Sony SL-2700 Betamax

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

William Sommerwerck wrote:

Most color TVs had no more than a 3MHz luminance bandwidth. Within that
limitation, Beta could record and play back with only a slight loss of
quality. This was a far cry from VHS, which was crap, crap, crap from the word
"go".

VHS took off because the European countries wanted to place quotas on VCRs.
They really did not want people to own them, and even with very high taxes,
they were selling well.

So the VHS companies got together and decided it was better to sell NTSC
VHS VCRs at a loss than it was to reduce production capacity. They
limited the number of PAL or SECAM ones and no quotas were enacted.

Eventually the sales of VHS outsripped BETA to the point that Sony could
no longer sustain the home market and left it.

Geoff.



--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM/KBUH7245/KBUW5379
It's Spring here in Jerusalem!!!

 

[William Sommerwerck]

Beta always was better than VHS. Even with all the advancement over the years,
Beta stepped ahead. When SVHS used metal tape and upped the video carrier to 7
Mhz, Sony upped theirs to 8.6. An ED Beta recording is indiscernable from the
original in NTSC, no matter how good a reciever you use, with digital comb,
wide I demod and allt that shit, you are very unlikely to percieve it, unless
you know how to look for the effects of the comb filter. Even then it isn't
all that easy.

My God. Somebody else who understands non-equal-bandwidth color encoding.

I wanted an ED Beta machine. Good thing I couldn't afford it.

 

"Right. We control banking, government, Hollywood, Las Vegas, the
garment biz, the media, the FCC, and whatever else works well.

Somewhere along the line, I seem to have forgotten to get rich. "

You have your rich just like everyone else, and they did not get rich by being nice. Are they nastier ? Probably not. Are there more per capita ? Yes. Jews and Zionists are - for lack of a better word handy - overrepresented in certain areas, some mentioned in the quote.

You know why ? Partly becausae they are a bit more qualified for those positions. Morality aside, because White Man has no fucking room to talk. I'm a White Man and I am serious. We are some of the nastiest motherfuckers on the planet, but we do have soem serious competition.

Zionists and Hebrews are two competely different things. They claim some blood linkage to a certain stretch of land in the middle east due to a religion. But everyone else is equal - with each other. One of my favorites is to say "You are equal" which is actually saying something quite different than "We are equal". You would be surprised at how many people out there don't catch that.

But back to the official diversion here. Was Einstein a Zionist ? Was he Hebrew, Ashkenazi or what ? Does it matter ? Well he opposed the state of Israel. Even the creation of the state of Israel. Then we have Hebrews who also oppose Zionism as well as Israels existence, I forget the organization's name but the Rabbi I think is Yisroel Dovid Wiess. Both are called self hating Jews because of their views.

I consider the whole lot to be a little off myself. Does that make me an anti-Semite ? Maybe. This bullshit about a God giving away someone else's land to a People chosen, but it requires blood. If your Mother is Jewish you are Jewish.

Nothing foments racism in others more than shit like that. What's more I guess I am an equal opportunity anti-Semite because I think the Moslems are nuts as well. Clinging to archaic laws that are almost as bad as the ones written by Leviticus, whom I believe to have ingested some ergot or something before writing. Both Moslems and Jews circumcise their males, and whether it is at eight days or eight years. you are stil bigger than the kid and can strap him down. Or brainwash him into it.

I call a spade a spade, I consider this shit crazy. You do not cut healthy bodies. It's not much better than FGM really. I've also read some peole on the subject of the nerve endings in the foreskin and it seems circumcision does actually impair sexual pleasure. Some say just as much as FGM, but I am not banking on that.

People are clanish, that is a natural trait everyone tries to avoid, or conceal, except of course for what could be termed the modern Semites. Moslem and Jew alike. Apartheid type practices, looking the other way when "certain" violence occurs. Everybody does it.

Now come the Jews who are generally better educated and have common sense. Greed ? Yes, just like anyone else, but I would say more in a position to exercise their greed.

Admit it in yourself and forget the hate. Look, if I had a machine that would remove a dollar from everyone in this country and give it to me I would push the button. Again and again and again. And again.........

There are alot of nasty motherfuckers out there but there is no sense in "hating", whatever the fuck that means. They are how they are and when we get to visit an alternate timeline and have their advantagesa (not Jews specifically, the upper classes)), let's just see how fucking Mother Theresa like we all are at that time.

When the last war comes, armegheddon, the final solution, pogrom or whatever happens, and we get this planet back down under a billion people, things will be right. It might however, be a bit boring.

