lucky enough to hear Dennis Brain in a live performance, I
would have expected it to sound very much like the recordings of his I
have, but a bit more spacious and open. I'm not interested in what an
"electronic" horn might sound like.

Live performance in which theatre? With which microphones (if any) assisting
the orchestra? With you sitting where? What time of year (which determines
how much people are wearing, and therefore how much sound they'll absorb)?
Recordings are as close to reality as they can be, but like photographs,
they're subject to interference with the reality.

Those torturing US bastards...
 

"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 13:32:20 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:


"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 12:59:50 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

3) Same jam session: I finished playing, and an excellent 80 year old
pianist who was next on the list to sit in with the house band. He had
just
one problem: He only knew how to play things in C.

Which is exactly my point - C is the easiest key to compose in and the
easiest to build around.

Real skill and creativity is needed to work beyond C which is why I
said what I said.

We have to work around the vocalist and the particular song. Otherwise, we
could accomodate some of these people. Even so, it would be deathly boring
to play everything in the same key. And, some songs need a certain effect
from the bass or the guitar. Maybe the rhythm really needs to have a
certain
note in order to move it along. In one of our songs, it's an open E on the
bass that seems to make the thing work. Nothing else does the trick.

Back in the day when I used to sub as a studio session man in New
Orleans, I learned a lot from one producer who knew this stuff cold.
He could change the whole impact of a song just by a subtle change in
emphasis, or change a bass line here, or guitar chord there - amazing.

Yeah...that's a cool skill. A couple of weeks back, my drummer suggested
that I play two eighth notes instead of a quarter note in a certain spot. It
made a huge difference - a sound that lasts a split second, just 4 times in
the song.