Concert Hall sound

[fas42]

9 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

 

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

 

Yes, the laws of physics are ruthless -- every time. So what I find rather perplexing is that it seems so difficult for many audiophiles to accept that the quality they hear will be highly dependent on the worst link in their playback chain - the rules of physics dictate that the strength of chain can only be as strong as that weakest item.

 

Where I 'win' is that I focus on locating those poor links - the fact that they are very mundane, zero bling areas, may upset many enthusiasts, but that's unfortunately at the heart of why so much "hifi" sounds so awful, far too often.

[fas42]

Just heard this track as background on TV this morning - I have it as a bog standard, cheap release of the original mastering. This can sound everywhere from AM radio fodder, to a huge, immersive sound vista expanding as far as the senses want to reach - which makes it Yet Another great evaluation tool ...

 

 

 

[fas42]

3 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

I have heard many audiophiles extol some miraculous experience from upgrading their audio, but never completely credibly.  But, it did not take 30 seconds to realize I was hearing by far the greatest sonic improvement I have ever heard in my life, and by a huge margin.  I was so excited and almost speechless for days. All of a sudden, that missing element, an incredibly good replica of that ever elusive concert hall realism was there for me to enjoy.

 

My life changed dramatically as a result.  ...

 

Very amusing ... I could have written those very lines, word for word - about what happened to me now over 30 years ago.

 

The fly in the ointment, as far as the present conversation is concerned, is that this was with boring ol' stereo - what people find so difficult to, yes, grok is that one's subconscious, mental capacity is extremely capable of decoding what the sound field is meant to represent - but refuses to be deluded if any audible clues pinpointing that it's 'fake'  are too strong ...

[fas42]

6 minutes ago, STC said:

 

I noticed that all your recordings and reference of videos are of typical studio or closed mike recordings. I think now I understand that our POV could be very different as our exposure are very different. 

 

I only present the type of clips that I do because I've found them extremely telling of the status of a rig - something classical with the normal big acoustic is quite straightforward to get to present well. When I'm working with optimising a setup I never use classical works to unearth deeper problems - these are already throwing up a nice ambience. Typically, you start the track, and "walk into the space" before a single musical note sounds ...

[fas42]

4 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 And I'm sure that everybody also knows which links in their systems (if any) are weak and that all they have to do, when budget and time permits, is replace them with stronger links. You can step down from this particular soap box now.

 

They don't. Every exposure to other people's systems yells from the rooftops that they don't have a handle on what is going on - I can put on one of my more telling recordings, and quite often it sounds like a gawdawful mess; normally, they just fail to reveal what's on the track ... talk about veils ... . And the stare of disdain from the demonstrator, signalling that I've contaminated his listening area, staining it with this terrible recording ...

[fas42]

10 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

I've never come across an audiophile who didn't know what the weak link in their system was (if any). I have, OTOH, heard systems belonging to non-audiophiles who didn't know that their amp or their cartridge or their CD player was sub par, but then, they didn't care either. They thought their "hi-fi" sounded just fine.

 

They are not aware of the factors that I worry about - I ask, what have you done to make certain that power mains noise is not an issue - and they wave their hands around, and say they have done so and so - with the conviction that having done some standard procedure that such was good enough - never actually thoroughly investigating it any further. And the issues inside their equipment - they "can't do anything about it", or it's done in a "I used this tweak, because so and so reckoned it was the bees knees!" - they can't hear whether there was an improvement, merely that the sound changed.

[fas42]

Adding rear sound actively is another method of pushing our hearing systems over the hurdle of accepting an illusion - the trouble with this is that every recording is different, and what works for one won't for others. The advantage of using the high integrity of the direct sound method is that it works for each and every recording, no matter how it was engineered.

[fas42]

Just now, GeneZ said:

 

If you don't list your system components it leaves us without an ability to get a handle of why and what you are hearing with.  I can hear even slight differences because the speakers I listen with are the most revealing, cohesive speakers I ever heard.   Yet,  I am sure there are others, too.  But why change?

 

Also, keep in mind .  I listen sitting very close to them. 

 

So, I can relate to what you are telling others.

