History Lesson
Jun 22, 2006 16:52:39 GMT
Post by rickcr42 on Jun 22, 2006 16:52:39 GMT
Was looking for my copy of the August 1976 Audio Magazine,in particular for the "Switched On Bass" article by W.J.J.Hodges for the subwoofer plans (big mutha ported sub @ 53x33x21 inches with an unassisted f3 of 20hz !!!!!!) and came across some literature I picked up from the Headroom Display/Room at the 2001 Stereophile Home Entertainment Show at the Hilton in N.Y. City.
I had not seen these papers in a couple of years so thought they were tossed in the trash or otherwise lost,obviously not the case,and while reading the literature was amused at the comparisons between then and where we are now five years later.
First up is the product cut sheet for the never released "Wheatfield Audio USB-1 Computer DAC+Headphone Amp" by Pete Millett.
I remember at the time I was very impressed by the demo that along with the "Dolby Headphone" demo and Grado "Home Theater Headphones" said multchannel USB high quality portable audio (if you consider a laptop portable) had finally arrived. I came away from the show thinking "when this hits the market I am buying it !" but it was not to be for some reason,the product never arrived as a full production piece for whatever reason even though the orignal idea a good one,as is being proven five years later by the avalanche of USB headphone amps,and the actual product design as good as it gets being exceptionally attractive and most importantly it sounded way good,better than any USB Audio device I had ever heard previously.
From the Cut sheet :
"The USB-1 Computer DAC+Headphone Amp (damn mouthful
) from wheatfield Audio provides an affordable,truly high fidelity way to get audio from the CD drive,or other source, in your computer.Now you can enjoy music while at work,on a plane,or anywhere you have access to a computer."
YES ! EXACTLY ! And why I was at the time so damn excited (see show report in the Headwize forum area) ! This was a landmark design that was for the first in a very long time (then) an actual new thing that made actual sense.In short a product that was dearly needed and Pete Millett was the first to my knowledge to recognise this then design an actual product to make it happen and why it never went full balls production is a question I never really got the answer to.Fact is it never happened so I built my own version from the information available but I have to say Pete's was better.
some more infor directly from the cut sheet :
Burr-Brown USB DAC chip (turned out to be the PCM2702).Burr-Brown Op-Amp gain stage and check this,a Class-a transistor follower stage
YESSSSSSSSS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No doubt why it sounded so damn good to me.There is a lot more content on the cut sheet but I am in no mood to write every line verbatum (
) so I will just say the stated reasons for designing the product have ALL been validated in the last year or so and designs are popping up all over,many of which can be readily whipped by this pioneer effort,and my suspician is Pete is the brains behind the current Headroom USB efforts though this just my personal opinion and having no proof.
I may at some point scan the sheet so there will be a record somewhere other than my own of just who it was that began all this madness.
Next up,the are the Grado HT Cans.These were headphones specifically designed for listening to DVDs,not music,with the main readily noticed change from the Grado norm being the HUGE foam ear pads.Pads so big they swamped the actual headphones and why back then I dubbed thse the "Big Muffs".
Here again was a product that for me personally had great appeal,mainly due to the fact that headphones designed for accurate music playback were are not the best choice for watching movies (IMO) because movies unlike music need to be bigger than life rather than accurate for best experience.
Think about it.Movies are meant to entertain so more often than not we suspend our reality and buy into whatever is portrayed on screen no matter how implausible.The sound track for this medium plays a supporting role rather than being the main feature this being mostly a visual medium so when the action on screen gets hot the sound effects of the audio track enhance what you SEE and are not the main focus.
When you listen to music the sound track is ALL important simply because there are no visual cues to distract making anything less than total perfection glaringly evident (this is know by the manufacturers and why they are trying to push multichannel MUSIC on us,to cover up for other areas where the products are severely lacking in SQ
).In the music only domain it is all music all the time and if there are problem areas or deviations from aaccuracy there is no place to hide.
So here we had cans made for a specific purpose,voiced to be bigger than life and because the average movie is two hours long designed to be easy on the ears for long periods of time without getting hot.Simple solution to a targeted end.
From the product cut sheet (partial):
"you have been listening to a prototype of the new Home Theater Surround headphojne from Grado Labs.Over the last year,we have been working very hard on a new design for headphones to be used for home or portable movie listening.Key elements neccessory to bring proper surround sound to headphones were better better bass and low end (my add-movies like to be a bit FAT at the bottom ) and a more spacious listening are (movies also need to be a tad bright rather than accurate.....).This we have accomplished.With these new surround headphones you will always have the best seat for listening and you'll have a real theater sound when listening off a portable DVD player or laptop"
BRILLIANT ! Impressive ! I Want !
