Step by step surgery

[kumakuma]

20 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Yes. All the microphone has to do is produce an electrical signal, in a very simple mechanical to electrical contrivance, and then pass then on to some type of recording mechanism - a USB microphone is a perfect example of how easy, how compact that can be.

 

 

You have conveniently "forgotten" about all human issues George mentioned that make a big difference when it comes to final recording quality.

[Ralf11]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

I thought I had gone quite mad

 

imagine what the rest of us think

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

That's nonsense, George, and you should realise that ... 😜

 

Air vibrating is physics, and a microphone relies on good ol', simple principles to make it work ... if it can register the frequencies that the human ear is sensitive to, then everything that matters will be captured.

The principles might be simple, but the ability of a microphone diaphragm to respond accurately to every nuance of a musical performance is quite lacking. Until  microphones that are perfect can be made, They will never be able to capture a musical performance with the accuracy, and dare I say the viscera of a live performance! 

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

To repeat, I have been amazed at times how much information is there in the oldest, most primitive recordings - the nuances are there, the clues about the acoustics have been caught - I have had many 100 year old recordings pumping out at maximum volume, and all the vibe of what happened, back then, in the recording space comes through with full force ... quite remarkable...

That’s irrelevant. As long as the finest audio equipment in the world can’t fool the most discerning ears with the best, state-of-the-art recordings into believing that they are listening to a live (not reproduced) performance, then a perfect capture and reproduction has not occurred. Not only are we not their yet, we never will get there. It’s a matter of half-steps to the wall. If each step is half the stride of the previous step. You will never reach that wall! 

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

Yes, sound engineering practices do matter ... what kills the "magic" is that last little weakness that someone didn't 'respect'.

 

Why I can speak so 'authoratively' about this is that I got the magic by complete fluke the first time - and it bowled me over, by the sheer specialness of the change - there was no going back from that moment on; how the world worked was forever changed, for me.

You can speak authoritatively about this for two reasons: 1) you don’t have to prove what you say to anyone, and 2) Your self delusions allow you actually believe what you are asserting.

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

Yes. All the microphone has to do is produce an electrical signal, in a very simple mechanical to electrical contrivance, and then pass then on to some type of recording mechanism - a USB microphone is a perfect example of how easy, how compact that can be.

 

Playback requires the manipulation of very large amounts, in comparison, of electrical energy - and that where things get unstuck ...

 

When you make asinine proclamations such as this, Frank, that we see how tenuous a grasp you have on these subjects, and it’s a perfect illustration of why your preaching has so little credibility here.

[Racerxnet]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

Yes. All the microphone has to do is produce an electrical signal, in a very simple mechanical to electrical contrivance, and then pass then on to some type of recording mechanism - a USB microphone is a perfect example of how easy, how compact that can be.

 

Playback requires the manipulation of very large amounts, in comparison, of electrical energy - and that where things get unstuck ...

 

 

Bravo Frank! LOL. You’ve got everyone convinced.... LMAO.

 

MAK

[Ralf11]

ok....  microphones don't need to be perfect or have zero diaphragm inertia, but the inertia does need to be sufficiently small so as to follow the musical waveform (instruments have inertia too BTW)

 

... and to follow it so closely that human ears cannot detect any difference between it and a perfect mic

 

as an example of the latter, consider that many components of the ar have inertia...

[fas42]

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

When you make asinine proclamations such as this, Frank, that we see how tenuous a grasp you have on these subjects, and it’s a perfect illustration of why your preaching has so little credibility here.

 

No need to be unpleasant, George - there are others around here who are quite capable of providing that element ...

 

Because you have done lots of recording, you think you have a strong grasp of what's required also on the playback side - your experiences of playback are "how the universe works" ... luckily, the universe is a bit bigger than one individual's thinking, and there are others quite happy to fill in where necessary, to move knowledge forward.

 

You see, I have heard rigs that deliver the qualities that are so precious, necessary to creating the liveness in music - that have had nothing to do with me. So the behaviour exists, out there, whether I live or die - my opinions count for nought, ultimately; true high quality SQ will rise up, eventually - irrespective of what I say.

 

My 'preaching' is to try and speed up - my way - that arrival of competent sound being everywhere - it bugs me hearing Yet Another Pretentious Rig sounding awful, getting the playback of some recording I know well so, so wrong.

[STC]

Here we go again. 
 

You can playback a recording to sound like a live performance and it has been established that they cannot be distinguished easily. The latest attempt was by Aalto University. 
 