 

I've got a history on forums - it's not what you have, it's how you use it! The actual components are irrelevant; it's whether enough of the weaknesses in how the system was put togther, and the subtle flaws inside nearly all components have been addressed or not - each situation is different; one works steadily to erradicate every issue - and prime sound then pops out, as an automatic result.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, STC said:

 You have not heard it so give your opinion but also be open minded. As you know, I don’t overly criticize your method but I know whatever things you say about tweaking the stereo that will produce something magical cannot be true as I have the privilege to listen to hundreds of well designed equipment. I know the limits of the magical tweak.  It doesn’t mean I have closed my mind about your magic; I still trying to figure out what are you really listening and what triggers your sense of realism. One thing I can guess from you many posts your are listening more to the indirect sound rather than what’s coming out from the main speakers. Correct me if I am wrong. 

 

Ummm, the "hundreds of well designed equipment" may be very close, and even slip over the line now and again - this subjective experience is elusive, currently, because the attention is not paid to achieving such, in the engineering of systems. The slightest anomaly, weakness is enough prevent it happening - as I well know! .

 

The definitive behaviour, as I've mentioned many times, is that true mono source being played over stereo speakers creates a rock solid image which is always "in front of you" - no matter how close you are to the plane of the speakers, and how far you are off centre with respect to the middle of the two speakers you are, this illusion is maintained, to a ludicrous degree. Even with your head almost touching the edge of one of the speakers this image doesn't evaporate. So, this is a situation where the direct sound is overwhelming, yet the illusion is not threatened.

 

What triggers it appears to be that all the normal clues that the mind uses to "catch out" what it's hearing as being not being 'real' are so low in level that the mind decides that mirage is real; in my early days of this happening the rig would reliably degrade in quality while listening, and the mirage would fade over a matter of some minutes. I could repeat this sequence of behaviour change at will; but couldn't control it - think of a clean pane of glass, with humidity conditions; the pane steadily mists up; you wipe it vigorously, have perfect vision for a time, but then the glass again starts to cloud up ...

[fas42]

1 hour ago, GeneZ said:

Whoever the engineer was who worked the Jeff Beck band?   Made the drums and bass sound amazingly good!  It was a jaw dropping moment in my life.  That engineer knew exactly what needed to be cut, or boosted.  The guitarist I was with, looked at each other and nodded...  we got up and left.  The sound of the Dead was confusing and all over the room.

 

That's the interesting thing with sound reinforcement sound, in venues. The people who "get it" do remarkably good jobs - I have excellent memories of the good ones - but everyone else is a disaster. I stopped wasting my money going to live shows eons ago, because the SQ was almost guaranteed to be far too offensive.

[fas42]

Quote

This is where I draw the line. You are implying I am deaf and ignorant of not knowing what sound is. 

 

No, I'm not implying that at all - what I'm saying is if you assemble even the "very best" system of highly reputable components, the chances are extremely close to zero of the SQ being good enough. Only a very few people have understood what can be achieved, and we all agree that this is a very difficult journey, getting to this level.

 

Ummm, the video doesn't exist - one of my little tweaks for trying to get better sound from the camera was to cover the lens, so that the processing of the video information in the circuitry had less to do. Might have helped,  might not - a black screen was not going to tantalise on YouTube, so I inserted an album cover, when I knew the track.

 

What I want to acquire is full knowledge of what needs to be done, in any situation, to get a rig up to scratch. My natural inclination is to know "what's around the next corner" - something interesting turns up, and I start investigating that. Plus, sometimes the gear fails, from old age, and I move on - the Philips lost a channel because the primary chip on that side went sour, and the volume control chip had an intermittent; it was getting too annoying to play with.

[fas42]

32 minutes ago, STC said:

On one hand you talk about actual modification and along the line you talk about subjectivity. Nothing you said is useful to me. I am not sure how many of others actually managed to follow and implemented your magic but to me we are not having a discussion but you just want to talk about your magic and only your magic which will remain a mystery to this world.

 

 

The magic is, listen to some piece which doesn't sound too good on your rig, and vary something. Anything. Does the quality of what's not quite working in the sound alter, in the slightest - for better, for worse? Most times it won't; sometimes it will - that's the clue, and the tool you then work with, to track down why the sound varied.

