In my original post where I said people were being brainwashed in to thinking bass was supposed to sound boomy, I was referring to the quality of the sound. No comment was intended toward any particular style of music. The BOSE system in my Miata is an equal opportunity distorter.
Here you are mixing types of music with overemphasized bass..."pseudo musical crap"
Again, see my original reply. It provides a club/concert feel and some people prefer this. No brainwashing involved.
????? Once again this appears to be an out of hand rejection of certain types of music...beyond the bass mix.
-John
Yes, that was perfectly clear. I still don't think brainwashing has anything to do with it, rather a preference to feel the vibration. If a person has boomy speakers then it will sound boomy, but still provide the desired bass sensation.
MLB's comments (after yours) mix a dislike for "pseudo musical crap" with overemphasized bass.
-John
I totally completely 110% agree! The only reason they "rap" is because they CAN'T sing nor play an instrument. But, they can play a radio. Besides, they must get cramps turning their wrists in and down towards their bodies..,wooooeeeeee :-P ~Cissy My '90 Mazda Miata I love PC adventure games
Cissy, I don't think that's strictly true. We borrow a lot of DVDs from the county library; it's free, so if it sux we can bail after two minutes then try something else. We watched "8 Mile," a film about rap. Now, I really don't care for rap and never listen to it voluntarily, but the film was pretty good, and taught me to understand rap (well, *good* rap) as a sort of forensic poetry, an artistic exhibition of language skills to make a point. You might not agree with the point, but some of the practitioners are quite talented, with an excellent command of English.
As for car radios, I think everyone must know by now that I don't even know if mine works, since the only part of it I ever use is the clock. Since my living room contains a high-resolution audio system worth about
4X the current value of my Miata, to me any car stereo is just a toy. It's the last thing in the world on which I'd waste any money or time.
i must agree with Lanny. some rappers are very creative, expressive, articulate observers of comtemporary urban life. the genre is not what i prefer to listen to but that doesn't mean it's all crap. every generation thinks their music is the best; anything before is irrelevant, sentimental drivel and anything after is only noise. i can still hear my father saying that my Emerson, Lake, and Palmer or Led Zepplin or Deep Purple or Pink Floyd albums were "just a bunch of no-talent noise."
again, i agree. i too have been spoiled by high quality home audio. my car stereo is a medium-priced, name-brand aftermarket system the PO installled. it sounds horrible. i don't understand why some people spend so much on car audio systems when cars are not very good listening chambers to begin with. to me, all car audio is a less-than-satisfactory compromise. but, each to his own.
dave
"Generic" wrote in news:40eee9ce$0$89653 $ snipped-for-privacy@news.nntpservers.com:
You seem to be missing my point, which is that no matter WHAT TYPE of music they listen too, they crank the bass up to full. EVEN THE GOOD MUSIC BEING MADE TODAY.
I've been to a LOT of concerts, and none of them (save a couple heavy metal bands) had anywhere NEAR the bass emphasis of much of the kids/rap/crap coming out now. SOrry, but that doesn't wash at all. Brainwashing is involved. (we do realize we're using "brainwashing" to mean "they listen to this hugely unbalanced sound and become "used" to it, and then they play ALL MUSIC that way. Don't know what you'd call it.............
Got that right. Rap sucks all the way :)
Of course you are both right. :) I HAVE heard some rap that I thought quality and/or interesting and inventive. Too Short's (?) "Wish I was a little bit taller" from some years back was really cute. I am wrong to lump all rap with gangster rap. Fact is I hate that SH*T so much that it erodes my ability to be objective about rap in general. Talking about abusing women,shooting cops, etc turns me off SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much that I do tend to lump it all together. And then when you see these tiny little kids doing it, well I just hate the whole scene. Rule #1 - To receive a recording contract one should be able to play an instrument or sing. That will ALWAYS hold with me.
So I'll stop acting like I'm being objective.:)
nat snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (Natman) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@netnews.comcast.net:
That was also my original intent. It morphed into a discussion of raps "worthiness". The idea was that if they crank the bass to max, ANY music is going to sound totally unbalanced. To me.
