fas42 Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 4 hours ago, Allan F said: Sorry, Frank, but to be consistent with reality the above edit is necessary, although I don't doubt that you have really convinced yourself otherwise. I see ... you've convinced yourself that it's impossible for all but a select group of recordings to provide an emotionally satisfying experience, and you'll fight tooth and nail to hang on to that belief... it would, like, the end of the world, for it to be otherwise ... 🙂. Link to comment
Popular Post 4est Posted March 18, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted March 18, 2020 3 hours ago, fas42 said: I see ... you've convinced yourself that it's impossible for all but a select group of recordings to provide an emotionally satisfying experience, and you'll fight tooth and nail to hang on to that belief... it would, like, the end of the world, for it to be otherwise ... 🙂. Oh quit acting like some sort of prophetic martyr. You have presented a paradigm that is contrary to most everyone's experiences and understanding, with nothing to back it up. All the while you're using a tone of mocking superiority that many seem to find distasteful. Oh, and please stop with the "I've been doing this for thirty years crap", most of us have been. In actuality, it appears as if you are the one that is convinced of something Frank, and we are not. We all have reproduction aspects that trigger responses. Yours seems to be different than the majority. So be it and get over it. There is no magic to your path, just a lot of rhetoric about how no one knows what do but you. gmgraves, Teresa, jabbr and 2 others 1 2 2 Forrest: Win10 i9 9900KS/GTX1060 HQPlayer4>Win10 NAA DSD>Pavel's DSC2.6>Bent Audio TAP> Parasound JC1>"Naked" Quad ESL63/Tannoy PS350B subs<100Hz Link to comment
Confused Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 I would like to propose that we consider the "there are no bad recordings" idea from a more middle ground perspective. I am sure most of us would agree that having a top quality recording is a key starting point for good quality reproduction, and that lesser quality recordings can never sound as good. Garbage in, garbage out. That said, I am also sure that most of do not want a system that is only "listenable" with a few select few quality recordings. From my perspective it is inevitable that I will sometimes want to play poor quality recordings, or lesser quality recordings, simply because the music I want to listen to is only available as a lesser quality recording. So as a thought experiment, lets say you have a system that has absolutely state of the art reproduction when fed with a top quality recording. You then try the system with lesser quality recording, and the shortcomings of the recording become so apparent that you no longer enjoy the music. In the above scenario, is it possible to tweak / optimise the system such that the lesser quality recordings become more listenable, without compromising the former "state of the art" performance with top quality recordings? If the answer to this question is yes, then maybe having "there are no bad recordings" as a mindset (not an absolute truth) might be beneficial in terms getting the right approach to system optimisation? fas42 1 Windows 11 PC, Roon, HQPlayer, Focus Fidelity convolutions, iFi Zen Stream, Paul Hynes SR4, Mutec REF10, Mutec MC3+USB, Devialet 1000Pro, KEF Blade. Plus Pro-Ject Signature 12 TT for playing my 'legacy' vinyl collection. Desktop system; RME ADI-2 DAC fs, Meze Empyrean headphones. Link to comment
gmgraves Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 14 hours ago, fas42 said: I see ... you've convinced yourself that it's impossible for all but a select group of recordings to provide an emotionally satisfying experience, and you'll fight tooth and nail to hang on to that belief... it would, like, the end of the world, for it to be otherwise ... 🙂. It is impossible for many of us (me included) to elicit an emotionally satisfying experience from a recording that sounds like crap! I realize that some people ostensibly can listen to the most horrible sound and find it acceptable. I’ve a friend whose teenage son finds 32 kbps MP3s personally quite acceptable. He’d rather have more songs on his iPhone than better sounding songs. I find that if I have a poor sounding recording (and I have many, unfortunately), it simply doesn’t get listened to. I continue to search for a better sounding performance of that work. Of course people whose musical tastes run to some form of pop music usually don’t have that luxury. If a Beatles’ recording of a favorite song sounds bad, one generally has to grin and bear it. That song, performed by somebody else, is simply not going to cut it while there are lots of performances of Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique”, for instance, and surely one can be found that is acceptable, both SQ wise and performance wise. And please, don’t retort with your usual nonsense about being able to tweak a mediocre system so that all recordings are acceptable, regardless of their quality. I don’t doubt that you have been able to do that, but as I‘ve said before, that’s because your system makes all recordings sound equally poor, and you have made your peace with that. Teresa 1 George Link to comment