One thing that is common with all these experiment including those in the 50s and the one in 70s by AR was they used mono and not stereo. Stereo will not sound like real live event. 
 

Aalto research was confident they could make the performance indistinguishable provided the have side and rear dispersion mimicking a a real instruments diaper person which can be easily done with and additional if there speakers to each of the main speakers and a little EQ and it would be indistinguishable. Look up for the latest research where now they think even the accuracy of response is no longer important compared to confirmation of HRTF. 
 

Our ears are less sensitive than a microphones. It is how our brain interpret the sound that matters. 
 

Stereo is fake and your brain will know that unless it contains very little information that confines to sound produced to the from the direction where the physical speakers position is. Stereo is fake and for that reason when you record the playback as how human would hear sound they would sound so artificial. 
 

This is the sound of loudspeakers with surround ambiance. All the sound in the performance was from the loudspeakers. and the are multichannel MONO playback. 
 

 

 

 

[fas42]

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

 

That’s irrelevant. As long as the finest audio equipment in the world can’t fool the most discerning ears with the best, state-of-the-art recordings into believing that they are listening to a live (not reproduced) performance, then a perfect capture and reproduction has not occurred. Not only are we not their yet, we never will get there. It’s a matter of half-steps to the wall. If each step is half the stride of the previous step. You will never reach that wall! 

 

 

Just to answer that point ... the 'miracle' is that brain is able to compensate once a certain quality is reached - it "fills the gaps". This is what blew me away the first time I heard it happening - no matter how aware I was of everything going on, no matter how certain I was that this was obviously pure illusion - the illusion either worked - or it didn't work ... depending upon the SQ,

 

This is why "half-steps" are irrelevant - miniscule, microsteps, up to the critical distance - then, bang! Two full steps beyond the wall - so to speak ...

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

No need to be unpleasant, George - there are others around here who are quite capable of providing that element ...

Sorry about that, I didn’t mean to sound unpleasant. But, I was pointing out that when you say things that show a distinct lack of depth in your knowledge about the subjects you are discussing, it underminds your credibility. Had I gone back and read what I wrote before posting it, I would have seen that my text came off sounding mean-spirited. I did not intend that.

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Because you have done lots of recording, you think you have a strong grasp of what's required also on the playback side - your experiences of playback are "how the universe works" ... luckily, the universe is a bit bigger than one individual's thinking, and there are others quite happy to fill in where necessary, to move knowledge forward.
 

Unfortunately, Frank, audiophilia does not suspend the laws of physics or the rules by which electrons move through circuitry or sound moves through the air. But some of the things you advocate simply make no sense and often, your explanations simply ignore the reality of the situation.

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

You see, I have heard rigs that deliver the qualities that are so precious, necessary to creating the liveness in music - that have had nothing to do with me. So the behaviour exists, out there, whether I live or die - my opinions count for nought, ultimately; true high quality SQ will rise up, eventually - irrespective of what I say.

But, this stuff is not magic. There are immutable rules that no amount of wishing or imagination can circumvent or change. You see, I have a certain rare opportunity, while not unique, is not available to every audiophile. I have recordings that I made and I know when they sound right because I was there! So, when I say that my system is accurate, I’m speaking from the knowledge of exactly what the recording should sound like and, well, it gets to a point where these tweaks that a lot of audiophiles think are improving the sound of their systems is actually moving the systems away the neutrality that bespeaks the very realism that they think that they are achieving!

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

My 'preaching' is to try and speed up - my way - that arrival of competent sound being everywhere - it bugs me hearing Yet Another Pretentious Rig sounding awful, getting the playback of some recording I know well so, so wrong.

I don’t argue that point with you, but most of the “awful systems” that I hear are that way because the owner never listens to live music and therefore has no reference to keep them on the straight and narrow. One can argue that such bloated, exaggerated sound is the system owner’s prerogative and on that point I cannot argue. It IS his system, and if he’s happy with it sounding that way, who am I, etc...

