Actually, the transitor is probably less aerodynamic than a tube so it will probably hit the ground later than the tube in real-world situations. Only in a vacuum would they hit at the same time, hence the only tubes that are any good at all are vacuum tubes.

Jeff

..”that are any good at all are vacuum tubes
or
Hence, transistors are superior to tubes.

Now wait a minute how high?.

Cause a transistor having greater weight (I don’t know I never weighed these items,…but transistors look heavier) will fall at a higher terminal velocity given enough time. Terminal velocity = constant speed = zero acceleration. If you apply air resistance to the items since air resistance is proportional to a falling body’s weight squared. The transistor will fall longer before air resistance = weight and will have time to attain a higher (speed) terminal velocity. Course it would need to be certain gap weight difference to the tube and just a simple box shape to get to this higher terminal velocity; cause all bets are just plain off, - if you leave those wires hanging off all sides of the transistor. Subsequently giving it greater surface mass creating greater aerodynamic drag and force against it.
Why fat skydivers fall just a tad speedier. Of course they can alleviate this situation by orientation assuming arms and legs at the ‘Cingular Wireless” logo-mans position, then that skinny skydiver has to catch up with head down assuming the bullet position. (arms swept back)

So what altitude are you going to drop these transistors and tubes from guys?
I say we have Captain Kittinger take them up and really let them smoke

If you drop the transistor and the toob into the ocean, assuming the impact on the surface of the ocean does not break anything, the transistor will sink, and if the ocean is deep enough at this location, will be lost and/or destroyed. The tube will float and can be recovered and, after cleaning, can be used again as a thermionic amplification device.

This means ... whatever.

Paul

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the 1derful1

[This message has been edited by Paul J. Stiles (edited August 09, 2003).]

Other than getting solid quality interconnects and nice thick speaker cables, I, myself, do not prescribe to all the fancy cable and interconnect claims.

That said, I've always wondered if some of these expensive cables are built or tailored to have a certain impedance, z(f), the transfer function, so that they introduce a coloration in the sound?

After all, our ears are all very different from each other with different response curve, both as a function of loudness and frequency. I know I have lots of holes beyond 13 kHz or so, especially after 15 kHz. As I grow older, I'm sure my high freq response is probably a bit attenuated as well compared to when I was in my teens. Which would suggest that I may prefer a bright system or cable that would compensate for my hearing loss.

Lately, I've been thinking that we are all trying to look for the system that sounds good to us - the system that matches our ears. Together, the matched system will sound good to an individual. No wonder different people like different sound.

BTW, I just got my 950/7100. Heard that DHL just delivered them. Can't wait to go home. Using AR interconnects from my local Best Buy. $13 a pair. Good solid construction. Modest Monster and RCA speaker cables, with Monster banana jacks.

Quoting quotes: "Let me explain. No, there is too much", Montoya, Princess Bride.

I love this hobby


[This message has been edited by BleakShore (edited September 18, 2003).]

I'd like to share a story with you about the war between 'esoteric' cable manufacturers and scinetists / engineers.

About 15 years ago, an audio magazine (with a very large circulation) comissioned an article from one of the faculty members of one of the larger universities here in the 'states. This article was written by said professor (if memory serves, he holds a Ph.D in Electrical or perhaps Mechanical engineering...possibly Mathematics...but I digress) who himself was rater adept in signal processing techniques and theory.

I remember reading the article at the time - again, being in school and woprking on my EE degree...and feeling 'at one' with it (it was the start of my Senior year when this article was published - and so all of this felt so 'current' and close to home...)

Anyway, the heart and soul of the article was that said professor / author applied the principles of transmission line mathematics to things like unbalanced (RCA) cables ('interconnects' as it were) as well as speaker wire. He looked at wire in terms of the properties that given its ability to send a signal, unadulterated, through it - things like resistance, capacitance, inductance and so on. I believe that not only did he consider the normal audio bandwidth, but even went a bit further bandwidth-wise 'just to see' if the terms bantied about (i.e. skin effect et al) were of significance in the audio band or even above.

After sopme very nice and (again, at the time) highly topical mathematics to lay it bare so to speak, his conculsions (paraphrasing) were that there was nothing in the formulae used to evaluate the design of transmission lines (i.e. fundamentally applicable mathematics universally acceptaed in the E.E. world) that would suggest that cables (again...excepting the 'obvious' blunders like using no shield (on a signal cable) or using #30 wire (speaker wire)) made one iota of difference. I don;t think he had any listening studies (paired comparison et al) and I think that ABX was just coming into play in those days...but again...this is from memory.

