Fas42’s Stereo ‘Magic’

[John Dyson]

10 hours ago, Confused said:

I have to be honest here, whist perhaps being perfectly listenable, I cannot escape the fact that this is not a particularly good recording.  Lots of noise, the snare is distorted, I could go on. 
 

It does not stop me appreciating the track, but I cannot think this would definitely “sound good” if played on almost any system.

 

 What I would say is that personally, I would not select such a track for optimising or listening for issues in a given system.
 

Just my view, others are welcome to see (hear) this differently I guess.

It is kind of hard to enjoy the recording with the obvious compression in addition with HORRID EQ.  With a good recording, I might have liked the song.   It sounds like they did a big boost in the higher vocal range (1k-3k) (in contrast to the lower vocal range of 200-1k).   This boost BEFORE compression can still give the 'telephone' sound, yet flatten the spectrum.  This recording an intense sound, but only less distorted than a telephone, but just a little more-than-telephnoe ACTUAL hf content from the performance (not the electronic distortion) of the recordiing -- and really very little below 100-200Hz on the recording BEFORE compression.  (again, the ends of the spectrum were filled-in by distortion/residual highs  and residual content on the low end, both boosted by 20dB.)  It also seems like there is very noticeable hiss in the recording.   The spectogram shows that (the hiss is distracting even to me with tinnitus.)

 

The sense of distortion comes from the multi-band  compression bringing up the highs that were  most likely distortion from legacy equipment and the lows starting to be AGGRESSIVELY rolled off at 120Hz and below.   After compression, the levels above 9kHz and below 120Hz were 'boosted' because of the multi-band compression applied to the YouTube version.  (The multi-band compression on material like this is similar to using a big 'smile' on a graphic equalizer.)

 

This recording has serious technical problems (before or after expansion) -- it is all about 'do you like the music?'.  This recording (BOTH the youtube version, and the slightly expanded version) is really irritating to my hearing, unless at least 10dB lower than my normal listening level.

 

The recording is NOT my thing, but my grandma used to say 'whatever blows your skirt up' (translated, whatever you enjoy is okay.)  The song, recorded and produced at reasonable standards, might actually be enjoyable (or at least, tolerable background radio listening.)

 

John

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HonestIDo-stillbad.flac

[fas42]

John, that track is dynamite bad, technically - the better the system, the more obvious this is. So, either do major surgery, as you specialise in - or use it to fine tune system issues, as I do ... whatever rocks your boat, 😉.

 

Will just add, played this last visit to N. up the road - did quite decently, not the last ounce of resolution; the roughness of the recording was very clear - but still was reasonable as a listening experience.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

6 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

What I react to, is whether the energy and life of the musical creativity dominates what I'm hearing - if obvious flaws in the playback keep intruding, this detracts, and then I switch off mentally - I'm no longer interested in the music; it's all about getting ready for the next grinding bit, 🙃.

 

I believe we all respond to the " energy and life of the musical creativity". So like I said before, we have no problems agreeing on the words which describe the experience it is just the perception of the playback quality that gets us to that point appears to be very different. Your perception of the playback that floats your boat does not appear to be the same as others, and the things that prevent you enjoying the music also do not appear to be the same as others.

 

6 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

I come across people who use language to describe what they're getting, which says to me that i would enjoy listening to their system - @ray-dude is the obvious example here.

 

So again, the language is not the problem. It's not as if I am saying "I aim for the gear to get out of the way of the music" and you were saying "I want to hear the signature of each piece of gear". We are saying much the same thing in the descriptions of what we want but we very much a differ on how to get there. Again, beauty is in the eye/ear of the beholder as to what is convincingly lifelike reproduction.

 

 

6 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

 

I might go along with that, except people around me echo how I feel. Bev ........when a rig I have is on song, she wants the volume to go as loud as possible - she wants the intensity of the sound of the voice or instrument to be as strong as possible, 😉.

 

It is not uncommon for married couples to have similar tastes in things. It is also quite possible that Bev is quite sensibly just enjoying the music and not trying to provide a critique on the gear.