And again,never to see widepread sales if any at all
Why ? Likely the pricing but again I do not have that answer and can only comment on the parts I know about first hand.So why is this important ?
This :
www.gradolabs.com/product_pages/gs1000.htm
Here we are five years later and what do I see NEW from Grado labs in the last five years ? Not a whole lot which to be honest is no big deal to me since I have all I need with my RS-1s as my reference cans and the Grado/Alessandro MS-1 for everything else but when I see the above the first thing that entered my mind is "So they took the HF-1 and the HT cans,melded them together as one then announced this "bastard" step child as a "new" thing ?" Not me man.Nope.Not buying in.
A bit harsh ? Could be rabbit but I do and always have had a big time problem with manufacturers trying to expand lines by creating mongo versions of things already in the lineup and while these cans may truly whip ass I will not be partaking simply because of the way they took two other headphones and made this out of the mix which no amount of convincing can make me think otherwise.And yeah it sucks for me to be such a miserable prick but as popeye always said " I am what I am and that's all that I am" ;D
So two products impress me so far and neither one ever sees the light of full production models ! WTF ?!?!?
Am I really that weird (don't answer that ) ? That "out there (ditto ;D ) ? S out of the mainstream norms ?
next up and the final part of the puzzle is Dolby Headphone,better known as "headphone surround" which to be honest is amazing when done correctly-which it was at this demonstration and especially so in combination with the above products using a pre-encoded DVD being played on a laptop.
Here was everthing I could ever hope for to view movies on the go in full headphone surround and this remeber is the year 2001 so what the hell happened ?
I have the Dolby Labs show literature right here but since it is just rehashing the content out for years on this technology will not bore with the details other than to say again I was impressed by something and again I was 100% dissapointed waiting for this to become a mainstream product !
Why ? Why has it taken five years for the first stand alone Dolby Headphone decoder to hit the market in the JVC DH-1 ? Why after five years do DVDs not have the DH track decoded directly on the DVD ? If it is space for the additional sound track Does anyone really watch all the "filler" crap presently on the average DVD ? And if so would it be too much to ask for the "option" of a DVD either WITH DH or a bilingual sound track which I personally have zero need for ?
So in 2001 I come away from the show thinking finally something not only new but useful has arrive-portable headphone based surround sound movies/high quality computer audio-yet five years later instead of having and using the above products I see hardly ANY Dolby Headphone discussions or products,no grado Movie cans but instead a conglomerate of two other headphones introduced as something new and pale imitations all over the planet of Pete's original USB Computer DAC/Headphone Amp !
Looking at the literature side by side I am a bit nostalgic for what might have been and feel someone missed the fkn boat on this one.................................
.
I had not seen these papers in a couple of years so thought they were tossed in the trash or otherwise lost,obviously not the case,and while reading the literature was amused at the comparisons between then and where we are now five years later.
First up is the product cut sheet for the never released "Wheatfield Audio USB-1 Computer DAC+Headphone Amp" by Pete Millett.
I remember at the time I was very impressed by the demo that along with the "Dolby Headphone" demo and Grado "Home Theater Headphones" said multchannel USB high quality portable audio (if you consider a laptop portable) had finally arrived. I came away from the show thinking "when this hits the market I am buying it !" but it was not to be for some reason,the product never arrived as a full production piece for whatever reason even though the orignal idea a good one,as is being proven five years later by the avalanche of USB headphone amps,and the actual product design as good as it gets being exceptionally attractive and most importantly it sounded way good,better than any USB Audio device I had ever heard previously.
From the Cut sheet :
"The USB-1 Computer DAC+Headphone Amp (damn mouthful
) from wheatfield Audio provides an affordable,truly high fidelity way to get audio from the CD drive,or other source, in your computer.Now you can enjoy music while at work,on a plane,or anywhere you have access to a computer."YES ! EXACTLY ! And why I was at the time so damn excited (see show report in the Headwize forum area) ! This was a landmark design that was for the first in a very long time (then) an actual new thing that made actual sense.In short a product that was dearly needed and Pete Millett was the first to my knowledge to recognise this then design an actual product to make it happen and why it never went full balls production is a question I never really got the answer to.Fact is it never happened so I built my own version from the information available but I have to say Pete's was better.
some more infor directly from the cut sheet :
Burr-Brown USB DAC chip (turned out to be the PCM2702).Burr-Brown Op-Amp gain stage and check this,a Class-a transistor follower stage
YESSSSSSSSS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No doubt why it sounded so damn good to me.There is a lot more content on the cut sheet but I am in no mood to write every line verbatum (
) so I will just say the stated reasons for designing the product have ALL been validated in the last year or so and designs are popping up all over,many of which can be readily whipped by this pioneer effort,and my suspician is Pete is the brains behind the current Headroom USB efforts though this just my personal opinion and having no proof.I may at some point scan the sheet so there will be a record somewhere other than my own of just who it was that began all this madness.
