Canon Quality, 5 Colour 1pl VS 6 Colour 2pl

[Tin Ho]

A $5000 stereo may not sound much better than one that is $500. I have owned a system that cost $3000 15 years ago. The $1200 SAE power amp finally broke a few months ago. A similar power amp will cost easily $3000 today. I can not afford one. So I picked up a $150 used Hafler. I was blown away to realize that it actually sounds better than my 300 watt per channel SAE 2400L. Well, if you do not compare my 2400L was actually pretty good. But Hafler DH-200 is simply no dog. My buddy refused my $150. He gave it to me if fact.

That's off topic. Sorry. Thanks for your input to this thread, Mikling. I did learn from them too. I have criticized Epson printers a lot. They deserve more respect from me for sure.

 

[Grandad35]

No, I am not anywhere near an expert at all. I simply believe I am full of outdated knowledge about color management in my head that is in need of fresh replenishment. I asked the questions because I used to believe that most commercial grade inkjet printers have a gamut well within the scope of sRGB. I also got the impression that most digital cameras (not including latest higher end ones) output by default in sRGB which seems to indicate that they do not capture colors outside of sRGB. If they can shoot in RAW then you may have options to output in aRGB or other wider color spaces. Then they may capture (or produce) colors outside sRGB (or even aRGB). You know scanners can produce scans using interpolation to produce resolution higher than their native resolution. Cameras sure can output colors outside their native space too by using software tools. So my real question is if most inkjet printers we use do have a gamut wider than sRGB. I may be very wrong about this. But when I compare the colors of my images on my Viewsonic LCD monitor set to sRGB (to match my PC's default) and the colors printed by my Canon printer I can see that some colors on my monitors are simply impossible for the printer to print. If some colors on my monitor in sRGB are not printable the printer's gamut has to be in a smaller color space than sRGB. I have seen a document published by Adobe on ICC site that concurred this. There are many colors seen on most computer monitors that are not printable by inkjet printers. Perhaps this is indeed old knowledge that needs revise. I am search for answers for a update.

You shouldnt think of these gamuts being Larger or Smaller, but Different. For starters, a monitor uses R/G/B colors in an additive mode, while a printer uses C/M/Y/K colors in a subtractive mode. Each additional color on a monitor adds light and color to the display, while each additional ink on a printer subtracts light that would normally be reflected from a (normally white) paper. R+G+B = white, while C+M+Y = (almost) black. To get a handle on this, you need to download the VRML viewer as stated above and look around these 3-D gamuts to see how a printer can have some colors outside of the sRGB boundaries while having many other colors well inside the sRGB boundaries.

As Mikling stated earlier, if you are just shooting things where capturing the exact color isnt necessary, stick to sRGB for everything and dont worry about the gamut of your equipment. If you are fussy about your colors, then take the time to learn about color management and to set up a color managed workflow its not an easy subject to grasp.

BTW, the difficulty of capturing the sunset scene at Grand Canyon for most digital cameras is more an issue of CCD's narrow dynamic range. Perhaps output in sRGB also further worsens the capture of colors as well. Thanks for pointing that out.

Most cameras have a dynamic range of about 5 stops (32:1). However, by using High Dynamic Range (HDR), multiple images with varying exposure levels can be combined to give 8-9 stops on the composite image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging).

 

[mikling]

I modded my Hafler DH-200 back in 1982-3. They were not bad in their day, their DH-220 was not much better. Both can have problems sounding sterile at times. Both do not have muscle or bass heft, their bass control was abysmal. I had a couple of them back then sold them off. Why because I powered up my home made ( even the PCBs) LEACH power amp with fully regulated power supplies. Needless to say ,my homemade stuff was always built up with high quality parts and transistors all matched. The DIY stuff I made easily and vastly sounds more musical and in total control of the music especially the bass. Needless to say, if you try to acquire that caliber of equipment, you're looking at not $5000, but at multiples of that. I sold those off to a speaker designer in Calgary (Perkins) who later diversified off to tube accessories. While I made another two more powerful LEACH power amplifiers. I still own both today and they sound as good as anything you could acquire today. I am finally going to build an updated one this year with more advancements.

BTW the power capacitors in the Hafler would be highly degraded by now ( if used regularly) and may need replacement to restore original performance like 20+ years ago. All the onboard caps of the Hafler could use upgrades as well.