The fact that It’s not my taste, is neither here nor there, which brings me, somewhat clumsily to my point. The sound that you think is “magic” is largely dictated by your own taste in sound and in the type of music to which you listen. I have heard systems that consist of good quality gear, and when playing the owner’s 60’s or 70’s pop or rock* sounds a lot like a live rock concert of the era. That’s what the system’s owners want, because they use “their music” to help them relieve their teen years, and other than that, they have no interest in accuracy for accuracy’s sake. These same systems, when asked to reproduce a Beethoven Symphony or a Miles Davis jazz track, sound like unmitigated excrement in spite of the fact that the equipment is high quality. The owner picked that combination to achieve his or her vision of what they want their music to sound like! An audiophile with an eclectic musical taste who knows what live music really sounds like is going to build a system that is accurate enough so that good program material, irrespective of genre, is going to sound as much like real music as technology and individual budgets will allow. 
Bottom line is that what you think is “magic” is what YOU think is magic, and may not be anyone else’s idea of what a system should sound like at all!😉

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Just to answer that point ... the 'miracle' is that brain is able to compensate once a certain quality is reached - it "fills the gaps". This is what blew me away the first time I heard it happening - no matter how aware I was of everything going on, no matter how certain I was that this was obviously pure illusion - the illusion either worked - or it didn't work ... depending upon the SQ,

That is not my experience, Frank. What you seem to consider “filling the gaps” I consider a delusion. Delusions allow people who listen to boom box ghetto blaster speakers to think that they have achieved audio Nirvana and sonic “magic”.

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

This is why "half-steps" are irrelevant - miniscule, microsteps, up to the critical distance - then, bang! Two full steps beyond the wall - so to speak ...

If all you need is your imagination, Frank, then “two full steps beyond the wall” should be attainable with a portable transistor radio!

[Speedskater]

7 hours ago, gmgraves said:

That is not my experience, Frank. What you seem to consider “filling the gaps” I consider a delusion. Delusions allow people who listen to boom box ghetto blaster speakers to think that they have achieved audio Nirvana and sonic “magic”.

Not delusional, it's more like when people go to the theater and 'suspension of disbelief'.

 

suspension of disbelief has been defined as a "willingness to suspend one's critical faculties and believe something surreal; sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment"

[gmgraves]

34 minutes ago, Speedskater said:

Not delusional, it's more like when people go to the theater and 'suspension of disbelief'.

 

suspension of disbelief has been defined as a "willingness to suspend one's critical faculties and believe something surreal; sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment"

The difference between the willing suspension of disbelief and a delusion can be a very small thing. Let’s say that a delusion is an unwilling suspension of disbelief! In a movie theatre, you know that what you are watching is not real. But, I suspect that in Frank’s case, he actually believes that his fretting over his playback tweaks makes his system sound so good that even bad recordings sound real to him. His admission that his “imagination” “fills-in the blanks” tells me that this imagining of reality is a delusion.

[Speedskater]

In either case (delusion or disbelief) it seems to be a common problem among audiophiles.

[fas42]

Yesterday was a bad day on the home front 😲 - things were more difficult than usual, things were breaking down, or playing up ...including the power adapter on the laptop! It had been making noises, and then completely died, at the end of the day - batteries will only last so long, so responses may not be too prompt, for a bit ...

[fas42]

14 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Sorry about that, I didn’t mean to sound unpleasant. But, I was pointing out that when you say things that show a distinct lack of depth in your knowledge about the subjects you are discussing, it underminds your credibility. Had I gone back and read what I wrote before posting it, I would have seen that my text came off sounding mean-spirited. I did not intend that.

 

Thanks for that, George, 👍.

 

Quote

The sound that you think is “magic” is largely dictated by your own taste in sound and in the type of music to which you listen. I have heard systems that consist of good quality gear, and when playing the owner’s 60’s or 70’s pop or rock* sounds a lot like a live rock concert of the era.

 

It's "magic" because it conveys the energy, the spirit of what live music making is like. An album of pop rock doesn't sound like a "live rock concert of the era" - it actually sounds like a carefully crafted, meticulously assembled sound creation, full of musical ideas, and quite fascinating to follow, seeing how the structure of the song progresses - IOW, what would have been heard if you had been in the recording studio, at the time, 😉. A very good example of this is "Machine Head", by Deep Purple - this can be such a satisfying album to listen to, because the expression of the musical ideas in it is done so skillfully.

 

Quote

 

That’s what the system’s owners want, because they use “their music” to help them relieve their teen years, and other than that, they have no interest in accuracy for accuracy’s sake. These same systems, when asked to reproduce a Beethoven Symphony or a Miles Davis jazz track, sound like unmitigated excrement in spite of the fact that the equipment is high quality. The owner picked that combination to achieve his or her vision of what they want their music to sound like! An audiophile with an eclectic musical taste who knows what live music really sounds like is going to build a system that is accurate enough so that good program material, irrespective of genre, is going to sound as much like real music as technology and individual budgets will allow. 

 

A competent setup can shift from one genre to the next - and nail each one perfectly. As per your last statement ... this is achievable, and if "taken to the limit" will always deliver - on every recording.