 

Now actually ON topic.

Beta always was better than VHS. Even with all the advancement over the years, Beta stepped ahead. When SVHS used metal tape and upped the video carrier to 7 Mhz, Sony upped theirs to 8.6. An ED Beta recording is indiscernable from the original in NTSC, no matter how fgood a reciever you use, with digital COMB, wide I demod and allt that shit, you are very unlikely to percieve it, unless you know how to look for the effects of the COMB filter. Even then it isn't all that easy.

That is one thing about both formats. Because of the nature of color under recording, they never upped the carrier frequency for that. They couldn't because the tapes would no longer be compatible, actually they wouldn't be anyway but the "retooling" was probably too expensive.

 

I have the old Sony training manuals. Like the one where they explain why the pits on a CD are ź of a wavelength of light. This was before CDR.

I read that, and also most of the trqaining manual for the Sony PCM-F1, the successor to the PCM-1. It had 48 Khz sampling which made it better than CD quality.

I also read a book called "Principles Of Digital Audio" I think, and in it the author wrote that CDs were capable of four channel sound but it was never marketed, I guess because the quadrophinic phase was over. All this Dolby shit wasn't quite all there yet, although I do believe there were CDs during the release of THX1138 which borne the name for THX sound. Well they usaed it anyway.

I bet hindsight is 20/2o and they wish they would have persued four channel CDs. Center and sub are easy, but this would be a real four channel. Years ago.

Thinking logic here, that would probably half the playing time of a CD.

One of the most important factors in the development of the CD was that it only be a certain diameter, so that in dash car units could be sold. Create a need and fill it. Now there is already a car. Make players and sell disks. That is how successful business works.

I find it interesting sometimes to explore just why what happened. Why did Beta fail ? It didn't. It failed in the market. It was better and there is no doubt but average people didn't see the difference (if they were shown) and also wanted the longer recording time.

Things were different ?, the COMB filter ? People used to watch TVs with bad CRTs and shit. Yup, the blue is gone, or the red, or the otha one. They would still watch it. you know, I wonder if that has an impact on their phyche to any measurable degree. They paint some jails pink........

 

[William Sommerwerck]

I read that, and also most of the trqaining manual for the Sony
PCM-F1, the successor to the PCM-1. It had 48 KHz sampling
which made it better than CD quality.

I'm confused. The PCM-F1 had 44.056kHz sampling when using an NTSC-format
video recorder. You could choose between 14-bit and 16-bit quantization,
though.

In "Principles Of Digital Audio" the author wrote that CDs were
capable of four channel sound but it was never marketed.

CDs can have any number of channels, within the limit of how rapidly data can
be read from the disk.

There was a standard for four-channel recordings, in which the disk ran twice
as fast and had 1/2 the two-channel playing time. Unfortunately, there was no
backward compatibility -- the four-channel disks could not be played in
two-channel on regular players. So they were never made.

I bet hindsight is 20/20 and they wish they would have persued four-
channel CDs. Center and sub are easy, but this would be a real four
channel. Years ago.

At least we have SACD and Blu-ray audio. I'd promoted surround sound since
1970, and had to wait 30 years until a simple, not-horribly expensive system
became available (SACD). (I still have quad open-reel tapes and a deck to play
them on.)

One of the most-important factors in the development of the CD was
that it only be a certain diameter, so that in dash car units could be sold.

That wasn't the only consideration. Ease of handling and playing time were
also factors.

People used to watch TVs with bad CRTs and shit. Yup, the blue is gone,
or the red, or the otha one. They would still watch it.

Many years ago I was visiting friends in Delaware. I joined them to watch TV
with some of their friends. Their set was badly adjusted. I tweaked the
tracking, and they were amazed at the improvement. They thought I was some
kind of genius. (I am, but not when it comes to servicing color TVs.)

 

[William Sommerwerck]

wrote in message news:d28b0092-3f4c-46fd-ae52-11fb4e18a565@googlegroups.com...

Now I do not do surround. I mean me. I'll put a million speakers
in some asshole's house if he has the money, but for me it is
strictly stereo. Two well placed speakers that sound good and
the sound sounds like it is coming right from them, which it is,
and the stereo imaging is in the hands of the recording engineer.
And I hear it as he heard it. THAT is high fidelity, not this nineteen
speaker junk of today.

You know nothing about what you talk about, either technically or
aesthetically. I've been involved with surround sound for 43 years, probably
longer than you've been alive.

I suspect you're the sort of person who deliberately says ridiculous things
just to get peoples' goats. Well, my goats will stay in their pens.

