Blue or red pill?

[fas42]

30 minutes ago, manisandher said:

But quite honestly, I'm way more interested in whether Mans can hear a difference. Once we've established that he can, it'd be really interesting to explore what could be causing two identical files to sound different.

 

Mani.

 

The what is no more "interesting" than using two different cartridges to play the same LP on a particular TT giving different sound - the environment used and in which the playback is occurring has altered, and unless scrupulous care has been taken to ensure there is 100% isolation from interference effects  - something which is very hard to do - I would expect that differences would be heard, by someone who is sensitive to the type of variations that occur.

[fas42]

7 hours ago, manisandher said:

...

 

I forgot to mention that none of my needle drops (made with a variety of different ADCs over the years) manage to recreate surface ticks correctly - the ticks on a recording always sound smoothed out in comparison to those heard playing the vinyl directly.

 

(Of course, they're still bloody annoying, and I do everything from vacuum- to ultrasonic-cleaning beforehand to minimise them.)

 

Mani.

 

Yes, it even counts on needle drops ... where playback chains often fail is that the transient events are not reproduced with full impact - and a vinyl noise tick is a beautiful example of such. When the sound element is the attack of an instrument, this is an obvious giveaway that it's "not right", when the normal impact is not there.

[fas42]

3 hours ago, sandyk said:

It was aimed purely at arrogant E.Es like yourself who treat people who make reports that they don't agree with ,as believing in "Myth and Magic" , even if they also happen to be fellow qualified E.E.s who post findings that you don't agree with ,and design electronic devices that you believe are a waste of time, just like you did in a reply to some Audiostream links recently.

 

 

Alex, there is a full range of attitudes held by audio enthusiasts, a spectrum of beliefs from the 100% objectivist who has zero trust in his own ears, and can only accept numbers from instruments as 'evidence', through to the 100% subjectivist who relies on 'magic' solutions for everything that he considers "good sound". That spectrum is continuous in nature, you can find people dotted at all points between the two extremes - there is no areas in the range that are deserted, where no-one is to be found; and many of those at one spot are somewhat amused by those who are quite some distance away, on that attitude spectrum - and will make 'disparaging' remarks, on occasion.

 

Which is just the nature of the world - individuals' experiences shape their beliefs, their thinking - there are no right and wrong positions in the spectrum of attitudes ... the smartest approach, I believe, is just to watch what everyone says, and pick up ideas that are useful for one's own journey - with minimum conflict along the way, .

[fas42]

2 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

I agree with Alex. My listening is explicitly unconscious (environmental noise is no issue at all) or otherwise I can't do it. Things must pop out positively, or annoy negatively.

That counts for me and can be different for everybody. It can also take quite some time (because not explicitly watching for).

 

Yes, "things must pop out positively, or annoy negatively" - for me, differences in the digital stream are less relevant, meaningful than the "analogue impact" - variations, because the digital signal is slightly different, in generally unsatisfactory sound are not interesting, and of no value in furthering the listening experience.

 

Differences in the digital feed to the DAC are not the problem - it's whether the audible, distortion spectrum content generated in the analogue areas of the reproduction chain is being altered, via some mechanism.

[fas42]

I haven't the time right now to read all the posts from overnight - but will just throw in, yet again, that the more one works towards getting optimum replay, the more one discovers that, yes, everything matters - and quite often it's seemingly "crazy" things that have some effect. I've worked in a number of areas investigating this, and, say, PeterSt has worked on another set of factors - they're all part of the big picture, and can become relevant, depending upon whatever, in a particular set of circumstances.

 

The real end goal is to make the complete audio chain fully robust - when the rig is properly sorted that nothing that you do further causes any significant changes in the quality of the sound.

 

The handicap that most people are working under is that the sound they currently experience is so far short of what's possible that almost "everything matters" - alter some parameter, in any area relevant to the subjective experience, and the sound changes, significantly. One has to push past this 'range'; get the quality in the zone where it's always a buzz to listen to - then further refinements are cream on the top, rather then altering the basic ingredients of the dish.

[fas42]

10 hours ago, adamdea said:

The other way of looking at this is that if one is committed to the "human sound quality device" model of audiophile hearing which attributes all fluctuation in listening experience to physical effects in audio equipment then one "discovers" that one "must" be hearing increasingly subtle effects beyond what can be measured (but are apparently easy to identify intuitively). One also "discovers" that returns do not necessarily diminish: three usb reclockers can be better than one; the cable loom must be coherent. Oh yes everything matters, even the psu on the router (what am I thinking- of course the psu on the router matters).

