Concert Hall sound

[kumakuma]

8 minutes ago, fas42 said:

I'm pissed off that audio is still in the doldrums...

 

Is it?

[kumakuma]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

Unfortunately, headphones don't do it for me - I was lent a pair of pricey Sennheisers for a while - could only take it for about 5 minutes. And the quality wasn't there - the loudspeaker experience is far superior, in every area.

 

Sounds like your rig's not there yet. On a fully debugged and sorted system, even the cheapest earbuds sound better than loudspeakers.

[kumakuma]

6 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

That’s absolutely not my experience and I’ve had some pretty fancy headphone systems during the time my daughter was studying and didn’t want my music interfering. Rigs included Stax with tube energiser, some German tube amp (with lots of Perspex so you could see the glow), AKG K1000 Earspeakers etc. They all sounded lovely but really could not creat the quality of sound I get from my loudspeakers

 

1 hour ago, firedog said:

I assume that you were making a funny/sarcastic comment to Frank about his "perfect" setup. But headphones are just a matter of taste. Just like tubes/solid state, PCM/DSD, etc.  Some people prefer one, some the other. 

 

Of course I was. Unlike Frank's equipment, my components are subject to the laws of physics.

[kumakuma]

6 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

So, in the context of this thread topic on achieving Concert Hall sound, your answer, as repeated and repeated and then defended by you, seems to be about the absolutely essential importance of using the right kind of wire.  Do I have that right?

 

Also, anyone who disagrees with him is either:

 

1. A sadist

2. A bully

3. A bigot

4. Two or more of the above

[kumakuma]

45 minutes ago, GeneZ said:

Not anyone...  Its HOW.  

 

When someone refuses to try something, and tells you its useless?   I should bother with you, too?  Did you not read that his own opinion was simply based upon his own biased guess and assumption..  Yet, he is sure.  Its trolling.

 

Have a nice day.... join the pack. 

 

Let me ask you a question.

 

If 20 people here told you that that they had tried audiophile fuses (for example) and told you they provided no audible benefits in their systems, would you be willing to admit that perhaps what you are hearing isn't real?

[kumakuma]

9 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

I'll be very surprised if he answers this, and if he does, I expect that he'll say that they are all bigots and hateful people. IOW, NO!

 

As you can see, he answered it but played the "your system needs to be good enough" card.

 

Doesn't he know that this card needs to be played with the "your ears need be good enough" card for full effect with bonus points if the "you won't hear the results unless you have an open mind" card is also played at the same time?

 

In his favor, there were no deductions this time for ad hominem attacks.

[kumakuma]

Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

 

Garrison Keillor
 

[kumakuma]

15 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Ummm, different masterings are different recordings - unless they deliberately tried to be identical, I would very much expect there to be variation ... .

 

Master tapes that are digital should match a CD copy. Analogue masters are using a different playback route, and this may be enough to differentiate from a digital copy replay.

 

Different masterings are different releases from the same recordings.

 

Master tapes will only match the CD if the master "tapes" are also in Redbook (16/44.1) format.

[kumakuma]

1 minute ago, fas42 said:

If tapes are in digital, 24 bit, etc - resampling to Redbook should have zero impact - if the digital replay is doing its job properly ...

 

Do you have any evidence to support this statement?

[kumakuma]

 

13 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

I find it bizarre that you say that - "objectivist" thinking is that Redbook is perfectly adequate for replay, and i agree with that 100% ... I have done many experiments, 'trashing' very high res material by downsampling to CD quality, then resampling to the original format - all that is "lost" is ultra sonic twaddle, of zero musical interest.

Just checked my JRiver library. Of the 149,407 files in my library, 71,121 have a sample rate higher than 44.1kHz.

 

Guess I'm not an "objectivist"...

[kumakuma]

2 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Human hearing reacts to something "not being right" - that's how we learnt to survive in the jungle, with wild beasts in the offing - once you are aware of that "oddness", your focus zooms in on it - the tiny itch becomes 'huge'. The task is, get rid of, yes, that 'tinyness' ...

 

So why doesn't it react the same way to things "not being right" in a recording?

[kumakuma]

13 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Yes, very good point. I have the same problem as others do with poor recordings - if the rig is below par, the "things wrong" in the source material can make it unlistenable to - which provides the feedback that I need to work more on the situation. What apparently is going on is that there is a tipping point, inside one's head - when the complexity of "things wrong" with the sound field overall is too great, there is overload: the mental agility to handle anomalies is pushed beyond what it can cope with - and it "sounds awful!!"

 

The combination of "things wrong" in the recording, and "things wrong" in the playback provide too great a  burden, for our minds - the answer is, reduce the "things wrong" in the playback chain to the lowest possible level, so that those anomalies don't 'intermodulate' with issues within the recording. And I know that I'm making progress, when the "worst" recordings still work - the problems of the playback rig are now so low in amplitude that my mind only has to deal with the recording "funnies" - and can successfully compensate for them.

