| StoreTags: turnkey, shite, useless
Author: Zanf on April 22 2007 Viewed 3960 times. 17 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
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So I went out yesterday to A/B test some Adam A7's against some Dynaudio BM5A's.
I first went to Turnkey on Tottenham Court Road to see what sort of deal they would do and have a good listening session with a variety of music.
The guy put my first CD in the player [Talk Talk - Happiness Is Easy] and started to pump it out of the BM5A's as I knew what these sounded like and so I could get my ears 'tuned' to the space.
About halfway through the song, the sales assistant switched to the Adams and instantly the sound changed for the worst. The speakers were out of phase.
I said to the sales assistant that they were out of phase and said for him to check it out. He listened for a short while then started to tinker with the cables at the back of the amp. He suggested that it was because the Adam's were known for being 'proud' in the mid range but had great definition because of it.
Another assistant, who had meanwhile come into demonstrate somehting to another customer, asked me how I could tell.
Biting my lip as not to piss myself laughing, I suggested he listen to the stereo field and move his head out of the centre axis to listen to what happened and about the bass cutoff as well because of the cancellation.
The first assistant, after tinkering with the cables said, "try now, it sounds a lot better".
The speakers were still out of phase.
I said that speakers are either out of phase or in and these were definately out.
The assistant was now babbling on about how these speakers had been like this for ages and were their biggest sellers and...." so, what do you reckon? Do you want me to sort a pair for you?"
I pointed out to him that I couldnt buy speakers based on a test where they were out of phase and asked if he could sort it out. He replied that they were going to redo the listening room in a couple of weeks and so they wont bother until then.
I left saying that I was going to go to Digital Village.
When I got to Digital village in Croydon, they didnt have the speakers in store but made me a cup of tea and then we made arrangements for me to go back next week after the guy compiled a list of about 6 different monitors that he felt I should check out and would get the stock into the store.
So, Ian of DV in Croydon: thanks for excellent customer service and to Turnkey: I will never spend another penny with you evar. | |
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04/22/07
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Zanf
I am but Ill be testing them against about 5-6 other monitors that the guy is getting into the shop especially. He said that I will more than likely go with the Adams but wanted to give me a good variety to listen to upto about the £800 range.
04/23/07
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Moriarty
hmm, I just ordered something from turnkey. hope it arrives okay.
i had to phone them up about my order and when i was speaking to the salesperson i heard a bang in the background followed by some woman saying "oh shit!". i wonder if it was my new keyboard she just dropped... having said that, they do have some bargains.
04/23/07
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soundhdack
This is the funniest thread I've ever read here. I'm so fed up with music stores it's not even funny. Daddy's Junky Music, Guitar Center, Sam Ash, they all blow for knowledgeable customer service. Don't know how many times I've walked in only knowing very little about a product, just the details gleaned from an ad in a magazine, and I STILL knew more about the product than the staff trying to sell it to me.
One time I went into Daddy's Junky Music and I told the guy working in the "Pro Audio" section of the store that I needed a 1/4" speaker Y-cable, just your ordinary M to F/F kind, and that fool brought over an XLR speaker cable to the counter. I was like, "What the frack?" I said to him that I wanted a Y-cable, that what he had brought me was an XLR cable, and he actually said to me, "I'm sorry, we're all out of the Y's. We only have X's left." I still go into shock every time I think about that.
04/23/07
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Otterfan
The Daddy's next to Berklee is the guitar-wank capital of the world.
Turnkey is a lot better than Guitard Center, btw. Not that the people are any smarter, but they've got much cooler stuff.
04/23/07
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bsr
what does it mean when speakers are out of phase? sorry!
04/23/07
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license
I've worked retail on and off throughout my life (hopefully OFF forever after I'm done with this last gig) so I am used to dealing with tards. I'm an introvert and I'm pretty good at giving people effective but subtle "fuck off" vibes when I want to be left alone. The thing that really irritates me about Guitar Zoo is this, gleaned from the first page of the gearslutz thread:
The reason people use mail order or internet music stores is because they are too intimidated to go into a real store where the sales men are all too heated up comparing how big their "shredders" are to be bothered with mongoloid mom and dad trying to set little Jonny up with a 100$ guitar that he'll pick up twice and never look at again because the "musicians" who aught to be teaching are once again over compensating for their little jimmys with their finger calisthenics.
