Concert Hall sound

[Fitzcaraldo215]

14 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

When I first started getting convincing sound I would have agreed with what you said in the second paragraph. However, time spent in trying all sorts of optimisation, over the years, kept on feeding me the contrary story - finally, I accepted 'defeat': "There is no such thing as a bad recording!".

 

Yes, masking takes place - but it's inside your head where it happens. If the playback is taken to the highest standards of 'cleaniness', then enough of the musical message gets through, with minimal exaggeration of the "badness" - your mind compensates for the shortcomings of the recording, and even though your intellect may know that the quality is not there, subjectively, it doesn't matter. I have had this happen on literally hundreds of occasions; it's a rock sold behaviour, for me.

OK, Frank, if the quality of the recording "doesn't matter" because we just tune out the bad stuff,  why then does the quality of the playback system matter?  Why waste your time fiddling, tweaking and conjuring?  Nothing seems to matter.  Our, or at least your, wonderful brain just compensates.  

 

How does your brain subconsciously know whether those trivial imperfections you are consciously aware of but easily ignore, according to you, are from the recording or from the playback system?

 

So, we should just play the damn music from any old good, bad or indifferent recordings on any old damn system and just be done with it.  They are all gonna sound terrific because your wonderful brain hears through it all.  But, if we don't happen to agree from long hard experience because our brains just simply refuse to work as you say, we are just unfortunate losers who have not yet seen the bright and shining path you have to audio nirvana.

[gmgraves]

18 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

When I first started getting convincing sound I would have agreed with what you said in the second paragraph. However, time spent in trying all sorts of optimisation, over the years, kept on feeding me the contrary story - finally, I accepted 'defeat': "There is no such thing as a bad recording!".

 

Yes, masking takes place - but it's inside your head where it happens. If the playback is taken to the highest standards of 'cleaniness', then enough of the musical message gets through, with minimal exaggeration of the "badness" - your mind compensates for the shortcomings of the recording, and even though your intellect may know that the quality is not there, subjectively, it doesn't matter. I have had this happen on literally hundreds of occasions; it's a rock sold behaviour, for me.

My what an imagination you have! I can't believe that anybody posting here would be out go touch with reality that they would say something as asinine as "There are no bad recordings." Most commercial recordings are bad! I don't know what happens between the time a musical event is captured and it gets released, but very few CDs or SACDs or LPCM files from either downloads or audio-only Blu-ray discs sound anything like the master recording.

 

As an example, I was at Paul Stubblebine's Studio in San Francisco a number of years ago, and he was making a DSD digital transfer for Mobile Fidelity of Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloe Suite #2” with the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and produced by the famous team of Mark Aubort and the late Joanna Nikernz for Vox in the early ‘Seventies. The original "Vox Box" set of "The Complete Orchestral Works of Ravel" had always shown promise (Aubort and Nikernz were probably the best producers working classical music in the '60's and '70's), but Vox's usually lousy pressings always got in the way. Noisy vinyl, under-fill, eccentric or warped discs, it was always something with Vox. When the new owner's of Vox transferred their catalogue to digital in the late '80's, the Ravel set ended up as two two-CD sets and I looked forward to buying them. While certainly better than the LPs, the CDs were nothing to write home about. Then I heard the "Daphnis et Chloe Suite #2"  master tape at Stubblebine's studio. The master was magnificent, thrilling, it raised goosebumps on me! I called Mobile Fidelity and as a reviewer asked them to please see that I got a copy of the Daphnis when it was released. Sure thing, they said, and in the fullness of time, it arrived. Boy was I disappointed. This was an SACD and side by side comparisons told me that the new transfer to high resolution sounded no better than the Vox CD that came out 10 years earlier! I have seen this phenomenon over and over again. I do not understand what the commercialization process does to recorded sound or why the record companies allow it. They certainly have the tools to do it correctly, and I would hope, the expertise. Yet Frank obviously can't hear that. and he believes that every recording, no matter how poor is rendered magnificent on his mid-fi combination of components and his "boom-box" speakers!

[Allan F]

9 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 I can't believe that anybody posting here would be out go touch with reality that they would say something as asinine as "There are no bad recordings."

 

Nor can I. But spouting nonsense has long been a favourite pastime of his.

[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
 

[fas42]

8 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

OK, Frank, if the quality of the recording "doesn't matter" because we just tune out the bad stuff,  why then does the quality of the playback system matter?  Why waste your time fiddling, tweaking and conjuring?  Nothing seems to matter.  Our, or at least your, wonderful brain just compensates.  

