speedo miles and km for usa models...by law?

[Ulvetanna_imp]

The shame in Ulvetanna's recording example is not that the young musicians decided to record to analog, but that they wanted to master the recording digitally. If the intent is to make the music available in an analog format then just skip the digital portions of the recording chain all together. The real problem with this scenario is that very few people have a decent enough playback system anymore to hear the difference between a recording made with low-end digital recording equipment and one made meticulously with an all-analog process (and that's if they even care). Most people now tend to listen to music through their computer speakers or via crappy headphones so it doesn't really matter that much to them. When it comes to recording music, if the desire is simply to make your music available for the masses via any of the digital based formats then don't bother with going to the trouble to incorporate analog technology into the mix, just let the music stand on it's own. Whether it's recorded music or motorcycles —I'd much rather see manufacturers leave the bogus stuff out/off.

Vinyl albums that were digitally recorded are exactly the same to me as a water-cooled bike sporting "air-cooling' fins, or using offset cylinder timing to create some unevenness in an otherwise amazingly smooth engine. Just like digitally recorded vinyl records, these things are done for no other reason than to sell more product (typically to people that don't know any better). Millennials go for this kind of thing with their music, as di some of us old farts with our motorcycles. Obviously I'm not thrilled with Honda's decision to intentionally make the engine run rougher. I will tell people that I bought the CB despite such a decision by Honda. In the case of Triumph, of course the fins add "some cooling' by the nature of physics, but they could have just as easily been left off. This along with the fuel injection being tarted up as carbs is exactly the same as digital recordings being transferred to vinyl records. The difference isn't so much the products involved but the age groups that they are being marketed to. Most vinyl records these days are being sold to millennials and most retro motorcycles are being sold to older guys. Either way, the marketers are counting on these different sets of consumers to buy into the image that they've worked so hard (and in the examples above, have gone above and beyond) to create.

The one thing about the CB1100 which I have said quite a few times is that it really is an air-cooled inline four. It feels like it, runs like it. It's about as close to vinyl as one could get. It's not modeled. So you are in fact experiencing the real thing so to speak.

The Royal Enfields are also air-cooled and pretty retro from all I can see. The twins should be really nice bikes.

The one thing about the CB1100 which I have said quite a few times is that it really is an air-cooled inline four. It feels like it, runs like it. It's about as close to vinyl as one could get. It's not modeled. So you are in fact experiencing the real thing so to speak.

The Royal Enfields are also air-cooled and pretty retro from all I can see. The twins should be really nice bikes.

One could argue that Honda dropped the ball and doomed the CB to the marginal sales success that it is by hewing too close on authenticity and delivering an underwhelming performance envelope. I get the design brief and labor of love that the CB is, but from a marketing standpoint, Honda’s conservative take on the CB, particularly considering how earthshaking the CB 750 was, to me is much more bothersome than fake fins.


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The shame in Ulvetanna's recording example is not that the young musicians decided to record to analog, but that they wanted to master the recording digitally. If the intent is to make the music available in an analog format then just skip the digital portions of the recording chain all together. The real problem with this scenario is that very few people have a decent enough playback system anymore to hear the difference between a recording made with low-end digital recording equipment and one made meticulously with an all-analog process (and that's if they even care). Most people now tend to listen to music through their computer speakers or via crappy headphones so it doesn't really matter that much to them. When it comes to recording music, if the desire is simply to make your music available for the masses via any of the digital based formats then don't bother with going to the trouble to incorporate analog technology into the mix, just let the music stand on it's own. Whether it's recorded music or motorcycles —I'd much rather see manufacturers leave the bogus stuff out/off.

Vinyl albums that were digitally recorded are exactly the same to me as a water-cooled bike sporting "air-cooling' fins, or using offset cylinder timing to create some unevenness in an otherwise amazingly smooth engine. Just like digitally recorded vinyl records, these things are done for no other reason than to sell more product (typically to people that don't know any better). Millennials go for this kind of thing with their music, as di some of us old farts with our motorcycles. Obviously I'm not thrilled with Honda's decision to intentionally make the engine run rougher. I will tell people that I bought the CB despite such a decision by Honda. In the case of Triumph, of course the fins add "some cooling' by the nature of physics, but they could have just as easily been left off. This along with the fuel injection being tarted up as carbs is exactly the same as digital recordings being transferred to vinyl records. The difference isn't so much the products involved but the age groups that they are being marketed to. Most vinyl records these days are being sold to millennials and most retro motorcycles are being sold to older guys. Either way, the marketers are counting on these different sets of consumers to buy into the image that they've worked so hard (and in the examples above, have gone above and beyond) to create.

Regarding music, people have traded fidelity for portability. And it’s a darn good deal. I enjoy vinyl as much as the next guy...my buds and I have monthly vinyl listening nights... but I’ll take Spotify and 30 million songs at my fingertips anywhere I am on earth, for $14/ month, over having to plop myself down in my den to listen to a record. Every day. I’m failing to see the link between fins on water cools motorcycle engines, and the consumption of music.


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Most people will never see, er, that is, hear the difference, nor do they care. But as a musician since the 6th grade, I care and can try to explain.