 

 

6 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Lifelike, for me, is when live music elicits the same feelings. Reproduced music nearly always says, "This is a hifi, pretending - and not doing a particularly good job of it" .

 

Again the words and language is not the problem. You describe what most of us want. We differ in how we perceive the goal has been achieved

 

 

5 hours ago, fas42 said:

John, that track is dynamite bad, technically - the better the system, the more obvious this is. So, either do major surgery, as you specialise in - or use it to fine tune system issues, as I do ... whatever rocks your boat, 😉.

 

Frank this sounds very much like you are saying bad recordings will be revealed as bad recordings, the better the playback system is..... If the "track is dynamite bad, technically - the better the system, the more obvious this is".

 

This is what most of us have been saying all along and have been trying to convince you. I know you then said, but you use the bad track to "fine tune" the system however, the better the system gets more "finely tuned", the more obvious the bad recording will be – unless you mean that "fine tuning" doesn't result in better playback . Fine tuning results in a better system and "the better the system, the more obvious dynamite bad becomes". It is virtually the opposite of your previous position of fine tuning your system makes bad recordings sound good or sound less bad.

 

 

 

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

6 hours ago, John Dyson said:

This recording has serious technical problems (before or after expansion) -- it is all about 'do you like the music?'.

 

For me, with a couple of exceptions that pass as not half bad, you can pretty much put the entire discography of the Rolling Stones in this category – love the music, hate the recording. It's almost as if whoever was recording it was trying to make it sound bad.

[PeterSt]

I still like Brown Sugar ...

[Confused]

7 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Which is exactly why I use it 🙂 - the "margin of error" is so tiny, that the slightest addition of playback distortion makes it sound dreadful - this is balancing a broom on the pointy end type of thing.

 

Yes, I understand your view regarding playback distortion exacerbating the distortion in the playback, maybe there are some kind of distortions that combine in some way to produce audibly unpleasant results?  Maybe, that is, I am not entirely sure what they are. 

 

It could also be argued that a 100% transparent system will simply reproduce any distortions in the playback, and similarly, a less transparent system might mask distortions.  So you might think or hear that system A is distorting less than system B, but in fact system A is the less transparent of the two.

 

To put this another way, lets say you had a recording that is known to be 100% free of any kind of distortion, a perfect recording.  You play this on a system and hear some kind of distortion.  In this scenario you know for sure that the distortion is in the system, you know what the distortion sounds like, so this should make "sorting" rather more straight forward. 

 

The problem that I have with my system is that with many recordings, everything sounds pretty much free of any audible distortions.  I am sure they are there, but I hear nothing that troubles me in the slightest.  So I go from listening to many tracks, and the system and the recordings sound distortion free.  I then try a particular recording and it sounds distorted, what am I to conclude?

 

So, the distortions in my system are not audible when listening to undistorted recordings and it is only when they combine with distortions in the recording that I hear them.  I therefore need to listen to distorted tracks to hear the distortion in my system.  I get this, as a theory..  What I do not follow is how I tell this apart from the possibility that I cannot readily hear the distortions in my system and all I am hearing is distortions, or lack of distortions, in the track.  For me you would need very precise details of what the distortions are and how they combine and how this combination sounds versus the original recorded distortion alone.  This seems a little tricky, and prone to misinterpretation. 

 

Using an undistorted track and establishing what distortions can be heard as a result of the playback system seems rather more straightforward to me.

 

To rewrite your quote; the "margin of error" is so tiny, that the slightest loss of transparency in the playback system makes it sound listenable - this is balancing a broom on the pointy end type of thing.

 

How can one tell the difference?  Maybe it can be done, but I would need more precise information to understand this in a useful and usable way.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

46 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

I still like Brown Sugar ...

 

yeh, yeh but what about the Stones ?🥰

[PeterSt]

All right, what about get yer ya ya's out then ?

Or is that a dishonest proposition ?

[PeterSt]

You don't want my pants to fall down, do you ?

[Confused]

1 minute ago, PeterSt said:

You don't want my pants to fall down, do you ?

