Nope. It's mono only. Apple promises to make it stereo "sometime in the future" but my guess is they will tread into the SONOS waters of IP and patents, that recently caught Denon's HEOS solution. Trying to do multiple, synchronized WiFi based speakers without stepping into the SONOS network of patents is exceedingly difficult.
If Apple was smart, they'd just buy SONOS and be done with it. Much like they did with Beats to get MOG/Beats Music. Buy SONOS, and you own the de-facto leader in wireless audio systems.
So what you're saying is we cannot trust the data in these measurements? The same data that was used to proclaim that it is better than a $499 (they are $998 in pairs) "audiophile" speaker? Is that what you are saying?
Not an issue, just do what we've learned from Star Trek. If we've learned anything from Star Trek, it's that any technical problem can be solved by simply reversing the polarity.
So what you're saying is that they are talking about cash flow (your $5 surplus), and I'm talking about debt (your $5 increase in debt). You used an increase in debt to create the surplus. I guess that's like using your credit card to pay your mortgage - yes, it gives you more "cash today" to use, but it increases your debt - and it happened simply because you spent more (mortgage) than you have. Why else would you take on debt, unless you believe you can make more in the long run?
Reading through it, I see a few things (and I saw them before I posted):
1. No mention of the fit; the paper I linked shows a r^2 value of 0.94; what is it for their fit?
2. Their conclusions are based upon subtracting estimated effects from non-CO2 based changes, and from estimates about how much ice there is. Meaning they are drawing conclusions accurate to 0.1mm, based upon several orders-of-magnitude higher estimates. Not good, statistically
3. They ignore tide-gauge corrections for altitude, on the basis that tidal gauges are too sensitive to decadal changes. They even mention that doing so increases the acceleration; if they left the tide-gauge corrections in, the acceleration would be lower.
4. There are several other papers (in the page to which I linked) which shows just the opposite of what is happening here, and it uses tidal gauges, satellite, or both for the results. In all cases, sea level changes are decelerating on a decadal basis. So at best this is a result that runs counter to many others, meaning "we're not sure".
So, does realizing there are errors in this study - which runs counter to many other studies - make me a denialist? I'd say it makes me a realist. Which can be offensive to people who take AGW as a religious basis for their life...
Study the Fletcher Munson curves. You'll find that 75 dB SPL in the bass frequencies - where the THD was up to 56% - is about the same perceived loudness as a 55-60 dB conversation. A quiet level. If you don't know of what you speak - keep your mouth shut.
Aha! So it's spending minus receipts! Now what if you put much of that spending "off record", so it doesn't count? Then you end up with a surplus... But is it really? The debt keeps increasing (and the debt listed by the Treasury Department is all debt that must be paid, per US Government promises - not future promises, but money already spent and financed by issuing bonds) even though we were supposedly spending less than we brought in. It's because of putting a lot of spending off budget so there is no accounting for that spend. But money WAS spent...
So, how do you add to your debt when you run a surplus? Simple question. If you can answer that with anything other than "you can't", then you've figured out how they can increase the national debt (which the US Treasury shows at Treasury Direct) while running a surplus.
And when we do that, and look at more than a straight line, we see that the global sea level rise is decelerating, not accelerating. Hard to get people worked up about things slowing down, though, so we'll stick with straight-line approximations for things that are best fit with non-straight-lines and be done with it!
Thank you! Many people don't look at the actual data of our national bank balance, so to speak...
Actually, no. You seem to have missed the words "Includes legal tender notes, gold and silver certificates, etc."
The debt on that page can increase when the government prints more money.
Only if that money is put into circulation, either in an attempt to stimulate the economy (Government literally giving money away via zero interest loans), or spent (Government buying goods and services). Print all you want, until it's handed over it's not debt.
An analogy would be that you have $10,000 in your bank account. If you write a $1,000,000 check, you are NOT overdrawn until you hand that check over to someone else. Then that printed money - written check - has become an actual liability that you must honor.