At least Cliff Claven is amusing.

 

"I'm confused. The PCM-F1 had 44.056kHz sampling when using an NTSC-format
video recorder. You could choose between 14-bit and 16-bit quantization,

though.
"
Been so damn long. It may be that the PCM-1 had that but it was dropped in the PCM-F1. I know it had a switch for better quality. It did not take more tape, but it made the recording incompatible. I kinda wondered incompatible with WHAT ? Hardly anyone had these things. But anyway, CD quality is not quite true sixteen bit, it is a bit faked and the reason for that is to get the minutes on a disk no more than the size they are. the other channels are irrelevant really, I just mentione that because not that many people know it, and they also do not know that most of the time their seven channels of sound are derived from two, or if lucky,three distinct channels, at least at the mixing board.

Don't get me wrong, the mixing board can show you and demonstrate as many channels as it wants, but that does not mmean you are getting that mant channels. You cannot have 99.5 FM on one and 1220 AM on the other, it doesn't work that way beyond two channels usually. It does sometimes, for ALOT of money, but most people only think they have that. Most of them just have two channels. You can have the fanciest surround sound reciever and nineteen speakers and all these modes like hall, auditorium, Folsom prison, my niggas car, the garage, but if all you input to that reciver is left and right there are only two channels. I know full well how they are matrixed and delayed and all that shit to "create" the rest. I did it myself a long time ago actually.

Those who really do run digital all the way to the amp might actually have more channels, but then not on all source material. HAHAHAHAH, you just can't win I guess.

And then, even with the "trigophonic" system i threw together when I was a kid, my Ma said "I only have two ears".

Now I do not do surround. I mean me. I'll put a million speakers in some asshole's house if he has the money, but for me it is strictly stereo. Two well placed speakers that sound good and the sound sounds like it is coming right from them, which it is, and the stereo imaging is in the hands of the recording engineer. And I hear it as he heard it. GTHAT is high fidelity, not this nineteen speaker unk of today.

 

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

jurb6006@gmail.com wrote:

But back to the official diversion here. Was Einstein a Zionist ?

YES!!! Albert Einstein funded the Palestine pavilion at the New York Worlds
fair 1939-1940. It was the only place that sold kosher food at the fair.
In those days, the words Palestine and Palestinians referred to JEWS!!!

He was offered the first Presidency of the State of Israel and turned it down.

You should look up the source of the word Palestine and Palestinian. You
will be surprised where it came from, who "gave" it to the area and
the Jews and what it meant.

I consider the whole lot to be a little off myself.
Does that make me an anti-Semite ? Maybe.
This bullshit about a God giving away someone else's land to a People chosen,
but it requires blood. If your Mother is Jewish you are Jewish.

Well, more bullshirt. You are a raving antisemite and a total ignoramus.

The land in question was almost empty 3,000 years ago when the Jews showed
up, and after the Romans dragged the Jews off into slavery in the year 73,
it remained almost empty until the 1900's when the Jews returned.

Read Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad" for an unbiased, American Christian
view of the land before the mass return of Jews in the 20th century.

BTW, an Ottoman census in 1876 showed 86% of the population was Jewish.

There simply was no Mosley or christian presence to speak of.

As for blood, it's not uncommon, but the Moslem's use the father. So this
makes a certain politician a Moslem whether he wants to be or not.

The state of Israel takes a much more liberal view. To be accepted as a Jew,
they use the NAZI definition, any Jewish grandparent. They also let in non
Jewish family members, spouses, etc.

A large portion of the population of Israel is Arab, they have full rights.
They are exempt from mandatory army service, but there are plenty of them
who have served. Over the years there have been Arabs serving as the
President of Israel, the Chief Justice of the (equivalent of) the supreme
court and so on.

You also should note that in exchange for services rendered (developing
the technology that allowed the allies to win the naval portion of WWI),
Chaim Weizmann asked for a portion of land to be set aside for a Jewish
homeland. In 1921 the League of Nations complied. In 1922, 85% of the land
was taken away and given to the Hashemites, a minor Arab tribe and cousins
of the House of Saud (Saudi royal family).

For your information, although the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has a king
who is very smooth talking and modern (he had a non speaking walk on
cameo on a Star Trek episode), his country really is an apartheid state.

About 1/3 of the population are nonHashemites (so called Palestinian Arabs)
and during the "Arab Spring" the 80% of the constitution was changed
to strip them of all rights. They no longer can buy land, attend higher
education, and so on............

Most of those so called Palestinians were resident in Jordan before
Israeli independence, or where born there. No 14th amendment, no
"anchor babies".