 

I think STC may be right. You've got something going on there that is causing you to perceive music in a different way than the rest of us.

[kumakuma]

9 minutes ago, fas42 said:

And, to put this MES silliness to bed, properly - Musical Ear Syndrome: What Do We Know? - viewcontent.cgi

 

 

and ...

 

   

Okay, everone can settle down now ...

 

Even if you don't have MES, there is still something going on here that isn't what the rest of us are experiencing.

 

For example, you recommended a digital audio player in another thread.

 

I have a very good one and very good IEMs.

 

Guess what?

 

Good recording sound fantastic and "bad" recording sound like shit.

 

No miracles. No magic. No "tipping point". No "mind filling in the blanks".

 

Just what's in the original (shitty) recording...

[kumakuma]

8 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

A digital audio player can be a very good starting point for getting the SQ one's after - the friend who has investigated these for years just doesn't plug them in, and play - he has developed a whole suite of little tweaks which all add up - to give the best result. I have heard these units of his playing, often, and when they're not in the "zone" they sound like, well, shit too ...

 

Driving headphones directly, alone may be enough to disturb the quality you want - he has gone to great lengths experimenting with buffering the output, to optimise performance.

 

Until one has investigated every aspect of some part of an audio rig, one can't really say where the weaknesses are - every situation is different.

 

I am using easy-to-drive IEMs and I have no desire to solder my IEMs to either the DAP or my ears so there's really nothing to tweak.

 

I guess I'm doomed to listen to my music just as it was recorded... for better or worse.

[kumakuma]

10 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The best solution is to encourage manufacturers of gear to "get it right", in the first place - out of curiosity, what's the model of DAP you're using?

 

 

I'm using an A&K Kann:

 

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/8/15752152/astell-kern-kann-review-audiophile-pmp

[kumakuma]

13 minutes ago, fas42 said:

have you ever tried using it to drive your speaker rig?

 

Yes... and bad recordings were still bad. 

[kumakuma]

25 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

OK, give us an example of a particularly disappointing bad recording, and what about it made it so disappointing.

 

Here's one example for you:

 

 

 

"Bottled up" piano sound. Cymbals sound like shit. Clicks and pops. His vocalizations sound like they are coming from a neighboring room.

[kumakuma]

12 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The vocalisations are part of how it was recorded; not much can be done about that - but the rest should come together.

 

When you listen to this, does it work better as a coherent musical experience on the headphones, or when hooked up to the rig, via the speakers?

 

 

 

ALL of flaws I mentioned are in recording.

 

In answer to your question, the music sounds better with my speakers because my speaker system is LESS "sorted" than my DAP and the flaws in the recording are less noticeable, allowing me to better enjoy the music.

 

Using the DAP I mentioned and high quality IEMs, the track is almost unlistenable as every flaw in the recording sticks out like a sore thumb. 

[kumakuma]

8 hours ago, fas42 said:

There is a path that occurs with optimising a rig, that happens nearly every time - the current NAD runs somewhat counter to this trend, at the moment. That is, a setup starts off sounding reasonably pleasant, then becomes nigh impossible with certain recordings at a certain point in the evolution; then, you're over the hurdle, it's all downhill from now on.

 

With all due respect, I don't believe this is possible.

[kumakuma]

58 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 

It's not. The reason why he never tells people much of significance, is because so much of what he does (whatever that is) is all in his head. Frank, I've concluded, is the ultimate victim of both expectational and confirmation bias. He move a cable away from a mains cable by a few centimeters and in his head, the sound quality of his system has just move forward by %100! He solders an interconnect connection to both the source component and the destination component, and the SQ of his collection of mundane components leaps ahead by %500! In reality, the difference before and after the modification may be minuscule or even non-existent, but in Franks mind it's an incredible improvement over what it was before!  

 

I've reached a similar conclusion. 

[kumakuma]

6 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The "everything else" in the audio chain is in pretty good shape - what people still seem to have great problems appreciating is that the circuitry if working as designed, as intended, does do a extremely good job of replicating what's on the recording.

 

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you on this point.

 

The issue is more your contention that you can take your equipment past accurate playback into a mystical state where shitty recordings suddenly start to sound good.

[kumakuma]

6 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Ummm, you will never get it ... because I have never, ever altered a component with those sort of ideas - see my previous post. The NAD was a mess because it had too much extraneous circuitry, with cheap pots and cheap switches controlling those areas - ditch all that functionality, and one starts to get somewhere ...

 

You see, you're still trapped in the "That link has 105 lbs strength; I need to up it to 114 lbs!" mindset - completely ignoring the cheap bit of hardware which is the next link - which is only 75 lbs. So, what happens when you pull on the chain?

 

 

No, it doesn't. There are pointless mods, and then there are genuinely useful ones - I tend to focus on the latter ...

 

 

How about sharing some photos of what you've done to the innards of the NAD?

[kumakuma]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

 This is grotesquely off-topic now  <SNIP>

 

The creator of this thread has asked you to start your own thread rather than post further to this thread.