Thanks for your kindness noromance...
I am pleased to recognize your avatar...
My very best to you...
( it was a bad period but it is better)
mahgister I just noticed you're back. Great to see you, and wonderful that nothing sad or bad happened.
Best Forum to hear experienced audiophiles exchange thoughts?
I don't want to say I have outgrown this site but I do know
I want more.
There are many other sites but where are the forums where people
talk about new gear? What's Best is terrible to try to maneuver thru.
Others??
Best,
Showing 17 responses by mahgister
Thanks for your patience and kindness... I am retired, 72 years old, without the friendship of the students, then i like all people here as friends and i like discussing about any matter...Audio and music is my passion... I only tried to be useful with few simple advices like the importance of acoustic over marketing reviews... Etc... I go often in the jazz and classical music section... In the other thread i gave my informed or uninformed opinion hoping to discuss, in a soft or hard way but always more friendly than not... English is not my first language and i never learned it by speaking it... I read books in philosophy and science in English but not many poets alas! Then my vocabulary is limited and my syntax not very fluid... I wish i could write as the marvellous George Santayana who wrote English so well, i even forgot the thread of the ideas sometimes, amazed by each sentence, to be immersed in his musical rhetorical almost poetical argument weaving...But i never will be... I wish i could read the great William Blake easily in english, his rude hard wrought prose or rhymes or stances inspired me but without any hope for my English improving mastery ... I studied linguistic but with no hope to be a gifted polyglot as the great Richard Burton was in mastering languages in 48 different one... And unlike William Jame Sidis who learned hundred of them , beginning Latin under 4 years old and knowing French his favorite language already , and learning Greek alone at six in hiding to surprize his father for his birthday, i am not gifted at all... 😊
I am grateful for everyone patient understanding... My very best to you...
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You are so kind to me. i must thank you and wish you the better... I miss you and many others... Thanks
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The worst forum i ever encountered, and i tried three or four times on a 8 years time, arbitrary applications of rules, gang like behaviour, financial evident interest for some company, same few ego driven "star", guru/disciples relationship ... etc :) Ignorance in acoustic and cult of brand name as in many audiophile circle for sure but with their prefered brandname to sell ...Annoying.. I dont go in forums so much to answer technical questions, most of the time i received answer talking wisely with any reasearch motor like Google ... Nobody explain me acoustic on any forum, i was in the obligation to read scientific articles more that reading threads...But in this forum for example a friend give me advice about springs for example to control vibrations and for sure this was helping.... But thats all , the research was mine to do the job...I prefer the friend who give me the information to the information itself for sure... I come here to discuss music and sound with other friendly people... The human part matter way more than any peculiar specific information... At the end... These audio forums are necessary to encounter some other humans for me with interest in sound and music and other matters too why not? ... The necessary audio Information i can look for it without any forums anyway ...I consider all people here as potential friends, even if we discussed "hard".... I dislike forums who pretend to be only and mainly informative, only "scientific" or only "subjective" i dont need them, save for a special peculiar question about a scientific fact in audio or about a brand i want to buy , one time or two in all my life... i like people not information... I prefer books to forums for information... Most people on any audio forum dont even know what "timbre" is and how to modify it in a room ...Why asking ? And it is impossible to explain because it is very complex to do and differ from one speakers/room to another one anyway... I dont need information at all i need friends to spoke with... Information which is given between two friends is only a + not the main part at all most of the times... Anyway i am in sonic heaven more than ever and even any upgrade seems useless because of the price to do it (20,000 dollars) , i will never need any more information; :) Then i come for friends i dont need information... I need the "name" of the friends i recognized and learned to know and discuss with , with time passing...Even if we disagree...