No.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

 

58 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

I still like Brown Sugar ...

 

4 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

All right, what about get yer ya ya's out then ?

Or is that a dishonest proposition ?

 

4 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

You don't want my pants to fall down, do you ?

 

You have to ask Brown Sugar !

[Confused]

OK - Enough of Peter's trousers, let's get back on topic.  Which of these recording sounds best, and which is most suitable for "rig sorting"?

 

Neither version has stunning sound quality, but they are different in a rather interesting way....

 

 

 

By they way, the second version does include some spectacular pink trousers, which I fear may invoke subconscious expectation bias.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

Stripped is one of their better recordings

 

[PeterSt]

The second one is good for nothing. Zero resolution, ~zero stereo. Flat as hell.

 

The first one would be good to check out the hard panning possibilities of your system. Mind you, LP users would perceive it more as the second one, and D/A users might have problems to really get it as hard-panned in the room as can be perceived through headphones.

 

Otherwise the first one would be good to get more emphasis out of the stroked electric (metal string) guitar; it's a detail that gives the song an extra dimension IMO, but it should be loud enough (listen to the second one for comparison, where no guitar is audible at all).

 

 

[PeterSt]

As a matter of (edit: my) fact, Let it Bleed is one of the most nice/good sounding albums from that era. BUT, stay away from remasters and especially stay away from Hires versions.

This is what we over here (in this room) call an "honest" recording.

[PeterSt]

Get yer ya-ya's out is for me loaded with youth sentiment.

The past 10 years I have mentioned this album numerous times because at first it sounded so poor that it had to be a miserable recording. However, it turned out it could be improved upon, by meas of random improvements in the system (call it Frank's story). Each time I achieved something sysem-wise, I tried that album, and today there is nothing wrong with it. I once said : even Watts is now jumping up and down behind his it (virtually impossible, but the album now shows that to me).

Watch Watts in the second Brown Sugar clip and you know what I mean, if you already didn't.

[Confused]

12 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

The second one is good for nothing. Zero resolution, ~zero stereo. Flat as hell.

 

The first one would be good to check out the hard panning possibilities of your system. Mind you, LP users would perceive it more as the second one, and D/A users might have problems to really get it as hard-panned in the room as can be perceived through headphones.

 

Otherwise the first one would be good to get more emphasis out of the stroked electric (metal string) guitar; it's a detail that gives the song an extra dimension IMO, but it should be loud enough (listen to the second one for comparison, where no guitar is audible at all).

 

 

I tend to agree, in fact I'm pretty sure the second one is pure mono, and yes, it is relatively flat and many things appear to be missing in the mix.

 

It is not quite that simple to me though.  Whilst the first track is definitively the better of the two, the second one does seem to be less distorted to me.  Less there, but in some ways it is an "easier" listen.

 

I would defiantly opt for track 1 for "rig sorting"

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

4 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

As a matter of fact, Let it Bleed is one of the most nice/good sounding albums from that era. BUT, stay away from remasters and especially stay away from Hires versions.

This is what we over here (in this room) call an "honest" recording.

I prefer the Stripped "Love in vain" c/w Let it Bleed version "Love in vain". I have the HD tracks version of let it Bleed so that could be the problem

[PeterSt]

1 minute ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

I have the HD tracks version of let it Bleed so that could be the problem

 

David, it 100% is. That one is completely congested (as so many fake hires).

[fas42]

17 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

I believe we all respond to the " energy and life of the musical creativity". So like I said before, we have no problems agreeing on the words which describe the experience it is just the perception of the playback quality that gets us to that point appears to be very different. Your perception of the playback that floats your boat does not appear to be the same as others, and the things that prevent you enjoying the music also do not appear to be the same as others.

 

Remember a key point I make is that the quality is such that the speakers become completely invisible, aurally. This is what completely bowled me over the first time I heard it, over 30 years ago - as soon as the SQ drops off, even slightly, from that plateau the presentation reverts to the normal soundstage of a stereo system - the illusion is completely extinguished.

 

I listen for the qualities in the sound that tell me I'm close to that point - the current Edifiers are still well short of that ... but that's the target.

