From Analog Planet
Guess it isn’t too late for Halloween humor :-0
… and it just keeps snowing and snowing…
About 10 inches here so far, but really fluffy, like cotton candy. 🙂
[and Neli is huddled under the covers hoping it will all just go away :-/ ]
This one of three posts on Ear Caressing Sound, Body Caressing Sound and Soul Caressing Sound.
These are hard to describe, but we’ll give it a go. Of the three, I’ve found Ear Caressing to be the most rare, Body Caressing less so, and Soul Caressing the most often experienced of the three. But YMMV.
Ear caressing is partly a physical sensation and partly a sonic effect.
It occurs when the ears are buffeted by sound in such a way that it feels almost like someone is whispering in both your ears at the same time [or nearly the same time. The different arrival time of the caresses is not disturbing at all, but kind of playful, and much like waves in a swimming pool as they splash the sides of the pool – it feels like the caresses are part of a physical whole that is very organic in shape. Now that I think about it, it is very like having your ears slightly underwater near the edge of a pool, and the feeling of the water kind of ‘splashing the ears’ in a random, but very natural, rhythm].
It is this extremely intimate, very human, warm, perfectly natural feeling. As if there is a person whispering to you and it is your loving parent, spouse or lover.
You feel their ‘breath’ as ‘they’ speak to you, but their words are the music you are listening to.
It is kind of like a headphone effect if headphones could move that much air.
This has happened to me only a handful of times, and fairly recently at that – or perhaps it’s uniqueness has just not called attention to itself until recently.
If fact, it has only happened with the Acapella Atlas horn speakers, and only when they are setup a certain way. They are very close to being setup that way now, but not quite. I am not sure that Neli or Kevin heard this effect – and during setup all I have been able to do is mumble incoherently something like ‘Wait I think this position is interesting’ before they all talk about how one speaker ‘looks’ like it is too close, or pointing out instead of of in, or all the other hallucinations involving speakers in the uneven mostly octagonal-shaped room late at night.
I do not know what event or combination of circumstances have allowed me to experience Ear Caressing now.
Perhaps:
1. It requires horn speakers and their ability to create distinctive dynamic waves of sound and we haven’t had horn speakers here for 10 years or so
2. It has something to do with the shape of each of our ears and how they uniquely capture and guide sound waves into the ear canal – and I was just lucky that my particular ears interfaced this way with a particular setup position of these particular speakers.
3. We had the speakers setup here to within a fraction of an inch of where they are supposed to be, and that we rarely get this lucky where the speakers are setup so perfectly
4. It just didn’t ‘click’ that this ‘effect’ was an effect worth distinguishing from other ‘effects’. Certainly I know I have experienced Body Caressing Sound many times before, but did not think to identify is as something kind of unique until after I had thought about and called out Ear Caressing as a particular effect that could be discussed and … pursued.
And I *do* want to pursue this effect.
Sometimes it is a lot like our Mother whispering into our ears that they love us, when we were very, very little and trusting and could still believe that someone could really love us THAT much. More often it is like she is whispering a fantastic tale, her warm breath gently playing on our young ears, in such a way that we could not help but believe that the story was true.
There is something about this kind of sound that gets around our usual defenses and cynical calculations and automatic emotional responses – to go right directly to the heart of us.
But I won’t be able to pursue it unless I can convince Neli that it actually exists [not an easy task will that be :-)]. Hmmmm…..
CES Asia is CES trying to branch out from its currently one-a-year shindig in Las Vegas each January.
Sure, why not?
But CES Asia 2015 is going to be in Shanghai on Monday, May 25 – Wednesday, May 27, 2015
But the Munich show, Munich High End, is on May 14 – May 17, 2015
Choose one option below:
a) CES is trying to take thunder [exhibitors] away from Munich, because they see Munich as a threat?
b) CES does not care about high performance audio and so do not care if exhibitors can make it to their show or not?
c) CES did not know there was a Munich show at almost the same time as their show
d) CES figures China is so important to business these days, it does not matter what other shows exist at all, they will all go to CES Asia 2015
e) is there an e) ?
I am going to cheat and say b), c) and d). But a) is funny, so I had to add it in [I mean, it would be great if a) were true, but… ]
In any case, I imagine this may cause some angst for some manufacturers. Which show… which show…
I would say Munich – it is our hobby’s premier show on the world stage – certainly until CES shows some significant support for high-end audio, high performance audio part of their new trade show / conference.
