An open letter to Mike Walker:
I’ve been busy all week, so I apologize for taking so long to respond to what you said when you started the thread, “Two new HD component tuners” on Wednesday (2/7). But even after a four-day delay, I just have to take issue with the following statement, referring to the new Cambridge SoundWorks "HD" tuner:
“Henry Kloss would be proud!”
Absolutely not!!! It would never have happened on his watch!
Please don’t jump on me (as you did on 700WLW) for posting a link, but I think you may be interested in this one, which compares the Bose Wave with two of Henry Kloss’s designs, the Cambridge SoundWorks Model 88 and the Tivoli Model One: http://www.geek.com/hwswrev/conel/tabrads/index.htm.
Also, see the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kloss (which also explains that “Kloss” rhymes with “gross,” not with “boss”).
The CSW Model 88 is a compact stereo unit designed to compete with the slightly smaller (and much more expensive) Bose Wave, while the Tivoli Model One is mono.
Both use individual semi-conductors instead of “off-the-shelf IC’s” in order to attain better RF and IF performance. (The disparaging use of the phrase “off-the-shelf IC’s” is a direct quote from a CSW brochure for the Model 88 ca. 1996; I would have given you a complete quote if I could have found the brochure.)
That may seem like “retro” engineering, but in the Tivoli, Kloss went even further by using ANALOG tuning, without even so much as a digital readout. This makes a lot of sense if you really know anything about engineering, because digital circuits -- even frequency counter circuits -- have a way of radiating stray energy that can compromise the performance of analog circuitry that is either nearby or sharing a common power supply (without extraordinary filtering). Tivoli pointed this out in its sales literature for the Model One -- and I think that Tom Wells is the only guy who has ever mentioned that phenomenon in this forum!
(BTW, back in the Seventies I knew one of the techs at Dynaco, and he told me how one of his colleagues had needlessy replaced some circuit boards in an FM-5 tuner a couple of times before he figured out that the terribe S/N ratios he was measuring were caused by energy from his first-generation digital multi-meter -- remember when he called 'em VOM's? -- getting into those tuner circuits through his test probes!)
All the reviews I was able to find online through Google today make a much bigger deal of the CSW 88’s superior audio, especially the bass, (compared to the Bose Wave) than of its better RF performance, CSW’s brochures stressed the two factors almost equally.
Henry Kloss died in 2002. But I think we can assume that he wouldn’t have staked the reputation of any of his fledgling companies at any point in his career on the performance of the iNiquity-approved chip necessary for the implementation of “HD Radio.”
In fact, I don’t think he would have approved of such a seriously flawed system at all.
And neither, apparently, does Amar Bose, since Bose Corp. isn’t offering any “HD” products. Of course, that’s not surprising, since Dr. Bose, has, after all, demonstrated both his engineering competence and his integrity. And he certainly doesn’t want to sacrifice Bose Corp’s reputation for reliability by jumping on a faltering bandwagon.
(If the Wave is somewhat over-priced -- especially by comparison with the Model 88 -- well, somebody has to pay for all that slick marketing!)
I’ve been busy all week, so I apologize for taking so long to respond to what you said when you started the thread, “Two new HD component tuners” on Wednesday (2/7). But even after a four-day delay, I just have to take issue with the following statement, referring to the new Cambridge SoundWorks "HD" tuner:
“Henry Kloss would be proud!”
Absolutely not!!! It would never have happened on his watch!
Please don’t jump on me (as you did on 700WLW) for posting a link, but I think you may be interested in this one, which compares the Bose Wave with two of Henry Kloss’s designs, the Cambridge SoundWorks Model 88 and the Tivoli Model One: http://www.geek.com/hwswrev/conel/tabrads/index.htm.
Also, see the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kloss (which also explains that “Kloss” rhymes with “gross,” not with “boss”).
The CSW Model 88 is a compact stereo unit designed to compete with the slightly smaller (and much more expensive) Bose Wave, while the Tivoli Model One is mono.
Both use individual semi-conductors instead of “off-the-shelf IC’s” in order to attain better RF and IF performance. (The disparaging use of the phrase “off-the-shelf IC’s” is a direct quote from a CSW brochure for the Model 88 ca. 1996; I would have given you a complete quote if I could have found the brochure.)
That may seem like “retro” engineering, but in the Tivoli, Kloss went even further by using ANALOG tuning, without even so much as a digital readout. This makes a lot of sense if you really know anything about engineering, because digital circuits -- even frequency counter circuits -- have a way of radiating stray energy that can compromise the performance of analog circuitry that is either nearby or sharing a common power supply (without extraordinary filtering). Tivoli pointed this out in its sales literature for the Model One -- and I think that Tom Wells is the only guy who has ever mentioned that phenomenon in this forum!
(BTW, back in the Seventies I knew one of the techs at Dynaco, and he told me how one of his colleagues had needlessy replaced some circuit boards in an FM-5 tuner a couple of times before he figured out that the terribe S/N ratios he was measuring were caused by energy from his first-generation digital multi-meter -- remember when he called 'em VOM's? -- getting into those tuner circuits through his test probes!)
All the reviews I was able to find online through Google today make a much bigger deal of the CSW 88’s superior audio, especially the bass, (compared to the Bose Wave) than of its better RF performance, CSW’s brochures stressed the two factors almost equally.
Henry Kloss died in 2002. But I think we can assume that he wouldn’t have staked the reputation of any of his fledgling companies at any point in his career on the performance of the iNiquity-approved chip necessary for the implementation of “HD Radio.”
In fact, I don’t think he would have approved of such a seriously flawed system at all.
And neither, apparently, does Amar Bose, since Bose Corp. isn’t offering any “HD” products. Of course, that’s not surprising, since Dr. Bose, has, after all, demonstrated both his engineering competence and his integrity. And he certainly doesn’t want to sacrifice Bose Corp’s reputation for reliability by jumping on a faltering bandwagon.
(If the Wave is somewhat over-priced -- especially by comparison with the Model 88 -- well, somebody has to pay for all that slick marketing!)
