Fas42’s Stereo ‘Magic’

[cab33]

On 3/9/2021 at 2:19 PM, fas42 said:

 

Nothing is "reversed" - what you get is everything that's on the CD, with zero additives from playback distortion - in the ideal case. Why most high end rigs do a bad job is that they don't extract enough from the disk, and they then add too much of their signature distortion to that. If this wasn't the case, then if you took a "bad recording" to an audio show, the exact same "badness" would be on show with every system - but of course it sounds very different on each system; the intermodulation distortion, etc, changes greatly as you go from one to the other - none of them, normally, are accurate to the recording.

 

They just need better cables, that's all.

[fas42]

5 hours ago, Confused said:

For clarity, it would be great if you could advise some example or suggested tracks that fit your recommended criteria.  Something along the lines of fas42's top ten complex pop extravaganza tracks for sorting systems.

 

If you are really keen, you could list 42 of them, which would be the definitive "fas 42", a bit like the "Top 40" charts.

(YouTube links for the same would be also be good)

 

Good idea ... of course, over all the posts I've done I've mentioned many albums that I use - a couple that come straight off the top is Carole King's Tapestry - the rig 30 years ago gave instant feedback on this one; Epic is a label whose mastering can make it hard going on below par rigs; yet the current active speakers find it straightforward not to show anything untoward. And, the soundtrack of the movie, Moulin Rouge - this has huge swings of dynamics, and immense density at times.

 

I'll organise a list, 🙂.

 

5 hours ago, Confused said:

 

I understand the "invisible speaker" idea, and indeed, sometimes I when listening I can convince myself that the sound is not actually coming from the speakers.

 

Why it made such a huge impact on me, those decades ago, was that I had no idea that this was a goal to work towards - it just went, "Bang!! - I'm heeeere".

 

5 hours ago, Confused said:

 

There are problems with this though.  Firstly I know that the sound is coming from the speakers, and our our aural and visual senses  work together.  So if you know the sound is coming from the speaker (which it is), and you can hear the sound, you do have to mentally work at the effect.  Clearly some systems are better than other in this regard, and with better systems it is more likely that the "invisible" effect springs from nowhere.  But what if you get a track with a mix where one instrument is fully reproduced in one channel only?  In this scenario you might have a lead guitar, or a violin or whatever, being fully reduced by your left speaker.  So you have the sound of an instrument, and in a very real sense the sound of this instrument is coming from the left speaker.  So if there are no other aural effects or ambient clues in the recording, the sound can do nothing other than sound like it is coming from the left speaker, which it is.

 

Yes, that's the obvious example ... but how it works, is that with full invisibility the instrument is behind the speaker, and much 'bigger'. There is always a distance between a normal instrument and the mike - and that's what you get, in the illusion. If the SQ is not of high enough standard, then it is very obvious that the driver is squawking at you; if the illusion is working, then the speaker is just a lump of timber between you and the source of the sound.

 

5 hours ago, Confused said:

 

I think this stuff is all very subjective.  I also suspect it is an area where individuals vary a lot in terms of subjective preference.  It seams to me that some individuals are obsessed with sound sage (which is fair enough), and others are not that bothered about it.  I sometimes wonder if the ability to ignore the physical reality (that the sound does actually come from two speakers which are in line of sight) and become taken by the subjective effect probably varies quite a lot between individuals, which might explain why some individuals are more interested in sound stage than others.  (purely speculation on my part)

 

Some people will always be aware of the speakers. Because that's how their brains work. But where they still win is that the standard of the replay is now so good that they can get great satisfaction from the listening; the level of audible anomalies is much less.

 

5 hours ago, Confused said:

 

With all that said, I do not personally believe that I could never experience a system with "100% invisible" speakers, not with all recordings at least.  For the reasons stated above, I know that for myself it would be impossible.

 

I suspect this is another one on which we will need to agree to disagree. 

 

The rig 30 years ago either did it. Or didn't. Others since have been more in between. The Edifiers so far can get pretty close, but have never nailed it, solidly.

 

I have an Errol Garner CD, with tracks of abysmal technical quality - they can be truly unlistenable, with zero redeeming qualities in any area. Yet, when a setup is getting towards the zone, the piano comes to life - and you want to keep listening. This is a good standard to aim for - the speaker thing is then icing on the top.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

Good idea ... of course, over all the posts I've done I've mentioned many albums that I use - a couple that come straight off the top is Carole King's Tapestry - the rig 30 years ago gave instant feedback on this one; Epic is a label whose mastering can make it hard going on below par rigs; yet the current active speakers find it straightforward not to show anything untoward. And, the soundtrack of the movie, Moulin Rouge - this has huge swings of dynamics, and immense density at times.

