Is Audiophiledom a confidence game?

[pkane2001]

Just now, opus101 said:

 

'Noise modulating the signal' isn't how I see this arising. Given music has very large numbers of discrete tones the resulting error signal (resulting from non-linearities in the electronics) from all the intermodulation between these tones has a noise-like character (rather than a distortion-like one). I believe Frank calls it 'distortion' though.

 

I don't believe phase needs to be invoked at all, that's just my opinion though. The noise modulation confuses the perceptual processing of lower level cues which the ear/brain uses to create the illusion of depth from the perceptual input.

 

Let's turn off the left channel and only listen to the right one. No matter how clean or noisy the signal is, it will never get out from inside the speaker. The only way a sound can appear to come from outside the speaker (ignoring the two-speaker mono case) is if there are two signals with some phase difference arriving at the ears of the listener. The only way this can be destroyed is by destroying the original phase relationship. 

 

Phase can be easily manipulated to place the sound in almost any position in the sound stage one would like. Mastering engineers use this technique to place multi-miked feeds in an artificial soundstage. Phase relationship between two channels is the primary source of the feeling of depth and width of the presentation, spatial instrument separation, etc. Anything that affect phase will affect this sense of space, including noise and inter-modulation.

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, opus101 said:

 

Already done this experiment - a clean signal most certainly sounds like its coming from well behind the drive unit in the speaker.

 

I see. So Frank is talking about the depth and not width of the soundstage when saying speakers disappear? That would make it a slightly different point, in which case I withdraw my phase comment

 

 

[pkane2001]

16 minutes ago, esldude said:

The intolerance asking for banning of dissenting views is far more distasteful than terms of other intolerant groups.   

 

There are some very fine people on both sides 

[pkane2001]

3 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Opus101, Richard, did a good job of clarifying an apparent reason for why the perceptual behaviours occur - any audible anomalies that pinpoint the location of the drivers are overriden by the cues of the recording content - you 'see' the space of the recording, rather than speakers being the source of sounds.

 

Both width and depth are presented - a particularly telling variation is when playing true mono material through the stereo speakers, ie, identical content in left and right channels. If one stands close to the line of the speakers, and midway between them then the sound appears directly in front of you, with depth to it depending upon how the recording was made - same thing as "sweet spot" presentation. Then you move sideways, closer to one of the speakers - the source of the sound will "follow you", not remain tied to the centre of the speakers - it's still "in front of you". If the behaviour is fully manifested then you can move sideways until you're directly in front of one of the speakers, left or right, and the sound is still "the same". The key thing is that the presentation doesn't alter while moving from midway between the speakers to directly in front of one - and in fact one can move outside the area between the speakers, and it still works!

 

I do understand better what you've been trying to say. The width of the soundstage and the horizontal positioning in that soundstage is due to phase differences between left and right channels. Depth is another matter, as that has to do with reproducing some of the early reflections that are recorded with the main signal. You might be right that the system must be of a certain level of quality in order to reproduce these early reflections well enough. Well enough for them to fool the ear into thinking the signal is coming from behind the speakers.

 

Quote

Normal stereo material has full positional information, which retains its integrity while moving anywhere in relation to the speakers.

 

A lot of the 'normal' stereo material is manufactured by applying a certain amount of phase difference and reverb to the signal to position it at a certain spot in the soundstage. The original recorded signal contains few real spatial cues, as it is often captured from a mic close to the performer/instrument and designed to remove as much of the reverberant  information from it as possible. More often than not, you're hearing positional cues that are artificially created in post-processing.

 

[pkane2001]

3 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Recordings which are totally artificial in their presentation of a soundstage are no less interesting than a completely "natural" one. An analogy might be, an impressionist painting versus a photograph of the same scene - one look at the latter, and you "know" just about everything that's 'happening' in the scene there and then; with the former it can be quite a journey of discovery, finding all the interesting plays with colour, texture and light and shade within, the creative input.

 

Heavily worked pop recordings can be amazing productions, a constant delight of Easter eggs for the ears, because there are almost no limits on what can be conjured up.

 

Yes, we agree. Some of my albums play with a soundstage so deep and spaced out that I hear the instruments and performers well outside of my listening room. I know this effect is mostly artificially created by a mastering engineer, and yet, these albums are a lot of fun to listen to anyway 

 

[pkane2001]

1 hour ago, jabbr said:

I think  if there is a widespread belief that “bits are bits” then folks won’t see the imperative of proper high speed design (audio is only 20-20k). Yes it’s possible to allow bits to be bits when properly designed (of course) but in consumer boutique audio how often is it done?

 

The problem as I see it is that companies (and audiophiles) are latching on to exactly the argument you're making that bits are not just bits in all parts of digital transmission. While this happens to be true, you and I know that there's little evidence that the effect of the RLC characteristics of a USB or ethernet cable have much to do with sound quality. And yet, that exact argument is reinforcing the belief of an average audiophile that they need to spend $500+ on an ethernet cable or that they absolutely must have that latest USB reclocker, along with an expensive USB cable, along with an expensive power supply, along with.....

 

Theory and speculation about audibility of noise sources in the digital domain is fine and healthy. What's not fine is the way audiophiledom is currently viewing USB audio: that it's a complete disaster, that it can only be fixed with 5 different chained cleanup/reclocking devices, expensive cables, and everything, including NAS and network switches, being powered by expensive LPS.