Concert Hall sound

[fas42]

 

1 hour ago, STC said:

 

Exactly, most listening rooms are just too dry to bring out concert hall sound.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa9zMCjmi-Q

 

Ummm, that shows the typical deficiencies of audio playback - better than some, but falling well short of what it should sound like - "big sound" is not happening because the rig is castrating the recorded quality. A major round of tweaking is needed, to lift the SQ into the right region.

 

A simple smartphone recording picks up the audible qualities of a live performance with ease, as evidenced in the first clip of the OP. But the album has used very different recording techniques, and will never sound like the first, even on the finest setup - the captured ambience is completely different. But there should be an intense sense of the liveness of the performers, on a capture of the playback of the album via speakers - a quality which is quite absent in the AVShowrooms clip.

[fas42]

7 hours ago, semente said:

 

I have a recording of the Hilliard Ensemble singing Morales' Mille Regretz mass. In the quiet moments one can hear sparrows chirping. This gives a good sense of the large space of the Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de Loreto in Sevilla which I don't get when the choir is singing.

 

 

Well, you should. If the recording was made in a large space then that's what you should hear, while the choir is singing - the cues are in the recording, but the SQ of the playback chain has to be of a certain level for one's mind to pick up on them, and "conjure" up the illusion. The word "blossoms" is thrown up regularly to describe what the subjective impression of the sound can be, and that's not a bad descriptor ... unless I'm getting that type of illusion from the recordings while playing then the setup is still below optimum.

 

The acoustics of the room you're in don't matter - if you place the rig in a huge concert hall, listen to some recordings; then move that rig to a tiny room in one's home, and listen to the same recordings, the subjective experience should be virtually identical - yes, the recorded soundfields will differ, but in your mind's eye they match.

 

Some recordings throw up gargantuan spaces - Led Zeppelin I, in the original release, does this - huge chasms of sound which stretch to forever - this makes a classical symphonic work sound highly claustrophobic, .

 

[fas42]

To take an example from this very thread, if I downloaded the best quality version of the audio track from the first YouTube clip, in the concert hall - and then played that over a competent setup at high volumes, and recorded the soundfield from the speakers - the subjective impression when listening to that final step should match what the original YouTube video conveys.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, STC said:

 

They are very important. In 5.1 SACD the rear channels reproduce the rear hall ambiance and that make a big difference in the sense of envelopment when compared to stereo recording of the same. In normal stereo recording the rear ambiance is deliberately omitted. 

 

 

The sense of envelopment happens automatically, with stereo - when competent sound is achieved. I had some "Well, I'll be ... !" episodes with the Philips all-in-one, when the surround sound mode was activated, by accident - and I didn't pick that this had happened for ages; say, during the whole album!

 

Even if the recording is highly lacking in reverb, an immersive quality is realised in the presentation - one is "swimming in the sound", everywhere in the listening space; it should never feel like the sound is just "over there", confined to an area between the speakers only - the MBL watermelon speakers in good form give a very good sense of the subjective experience.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, STC said:

 

 

So with stereo in surround mode is gives you envelopment? In a way that's true. Some also feel sense of envelopment when the speakers connected out of phase.

 

 

No, not what I meant - rather, that conventional stereo produced envelopment, and 'enhancing'  it by also driving the rear speakers did virtually nothing to make the experience different.

[fas42]

In the sense that ST originally used the word, above ... . With any sort of surround, multi-channel setup there is a feeling of being within the sound, rather than it happening in a specific area of the space you're in, say, "where the speakers are". Convincing stereo has the same impact - the sound "is everywhere".

 

All that is actually happening is that the ear/brain has accepted the illusion that one is hoping the rig can trigger - a switch has gone on inside one's head, "I'm happy to keep being fooled ... ".

 

[fas42]

48 minutes ago, audiventory said:

 

In short, not yet.