 

I'll organise a list, 🙂.

 

 

Another one,

 

 

This is from a real el cheapo release I have - a single, flimsy slip of paper for the cover, just a list of tracks on the back of it - you know the type of quality of this sort of CD case presentation, 🙂.

 

Haven't run the rig in a few days, third track from cold start - all the soundstaging is well out of the speakers, above and spreading far behind them - the layers are clearly defined, no tonality issues.

[fas42]

5 hours ago, cab33 said:

 

They just need better cables, that's all.

 

Yep, that's it ... 🙃.

[fas42]

Just put on a cheapy label of Coleman Hawkins, recorded '49 to '52 - is it mono or stereo? Well, has to be the former - but there's nothing really in the listening to give it away - plenty sense of space, depth, separation of the instruments ... the hangup about things being stereo intrigues me - if the music connects, where it's coming from, precisely, is not very interesting - to me.

[fas42]

Just saw this,

 

Reminds me of the characteristics of my old Yamaha CDP, the one I had in the mid 80's. Using classic Burr Brown DACs of the day, it was mellow at switch-on, and took ages to finally reach a peak - the only solution was leaving it on 24/7; because any extended power down lost the 'magic' - meaning then days of constant use to get it to recover.

 

Which is where advances in digital design have improved things - the active speakers get on song so quickly; something that really surprised me.

 

[fas42]

Virtually everyone groks when the SQ is moving in the right direction - as in this post,

 

What people seem very reluctant to accept is that the focus has to be fully in improving these qualities - it's not money, nor status of manufacturer, nor measurements, that give one much predictability as to whether the good things mentioned in this posts are going to get better - which is partly why there is such confusion as to how to move forward ...

[fas42]

And something else ... from this thread,

 

A user found no significant advantage - and after Google Translate,

 

Quote

Obviously, I am intrigued by the fact that many people find a net benefit in Diretta, but I imagine this is either due to the fact that my system does not highlight these differences due to its limitations, or that the Tambaqui erases all the differences by being quite insensitive to what is happening upstream, or even that I used an unsuitable USB cable (although the idea of depending on a USB cable would irritate me greatly in itself), or other causes, including my hearing ability which is obviously not to be excluded from the picture!

 

The underlined is exactly what you want!! Audiophiles often go into this strange space where they can completely manipulate the tonality, the SQ, by playing with absolutely every aspect of the setup - and that somehow that is making their rig "more accurate" ... how on earth can that be so ?? ... Stability of what I hear is my goal - it always "sounds the same", no matter what I do around the periphery - it's the recording, not the seasoning of it, that dictates the 'taste' ...

[fas42]

Very interesting thread,

 

Yes, he worries about the room, but the facet I particularly like is that that modern, non-audiophile music works - the complexity and intricacy of the music presents well, and doesn't lead to fatigue ... yes, the focus is on reflections, but those consideration also evaporate when the SQ is of high enough standard.

 

Would I tweak what he's got? ... Of course I would! ... Silly question ... 😁.

 

Setups like this are so much closer to getting everything right, that it probably wouldn't take too much to absolutely nail the sound ... as he mentions, conventional methods of setting up hifi systems lead to sound which is "impossible!!"; and therefore take much more effort to sort out ...

[fas42]

Along the lines of pop albums that I find revealing, here are:

 

 

From his Comedy album, where every track can have an "in your face" quality about it - if sub par SQ, then this can be relentless.

 

An reliable standard, from 12 Gold Bars:

 

 

This is about, separation of the guitars, from the vocals, from the drums - the latter should be 100% clean, no matter how loud you push it.

 

And that old favourite, Adele's 21 ... this is obviously about the ability to handle the compression of the mastering, without losing the 'soul' of the track.

[fas42]

Interesting comment from here,

 

Quote

Does stereo serve another function (other than reapers in an “accurate” soundstage)? By mixing various instruments so they are distributed among different channels reduces “congestion” at any given frequency and makes it easier for our speakers to reproduce all sounds more clearly.

 

Umm, if a system is producing convincing sound, then the word "congestion" has no meaning - I know many people can't believe this, but a very ordinary, cheap speaker has no problems in producing non congested sound ... if, a very big IF, it's stabilised properly, and driven correctly ...