No, according to the CBO, there were real BUDGET surpluses, which only counts the on-budget spending. For example, the Federal Government does not consider spending on Social Security, the US Postal Service, Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae, and several other large ticket items as "on budget". So you can keep the rest of spending just under budget, but blow trillions on these via borrowing - and still be, per the CBO, under budget and in surplus.
This would be akin to you having a $10,000/month take-home pay. You spend $9,000 per month on food, utilities, travel, clothing. You spend $3,000 per month on housing, and you spend $2,000 per month on your IRA/401K. Your total spending is $14,000 - with only $10,000 income. BUT, because you consider housing and your IRA/401K not "on budget", you actually ran a surplus! Never mind that your actual net worth dropped by $4,000 (you accumulated $4,000 of debt - excess spending relative to income). You were below your budget on the other things you want to put into your budget, so you're all good.
2. Even Audiophile-quality (whatever THAT means!) Subwoofers generate around 25-30% THD when they are crankin'.
Funny, in his statement, I don't see anything about size or price. In fact, when people think "audiophile" they tend to think high-price! So TFTC claimed that audiophile subs generate high levels of THD when cranking. I have provided two links, one from nearly 15 years ago, that show it is not the case. You want to put extra conditions upon it? That's a different claim, is it not?
2. Even Audiophile-quality (whatever THAT means!) Subwoofers generate around 25-30% THD when they are crankin'.
Those two linked subwoofers are considered "Audiophile-quality". If he wanted to restrict it to smallish, general consumer speakers, he shouldn't have made the claim.
Ahh, someone doesn't understand levels! The HomePod was doing about 75 dB SPL in that 56% THD test! That's just above audible - that is a lower signal level. See, human auditory systems do NOT change sensitivity with the limits if your speakers! A speaker generating 56% THD @ 75 dB SPL will not be hard to hear at all. Doesn't matter that it's a "high level signal" for the speaker - that is a low level signal for a human! And it is quite audible - just check the FM/RD curves...
No, the human ear is quite sensitive to THD in the bass, it comes down to the order of the harmonics. If it is just 2nd and 3rd, then it can be much less objectionable (you can hear 2-3% of each harmonic, but it's not "bad"). Higher order harmonics, though, become extremely pronounced and easy to hear and objectionable. In fact, as you go up in frequency, the importance of those higher harmonics somewhat lessens. All this is pretty heavily documented in the several AES presentations by Louis Fielder of Dolby Labs. It's the structure of the harmonic distortion, not the total level itself, that becomes critical in the bass.
That said, when you push a woofer to its limits, reaching beyond its linear BL or Cms range (motor force and suspension force), the lower order harmonics start to increase - but the higher order harmonics explode. Le (inductance) nonlinearities can exacerbate this issue when it comes to wideband transducers that are a bit small for their size, because of the broader frequency range over which they are moving a lot.
So for example, a woofer that is still not quite at its BL or Cms limits, and is generating 10% THD, but it's 3% 2nd, 6% 3rd, and 1% higher orders, will sound "better" than a woofer at its limits, generating 8% THD, but it's 2% 2nd, 4% 3rd, and 2% higher orders. It turns out it is really hard to keep those higher order components low - and that is one of the biggest differences between a "good" woofer and a "bad" woofer. But in any case, 18% and more will be audible - and 56% is atrocious. That is effectively a 3 dB SNR - the signal is only 30% higher than the noise of the distortion, the THD will be extremely easy to hear, even if it's all 2nd harmonic.
Last thing: many people consider the ear insensitive to THD in the bass range because of the general insensitivity to SPL for low frequencies (plus the complete breakdown of ITD/IAD localization below ~100 Hz). However, harmonics are NOT in the bass range! What is the 5th harmonic of 80 Hz? It's 400 Hz - right in the lower midrange. Meaning you can end up with situations where, because of a bad driver (high THD) at lower SPLs, you can hear a bunch of harmonics and not hear the fundamental! For example, the threshold of hearing says you can hear ~55 dB SPL @ 40 Hz. The 5th harmonic would be at 200 Hz. You can hear ~10 dB SPL at 200 Hz. That means you could hear ~1% 5th harmonic of a 40 Hz tone that was inaudible (50 dB SPL @ 40 Hz, -40 dB 5th harmonic). You hear the distortion - not the fundamental.
