Audio Blind Testing

[fas42]

How I look at things is that many important, and worthwhile recordings are in terrible condition - for all sorts of reasons. And poor data compression can be one of those reasons. So, in the first instance aim to get the absolute best out of any recording, however it has been "damaged" - I find this approach then works for everything, meaning that any recording will yield a satisfying listening experience.

[fas42]

6 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 Why ? I am connected via WiFi and I regularly achieve speeds up to 2.82M/BS

We are on a medium speed plan too.

 

 

I'm in the Blue Mountains, and the complaints are pouring in - much worse connectivity, unreliable, paying the same or more money for significantly worse performance.

 

The big joke is that NZ went full fibre, and now are miles better off than we will ever be with this shemozzle - it will take decades, probably, to sort it all ...

[fas42]

8 hours ago, esldude said:

Audio is engineering.

 

Music is art.

 

But, there's an art to getting the engineering right for audio ... why? Because there aren't any textbooks with a full recipe for making it happen ... something for the future ...

[fas42]

2 hours ago, marce said:

Wrong.

 

Recommendation?

[fas42]

10 hours ago, marce said:

The "Art of Electronics" is a good place to start...

 

Ummm, my copy is worn out, just about - I 'pinched' the earlier edition from the library, because I couldn't bear not having access to it ... .

 

Note, the magic word "Art" in the title - the content is all about being completely pragmatic in the exercise of designing, and I learnt a lot about the "usefulness" of spec sheets.

 

However, it told me nothing about how to ensure audio systems work well enough to get the SQ I chase - what it did do was give me plenty of clues on how to approach thinking about circuits - and how to take nothing for granted, .

[fas42]

18 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

I presume that mansr and yourself also have copies of Audio Power Amplifier Design Handbook  - Douglas Self, such as the 5th edition ? 

 

I have access to nearly all the books specifically on the subject - and check out what they have to say out the "interesting" stuff. Unfortunately, there is usually only a paragraph or so muttering about how other things need to be "kept in mind", and that's about it!

 

My attitude to all this was born from the fact that I took a reasonable quality rig, which was extremely simple, 30 years ago to a high point without doing a single thing that altered any of the circuitry in a way that you would have to alter a schematic - the raw parts did the job, all I had to do was correct weaknesses of implementation, and be very fussy with how I ran it - and the SQ fell into place.

 

Which forcefully told me that the "stuff is good enough", as is - I have very little inclination to fool around with magic new ideas, unless they appear to be a good shortcut to getting consistent results.

[fas42]

4 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

 

 

the veil is lifted!

 

or boosted

 

whatever

 

Missed this chat on transparency earlier, ... pretty easy starting point: get the speakers completely invisible, no matter how hard you try to "hear them" - there, that will keep most people busy for a few years !!

 

The next rounds are that every recording gives that presentation, and that one can listen at any volume setting from inaudible, to breaking down the walls - effortlessly, fully satisfying as an experience.

[fas42]

43 minutes ago, sandyk said:

The various Distortion mechanisms discussed by Douglas Self are NOT magical new ideas, they are fairly recent technically based findings and methods for improvements that are readily measurable with the right equipment, and result in an amplifier being closer to the proverbial "bit of wire" connection.

 

Which fits in with, "appear to be a good shortcut to getting consistent results" ... I'm happy to take something on board if it's clear that it's a smarter approach to getting lower distortion; but a large part of my investigative journey was seeing if "mediocre" gear could get important parts of the subjective quality right - and it has been remarkable how "cheap and nasty" one could go without severe, obvious shortcomings getting in the way.

 

It's easier than ever, these days, to get competent sound happening - trouble is, most don't go far enough with the exercise to make it happen under all circumstances - not "knowing" what's possible is of course part of the problem ...

[fas42]

25 minutes ago, davide256 said:

 

I said "tone color structure".  When you have a full orchestra piece  with strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion playing many systems lose transparency... instruments the system could reproduce clearly for few players become blurred with many, often in specific regions due to crossover, driver or amplification weaknesses. If you have a trained ear, these jump out, the tone color structure is degraded. Well recorded Berlioz  and Prokofiev pieces I find to be excellent for this purpose.

 

 

The advantage of a transparent, or competent, system is that the ear/brain finds it so easy to process what's happening in the sound field - it can be "staggeringly" complex, layer upon layer upon layer of detail in the whole - yet the mind can "see" what's happening in each area, just by turning one's mental focus to the one of interest.

 

In the visual field one can build up images with Photoshop or Gimp, using the layering mechanism - and then "solo" just one layer, to see its content, and effect. The same happens with the mind unraveling complex sound mixes, and being aware of precisely the part played by each sound element.

