Daniel Htz. Only ones that understand digital vs analog?

[fpitas]

I'm not sure that it isn't worse when someone who knows better starts down the snake oil path.

 

[robwpdx]

I would not, however, call your 'bus effect processing' an example of 'snake oil'. Perhaps it's just a matter of semantics, though. Processors, whether one likes their effects or not, actually do something. So you are paying for an actual sonic artifact.

In my understanding, snake oil product is something marketed as producing a beneficial effect, but which essentially does nothing at all, like cable risers and magic bricks.

Thanks for some good data on classical recording.

I think you may have misunderstood my comment to snake oil was to Levinson's product* specifically.

I would include actively muddling up the sound in snake oil, along with things that do nothing measurable and depend on psychoacoustic effects in the brain. If your definition is only the latter, it is fine to differ, and ASR readers may differ.

I would say ASR follows the philosophy of straight wire with a gain. Occasionally in the reviews, the frequency response of speakers may be touched up with EQ. At home we have available room EQ, often automated.

You understand, but for all readers:

Usually tracking is done without processing. Classical tracking can have many microphones and many microphones are common in film scoring with orchestras. Processing is applied to individual tracks in the mix process. In classical maybe if you have a well isolated timpani track there is a place for processing, or for a voice soloist.

Bus processing (the left and right bus, or all the ATMOS channels) is applied in the mixing and mastering workflow. Bus processing applies to all the tracks in proportion to their mix on that bus.

Then the recording comes into our homes where we listen to it through a straight wire with a gain. I am fundamentally against applying echo (bus processing) in the home, or compression either. I do not say all bus processing in the home is snake oil.

*https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2022013611A1/en?inventor="mark+levinson"&sort=new
(I would also say that some of the EQ gains are below the just noticeable difference and the Q are very broad in the patent)

 

[anmpr1]

I would say ASR follows the philosophy of straight wire with a gain. I am fundamentally against applying echo (bus processing) in the home, or compression either. I do not say all bus processing in the home is snake oil.

I think you are correct about ASR. At least that is my impression.

But practically, unless we are talking about tubes, pretty much everything that is DAC or amp related can be considered straight wire--from a listener's living room experience. Even if imperfections are easy to recognize on a 'scope, from the ear's perspective one really have to search out something special in order to find an amp that will sound horrible, simply based on its poor measured electrical performance (I'm not talking power so much, as THD and other distortions).

For my own part, after taking the on-line Klippel distortion test, I found that my tolerance for detecting distortion was not what I thought it would be--but what I considered to be a poor score was about average, relative to others who took the test.

For loudspeakers it remains pretty subjective, even with all the measurements offered. IMO. So many different tradeoffs. I wish it were easier to A/B a lot of different loudspeakers in one's home (or at a dealer) but it's not, and this poses a problem for the end user. Going with and seeking out the 'best measurement' is not an unreasonable place to start... or to end, if that's all you can practically do. The days of driving around town and visiting five or six dealers, each with five or six different loudspeaker brands to audition, is long gone. And probably never coming back.

As far as additional user defined signal processing? My bottom line is whether the process can be switched out. For example, contrast Bob Carver's erstwhile Sonic Holography device to Polk's SDA array. Evidently both were an attempt to fix what each saw as a problem with stereo imaging, in the living room. But with Carver's box, you could turn it off if you didn't like it. I don't think it was possible with the Polk.

The new Levinson Hertz has some sort of filter or processor to help digits? Can it be switched out like Bob's Digital Time Lens (remember that)? One thing's for sure, Bob gave you his circuit for a lot less than Mark will ever sell his for. On the other hand, I don't think Bob's box gave you better health. So Mark wins on that basis.

PS: One actual problem I have with the 'don't touch the signal' argument, is that recordings vary a lot. I find it most noticeable on jazz oriented music, where recorded low notes (kick drum and string bass--either acoustic or electric) need tonal correction. In my opinion, even within different tracks on the same record, it's never a 'one bass setting fits all' sort of thing. Just because the engineer/producer mixed it that way, doesn't mean I want to listen to it that way. YMMV

 

[robwpdx]

I think you are correct about ASR. At least that is my impression.