And the airports suggested to be sold - they don't exist now, and don't need a massive overhaul? We would expect them to make big profits even when they are going to get reworked?
Prove they were doing what you claim earlier or STFU. See how easy that is? You just want to lie and slander, and then crawl away when hammered with real facts that show you are just an Apple shill...
We never had a surplus. The national debt has increased every year since 1957. The only way for the debt to increase is to spend more than was brought in. The "surplus" was in name only, because it only dealt with some of the spending of the Federal Government. But we haven't had a surplus since 1957, back when Ike was rolling out the Interstate highway system.
Maybe elsewhere they make big money, but in the US, it's not quite true. Here's the budget for Los Angeles World Airports. Now, at first blush it looks like they'll make about $100MM in profit in 2017; however, tearing into it, you see they do that by issuing $680MM in new bonds, and paying our $560MM in old bond servicing. So basically their profit comes from issuing new debt. Not quite as much of a gold mine as many would think, especially for the 2nd busiest airport in the US.
Google tells you up-front it'll snoop on your free Gmail account e-mails. It also tells you that when you use its free services, it reserves the right to snoop as much as it wants. But for paid services - it does not snoop. Apple says kind of the same things (they will use data they collect for their purposes only - but they will collect data), but at the end of the day, we're simply trusting a 3rd party anyway. So your position is that Apple is trustworthy, and Google is not. Yet it is only held because of faith. Much like religion...
Oh, one other thing. If you want more than 140 dB SPL, it's not hard at all. Get yourself a Danley Sound Labs SM80F and you're there. Want more? We can do line arrays. I've installed a few systems that are capable of 150+ dB SPL at 10 meters, in open air stadiums. There are quite a few larger systems that can do that kind of SPL if you want it. Heck, some headphones can easily exceed 128 dB SPL - and that's a tiny system that can fit in your ear! The highest system I ever did reached around 182 dB SPL - but what do I know...
Hmmm.... So your contention is that the well documented hearing limits from Fletcher-Munson (and later Robinson-Dadson) tests are in fact not relevant? My personal listening room in my home is ~31 dBA per measurements (APx515 with an Earthworks M50 mic and an Earthworks 1021 preamp). Given the well-known capability of the human auditory engine to be able to perceive information 15-20 dB below the noise floor, that puts my "lower limit" around 15 dBA. My speaker system (custom 7" woofer, 0.75" wide x 5" long ribbon, active crossover and bi-amped for mains, dual 15" sealed subwoofers for everything below 60 Hz) is capable of 118 dB SPL at the listening position from ~25 Hz to 40 kHz, with less than 7% THD. So that would give me about 103 dB of range - more than 17 bits.
And you cannot mix dB SPL and dBm; dB SPL is relative to 20 micropascals of pressure, dBm is relative to 1 milliwatt. You're talking, literally, electrical power and acoustic pressure. Apples and oranges. Just - stop. You are flailing in an attempt to protect that which you literally know nothing about. It's clear from your own statements here - and elsewhere, in this thread - that you've not even done something as basic (1st grade equivalent) as reading the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook, let alone anything beyond the 3rd grade level of acoustics.
As far as your claim about small drivers and TLs - the number one use of TLs in the audio world is probably Voigt pipes for Lowther speakers - which are pretty much all 8.75" full range transducers. Or perhaps you mean PMC Speakers which uses TL designs for their woofer transducers. Not to mention thousands built around the 12" and 15" subwoofer drivers I designed and built and sold back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Just stop. You're embarrassing yourself with your nonsense and clear lack of any knowledge when it comes to audio and acoustics. Just stop.
PS: if you want to know about TL theory, I'd recommend anything from King or Augspurger for a good mathematical model that is pretty accurate.
Which product are they killing off? Is it being refreshed/updated, like the Play:5 or the Bridge (now Boost)? Or the Play:1 now Play One?
Nope. It's mono only. Apple promises to make it stereo "sometime in the future" but my guess is they will tread into the SONOS waters of IP and patents, that recently caught Denon's HEOS solution. Trying to do multiple, synchronized WiFi based speakers without stepping into the SONOS network of patents is exceedingly difficult.