 

Ummm, to the contrary - to use that well worn cliche, Everything matters! And the reason is that the brain, apparently, is extremely sensitive to any anomalies which "reveal the truth". I had this behaviour happening to me constantly with my first good setup, decades ago - it would revert to conventional stereo presentation with complete predictability, because there was an aspect of of its state of tune that I didn't understand, and didn't have control over.

 

8 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

 

How does your brain subconsciously know whether those trivial imperfections you are consciously aware of but easily ignore, according to you, are from the recording or from the playback system?

 

The imperfections are very obvious when the rig is below par; you are consciously aware of them, they scream at you - I'm thinking here of very hamfisted noise reduction applied to a Gene Pitney ripoff CD. The amazing thing that happens is that at a high standard of replay you lose the ability to pick what was so damaging to the recording - the musical message overrides that severe imperfection. You know that the transfer is terrible, but you don't hear it ... I would liken it to the McGurk effect.

 

The brain is tuning into the threads of sound which form the content of what was recorded - if not enough of that is getting through, the illusion fails.

 

8 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

So, we should just play the damn music from any old good, bad or indifferent recordings on any old damn system and just be done with it.  They are all gonna sound terrific because your wonderful brain hears through it all.  But, if we don't happen to agree from long hard experience because our brains just simply refuse to work as you say, we are just unfortunate losers who have not yet seen the bright and shining path you have to audio nirvana.

 

No. The mantra is, "just play the damn music from any old good, bad or indifferent recordings on a system that is as close to perfect as you can get it". The rig has to operate at at an extremely high standard, otherwise the clues that the playback is not up to scratch are too obvious. As a simple example, go up to the tweeter of a speaker on one side while playing at a normal volume - if you can hear any sort of 'ugliness', unnatural quality to the treble output ... then, the SQ of the playback setup is not good enough.

[fas42]

5 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Then I heard the "Daphnis et Chloe Suite #2"  master tape at Stubblebine's studio. The master was magnificent, thrilling, it raised goosebumps on me! I called Mobile Fidelity and as a reviewer asked them to please see that I got a copy of the Daphnis when it was released. Sure thing, they said, and in the fullness of time, it arrived. Boy was I disappointed. This was an SACD and side by side comparisons told me that the new transfer to high resolution sounded no better than the Vox CD that came out 10 years earlier! I have seen this phenomenon over and over again. I do not understand what the commercialization process does to recorded sound or why the record companies allow it. They certainly have the tools to do it correctly, and I would hope, the expertise. Yet Frank obviously can't hear that. and he believes that every recording, no matter how poor is rendered magnificent on his mid-fi combination of components and his "boom-box" speakers!

 

All the answers are in your post ... but you can't see them ... .

 

Why the "master tape at Stubblebine's studio" sounded "magnificent" was because of the quality of the playback chain that was in action at that moment. You can't 'buy' that quality as you can a CD, etc - you have to make it happen by other means!

 

So, you have clear "proof" that the recording has the qualities you want - your mission, if you chose to accept it , is to realise that in your own home ...

 

All I've done is to put the effort into getting the playback tool to work to a high enough standard - the "master tape at Stubblebine's studio" level. The losses you hear are only because your rig is not working well enough - if I were to put on that Daphnis et Chloe CD on a setup that I was confident was up to scratch, then it would deliver everything you heard back then, and more ...

[STC]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

As a simple example, go up to the tweeter of a speaker on one side while playing at a normal volume - if you can hear any sort of 'ugliness', unnatural quality to the treble output ... then, the SQ of the playback setup is not good enough.

 

Why is it so important that you always just the sound quality form the side or back of the speaker and not from the front like normal people? Tweeters will sound distorted from the side because HF dispersion due to the cabinet and the readiton pattern of high frequency. 

 

IOW, if the tweeter sounds perfect from the side and as good as the front, will that be considered that the SQ is good enough? Bad news for you: Sony discovered your secret.

 

 

 

I have listened to these speakers and almost bought them.

[STC]

Apparently they got the smaller version now. I have not seen the new ones yet.

 

 

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

All the answers are in your post ... but you can't see them ... .

 

Why the "master tape at Stubblebine's studio" sounded "magnificent" was because of the quality of the playback chain that was in action at that moment. You can't 'buy' that quality as you can a CD, etc - you have to make it happen by other means!

 

So, you have clear "proof" that the recording has the qualities you want - your mission, if you chose to accept it , is to realise that in your own home ...