But practically, unless we are talking about tubes, pretty much everything that is DAC or amp related can be considered straight wire--from a listener's living room experience. Even if imperfections are easy to recognize on a 'scope, from the ear's perspective one really have to search out something special in order to find an amp that will sound horrible, simply based on its poor measured electrical performance (I'm not talking power so much, as THD and other distortions).

For my own part, after taking the on-line Klippel distortion test, I found that my tolerance for detecting distortion was not what I thought it would be--but what I considered to be a poor score was about average, relative to others who took the test.

For loudspeakers it remains pretty subjective, even with all the measurements offered. IMO. So many different tradeoffs. I wish it were easier to A/B a lot of different loudspeakers in one's home (or at a dealer) but it's not, and this poses a problem for the end user. Going with and seeking out the 'best measurement' is not an unreasonable place to start... or to end, if that's all you can practically do. The days of driving around town and visiting five or six dealers, each with five or six different loudspeaker brands to audition, is long gone. And probably never coming back.

As far as additional user defined signal processing? My bottom line is whether the process can be switched out. For example, contrast Bob Carver's erstwhile Sonic Holography device to Polk's SDA array. Evidently both were an attempt to fix what each saw as a problem with stereo imaging, in the living room. But with Carver's box, you could turn it off if you didn't like it. I don't think it was possible with the Polk.

The new Levinson Hertz has some sort of filter or processor to help digits? Can it be switched out like Bob's Digital Time Lens (remember that)? One thing's for sure, Bob gave you his circuit for a lot less than Mark will ever sell his for. On the other hand, I don't think Bob's box gave you better health. So Mark wins on that basis.

PS: One actual problem I have with the 'don't touch the signal' argument, is that recordings vary a lot. I find it most noticeable on jazz oriented music, where recorded low notes (kick drum and string bass--either acoustic or electric) need tonal correction. In my opinion, even within different tracks on the same record, it's never a 'one bass setting fits all' sort of thing. Just because the engineer/producer mixed it that way, doesn't mean I want to listen to it that way. YMMV

Thanks. ASR is a very good discussion platform with a lot of knowledge.

I would say in the professional recording world we are getting plugins that combine EQ and compression - multi-band dynamics. The company FabFilter is an example.

So today, with a multi-channel interface on a real time digital audio workstation (DAW) software platform in a home playback signal chain, it would be possible to experiment with at-home bus processing on your drum example. The displays on the plugins can play a role in ear training.

DAW software is cheap to free. Today you can get most professional audio software free for a 30 day trial. The curious could even experiment with echo plugins!

 

[JRS]

The Cello Amati was (FWIW) fundamentally ML's take on the (arguably) venerable -- and inarguably hard to drive -- AR-LST loudspeaker.

(random internet photo of a refoamed AR-LST)

AR also had a bargain-basement version of the LST called the AR-MST. These are pretty uncommon, as best I can tell.

AR-MST

I owned 2 pairs of AR-MST loudspeaker. My MST is the earlier model. The speaker box contained 4 units tweeters and 8 inches woofer. I learn some MST information from this forum. AR discovered that the earlier MST model have technical problem occured. For example, impendance issue. They released a...

community.classicspeakerpages.net

(two AR-MST in the rando internet photo above)
Somewhat inexplicably, there's a pair of AR-MSTs in my basement.

As a completely whacked aside , Henry Kloss's KLH had a somewhat similar loudspeaker design, at least briefly.

(KLH 28 -- another random internet photo)

There was also the AR-LST2 which is to the LST as the AR5 is to the 3A. (10" woofer vs 12, otherwise the same except cab size). The LST stood for laboratory standard transducer--and though good for the time, never quite lived up to that description. The tweeters, in spite of the vaunted ferrofluid still had a penchant for frying--at least in my hands, where I could now fry three at a time vs one.

