Being aware of misbehaviour of the playback chain

[gmgraves]

2 minutes ago, mansr said:

The result of those non-ideal properties is distortion.

Well, OK, but I was trying to be less general and more specific in laying the blame for the shortcomings of microphones when it comes to capturing brass. 

 

Time for tonight's Boston Symphony live concert on WRCB's Internet feed (192kbps, not bad). So I'm gonna sign off and go listen to Shostakovich's Symphony #4 and Bernstein's The Age of Anxiety.

[mansr]

9 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Well, OK, but I was trying to be less general and more specific in laying the blame for the shortcomings of microphones when it comes to capturing brass. 

It's hard to say, just by listening, how well the microphones have captured a sound when the speakers are much worse at reproducing it.

[semente]

33 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

I've often wondered why somebody hasn't marketed microphones designed like speakers with multiple capsules, like a big one for good low frequency response and a very small one for the other required characteristics. Maybe it doesn't work for microphones like it does for speakers ...).

 

Isn't that why some people add an extra pair of mics?

[anwaypasible]

14 minutes ago, semente said:

 

Isn't that why some people add an extra pair of mics?

pointing out the fact of headphones being single full-range drivers should quell thought.

[anwaypasible]

5 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

 

yes, compared with say an amplifier, all transducers suck

 

there is always a penalty for changing energy from one form to another

you seem to be a non-believer of weightless possibility.

makes me think levitating magnets freak you out.

[anwaypasible]

3 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Luckily, no wishing required! ... Just hard work ...

 

The mistake you make in your reply is claiming that the brain can't reconstruct the illusion, because reflections modify the sound waves. This is wrong, the brain is capable of extracting what it needs from the incoming signal, even when 'confusing' details are also present. That experience in the show demonstrated how capable the brain is, when the sound waves are 'carefully groomed' so that contradictory sound information is minimised; what I work on is to ensure that the sound waves when leaving the speaker driver surfaces have the least amount of confusing detail present, and only the room interactions have to be dealt with, by my brain.

 

This is well known, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect ; normally only studied in non-musical settings - but it also works for audio, as a few have found out. The biggest problem is that the ear/brain is very fussy, and requires a very high standard of SQ to do its filtering job - higher than most people try for.

while your point is valid, brains can hold the virtual ideal & listen to the room interactions to build a comparison - with such low bitdepths of convolution it remains to be more than a chore to do.
then factor in how the end-listener doens't know what it is supposed to sound like - they aren't getting a chance to do the extra workload & thus fallback to the other half of the argument where the room interactions are going to be the mark of the final verdict.
though to mix things up a little bit, even a room that luckily has a chip with a bitdepth high enough to fully remove the rooms echo, the soundwaves continue to traverse the course of the room in the time domain to continue utilizing virtual speakers & creating a soundstage.

[anwaypasible]

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

Yes it is. By definition, any device that changes sound (or any other vibration) into an electrical waveform that is analogous to that sonic waveform or vibration, is a transducer. It doesn't matter what the methodology is: classic condenser, RF, Electret, ribbon, moving coil magnetic, laser, carbon, piezoelectric, all are transducers. 

I'm sorry. That sentence makes no sense to me. How can a microphone that captures sound that is more distorted than that microphone's limit produce a perfect signal? 

Again, I don't know what you are talking about. I've never heard of nuclear speakers or microphones. So I can't comment.

Are you writing English? I read English words here, but English thoughts don't emerge from from those sentences. In short, to me the above makes no sense. 

You're being way too literal here! Just because we cannot either capture or playback music exactly as it was performed, doesn't mean that what we do capture is gibberish!

I mean, be reasonable. Music played on hold on the telephone is very limited in frequency range and is very distorted, but you can still recognize it as music! The point many of here are making is that microphones aren't perfect transducers and neither are any speakers. No transducer is perfect. It's a physical impossibility. 

This doesn't even warrant a comment. 

a transducer is defined by a coil of copper & a magnet.

going by your way of thinking, a laser uses an optical sensor transforming the signal directly to digital - you are thus wrong again.

 

when the frame of mathematical equation A fits into mathematical equation B - there is zero chaos.

speakers can be perfect, but because you don't know how they work they must not exist is what you are demanding.

you are an unjustified hateful skeptic & you'll be treated as such.

[mansr]

13 minutes ago, anwaypasible said:

a transducer is defined by a coil of copper & a magnet.

So if the coil is made of silver it isn't a transducer?

[Ralf11]

43 minutes ago, anwaypasible said:

you seem to be a non-believer of weightless possibility.

makes me think levitating magnets freak you out.

 

are you a native English speaker?

 

your response has nothing to do with my post

[anwaypasible]

4 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

are you a native English speaker?

 

your response has nothing to do with my post

if it was a snake, it would bite you in the nose - ever heard of that?

 

anyways, your hateful ostracizing of my character is known as a hate crime & you'll be treated as such.

i'm german, irish, canadian, indian - that makes me more of an english speaker than you (and probably why you are confused being spitefully antagonistic)!

[sandyk]

4 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

are you a native English speaker?

 

your response has nothing to do with my post

 

 Getting some of your own back ?

I understood what he meant.

[gmgraves]

38 minutes ago, anwaypasible said:

a transducer is defined by a coil of copper & a magnet.

going by your way of thinking, a laser uses an optical sensor transforming the signal directly to digital - you are thus wrong again.