sandyk Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 7 hours ago, Confused said: In the above scenario, is it possible to tweak / optimise the system such that the lesser quality recordings become more listenable, without compromising the former "state of the art" performance with top quality recordings? If the answer to this question is yes, then maybe having "there are no bad recordings" as a mindset (not an absolute truth) might be beneficial in terms getting the right approach to system optimisation? IOW, make them all sound equally bad ? 😲 gmgraves 1 How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file. PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020 Link to comment
Confused Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 Just now, sandyk said: IOW, make them all sound equally bad ? 😲 No, that absolutely is not what I was saying. Windows 11 PC, Roon, HQPlayer, Focus Fidelity convolutions, iFi Zen Stream, Paul Hynes SR4, Mutec REF10, Mutec MC3+USB, Devialet 1000Pro, KEF Blade. Plus Pro-Ject Signature 12 TT for playing my 'legacy' vinyl collection. Desktop system; RME ADI-2 DAC fs, Meze Empyrean headphones. Link to comment
Popular Post gmgraves Posted March 18, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted March 18, 2020 22 hours ago, fas42 said: Which works if you always play the "right recordings" 😉 ... I, however, want to play all and every recording that comes my way, and get the best from it - for it to be an emotionally satisfying experience. From experience, this doesn't happen with the great majority of rigs - my efforts are directed to doing whatever it takes to evolve a system to reach that higher level of performance ... this is most certainly possible, but currently requires a great deal of personal effort to achieve; it is almost impossible to buy one's way to it - getting better all the time; but usually very expensive, or a lot of careful, nitpicky looking at what's available. Frank, there are people who can get all they require of a performance from an AM table radio, but that doesn’t mean that said radio is, in any way, High-Fidelity, nor does that make the listener an audiophile. The fact that you are happy with all recordings sounding alike and sub-par, says nothing about what you consider “good sound”. John Dyson and Teresa 1 1 George Link to comment
sandyk Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 1 minute ago, Confused said: No, that absolutely is not what I was saying. That is basically what George is saying though 😉 How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file. PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020 Link to comment
Confused Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 7 minutes ago, sandyk said: That is basically what George is saying though 😉 Which is fine, and I fully understand his position. I was posing a thought experiment, to see if anyone had any interesting ideas on the topic. It could well be that George’s response to my question is a simple “no”, but it would be interesting if he or anyone else has a more nuanced response. Or maybe the correct response is no? Windows 11 PC, Roon, HQPlayer, Focus Fidelity convolutions, iFi Zen Stream, Paul Hynes SR4, Mutec REF10, Mutec MC3+USB, Devialet 1000Pro, KEF Blade. Plus Pro-Ject Signature 12 TT for playing my 'legacy' vinyl collection. Desktop system; RME ADI-2 DAC fs, Meze Empyrean headphones. Link to comment
sandyk Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 28 minutes ago, Confused said: Which is fine, and I fully understand his position. I was posing a thought experiment, to see if anyone had any interesting ideas on the topic. It could well be that George’s response to my question is a simple “no”, but it would be interesting if he or anyone else has a more nuanced response. Or maybe the correct response is no? I think that is likely to come down to what gear we are able to use, with in some cases , possibly for financial reasons ,some have of necessity to use sub optimal gear for listening, which doesn't mean that they haven't heard much better previously. In that case any minor improvements that they can make with added attention to detail as Frank does, would be more noticed by them, and result in their brain not having to compensate as much. Incidentally, Frank surprised me recently by hearing things correctly that many members are simply not capable of hearing, and even George with his much higher quality gear would struggle to notice. How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file. PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020 Link to comment
