True to life recording? - We are fooling ourselves!

[fas42]

18 hours ago, hsmeets said:

Yep, the true to life reproduction is a pipe dream, surely one can buy/build very nice sounding playback systems but it will never be like the real thing. And given many multi-track, overdubbed, post processed studio recordings...how can there be a live reference to listeners of such recording. And so much more factors to consider.....

 

How it works for heavily processed recordings is that one hears, is aware of multiple spaces, in front of one; each with their own part of the overall sound - they overlay each other, and you can shift your focus from one to the other, quite easily - a good, everyday example of this is when two radio stations in the car fight for ascendancy in an area of poorer reception, they blend in with each other, but you can still hear the content of one as being distinct from the other, back and forth.

 

Is this realistic? Of course not! ... especially in the car radio example. However, in the musical creation of an album they are designed to complement each other - and so it still works as a listening experience.

[fas42]

Just now, STC said:

 

That's known as Cocktail Party Effect.

 

Yes ... I'm just pointing out that such a listening 'technique' also works for highly manipulated recordings ...

[fas42]

1 minute ago, sandyk said:

 

You listen to AM Radio  in a car ? 

 

Did I say, AM, radio? The term was used by STC, I recall - and last I checked there was just endless gabbling in that area of the broadcast spectrum ... .

[fas42]

11 minutes ago, sandyk said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_effect

In telecommunications, the capture effect, or FM capture effect, is a phenomenon associated with FM reception in which only the stronger of two signals at, or near, the same frequency or channel will be demodulated.

 

Alex, we need to keep on topic ... . I used the example of, yes, FM radio music playing stations 'layering' to respond to a post - in our car, the switching, if such occurs, is so rapid that effectively you can hear two stations at once.

[fas42]

25 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Listening technique? Wow...you have some far fetched mind control or believe that you do.  

 

Yes, I call it the Cocktail Party Effect ... it means that I'm able to switch my attention from one source of sound in the environment, to another, when there's a mix of sounds occurring ... I'm not sure whether I'm the only one who can do this, though ...

[fas42]

12 hours ago, STC said:

 

You didn't say "cocktail party effect" but gave an impression like some sort mind control technique where in reality it is a common occurrence and nothing to do with stereo reproduction in the context of the discussion.

 

Cocktail party effect is relevant, because it means that when one listens to say a highly 'artificial', extremely rich mixing of all sorts of sound elements in a track, each of which occupy their own acoustic space, that one can switch, quite effortlessly, one's focus from one to the next 'inner track' of the mix ... this is akin to those music documentaries where they play the original multi-track tape of a famous album, and bring up a single track within it, muting the others; to show what the contribution of one of the musicians was.

[fas42]

4 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Its basically attention focusing. Let’s say you’re not concentrating on the music and the violins register as sounding a little irritating. When you actually pay attention you hear some perfectly good violins and some voices hitting high notes very close to the violins’.  Don’t pay any attention and the sound you hear becomes something of a wash and the similar frequencies aren’t separated. But pay attention and you hear immediately that the voices are happening in a slightly different part of the soundstage and can be easily separated from the violin tones, if you pay attention to the music. 

 

And this is precisely why I aim for the SQ that I describe, which is achievable if one goes to enough effort ... whether you choose to focus or not, the music never registers, subjectively, as "irritating" - I can have the system running at "maximum volume", and be doing something completely otherwise for some time - and I never get a buildup of irritation ... If I do, then I know something's wrong with the sound! ... that's my "measuring stick"!

 

IOW, the soundstage is fully consistent, no matter how little or how much attention I pay - just like having real musicians in the room, you see ... .

[fas42]

32 minutes ago, STC said:

 

1)How soundstage and real musicians in the room are related?  

 

If real musicians were in some space beyond the speakers, their music making would have a certain 'presence', create a 'vibe' in the room you were listening, irrespective of where you were sitting, etc. There wouldn't be pinpoint imaging, as beloved by audiophiles, but you would still have no trouble pointing to where each player was, have a strong sense of the location from where their contribution was coming - that's the sense of soundstaging I'm looking for, from an audio system.

 

32 minutes ago, STC said:

 

2)Looking at some of your examples, it looks like you (fas42) could still hear soundstage ( as happened in in actual recording) with one speaker place in front and the other places at the back. True?  

 

 

 

 

Don't understand your question here - the speaker are always placed in a conventional configuration, left and right, pointing directly or almost directly forward always. What I have said is that I'm aware of the sound happening in spaces completely outside the speakers even when behind them; the sound is bouncing off the wall that the speakers face, and that still gives sufficient definition to what I'm listening to.

[fas42]

1 minute ago, STC said:

 

Unlike what you alleges, in life performance we would always able to to pinpoint accurately where the performers are because all the cues relating spatial hearing is received correctly to the ears. 

 

This depends upon the intensity of the sound in the space - when the room is very strongly energised with sound, from live instruments and players, then the echos bouncing around like crazy make precision locating rather difficult, - but we don't mind, because the sense of immersion in the sound is what's driving the enjoyment; knowing precisely where one sound is coming from is no longer relevant.

