Measurements & Sound Quality

[bluesman]

56 minutes ago, mansr said:

"what in our living room is lacking that a live concert has?"

Musicians.

Exactly!

 

 

[NOMBEDES]

Can you plot human hearing on a graph?  A bell curve?

Do any two people hear something as complex as music in the same way?  

 

So how can we agree on any relationship between measurements and sound quality?

 

Put 10 audiophiles in a room and you may get 7 opinions regarding sound quality regardless of measurements.  (and who knows if measurements are accurate anyway?)

 

 

[Miska]

One can learn quite a lot how different measured faults sound like and be able to name those faults. Once two persons both know where some sonic property comes from, they can have a common name for it too. Was it Harman or Philips who even had application for this?

 

One example being the compression artifacts of MP3, these are both measurable and audible. If two persons know this, they could both say "it sounds like MP3". It has pretty distinct sonic flavor.

 

Measurements overall are science and lot of areas from any engineering to medical sciences depend on accurate measurements. Way beyond anything related to audio. Without measurements we wouldn't have any HiFi or electronics in first place.

 

[sdolezalek]

It would be interesting to develop a "scoring system" along the lines of what we now use REW for that allowed someone (ideally the system owner) to competently measure a sound system across a range of variables that included frequency response, phase response, soundstage, pulse response, reverberations, timing accuracy, etc. that you could then compare to ??? 

Would you compare it to how the same piece of music sounded in the 5th row at Symphony Hall X, or the front row at your favorite jazz club, or the control seat at a respected sound studio, or ....

The problem is that we can measure a lot of things, but I'm not sure we know how to rank those measurements against each other in relative importance and then we don't really know what standard to compare them to.  We can much more easily measure whether what went into a piece of equipment on one end came out the other side in tact.  But sound interacts with our environment in a way that video, for example, does not and so it is only by reference to another environment that we can really say whether what we hear sounds as much as possible to what was recorded.  

So when we say that we are working on "making our systems sound better" do we really know whether the end result is more faithful to the original or not?

[bluesman]

1 hour ago, NOMBEDES said:

Put 10 audiophiles in a room and you may get 7 opinions

I would have guessed 11.......

 

[Ralf11]

8 hours ago, mansr said:

Musicians.

 

I don't want those filthy beasts in my home - if they must be allowed in, at least they should use the side door.

[Ralf11]

I agree we don't want a too warm sound - just slightly warm - say, a recent model Audio Research tube pre-amp, but not a really old CJ ultra-toaster warm pre-amp.

 

I also agree with @jabbr 's points.  And I see DSP in the speakers/room as providing that, or close to it.

 

As for deliberately distorted sound, I deleted Lou Reed's metal Machine Music album as it was just too dissonant, not to mention annoying.  I am also waiting for @gmgraves to get the wah-wah pedal tuned just right for his rap album.

[fas42]

14 hours ago, iaval said:

Usually not without introducing other problems. 

 

Some would believe this, but I have found it to be otherwise. The main 'trick' is to precisely focus on aspects of the sound which are faulty - the one word that should never enter the discussion is "better"; at no time does one do anything to make the sound "better" - as I sometimes say, one Subtracts Badness, it's never an exercise in Adding Goodness; though the latter will be a by-product, automatically, in the subjective sense.

 

Quote

I'm a bit unclear on this - digital in this context is meant as PCM? 

The biggest problem with the CD era music IMHO is that dreaded loudness war, and the fact that many artists can't even render lossless track out of their DAWs and therefore supply labels with MP3s. 

 

Any mechanism where the music source can be treated as computer processable data.

 

The loudness war is due in part to the failure of audio systems to convey the vibrancy and energy of live sounds. So they substitute loudness as an easy "fix" - a bad cook adds too much salt or sugar to the dish to "give it some punch", and this is the deplorable state of much of the current recording production.

 

Note that one has to be careful not to confuse dynamics compression with data compression - entirely distinct processes, with very different subjective results.