If Apple was smart, they'd just buy SONOS and be done with it. Much like they did with Beats to get MOG/Beats Music. Buy SONOS, and you own the de-facto leader in wireless audio systems.
So what you're saying is we cannot trust the data in these measurements? The same data that was used to proclaim that it is better than a $499 (they are $998 in pairs) "audiophile" speaker? Is that what you are saying?
Not an issue, just do what we've learned from Star Trek. If we've learned anything from Star Trek, it's that any technical problem can be solved by simply reversing the polarity.
The nation of China pretty much bans all things Google - and they somehow manage to have close to 1 billion people on the Internet...
So what you're saying is that they are talking about cash flow (your $5 surplus), and I'm talking about debt (your $5 increase in debt). You used an increase in debt to create the surplus. I guess that's like using your credit card to pay your mortgage - yes, it gives you more "cash today" to use, but it increases your debt - and it happened simply because you spent more (mortgage) than you have. Why else would you take on debt, unless you believe you can make more in the long run?
Reading through it, I see a few things (and I saw them before I posted):
1. No mention of the fit; the paper I linked shows a r^2 value of 0.94; what is it for their fit?
2. Their conclusions are based upon subtracting estimated effects from non-CO2 based changes, and from estimates about how much ice there is. Meaning they are drawing conclusions accurate to 0.1mm, based upon several orders-of-magnitude higher estimates. Not good, statistically
3. They ignore tide-gauge corrections for altitude, on the basis that tidal gauges are too sensitive to decadal changes. They even mention that doing so increases the acceleration; if they left the tide-gauge corrections in, the acceleration would be lower.
4. There are several other papers (in the page to which I linked) which shows just the opposite of what is happening here, and it uses tidal gauges, satellite, or both for the results. In all cases, sea level changes are decelerating on a decadal basis. So at best this is a result that runs counter to many others, meaning "we're not sure".
So, does realizing there are errors in this study - which runs counter to many other studies - make me a denialist? I'd say it makes me a realist. Which can be offensive to people who take AGW as a religious basis for their life...
Study the Fletcher Munson curves. You'll find that 75 dB SPL in the bass frequencies - where the THD was up to 56% - is about the same perceived loudness as a 55-60 dB conversation. A quiet level. If you don't know of what you speak - keep your mouth shut.
Aha! So it's spending minus receipts! Now what if you put much of that spending "off record", so it doesn't count? Then you end up with a surplus... But is it really? The debt keeps increasing (and the debt listed by the Treasury Department is all debt that must be paid, per US Government promises - not future promises, but money already spent and financed by issuing bonds) even though we were supposedly spending less than we brought in. It's because of putting a lot of spending off budget so there is no accounting for that spend. But money WAS spent...
So, how do you add to your debt when you run a surplus? Simple question. If you can answer that with anything other than "you can't", then you've figured out how they can increase the national debt (which the US Treasury shows at Treasury Direct) while running a surplus.
And when we do that, and look at more than a straight line, we see that the global sea level rise is decelerating, not accelerating. Hard to get people worked up about things slowing down, though, so we'll stick with straight-line approximations for things that are best fit with non-straight-lines and be done with it!
How is the Federal national debt not "Government debt"? And how do you build up debt without spending more than you have?
We never had a surplus. The national debt has increased every year since 1957.
That's an interesting chart.
Thank you! Many people don't look at the actual data of our national bank balance, so to speak...
Actually, no. You seem to have missed the words "Includes legal tender notes, gold and silver certificates, etc."
The debt on that page can increase when the government prints more money.
Only if that money is put into circulation, either in an attempt to stimulate the economy (Government literally giving money away via zero interest loans), or spent (Government buying goods and services). Print all you want, until it's handed over it's not debt.
An analogy would be that you have $10,000 in your bank account. If you write a $1,000,000 check, you are NOT overdrawn until you hand that check over to someone else. Then that printed money - written check - has become an actual liability that you must honor.