That point has been taken, but that's not what you said above. You made a comment about the ENCODING of "pseudo musical crap." Some recordings are certainly encoded with massively overemphasized bass. Prodigy's "Fat of the Land" (1997) album springs to mind. The bass is easily 2x or 3x louder than typical. This album has received very solid reviews and is an "essential recording" at Amazon.com. It is, however, aiming for a dance club feel.
Again, you are flipping back to a personal dislike for one genre that happens to be bass heavy.
I'd call it a simple preference. Some like apples, some like oranges. If you like a bass heavy sound profile you'll get as close as possible with the equipment available. Such people are not necessarily looking for a realistic sound, but who am I to criticize?
-John
Somehow, I'm reminded of Steve Martin saying "moon-knock, uh, I mean, moon-rock needle. It's OK for the car, wouldn't want it in the house"
;-)
Fershizzle!!
Aw, it's really more like "So what?" But then, I don't think Seinfeld is worth watching, either, for much the same reason. It's just not a culture (and NYC not a place) in which I'm interested.
It was a joke, Lanny.
Dana
I beg to differ. There are "specs" and real world measurements. The standard way to test speaker impedance and overall performance involves use of a closed and open box, along with an audio signal generator and a resistive network, part of which is adjustable. The speaker cone may also have weight attached. A good A/C voltmeter, once referred to as a VTVM, (now usually an true RMS voltmeter with DB scales) is used to make most of the electrical measurements. A sound level meter can also be used for sensitivity and flatness measurements. Speaker impedance is a combination of electrical and mechanical characteristics, since all change the flow of energy thru the circuit. The same measurements are made with the speaker installed in the enclosure and location that it will be used. You can bet that this was done using a Miata and a fairly complex sound measurement system. Speaker impedance varies with the frequency and the environment. (Been there, measured that, done that!)
The amp output characteristics can have a large or small effect. At one time the output impedance of an amp was determined by a transformer. Later, it was fashionable to provide large damping factors. Then very low amp output impedance. The real problem in a car is simply that 13 volts DC or so is not enough by itself to provide the necessary energy to drive a four or eight ohm speaker to high volume levels. It's much simpler to reduce the speaker impedance, thus not only reducing the voltage needed, but also reducing the difference between the amp and speaker impedance.
Of course. We're talking about "enhancing" their idea of an equalizer...
Chuck,
You are correct in most of your comments. If you would have carefully read my postings from the beginning you would see that we don't disagree on much. I misunderstood your use of the phrase, "mechanical coupling" as you mentioned wiring size and length. They affect the damping factor, but have nothing to do with the impedance of the speaker. They do affect the load impedance seen by the amplifier.
Your statement that an output transformer was used to determine the output impedance of an amplifier is a half-truth. The transformer was used to match the impedance of the amplifier output to the speaker. Example: If the output impedance of a vacuum tube amplifier was 10k ohms, it was necessary to use a 250:1 step down ratio to match an 8 ohm speaker. Better systems used multiple output taps to allow correct impedance matching.
The output impedance of most modern solid state amplifiers is determined by the output current limiting device (resistor), the minimum on-resistance of the output device(s), and the power supply capacitors. Many of the modern power amplifiers have output impedances of less than .1 ohms. Output efficiency decreases rapidly when the low impedance is reduced below a factor of 10. This would be at 1 ohms load for a .1 ohm amplifier.
The Bose door speaker impedance is not unusually low. The basic impedance is determined by the inductance and resistance of the voice coil. The inductance calculates out to about 217 microhenries. The DC resistance is about .5 ohms. The impedance of the speaker/door enclosure combination never goes very low because of the speaker system resonance. The speaker impedance rapidly rises below 30 hz. Yes, speaker and design performance has been a topic of arguments since the beginnings of electronic sound reproduction.
Jason Cuadra has done a good job of graphing the overall frequency response of the Miata Bose System. A grahic equalizer that offers + or - 15 db would be enough to straighten out the system reponse curve. A replacement door speaker with average or better mid range response would require less equalization. This would not fix the door resonance which gives the system a boomy sound.
There is an assumption that the Bose system uses 12 or 13 volts directly on the output devices. It is possible, but unlikely. Better systems use DC to DC conversion to step the voltage up for higher wattage output with less distortion.
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