 

 

All of what you say would make sense, to me, if I had had the usual set of experiences that most audio enthusiasts have over the years - that is, subtle changes, after doing "big things". What happened to me, was getting a "big change in sound" after doing lots of little things - the difference between listening to live sound, and just a "hifi rig"; that's how much of a jump it is ...

 

And every audiophile system, of others, that I listen to is different - meaning, they have had all sorts of changes made to them, to get a "certain sound" - but they're all wrong ... because, they don't sound like what's on the recording; the latter is masked to some degree by the "signature" distortions of the particular playback setup. Only recently have I come across other rigs that get key attributes in the sound right- and this is a good sign of course. Unfortunately, these have typically been pretty expensive components - but it doesn't have to be that way.

 

The "increasingly subtle effects" are the steady removal of all the distortion anomalies - or should be!! The cause of audible degradation can be hard to pin down, and doing "silly things" may 'fix' issues for reasons that one doesn't understand at that moment - but there will always be a straightforward technical explanation, if one chooses to pursue finding out "why".

 

The reason for chasing down every last one of the issues is that the rewards are great - the SQ finally gets to the point where the human mind takes on board the presentation as matching how live sound is; and a convincing illusion snaps on, inside our head. The downside is that a great deal of fussing around may be needed, including using "three usb reclockers" , etc - every situation will be different; you do what it takes to get the system to the required level, in ways that make sense, or work.

[fas42]

10 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

And by the way, I've been in Mani's shoes for many years. Spent a ton of money on digital clean-up equipment, cables, etc. Until I decided to seriously test what I was hearing. I've done the proposed blind test many times over, and no, personally I can't hear the difference.

 

I'm fully open to Mani proving his point. And if he does, just like Mans, I'd like to try to understand what caused the audible differences even if PeterSt thinks that's impossible to figure out. An objective outcome, positive or negative is something I would welcome, unlike all the subjective reports that dominate this topic.

 

Again, the word used is "different" - for me the important word is, "wrong" - does the sound have some quality about it which strikes you as not being how 'natural' sounds are, is the question to ask; is there an "uncomfortable" factor, no matter how tiny, in the listening? Chasing whether something is merely "different" is a huge waste of time, in my world.

 

The causes of audible difference are not impossible to work out, just mighty, mighty difficult at times - I say, who cares, so long as the work is done to eliminate those factors ...

[fas42]

13 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Frank, in order to be wrong or right, they must first be different. If you can't tell two playback methods apart, then they can't be audibly "wrong" or "right", whatever that means.

 

This will vary between people, but I have found personally that hearing two sets of sound which are both "wrong" just starts building a sense of irritation with the listening - and I lose motivation, and interest, in deciding whether the irritation is identical between the two - so, will probably get that, wrong ... .

 

Audibly "wrong" means that one can hear clear artifacts in the playback - the distortion is distinctive, and describable. If car A has rattle type 1, and car B has rattle type 2 - I'll take car C, which has no rattle, at all.

[fas42]

13 minutes ago, Spacehound said:

Correct. People often get confused about this.

 

And as you don't know how your imitation music is supposed to sound there is no right or wrong as there isn't a reference.

 

So 'improvement' is also pointless. .

 

The replay getting it right means that subjectively nothing significant is lost - if the source is a microphone registering a live musical performance, then a person hearing the result after the signal passes through the chain, and sound emerges from the speakers, cannot determine that what they're hearing is a 'reproduction', or not.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, lmitche said:

Mansr, this could not be further from the truth. I hope you get a chance to listen to some better systems. Height and depth are always there. Plus one can hear naturally occuring room reflections from the room where the recording was made. This occurs in almost every recording.

 

It's remarkable how even the "crudest" recording techniques pick up this information - Nellie Melba recordings, from around 1912, have a piano accompaniment to the operatic singer - one can pick up the position of that instrument, being about 10 feet behind her, on good replay of the mono material.

[fas42]

5 hours ago, adamdea said:

Beyond a certain level of reproduction any differences are weak compared with  other inputs. I'm not saying this about speakers, but as between dacs even (let alone transport interfaces) you really need controls to be sure. The good news is that you don;t need to buy expensive things for it to work. A lot of people have found that playing with raspberry pis gives them enough interest to enjoy listening to music afresh. Hence the mystery of why those £40 dac cards "sound so good". Small and DIY is almost as good as thick aluminium faceplate. 

In any event as long as people are happy I guess that's great. 

 

Objectively, the differences are slight; subjectively, it's dramatic. The "magic" occurs inside our skulls - and if one has never experienced this aspect in the listening then it will be difficult to understand ...

 

Some people appear to find it impossible to distinguish live music, from hifi - say, just before they enter the room whether the sound is coming from - with conventional playback for me this is trivially easy, obvious - the level of reproduction I'm interested in is where it becomes "impossible" to pick the "fake from real" ... everything else about the situation is vastly less interesting, to me ...

