Measurements & Sound Quality

[Ralf11]

I'm interested in any cites to the scientific literature for detection of transients, or non-detects...

[fas42]

If your rig can fully express the attack of a piano key being struck hard, then everything's fine. Not talking about smoochy music here, this is Chopin or Liszt, in full flight. The transients are still miles within the capability of a playback chain; there is nothing 'magical' about them.

 

The 25 year old Yamaha keyboard we have here perfectly displays the difference between competence, and lack of such, to do transients: if not switched on in ages, and cold, the piano sound is dreadful, the transient attack is a sick joke. But give the beast a good thrashing for a couple of days, and its tonality fully awakens. The quality transits to 'convincing', and one could easily fool someone in the next room. Not a single thing in the environment changes; merely, the internal circuitry is fully 're-energised', and is now working correctly.

[Summit]

On 12/22/2018 at 1:50 PM, STC said:

 

I understand what you are trying to convey here after reading your post till the end. However, reading this sentence in isolation may create some confusion as to the role of the speaker.

 

I intentionally left out from qualifying the term "spot" and "instrument" because that would lead to other areas of human perception of sound.

 

IMO, there is nothing wrong if the sound comes from the tweeter or woofer. That's how a speaker function anyway. In a normal two stereo setups (devoid of reflection) the image(s) will float between the two speakers. This is more natural compared to having all sound emanating from a single speaker. However, saying that sound shouldn't originate from the woofer itself is wrong as it depends on the size of the instrument itself.

 

A mouth is about 4 inches wide, and that's where the vocal originates.  If Norah Jones were to sing in front of you, the size of the sound would correspond to the size of her mouth. That's the same with a harmonica. The radiating surface is relatively the size of the woofer. The problem starts when you try to reproduce a piano or a drum set as they radiate from a large area or multiple spots. In this case, the sound of a single instrument will not have the large radiating surface, and we knew the size of piano due to prior knowledge of how a real piano would sound. This "unnaturalness" shouldn't be equated to inherent misinformation and confusion that the brain will have when creating phantom images. At most, this sounds 'unnatural" in a different sense because you are hearing an 8 foot Steinway piano sound coming from 1 foot piano (reference to a speaker size) and your prior knowledge knows that's not real.

 

 

In reality no musicians are playing in our living room. The recordings we play on our stereos is not the same as a live concert, it’s just an illusion, and we want to be tricked to “believe” that the musicians are playing in front of us on real instruments. The more believable the reproduction is the better we like it. But remember it is never real and just an illusion there the audio system that trick us best is the one we audiophiles like the most. Sound stage, image and sense of dimension is essential parts of the illusion.  

[STC]

1 hour ago, Summit said:

 

In reality no musicians are playing in our living room. The recordings we play on our stereos is not the same as a live concert, it’s just an illusion, and we want to be tricked to “believe” that the musicians are playing in front of us on real instruments. The more believable the reproduction is the better we like it. But remember it is never real and just an illusion there the audio system that trick us best is the one we audiophiles like the most. Sound stage, image and sense of dimension is essential parts of the illusion.  

 

On the part about the sound coming from speakers, which is my response(s) related to,  a speaker itself is not the limiting factor. There are many great live concerts where almost all the performance come out from the speakers. A digital piano is in a way a speaker playback. So too an electric guitar. Even a double bass. All these reproduce the sound through the speaker despite being a live performance.

 

There are millions here who couldn't distinguish a digital piano over the "real" acoustic one. Some do not even know the difference. The challenge for accurate reproduction of a recording is to reproduce them accurately so that the brain localize them as they would localize them in real performance. The second part is to create the ambiance of the live performance. That means make them sound like how it will sound in a concert hall, or a club or just a small room depending on the material or genre.

 

This will lead you to a discussion about spatial sound reproduction. This is a complicated topic, and after a recent forum exchange with music producer for big-time Hollywood movies,  I realize there are many misunderstanding, and until we all can sit together and listen to the different systems, we will go on forever arguing.

 

Happy New Year!

[fas42]

Spatial audio is not complicated at all - give the brain enough information, and it does all the necessary end processing, effortlessly. The subjective divide is caused by the playback needing to be of a, very high, standard, so that there are no "giveaways" in what the ears can pick up.

 

A very easy test is to just listen to a YouTube clip of a supposedly high performance rig working - if one can easily hear the 'fakeness' of the SQ via that 'tainted' pathway, then listening in the flesh is guaranteed to be no better - the anomalies will be even more obvious, and the mind dismisses it, "as just hifi" ...