[fas42]

Was just reminded, by someone saying "you need a turntable", that it has been very helpful to have N. up the road with both vinyl and digital - his LP replay at the moment is excellent; and puts what is being achieved on the digital side up to the mirror, very nicely.

 

I haven't heard decent record playback elsewhere, for ages. Hifi shops are a shocker, and the demos at the last audio show, of vinyl, were all duds ... would be very easy to believe that using TT is purely nostalgic nonsense, if one didn't look around, really hard ...

[fas42]

Something to comment on, from

 

In particular,

 

Quote

He states that he was hard pressed to find differences between CD quality (16/44) and higher resolution formats (DSD, or others), concluding "c'est assez incroyable" ("it's pretty amazing").

 

Ummm, that's exactly what I would expect to be the result, assuming the masters were identical - one of the Great Fantasies of the audio world is that something extra is retrieved by going hi res - of course, many times the subjective results are better; but this is purely because the analogue sides of the circuitry are doing a better job, handling that format - it has practically zero to do with more musical information being retrieved and processed...

[fas42]

Now, this is really interesting ...

 

This and the next post discuss the "holographic effect" - even tagging it as a Synergistic Research "house sound" - which I find rather hilarious - since when is a reduction of audible distortion, a house sound?

 

One comment that really gets me,

 

Quote

The enveloping nature of the expanded soundstage was an initially pleasant sensation that eventually lost its novelty and came to seem like a *change* but not an *improvement* and so  out it went.*

 

I see. A more realistic presentation is a novelty, which ultimately gets in the way of experiencing recordings as they should be heard - sound obviously coming from two speakers, and sounding rather small ... "deflated", in fact.

 

... And people think I've got it in for 'audiophiles' ... 🤣 🤣 🤣.

[R1200CL]

@fas42

I’m not reading this tread. Maybe I lack some English skills, but to me it’s seems you’re picking one an honest guy posting about what he hear. If I misunderstood, I’m sorry. If not, I’m sure you understand what I’m tinkering about your post. Just saying. 
 

Anyway, good with som publicly about the fuse madness. Or truth. 
 

[fas42]

57 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

@fas42

I’m not reading this tread. Maybe I lack some English skills, but to me it’s seems you’re picking one an honest guy posting about what he hear. If I misunderstood, I’m sorry. If not, I’m sure you understand what I’m tinkering about your post. Just saying. 
 

Anyway, good with som publicly about the fuse madness. Or truth. 
 

 

Well, it's born of frustration, actually - I'm after hearing the recording as it truly is; without the signature of the playback chain intruding. And when you do this, certain qualities emerge - holographic, spaciousness, depth, immersiveness ... it comes with the territory, when you get close to the heart of a recording. And a bunch of people refuse to believe that such is possible - as evidenced in this thread. But then you get another bunch of people who come across this replay behaviour - which is what I pointed to - and consider it, weird ... and don't like it!

 

Audiophiles pay lip service to wanting "accuracy" - but I have seen too many times that when they do get such, that they don't recognise it - or value it. Yes, it's a fine hobby using audio gear to mold the SQ to suit oneself - but I'm irritated if they turn around and claim that they doing this in the name of, "accuracy" - it's really a form of remastering: using a electronics chain to 'distort' what's on a recording, so that it fits in with expectations, or what they believe the intent of the original recording was.

 

Just letting off steam ... sorry! 🤐

[fas42]

There is one absolute in this game, and that's what's on the recording - it may be a certain mastering, in a certain format ... but it's locked in. Like software - your Windows machine one morning doesn't amble off, and present an Apple interface - just because you "changed something".

 

Now, it's pretty clear that people want audio to sound a certain way ... because, that's what they want! 🙂 In essence, the replay chain is meant to be Yet Another Effects Machine - just like what they used back at mastering time. So, perhaps the audio world will evolve like the pro music scene - in the old days, 🤩, a Marshall guitar amp sounded like, well, a Marshall amp - because that's all they thought of squeezing into one box ... these days, they've got clever - the box looks the same; but there is a now a Marshall amp button, a Fender amp button,etc, etc - I think they can now mimic of the order of a 100 different circuit variations - dial in signature distortion profiles, to taste.

 

So, do the same with 'straight' audio - start with a clean, distortion free sound; and then dial in your preference: a touch of digititus; perhaps some super syrupy valve tone; or squash the sound down to tranny radio dimensions - or, go for ruthlessly revealing Magico bite; or cuddly Spendor roundness ... whatever turns you on, on the particular day. As a variation, select mastering styles, of name producers - Katz, Van Gelder, etc, type of thing.