 

Quote

 

 

So again, the language is not the problem. It's not as if I am saying "I aim for the gear to get out of the way of the music" and you were saying "I want to hear the signature of each piece of gear". We are saying much the same thing in the descriptions of what we want but we very much a differ on how to get there. Again, beauty is in the eye/ear of the beholder as to what is convincingly lifelike reproduction.

 

The key thing here is that there are multiple ways of getting there - no-one else I've come across has used my approach, but all the other methods are just as significant - one advantage of mine is that low cost gear can be used.

 

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It is not uncommon for married couples to have similar tastes in things. It is also quite possible that Bev is quite sensibly just enjoying the music and not trying to provide a critique on the gear.

 

Hmmm ... not really 🤨. Too much feedback, over a long time, from too many people - others can certainly tune into what's going on. Note what @ray-dude said about people hearing his rig - some completely understood, others were totally baffled ... the less one thinks about how an audio system should sound, the more likely they will appreciate it.

 

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Frank this sounds very much like you are saying bad recordings will be revealed as bad recordings, the better the playback system is..... If the "track is dynamite bad, technically - the better the system, the more obvious this is".

 

Technically bad recordings will sound awful, as soon as the playback slips from optimum. Superbly well done recordings will be very impressive on virtually anything. Get a rig to sit at the optimum point, and both the technically bad, and superbly well done, will work, as listening experiences.

 

Quote

 

This is what most of us have been saying all along and have been trying to convince you. I know you then said, but you use the bad track to "fine tune" the system however, the better the system gets more "finely tuned", the more obvious the bad recording will be – unless you mean that "fine tuning" doesn't result in better playback . Fine tuning results in a better system and "the better the system, the more obvious dynamite bad becomes". It is virtually the opposite of your previous position of fine tuning your system makes bad recordings sound good or sound less bad.

 

 

 

 

See above... 🙂

[fas42]

16 hours ago, Confused said:

Yes, I understand your view regarding playback distortion exacerbating the distortion in the playback, maybe there are some kind of distortions that combine in some way to produce audibly unpleasant results?  Maybe, that is, I am not entirely sure what they are. 

 

A simple way of looking at it is the recording setup would have had a distortion signature. And the playback system has another distortion signature. Which is likely be very different. The poor listening brain has to fight its way through 2 layers of possibly highly conflicting distortion to 'understand' the music. One has control over one, but virtually none over the other ... so ...

 

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It could also be argued that a 100% transparent system will simply reproduce any distortions in the playback, and similarly, a less transparent system might mask distortions.  So you might think or hear that system A is distorting less than system B, but in fact system A is the less transparent of the two.

 

Quote

To put this another way, lets say you had a recording that is known to be 100% free of any kind of distortion, a perfect recording.  You play this on a system and hear some kind of distortion.  In this scenario you know for sure that the distortion is in the system, you know what the distortion sounds like, so this should make "sorting" rather more straight forward. 

 

The problem that I have with my system is that with many recordings, everything sounds pretty much free of any audible distortions.  I am sure they are there, but I hear nothing that troubles me in the slightest.  So I go from listening to many tracks, and the system and the recordings sound distortion free.  I then try a particular recording and it sounds distorted, what am I to conclude?

 

The brain is very forgiving - it will tolerate distortion up to a certain point - and then it's too much ... it's an overload situation. Not talking from a physician's POV, just something that makes sense to me - I had recordings which were "hopeless", for years, and then one day they snapped into place ... huhhh??! The brain having a limit is what seems to be an answer.

 

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So, the distortions in my system are not audible when listening to undistorted recordings and it is only when they combine with distortions in the recording that I hear them.  I therefore need to listen to distorted tracks to hear the distortion in my system.  I get this, as a theory..  What I do not follow is how I tell this apart from the possibility that I cannot readily hear the distortions in my system and all I am hearing is distortions, or lack of distortions, in the track.  For me you would need very precise details of what the distortions are and how they combine and how this combination sounds versus the original recorded distortion alone.  This seems a little tricky, and prone to misinterpretation. 