Some migrated there from 1948-1967 when Jordan illegally occupied Israeli
land and they were considered Jordanian citizens. There was some
unpleasantness between the king and Yassar Arafat, and that was when they
lost their citizenship and the apartheid started.

Other countries have laws of return, for example the Irish Republic
(instead of the apartheid state of Northern Ireland), Lithuania and Poland.

Some people are lucky that way, a friend of mine researching her ancestry
found that she was eligible to return to Poland, Lithuania, Bellarussia
(aka White Russia) and Israel.

Nothing foments racism in others more than shit like that.
What's more I guess I am an equal opportunity anti-Semite

Well, that's it. I guess you are not a Christian either, because Jesus was
born, raised, and died a Jew, and he went around preaching Judaism.

Now come the Jews who are generally better educated and have common sense.

Jews don't have more common sense. They have an average IQ over the group.
The ones that have better educations do so because their families raised them
that way.

Since the 1960's when all the extra money went to affirmative action, they
had to pay their way. Almost all of the scholarships to Jews dried up by 1970.
Same with nonjewish people too. The ones that went to school, spent their
time studying, etc went somewhere. The ones that hung out on the street
corner drinking beer, went nowhere.

I know someone who being white and christian got no scholarship aid and
worked her way through a bachelor's degree at $2 an hour work study
jobs, a master's and 60 more credit hours by student loans and working
a full daytime job, while being a single mother (widowed). She's
almost 60 and is still paying off her loans.

My point is she did it, and she wasn't Jewish. Lots of nonjews are like that.

Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM/KBUH7245/KBUW5379
It's Spring here in Jerusalem!!!

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Tue, 28 May 2013 09:35:14 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
<grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:

"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
news:5n38q8hrve8rql0gtstc5k5qs8i9pka5dh@4ax.com...

I'm old enough to remember the Beta vs VHS wars of the late
1970's. At the time, both VHS and Beta machines looked and
worked badly because both camps were furiously rushing to
make things work.

Absolutely untrue. I remember seeing Sony's first US Betamax, which was
ensconced in a handsome console with a 19" display. The store (I think it was
Luskin's) was playing a boxing match, and I was not aware that it was a
recording.

SL-6200 perhaps?
<http://www.betainfoguide.net/Pix.htm>
I've never seen one.

I will confess to not being an expert on video quality. I also didn't
care much for TV in any form. However, the lady friend dragged home a
brand new Betamax SL-8200(?) and assigned me the task of setting it up
and making it play. I'm not sure of the model number but I do recall
it was a top loader. It worked fairly well for about a month. Then,
things started to fail. I don't recall the exact failures. Rather
than tinker with it, we sent it to the authorized repair center
(initially under warranty). It returned functional, but with a
deteriorated picture. After about 3 additional repairs and no
improvements, we parked it in the garage. I then bought her a no-name
cheap VCR at the local department store. As I recall, it was about
half the price of the Sony. It lasted about a year before it totally
died. When we parted ways, she took both with her. It was 15 years
later before I bought another TV.

I never did a side by side comparison between VHS and Beta, so I can't
really be sure that Beta is really better. As I recall, I didn't see
much difference. My uninformed impression was that both were
mechanical nightmares, that were easily jammed and broken by
mishandling and bad tapes. Perhaps if the VCR and TV were maintained
to peak performance, Betamax might have shown it's superiority, but
with the poor lifetime and generally miserable picture that I
experienced, I suspect that "normal" operation would not have shown
much difference.

Most color TVs had no more than a 3MHz luminance bandwidth. Within that
limitation, Beta could record and play back with only a slight loss of
quality. This was a far cry from VHS, which was crap, crap, crap from the word
"go".

Like I said, the superior technology doesn't always win. Sony may
have had the edge in picture quality, but what the GUM (great unwashed
masses) wanted was long play, and cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, and
cheaper.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[William Sommerwerck]

I never did a side by side comparison between VHS and Beta,
so I can't really be sure that Beta is really better. As I recall,
I didn't see much difference.

I hope the following doesn't sound unduly ad hominem. However, the differences
are plain.

1 Betamax has more-stable tape motion. Without TBC, VHS has enough jitter to
produce a sometime-ragged-looking picture.

2 Betamax appears to have slightly better luminance /and/ chroma bandwidth.

3 Sony's refusal to license its polarity-inversion chrominance-recording
system forced JVC to use a quadrature system, which badly degraded color
fidelity.