 

The easiest way of doing this is to start with zero character sound - sorta makes sense, doesn't it 😉? Otherwise, you're always fighting to mask the inherent signature of the replay rig - the end result is that for the people who just want the sound of the recording, that this is always available as an option ...

[fas42]

Sometimes people ask why I bother 'crusading' 😉 ... well, that threads like this are posted, and the replies that come up echo the title of it, 

 

, is one of the reasons ... last time I thought about it, music was meant to be something to be enjoyed - rather than being treated with contempt, 🙃.

[fas42]

Okay. The other post,

, is referring to the holographic, immersive, etc, switching on - at a time in the evening ... this is the 'peculiar' nature of this illusion - there's no halfway house; it's either there - or it's not.

 

What this is about is, again, that the ear/brain finally has enough data to unravel what's going on in the sound that it hears- it reconstructs its meaning within your skull; and you get, a Grand Illusion. Too much 'dirtiness' in the SQ inhibits the switch triggering - and you get, boring ol' normal stereo - as the subjective experience.

 

Here the rig is on the boundary of being clean enough to flick over - as per normal, too many audible anomalies at low level are in the sound, here during the day - because the gear, as occurs for nearly all setups, is too sensitive to noise coming over the mains. Only late at night does the level of noise interference drop enough, so that the distortion caused by that is sufficiently attenuated:

 

Quote

I have heard my system sound similar (not the same but similar characteristics) to using it with the SR Orange fuse.  This happens at night after about 10.30pm.  I assumed it was because in general there was generally less interference in the mains power supply.  I asked questions on a couple of forums and this was the consensus opinion for those who had similar experiences.

 

So the next move is ... do I like my system working at this better level, or not? 😁 If yes, then you work out how to improve the isolation of the setup from that mains interference ... and everything else then follows ... 🙂.

[fas42]

An interesting thing is, that visuals seem to be so important for many people - and the simple, "Size matters!" philosophy applies ... haven't found this to work once, for me... 😄. The rule of thumb has usually been, the bigger it looks, the worse it's gonna sound, 🙂.

 

My very modest active speakers would have no trouble deafening me, in a very short time frame, with highly decent sound - if I was dumb enough to try this. And the bass even at normal levels, on some recordings, is a bit much - so, I really do wonder at times what people are really after ...

[GregWormald]

On 4/2/2021 at 8:43 AM, fas42 said:

<snips>My very modest active speakers would have no trouble deafening me, in a very short time frame, with highly decent sound - if I was dumb enough to try this. And the bass even at normal levels, on some recordings, is a bit much

Two things, if I may—

"Louder is better" is virtually the same as "bigger is better". Personally, I'm after just the better: the response I have to the music.

Unless you try tuning your playback all you can do is attempt to extract what's on the recording and present it in your room.

[fas42]

26 minutes ago, GregWormald said:

Two things, if I may—

"Louder is better" is virtually the same as "bigger is better". Personally, I'm after just the better: the response I have to the music.

Unless you try tuning your playback all you can do is attempt to extract what's on the recording and present it in your room.

 

Note, I was talking of the physical size of the gear - humongous speakers, monster power amplifiers; that type of thing ... I was reacting to someone's call that one needs "size" there, to get competent SPLs.

 

A capable setup is able to produce very intense sound levels; think of being in a normal size room with a big band, live, going for it - this is 'deafening', by most standards 😉 - that's the the sense in which I was using that word. Speaking of such matters, I had the volume up for a relatively old opera recording, just now - and without thinking put on recently recorded, local big band, "at the gig" on sale CD ... without adjusting the level. Talk about jumping out of my skin !!! 🙃 ... Far, far too much - frantic grab of the remote to restore sanity ...

 

Extracting the contents of the track, only, should always be the goal ... yes.

[Racerxnet]

10 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Note, I was talking of the physical size of the gear - humongous speakers, monster power amplifiers; that type of thing ... I was reacting to someone's call that one needs "size" there, to get competent SPLs.

 

There are times when large/powerful amps are needed for a reason to power large speakers. In this particular instance, the Kappa 9's impedance dips below a 2 ohm load. The Kappa 9's are amp eaters and I chose the Bryston 7BSST x 4 amps to drive them. The amps then powered the RS1B and the Genesis 2's. In a room that is 15 x 35, your Edifiers are going to be pushed much harder than the larger speakers for a given SPL.  The harder you push the Edifiers with the internal class D amps, the more distortion they will produce. 