[pkane2001]

48 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Spatial audio is not complicated at all - give the brain enough information, and it does all the necessary end processing, effortlessly.

 

Can you list the specific information that is needed by the brain, Frank? Since it's not at all complicated ?

 

[fas42]

Tsl, tsk, the reading skills need to be topped up a bit, Paul  ... I've noted many times, on CA, why all these technical crutches people have devised to get stereo to sparkle, in the spatial sense, work - they ferret out, and highlight the spatial cues that already exist in the recording, or, add some good guesses at to what's needed - voila, spacious, immersive sound, to various degrees of success.

 

So, the "specific information needed" are auditory cues that always make sense. Our analytical brains have a so-so grasp on these; but they already exist in the recordings, at subtle levels, perfectly formed by the conditions in which the sound elements were captured.

 

All one has to do is to stop the playback rig from tromping all over this data; dithering it into a useless soup of auditory chaos.

[pkane2001]

30 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Tsl, tsk, the reading skills need to be topped up a bit, Paul  ... I've noted many times, on CA, why all these technical crutches people have devised to get stereo to sparkle, in the spatial sense, work - they ferret out, and highlight the spatial cues that already exist in the recording, or, add some good guesses at to what's needed - voila, spacious, immersive sound, to various degrees of success.

 

So, the "specific information needed" are auditory cues that always make sense. Our analytical brains have a so-so grasp on these; but they already exist in the recordings, at subtle levels, perfectly formed by the conditions in which the sound elements were captured.

 

All one has to do is to stop the playback rig from tromping all over this data; dithering it into a useless soup of auditory chaos.

 

Sorry, Frank, was this an answer? Because I didn’t see any specifics mentioned. Maybe I do need to improve my reading skills?

 

[fas42]

Gotta luv the scientific crowd ... unless one can regurgitate the very latest research findings on a particular topic, "you're not saying anything!".

 

Let's just say understanding precisely how human hearing processes incoming data, to make sense of the world, is an extremely active research field ... right now. If you want numbers, for the sake of numbers, then you'll need to hunt them down yourself ...

[pkane2001]

Just now, fas42 said:

Gotta luv the scientific crowd ... unless one can regurgitate the very latest research findings on a particular topic, "you're not saying anything!".

 

Let's just say understanding precisely how human hearin processes incoming data, to make sense of the world, is an extremely active research field ... right now. If you want numbers, for the sake of numbers, then you'll need to hunt them down yourself ...

 

I understand, Frank. I was just curious if you had something specific to share.

 

[fas42]

1 minute ago, pkane2001 said:

 

I understand, Frank. I was just curious if you had something specific to share.

 

 

Sorry, I appear to have misunderstood your intent ... the key thing that I've taken away from all my exposure to rigs working at varying degrees of clarity is that there is an absolutely critical level of "transparency" needed for the spatial information embedded in the recording to be properly decoded by the listening mind. If a system happens, at that point in time, to fall below that standard, then the spatial integrity of the presentation will be quite mediocre; but manage by any means to get above that required, and the recording space(s) "open up".

 

As an example most would understand, it's as if you had two adjacent but aurally separate rooms, one with a stereo rig, the other with a MCH setup equivalent in playback quality; put on the 'same' recording in the two rooms, the MCH one has the decoded information working well, through the extra speakers - well synchronised in time. And you can step, as you like, between the two rooms - that's how 'dramatic' the apparent difference is.

[Summit]

23 hours ago, STC said:

 

On the part about the sound coming from speakers, which is my response(s) related to,  a speaker itself is not the limiting factor. There are many great live concerts where almost all the performance come out from the speakers. A digital piano is in a way a speaker playback. So too an electric guitar. Even a double bass. All these reproduce the sound through the speaker despite being a live performance.

 

There are millions here who couldn't distinguish a digital piano over the "real" acoustic one. Some do not even know the difference. The challenge for accurate reproduction of a recording is to reproduce them accurately so that the brain localize them as they would localize them in real performance. The second part is to create the ambiance of the live performance. That means make them sound like how it will sound in a concert hall, or a club or just a small room depending on the material or genre.

 

This will lead you to a discussion about spatial sound reproduction. This is a complicated topic, and after a recent forum exchange with music producer for big-time Hollywood movies,  I realize there are many misunderstanding, and until we all can sit together and listen to the different systems, we will go on forever arguing.

 

Happy New Year!

 

Happy New Year!

 

Let us continue this discussion about measurements, sound quality and what make one gear or system sound good while not another next year.