fas42 Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 11 hours ago, 4est said: Oh quit acting like some sort of prophetic martyr. You have presented a paradigm that is contrary to most everyone's experiences and understanding, with nothing to back it up. All the while you're using a tone of mocking superiority that many seem to find distasteful. Oh, and please stop with the "I've been doing this for thirty years crap", most of us have been. Well, if no-one is going to do the "prophetic martyr" thing, then I guess I'll have to do it, 🤪. Indeed it's "a paradigm that is contrary to most everyone's experience", but since so many people were foolin' around in audio I thought that there were bound to be others who "stumbled across it". And that in fact turned out to be the case ... I've bumped into over half a dozen people, on the Internet, who have a very good grasp of the situation - but for a variety of reasons either don't or can't make others aware of what they're getting - I just happen to be the one who believes the concept is important enough, to keep banging on about it ... 🙃. "Mocking superiority"?? ... some parts of the world seem to need others to adopt the tugging one's forelock manner to seem to be pleasant, but I come from a part of the world where that doesn't compute ... I'm just calling it straight, I'm not interested in playing social games to get people on side. Mocking superiority is the thing furthest from my mind when I post - I'm just stating what my thoughts on the matter are. Yes, everyone who is enthusiastic about audio has been doing for 30+ years - the difference for me is convincing SQ popped out right at the beginning, and I've spent the time getting a better handle on everything; I'm not still "chasing the dream" ... 11 hours ago, 4est said: In actuality, it appears as if you are the one that is convinced of something Frank, and we are not. We all have reproduction aspects that trigger responses. Yours seems to be different than the majority. So be it and get over it. There is no magic to your path, just a lot of rhetoric about how no one knows what do but you. If you want every recording to be a "Wow!!" experience, then my path might have some magic that appeals to you, 😉. Note that every time I mention the process that I find is absolutely essential to getting there, I'm met with disbelief and ridicule - I can't help those those are intent on ignoring the advice I offer up. Link to comment
fas42 Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 1 hour ago, gmgraves said: It is impossible for many of us (me included) to elicit an emotionally satisfying experience from a recording that sounds like crap! The goal is to have a system that doesn't make a recording sound like crap! Note the key inclusion of the word "make" in that sentence - the recording is OK, but the playback doesn't elicit all the positive aspects of the source material. Unless you have spent decades listening to expensive, ambitious rigs make recordings you know well sound like a garbled mess, you probably can't appreciate what's going on - money doesn't solve the problems, but it can certainly blind one to what the true possibilities are. Teresa 1 Link to comment
Allan F Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 32 minutes ago, fas42 said: The goal is to have a system that doesn't make a recording sound like crap! Note the key inclusion of the word "make" in that sentence - the recording is OK, but the playback doesn't elicit all the positive aspects of the source material. Unless you have spent decades listening to expensive, ambitious rigs make recordings you know well sound like a garbled mess, you probably can't appreciate what's going on - money doesn't solve the problems, but it can certainly blind one to what the true possibilities are. jabbr 1 "Relax, it's only hi-fi. There's never been a hi-fi emergency." - Roy Hall "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - William Bruce Cameron Link to comment
Popular Post Teresa Posted March 18, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted March 18, 2020 56 minutes ago, fas42 said: The goal is to have a system that doesn't make a recording sound like crap! Note the key inclusion of the word "make" in that sentence - the recording is OK, but the playback doesn't elicit all the positive aspects of the source material. Unless you have spent decades listening to expensive, ambitious rigs make recordings you know well sound like a garbled mess, you probably can't appreciate what's going on - money doesn't solve the problems, but it can certainly blind one to what the true possibilities are. Frank your standards are way too low, what you find musically satisfying I would likely find to be of poor sound quality to unlistenable even on your supposed well-sorted mid-fi equipment. I wish you could hear how realistic music can sound when the microphones are placed in the best positions, a great performance venue is chosen with musicians playing together and not separated by isolation booths. With recording engineers who know how to capture sonic realism. GIGO (garbage in garbage out) cannot