 

That's precisely how I started this doing exercise decades ago - and I still use the same approach.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, STC said:

 

I could hear it with my laptop speakers. More to the front centre slightly towards the left of dead centre. Are you using your PC ? Is the sound effect turned on? Interesting at 1 meter away with the laptop inbuilt speakers at ear level they sound like emitting from the left speaker.

 

Sounds to me like someone momentarily singing along, off camera - also listening on laptop speakers. The person is in "another space" from where the musicians are, and the distinct separation of his contribution from that of the instruments is clear.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, STC said:

 

 I try to see his point but practically no matter what’s the topic he will start to talk about the magical experience he refused to share but loves to talk about saying how good is the sound. 

 

 

I'm trying to encourage people to experiment with their equipment, to discover how good they can make it for themselves - but obviously doing a terrible job of it!

 

The first step is to acknowledge, become aware of where the sound is less than it could be - so one then has an effective "measuring stick" - I ask people to try and listen in this fashion, and meet a stone wall, every time. Only GUTB has listed what could be made better - the tiniest crack of light in an otherwise solid barrier ... .

[fas42]

13 hours ago, semente said:

 

Did he listen to your system?

 

No, he listed what he felt was lacking at one stage with the sound of his setup - in terms that I could relate to; this gives me the information to start making suggestions.

 

What can be achieved is that the sense of aliveness is felt with every recording - irrespective of how it was recorded, it is effortless to make a connection with the musicians and musical content therein. The worst thing with how much audio replay sounds is that it's like visiting a dusty old museum of relics - curious artifacts of the past, that never engage one at a strong emotional level - if I can't feel the "guts" in the music then I see no point in the listening.

[fas42]

7 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Of course if you had the coin, you could buy one of those beautiful (Altec Lansing) oiled-walnut Danish modern cadenza-like system with the curved "panoramic" front on it called the Paragon. But even in 1964, that puppy was around US$2000 (that would be $20K or more in today's worthless currency)!. Never heard one though. but it sure was beautiful:

 

 

 

To skip the boring bits, go to 14:00 ...

 

[fas42]

This obsession with technical issues of artificially enhancing a sense of space during playback is a dead end - human hearing does all what's necessary to "bring recordings to life" if the SQ is of a high enough standard - I have had recordings done in the 1910's produce a convincing illusion of the environment in which the musicians performed, with a strong sense of depth.

 

Even if one had 1,000's of channels, doing a squillion things, it would still sound 'wrong' if the quality wasn't there - your ear would pick that, say, the tone of the string section wasn't up to scratch ... and it would be a fail ...

[fas42]

22 hours ago, ARQuint said:

 

This is a straw dog. The best engineers of multichannel programs—Jared Sacks, Michael Bishop, the folks of  BIS and PentaTone, the SoundMirror team, and many others—set up their microphones at the recording session to render the specific character of the venue they are working in. They recreate the sense of being in the Concertgebouw vs. Boston Symphony Hall vs. the Musikverein vs. Bayreuth's Festspielhaus, etc. to a degree that occurs only very rarely with even the best two-channel set-ups and, typically, only when those stereo systems are deployed in a large listening room.

 

 

There is no question that, with the right recordings, a top-flight two-channel stereo system can create a magical sense of spatial realism and "ambience". Whether this is an instance of all the stars aligning or that "human hearing does all what's necessary to bring recordings to life" I can't say. But modern multichannel, carefully configured, is a powerfully democratizing force. Hundreds—thousands, actually—of four- and five-channel recordings do this routinely. And when played back through equipment that is merely very good, not SOTA. Getting there requires more than a little courage, in addition to the time and long green alluded to above. But, as Kal, Fitzcaraldo, and many others can tell you, boy is it ever worth it.

 

Yes, it's rare. But it's the 'correct' state of playback - because what you hear is the content of the recording, without any significant anomalies added by the playback chain; the flaws of conventional, stereo, reproduction setups do too much damage to the SQ, and no 'realistic' illusion is heard. Part of why it is so hard for many, here and elsewhere, to appreciate this is because they are unable, or unwilling, to listen in an 'analytical' fashion to the sound of their rig - and can't discern the obvious distortion it's producing; if one has been in a situation repeatedly where a particular combination of gear is lifted, accidentally or intentionally, to the necessary 'cleanness' - and more usefully, drops back to a less than adequate standard, then it becomes trivially easy to pick the difference in the qualities of the sound between the two 'states'.

