Concert Hall sound

[gmgraves]

2 hours 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 ...

Agreed that they should be. But in reality, there seems to be plenty a slip twixt the cup and the lip. 

[gmgraves]

59 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!!"

But, in an earlier post you said that was no such thing as a poor recording!

[fas42]

3 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Agreed that they should be. But in reality, there seems to be plenty a slip twixt the cup and the lip. 

 

The "slip" is that digital replay chains vary in their ability to reproduce material when it's stored in 24 bit versus 16 bit, say. A simple solution is upsample, or downsample all one's recordings to that format which the rig is best competent with - a long-winded and irksome exercise, but something I would do, if "forced" to "live with it".

 

IOW, exactly what many of the download sites do, in order to supply the market ... .

[fas42]

4 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

But, in an earlier post you said that was no such thing as a poor recording!

 

Subjectively, it's a mantra which is very useful for getting the best from your rig ... objectively?? As has been said, an Edison roll, versus a 24 bit digital ... ?

[fas42]

Actually, one aspect about this MES red herring is rather hilarious - it's infectious! These days, the audio friend down the road, younger by some decades, has no trouble picking up the variations in SQ - sometimes, he notes something before I do, and without saying anything gets up to make an adjustment ...

[fas42]

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

 

Quote

The    purpose    of    this    study    was    to    review    the    existing    literature    regarding    Musical    
Ear    Syndrome    and    other    related    auditory    hallucinations.    While    the    existence    of    
auditory    hallucinations    is    evident,    their    cause    is    unclear    and    widely    understudied.    
There    was    a    need    for    existing    information    to    be    compiled    for    use    in    the    healthcare    
field.    This    review    of    existing    literature    will    aid    speech-language    pathologists,    
audiologists,    nurses,    psychologists,    and    physicians    in    understanding    this    condition    
and    what    differentiates    it    from    other    various    disorders.    This    will    allow    these    
professionals    to    better    understand    the    experiences    and    needs    of    those    with    Musical    
Ear    Syndrome.

 

and ...

 

Quote

Dr.    Neil    Bauman,    who    coined    the    term    “Musical    Ear    Syndrome”,    has    defined    it    
as    “hearing    non-tinnitus    phantom    sounds    (that    is,    auditory    hallucinations)    of    a    non-psychiatric    nature,    often    musical    but    also    including    voices    and    other    strange    
sounds”    (Simpson,    2014,    p.    19).    As    previously    stated,    Musical    Ear    Syndrome    (MES)   
is    a    type    of    nonverbal    auditory    hallucination    “characterized    by    the    perception    of    
music    in    the    absence    of    external    acoustic    stimuli”    (Bhatt    &    Carpenter,    2012,    p.    615)

   

Okay, everyone can settle down now ...

[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...

[fas42]

18 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

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...

 

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.

[fas42]

Harking back to the theme of this thread, here is some light reading  ... http://caseyocallaghan.com/research/papers/ocallaghan-nudds-2009-Introduction.pdf - "Introduction: The Philosophy of Sounds and Auditory Perception" ... I came aross this again when chasing down the speaker designer who was mentioned in regard to people stepping in front of you when listening ...

[STC]

1 hour ago, kumakuma said:

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...

 

Unfortunately to those suffering from MES or musical hallucination will not hear sound as it is. Generally, human brain evolved to fill in the gaps for missing words. This happens in speech often. There are other types of hallucination related to music where we often fill in for missing information due to hearing loss or deficit.  Sometimes, we are just capable of listening to the essence of the music without paying attention to the sound quality defect.    

 

There are also research suggesting that when you are engrossed  listening to complex music, the brain actually simplify and only processes relevant portion and ignores the rest.  I think the research was related with Mozart pieces.  So far, we only have an admission of hearing sound inside the head and one ear is having 3000hz band hearing loss. The next question to ask is whether an active intervention by tweaks triggers certain region of his brain to perceive impossible to exist auditory event. Relevant reference starts here  . 

 

 

[fas42]

7 minutes ago, STC said:

The next question to ask is whether an active intervention by tweaks triggers certain region of his brain to perceive impossible to exist auditory event. Relevant reference starts here  . 