On current current techical level copying of original sound into listening is impossible. Because we still can't manage acoustical wave field enough: https://samplerateconverter.com/content/where-limit-audio-quality

 

 

I briefly looked at that link. And noted, as usual, that the human ability to "fill the gaps" has not been taken into account - unless one has experienced how 'impressive' the presentation of a conventional stereo replay system is when the level of key audible anomalies is low enough such that it becomes impossible to locate the speaker drivers aurally, no matter how close you are to one, then it's difficult to convey what is gained in every area of the listening.

 

If you can't play the following, from a quality source, at full tilt, and not be blown away by the experience, then there's work to be done ...

 

 

[fas42]

4 hours ago, semente said:

 

Whether or not the acoustics are in the recording depends on how close the mics were from the vocalists.

 

And you're wrong about the room.

 

 

As people have been pointing out, mics don't discriminate; they pick up all the sound energy that is impinging on their diaphragms ... we are the ones that separate the content, and choose to focus on what's important, to us ...

 

Mics being closer to the "instruments" doesn't stop the acoustics pickup, dead - it just means that the contribution of the latter is lower in level - and that requires a higher standard of replay for those acoustics to register, when listening. To appreciate this, one needs to have a rig working at a level where one can play a recording which is a studio mix of various instruments, all recorded separately - and one can turn one's focus on each of those sounds in turn, and "see" the acoustic where each one was located; a complex recording is a layering of acoustics, each of which still retains its identity within the whole.

 

Rule of thumb: poorer quality playback == listening room is everything; convincing standard playback == listening environment is irrelevant.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Toole talks about "listening through the room", where the brain compensates for the room's reverb and reflections, making the room "disappear".  But, there are obviously finite limits to that.  Some rooms are better than others.

 

Yes, the room "disappears" - but it's not a function of the room, it's a function of the integrity of the playback. When I start the tweaking process, the system is producing tiny, squawking sound, in a certain location in the room; if I fully succeed, the sound has become huge, and totally dominates the enviroment - the music event that was recorded is the universe, at that moment.

[fas42]

17 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Nonsense, as usual, Frank.

 

Which makes it clear that you have never experienced this quality of replay - or if you have, dismissed it as being some sort of artifact of the rig's setup. Ummm, yes it is, an 'artifact' - it's being able to fully hear what's on the recording ...

[fas42]

19 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

mics always discriminate; they never pick up all the sound energy that is impinging on their diaphragms

 

I presume this is meant in jest - otherwise, illogical. Of course, if you meant subsonic, and ultrasonic it's acceptable ...

[fas42]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

no my post is not in jest - one hopes that yours are

 

no microphone is perfect

 

It may not be "perfect", but it is an exceedingly simple device - sound energy will move the diaphragm, unless it somehow is stuck in its motion, and an extremely sensitive electrical tranducing mechanism registers that movement. Now, the translation to an electrical signal may not be 100% correct, but it will still produce a replica of  the air's vibrational motion.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, STC said:

 

Fas is not entirely wrong. I would agree to a modified version of his post as follows:-

 

 

 

 

At one level I find this amusing - people are so ernest in the rejection of the concept that the quality of playback is so critical as to how the presentation registers subjectively ... as someone who has heard this changing of the subjective qualities literally thousand of times over the years, for decades, on numerous systems of my own, and of those belonging to others - it's like saying there is no such thing as colour TV, because I haven't actually come across one yet; black and white is all that's possible - so there!!!

[fas42]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

how about: While imperfect, mics do not actively pay attention in the way a human listener does.

 

 

by "pay attention" I mean the sorts of things cognitive psychos study in attentional processes

 

- subject to change when Siri becomes self-aware

 

What a playback rig has to do is regurgitate absolutely everything the microphone 'heard', hopefully not too contaminated by the following stages of processing - which gives the ear/brain all the necessary data, allowing the human listener "to actively pay attention" - the recording/playback chains are a conduit for putting the ear back to where the microphone was; a sound time machine.