If you want conclusive proof, look for an article in one of the video mags
(sorry, I don't remember which or when) where a source was repeatedly dubbed.
Betamax held up for three or four dubs. VHS fell apart very quickly.

Betamax represents a "reasonable" compromise for a consumer product. I
consider myself a critical viewer, but I could watch Beta tapes without
getting unduly upset. VHS was another matter.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

"Cydrome Leader" wrote in message news:ko56r2$i06$1@reader1.panix.com...

The movie folks do a really half assed job with surround sound
is the short version of the story.

That might be true. But I've spent many years listening to orchestral
recordings enhanced with surround -- either from the recording itself, or a
hall synthesizer -- and the improvement is huge.

Circa 1980, I had a really high-quality quad system, with Lux electronics and
Infinity speakers. People -- including a hi-fi dealer -- said "I don't like
quad, but I like your system".

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Wed, 29 May 2013 15:28:34 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
<presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

If fuses blew on the amp, I'd not be in a hurry to start replacing them.
I'd probably disable channels in the surround decoder.

Chuckle. I have an old Heathkit AA-2010 quad channel amplifier.
<http://www.audioasylumtrader.com/ca/ca.html?ca=23000>
I'm down to one channel now, as the other three have blown up over the
years. When the last channel dies, I'll probably fix it and start
over.

My ears are somewhat screwed up, so quad sound never did anything for
me. In the early 1970's, I attened an AES (Audio Engineering Society)
convention, where the hot topic was quadraphonic everything. I tried
on quad earphones and heard nothing interesting. I listened to a
serious discussion between "experts" over whether the listener wants
concert hall realism, which meant sitting in front of the orchestra in
stereo, or whether he wants to be "immersed" in the sound, which meant
sitting in the middle of the orchestra in quad. Meanwhile, the movie
theaters were having a bit of a problem with quad sound, which tended
to produce dead spots.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Tue, 28 May 2013 18:34:12 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
<grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:

There was a standard for four-channel recordings, in which the disk ran twice
as fast and had 1/2 the two-channel playing time. Unfortunately, there was no
backward compatibility -- the four-channel disks could not be played in
two-channel on regular players. So they were never made.

It was dropped in the IEC specification:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-channel_compact_disc_digital_audio>

I may have told this story before... I was working for Intech in
Santa Clara during the 1970's. There were several divisions under one
roof, including one that made high end A/D and D/A converters. Sony
was using Intech converters in their recorders and parked a small team
of engineers in the building to do who knows what with the converters.
Intech catalogs were loose leaf pages in a red ring binder. I still
have a few floating around. The red ring binders were everywhere and
apparently, the Sony people used them for collecting their data and
test results. It eventually became the "red book".

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Cydrome Leader]

William Sommerwerck <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:

wrote in message news:d28b0092-3f4c-46fd-ae52-11fb4e18a565@googlegroups.com...

Now I do not do surround. I mean me. I'll put a million speakers
in some asshole's house if he has the money, but for me it is
strictly stereo. Two well placed speakers that sound good and
the sound sounds like it is coming right from them, which it is,
and the stereo imaging is in the hands of the recording engineer.
And I hear it as he heard it. THAT is high fidelity, not this nineteen
speaker junk of today.

You know nothing about what you talk about, either technically or
aesthetically. I've been involved with surround sound for 43 years, probably
longer than you've been alive.

I suspect you're the sort of person who deliberately says ridiculous things
just to get peoples' goats. Well, my goats will stay in their pens.

At least Cliff Claven is amusing.

the my niggas car part was funny. I noticed the audio drivers on most
computers have such silly modes, some of which are completely horrible,
like "wide stereo" or something similar.

As for real surround systems in the home, I have a fairly old 5 channel
system. To be honest, yeah, there's at least 4 idle speakers most of the
time.

Sometimes something explodes, and there's some noise behind you, and some
movies have the ugly CGI intro from the releasing company that might wake
up all speakers for a few seconds.

I'm usually more startled not by the sounds, but by the completely random
effects they'll mix in surround, and only at random points in a movie.

The movie folks do a really half assed job with surround sound is the
short version of the story.

If fuses blew on the amp, I'd not be in a hurry to start replacing them.
I'd probably disable channels in the surround decoder.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

"You know nothing about what you talk about, either technically or
aesthetically. I've been involved with surround sound for 43 years, probably

longer than you've been alive. ..."

I've snipped correct or generally correct statements.

When I was a kid I discovered something, that when you connect a speaker
between the two hots (+ or red) of an amp you get the difference signal.
That is how the el cheapo method worked actually to get the rear channels
but they used a resistor to common to allow some of the L+R, but only a
portion of it. This does not work with amps that run the two channels out of
phase, but those are kinda rare.

