How much difference does it make?

[fas42]

Always everyone in the audio industry addresses these sort of questions in the wrong manner - worrying about how the levels of Goodness add up, in simple arithmetical patterns. Which is not how human hearing deals with what it hears - the ear/brain doesn't 'measure' how good the sound is; it's just aware of how the presentation comes across, and either gives it a tick - or a cross.

 

If one is aiming to create an illusion, to immerse oneself in the world of the recording - rather than be aware of how Gee Whiz! good your rig is - then the approach needs to very, very different. Worrying about percentages is equivalent to worrying about which bits of your next new car are most important for it to be satisying to own or drive - let's see: engine 35%, suspension, 27%, tyres 14%, etc, etc, etc ... hmmm, sorta dumb, eh? .

 

The one bit of sloppy assembly in the factory is what is going to kill your enjoyment of using that vehicle - and make you want to get rid of it; irrespective of all the brilliant stuff ... and that's how it works with audio too. You will become aware of the 'character' of the reproduction system, and that will always be there, reminding you that the rig is still not getting out of the way - which you will learn to live with, or actually enjoy, or make you  want to indulge in continual swapping, in the hope that the magic combo will fall out of the sky ... somehow.

[fas42]

There are so many takes on what can be done to improve SQ, and managing of vibration certainly plays a part.  I don't use the techniques of shtf, but understand the value of his approach - I appreciated the benefits of mass loading decades ago; in one area to consider, monster speakers weighing a ton is an extremely expensive way of doing this - there are far more cost effective approaches for achieving similar benefits.

 

As for so many of the methods for optimising SQ, the precise value of an individual tweak may be hard to measure - but disable a couple of them, and the floor may drop out from under you in terms of listening satisfaction, .

[fas42]

11 hours ago, jabbr said:

You also use this bizarre terminology of a “bi-directional” line filter ... get a grip of some basic electronics. Circuits are circular, bidirectional ... all of it. Noise floor is also trivial to measure — or just listen — no need for bizarro terminology.

 

 

The subjective noise floor is almost impossible to measure - if it were otherwise, audio wouldn't be in the mess it is currently; leaving the doors wide open for snake oil peddlers to have a wild spree spruiking all sorts of "crazy ideas" ... technically correct audio would be so good that no-one would be motivated to try to improve what they're hearing - and every system would sound exactly the same; always being the contents of the recording, with no signature of the playback chain intruding.

[fas42]

6 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

 

I will bet on transducers.  For the consumer, that means speakers (and their boundary conditions).  DSP is a biggie and I look forward to Kii 3 type performance at lower price points.

 

What I find very amusing is that almost no-one understands why the Kii 3 and similar products can do so well in subjective performance - the "magic" of DSP is proposed as the Big Answer, and of course this is not the case ... having heard a Blaah!! system finely tuned with a DEQX setup to an inch of perfection in the FR, which merely resulted in a variation of being Blaah!!; this is merely a toy for people who want "good measurements".

 

A fully integrated system, carefully optimised, will always be a winner - because so many of the usual weaknesses have been engineered out of the way. As soon as you open the door for people to start fiddling, adding their own special juices, the integrity of the carefully sorted unity will be lost - and the whole messy business starts all over again ...

[fas42]

49 minutes ago, shtf said:

But what you seem to be overlooking is my statement about keeping audible at the speaker the volumes of ambient info already embedded in most any given recording.  If/when that is achieved, the recording hall's ambient info embedded in the recording and remaining audible at the speaker should in most instances completely overshadow most / all room acoustic anomalies.

 

 

 

Exactly. Unfortunately, very few appreciate that this can happen, and even if they experience it in another system they dismiss it as an artifact of the rig, a "type of distortion". Ensuring that they are not then motivated to try and achieve the same results in their own setup. And so they lose ... yet again ...

 

The most vociferous here decrying what is possible are trapped by their belief in the Pyramid of Authority - the persons or organisations at the top are the keepers of the Greatest Truths, and should be deferred to - until someone comes along and kicks the oranges crates that the former have been standing on out from under them - and then there is mild hysteria as the people who need this type of structure work hard to rebuild a new Pyramid of Authority ... and then they all can go back to sleep again ... .

[fas42]

52 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 

That's not always easy to do though, is it ?

 

Indeed ...

[fas42]

Why vibrations matter is that the materials used in all the various parts inside components respond by generating subtle electrical noise, from various parasitic behaviours, and mechanical imperfections. Just enough to degrade the perceived SQ - and the elimination of those factors by whatever means can make a substantial difference in the listening.

 

I use a combination of preventing vibration reaching the parts that may be affected, and, stabilising the internals so that any movement is strongly damped ... how far does one go? Until doing more than what one has done to that point makes no apparent difference.

 

The rule is pretty simple: the better the rig is in resolving detail, the more likely attention in this area will provide substantial improvement.

[fas42]

10 minutes ago, shtf said:

I certainly never said a recording can or ever will contain all the info of the live event.  But I will say that every last recording contains far more of the live event than you and many currently think.  In fact, your playback system is already reading and processing perhaps 100% of the music info embedded in the recording (not the live event).  But by the time it reaches your speakers, much of it is completely inaudible.  As a result, you and many others think microphones and recordings are simply unable to capture much of the live performance. 

 

Yes, that's the story. Recordings are truly amazing captures of musical events, and creations. Worth vastly more than the overly expensive combos of equipment that attempt to extract this information - and that usually do a relatively poor job of it.

[fas42]

shtf, I doubt you will get anywhere here ... these are people who say they believe in integrity as a concept that applies to other ventures - but have little interest in considering it relevant to audio. Unfortunately, the same rules of physics do apply to chains of electronics used for audio playback, as for space missions - and also unfortunately, the ears are sensitive to lackings in that circuitry to a very fine degree. In Voyager, staggering amounts of money go down the gurgler if it's a tiny bit wrong; in audio it merely means that one listens to somewhat subpar sound - the order of magnitude of motivation is slightly different, .

 

Audio is a fantasy hobby for most; few are genuinely interested in evolving the quality of sound heard by being more fastidious in the assembly of the parts, and refining the overall setup of the system - so they will keep chasing gimmicks and impressively technical solutions to try and mask shortcomings in the core functioning of the 'machinery' ... hmmm, for some reason Microsoft Windows just popped up as a thought bubble ...

[fas42]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

Have you considered the possibility that you haven't the slightest understanding of terms like experiment and science ??

 

I certainly appreciate that many here are fond of poor quality, badly constructed experiments - sloppily done to ensure that their strongly held beliefs are not endangered - if it smells sciencey enough, well, it must be valid!

[fas42]

Of course if the engineering was done adequately, rather than worrying about how to sex up the appearance of the gear, than none of the "nonsense stuff" would be necessary ...

 

Yes, they don't know how to measure the important stuff - all the giveaways to the brain that the sound being listened to is 'fake' - it's so much easier to bring in out some sexy measuring kit, pull out some numbers, and say "What a good boy am I!".