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Maybe not the fault of the recording engineers who want to preserve the dynamics, but perhaps more so the label execs and the need for loudness, hence the loudness wars. On some CDs that I listened to casually, it sounded 'acceptable' - the parts of the piece that should be loud is...

In the early '90s while driving back to SoCal at night, I was listening to an unknown AM radio show that asked listeners to call in and tell everyone how they use duct tape. Many users provided original, helpful, useful, and sometimes amusing suggestions. Then came a caller who said that she...

Didn't see the one this year. Saw the one in 2017, in Salem, OR. There were wildfires south of there, but no smoke anywhere near Salem. Many people were at the capitol building grounds. Got lucky by going to the top level of a shopping mall parking structure, which offered virtually...

W9TR, have you ever listened to your Fs using a wire across the fuse holders? It sounds very different. Even different fuses (or wires) will sound different.

Cleaning ears should help a lot, if you have more than usual amount of wax. Best to have ENT do it. If you want to clean your own ears, follow proper procedures from the ENT. A few of caveats I got over the years are use an ear wax softener first, the use clean warm water (not hot and not...

Didn't know that. Tried to find it and also cannot.

Putty drying out was first told to me by a dealer who sold Ohm speakers. When new, the putty is like modeling clay in consistency. Mine dried out, and was hard to the touch. I didn't know the properties of the putty or internal foam in order to replace it with what Ohm used. Unless one has...

Ohm F speakers had been repaired by Ohm Acoustics up until around 1987, when their last craftsperson retired, I was told. Inside the cone, the 'putty' on the titanium part of the cone dries out and alters the performance. The foam on the aluminum section of the cone deteriorates and flakes off...

First encountered OHM at a store in SoCal - speaker was a prototype, Ohm A, photo only, in 1972. Heard a prototype pair at a friend's house. Amazing sound I ever heard from a speaker, more natural sound than typical 'expensive' speakers then. Unfortunately, out of reach for a student. Later, the...

Got it too. Probably sent to Ohm's customer contact list, and more. His News and Views column was concise, on-point, easy to understand, and provided a practical viewpoint that was above the audiophile noise, while clearly demonstrating his technical depth through a conversational approach...

stop your conversation at a party and suddenly look for the singer in the room.

If you listen to the speakers from various distances, angles and elevations, does the sound change quickly at low angles off-axis or not? If it does not, then stands may not be required. If the sound does change significantly with listening positions, then see how far off-axis you will accept...

1. Does this happen with other speakers substituted for the CVs to the same amp/receiver? 1) If so, check the amp. 2) If it does not, then check the speaker for short circuits.

The original US Patent is 3,424,873, by Lincoln Walsh. The concept is straight forward, describes exactly how all speaker cones work. But the execution is difficult. When I first read it, it explained why conventional speakers necessarily have crossovers, and their associated complexities and...

The Walsh concept, applied to the construction of the latest 'thousand' series of speakers, and/or others, it is not surprising to me that replacing the surround is not a DIY project without the right surround and materials, beyond size and shape alone.

There were many attempts at, and a few products in the group of "omni-directional" speakers. Some look omni-directional, but are really blended drivers with multiple drivers aimed at different directions in an attempt to create omni-directional sound. Some of the vertical axis speakers firing...

You may not like my suggestion regarding no schematic. The following method can be time-consuming. I've had to trace a board by hand and create a schematic, a few times in the past. The simpler the board the easier it is to trace, of course. This board looks simple enough, such as few...

I remember the car, as well as the PDQ Bach character Carmen Ghia in The Stoned Guest album.

In the pair of speakers I had, the four support posts were at significantly different clock orientations around the rim, as viewed from above. This meant that the listener sees a different segment of the cone between two supports from the L vs. the R speaker. I also noted that swapping the L and...

I've not tried this particular test, yet. Some years ago, I created a file of one song from a CD, at various mp3 bit-rates, from 64 up to 320 kbps. With that particular file, I could clearly say the 64 kbps is really poor. But when I got up to 256 kbps or more, the sound was very similar to the...

Suggestions for headphones often cover how they sound, interface with the headphone amp, etc. After all the suggestions and listening tests, which phones are ones that feel comfortable enough to wear for the long term, and sound good enough to you? I have several pairs of headphones, and one...

I guess it depends on what you mean by "better". My thinking is: 1. From a structural strength viewpoint, the originals with thin metal supports is not as stiff as one with bigger metal supports. Same for adding wood to the inside surfaces of the metal supports, or to inside and sides of the...

The turntable is a Rabco ST-4, with a linear tracking arm. The 0.25 g per single revolution of the arm counterweight is from the instruction manual, if I recall correctly. Skating force results from an offset angle of the record groove tangent line (that the stylus tracks) relative to the...

I've related this story on a couple of other forums many years ago (maybe even here), some years after I finished school. One of my friends is an audiophile too. I told him my story of adjusting the tracking force. So we did a single-blind approach of adjusting the counterweight on his...

On my turntable's tonearm, the cylindrical counterweight's circumference is marked with the numbers 1 through 10, in increments of 1 (1, 2, 3, ..., 10). One whole turn of the counterweight changes the tracking force by 0.25 gram (1/4 gram), as the owner's manual says. That means the force change...