be fixed by soldering connections and the other tweaks you do. The music captured must sound real in order for any audio system to reproduce it realistically. You have a much better imagination than I to be able to magically undo all the wrongs in poorly made recordings. It works for you but I know I would hate the sound of any music coming out of your well-sorted mid-fi system as my imagination is not as good as yours evidently. BTW I have heard many superbly realistic sounding high-end audio systems at CES and The S.H.O.W. in Las Vegas, especially when I give them an SACD to play or they were playing high-res downloads, audiophile LPs or those wonderful sounding 2 track 15 IPS master tape copies. The only bad sounds I heard were when they were playing CDs or 16/44.1kHz digital music files. In conclusion, I don't believe a single word you say as your statements are illogical to me. Allan F, John Dyson and jabbr 3 I have dementia. I save all my posts in a text file I call Forums. I do a search in that file to find out what I said or did in the past. I still love music. Teresa Link to comment
Allan F Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 11 hours ago, Confused said: In the above scenario, is it possible to tweak / optimize the system such that the lesser quality recordings become more listenable, without compromising the former "state of the art" performance with top quality recordings? If the answer to this question is yes, then maybe having "there are no bad recordings" as a mindset (not an absolute truth) might be beneficial in terms getting the right approach to system optimisation? You can't have both. A system that is "optimized" is one that will produce the best sound from well recorded music. If you have a highly resolving system capable of producing "state of the art" performance, the simple answer to your question is "No". Ironically, a less resolving or mid-fi system may be more forgiving and be less likely to highlight the negative aspects of a poor recording. Quality components typically avoid tone controls because of the negative effect that they have on the sound. OTOH, tone controls could potentially make those poor recordings sound less objectionable by "dumbing down" the system to the level of the recording. Teresa 1 "Relax, it's only hi-fi. There's never been a hi-fi emergency." - Roy Hall "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - William Bruce Cameron Link to comment
fas42 Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 2 hours ago, Teresa said: Frank your standards are way too low, what you find musically satisfying I would likely find to be of poor sound quality to unlistenable even on your supposed well-sorted mid-fi equipment. I wish you could hear how realistic music can sound when the microphones are placed in the best positions, a great performance venue is chosen with musicians playing together and not separated by isolation booths. With recording engineers who know how to capture sonic realism. And I wish more high end systems could do a better job of replaying the source content correctly, Teresa 😉. It's trivially easy to catch out ambitious rigs - feed them a track which is above a certain level of complexity, and the level of audible distortion makes them quite unlistenable to, especially if one tries for higher volumes. Such systems will never be capable of providing satisfying listening with everyday recordings - the playback chain is far too flawed. Quote GIGO (garbage in garbage out) cannot be fixed by soldering connections and the other tweaks you do. The music captured must sound real in order for any audio system to reproduce it realistically. The music reaching the microphones was real, back then - and the microphones, and the recording technology was good enough to capture what matters to the listening brain. All that is necessary is for the playback to work extremely precisely in key areas; and if one is too sloppy in optimising these subjectively important areas, then the SQ will be that of "just another hifi". Quote You have a much better imagination than I to be able to magically undo all the wrongs in poorly made recordings. It works for you but I know I would hate the sound of any music coming out of your well-sorted mid-fi system as my imagination is not as good as yours evidently. The amusing thing is that it's the women who very much tune into the SQ I aspire to - audiophiles are often too busy analysing whether there is any 20Hz content, and whether it sounds exactly like their rig , etc. The fact that it has the 'naturalness' of everyday sounds, and doesn't wave its hand in the hand, shouting, "Look at me, look at me!!" may seem strange to some - but that quality is what allows 'difficult' recordings to come off beautifully 🙂. Link to comment