[fas42]

5 hours ago, STC said:

 

Fas, it is hard to accept or even understand your statement when you also conclude that what you hear is

 

 

 

 What I'm saying is that a particular setup can be in a mode of convincing sound at one point in time, and not so at another point of time - it all depends on the state of tune of the overall chain. What the specific components are in that chain is nowhere near as important as the integrity of the chain in key areas of behaviour - I've had a rig switch between the two states numerous times on a single day, depending upon precisely what I've changed, stabilised, and quite often stuffed up by accidentally moving or disturbing, during that period.

 

If the rig is unconvincing, then it just sounds like the normal stereo we all know and 'love', ; a plateau of performance has to be reached which triggers the "fool you!" illusion - there is no conscious control over this, I can't "decide" that the SQ is sufficient; it's either good enough, or it ain't ...

[fas42]

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

 

I heard something similar to this years ago at Bert Whyte's* house. He had constructed a dedicated listening room in what he called "live end, dead end" His custom speakers were arranged  at the live end of the room which was highly reflective with hard, irregular surfaces. His listening chairs were at the dead end of the room in which every building surface was covered in acoustic insulation five inches thick with a tasteful light tan grill cloth material covering the insulation. I have never heard such pinpoint imaging and such a bloom of acoustical space. Of course, Bert was playing his own master tapes, so the program material was about as good as it could be in the late 1970's.  

 

* For those of you who don't remember Bert, he was a recording engineer and an early practitioner of recording in stereo. In the late 1950's Bert was the sole recording engineer for a classical label called "Everest" Records (many of these recordings are still available as CDs and high-resolution downloads). Starting in the 1960's and up until his death in the late 80's, Bert had a regular monthly column in Audio magazine.

 

The "pinpoint imaging and such a bloom of acoustical space" is what switches on when the playback chain is sufficiently sorted; using acoustic manipulation and dressing is another method for getting our hearing systems to accept the illusion ... I just happened to trigger this subjective experience via the setup refinement route, because I was that way inclined - if I had talked a lot to other audiophiles, back then, who used room treatments to switch this experience on then I probably would never have chanced upon the alternative, and to my hearing, better method.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, STC said:

 

Playing a recorded music in dead room would still sound dead despite having as much ambience cues captured in the recording. I can demonstrate that and there are many literatures out there explaining this point. Reverbs must come from around us. Room reflection helps to fill in the absent cues that were intentionally left out in the recordings.

 

 

 

 

Which is what I disagree with - in an extremely dead room the sound coming from the speakers, provided you're standing in a position where you can pick up the direct sound to some degree will provide an experience which has very satisfying ambience - it will mimic being in front of a huge open window onto the "concert stage", where you are sitting in an open field.

 

The cues are in the recording - the engineers may have thought they were clever and left them out, "intentionally" - but it is quite easy to pick the space where the sounds, if natural, were recorded. People might be upset with this, because it doesn't conjure up a uniform acoustic - I don't mind, it's interesting to note the balance between the spaces one "sees"; doesn't get in the way of "enjoying the spectacle".

[fas42]

11 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Thank you.  

 

As far as channel count is concerned, yes, we know that real images from speakers are more precise than phantom images between speakers, and also that phantom images are better and more precise over a smaller distance = a narrower angle between them.

 

Ummm, no ... with convincing sound, there are no "real images from speakers" - it's all phantom images, nothing else - it's absolutely impossible to see an image "in the speaker", no matter how hard you try to place it there, in your mind. When I have a rig that's slipping between the convincing and unconvincing modes, that's what happens - if the sound degrades, the "speaker images" come to life, and the illusion is lost.

[fas42]

Yes, you've addressed the room ... but not the replay chain. And I have done absolutely nothing to any room where a system is set up that I've worked on.

 

There is a step change in the presentation of recordings - in a positive direction - if the SQ from the speakers is good enough. If someone hasn't experienced this transition, occurring to some degree at least, then they will probably never understand what this is like - it goes from ordinary, to Woowww!!! And there is nothing in the research that talks about this - the quality of playback of the systems used for investigating has never been good enough ... QED.