[fas42]

12 hours ago, Spacehound said:

And the 'depth' is a line between the front of the speakers. Anything else is bouncing off your back wall.

 

Recording room reflections? They go into the microphones just the same as the instruments/voices do.

The microphones have  no way of telling what is instruments (maybe with some incompetent guy slightly behind the rest) and what is reflections.  And so they  come out of your speakers  exactly as above. What you hear is your  room reflections, not  the recording room's. Sure, it may sound different from recording to recording, but that is because the rooms were different sizes so the delays were different, so it is more or less 'delayed' to start with. The above still applies in your room. Which is always a fixed plus or minus from what' s on the recording and applies equally to all  recordings.    

 

It's interesting that you can't perceive the depth in your recordings, considering the quality of your setup - I'm curious as to whether it's a result of of how your internal hearing mechanism organises itself, or the level of optimisation of the rig. For some people, like myself, the sense of depth captured in the recording is as 'real' as hearing live sounds  - and it's relatively straightforward for me to give an estimate of the distance back some sound is coming from, as say a number of metres - just like I can, hearing natural sounds in everyday activities.

[fas42]

11 hours ago, manisandher said:

I think this 'pre-post' fallacy is rife in our hobby.

 

Can something sound different to a listener if the difference can't be measured (in any way that we currently know of)? Those of us who say "yeah, maybe" are automatically lumped in with the 'audio nutters'. It's frustrating sometimes.

 

Mani.

 

This bizarre "battle" is core to the audio madness of the current age - those who are obsessed about being sciencey on the journey, to the last degree, can't bear the fact that there may be issues that are too difficult to easily measure - so their solution is to loftily proclaim, "Well, you're just mad to think that way!"

[fas42]

8 minutes ago, Sonicularity said:

 

It was from the science and research that we even have digital audio, not the other way around.  If someone would provide some solid evidence to suggest the math is wrong and the physiological limitations are completely unfounded, it would do a lot to sway my current understanding.  I want answers.  I love to discover new things.  It is not a battle to me, it is a quest for knowledge.   

 

Technology, engineering development, rational thinking are marvellous tools for evolving the physical mechanisms used for audio reproduction - but when they try to use the same methodology to give simplistic, unsophisticated 'explanations' for how our hearing mechanisms work, how we make sense of what's heard - then it's being used the "wrong way".

[fas42]

21 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

As are the vast majority of current recordings, other than many classical recordings.

 

Many recordings are also capable of filling the entire listening area with sound, especially if they were recorded in Dolby Surround,(even the old " Q Sound")  despite not needing a Dolby Decoder. The movie " Avatar"  can do this from just 2 stereo speakers. " The Eagles- Hotel California"  , and " Queen -Another One Bites the Dust" from the DVD-As can also do this through better than average gear. Don Dorsey-Ascent from " Timewarp-Erich Kunzel"  also fills the whole listening area with sound.

 

 

A favourite of mine in this respect are the early Led Zep recordings, original releases; these have massive spaces 'artificially' encoded on them - cavernous areas that seemingly go to forever. This is Art, in the true sense - you enter a musical world that is not real in any sense, but it's a fabulous journey ...

[fas42]

8 minutes ago, semente said:

 

It can but at the expense of other to me more relevant aspects of sound reproduction.

Between spatial recreation and sound reproduction I will choose the latter, thank you.

Music is primarily about sound (I listen to Classical, some vintage jazz and a bit of traditional).

 

Wagner went as far as to hide the orchestra...

 

Competent replay gives you both ... spatial information, in spades, and beautiful tonality.

 

You can have it all, when playing recordings ... .

[fas42]

7 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

yes, rather than scientific analysis and rational thought, it will be MUCH better to paint yourself blue and dance around an oak tree

 

true understanding will come

 

Note that I said, " to give simplistic, unsophisticated 'explanations' for how our hearing mechanisms work,", Mr Bulver.

 

The current field of Auditory Scene Analysis gives excellent insight as to how the ear/brain is so much "cleverer" at working things out than audio objectivists give it credit for.

[fas42]

10 minutes ago, semente said:

 

Some of the minimally mic'ed recordings I own do create a nice illusion but it still falls short of the real thing.

 

Falling short of the real thing says to me, the playback is not at a high enough level - most of the time what I listen to on my own setups also falls short; because it requires quite a degree of optimisation of the rig and environment at that moment to make it happen - and I need to be motivated to go to the effort necessary. But I know I can always make it happen, if I do the "work" - because I have done it so many times before ...

[fas42]

12 minutes ago, semente said:

 

Alow me to disagree and instead to suggest that your expectations are perhaps not at the same level as my own.