This is called DynaQuad. It was first officially proposed by David Hafler. The
difference signal has a higher ratio of reflected-to-direct sound, so with the
speakers to the sides or rear, there is an enhancement of ambience.

Now they use OP AMPs pretty much for the basic surround.

Actually, matrixed surround is handled by DSP.

Digital delay is added for the effects like "hall", "auditorium" and so
forth. It is all in a chip but if you look back in the prints of older
equipment that used discrete components you can figure it out.

Figure out what?

Along came a guy named Bob Carver who tried to do some tricks with digital
delay and called it sonic holography. that baby was supposed to enhance the
stereo image by sending a "null echo" for lack of a better term, to the
opposite speaker. IIRC you were supposed to have them a certain distance
apart for this "magic" to work properly.

Sonic Holography did not use digital processing. I had one of them, and with
my own live recordings, the results were much closer to what I heard at the
mikes.

All junk as far as I am concerned. That is an opinion. In movies, the
effects and ambience are excessive to the point wherte you can hardly
understand the dialogue and you have to crank it to hear it, and then a car
blows up or something and it happens to be three AM. This annoys enough
people that the TV manufacturers started equipping TVs with audio
compressors, calling it "Smart Sound" or "Level Sound" or a few other names.

Not a valid opinion. When surround is used to record or synthesize hall
ambience, it is a huge improvement.

You made a mistake. I said I think stereo is it, and all this surround shit
is junk and you failed to realize that is an opinion. That is my opinion,
absolutely.

It might be an opinion, but it is verifiably an invalid opinion. Anyone who's
heard good surround knows otherwise -- because surround brings you
significantly closer to what you hear at a live performance.

 

[Smarty]

On 5/29/2013 5:43 PM, William Sommerwerck wrote:

"You know nothing about what you talk about, either technically or
aesthetically. I've been involved with surround sound for 43 years,
probably
longer than you've been alive. ..."

I've snipped correct or generally correct statements.

When I was a kid I discovered something, that when you connect a
speaker between the two hots (+ or red) of an amp you get the
difference signal. That is how the el cheapo method worked actually
to get the rear channels but they used a resistor to common to allow
some of the L+R, but only a portion of it. This does not work with
amps that run the two channels out of phase, but those are kinda rare.

This is called DynaQuad. It was first officially proposed by David
Hafler. The difference signal has a higher ratio of
reflected-to-direct sound, so with the speakers to the sides or rear,
there is an enhancement of ambience.


Now they use OP AMPs pretty much for the basic surround.

Actually, matrixed surround is handled by DSP.

Digital delay is added for the effects like "hall", "auditorium" and
so forth. It is all in a chip but if you look back in the prints of
older equipment that used discrete components you can figure it out.

Figure out what?


Along came a guy named Bob Carver who tried to do some tricks with
digital delay and called it sonic holography. that baby was supposed
to enhance the stereo image by sending a "null echo" for lack of a
better term, to the opposite speaker. IIRC you were supposed to have
them a certain distance apart for this "magic" to work properly.

Sonic Holography did not use digital processing. I had one of them,
and with my own live recordings, the results were much closer to what
I heard at the mikes.


All junk as far as I am concerned. That is an opinion. In movies, the
effects and ambience are excessive to the point wherte you can hardly
understand the dialogue and you have to crank it to hear it, and then
a car blows up or something and it happens to be three AM. This
annoys enough people that the TV manufacturers started equipping TVs
with audio compressors, calling it "Smart Sound" or "Level Sound" or
a few other names.

Not a valid opinion. When surround is used to record or synthesize
hall ambience, it is a huge improvement.


You made a mistake. I said I think stereo is it, and all this
surround shit is junk and you failed to realize that is an opinion.
That is my opinion, absolutely.

It might be an opinion, but it is verifiably an invalid opinion.
Anyone who's heard good surround knows otherwise -- because surround
brings you significantly closer to what you hear at a live performance.
Let me strongly affirm William Sommerwerck's comment above. I have also

lived in the world of Carver Sonic Holography (or4iginal and 2
subsequent redesigned and improved versions) as well as many discrete
true 4 channel surround sound systems on open reel, CD4/Shibata LPs,
derived surround from Dynaquad, CBS SQ Quad, Dolby, Ambisonics, and
synthesized surround from Advent SoundSpace, , Yamaha DSPs, Sound
Concepts bucket brigade CCD processor, and quite a few others.