 

Quote

Bottom line is that what you think is “magic” is what YOU think is magic, and may not be anyone else’s idea of what a system should sound like at all!😉

 

The system should sound like nothing ... it has zero qualities in itself, all it is is a conduit for the recording to come through. Very rarely I come across a rig that achieves this - I can put on a recording, and it sounds precisely what it should sound like - the musical event itself "is there", the rig has shuffled to the side, into the shadows, 🙂.

 

[sandyk]

4 hours ago, Speedskater said:

In either case (delusion or disbelief) it seems to be a common problem among audiophiles.

 

Just as it is with technically qualified members such as yourself

 The delusion of always being 100% correct with technical statements that you make, and that you are able to control Expectation Bias of what you will hear with anything that doesn't conform with what you were taught MANY years previously. Science moves on, but not all technical people are up to date in the areas they were originally up to date with when they were at Uni..

[fas42]

5 hours ago, gmgraves said:

The difference between the willing suspension of disbelief and a delusion can be a very small thing. Let’s say that a delusion is an unwilling suspension of disbelief! In a movie theatre, you know that what you are watching is not real. But, I suspect that in Frank’s case, he actually believes that his fretting over his playback tweaks makes his system sound so good that even bad recordings sound real to him. His admission that his “imagination” “fills-in the blanks” tells me that this imagining of reality is a delusion.

 

You see, this is the fascinating thing about the auditory illusion that's possible - conscious awareness that you are obviously being fooled makes not one iota of a difference - the infamous McGurk effect is a perfect example of this, which is usually used to discredit audiophile 'fantasies': the listening brain refuses to accept what it hears as being correct, and supplies another interpretation. And this is what occurs with "magic" presentation - the mind completely compensates for the usually mentioned technical issues; the illusion is total.

 

35 years ago I had a rig that would slip from one mode to the other, back and forth, back and forth, for as long as I wanted to play this game. I was able to 'study' it happening, for days, weeks, months - this was as solid as being sure that when you get out of the bed in the morning, that your legs know what to do when your feet hit the floor.

 

The 'delusion' is, that this type of convincing playback is impossible, because half-hearted studies proclaim that they know everything about how human hearing works, 😜.

[fas42]

Consider this ... I get a recording, lop everything off under 200Hz, and then play it very, very softly over a supposedly high end rig - and then go up and listen very closely to the midrange driver of one speaker. In what way will it sound radically different from what I hear on this laptop that I'm tweaking at the moment ... and why?

[gmgraves]

11 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Thanks for that, George, 👍.

 

 

It's "magic" because it conveys the energy, the spirit of what live music making is like. An album of pop rock doesn't sound like a "live rock concert of the era" - it actually sounds like a carefully crafted, meticulously assembled sound creation, full of musical ideas, and quite fascinating to follow, seeing how the structure of the song progresses - IOW, what would have been heard if you had been in the recording studio, at the time, 😉. A very good example of this is "Machine Head", by Deep Purple - this can be such a satisfying album to listen to, because the expression of the musical ideas in it is done so skillfully.

I think you misunderstand me. I said that people who don’t listen to “live music” tend to put together a system that makes the music of “their era” sound good, like a rock concert of that era, and said system is often generally terribly colored when asked to play music other than that which the owner is interested. Myself, I don’t listen to the kind of stuff that you are talking about and I don’t even consider it music. To me, at best, it’s an “entertainment” and at worst it’s noise. Since I can count the number of pop/rock songs that I actually like on my fingers, I have far too little experience with the genre to understand why anyone would want a steady diet of this stuff.

11 minutes ago, fas42 said:

A competent setup can shift from one genre to the next - and nail each one perfectly. As per your last statement ... this is achievable, and if "taken to the limit" will always deliver - on every recording.

Again, I think you are missing the point here. My goal has always been to craft a system that’s accurate to the sound of real music. It’s an impossible goal, but one can get pretty close. Since it is impossible to get everything right, people who keep their ears “calibrated” to the sound of real acoustic music played in a real space, tend, in my experience, to latch-on to certain musical parameters tha seem important to them and strive to get that part of the presentation “right”; often at the expense of other parameters that other music lovers might consider more important. Therefore each person’s idea of a proper sounding system is going to be different. I dare say that your system is no exception to that. Again, what I’m trying to get across, that the sound that you have achieved, and about which you preach in every forum to which you post, probably wouldn’t translate to many other people’s taste. I certainly don’t give a tinker’s damn about a system that makes “Machine Head” by Deep purple (whoever or whatever that is) sound good. Just as I suspect that to some people, a system that makes steam locomotives or boiler factories sound “real”,  there are people who don’t consider heavy metal rock noise, but I’m not one of them, and I don’t care what either a boiler factory or the Grateful Dead sound like. That you or anyone else might care about these things is your right and your prerogative. But I’ve heard too many systems, both modest and megabuck that to me sound no more like my taste in sound than does the Public Address system at Victoria Station in London!