 

Yes, it would be tricky. It's taken me years to learn how to fully 'read' what I hear in the sound, which has happened because I do it over and over again. I believe a good technique is to point to a certain recording which may sound off, say to you, and insist that the recording is fine - if you find it unpleasant to listen to, then the combined distortion is too great. So what you have to do is to start experimenting, with the intention of making that recording sound 'clean'.

 

Carole King's Tapestry, in a standard release, I found excellent in the early days - the slightest veering from the right direction in tweaking, and it became uncomfortable to listen to.

 

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Using an undistorted track and establishing what distortions can be heard as a result of the playback system seems rather more straightforward to me.

 

The trouble here is that brain compensates - I would struggle using this.

 

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To rewrite your quote; the "margin of error" is so tiny, that the slightest loss of transparency in the playback system makes it sound listenable - this is balancing a broom on the pointy end type of thing.

 

How can one tell the difference?  Maybe it can be done, but I would need more precise information to understand this in a useful and usable way.

 

Unfortunately, listening in the flesh is the easiest - I mentioned the tambourine in the Rolling Stone's track; when you nail it, there's the tambourine, sounding just like it should ... it's like an on/off switch.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

31 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Remember a key point I make is that the quality is such that the speakers become completely invisible, aurally. This is what completely bowled me over the first time I heard it, over 30 years ago - as soon as the SQ drops off, even slightly, from that plateau the presentation reverts to the normal soundstage of a stereo system - the illusion is completely extinguished.

I listen for the qualities in the sound that tell me I'm close to that point -

The key thing here is that there are multiple ways of getting there -

 

Once again, our descriptive language is the same. I also look for the speakers to aurally disappear.

 

We both want to go to Rome, we both agree what Rome looks like, we both agree that there are many different roads to Rome....BUT, when we each arrive in Rome we are in different places.

[fas42]

16 hours ago, Confused said:

OK - Enough of Peter's trousers, let's get back on topic.  Which of these recording sounds best, and which is most suitable for "rig sorting"?

 

Neither version has stunning sound quality, but they are different in a rather interesting way....

 

 

 

By they way, the second version does include some spectacular pink trousers, which I fear may invoke subconscious expectation bias.

 

The answer is to get a solid version of it, like this one, and note all the layers in the mix, the air, interplay of the vocals, and bite of the sax ... full of good stuff, 😉

 

 

[fas42]

17 minutes ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Once again, our descriptive language is the same. I also look for the speakers to aurally disappear.

 

We both want to go to Rome, we both agree what Rome looks like, we both agree that there are many different roads to Rome....BUT, when we each arrive in Rome we are in different places.

 

Okay, I could put on that Rolling Stones track, the version in the previous post, on a competent rig - not the Edifiers, as yet - and I would see a huge stage, and nowhere where I was in the room would I be able to single out the speakers as being the source of the sound ... can you relate to that?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

no-one else I've come across has used my approach,

 

That's the thing Frank. I believe that there has been a great many people that have tried exactly your approach which is as far as we can surmise you continue to tweak your system to squeeze every single last bit of goodness out of it. This is the goal of any tweaker and there are many thousands of tweakers in the audiophile community. They all want their speakers to aurally disappear and to achieve convincing lifelike sound. I cannot accept that they somehow fall short in either the skill or perseverance area to replicate your results if it were possible.

 

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Too much feedback, over a long time, from too many people - others can certainly tune into what's going on.

 

It's not a question of other people being able to enjoy your sound system which I am sure they can. In fact, I am pretty sure I would enjoy your sound system and be pleased with your results. What is in question is the extent of the results

 

 

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Note what @ray-dude said about people hearing his rig - some completely understood, others were totally baffled ... the less one thinks about how an audio system should sound, the more likely they will appreciate it.

 

I very much doubt anybody here was "totally baffled" by ray dude's results. He is using extreme high end gear and while some of his methods may not be orthodox to some (I am not suggesting they are not), no one is going to fall off their chairs that using a $50,000 server should in theory produce great results.