Used with discretion these have profoundly improved the reconstruction
of a very credible and most enjoyable sound field vastly superior to the
collapsed image which remains when only the front system is employed
without surround.

 

"You know nothing about what you talk about, either technically or
aesthetically. I've been involved with surround sound for 43 years, probably

longer than you've been alive. ..."

Where ? I'm 52 and the only thing we had here 40 years ago that resembled surround was quadrophonic. Movies weren't even in stereo.

I still have a Marantz CD4 decoder that I've used to transcribe vinyl to digital. There is no carrier but it is a damn good phono preamp.

When I was a kid I discovered something, that when you connect a speaker between the two hots (+ or red) of an amp you get the difference signal. That is how the elcheapo method worked actually to get the rear channels but they used a resistor to common to allow some of the L+R, but only a portion of it. This does not work with amps that run the two channels out of phase, but those are kinda rare.

Now they use OP AMPs pretty much for the basic surround. Digital delay is added for the effects like "hall", "auditorium" and so forth. It is all in a chip but if you look back in the prints of older equipment that used discrete components you can figure it out. Also, along came a guy named Bob Carver who tried to do some tricks with digital delay and called it sonic holography. that baby was supposed to enhance the stereo image by sending a "null echo" for lack of a better term, to the opposite speaker. IIRC you were supposed to have them a certain distance apart for this "magic" to work properly.

All junk as far as I am concerned. That is an opinion. In movies, the effects and ambience are excessive to the point wherte you can hardly understand the dialogue and you have to crank it to hear it, and then a car blows up or something and it happens to be three AM. This annoys enough people that the TV manufacturers started equipping TVs with audio compressors, calling it "Smart Sound" or "Level Sound" or a few other names.

If you lived in Europe or something 40 years ago maybe you had surround sound there, I have no way of knowing. All I know is that here in the US, the TV news has more dynamic range than the supposedly high fidelity FM radio. That's not so good either. We modulate at four times the level of European stations, why ? Also look at the difference in the European version and the US one of Golden Earring - Moontan. The US version has the grooves much more modulated. Why ? Cheap turntables. Signal to noise ration is easier to deal with when things are LOUD, in fact something like that is stated in the original explanation of how Dolby noise reduction works. (or worked, I think they just make surround chips now)

The sheeple will actually buy an amp with 5 % more power for alot more money with all other things being equal. Seriously, you will not notice the difference between 110 watts and 120 watts if all other specs are equal. We know that. Marketing knows that. Alot of the market does not know that so guess what they sell.

Except for the PC that feeds everything now, I am not really interested in audio equipment less than 20 years old. Older even. There are some exceptions, I might like a pair of Martin Logans or something like that, but those are not at Walmart. They may be well worth the money but I will not spend that much unless I hit the lottery, and I don't play because it's a sucker bet.

Maybe I'm an old fuddy duddy. I see an RJ45 on an amplifier and I say to myself "Why ?". do we really need this shit ? And to me, really it doesn't sound better. You still don't see the THD rating on mosat speakers, you know why ? Because then peole might figure out paying twice as much for an equal power amp with 0.003 % THD instead of 0.005 % is a waste of money because most speakers hit 1 % even at one watt. Shhh, don't tell.

You made a mistake. I said I think stereo is it, and all this surround shit is junk and you failed to realize that is an opinion. That is my opinion, absolutely.

These days the only TV or movies I watch is on the PC. I have the TV output and it's hooked up to an amp. I WISH that amp has a mono selector. It actually does, but becasue I use the tape monitor in case I want to rip analog to the PC, the mono button does not work. Luckily most of the stuff I watch is ono anyway, just PLEEEEEZE do not try to fucking enhance is or give it fake stereo.

Although they did remix some of the Star Trez TOS, but it seems they only did the effects and left the dialogue alone. Thank Peter Pan for that much.

 

[Smarty]

On 5/29/2013 12:59 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Wed, 29 May 2013 15:28:34 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

If fuses blew on the amp, I'd not be in a hurry to start replacing them.
I'd probably disable channels in the surround decoder.
Chuckle. I have an old Heathkit AA-2010 quad channel amplifier.
http://www.audioasylumtrader.com/ca/ca.html?ca=23000
I'm down to one channel now, as the other three have blown up over the
years. When the last channel dies, I'll probably fix it and start
over.