 

[JRS]

Yes, totally over-engineered. Like the hotch-potch of different resistors, which as any audiophile knows really should not be off the shelf commercial components, like the Vishay Dales that quite a few of those seem to be.

The Palette was a graphic EQ (I know the horrors!) adjustable in 0.1 dB increments with full throw being something like +/-2dB IIRC. Hence the resistors. The product was so against the audiophile grain, I am surprised it was ever produced, much less garnered a good review at Stereophile.

 

[JRS]

LOL. Everybody with technical intellectual capability can understand digital and analog. It was Heinrich Hertz who found analog radio wave transmission.

Yes but are those radio waves really waves? Or ghostly manifestations of fundamentally discrete processes? I suspect all those CAT references speak to some particle wave duality that ML is on to.

 

[Pearljam5000]

Does it make sense ?

 

[FrantzM]

Does it make sense ?

You know better

 

[Pearljam5000]

You know better

Lol
But he says it's objective and not subjective and can be measured
So that's why I asked

 

[Berwhale]

 

[Cbdb2]

Does it make sense ?

Didn't know he was that stupid.

 

[thewas]

Harman/Samsung has now an issue using his name as a brand...

 

[voodooless]

Does it make sense ?

Queuing Monty video in.. 3…2…1

 

[darrellc]

Here is the medical device/software (Avatar is the specific EAV device referred to in the Daniel Hertz whitepaper on their website) used to generate his claims of improved health from listening to analog (or of course his cwave processed digital) vs digital music.

Quack "Electrodiagnostic" Devices | Quackwatch

Thousands of practitioners use "electrodiagnostic" devices to help select their recommended treatment. Many claim to determine the cause of any di ...

quackwatch.org

 

[anmpr1]

Harman/Samsung has now an issue using his name as a brand...

Harman doesn't care. Probably the folks in charge aren't even that aware of what 'the man' is up to. I'm sure both Mark and his history have been lost in the Samsung (or whoever owns the place, nowadays) corridors. For sure the Levinson name still has value among a certain demographic, and if anything is important that's what remains meaningful for them.

The thing with Mark was always hubris. You could see it not only with the company's name, a name no one had heard of when he began selling his LNP-2, but especially after he made the decision that he didn't want to share the limelight with John Curl, changing the very name of that product. [To be fair, maybe the insides were so reworked that it no longer had any electrical relationship to the original.]

Important figures like Saul Marantz and David Hafler had the good sense not to use their first name on the front panel. That more than less disassociated them from their companies. It was less personal, you could argue. Few today probably even know (or care) there was a Saul Marantz, and David Hafler is relegated to audio history since nothing of his legacy remains, except on the second hand market, and most of that is via his never going to die Dynaco gear.

Probably Mark would be better to eschew 'tech' explanations, and just concentrate on his brand of magical madness. I mean a 'health' angle? For hi-fi gear? We all want to be healthy, but how is neurosis ever healthy?

One thing you can say, Mark's been pretty consistent. It's been brought up before, but during his storefront Red Rose iteration he had the idea of selling refurbished Nakamichi 1000 tape decks as an 'antidote' to digital poisoning. The idea was to bundle high priced cassette transfers of his 30ips 'modified' Studer A80 master tapes. I don't think anything ever came of that, and in any case RR soon went south.

 

[Mnyb]

There been something wrong all the time . Why invent extremely expensive preamps without preamp functionality in the first place ?

 

[anmpr1]

There been something wrong all the time . Why invent extremely expensive preamps without preamp functionality in the first place ?

His first product, the LNP-2, had a lot of features, as did his Cello front end. Most of the MLAS stuff was minimalist, highlighted by the ML-6a which had a gain control and a two inputs..., and you needed two for stereo. I guess it just depended upon Mark's mood at the time, and what he thought he could sell, along with what Peter Aczel and the rest were willing to shill (a situation Aczel later came to regret ever getting involved with).