 

 

 

Sorry, struck out again ...

 

Quote

 

The human brain routinely fills in missing bits of information to form the perception of patterns—even when no such patterns exist. We may see a cat crouched on the sidewalk, when in reality it is the shadow of a mailbox. Or we think we hear our name, when it is only someone calling out for another. “The brain doesn’t like to have holes,” says Josef Rauschecker, a tinnitus researcher at Georgetown University.

 

Auditory hallucinations, however, are formed out of whole cloth. The brain doesn’t mistake one thing for another, it invents the perceived stimulus altogether.

 

 

Yes, to the first para; no, in the second.

 

Key point is that the imagined music bears no relationship to what is actually in the sound field.

 

 

All this chatter to try and explain away an "impossible to exist auditory event" - it would warm the hearts of all those who recorded music over the decades to hear that it's impossible to experience what they heard in front of the mic's,  .

[STC]

17 minutes ago, fas42 said:

All this chatter to try and explain away an "impossible to exist auditory event" - it would warm the hearts of all those who recorded music over the decades to hear that it's impossible to experience what they heard in front of the mic's,  .

 

Not until they start tweaking the microphones. A better solder and thicker wire for a start.

[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.

[fas42]

7 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

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.

 

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?

 

A torch does the job well enough to see where you're going - but switch on the sun, and it's a whole different "world" - the places you visit are exactly the same, either way.

[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

[fas42]

Just looked it up, the review makes all the right noises about its subjective performance - certainly better than the raw capabilties of the players that my friend uses. Implies that it betters very well recognised DACs - have you ever tried using it to drive your speaker rig?

[Fitzcaraldo215]

7 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?

 

A torch does the job well enough to see where you're going - but switch on the sun, and it's a whole different "world" - the places you visit are exactly the same, either way.

Gosh, Frank, we are so lucky to have you here to make so many totally off topic remarks.  But, unfortunately, your method requires you and only you, since you are the only one who knows when we "get it right".  We just don't and are clueless. And, there you are buried in rural Australia.  And, since your methods are a total mystery, they cannot be exported or applied by anyone else.  Life sucks sometimes.

 

I want so badly to see the sun in my own listening room, to follow on your mystical journey, to achieve the very heights of audio you have described, redescribed, and re-re...  But, you are there and I am here.

 

You tease us with such remarkably vacuous statements, but we need you and your remarkable powers here or, at least a road map to how to achieve this remarkable nirvana which you and only you have achieved.

 

Come on, we all want the sun to shine in.  But, you are not showing us the way.  You are just feeding us evasive foreplay.  Give it to us, man.  

 

 

[kumakuma]

13 minutes ago, fas42 said:

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

 

Yes... and bad recordings were still bad. 

[fas42]

4 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Yes... and bad recordings were still bad. 

 

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

[fas42]

10 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

 

You tease us with such remarkably vacuous statements, but we need you and your remarkable powers here or, at least a road map to how to achieve this remarkable nirvana which you and only you have achieved.

 

 

Come on, we all want the sun to shine in.  But, you are not showing us the way.  You are just feeding us evasive foreplay.  Give it to us, man.  

 

 

 

Well, at the moment I'm trying to "tease out" some useful information from kumakuma, that I can work with - we'll see how long he lasts ... .

[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.

[fas42]

And an excellent example it is, too! I have no trouble hearing the potential there, that would fabulous to listen to, on a sorted setup. Down the road we use old Oscar Peterson tracks; I have an Errol Garner CD with tracks in very bad shape, far worse than the Bud Powell item.

 

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?

 

And ... this is where I will have to take a break - I have some real world things to do; will be back later in the day ... .

[mansr]

57 minutes ago, fas42 said:

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

 

 

The FBI couldn't make out the lyrics despite trying for months.

[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. 

[Jud]

24 minutes ago, mansr said:

 

 

The FBI couldn't make out the lyrics despite trying for months.

 

How do you know it wasn't a completely accurate recording of the way the guy sang it? ? 

 

(BTW, the FBI apparently missed the drummer cursing in the middle of the song - see Wikipedia.)