[fas42]

18 hours ago, STC said:

 

You mentioned elsewhere that you are still chasing the elusive sound some 30 year ago that you accidently discovered. By now you should have known you are going the wrong direction. More than half of the sound that determines fidelity/realism is not even in the recording. It is the ambiance. Even with mp3 SQ you can make great sound if you address the room acoustics.

 

There are a variety of reasons why I'm still "chasing" - and the main one of them is that the SQ that's possible is, yes, so elusive - at the moment.

 

Wrong direction? The amount of awful sound I've heard from ambitious systems over the years is pretty depressing - my interest is in trying to inject some sanity into the audio game, and move the thinking towards getting playback to, well, play back the recording with full integrity; rather that having rigs which are Yet Another Effects Unit.

 

The dilemma with producing high SQ is doing it with "robustness"; meaning, you can start a system from cold and after about 5 minutes, and irrespective of what's happening otherwise electrically nearby the setup will be performing to a high standard. I have never achieved this, because the raw ingredients, the components, aren't engineered well enough, or are far, far too expensive to consider playing tweaking games with - this is an absurd situation, and constant heckling by people like me on the sidelines is needed, until some more sense emerges.

[fas42]

6 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Yes, phantom imaging between two speakers becomes more accurate as the apparent, panned sound source approaches the speaker to one side or the other.  Also, the centered phantom image between two speakers with a 60 degree angle between them will be less accurately conveyed than if the angle was 30 degrees.  

 

There is also a special case of sounds from front dead center and slightly either side of that.  Due to our head related transfer function and ears to the sides of our head, there is a large drop at upper middle frequencies when heard from phantom imaging by two front speakers.  The same signal when played by a single center channel speaker eliminates that.  That is important for imaging at the front of the soundstage for music, and also for dialog articulation on video.  It is a frequency response problem with center imaging in stereo we have just gotten used to.

 

 

Probably the most remarkable phantom imaging that our ear/brains can do is with a true mono source being played over stereo speakers - identical signal from the two speakers. This produces an image which always remains perfectly in front of one, "follows you" as you move from between the speakers to the left of the left speaker, and all the way back to the right of the right speaker.

 

This can only happen when the setup is producing competent sound; anything less than that level of SQ and the sound "jumps back into" the nearest speaker as one moves sideways; which is of course what one gets with normal reproduction.

[fas42]

12 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Listening room acoustics absolutely affect the sound that we  hear in major ways.  There is so much empirical science to back this up, I don't even begin to know where to direct you for starters.

 

The empirical science has always used playback systems that weren't of sufficient standard - "In the 1930's scientists tried to fly faster than the speed of sound, using every aircraft that was readily available - and failed. They confidentally stated, 'It's impossible to break the sound barrier, because we have tested for that possibility' ".

[fas42]

Sarcasm doesn't achieve anything ... there are plenty of people around who have discovered, or investigated aspects of what I'm talking about - I have pointed to them from time to time. But most of these people largely keep their heads down, and go along with the crowd - to keep the peace ... I'm pissed off that audio is still in the doldrums, and just doing a bit more to push this message than others.

[fas42]

12 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Is it?

 

I agree that standards are slowly rising - excellent value for money equipment is around; careful buying will get one a setup that gets so much right in the first instance.

 

Audio shows and retail outlets are the giveaway - the former will be full of expensive equipment that will sound 'orrible, with just a couple of rigs showing good potential - if a car show was full of duds that were dreadful or outright dangerous to drive, how much respect would vistors have for the manufacturers, etc.

 

Last time I visited an ambitious audio dealer, everything sounded terrible - I was shaking my head after leaving the store.

[fas42]

I enter "audio hell" via two missteps - i don't care about the room; and, I plunk the speakers down wherever it's most convenient to put them, where they will be the least nuisance ... burn, son, burn!!