Anyway, I remember one suggestion in particular - he basically said that if you have long runs between the amplifier and the speaker, stick with the lowest (i.e. fattest) practical gauge (I think he suggested #12 at the most), but the best thing you could do would be to move the amplifier as close to the speaker as possible (even though this was a general statement as with the amplifier very close to the speaker, the gauge (any sane guage) will have little effect). The next step was purchasing / fabricating something to produce a low-Z balanced send from the preamp's high-Z unbalanced - if it wasn't so equipped - out and a low-Z differential input at the amplifier (which would then turn out a signle-ended high-Z signal to feed the amplifier locally). All in all a very sane approach at getting the low level signal from pre-amp to amplifier with the lowest noise floor, and minimizing the length of the speaker cables used in the process.

After this story hit the newsstands an interesting thing happened. The magazine in question was beseiged by their advertisers, many of whom sold 'specialty' cables that appeared in the back of the magazine on a regular basis. Now...this is second-hand, but as it was told to me, said advertisers, bemused by this article, essentially threatened to pull all of their advertising if a retraction was not published. What was interesting to me was that not one of them offered to provide any measurements that would assert their claims of their products' superiority. Indeed, not to change horses mid-stream, but the 'esoterics' that do make cable often say (or rather...hide behind in my opinion) that to reveal the results of their analyses would be giving away proprietary details, and thus, said documentation cannot be provided.

Again...I have paraphrased much...and I have not revealed the names and dates, but believe me, this is exactly how I remember the story having gone down.

Later on, I had the opportunity to meet said professor as I had the chance to attend some of his lectures as well as discuss the article with him. He was pretty amused by the whole thing as I recall...he never knew that such a 'straight ahead' matter could cause such heated debate in the audio community.

Interesting read. Stereo review did a "blind study" a number of years ago by using a "hi-fi boutique" speaker cable measured to the exact distance from the amp to the speaker, and lamp cord that was way too long and coiled on the floor to the other speaker. Both cables were hidden from view and then the listening experts came in to listen to the set-up. You guessed it, none of the listeners even knew there was such a gross imbalance with wires. Once they were told, statistics showed that the experts couldn't tell which speaker was attatched to which wire. But to keep the wire manufacturing advertisers happy, Stereo Review refrained from drawing a conclusion. Of course some things don't change, S&V still finds the silver lining on even a piece of AV junk so as not to offend any advertisers. But I thought the test was interesting.

I cannot speak to anyone else's implied meaning to the often used reference that "even my wife hears it", however I have a different take. My wife's hearing ability (like most females) is superior to mine but she doesn't give a hoot about this hobby of mine. Therefore, if she says she hears a difference I tend to believe her. She has no vested interest in a conclusion either way, totally unbiased. So to infer anything derogatory from these comments may be a misread on your part. I certainly don't take it that way. On the contrary, I respect my wife's hearing abilities as well as her opinions.

Leave it to me to post my first message on such a highly debated topic
FWIW I noticed a difference in sound quality when I upgraded speaker cabling from a very popular off the shelve relatively inexpensive cable, to a higher priced (NO not a rediculously high priced!) cable. I also moved the pair of cables back and forth in my biwired configuration and the upper end and low end had differences depending on the cable used. Oh and by the way
Boy Howdy I've been lurking around this site for a while because I am hoping/planning to purchase the 950/7100 so I've been doing my homework

VADER brings up an excellent point. Once you spend $5k on interconnects, you are going to have to start hearing a difference to justify spending a ridiculous amount of money on them.

Thus, buying very, very expensive gear (because we've also learned in another thread that more expensive = better), then constantly telling everyone how expensive it was, makes you better than the "the average person within this discussion."

-Joe

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Remember the Intellivision?
http://www.gotmaille.com/nostalgia/

My interpretation of VADER is that what good is all the improvement in electronic signals via higher quality cables (IC / speaker) if the speaker itself cannot convert that into air vibration (sound)?

We all agree that different speakers can produce different level of details, clarity and depth with more or less roll-offs along with different price tag. If I own average commercial brand speakers, I’ll choose the cables and other components accordingly unless I plan to upgrade soon.