 

All I've done is to put the effort into getting the playback tool to work to a high enough standard - the "master tape at Stubblebine's studio" level. The losses you hear are only because your rig is not working well enough - if I were to put on that Daphnis et Chloe CD on a setup that I was confident was up to scratch, then it would deliver everything you heard back then, and more ...

My god, Frank, you're getting in deeper all the time! You don't know what Stbbulebine's "playback chain" even was at that moment or at any other times for that matter. You're right, you can't buy that quality because you can't buy the master tape! 

Jeez, what a hard head you are. for the 23,569th time my system is just fine because MY master recordings whether on analog tape or digital, sound just like they did while I was recording them! I don't think one can get much more accurate than that!

Basically, you are full of it Frank!

Earlier you said that recording quality doesn't matter (which is absolute nonsense), and then in your very next post you said "Everything matters!" Which is it Frank? Does everything matter or doesn't it? Can you see now why  the things you say have no credibility? Well, things like that are certainly one reason. Another is that you make pronouncements about things that you can't possibly know! You have no idea what my system sounds like or anybody else's system for that matter! You have no way of knowing whether a release sound recording sounds as good as the master. BECAUSE YOU HAVEN"T HEARD THE MASTERS! All you post is nonsense and then, to make things worse, you then defend that indefensible nonsense in spite of the fact that it makes you sink deeper into your own morass!

[fas42]

40 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Why is it so important that you always just the sound quality form the side or back of the speaker and not from the front like normal people? Tweeters will sound distorted from the side because HF dispersion due to the cabinet and the readiton pattern of high frequency. 

 

IOW, if the tweeter sounds perfect from the side and as good as the front, will that be considered that the SQ is good enough? Bad news for you: Sony discovered your secret.

 

 

You misunderstood ... I was referring to the tweeter on one side of the stereo setup; the left channel, or, the right channel. You listen from directly in front of the driver, just like "normal people" ... .

[fas42]

43 minutes ago, STC said:

Apparently they got the smaller version now. I have not seen the new ones yet.

 

 

 

This sort of speaker is what I last investigated - the potential is certainly there ... as always, the quality of the driving electronics will dictate the quality of the experience.

[fas42]

17 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

My god, Frank, you're getting in deeper all the time! You don't know what Stbbulebine's "playback chain" even was at that moment or at any other times for that matter. You're right, you can't buy that quality because you can't buy the master tape! 

 

I don't need to ... what you're telling me is that the quality is of a very high standard - it's a chain that can handle a 100 lbs pull, so to speak.  And, the master tape is not 'magical' - the same information is on the CD ... really ...

 

17 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Jeez, what a hard head you are. for the 23,569th time my system is just fine because MY master recordings whether on analog tape or digital, sound just like they did while I was recording them! I don't think one can get much more accurate than that!

 

Ummm, do I hear an echo of, gulp, "expectation bias" - you know what those recordings should sound like, because you were there - your head is filling the gaps . With an "unknown" recording you've got nothing to hang on to, to help guide you ...

 

17 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Basically, you are full of it Frank!

Earlier you said that recording quality doesn't matter (which is absolute nonsense), and then in your very next post you said "Everything matters!" Which is it Frank? Does everything matter or doesn't it? Can you see now why  the things you say have no credibility? Well, things like that are certainly one reason. Another is that you make pronouncements about things that you can't possibly know! You have no idea what my system sounds like or anybody else's system for that matter! You have no way of knowing whether a release sound recording sounds as good as the master. BECAUSE YOU HAVEN"T HEARD THE MASTERS! All you post is nonsense and then, to make things worse, you then defend that indefensible nonsense in spite of the fact that it makes you sink deeper into your own morass!

 

Right, open your exercise books, children; pen in hand ...

 

With the playback chain, Everything Matters!

With the recording, better quality helps, but it still works if it's mighty dodgy ...

 

Okay, hands up those who think they can repeat this, without looking, 10 times ...

[STC]

14 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

You misunderstood ... I was referring to the tweeter on one side of the stereo setup; the left channel, or, the right channel. You listen from directly in front of the driver, just like "normal people" ... .

 

If that's the case, I misunderstood so many things. I give up. Do you have anything to contribute about concert hall sound? 

[fas42]

1 hour ago, STC said:

 

If that's the case, I misunderstood so many things. I give up. Do you have anything to contribute about concert hall sound? 