fas42 Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 1 hour ago, Allan F said: You can't have both. A system that is "optimized" is one that will produce the best sound from well recorded music. If you have a highly resolving system capable of producing "state of the art" performance, the simple answer to your question is "No". Ironically, a less resolving or mid-fi system may be more forgiving and be less likely to highlight the negative aspects of a poor recording. Quality components typically avoid tone controls because of the negative effect that they have on the sound. OTOH, tone controls could potentially make those poor recordings sound less objectionable by "dumbing down" the system to the level of the recording. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. So-called highly resolving systems nearly always add a good dollop of disturbing distortion, and those anomalies intermodulate with anything that is less than perfect in the recording - as excellent an example of IMD as one can get ... two solutions: an absolutely pristine recording played on a flawed rig is the first solution; any recording played on a well sorted setup is the second solution - intermodulation is held to a low enough level so that the listener can enjoy the musical capture, in both situations. I just happen to be talking about the second scenario ... the huge gain is that the vast array of the recording legacy is then available to be enjoyed, 🙂. Teresa 1 Link to comment
John Dyson Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 11 hours ago, sandyk said: I think that is likely to come down to what gear we are able to use, with in some cases , possibly for financial reasons ,some have of necessity to use sub optimal gear for listening, which doesn't mean that they haven't heard much better previously. In that case any minor improvements that they can make with added attention to detail as Frank does, would be more noticed by them, and result in their brain not having to compensate as much. Incidentally, Frank surprised me recently by hearing things correctly that many members are simply not capable of hearing, and even George with his much higher quality gear would struggle to notice. You know that there are situations where tempoarily damaged hearing can make some defects much easier to detect. By happenstance, I used that effect for good improvments a few months ago. When there are certain kinds of defects in equipment and/or hearing, then certain kinds of distortions can become more noticeable. The situation was astounding -- totally astounding to me. My uneducated guess it that the syndrome might be similar to a person who loses sight can sometimes gain certain additional 'processing' on their hearing, thereby benefit greater from the senses that are still available. It could be that the brain can more easily focus on the available data. AGAIN A GUESS. Because of my project, I focus on very particular kinds of defects in audio, thereby sometimes making it very difficult for me to hear other defects. Too much treble, even though I can hear treble very clearly is less of an impairment to me than certain kinds of dynamic distortions... Too much bass mildly irritates me (esp 20-40Hz), but the worst, 'chalk scraping on chalkboard' for me is midrange woodiness making many CDs intolerable. Other people, with better hearing that I have, seem to totally ignore the woody sound of vocals on many CDs. The 'CPU' (brain), focus on certain defects, and available information comes to play in audio comparisons. John Teresa 1 Link to comment
Popular Post Blackmorec Posted March 19, 2020 Author Popular Post Share Posted March 19, 2020 21 hours ago, Confused said: I would like to propose that we consider the "there are no bad recordings" idea from a more middle ground perspective. I am sure most of us would agree that having a top quality recording is a key starting point for good quality reproduction, and that lesser quality recordings can never sound as good. Garbage in, garbage out. That said, I am also sure that most of do not want a system that is only "listenable" with a few select few quality recordings. From my perspective it is inevitable that I will sometimes want to play poor quality recordings, or lesser quality recordings, simply because the music I want to listen to is only available as a lesser quality recording. So as a thought experiment, lets say you have a system that has absolutely state of the art reproduction when fed with a top quality recording. You then try the system with lesser quality recording, and the shortcomings of the recording become so apparent that you no longer enjoy the music. In the above scenario, is it possible to tweak / optimise the system such that the lesser quality recordings become more listenable, without compromising the former "state of the art" performance with top quality recordings? If the answer to this question is yes, then maybe having "there are no bad recordings" as a mindset (not an absolute truth) might be beneficial in terms getting the right approach to system optimisation? Based on my most recent experience I don’t believe it works quite like this. There are some recordings, quite a few actually that are spectacularly good, transporting the listener to