«When my wife inform me , i know the ends is near" -Groucho Marx 🤓
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The problem of this headphone is the hybridation between the two cells dynamical and electroacoustical that ask for a steady amount of power on demand but also an amplifier with a very low noise floor : my Sansui alpha Au 607i fit the bill in a way my Sansui AU 7700 could not...This headphone is sensible to electrical noise more than all my 9 others one... But the source must be the more clean possible, i used a battery dap as a FIXED dac and as a bank for my thousand of lossless musical files ...No more noisy computer bank because this headphone dont want noise at all... :) And i needed equalization too , ( in my room i used mechanical equalization but here i must use an electronical equalizer... I dont play with it i used it and fine tuned it by ears for weeks of listenings experiments and after that thats all and all stay that forever) because it is necessary to optimize the two cells the dynamical in the bass register under 4000 hertz and the higher frequencies over to reach optimal S.Q. ... The K340 is a true hybrid in a way the Dharma headphone for example is not, the second cell of the Dharma is a mere super tweeter addition working way over the 4000 hertz of the K340, in the 12,000 hertz if my memory is good, ... And there is NO TUNED RESONATORS GRID inside the shell of the Dharma to create a dual acoustic chamber as in the K340 case...Then one of the only hybrid contender to the K340 is no match at all even if i never listened to it , i dont need to anyway... The array of tuned resonators is the KEY to the S.Q. of the K340 not only the specific modality of the hybrid cells which work equally together and in a specialized way from half the way of the frequencies scale with a cross over transformer inside... The shell dual chamber need the right pads with the right thickness ( i tried 5 different ) because with the wrong pad the VOLUME of the dual acoustic internal chamber is not optimal...And without punctuated pads the soundfield is not balanced... All my headphones were damped and i used two different materials inside to control resonance : sorbothane duro 70 and FoQ Ta 102 tape....The plastic grid inside the K340 must be cut off because AKG put it there only for protection of their product not at all for acoustic reason... I used my "golden plate" ( shungite+copper tape) to filter the RMI and EMI from the amplifier... With many crystals as quartz and tourmaline etc ( here you can laugh i dont mind) I even use Schumann generators and ionizer but the effect is there but way less spectacular than in my acoustic room ... It takes all that to reach the potential of this vintage headphone, i paid 100 bucks, and which put any headphone i ever listen to, dynamical, -planar or electroacoustic to shame... They create an holographical soundfield which is completely out of the head natural and speaker like completely... It is a miracle who cured me for the lost of my room... The only way to upgrade my actual system, will cost me around 20,000 bucks.... I will buy the Choueri BACCH filters dac to improve over my actual basic but very good dac ( dac technology is mature now and good dac may cost peanuts) ... As Dr. Gorike the acoustician physicist who created the K340, Dr. Choeri is a physicist of -plasma working acoustic as a hobby and being a genius he created the ULTIMATE acoustic dac... I will not described why here... And to replace the Top Sansui alpha only the Berning ZOTL tube amplifier will be better and i dont even need to listen to any of these two upgrade before buying them... Dr. Berrning is also a physicist not an engineer who design am,plifier tubes with a complete new technology as a hobby... As you see i trust physicists in Audio they are not there to sell but to invent something new... ... But i dont need these upgrades; so much happy i am with what i own right now, which total cost is 600 US dollars for the best audiophile system i listened to in my life ... I can die now... But if you had 20 000 Us dollars as a gift for me i will upgrade because i am curious to add Dr. Choueri invention and Dr. Berning genius design to Dr. Gorike K340 unique genius headphone technology... :)
«Truth is a science today who battle for his survival tomorrow» - Groucho Marx 🤓
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By the way, i tried and did go on many forums. but the best ever is audiogon, for the human dimension...In some forums "tweakers" are not welcome, in some others they are bent to sell products mainly and dont like too much criticism about some products even in an indirect way ... In many forums the human discussion is not as free and interesting as here , it is one of the best... |
Thanks for your kind thoughts about me... I was not well but now it is very good... I sold my house and the ordeal was very hard on me... No acoustic room.... but a benediction in disguise, now i regret not my research around the AKG k340 headphone, one of the more complex and best designed headphone ever on the ratio Price/sound quality... I did not even see your thread because i lost my password here and being ill and in a turmoil with no audio room i was not motivated at all to try to reenter here ...And even now i am not sure i will be able to reenter with my password when i will close the computer... my computer did not close for the last 24 hours...It is the reason why i am here... I must ask for my password each time i come and i dont know why...