 

Of course ... I'm after the kick, the impact that live instruments produce - if I were to play a recording of a brass band in full cry on your system, and it replicated the live experience then I would be satisfied with its capabilities, to my standards. I have heard only the odd setup by someone else, to date, that could do this type of thing - and I have found that such a standard is a prerequisite for satisfying listening, for myself.

[fas42]

30 minutes ago, mansr said:

Jazz at the Pawnshop is a good recording of good music. However, any spatiality you perceive has to be an illusion. It was recorded with multiple microphones and subsequently mixed. There's no way actual spatial information could have been captured and preserved.

 

I only recently heard Jazz at the Pawnshop - and wondered what the fuss was about ... I have plenty of jazz recordings that are far more 'captivating' than this particular example, in terms of the "spatial experience", and the sense of the whole - guess I just don't have audiophile ears, whatever those strange things are ...

[fas42]

Highly 'artificial' recordings are vastly better than 'natural' ones at pointing out deficiencies in the playback - one's hearing can "fill in the gaps" with sound combinations that one's hearing has learned to deal with; when the recording is unusual there is nowhere to hide for the reproduction chain; the ear/brain has to rely completely on the audible information at that moment.

 

Which means, "good" classical recordings are trivially easy to have sounding well - as one pursues greater competence, "awkward", "artificial", pop creations are pulled out, to see if the rig is up to it.

[fas42]

59 minutes ago, semente said:

 

I agree, but only at a very primitive level of reproduction.

The difference is that whilst I can listen for realism with classical I have no idea what the producer was looking for with a pop or rock track.

 

And I my experience a lot of pop music sounds even worse with a higher-fidelity stereo.

 

A lot better than primitive ...

 

What one looks for is that the sound elements in the pop recording become completely individual - think of the recording being a montage of musical sounds, overlaid upon each other, but still retaining their distinctive attributes, qualities. Poor reproduction will yield a blurred amalgam of those musical entities; but competent playback of the same will allow one to easily mentally focus on a particular strand, and just "watch" what it's doing, in the middle of everything else. As an example, the vocal line will become a completely natural, human voice in the middle of synthesizer carry on - with the same clarity and realism as, say, as one gets on an audiophile girl and guitar combo cliche.

 

Typical progression with just OK pop recordings, as the rig is optimised: firstly, reasonable, pleasant "memory lane" sound; then, sounding messy, overcooked, too "obvious"; next, almost impossible to listen to, too much shrieky detail, "why did I buy this?" sound; final step, it snaps into focus, the complexity all makes sense, and it becomes a joy to listen to, "there is so much going on ...".

[fas42]

54 minutes ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

These are people who have never listened before to a high-end system and for which i play various musical tracks. I ask them to close their eyes and 'look into the music'. With eyes closed I ask them to point to various instruments. Some have a natural talent for it and when opening their eyes look stunned at where they are pointing.As said,recently a friend of my son actually volunteered, with a look of astonishment, "Oh my god i can hear stuff from all over the place" and when asked easily pointed to instruments.  I am not pushing any barrow here trying to prove why, just that is an easy reproducible phenomenon.

 

"Looking into the music" is a good phrase to use - there is no on/off switch in this regard, that some recordings have this ability to throw up "an illusion", and not others. Like most things in life there is a continuum, and the better the system the easier it is to "see deeper" in particular recordings; to unscramble the many layers in complex recordings; and to make spatial sense of what's going on in "poor" recordings.

 

The why, to me, is pretty simple - the ear/brain needs enough clues to "build the illusion"; and lower quality reproduction blurs this critical data to being unusable - the mind rejects the illusion as being possible, no mirage can form. This has been demonstrated to me endless times over the years, when I play a recording that has shown its "true colours" - when played on a setup below par I can't see the illusion, at all, irrespective of knowing what should be there  - the "wanting" it to present well helps not one iota ...

[fas42]

14 minutes ago, STC said:

stereo stage The area between and behind the loudspeakers, from which most phantom images are heard. ( how about in front of the speakers?)

 

 

I have never heard "in front of the speakers" imaging, from good playback - the stage always starts at the line  of the speakers, and extends back from that. To me, anything in front would be an artifact from manipulation of sound from multiple sources, or deliberate echoing by the room configuration

[fas42]

4 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Cover all your front and side with thick rock wool and leave the rear reverbrant, we can have the conversation again whether sound can emerge in front of the speaker or not. It also depends much on your system itself of how well it could create the depth. 

 

Well, that sounds exactly like "deliberate echoing by the room configuration", as I said - my approach is for the recording to "speak for itself"; if there is spatial projection happening, it should be completely from the recording being played over two speakers, nothing else.