an acoustic whole that has absolutely no relationship to the listening room. The recording comprises instruments and voices that each have their defined acoustic space and reverb that makes perfect sense both for the instruments and voices themselves and for the overall acoustic. The overall acoustic is fully immersive and seems to energise the entire recording venue. The sound is thrilling, totally captivating and has huge amounts of rhythm and/or emotion. The music fully takes over the listener’s consciousness. I have found that when a system is fully dialled in, music that you may not have found so appealing previously, suddenly becomes incredibly involving and extremely appealing. This may be say 20% of recordings. Another 75% of recordings will exhibit degrees of the above and be entirely listenable and while not spectacular, will still be beautiful, engaging and delightful to listen to. 5% or maybe even less will be completely flawed, due entirely to the recording and mastering process. In this case, the system that reveals all the above will reveal something entirely different. Cymbals that lack sparkle, note structure and development, horns that lack that initial bite, piano that has no percussive element, note development and bloom, guitars and violins with no complexity or real beauty and worst of all, instruments that occupy exactly the same acoustic space and interfere with one another, leaving large parts of the soundstage unoccupied and silent, while cramming everything into the exact same acoustic space. This implies very little lateral separation and no depth....like listening to a transistor radio through a window. Such recording will never sound good or enjoyable and all the improved listening system and resolution does is to reveal in detail why the recording sounds so poor. When I get a recording like this I simply delete it, because no amount of fine tuning of a system can add or reveal something that simply isn’t there. I don’t believe I have ever made a genuine improvement to any system I’ve owned that has made recordings I’ve previously enjoyed less enjoyable. If that happens, I know that the change I’ve made to the system is taking me in the wrong direction. Most recently that has has happened with a base I used under my amps, with a USB decrapifier that I tried extensively before abandoning and with footers that I tried under a power supply that sits on a glass shelf. Teresa, fas42, kumakuma and 1 other 3 1 Link to comment
Confused Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 10 hours ago, fas42 said: Sorry, it doesn't work that way. So-called highly resolving systems nearly always add a good dollop of disturbing distortion, and those anomalies intermodulate with anything that is less than perfect in the recording - as excellent an example of IMD as one can get ... two solutions: an absolutely pristine recording played on a flawed rig is the first solution; any recording played on a well sorted setup is the second solution - intermodulation is held to a low enough level so that the listener can enjoy the musical capture, in both situations. I just happen to be talking about the second scenario ... the huge gain is that the vast array of the recording legacy is then available to be enjoyed, 🙂. Hang on, there is a slight of hand here, to be expected from an audio magician I suppose. 🙂 The actual question @Allan F was responding to was clear in that it was a thought experiment and was referring to a system with "absolutely state of the art reproduction". In your response above Frank, you are saying Allan is wrong, but then you are changing the question not to refer to a "state of the art system", but to a system that adds "a good dollop of disturbing distortion". I suspect most of us here would agree that removing a good dollop of disturbing distortion from a system will indeed improve the reproduction most if not all recordings. So we end up with two slightly different scenarios, for the following two systems 1. A system that has absolutely state of the art reproduction, AKA "a well sorted rig". Because this system is well sorted, it does not add any distortions to the recording. 2. A so-called highly resolving systems that adds a good dollop of disturbing distortion, Could both of the above systems above be improved / tweaked to make recordings of a lesser quality more listenable without compromising the performance with top quality recordings? I suspect we can all agree that system 2 could be improved for the benefit of all or most recordings. With system 1, are we all agreed that the answer is indeed no? It is after all a well sorted rig. Maybe someone has a more nuanced response? Teresa 1 Windows 11 PC, Roon, HQPlayer, Focus Fidelity convolutions, iFi Zen Stream, Paul Hynes SR4, Mutec REF10, Mutec MC3+USB, Devialet 1000Pro, KEF Blade. Plus Pro-Ject Signature 12 TT for playing my 'legacy' vinyl collection. Desktop system; RME ADI-2 DAC fs, Meze Empyrean headphones. Link to comment