[fas42]

12 minutes ago, STC said:

The next hurdle is reproducing the recorded sound in your system. All sound in nature is essential mono. There is no stereo sound. All reproduction using Stereophonics replay is inherently flawed. We have just learned to accept them as natural.  Stereo sound will always sound veiled but just like many things in life, after years of stereo sound exposure, we have learned to filter away the flaws. It is just like we have learned to ignore the nose which is always in our field of vision. If you have an original mono recording (one channel) of solo vocalist, listen to that with one speaker and then with two speakers and the veil will become apparent to you.

 

The idea of reproducing the sound in your room is to recreate high fidelity sound matching your room. It should sound like listening to actual performance with no hint of unnaturalness. A string quartet should sound like a string quartet performed in real space of the venue. That the transparency in audio we should go after, IMHO.

 

 

" Sound like listening to actual performance with no hint of unnaturalness" also gives a specific listening characteristic with mono sound over stereo speakers - I have used other ways of describing this, but an apt one in this case is that it presents as if you had a single speaker in front of you, which is on rails, from left to right, and this mono source moves as you do, from left to right, tracking you as you move around, being always being in front of you, with respect to the real speakers.

 

[fas42]

8 minutes ago, esldude said:

You still won't be able to know when you have reached transparency vs the input this way.  A system could exhibit none of the problems with increased complexity and still not be transparent.  Other processing that you don't believe could simplify the structure as levels increase corrupting your ear's ability to judge.  

 

Processing will sound like ... processing - I have some Telarc recordings, classical, which are quite bizarre - what on earth were they trying to get across here, one thinks! In that context it's irritating, because it's a candy store rendition of the event - with pop, anything is fair game, I don't mind them playing with the sound.

[fas42]

44 minutes ago, esldude said:

Must be some kind of voo doo.  A real sound doesn't do this and you'll not be able to get a speaker to do this either. 

 

No voo doo at all - it's the mind accepting identical sounds coming over two speakers, as an illusion of the sound coming from a single point. Because of the time delays between the two speakers as you move around, this is interpreted as the source also moving around, laterally. It always occurs when the SQ reaches "competent" levels, irrespective of the speakers used, IME.

[fas42]

5 hours ago, esldude said:

That does not fit with how we hear directionality nor with other people's experience.  

 

Mono sound coming over stereo speakers is slightly unusual as an experience - people can easily test this for themselves by standing close to, and midway between the speakers. For a half decent rig there should be a very strong 'image' of the event now directly in front of them; if one moves one's head to the left or right then that frontal image should sustain for at least some degree of movement in those directions - before it collapses into the nearest speaker. The illusion I get is that there is never that moment of collapsing, no matter how far I move my head; it's just an extension of what always occurs to some degree.

 

Some people will likely never hear this, because of how their brains are wired; and, it requires a sufficient SQ - most of time, most of my systems haven't done this, because they have not been adequately optimised in the particular moment; but I only have to "full out some more stops", to get the behaviour.

[fas42]

Yes, another infernal dup ...

[fas42]

8 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

That's been my impression, as well, apparently confirmed by Frank's answers to my questions. @fas42, would it be too much to ask you to describe your method in detail, something that others could understand and try to repeat? A recipe perhaps? After reading many of your posts, I'm now confused as to what it is you do and advocate frequently.

 

Sorry if there has been any confusion! I used the example of head movement, in the sweet spot, so that people would understand the sense of the experience - again, the concept is that the sweet spot enlarges so that it takes in the full room. Which means, there is no longer a "sweet spot" in the usual sense - if I'm positioned in the proper, central position, move my head left or right, get up and move left or right, or move randomly around the room - nothing changes. Alternatively, the experience is as if I'm in the recording space, and move around while listening.

 

This works with completely conventional, boring, two way box speakers - I have never tried more exotic speaker machinery, but don't see any reason why the behaviour would differ. In fact, I heard the big MBL omnis at a high end show throw up the familiar presentation - it's "always the same".

 

The point being, it's not what the speaker is doing, or what the sound pattern being projected into the room is - it's that the ear/brain 'decides' what the sound field 'means' - and there is no conscious control of this. And the most important parameter is the absence of audible artifacts in the sound, which allow the brain to lock onto the drivers being the source. The switch goes inside one's head - either one can locate the drivers, or one can't; there is no inbetween ...

 

I have been asked many times to describe the process, and I have attempted to respond - but this has never worked: people can't "tune into" the approach - and it always ends in tears ...

 

The most important thing is to be able to hear whether the system is working properly or not - if you can't detect or identify the distortion that less than optimal playback adds to the sound, then you're "working blind" - so the recipe would start: play recordings which sound "awful" on your setup, and study the sound; what precisely is it that makes that track unpleasant to listen to?

 

Sorry, I will be busy on chores stuff for a bit; so won't be around for much of the day.