 

The gear doesn't have to be "SOTA" - that's largely a meaningless phase; the term relates to essentially conventional circuitry that's been been very thoroughly "debugged", put into a very blingly enclosure, and sold at a commensurate price as reward for the efforts to "get it right". DIY is a method for bypassing that expensive approach - but very, very few go down that road ...

 

Ummm, when I buy a new car I expect it to feel "right" from the moment I drive it off the dealer's lot - no matter how cheap it is the basic integrity of the vehicle should be 100% - performance parameters, of how fast it can accelerate say, are in a very different category of capability. Audio systems usually fail the basic test of integrity, badly - and that's why hifi is such a dodgy game, full of snake oil, etc.

 

"A magical sense of spatial realism and ambience" is merely competent playback - but it occurs, sadly, far too rarely.

 

 

[fas42]

21 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Kal, you have to excuse Frank. He has a single-track obsession with a single nebulous idea. He posts over and over again that any audio system will be perfect if you just follow his voodoo-like non-instructions for tweaking said system using incantations, magic potions and ingredients nine out of 10 doctors recommend. What these various witch doctor like procedures are we don't really know. All we know is that he carefully dresses his cables, solders his interconnects to their respective components and removes "extraneous and unnecessary" parts from his audio components. Many of us think he's been baked by the outback sun much to long but other than that, he's alright mate! 

 

The doctor analogy is good, actually - you go to the surgery not to get "perfect health", but to diagnose and resolve ailments - the chap, if he's half decent, works through each problem area - and, Magic Happens!! You feel healthy ... the ol' Subtract Badness trick ... Max was on the money ...

[fas42]

What I do is pretty obvious - the keener eyed amongst you may have noted my exchanges with Paul, where I was trying to get him to let out the "secrets" of his rig; what he had done to "debug" the setup. Was getting somewhere, but then he closed down on me - if the interest isn't there in trying to understand where issues may be, then one has very poor chance of achieving the required standard.

[fas42]

6 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Ah, Frank, but you have revealed absolutely no secrets of your own.  You and your golden ears have totally danced around that in post after post in this and many other forums.  The rest of us have no secrets, unlike you.  Unlike you, we will and do tell all. So, it is you who needs to start revealing, not George.

 

Just tell us in detail specifically what you did on one system specimen, step by step, to unlock the "magic" of what you claim to hear.  Hiding in rural Australia behind a constant barrage of vague, meaningless, unverifiable claims tells us nothing other than that you are full of it, self obsessed with delusions of grandeur and totally lacking in any credibility.

 

I've revealed the substance of all my secrets over and over again - to wit, I've listed the full set of steps taken with the original good rig, 30 years ago; and detailed what has been done, to date, with the current NAD combo; the keen eyed will note that completely different issues were addressed, in those two situations. Therefore, there can be no magic combo of "things done" that make it happen - each setup had different weaknesses, and therefore time spent on "doing stuff" which is irrelevant to that set of gear is a complete waste of time - I'm as lazy as the next man!

 

The key secrets are that I know what I'm after, that I can hear when a rig is getting closer to the right state, and that I know that it is always possible to make happen - the last is conditional on whether the gains are worth the effort spent; it's always going to be smarter to start with good equipment, because more "stuff" has already been sorted, the downside is that good normally means expensive - do you want to wreck pricey stuff, by making a mistake on the journey?

 

Which is why I emphasise being able to put ego aside, and properly appraising the SQ. And that can start with putting on a recording which sounds awful, and saying to yourself, it sounds awful because I'm hearing too much distortion from the playback chain ...

[fas42]

9 hours ago, semente said:

 

A recoding can sound awful because of too much distortion from the playback.

 

A recoding can also sound awful because it's a badly made recording. In this case, no matter how much tweaks and mods and improvements you do to the playback it'll never sound better than awful. The contrary may happen if the distortion from the playback happens to mask some of the awfulness...

 

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.

[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 ...

[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" ... .