Popular Post kumakuma Posted March 19, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted March 19, 2020 4 hours ago, Blackmorec said: 5% or maybe even less will be completely flawed, due entirely to the recording and mastering process. In this case, the system that reveals all the above will reveal something entirely different. Cymbals that lack sparkle, note structure and development, horns that lack that initial bite, piano that has no percussive element, note development and bloom, guitars and violins with no complexity or real beauty and worst of all, instruments that occupy exactly the same acoustic space and interfere with one another, leaving large parts of the soundstage unoccupied and silent, while cramming everything into the exact same acoustic space. This implies very little lateral separation and no depth....like listening to a transistor radio through a window. Such recording will never sound good or enjoyable and all the improved listening system and resolution does is to reveal in detail why the recording sounds so poor. When I get a recording like this I simply delete it, because no amount of fine tuning of a system can add or reveal something that simply isn’t there.. Couldn't agree more! There are some recordings that no amount of "magic" can save. 4est, gmgraves and Teresa 2 1 Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby Edgy and dull and cut a six inch valley Through the middle of my skull Link to comment
John Dyson Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 4 hours ago, Blackmorec said: 4 hours ago, Blackmorec said: This may be say 20% of recordings. Another 75% of recordings will exhibit degrees of the above and be entirely listenable and while not spectacular, will still be beautiful, engaging and delightful to listen to. 5% or maybe even less will be completely flawed, due entirely to the recording and mastering process. I I am a little more critical than a lot of people, and the reason why I walked away from the serious listening hobby back in the 1990 timeframe. It is pretty clear to me that the vast majorty of the POP CDs are significantly mismastered, and as you have probably read my long descriptions in the past, are compressed in a way that was entirely unintended by the equipment designer. The POP CDs have a persistent and changing frequency response balance that includes woody midrange and swishy high end. Vocal sibilance is also sustained, however is a bit of a sweet way. Can these mismastered CDs be enjoyable? Sure they can. I finally figured out what was going on with CDs in 2012 (22yrs after my disgust and quitting) when listening VERY casually. Something 'clicked' and I realized what was wrong with the CDs. It took a year or two to be able to talk about it, because I truly thought that I might be nuts.... However, I was right about my spontaneous guess about the NR encoding not being completely removed. So, for casual, passive listening, the 'CDs' as commonly mastered are okay, certainly better than a '45' with grainy vinyl (or whatever mix of sandpaper that they used in the US.) However, as containing 'high fidelity' material in their natural state -- NO WAY. Simple EQ cannot correct the CDs... Normal linear amplification cannot correct the kind of damage imparted on many pop, classical and jazz CDs. (yes, even classical, even though the encoding is sometimes a little different than pop.) I had been reflecting why back in approx 1990, I couldn't enjoy the sound of CDs when listening seriously, and I remembered that I used to do actual analog tape recordings for people -- I mean, good, real stereo recordings, not major mixing. I know what sound and recordings really sound like, and the CDs weren't 'normal'. I wanted CDs to sound good, and in a final attempt to purchase a good CD, I got a remake of my 'I ve got the music in me' from Sheffield Labs, and it was mastered even worse than most pop CDs!!! Again, I am NOT claiming that people cannot enjoy the CDs, but it is sort of misguided to spend many $KUS on a system to remove the last 0.01% distortion, when the actual mismastering on many CDs ( which would be most that I would be listening to) is tantamount to well over 1% distortion, perhaps as much as 10% distortion by some measures. (The kind of 'distortion' caused by mismastering is NOT as ugly as 3rd/5th harmonic distortion, but does evidence inferior quality.) The genius of the human auditory system has allowed people to learn to tolerate the bad sound, but in a way it is kind of sad. Properly mastered material CAN (not always) sound a lot better than the mess that had been sold to us for approx 35yrs. Proper mastering doesn't fix all problems, but it certainly improves the liklihood of good sound. It doesn't happen often enough. John Teresa 1 Link to comment