My ears are somewhat screwed up, so quad sound never did anything for
me. In the early 1970's, I attened an AES (Audio Engineering Society)
convention, where the hot topic was quadraphonic everything. I tried
on quad earphones and heard nothing interesting. I listened to a
serious discussion between "experts" over whether the listener wants
concert hall realism, which meant sitting in front of the orchestra in
stereo, or whether he wants to be "immersed" in the sound, which meant
sitting in the middle of the orchestra in quad. Meanwhile, the movie
theaters were having a bit of a problem with quad sound, which tended
to produce dead spots.

Subsequent to the original release of quad headphones, in the late 60s,

considerable research was done on ear / brain localization and spatial
imaging, funded in part by the Air Force / DARPA (to facilitate heads up
display direction of arrival cues for pilots being fired upon from 360
degrees in azimuth). Some seminal work was done at the University of
Darmstadt, Germany, the prior art upon which Bob Carver's original
"sonic hologram' patent was granted.

The technical significance of the findings was the intra-aural spacing
of the typical human and the resulting time difference of arrival from
the earlier to the later ear, combined with the comb filter created by
the external ear's ridge structure (pinnae) allowed the brain to build a
mental map of where things arrived from acoustically. A given angle of
arrival in azimuth and elevation at a given frequency would have a
learned interpretation of where it arose from. This was in addition to
the reverb decay times and spectra influencing / defining the enclosed
space in which the audio was captured / simulated.

The bottom line was that headset design could not inherently replicate
the intra-aural delays and especially the comb filter results accurately
for all individuals, since each of us has a unique set of parameters.
Partially successful alternatives such as binaural recording and
playback have overcome this to some extent but not fully.

 

"He was offered the first Presidency of the State of Israel and turned it down. "

I am aware of that. I think he refused it on principle, but really I think he should have taken the job. Did Einstein's principles make him an anti-Semite ?

"You should look up the source of the word Palestine and Palestinian."

I did some time ago but forgot, the Romans ? I know they (Palestinians) didn't name it themselves. Does that negate any and all sovereignty claims ? Apparently in some peolle's eyes it does.

"> but it requires blood. If your Mother is Jewish you are Jewish.

Well, more bullshirt. You are a raving antisemite and a total ignoramus. "

If you think an ad honinem attack is going to ruffle me forget it. I have been called worse. I have also been beaten to a pulp by three guys and shot in the face, so the namecalling is laughable. Sticks and stones, Got any ?

However, regardless your demeanor here I will probably have to admit to being somewhat anti-Semmitic. that is strictly based on their adhesion to a religion that is detrimental to their well being, IN MY OPINION. Obviously they do not agree.

"They are exempt from mandatory army service, but there are plenty of them
who have served. "

In the meantime there are Israeli Jews sitting in jail for refusing to serve in the IDF on moral grounds. I do not want to get into atrocities and kill ratio here, but nobody's right if everybody's wrong. It is a fucking mess in the territories and both sides keep making it worse.

"Well, that's it. I guess you are not a Christian either, because Jesus was
born, raised, and died a Jew, and he went around preaching Judaism. "

That is correct. I do have respect for Christ's ideals and I really believe that if everyone lived by His tenets (capitalisation for respectful purposes only), the world would be a wonderful place, near Utopia. He was one of the greatest prophets who ever lived, but that gives Him no right to forgive those who hurt ME.

I also believe that there is nothing supernatural. In conventional terms that means no heaven or hell. There is probably some sort of afterlife but you are not meeting your ancestors. They are your ancestors because of a corporeal relationship, which is terminated upon death of the body. What little spark of whatever in the mind that developed during corporeal life may well live on, but I think as more of a part of a huge collective. But you are not John Doe. John is what your Parents named you, Doe indicates paternity (or it did when things worked right). When you are dead, all of that is gone.

I also respect that there is wisdom in the Bible. The main one who I think was a nuts is Leviticus. Again, not everyone agrees. But no book holds me laws, even the government's.

"The ones that have better educations do so because their families raised them
that way"

Which is more prevalent among them than those who just sit their kids in front of the TV. I had no video games nor TV in my room until I was a teenager. I had no phone. I had no nothing almost - except books.

Jews are smarter than many in the US on average because they pay attention to life. At least the ones I know or have known. This is not exclusive, a friend of mine is not Jewish but his son is making $130,000 a year before hitting thirty years old. It's a matter of life experience when young and I participated in it among others. When you grow up among studious people, guess what.

I want everyone to understand, my anti-Semitism, if it is even such, only has to do with certain things. The people themselves, Moslem or Judaic, if they do not want to kill the infidels (which would be me) we can get along.

The government of Israel is a different story. I swear they are the only worse government in the world worse than than ours.