Or I could say CES Asia, because lets say you are the only high-end audio booth; depending on how many people attend the show, this could be an awesome amount of exposure in what appears to be a market hungry for high-end audio gear.
Decisions decisions…
The Rational Audiophile, another audio blog to add to the Audiophile’s Guide page for high-end audio magazines on the internet.
The Rational Audiophile talks about the intersection of science and high-end audio.
I don’t always agree with what he says – but I don’t disagree either. His ideas are presented in a relatively succinct and well-thought out manner which in the end hopefully prompts us to reflect on what we think ourselves about the matter at hand.
Actually, it is weird. I agree with the vast majority of his conclusions, but find it extremely interesting how he reaches those conclusions. He take different routes than we do to reach the same conclusions. And they all seem quite logical, just different, which is ‘fascinating, Captain’ [as Spok might say].
Anyway, I enjoyed reading it.
Audio Note Soro Phono SE Integrated Amp open chassis photos.
Been awhile since we posted photos of the innards of something. Its guts. Out there for the whole world to see.
🙂
Sure is a heckuva lot of ‘stuff’ in this box.
This Soro PhonoSE has been in the storage unit for-ev-er. It is sounding way, way better than it ought to [at its $6500 or so price] downstairs on the little Audio Note AN/E Spe HE speakers.
Its kind of freaking people out 🙂
This integrated amplifier outputs about 18 watts per channel.
Emm Labs MTRX Amps LIVE – and we are already learning a lot about music, sound and what we have been missing.
We all know solid-state amps have lots of power – but typically sound not so much like music but like ‘hifi’.
Well, we already learned one reason why that is…
Who knew solid-state amps were so sloppy with the sound, petering out on notes all the time, making what now sound like half-hearted attempts at each note – some attempts getting closer to where the note is supposed to be, some fumbled all together..
And those background notes! Geez.
Not anymore.
Until you hear it, it is hard to believe.
We’ll have a lot more to say, and about how the 93dB Acapella Atlas speakers, with 2 10in woofers and one isobaric 10in woofer, can tell us some things right away about these amps.
Previously we had on the Atlas speakers an older pair of Edge amps, 200 watts, and to our ears one of the best solid-state amps made [probably worth $50K to $60K in today’s inflated market if that company still existed and did some marketing and hadn’t keep shooting themselves in the foot. You can get this old pair for $8K here. These are WAY better than most of your $120K amps that have been all the fad lately, in our opinion, with more resolution, micro-dynamics, linearity, etc. but somewhat less bass slam].
Currently playing: the famous $25K Emm Labs XDS1 CD / SACD player, the legendary $130K Audio Note M9 Phono preamplifier [lots sold, but have NEVER seen one on the used market], the $130K Emm Labs 750 watts/channel amps, and the $99K Acapella Atlas speakers with ION tweeter [our demos need a new home before CES]. Mostly Nordost Odin cables and power cords. HRS SXR equipment rack. Oh, and Kimber Model 10 PowerKords on the amps.
Radiohead – In Rainbows
Can hear amps warming up minute by minute
Kings College Choir – Nelson Mass
Voices much more distinct and legible [we’ve heard this CD on a LOT of different systems, some quite good]. Hear more emotion and modulation and the power of the lead vocal’s voice.
Radiohead – Kid A
More complex and innovative than In Rainbows. The MTRX really showed how this album is a spectacle of sound . Massive amounts of separation – can hear Everything. Changes in tone more accurate a the amps were able to keep up with all the weird changes. The cacophony near the end of track 3 was actually understandable as about 5 to 7 different ‘instruments’ making sound at the same time [some purposely obnoxious. You know. Radiohead.]
Amps still warming up. Been on about 4 hours. With only about 150 hours on them, they still need breaking in as well.
Silly me, but you know how you hear a song on the car radio, and then go home to hear it on your system – you know, to hear what it REALLY sounds like? This is like that, except all over again.
Ha! You think I exaggerate.
…..