[fas42]

9 hours ago, jabbr said:

So really the question should be: what in our living room is lacking that a live concert has? Send that signal to the brain  

 

Simple answer: a competent playback system . Yes, very trite, but doesn't stop it being true - if one has spent years fiddling with rigs that can be on either side of the necessay degree of optimisation to "send out the right signals to the brain", depending upon everything, then it's a remarkably straightforward question to deal with.

 

If the living space could magically detect and null out the distortion artifacts that the brain is reacting to then that's another solution. And room treatments are a well worn, sortof method of trying to do this. But the best remedy is to just get the playback chain to be on its best behaviour - and then one's brain does the rest ..

[fas42]

6 hours ago, NOMBEDES said:

Can you plot human hearing on a graph?  A bell curve?

Do any two people hear something as complex as music in the same way?  

 

So how can we agree on any relationship between measurements and sound quality?

 

Put 10 audiophiles in a room and you may get 7 opinions regarding sound quality regardless of measurements.  (and who knows if measurements are accurate anyway?)

 

 

 

Best is to have non-audiophiles listen! People who don't know what they are supposed to be hearing are the best guide, because the audio crowd are obsessed with mentally measuring the level of bass, precision of imaging, etc, etc.

 

I'm pleased when I can have the system running at maximum volume, and non-audio people are blissfully unaware that this is the case, and even ask for more volume; they have no trouble interacting with each other while listening - because the system is not yelling at the top of its voice, "Look at me!!"

[sandyk]

6 hours ago, Miska said:

Without measurements we wouldn't have any HiFi or electronics in first place.

Miska

 Agreed.

However the major sticking point is when we try to attribute or deny differences as a result of measurements which are already close to what most E.E.s consider the threshold of audibility.

 Many would suggest that the levels of audibility may be considerably lower than was  originally believed, especially as system noise levels are further reduced due to a marked improvement in the noise performance of the most recent types of voltage regulators..

Perhaps a little like the ability of a well trained Sonar operator ?

Alex

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

 

I don't want those filthy beasts in my home - if they must be allowed in, at least they should use the side door.

 

 But first fumigate them and lock away your wife and daughters ?

[Miska]

1 minute ago, sandyk said:

However the major sticking point is when we try to attribute or deny differences as a result of measurements which are already close to what most E.E.s consider the threshold of audibility.

 Many would suggest that the levels of audibility may be considerably lower than was  originally believed, especially as system noise levels are further reduced due to a marked improvement in the noise performance of the most recent types of voltage regulators..

Perhaps a little like the ability of a well trained Sonar operator ?

 

Yes, I have already long ago come to conclusion that audibility is not so straightforward. The audibility models used many times are oversimplified. And it is something you can learn; you can teach your brains filters to cut out the disturbances if you know what to focus on. Once you have learned about some defect, it becomes much more apparent and becomes sort of annoyance. For example if you know you have a small scratch somewhere on your car, you will keep noticing it. But likely most other people don't notice it unless you tell them. And then they will start noticing too...

 

But going back to audibility, for example if you have white noise at amplitude of 0 dB and then you mix in 1 kHz sine at -20 dB amplitude, most people will have no problem hearing that tone. If you look that signal at oscilloscope it will look like complete noise. But spectrum analyzer will also have no trouble to show that tone sticking out of the noise. Reason for this is also quite simple, because noise energy is spread over much wider bandwidth than the tone. As an interesting side note, if you start adding jitter, the tone will begin to spread over wider frequency band too...

 

[Ralf11]

if a parasite lays eggs inside a host, but the eggs have not hatched yet... is that parasitism?

 

that is my analogy to the DRM question

[Allan F]

Psychoacoustics plays a significant role as well. Measured characteristics vary as to their effect on sound quality because of the nature of human hearing and its differing sensitivities. 

[jabbr]

12 hours ago, PeterSt said:

The playing together. Must be about PRaT or something.

Anyway, I more or less frequently reported that "we" now are waiting for the applause at the end. It doesn't come ? then it's a studio recording after all.

 

IOW: I think this sensation can be there all right. But don't ask me what it takes to get it there, technically. Better balance ? Anyway it must be about better quality of some sort; the fact that the quality seems to be improving is, ... a fact.