11 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The system should sound like nothing ... it has zero qualities in itself, all it is is a conduit for the recording to come through. Very rarely I come across a rig that achieves this - I can put on a recording, and it sounds precisely what it should sound like - the musical event itself "is there", the rig has shuffled to the side, into the shadows, 🙂.

This is where you are deluding yourself, Frank. No offense, but you keep making the mistake of not completing the sentence. I.E. that it “sounds precisely what it should sound like” To you!

[gmgraves]

37 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

Just as it is with technically qualified members such as yourself

 The delusion of always being 100% correct with technical statements that you make, and that you are able to control Expectation Bias of what you will hear with anything that doesn't conform with what you were taught MANY years previously. Science moves on, but not all technical people are up to date in the areas they were originally up to date with when they were at Uni..

While I agree with you mostly, Alex, science has nothing to do with impressions that audiophiles form about this or that tweak such as audiophile fuses, thousand dollar mains cords that weigh more than the component that they are connected to, or 2-meter or shorter interconnects which purport to change the sound of one’s system, when science not only says that these things cannot be, but actually has no explanation as to why these things even “might” be real. It seems to me that this is more a case where mythology moves on rather than science...

[fas42]

7 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

This is where you are deluding yourself, Frank. No offense, but you keep making the mistake of not completing the sentence. I.E. that it “sounds precisely what it should sound like” To you!

 

So you think it's important that a system should sound like something definite, that it has a personality that intrudes into the playback of everything you put on?

 

To you, it's "wrong thinking" that I can take a track, and play it on two completely different setups - and that it "sounds the same" each time - yes?

[gmgraves]

Just now, fas42 said:

 

So you think it's important that a system should sound like something definite, that it has a personality that intrudes into the playback of everything you put on?

Certainly not! How you could glean that from what I’ve been posting is beyond me. I have been saying just the opposite. But what you should have taken from this discussion is that since perfect playback, like a perfect recording, is impossible, people’s biases, conscious and unconscious, play the larger part in the kind of sound people think of as “good” or desirable when they are assembling their systems. IOW, it’s unlikely that a system will ever sound like “nothing”, not even yours, Frank. Especially given the description of your system that you continually post here.

Just now, fas42 said:

 

To you, it's "wrong thinking" that I can take a track, and play it on two completely different setups - and that it "sounds the same" each time - yes?

I think that you believe that, and no more or no less.

[sandyk]

27 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

or 2-meter or shorter interconnects which purport to change the sound of one’s system, when science not only says that these things cannot be, but actually has no explanation as to why these things even “might” be real.

 So what ??? Cables of different L and C can interact with imperfectly designed components, especially where low Z output buffers aren't used.

 Your Science has no present explanation to several other recent findings either, not just from me, but in the Music Server section of the forum.

 

[fas42]

37 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Certainly not! How you could glean that from what I’ve been posting is beyond me. I have been saying just the opposite. But what you should have taken from this discussion is that since perfect playback, like a perfect recording, is impossible, people’s biases, conscious and unconscious, play the larger part in the kind of sound people think of as “good” or desirable when they are assembling their systems. IOW, it’s unlikely that a system will ever sound like “nothing”, not even yours, Frank. Especially given the description of your system that you continually post here.

I think that you believe that, and no more or no less.

 

Yes, perfect playback is impossible. But there are 2 levels of playback possible: the normal standard where the characteristics of the playback chain intrudes significantly - this is the world where "the recording always sounds different, when it is played on another system"; the other level is, "the recording dominates, what's encoded there is what subjectively fills my universe".

 

What one does when tweaking is keep the reference of what a particular recording sounded like, when the one time it sounded "its best" occurred - that's the goal. As an example, I'm using the ABBA track, Ring, Ring, as a target, right now ... I 'know' how good it has sounded, so I work on altering the playback environment so that  the obvious distortions from the lackings of the chain are attenuated as much as possible ... this is the process of advancing the competence of the hardware, so that the absolute maximum can be extracted, given the obvious limitations.