On 4/1/2021 at 5:13 PM, fas42 said:

An interesting thing is, that visuals seem to be so important for many people - and the simple, "Size matters!" philosophy applies ... haven't found this to work once, for me... 😄. The rule of thumb has usually been, the bigger it looks, the worse it's gonna sound, 🙂.

Another interesting note is how you "think" that everyone who has large speakers has no clue what they are doing. You haven't found it to work for you, because you NEVER purchased Wilsons, Genesis, Infinity, Wisdom, Magico or others. Go ahead and backpedal that you wouldn't buy them regardless. It's your demeanor that pushes people away. Maybe they like the visual looks of their speakers as part of the room decor. So, if they look good, and sound good, what's the big deal?? We don't care what your opinion is of our gear, nor do the MAJORITY of us follow your line of "repeated" illogical posts.

 

With a 19 (Frank) to 4 (others) post response from you on this page alone, it appears you have some psychological problems. 

 

Have fun and enjoy the music.

[fas42]

9 hours ago, Racerxnet said:

 

There are times when large/powerful amps are needed for a reason to power large speakers. In this particular instance, the Kappa 9's impedance dips below a 2 ohm load. The Kappa 9's are amp eaters and I chose the Bryston 7BSST x 4 amps to drive them. The amps then powered the RS1B and the Genesis 2's. In a room that is 15 x 35, your Edifiers are going to be pushed much harder than the larger speakers for a given SPL.  The harder you push the Edifiers with the internal class D amps, the more distortion they will produce. 

 

Older style class AB amps will be physically big, because they normally use linear power supplies; hence, large transformers, and plenty of smoothing caps, if they're ambitious - which chews up room. And then plenty of heatsink real estate, the more capable units often run pretty warm, so need lots of metal to dissipate the heat generated. Class D, with switching supplies, solves all that.

 

The room my speakers are in are of that size, and have no trouble filling it. The design so far seems pretty competent, and I have yet to note any distinctive distortion behaviour, from running them at higher volumes - but note that I have yet to really test this, by deliberately stressing them to the maximum.

 

Quote

Another interesting note is how you "think" that everyone who has large speakers has no clue what they are doing. You haven't found it to work for you, because you NEVER purchased Wilsons, Genesis, Infinity, Wisdom, Magico or others. Go ahead and backpedal that you wouldn't buy them regardless. It's your demeanor that pushes people away. Maybe they like the visual looks of their speakers as part of the room decor. So, if they look good, and sound good, what's the big deal?? We don't care what your opinion is of our gear, nor do the MAJORITY of us follow your line of "repeated" illogical posts.

 

With a 19 (Frank) to 4 (others) post response from you on this page alone, it appears you have some psychological problems. 

 

Have fun and enjoy the music.

 

My goal is present the recording with the least signature of the replay chain that's possible. The speakers used are a means to an end, for me - if you get pleasure from how they look, I have zero issue with that - what I do object to, though, is hearing the attitude usually expressed like this, "I have very expensive, very impressive looking speakers - they're going to sound so, so much much better than your shitty little shoebox bits of rubbish !!" ... comprendez? You see, it was speakers of the latter category that first delivered convincing SQ, for me - and then when I then checked out what other people were getting, with "very expensive, very impressive" speakers ... they generally sounded shite. So, my "demeanor" developed from real life experience ... which runs counter to what most people are biased towards thinking ...

 

It seems you haven't worked out yet that this thread is a convenient spot for me to effectively run a blog, where I can drop in thoughts upon what contributes to, or inhibits "Stereo Magic" - the title of the thread ... 😉

[Racerxnet]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

So, my "demeanor" developed from real life experience ... which runs counter to what most people are biased towards thinking

Your real life experiences do not dictate the performance of speakers others own. Whether you like them or not is irrelevant to them. The setup can vary widely from one system to another, and influences the replay. Your word is not the final say on any speaker system over your 400.00 Edifiers. 

 

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

It seems you haven't worked out yet that this thread is a convenient spot for me to effectively run a blog, where I can drop in thoughts upon what contributes to, or inhibits "Stereo Magic" - the title of the thread ... 😉

You don,t own the thread, Blackmore does, and your own failed blog is testament that few people follow your illogical blather. Same canned reply over and over in this thread or others. 

 

As stated, with a 19 (Frank) to 4 (others) post response from you on this page alone, it appears you have some psychological problems.