According to the Congressional Budget Office there were real surpluses in the years 1969, and 1998-2001.
No, according to the CBO, there were real BUDGET surpluses, which only counts the on-budget spending. For example, the Federal Government does not consider spending on Social Security, the US Postal Service, Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae, and several other large ticket items as "on budget". So you can keep the rest of spending just under budget, but blow trillions on these via borrowing - and still be, per the CBO, under budget and in surplus.
This would be akin to you having a $10,000/month take-home pay. You spend $9,000 per month on food, utilities, travel, clothing. You spend $3,000 per month on housing, and you spend $2,000 per month on your IRA/401K. Your total spending is $14,000 - with only $10,000 income. BUT, because you consider housing and your IRA/401K not "on budget", you actually ran a surplus! Never mind that your actual net worth dropped by $4,000 (you accumulated $4,000 of debt - excess spending relative to income). You were below your budget on the other things you want to put into your budget, so you're all good.
2. Even Audiophile-quality (whatever THAT means!) Subwoofers generate around 25-30% THD when they are crankin'.
Funny, in his statement, I don't see anything about size or price. In fact, when people think "audiophile" they tend to think high-price! So TFTC claimed that audiophile subs generate high levels of THD when cranking. I have provided two links, one from nearly 15 years ago, that show it is not the case. You want to put extra conditions upon it? That's a different claim, is it not?
2. Even Audiophile-quality (whatever THAT means!) Subwoofers generate around 25-30% THD when they are crankin'.
Those two linked subwoofers are considered "Audiophile-quality". If he wanted to restrict it to smallish, general consumer speakers, he shouldn't have made the claim.
Ahh, someone doesn't understand levels! The HomePod was doing about 75 dB SPL in that 56% THD test! That's just above audible - that is a lower signal level. See, human auditory systems do NOT change sensitivity with the limits if your speakers! A speaker generating 56% THD @ 75 dB SPL will not be hard to hear at all. Doesn't matter that it's a "high level signal" for the speaker - that is a low level signal for a human! And it is quite audible - just check the FM/RD curves...
No, the human ear is quite sensitive to THD in the bass, it comes down to the order of the harmonics. If it is just 2nd and 3rd, then it can be much less objectionable (you can hear 2-3% of each harmonic, but it's not "bad"). Higher order harmonics, though, become extremely pronounced and easy to hear and objectionable. In fact, as you go up in frequency, the importance of those higher harmonics somewhat lessens. All this is pretty heavily documented in the several AES presentations by Louis Fielder of Dolby Labs. It's the structure of the harmonic distortion, not the total level itself, that becomes critical in the bass.
That said, when you push a woofer to its limits, reaching beyond its linear BL or Cms range (motor force and suspension force), the lower order harmonics start to increase - but the higher order harmonics explode. Le (inductance) nonlinearities can exacerbate this issue when it comes to wideband transducers that are a bit small for their size, because of the broader frequency range over which they are moving a lot.
So for example, a woofer that is still not quite at its BL or Cms limits, and is generating 10% THD, but it's 3% 2nd, 6% 3rd, and 1% higher orders, will sound "better" than a woofer at its limits, generating 8% THD, but it's 2% 2nd, 4% 3rd, and 2% higher orders. It turns out it is really hard to keep those higher order components low - and that is one of the biggest differences between a "good" woofer and a "bad" woofer. But in any case, 18% and more will be audible - and 56% is atrocious. That is effectively a 3 dB SNR - the signal is only 30% higher than the noise of the distortion, the THD will be extremely easy to hear, even if it's all 2nd harmonic.
Last thing: many people consider the ear insensitive to THD in the bass range because of the general insensitivity to SPL for low frequencies (plus the complete breakdown of ITD/IAD localization below ~100 Hz). However, harmonics are NOT in the bass range! What is the 5th harmonic of 80 Hz? It's 400 Hz - right in the lower midrange. Meaning you can end up with situations where, because of a bad driver (high THD) at lower SPLs, you can hear a bunch of harmonics and not hear the fundamental! For example, the threshold of hearing says you can hear ~55 dB SPL @ 40 Hz. The 5th harmonic would be at 200 Hz. You can hear ~10 dB SPL at 200 Hz. That means you could hear ~1% 5th harmonic of a 40 Hz tone that was inaudible (50 dB SPL @ 40 Hz, -40 dB 5th harmonic). You hear the distortion - not the fundamental.