I am very sorry, but it is YOU who are wrong. To Quote from the New World Dictionary of the English Language: 

"transducer |transˈd(y)o͞osərtranzˈd(y)o͞osər|
noun
a device that converts variations in a physical quantity, such as pressure or brightness, into an electrical signal, or vice versa."

 

From Wikipedia:

A transducer is a device that converts energy from one form to another. Usually a transducer converts a signal in one form of energy to a signal in another. Transducers are often employed at the boundaries of automation, measurement, and control systems, where electrical signals are converted to and from other physical quantities.

 

So you might want to rethink your response.

 

Also I said nothing about a laser transforming the signal directly to digital. All I said was that a laser microphone, which changes sound waves in an electrical signal, is by definition, a transducer. 
 

Quote

when the frame of mathematical equation A fits into mathematical equation B - there is zero chaos.

speakers can be perfect, but because you don't know how they work they must not exist is what you are demanding.

you are an unjustified hateful skeptic & you'll be treated as such.

Your assumptions are unfounded. I was building speakers likely before you were born. I am neither a skeptic, nor hateful. I am an educated realist and I know electronics, acoustics and physics partially because I'm an EE. This keeps on the straight-and-narrow facts-wise. I sometimes make mistakes, sure. All humans do. But I don't posses enough ego or hubris to not admit it when I make a mistake. 

I am also not hateful. I wish no one ill will. If I am a bit abrupt sometimes in my posts, forgive me, it's just that I sometimes have little patience for people who try to discuss things about which they are ignorant. And I try to always be polite. Even now after what you said about me above, I am not inclined to respond in kind by being nasty to you. 

[gmgraves]

47 minutes ago, anwaypasible said:

if it was a snake, it would bite you in the nose - ever heard of that?

 

anyways, your hateful ostracizing of my character is known as a hate crime & you'll be treated as such.

i'm german, irish, canadian, indian - that makes me more of an english speaker than you (and probably why you are confused being spitefully antagonistic)!

All I can say is that if English truly is your first language, then you have very poor command of it's written form. May I suggest that before you post, that you read over what you have written to see if it makes any sense to you. If not, you should revise it. The internet is a poor enough way to communicate with people you don't know, we don't need to add undecipherable posts to the problem. Thank you. 

 

I also don't understand why are accusing everybody of being hateful and antagonistic toward you. Believe me, nobody on this online community is here with that intention. Raf11 merely asked (the same as I did) whether you were a native English speaker, In other words, is English your first language? He was neither ostracizing your character or being hateful, and neither am I. 

[gmgraves]

47 minutes ago, mansr said:

So if the coil is made of silver it isn't a transducer?

I guess not. I was amazed to hear that an electrostatic speaker and a phonograph cartridge are not transducers either. You could have knocked me over with a feather!

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

It's hard to say, just by listening, how well the microphones have captured a sound when the speakers are much worse at reproducing it.

Well, I think I have a better handle on that than most people. I listen to the direct microphone feed while making a recording on Stax SR7 headphones when the venue allows for it, and I hear the same lack of realistic horn sound on those as I do on speakers when listening to the playback. So I hesitate to blame the speakers alone. 

[anwaypasible]

yet the length of this thread & how balderdash the quantifiable details are, there is more done to demoralize wishful thinking at a place meant to build the industry than there is profit making it to your stocks & bonds.

[Allan F]

8 minutes ago, anwaypasible said:

yet the length of this thread & how balderdash the quantifiable details are, there is more done to demoralize wishful thinking at a place meant to build the industry than there is profit making it to your stocks & bonds.

 

Would you care to tell us what this means in English?

[pkane2001]

6 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

Would you care to tell us what this means in English?

 

Sounds like a poorly done, computer-generated attempt at English.

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, anwaypasible said:

yet the length of this thread & how balderdash the quantifiable details are, there is more done to demoralize wishful thinking at a place meant to build the industry than there is profit making it to your stocks & bonds.

 

or just use phrases & white space

 

sentences are not required

 

see above

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Sounds like a poorly done, computer-generated attempt at English.

 

some AI Systems are better than others

 

just as some NIs are better than others

 

[look&listen]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

computer-generated attempt at English

? PeterSt on LSD

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Sounds like a poorly done, computer-generated attempt at English.

Good thinking! That's exactly what this guy's posts are. They are the product of translation software!

[semente]

9 hours ago, anwaypasible said:

pointing out the fact of headphones being single full-range drivers should quell thought.

 

Maybe because the advantages of using a single membrane outweight those of using two or more, but in loudspeakers it's the other way around, one of the reasons being intermodulation distortion.

[semente]

8 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

 

are you a native English speaker?

 

your response has nothing to do with my post

 

8 hours ago, anwaypasible said:

if it was a snake, it would bite you in the nose - ever heard of that?

 

anyways, your hateful ostracizing of my character is known as a hate crime & you'll be treated as such.

i'm german, irish, canadian, indian - that makes me more of an english speaker than you (and probably why you are confused being spitefully antagonistic)!

 

Would the two of you mind using capitals in the begining of a sentence?

It would help non-English natives like myself... And it doesn't require that much of an effort.

[mansr]

10 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Well, I think I have a better handle on that than most people. I listen to the direct microphone feed while making a recording on Stax SR7 headphones when the venue allows for it, and I hear the same lack of realistic horn sound on those as I do on speakers when listening to the playback. So I hesitate to blame the speakers alone. 

Headphones are also a form of speaker. What you hear is the combined distortion from the microphones and the headphones (and the mic amps). Separating them is impossible.