Now i wanted to come back because it is different my health is good and my system is even better than in the past with my room because the headphone goes under 30 hertz and go beyond the higher frequencies of my past Mission Cyrus speakers and no acoustic control can replace that....Thanks to Dr. Gorike patent for the K340...Becauase of his acoustic tuned resonators the soundfield is speaker like and out of the head...But i needed to figure out how to modify them , anti- vibrations two different products and cutting off the internal obstructive grid... I even go beyond my beloved Sansui AU 7700 for an improved more powerful and cleaness Sansui AU 607i... The K340 are the hardest headphone to drive and not only because they are hungry ... The difficulty to create a working hybrid is so great and costly, i spoke to Kennerton headphone in Russia and they candidly said to me that they tried to create a hibryd headphone for years but it is too complex to do right et too costly... AKG for these reason never improved the K340 and did not enter in a new hibryd race ever even if this K340 was their flagship for some years and trust me it is a good headphone ... It is an unrecognized marvel...
I am in heaven ... But it takes me 6 months to figure out how to drive them... :) I do not recommend this headphone to the average beginners at all... All negative reviews on the net comes from reviewer who put them out of the bag and connect them and listen to them few hours... I experimented all their negative first impressions in the beginning but i figured out why their impressions was not a true description of the real K340 potential at all but reflected their complete non- understanding of what is a true hybrid headphone and how to improve the dual shell/chamber where the tuned resonators acted the same way the Helmholtz resonators i used worked in my room... Most reviewers are most of the times useless...They sell products one after the other... Acoustic is more helpful... For me at least... My enthusiasm for audio and music is then there again more than ever...Even with no acoustic room... ( it takes me 2 years to tune my room by the way then i was sad when i closed it definitively because my big house must be sold )
I am vey glad to speak to you again and i hope you had been healthy and will be...
My best to you my friend...
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You are absolutely right.... I missed everyone here in the last 10 months... These forums are not only there for clinical information but for discussion in general... We can only appreciate people with which we discuss...Anyway my system is good enough now, and i dont plan to upgrade at all...The advice i can give or receive are only cherries on the cake of socialization with friends...By the way i loved EVERYONE especially those with whom i disagree in the past...But being imperfect i never stop if i can object ... :)
My best to you edcyn
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The "rosetta stone" for the audio vocabulary is in acoustic concepts and listening acoustic experiments... It is there i discovered it for myself...Not at all reading audiophile reviews but more in acoustic books... For example :
A good example for the vocabulary problem is the soundfield of specific recorded source as perceived in the virtual psycho-acoustic space of a room or the psycho-acoustic space perceived from the shell/ cup of an headphone...
I never read a review where the THREE components of the soundfield of the recorded albums are described completely as such :
---Timbre...
---Distortion...
---Immersiveness...
And the three components of the soundfield immersiveness:
---Imaging differentiation of each sound source ...
---Soundstaging global size dimensions of all sound sources together ...
---Holographical ratio between the recorded sound source (ASW) and the recorded listener envelopment (LV) , it is more here about the size dimension of the musical instrument themselves and the perceived spatial VOLUME of each chord in his own space; it is not about their differentiation "per se" or the size dimension of the recorded global stage, but about the way the recording is translated by your brain/ears , translated through the speakers or headphone by a specific volume size for each playing instruments ...
Observe that most of these concepts are acoustical one and not ONLY mere audiophile vocabulary...For example the ASW/LV is a specific acoustic ratio in room acoustic ... i discovered it reading acoustic articles not audiophile reviews at the times where i tune my room mechanical equalizer made on one hundred Helmholtz resonators.. The location of the resonators and not only their absorbtion /diffusive frequencies ratio matter to reach immersiveness and in particular this aspect of immersiveness, the more important one, i called holographical ratio : ASW/LV
If your system is right/wrong acoustically you will feel for example the recorded holographical ratio as intended from your headphones or from your speakers as they can do it by virtue of their acoustic content and properties coming from the specific relation between the drivers properties and the room or shells ...
Now a test : Look for all reviews of headphones anywhere, and cite one where the holographical ratio is described? Good luck... :) Audiophile reviewers never spoke about it or so rarely i dont remember one... ( i only use my AKG K340 now because i go in a smaller house with no space for an acoustic dedicated room as i tuned it myself in my last home )
This ratio is recording dependant, for example chorus recorded in a church generally dont exhibit this ratio the same way a jazz trio did playing and recorded in a small studio.... The recording space in my headphone may be more "out of my Head" partially or completely as if the chorus was there in my room ( not in my head at all ) ... With the jazz trio recording often the soundfield will be "outside of my head" only partially but more "around my head" than "inside my head" but not filling my room as the church chorus did...