 

I hope so ... the core of what I'm saying is that the concert hall sound is encoded already on many recordings; better replay SQ brings it out, automatically. If one wishes to make tracks which were mastered to be intimate sound as if they were indeed in a concert hall, then the ideas that you pursue are very valuable ... it's up to the individual to decide what path ...

[STC]

52 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

I hope so ... the core of what I'm saying is that the concert hall sound is encoded already on many recordings; better replay SQ brings it out, automatically. If one wishes to make tracks which were mastered to be intimate sound as if they were indeed in a concert hall, then the ideas that you pursue are very valuable ... it's up to the individual to decide what path ...

 

You are not entirely wrong. The necessary cues are already in the stereo recordings. It can be retrieved as explained by the various research literatures. 

 

All I am asking for, maybe there are few more others, is there anyway you can document what you are doing and can that be repeatable without trial and error? Is there any valid scientific papers that could confirm your stand?  How does your tweak address the inherent crosstalk in stereo? How is your method could magically recreate the ambience directional cues with just two front channel speakers?

 

You have not addressed this but you keep on telling about your imaginative abilities where you could recreate the concert hall sound in your head. That's not helpful. We cannot reproduce what your are claiming. That's not helpful and often a distraction. Please be constructive. There are places where we can talk about magic, belief and one's own imaginative power. This is not the thread. 

[fas42]

1 hour ago, STC said:

 

You are not entirely wrong. The necessary cues are already in the stereo recordings. It can be retrieved as explained by the various research literatures. 

 

Why extract it 'artificially', if one's head can do it all by itself, subconsciously? The only requirement is that this information is not contaminated by too much distortion, making it that much harder for the mind to make sense of it all.

 

Quote

 

All I am asking for, maybe there are few more others, is there anyway you can document what you are doing and can that be repeatable without trial and error? Is there any valid scientific papers that could confirm your stand? 

 

 

The key requirement is that the standard of the reproduction is to an adequate level. With the current standards of how components are implemented, and systems are assembled, this standard is hard to reach; if enough setups were working to this standard then any depth of research could be done, to validate all the parameters.

 

For me, Bregman's "Auditory Scene Analysis" and all the research that's been inspired by his thinking are the "explanations" as to what happens - if the brain has sufficient information then it can extrapolate as necessary to construct a sufficient internal picture of the intended sound field.

 

Quote

How does your tweak address the inherent crosstalk in stereo? How is your method could magically recreate the ambience directional cues with just two front channel speakers?

 

Because the mind has learnt how to deal with 'unusual' access to sound data, from a lifetime of doing so. If  a live orchestra was heard via two widely spaced doorways in a wall between the sound and you, it would not stop sounding like the "real thing", just because there was no "direct sound".

 

Quote

 

You have not addressed this but you keep on telling about your imaginative abilities where you could recreate the concert hall sound in your head. That's not helpful. We cannot reproduce what your are claiming. That's not helpful and often a distraction. Please be constructive. There are places where we can talk about magic, belief and one's own imaginative power. This is not the thread. 

 

The requirement is to enable a higher standard of replay - there is no point in concerning oneself about tyre safety at 120 mph, if no car can go faster than 90 mph. The tragedy in audio is that the cars can easily go at very high speeds, but they all have faulty brakes, which drag on the vehicle, and prevent higher velocities.

[STC]

11 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Quote

Why extract it 'artificially', if one's head can do it all by itself, subconsciously? The only requirement is that this information is not contaminated by too much distortion, making it that much harder for the mind to make sense of it all.

 

Because you will be accused of  hallucinating.  In dreamland, we can do whatever we like but I am talking about real world.

 

11 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Quote

The key requirement is that the standard of the reproduction is to an adequate level. With the current standards of how components are implemented, and systems are assembled, this standard is hard to reach; if enough setups were working to this standard then any depth of research could be done, to validate all the parameters.

 

Nothing to show. Not a single photograph of your system. Not a single measurement. No independent verification.

 

11 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Quote

For me, Bregman's "Auditory Scene Analysis" and all the research that's been inspired by his thinking are the "explanations" as to what happens - if the brain has sufficient information then it can extrapolate as necessary to construct a sufficient internal picture of the intended sound field.

 

Show me the relevance of the paper which supports your tweaks. Just one.

 

 

11 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Quote

Because the mind has learnt how to deal with 'unusual' access to sound data, from a lifetime of doing so. If  a live orchestra was heard via two widely spaced doorways in a wall between the sound and you, it would not stop sounding like the "real thing", just because there was no "direct sound".

 

Yes...yes...yes.. I said it before. That doesn't mean we stop at that and let imagination takes over. 