I fucking hate going into a store to pick up a couple 1/4" cables and a MIDI cable and having to walk past 3+ guitarists playing riffs that were moldy in the 80s with the amps cranked to 11. I don't mind going in there when there's no one there, and I actually seem to have fairly good luck with knowledgeable staff. Again I think I give off icy nerd vibes and so fake ass narcissist sleazeball hairgel sales types know better than to approach me unless I have a question.
04/23/07
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license
bsr: It means that on one speaker, the part of the wave that's supposed to be going up is going down and vice versa. Not sure how they can get wired up that way..? The effect is that when the 2 signals are added together (or waves, as Zanf said, when your head is in a certain spot in the stereo field), they cancel each other out and you get silence.
Sometimes you can put this to good use, as you can cancel out signals that occur in both channels and leave only the signals that occur in one or the other: link
04/23/07
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bsr
aah, maybe that's whats wrogn with my setup and i'm not actually going deaf.
04/23/07
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license
It sounds kind of funny, like there's a false sense of space. To me, it's kind of like trying to make eye contact with a person who has a lazy eye.
You can test it pretty easily in software. I see you have Cool Edit...I believe it's just a matter of highlighting one of the channels and then inverting it. If it sounds more "correct" or "centered" when you invert it then that might be your problem. I'm sure there's a better or more scientific way to test it but I'm not sure what that is using acoustic speakers. If it was just out of phase line outputs, it'd be pretty easy: just mix them together at the same level and see whether what came out was silence (probably wiggling one of the levels up and down a little to see if it comes back in).
Anyway I'll STFU because this basically concludes my understanding of phase.
04/23/07
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bla
is it when youve got the wires the wrong way round?
04/23/07
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license
I think that's one way it happens, because I've done the out-of-phase "cheapest" way using a cheap boombox with the negatives from both speaker outs before, as described in the link. I dunno how that happens, though, if you are using 1/4" speaker wire...unless...you aren't.  If it's just wire terminals maybe you can just flip the two. I hate to give advice that could potentially damage expensive equipment but I'm reckless so that's probably the way I'd do it.
04/23/07
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crabster
Oh dear. So many horror stories, so little time.
Overheard this a couple of weeks before christmas a couple of years back:
cheesy sales guy said: "
But you want little Johnny/Jenny to learn to play properly don't you?
"
Stressed out dad got a $1200 or whatever fender.
To me:
cheesy sales guy said: "
I use the nord modular alot myself. Uh-huh. Good for. Ahem. ... awkward silence. Bass?
"
cheesy sales guy said: "
Uhm, you'll have to way for 2 weeks. Or if you add some memory it'll get here faster. Uh. Custom computers get here faster for some reason.
"
That one I had no response to.
04/23/07
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ignatius
bsr said: "what does it mean when speakers are out of phase? sorry!"
if you have a home stereo w/amp/speakers it's easy to give an example. take one speaker and swap the negative/positive wires on the back. sit an listen and you'll hear what out of phase speakers sound like. it's basically polarity.
another way is to take a stereo sine wave in an audio editor. loop it. now select one channel and invert the phase. the wave should cancel out.
[b]Q: I've heard that to get the best sound from my speakers, they need to be "in phase" when I hook them up. What does that mean?
A: When your stereo speakers are connected in phase, the drivers of the left and right speaker move in and out at the same time. When they're out of phase, the drivers of the left speaker move in, while those of the right move out. If your speakers have removable grilles, you can pop them off and actually see this.
Stereo speakers should always be connected in phase. Out-of-phase speakers sound "not quite right" — imaging is vague and there isn't as much bass.
To hook up your speakers in phase, just make sure that your positive receiver (or amplifier) terminals are connected to the positive speaker terminals, and your negative receiver terminals are connected to your negative speaker terminals.
It helps to pay attention to the markings on the wire — look for print, a stripe, or a rib that may be molded into the wire's jacket. If you find that your speakers are out of phase, don't worry, it's easy to fix. Just switch the positive and negative leads at one of your speakers (not both).[/b]
04/23/07
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Zanf
If you get a stereo widening plugin, it sort of has a similar effect [it actually inverts the channels phase to give that extra stereo width but will kill anything in the middle of the stereo field].
What made me laugh most was that going from the BM5's to the A7's and the assistants still couldnt tell anything was wrong.
04/23/07
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mlbot
Do the A7's go to 11?
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