With speakers, the soundfield holographical ratio will present different immersive experience: the church recorded chorus may be completely detached from the speakers, extending behind them and/or around me, it is recording dependant,
and with the small jazz trio recorded studio, the soundfield may be more for some part behind the speakers and for some part in front of them , it is microphone dependant for sure and it is dependant of my room acoustic translation ....
This immersiveness is very difficult to reach with speakers in a non dedicated ordinary room.... It is more easier to reach in a dedicated acoustic room....But with headphones this immersiveness we feel with speakers in a good acoustic room, is more difficult to reach, more difficult to reach with headphone than with speakers if possible, why? Most of the times the soundfield is between our ears and in our head not "out of our head" be it completely out or around the head, not merely inside the head , with a perceived volume impression for each instruments chords... Here the acoustic design of the shell and his relation to the driver(s) is the key, and most ordinary headphones , sorry, are not well designed...
Because for the headphones driver the shells/cups chamber are like the room is for the speakers drivers; it is the space content of this two rooms ( the room where are located your speakers and the shells of headphone) and their acoustic properties that make possible the immersiveness experience....
Now read all headphone reviews attentively, you will never read anything directly describing this immersiveness in details... most of the time they spoke about the soundstage only or/ and the imaging...Moast reviewers wrote about bass mids, and highs larger paragraphs... Which is preposterous for me because the TIMBRE acoustic is not an external sums of these three factors, but an internal perceived ONE experience... Is the piano recording translation right about timbre ? i dont want to know if the headphone had more bass or less than some other headphone X, i want to know if the headphone is able to give an organ bass note which will be felt by my body by skeltal resonance or not ?
People having no musical timbre experience nor any acoustic experience go for marketing brand publicity : this headpghone had more bass and less fatiguing highs than this other headphone... This is completely useless, because the difference between two headphones in soundstage, imaging, bass, mids and highs, between headphone X and headphone Z are not enough to give you the real acoustic experience for any other headphone .... Immersiveness three factors especially the third one, the holograpghical ratio, and the timbre experience are the KEY....And these two factors are the less well described in headphones reviews...
The reason is simple : most headphone are not well designed enough to give a clear immersiveness experience...( Because generally headphones are one single driver attached to an empty shell with no acoustic device or content inside )
It is the same thing for the speakers, but for different reasons than only the design box itself, most speakers need a specific passive acoustic treatment and an active acoustic mechanical control of their dedicated room to achieve complete immersiveness and good timbre and their optimal acoustic potential ...
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my deep salutation to hilde45 who did not loose the habit to be spot on...
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I just remember how to make quote.. :) you use the mark » above... I have no idea what you spoke about ... I just came back today ... And i lost my password here 10 months ago,i loose even my mail adress for a while, and anyway i was ill,not in the mood to discuss here, and in the process of preparing my move to another house, very complicated business , then without my speakers/room to add to my sadness ... It was anyway a benediction in disguise, because i discovered probably the best designed headphone ever made... Now i enjoy a minimalistic system which give me the best sound quality i ever heard, speakers or headphones... Then i am in sonic heaven and no more sad for the lost of my speakers/room... And to answer those who will say why did you claim that this AKG K 340 was one of the best design ever made, i discuss with a Russian headphone designer, and they say that they did not succeed to create a hibryd headphone as the K340, too hard and too costlyv to design it right... That speak volume... |
Welcome back, my friend. : ) Not sure if you read that thread someone started about you ... that some dip***t wound up getting deleted ... hopefully you did, because I think it made it abundantly clear that you were pretty dearly missed.
It seems i dont remember how to import a quote here... :) How did you import a quote?
Thanks for your kind words.... |
I come back after 10 months ...( health problem and a new house then no more acoustic room going back reluctantly to headphone but happy ending described in my new thread : going back to headphone ) I missed the human dimension discussions... For knowledge i learned a lot in these threads discussions... This forum is like real life, good and bad, but good exceed bad at least for me..,. My deepest salutations to all people here ... I missed everybody.... |