I grew up first listening to transistor radios, and a "Hi-Fi" played LP's and singles, with usually a solitary 6" woofer and two oval speakers, one left and right of center. I'd listen to that for hours at night at low volumes and it seemed to me I was in the group, it was so real.

That seems ridiculous by today's standards of fidelity; we have 7.1 surround, a pure digital signal chain from beginning to end, and so on. All that's pretty much irrelevant to most people, whether they're in a theatre or in their car or living room or wherever.

People like music, it has an energizing or therapeutic effect on us, which is truly medicinal. It can be a tonic or it can be depressing.

Folk music is the simplest sort of music, with lyrics generally about social unity, strife, tragedy, or sometimes joy. Folk music was originally composed simply to be sung by the human voice.

The human voice has very distinct sonic characteristics. The overtones from what we generally consider a great singing voice always fall into a certain measurable and distinct range. We now call this quality "WARMTH". Many tests have been done to see why certain singers have a great appeal. This is down to the bone structure of the skull and the cavities which resonate.

All this is scientific fact and has been studied for decades.

The early electronic equipment used to record and reproduce sound naturally lent a warmth to the tonality of whatever was recorded. Analog technology peaked around 1955 or so. Condenser microphones with vacuum tube preamplifiers had a superb recording quality and lent a natural warmth and "compression" to the singer or instrument. Recording consoles used vacuum tubes and simple circuits. Even the magnetic tape lent a warmth and saturation to the recorded sound. This was very desirable.

Leo Fender used simple, well-known electronic circuits out of a standard handbook to design his guitars and amplifiers. He did not know how to play guitar, he was not a musician. He was a businessman with a good idea. Just how good was not known for some time; those simple circuits, using the most basic electronic principles, yielded the best sounding guitars and amplifiers of all time.

When digital recording and storage became popular, most people gobbled it right up without any criticism. CDs took up a lot less space than LPs and most people I spoke to said they felt the CDs sounded better. I was a musician at the time and still am, and I thought they sounded like crap. It was not until 25 years later I was completely vindicated, when the reasons why digital music sounded like crap were well-understood.

In the 1980s when digital stuff first arrived, the sample rates and data transfer rates were very, very slow. CDs were sampled at 44.1 kHz and 16 bit in the 1980s, and with the garbage analog/digital converters used at the time, they sounded very harsh. This is what I was hearing. I hated CDs and hardly listened to them except in the car. They hurt my ears.

The Linndrum was an electronic drum machine that was used a lot in the 1980s and it also sounded like crap. But it's on countless hit records. "Don't Come Around Here No More" by the late Tom Petty comes to mind. I hated those things and refused to use them.

To produce a good vinyl record requires a very strict and precise process, with a whole chain of very specialized electronic equipment for mastering and cutting the first one, from which all others are cloned. The dynamic range of a vinyl record is very limited, because the bass frequencies as well as excess presence (about 5 kHz) will cause the needle to jump right out of the groove. But this is very desirable for listening because one can hear the softest as well as the loudest passages without having to strain or adjust the volume control. And vinyl mastering imparts warmth.

Today digital music can sound magnificent, because all of the peculiarities and characteristics of the techniques and equipment used for analog recording (unknown and taken for granted back in the day) are very, very well understood and well-modeled in digital software. The fidelity and dynamic range is far better than any analog system can reproduce; however, hardly anyone owns the equipment to attain that fidelity nor would they be able to notice the difference anyway.

The reason this is similar to cooling fins is because fake fins suggest a simplicity and authenticity of a time when air-cooled motorcycles were popular, which just happens to coincide with the golden age of rock and roll. Fins were also popular on cars, as were dual exhausts, in 1955. Neither one adds a single whit to the performance of the vehicle. But the garish fins on the automobiles at the dawning of the supersonic jet age suggested stability, speed, and agility, which is what we were all seeing in fighter and bombers like the F-86 Sabrejet and B-58 Hustler.


The '57 Chevy had fins. My favorite classic car.

The era of motorcycles, fins, scoops, jets, rockets, and rock and roll music was born between 1950 and ended about 1970. The CB1100 captures as authentically as practicable the look and feel of the motorcycles that began to be popular at the very end of that era.


The XB-70 Valkyrie, mid-1960s Cold War bomber.

And there again, music is part of the equation. Engines produce music. Air-cooled engines produce the best music because much of the mechanical clatter can be heard, and it blends with the exhaust note.

The twin pipes are favored by traditionalists for two main reasons:

First, they are stereophonic which creates a pleasant "doubling" of the combustion sounds. (Doubling is a well-known and often-used technique in the recording of popular music, most often applied to guitars and voices, to thicken and spread out the sound).

Second, the twin exhausts suggest jet or rocket effects which seem, on a gut level, to impart just a bit more power or speed to the vehicle.

That's why people buy bikes with those features.

The simplest configuration is a single, well-tuned exhaust, liquid-cooling, and so on but that experience is not "viscerally" satisfying nor is it soulful.

Why our minds and bodies respond to "warmth" "speed" "power" and "authenticity" is something for the adherents of Carl G. Jung to explain.


...whatever that means.