In the DIY world, you can incorporate technology that would be uneconomical for a commercial manufacturer to offer, even for high end mfrs. Take for example fast high bandwidth power supplies for preamps and DACS. Too costly and complicated to incorporate these into commercial products but they make real differences that sadly most people have no opportunity to experience.

Hi Fi & Home Theatre is another area of specmanship where the numbers do not tell the story at all. The sound tells all.

Enough off topic.

 

[mikling]

Yes, grandad35, people need to find out about HDR software out there that can really open up images! I just want to mention that.

Beyond the dynamic range and color space is also the issue of bit depth of JPG that most point and shoots use . This could also be another shocker.

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/essentials/16-bit/

 

[Tin Ho]

I sure hope the stereo talk will not provoke any protest here. This is good subject sometimes.

The DH-220 I got was factory built. So at least it was factory tested and approved, unlike those kits that DIYer assembled them that might not be properly biased and tested. I do not know the condition of the capacitors as I did not open it to check them out. It is a power amp so there is no nothing for bass and treble knobs to mess with. All that adjustment are on my Yamaha C-2A preamp. The DH-220 appears to have plenty of bass to drive my M&K non-powered The Bottom End sub-woofer. It's not a high end power amp but it does the job. The only problem I see it is it's got only 100 watts per side and the amp heats up very quickly within less than 10 minutes. In last Summer I had to refrain myself to lower the playing volume to not over heated the amp. That's the limit set by the $150 price tag of the amp. Other than that I have no complaint really. I use a Dynavector MC phono cartridge on a SME tonearm on a Technics direct drive turnable which feeds my Denon MC head amp before driving my C-2A. My speakers are a pair of Magnaplanar 2x6 feet for mid range and 2x6 feet for tweeter plus one single M&K for the bottom. The speakers are only one inch thicj but they are 4x6 feet wide on each side.

My original power amp was a SAE-2400L 300watt x 2 amp. Unfortunately I fried the power transistors apparently. I will have it rebuilt eventually. Right now it is accumulating dust in my house. DH-200 and DH-220 are good power amp. If you know how to improve them they are great to keep. I would figure out a way to more effectively cool the heat sink first. They heat up too hot too quickly. I do not want to mess with the bias because it's factory set.

I would spend more money in speakers than in electronics. Normally you get more bang on the buck in speakers than in electronics. Well, at the moment I am more into my hobby in photography and printing my photos. To make this post not completely off topic I am enclosing a photo here for ending this post. It's from a scene with a large dynamic range that was a little difficult to capture. Thanks guys.

 

[mikling]

Just for your benefit. Neither the 200 or 220 gets too hot when biased to factory specs the 220 is warmer than the 200. Some of them exhibit a tendency to oscillate because of instability. The 200 could be biased to run higher into class A to remove some of the hardness in its sound and the large heatsinks allowed it. The 220 had a bigger power supply to improve on the weak one the 200 had and had a few mods. Hafler basically asserting the weakness of the 200. If the 200 is getting too hot either your're too highly biased into class A (unlikely if factory set) or there is some instability in your 200...old caps are one possible source. Those Hitachi FETS are hard to replace nowadays and you'll have to scour Ebay to find a set so be careful as instability can burn out those FETs.

 

[Grandad35]

Tin Ho,

Thats a nice landscape shot. Just for fun, I decided to see what could be done with it.
1. Since it didnt have an embedded color space, I assumed that it was sRGB and assigned that as its color space. Without an embedded color space, you cant be sure that your photos will be printed as you edit them.

2. This shows (in gray) the areas that are out-of-gamut in your original. Note that just because a color can be defined within a color space does not mean that it is guaranteed to fall within its gamut. These colors are guaranteed to print differently from what you see on your monitor.


3. This shows how much the appearance of an image can be changed by some editing (5-10 minutes), especially by reducing the haze in the mountains and boosting the local contrast.

 

[Tin Ho]

It was a nice scene but my shot was only so so. It is interesting that you can improve the image that much. It was a sRGB output but edited in aRGB color space I think. All I did was simple level adjustment and maybe some contrast adjustment also. I shot it on a cloudy day. If it were sunny the dynamic contrast range would have blown the sky to all white and the foreground to near all black.