All significantly better systems make you want to hear this album on it, and that album…
… but here there is so much more accuracy, so much more information [because the amp does not allow the speaker to slack off on any of the sound, which tends to muddy things up a lot, and which obscures lots of what we hear, ordinarily] … it really is a case of ‘great sound’ [which we had before with some of the best solid-state amps around] or ‘great sound with none of the music removed’ [of which there is, apparently, a LOT.], and which is what, with the MTRX, we are hearing now.
A lot more later… and over the forthcoming days and weeks.
Today it is all about Treats. Audiophile Treats. This Halloween morning.
Very sunny. Good ole Boulder is coming through.
About to hook up the Emm Labs MTRX 750 watt/channel amps up to the Acapella Atlas speakers. The Emm Labs XDS1 CD player into the Audio Note M9 as source.
Then… Radiohead. 🙂 [followed by music from just about every genre under the sun]
Tick-tock-tick-tock…
Streaming is doing to downloads what downloads did to CDs, which is make the media harder to find and the gear that plays them harder to find and more expensive.
Yeah, we are still keeping our CDs around, and maybe a lot of audiophiles will keep their downloads around, but…
Should audiophiles stop investing in downloads and music servers? Or will we have another niche economy where we collect downloads and machines to store and play them back for the next 100 years, like vinyl?
And what is it with media coming and going so quickly these days? Remember Blu-ray [Sony has stopped producing this, their own format]? DVD-Audio?
This looking at the abyss as downloads and CDs fade into obscurity for the majority of the human race makes this a bit scary for those of us with many $1000s invested and for companies whose product lines depend heavily on these media. So scary that this becomes the third in our special ‘Halloween Series’ posts.
Streaming is Up (source: PandoDaily):
And Downloads are down 13% to 15%. Similar to the decline in CD sales in the early to mid 2000s.
Streamed albums should exceed CD album sales sometime in 2014:
Q1 2014 At-A-Glance |
|
| Digital sales (albums + TEA) | Down 13.3% |
| Interactive streaming | 34.28 billion streams (vs. 25.44 in Q1 2013) |
| Interactive streaming rate | $0.005 (vs. $0.00375 in 2013) |
| Streaming equivalent albums | 22.85 million |
| CD sales | 31.9 million scanned (vs. 40.1 million in Q1 2013) |
| Number of tracks > 1M scans | 16 (vs. 15 in Q1 2013) |
| Electronica | 2.7% increase in sales |
| Classical | 33.3% decrease in sales |
| Pop | 28.6% decrease in sales |
Yay, Electronica! Ouch, Classical. Pop? Eh.
A lot of more great information at this link: Billboard.com : Nielsen’s Q1 numbers
We talked about how streaming will win the media delivery wars and problems like their being no ‘used market’ with streams, so no one can get top quality music at bargain pre-loved prices. On the other hand, if it just costs a few cents to listen to an album, this will drive prices of Downloads and CD down, down, down unless people really want to put the things on ‘repeat’ [like, uh, we do sometimes here :-)] and won’t want to pay 50 cents an hour, $12/day for the delicious pleasure of hearing:
Kruder & Dorfmeister
over and over..
“23% of music streamers used to buy more than one album a month but no longer do so. Download sales are affected most and will continue to feel the pinch with 45% of all music downloaders also music streamers.
Thus although streaming and subscriptions will grow by 238% on 2013 levels to reach $8 billion in 2019, download revenue will decline by 39% – only five percent less than the rate at which CD revenues will fall – leaving streaming and subscriptions representing 70% of all digital revenue.”
Much of this is attributed to the fact that the “first wave” of subscribers to streaming services like Spotify are/were among the most valuable iTunes downloaders.
In the age of streaming, downloading has just become an inconvenience.
From AltPress
From the Music Industry Blog.
Unfortunately, while this is great for music lovers, it is unclear how music artists (musicians) will survive all this: What the Numbers Tell Us About Streaming in 2014
It seems to us that it is best to hedge our bets; the audiophile community could even move enmass to back to vinyl [some certainly think this is happening now, based on the steadily dramatic increase in vinyl sales], or to streaming, like everyone else.
For now, pity the poor manufacturers, who have to support Vinyl, CDs, Downloads and now Streaming. Yeah, I realize that some components, like DACs with a lot of interfaces, span multiple categories. Just relax and go with the flow here. Manufacturers have to be really good at reading tea leaves to figure out that next month triple wireless DSD will be the hot must-have feature next month… but only for a month.