I think that until we are able to describe mathematically the difference between a performance and the recording of a performance, that we will remain unable to develop measurements that meaningfully distinguish between reproduction systems that are “lifelike” or not. 

[sandyk]

9 minutes ago, jabbr said:

I think that until we are able to describe mathematically the difference between a performance and the recording of a performance, that we will remain unable to develop measurements that meaningfully distinguish between reproduction systems that are “lifelike” or not. 

 

 How can they ever be truly " lifelike" while using ONLY 2 front stereo speakers , which the vast majority of Audio systems do ?

[Kal Rubinson]

8 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 How can they ever be truly " lifelike" while using ONLY 2 front stereo speakers , which the vast majority of Audio systems do ?

Thanks.  

[Jud]

13 hours ago, PeterSt said:

The playing together. Must be about PRaT or something.

 

The interesting thing is I remember you having me listen to a piece of music (by someone and The Holy Innocents if I remember, a jazz ensemble piece) with two different settings in your software. It was I think a memory utilization setting, SFS perhaps? Nothing explicitly to do with DSP.  And I told you that one setting seemed much better than the other at presenting the ensemble as musicians playing with and reacting to each other. The setting that wasn't as good seemed to lose the thread of some of the instrumental lines and present the piece as more of a jumble.

 

So even if you didn't know what to measure for musicians playing together, you know how to get your software to reproduce it.

 

Edit: Yes, this - https://www.allmusic.com/album/octave-of-the-holy-innocents-mw0000105086

[fas42]

31 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 How can they ever be truly " lifelike" while using ONLY 2 front stereo speakers , which the vast majority of Audio systems do ?

 

A competent stereo system presents lifelike reproduction because the 2 front speakers completely disappear from one's awareness - it literally becomes impossible to locate the position of the speakers just using one's ears.

 

Playback will fail the test, if there are giveaways in the sound that our ears zoom in on - it is not trivial to deceive our hearing, but can be done with sufficient attention to detail.

[STC]

41 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 How can they ever be truly " lifelike" while using ONLY 2 front stereo speakers , which the vast majority of Audio systems do ?

 

That depends. If you have one or two soloist then there should be any difference.  Briggs and AR demonstrated that two thousands and majority of them couldn't distinguish. 

 

We have reached the desired sound quality in recordings long ago. Now is the time to concentrate on the psychoacoustics aspect of it during playback for realism. 

[sandyk]

5 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

A competent stereo system presents lifelike reproduction because the 2 front speakers completely disappear from one's awareness - it literally becomes impossible to locate the position of the speakers just using one's ears.

 

Sorry Frank, but that depends entirely on the recording itself.

However, some multi channel recordings down sampled to Stereo may sound very close with a better than average system.

[sandyk]

6 minutes ago, STC said:

We have reached the desired sound quality in recordings long ago.

 I don't agree  .

I recently heard a 24/192 .wav segment of a track from Barry Diament's soon to be released album, and it sound's better than anything that I have previously heard from Barry. Among other things, the Clocking in his Metric Halo has been markedly improved.

[STC]

17 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 I don't agree  .

I recently heard a 24/192 .wav segment of a track from Barry Diament's soon to be released album, and it sound's better than anything that I have previously heard from Barry. Among other things, the Clocking in his Metric Halo has been markedly improved.

 

That's because you are listening to sound not music as a whole. A good sound engineer can hear the difference of 0.5dB but for rest of the music lovers it means nothing. 

 

Unless you are discussing this with sound from headphones, the room sound is more important for perceived SQ for enjoyment. 

[fas42]

22 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

Sorry Frank, but that depends entirely on the recording itself.

However, some multi channel recordings down sampled to Stereo may sound very close with a better than average system.

 

At a lower level of optimisation that will be the case. The goal is to advance the playback SQ to the point where the speakers always disappear, irrespective of the recording - this is something I've been playing with for many, many years, and it has always turned out that even the most unlikely recordings will 'succumb'.

 

This is how one advances the "art" - accepting a compromise simply because that's as good as one can get with the current situation, and personal knowlege, is not a useful solution.