No, he's pretty much correct. Per DIN 45500, the HomePod is not Hi-Fi. Published standards and all...
And the airports suggested to be sold - they don't exist now, and don't need a massive overhaul? We would expect them to make big profits even when they are going to get reworked?
Prove they were doing what you claim earlier or STFU. See how easy that is? You just want to lie and slander, and then crawl away when hammered with real facts that show you are just an Apple shill...
We never had a surplus. The national debt has increased every year since 1957. The only way for the debt to increase is to spend more than was brought in. The "surplus" was in name only, because it only dealt with some of the spending of the Federal Government. But we haven't had a surplus since 1957, back when Ike was rolling out the Interstate highway system.
Maybe elsewhere they make big money, but in the US, it's not quite true. Here's the budget for Los Angeles World Airports. Now, at first blush it looks like they'll make about $100MM in profit in 2017; however, tearing into it, you see they do that by issuing $680MM in new bonds, and paying our $560MM in old bond servicing. So basically their profit comes from issuing new debt. Not quite as much of a gold mine as many would think, especially for the 2nd busiest airport in the US.
Google tells you up-front it'll snoop on your free Gmail account e-mails. It also tells you that when you use its free services, it reserves the right to snoop as much as it wants. But for paid services - it does not snoop. Apple says kind of the same things (they will use data they collect for their purposes only - but they will collect data), but at the end of the day, we're simply trusting a 3rd party anyway. So your position is that Apple is trustworthy, and Google is not. Yet it is only held because of faith. Much like religion...
Oh, one other thing. If you want more than 140 dB SPL, it's not hard at all. Get yourself a Danley Sound Labs SM80F and you're there. Want more? We can do line arrays. I've installed a few systems that are capable of 150+ dB SPL at 10 meters, in open air stadiums. There are quite a few larger systems that can do that kind of SPL if you want it. Heck, some headphones can easily exceed 128 dB SPL - and that's a tiny system that can fit in your ear! The highest system I ever did reached around 182 dB SPL - but what do I know...
Hmmm.... So your contention is that the well documented hearing limits from Fletcher-Munson (and later Robinson-Dadson) tests are in fact not relevant? My personal listening room in my home is ~31 dBA per measurements (APx515 with an Earthworks M50 mic and an Earthworks 1021 preamp). Given the well-known capability of the human auditory engine to be able to perceive information 15-20 dB below the noise floor, that puts my "lower limit" around 15 dBA. My speaker system (custom 7" woofer, 0.75" wide x 5" long ribbon, active crossover and bi-amped for mains, dual 15" sealed subwoofers for everything below 60 Hz) is capable of 118 dB SPL at the listening position from ~25 Hz to 40 kHz, with less than 7% THD. So that would give me about 103 dB of range - more than 17 bits.
And you cannot mix dB SPL and dBm; dB SPL is relative to 20 micropascals of pressure, dBm is relative to 1 milliwatt. You're talking, literally, electrical power and acoustic pressure. Apples and oranges. Just - stop. You are flailing in an attempt to protect that which you literally know nothing about. It's clear from your own statements here - and elsewhere, in this thread - that you've not even done something as basic (1st grade equivalent) as reading the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook, let alone anything beyond the 3rd grade level of acoustics.
As far as your claim about small drivers and TLs - the number one use of TLs in the audio world is probably Voigt pipes for Lowther speakers - which are pretty much all 8.75" full range transducers. Or perhaps you mean PMC Speakers which uses TL designs for their woofer transducers. Not to mention thousands built around the 12" and 15" subwoofer drivers I designed and built and sold back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Just stop. You're embarrassing yourself with your nonsense and clear lack of any knowledge when it comes to audio and acoustics. Just stop.
PS: if you want to know about TL theory, I'd recommend anything from King or Augspurger for a good mathematical model that is pretty accurate.