Popular Post Allan F Posted March 19, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted March 19, 2020 17 hours ago, fas42 said: So-called highly resolving systems nearly always add a good dollop of disturbing distortion... This is complete and utter nonsense. The reason that these systems are able to resolve detail to a greater degree is because they are designed to minimize distortion. Of course, if there is distortion in the recording, they will more faithfully reproduce it. But the system is not the source of the distortion. 4est, kumakuma, jabbr and 2 others 3 1 1 "Relax, it's only hi-fi. There's never been a hi-fi emergency." - Roy Hall "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - William Bruce Cameron Link to comment
Popular Post gmgraves Posted March 19, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted March 19, 2020 21 hours ago, Confused said: Which is fine, and I fully understand his position. I was posing a thought experiment, to see if anyone had any interesting ideas on the topic. It could well be that George’s response to my question is a simple “no”, but it would be interesting if he or anyone else has a more nuanced response. Or maybe the correct response is no? Like you said, above, “garbage in, garbage out.” 99% of the time, you can’t fix a bad recording. There is nothing you can do, for instance, to a symphonic recording made with a microphone and a tape track for each and every instrument to make it not sound like a “chorus line” of instruments stretched across the soundstage from left to right. There is nothing you can do to a piano, recorded with two or more mikes inside the instrument to make it not sound like it stretches from wall to wall with the bass keys on the extreme left, the treble keys on the extreme right, and middle ‘C’ coming from dead center. There’s nothing you can do to fix a recording that’s overmodulated to the point that it distorts on peaks. Nothing can be done to correct a heavily compressed dynamic range recording. Nothing can make a three-channel mono jazz recording into a true stereo recording. The only thing one can maybe fix is a recording with a skewed or deficient frequency response by using an equalizer. And recordings that respond to that kind of correction are few and far between. kumakuma, John Dyson, jabbr and 1 other 4 George Link to comment
Popular Post gmgraves Posted March 19, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted March 19, 2020 3 hours ago, John Dyson said: I had been reflecting why back in approx 1990, I couldn't enjoy the sound of CDs when listening seriously, and I remembered that I used to do actual analog tape recordings for people -- I mean, good, real stereo recordings, not major mixing. I know what sound and recordings really sound like, and the CDs weren't 'normal'. I wanted CDs to sound good, and in a final attempt to purchase a good CD, I got a remake of my 'I ve got the music in me' from Sheffield Labs, and it was mastered even worse than most pop CDs!!! John I’m with you here, 100%. This is my experience as well. Perhaps making real, true stereo recordings changes one’s perspective on reproduced sound. I see how easy it is to make truly real sounding, clean, open, recordings that make people sit up and take notice, and I have to wonder why anyone would want to make anything else. I ran into RCA Victor producer J. David Saks once at an AES convention in NYC. At the time, RCA had recently taken over the recording contract for the Philadelphia Orchestra from Columbia. RCA was a signatory, at the time, to JVC’s quadraphonic phonograph system which used a 50 KHz subcarrier in each channel to give four discrete channels on a phonograph record (CD4? I really can’t recall if that’s the proper nomenclature or not). I had the special cartridge with the Shibata stylus, and the frequency response to over the 50 KHz required, and the JVC “decoder box” to elicit true discrete 4-channel sound from records. I had bought several of the quad records from RCA of the Philadelphia Orchestra in anticipation of hearing that great orchestra arrayed in front of me and the hall ambience from behind. Instead, what Sacks gave me was a perspective of the orchestra being all around me! This wasn’t what I wanted! This wasn’t what I imagined any classical listener wanted! So I approached Saks about it, and his response struck me as the most arrogant self defense of his recording style that I have ever heard. When I told him that his recordings, made with a forest of microphones, did not sound real by any stretch of the term. He answered that he wasn’t looking for real. His recordings sounded BETTER than real. I realized then that there was no changing the man’s mind and that there were a lot of people in the industry who shouldn’t be allowed near a recording setup. After I bit my lip and took my leave of Mr. Saks, The great, late, John Eargle came up to me and sand said he’d overheard my exchange with Saks. He told me that he agreed with me 100% and that in his estimation, Saks should be run out of the business (at the time, Eargle was the producer at Delos records and was responsible for the excellent recordings of the Seattle Symphony under Gerard Schwartz. Teresa and John Dyson 1 1 George Link to comment
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