 

11 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Quote

The requirement is to enable a higher standard of replay - there is no point in concerning oneself about tyre safety at 120 mph, if no car can go faster than 90 mph. The tragedy in audio is that the cars can easily go at very high speeds, but they all have faulty brakes, which drag on the vehicle, and prevent higher velocities.

 

Again. Meaningless post that helped no one except yourself reiterating that your imagination is very convincing.

[fas42]

2 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Because you will be accused of  hallucinating.  In dreamland, we can do whatever we like but I am talking about real world.

 

We're in the realm of the Black Swan Fallacy here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability. Anything that's unusual, or rarely occurs can hit this barricade - it just takes a few rounds of exposure to move everyone on ... I've engaged enough with other people to know that that it doesn't happen often, but sufficiently to confirm how it works.

 

2 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Nothing to show. Not a single photograph of your system. Not a single measurement. No independent verification.

 

Images don't tell you anything. This is a sensory experience, and the people around me validate that they hear it too. Amusingly, a hard core audiophile took an hour or so to come off his high horse - he was constantly trying to hear "audiophile things", which weren't there. Female listeners get it straightaway, - it just sounds, 'right'.

 

2 minutes ago, STC said:

 

 

Show me the relevance of the paper which supports your tweaks. Just one.

 

 

We're talking a major book here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_scene_analysis

 

2 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Yes...yes...yes.. I said it before. That doesn't mean we stop at that and let imagination takes over.

 

Again. Meaningless post that helped no one except yourself reiterating that your imagination is very convincing.

 

People can be shown how to become aware of where the sound quality is deficient, and what to look for to remedy the situation. A local audio enthusiast has caught the bug, and has wrought very impressive sound from "trivial" gear.

 

What is being done is not stimulating imagination; it's skillfully crafting an illusion from the information in recordings, by enabling the brain to do the hard work.

[STC]

3 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Quote

We're in the realm of the Black Swan Fallacy here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability. Anything that's unusual, or rarely occurs can hit this barricade - it just takes a few rounds of exposure to move everyone on ... I've engaged enough with other people to know that that it doesn't happen often, but sufficiently to confirm how it works.

 

That's right. But it is not relevant here. 

 

3 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Quote

 

Images don't tell you anything. This is a sensory experience, and the people around me validate that they hear it too. Amusingly, a hard core audiophile took an hour or so to come off his high horse - he was constantly trying to hear "audiophile things", which weren't there. Female listeners get it straightaway, - it just sounds, 'right'.

 

 

 

Validate to you, I suppose.  Matured adults know the reason.

 

3 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Quote

We're talking a major book here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_scene_analysis

 

I thought so. I have read some reference and experiments related to what the book is about. Nothing there will support you. But I am beginning to find some evidence that you maybe be telling the truth.

 

3 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Quote

 

People can be shown how to become aware of where the sound quality is deficient, and what to look for to remedy the situation. A local audio enthusiast has caught the bug, and has wrought very impressive sound from "trivial" gear.

 

What is being done is not stimulating imagination; it's skillfully crafting an illusion from the information in recordings, by enabling the brain to do the hard work.

 

 

It could be MES. Musical ear syndrome. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Musical earsyndrome (MES) describes a condition seen in people who have hearing loss and subsequently develop auditory hallucinations.  You fit the description perfectly.

[fas42]

Just now, STC said:

It could be MES. Musical ear syndrome. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Musical earsyndrome (MES) describes a condition seen in people who have hearing loss and subsequently develop auditory hallucinations.  You fit the description perfectly.

 

Nice one, ST !!

 

A couple of years ago I checked my hearing with, oh dear, the now dead Philips rig - my right ear could still pick up 18kHz tones, the left 15k. Not tooo bad ...

 

If I hallucinate, I sure wish that it worked well enough to disguise the huge gulf between the qualities of live sound, and that of normal hifi - closing that gap is where the fun is; because it ain't much joy listening to the usual standard ...

[STC]

29 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Nice one, ST !!

 

A couple of years ago I checked my hearing with, oh dear, the now dead Philips rig - my right ear could still pick up 18kHz tones, the left 15k. Not tooo bad ...

 

If I hallucinate, I sure wish that it worked well enough to disguise the huge gulf between the qualities of live sound, and that of normal hifi - closing that gap is where the fun is; because it ain't much joy listening to the usual standard ...