Next up,the are the Grado HT Cans.These were headphones specifically designed for listening to DVDs,not music,with the main readily noticed change from the Grado norm being the HUGE foam ear pads.Pads so big they swamped the actual headphones and why back then I dubbed thse the "Big Muffs".
Here again was a product that for me personally had great appeal,mainly due to the fact that headphones designed for accurate music playback were are not the best choice for watching movies (IMO) because movies unlike music need to be bigger than life rather than accurate for best experience.
Think about it.Movies are meant to entertain so more often than not we suspend our reality and buy into whatever is portrayed on screen no matter how implausible.The sound track for this medium plays a supporting role rather than being the main feature this being mostly a visual medium so when the action on screen gets hot the sound effects of the audio track enhance what you SEE and are not the main focus.
When you listen to music the sound track is ALL important simply because there are no visual cues to distract making anything less than total perfection glaringly evident (this is know by the manufacturers and why they are trying to push multichannel MUSIC on us,to cover up for other areas where the products are severely lacking in SQ
).In the music only domain it is all music all the time and if there are problem areas or deviations from aaccuracy there is no place to hide.So here we had cans made for a specific purpose,voiced to be bigger than life and because the average movie is two hours long designed to be easy on the ears for long periods of time without getting hot.Simple solution to a targeted end.
From the product cut sheet (partial):
"you have been listening to a prototype of the new Home Theater Surround headphojne from Grado Labs.Over the last year,we have been working very hard on a new design for headphones to be used for home or portable movie listening.Key elements neccessory to bring proper surround sound to headphones were better better bass and low end (my add-movies like to be a bit FAT at the bottom
) and a more spacious listening are (movies also need to be a tad bright rather than accurate.....).This we have accomplished.With these new surround headphones you will always have the best seat for listening and you'll have a real theater sound when listening off a portable DVD player or laptop" BRILLIANT ! Impressive ! I Want !
And again,never to see widepread sales if any at all
Why ? Likely the pricing but again I do not have that answer and can only comment on the parts I know about first hand.So why is this important ?
This :
www.gradolabs.com/product_pages/gs1000.htm
Here we are five years later and what do I see NEW from Grado labs in the last five years ? Not a whole lot which to be honest is no big deal to me since I have all I need with my RS-1s as my reference cans and the Grado/Alessandro MS-1 for everything else but when I see the above the first thing that entered my mind is "So they took the HF-1 and the HT cans,melded them together as one then announced this "bastard" step child as a "new" thing ?" Not me man.Nope.Not buying in.
A bit harsh ? Could be rabbit but I do and always have had a big time problem with manufacturers trying to expand lines by creating mongo versions of things already in the lineup and while these cans may truly whip ass I will not be partaking simply because of the way they took two other headphones and made this out of the mix which no amount of convincing can make me think otherwise.And yeah it sucks for me to be such a miserable prick but as popeye always said " I am what I am and that's all that I am" ;D
So two products impress me so far and neither one ever sees the light of full production models ! WTF ?!?!?
Am I really that weird (don't answer that ) ? That "out there (ditto ;D ) ? S out of the mainstream norms ? next up and the final part of the puzzle is Dolby Headphone,better known as "headphone surround" which to be honest is amazing when done correctly-which it was at this demonstration and especially so in combination with the above products using a pre-encoded DVD being played on a laptop.
Here was everthing I could ever hope for to view movies on the go in full headphone surround and this remeber is the year 2001 so what the hell happened ?
I have the Dolby Labs show literature right here but since it is just rehashing the content out for years on this technology will not bore with the details other than to say again I was impressed by something and again I was 100% dissapointed waiting for this to become a mainstream product !
Why ? Why has it taken five years for the first stand alone Dolby Headphone decoder to hit the market in the JVC DH-1 ? Why after five years do DVDs not have the DH track decoded directly on the DVD ? If it is space for the additional sound track Does anyone really watch all the "filler" crap presently on the average DVD ? And if so would it be too much to ask for the "option" of a DVD either WITH DH or a bilingual sound track which I personally have zero need for ?
So in 2001 I come away from the show thinking finally something not only new but useful has arrive-portable headphone based surround sound movies/high quality computer audio-yet five years later instead of having and using the above products I see hardly ANY Dolby Headphone discussions or products,no grado Movie cans but instead a conglomerate of two other headphones introduced as something new and pale imitations all over the planet of Pete's original USB Computer DAC/Headphone Amp !
Looking at the literature side by side I am a bit nostalgic for what might have been and feel someone missed the fkn boat on this one.................................
.