 

You just confirmed, you left ear declining faster than you right. MES is rather a new discovery and diagnosis will be hard at early stages. I know of two respected audiophiles who couldn't hear anything above 10 and 12kHz. Coincidentally, they are the one who often describe sound in very detail about a system. Until today, I couldn't hear the so called rolling bass in Tracy Chapman's track that he could hear and he often judges bass accuracy with that track. 

 

Do a proper test. Read more about MES. I am not saying it's MES but you are exhibiting the symptoms. Hearing non- existent sound is MES 's symptom.  

 

Sadly, I have to mark this post as irrelevant to this thread. 

[gmgraves]

20 hours ago, fas42 said:

I don't need to ... what you're telling me is that the quality is of a very high standard - it's a chain that can handle a 100 lbs pull, so to speak.  And, the master tape is not 'magical' - the same information is on the CD ... really ...

No, frank, it's NOT. I have the Koch International "Vox Box" CD or the "Daphnis and Chloe" and the Mobile Fidelity SACD of it and they don't sound alike. By your whacky reasoning, they should sound identical on the same system. Not even close. Some of the same information is on the tape and the discs, sure (DUH!), the Master tape was better. I have master tapes that I have transferred to CD and some that I have transferred to DAT. when compared to the master on the same playback chain used to transfer the tapes to digital, the master and the digital copies do not sound the same. The master, whether analog tape or digital, always sounds better (although the difference is always less between the digital master and digital copies). 

 

20 hours ago, fas42 said:

Ummm, do I hear an echo of, gulp, "expectation bias" - you know what those recordings should sound like, because you were there - your head is filling the gaps . With an "unknown" recording you've got nothing to hang on to, to help guide you ...

 

It's possible, but even so, if there was great chasm between what I heard when making the recording and what I hear  when playing it back on my home system, I'd know it. How do you know that all of "your method" tweaks and the fabulous improvement in seven mundane equipment that continually report, isn't expectation bias on your part?

 

20 hours ago, fas42 said:

Right, open your exercise books, children; pen in hand ...

 

With the playback chain, Everything Matters!

With the recording, better quality helps, but it still works if it's mighty dodgy ...

 

Okay, hands up those who think they can repeat this, without looking, 10 times ...

Caught with his pants down, Frank can do nothing but make fun of the person who caught him by calling him children, and then follow it up with a lame bit of back peddling that even Frank can't possibly believe himself! Honestly Frank, if everything matters in playback, why shouldn't it matter just as much on the recording side?

[pkane2001]

15 hours ago, STC said:

I know of two respected audiophiles who couldn't hear anything above 10 and 12kHz. Coincidentally, they are the one who often describe sound in very detail about a system. 

 

I know it's off topic. I'd love to see all the subjective reviewers post their audio band sensitivity chart. Include it with the system profile or in the signature. Wonder if there would be any takers?

Oh, alright, objective also.

 

[fas42]

12 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

No, frank, it's NOT. I have the Koch International "Vox Box" CD or the "Daphnis and Chloe" and the Mobile Fidelity SACD of it and they don't sound alike. By your whacky reasoning, they should sound identical on the same system. Not even close. Some of the same information is on the tape and the discs, sure (DUH!), the Master tape was better. I have master tapes that I have transferred to CD and some that I have transferred to DAT. when compared to the master on the same playback chain used to transfer the tapes to digital, the master and the digital copies do not sound the same. The master, whether analog tape or digital, always sounds better (although the difference is always less between the digital master and digital copies). 

 

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.

 

12 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 

It's possible, but even so, if there was great chasm between what I heard when making the recording and what I hear  when playing it back on my home system, I'd know it. How do you know that all of "your method" tweaks and the fabulous improvement in seven mundane equipment that continually report, isn't expectation bias on your part?

 

My "expectation bias" doesn't help me get a system to the necessary standard in a robust manner! The amount of frustration over the years, because I get close, but no cigar, on so many occasions - I'm talking of what's possible; I would never say it's easy to do ... but the results are always worth it, if you can make it happen.

 

12 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 

Caught with his pants down, Frank can do nothing but make fun of the person who caught him by calling him children, and then follow it up with a lame bit of back peddling that even Frank can't possibly believe himself! Honestly Frank, if everything matters in playback, why shouldn't it matter just as much on the recording side?

 

You can't do anything about the recording - well, that's not really true, but I'm saying that you start with the data that's there, and "make the best of it". Luckily, that's still good enough to deliver a powerful experience - the "master tape at Stubblebine's studio" impact can be delivered, every time ...

[gmgraves]

1 minute 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.

 

There you go. Talking in circles again.