 

1 minute ago, STC said:

 

In a stereo playback, the position of instruments across the soundstage which is a sound field between the most extreme side where sound emerges. This is limited to the width of the two loudspeakers in a true stereo recording. 

 

It is simply impossible to claim that you could recreate the stage at any position outside the mid point of the triangle. Outside the mid point you would perceive the sound of the speaker closer to you more louder than the other which destroys the ability of stereo to fully utilize the difference of level between the two speakers to create the phantom image. 

 

What appears to happen is that the brain's processing switches to another level of capability, to interpret what it's hearing - if one has experienced rigs for decades, that will allow the mind to access this 'higher order' of presentation, when they're firing; and for it to shrivel back to standard stereo fare when they're misfiring, then you have a good handle on what happens, subjectively ... simply, the mind "fills the gaps", beautifully, when the SQ is good enough.

 

1 minute ago, STC said:

 

It is not possible. But if you insist your brain could reconstruct the positioning information then it is definitely impossible because me and the rest of the people I know could not. Having said that, there can be some occasions where it is possible where the recordings have a very small number of instruments and the instruments are split between extreme left and right channels. For an example, the Sax could be strictly confined closer to the left speakers and a drum to the right. In such circumstances, it is generally possible to perceive a stage because you are can hear two distinct source. So in a way, what you are saying is possible for certain type of recording. 

 

It's a step change in what you hear - below the necessary quality, the sound is 2D, hanging between the speakers like a wet blanket; above the quality, everything springs out of the speakers and positions itself in  clearly defined areas behind the speakers; some such 'stages' are tiny, some are monstrous - completely dependent on how it was recorded.

[fas42]

22 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

The contrary.

 

Obviously everybody has had different experiences of live sound from me - personally, if I'm in a smallish room full of people singing at the top of their voice, "deafening" levels; I have some difficulty in picking out a single voice in the 'mix', and saying, yes, it must be coming from that particular person, riiight there ... I bow to other people's greater abilities, .

[fas42]

The image does shift because of the time delay between the two speakers - this is precisely what I hear when true mono is replayed over a competent stereo setup, as I've described many times: if I stand in the centre of the speakers, and then move to the left the phantom images then 'follow' me - that is, they still appear to be directly in front of me, rather than along the centre line between the speakers. If the rig is not at optimum, and I keep moving laterally, at some point the mind no longer sustains that interpretation - and the sound then dives into the nearer speaker.

 

The remarkable thing is that at its peak this phantom image following can't be shaken, no matter how you move your head or body - the delay of the signals is always translated as an illusion that the sound is directly in front.

[fas42]

13 hours ago, STC said:

 

Now, you are slowly agreeing that accurate phase is no longer relevant. The point is the stereo "ACCURATE and WELL SET UP" loudspeakers could not produce the accurate position due to crosstalk. I have another track where the male and female voice would appears to be coming from the centre but with headphones the male will be on the left  and the female on the right. No stereo system could reproduce that accurately. There goes the reality and accuracy.

 

ST, could you possibly post a snippet of that track, please - I would be interested in what it shows.

[fas42]

10 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

I still don’t agree with you. I have documented what I hear and what the physics and what-we-know-about-psychoacoustics would indicate will happen and they pretty much agree. What I hear from my system in terms of music is ‘no speakers as sources’ and ‘all musicians occupying their individual points in space’, making for outstanding clarity and resolution, while rhythms and interplay of rhythms are incredibly involving and alluring. Are they correct? According to what? They sound great, but I have no idea what the sound engineer put on the master tape and whether what I hear is what he heard or intended. And why should I care as long as what i’m hearing sounds natural, musical, highly involving, joy giving and as far as my tastes are concerned, error free?

 

The good news is that there is enough 'data' on all recordings for this to happen - the "correctness" is irrelevant, because the mind is doing all the necessary compensation to allow this level of  subjective involvement ... if one is listening to live playing of music, there is no "correct" place or way to listen to it, because everywhere is "correct".

 

Your hearing system goes way beyond the capabilities of the sound engineer - he's a rank amateur in making it "work for you!" ... it's pretty obvious at times how contrived the effects are, but it doesn't matter, because your ear/brain is just enjoying the energy, the vitality of the sound of the musical elements.

[fas42]

8 hours ago, STC said:

 

I am speechless. Do you understand what psychoacoustics is? 

 

Looks like you are not interested to find out how this is even possible. Either the loudspeaker positional information is correct and the headphones playback wrong or vice versa. 

 

From experience, how I would put this is such - it's far, far easier to get a playback system to get key elements of SQ correct via headphones; for a variety of reasons. Most speaker playback is flawed, quite substantially, by comparison - and so all the detail is far too blurred to pick up correctly.

 

Every experience I've had with headphones, irrespective of cost, has been a solid negative - first of all they are physically unpleasant, and secondly they reveal less of what's going on than speaker replay; the headphones chain has not been 'debugged', and so come a clear second in the race.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, STC said:

 

Check my link in the profile/signature. Thanks for your interest.

 

Interesting music!

 

Okay, through my laptop's internal speakers there's no problem registering that the female voice is way left of the male; as compared to the first segment - headphones were not required, at all.

[fas42]

ST, note that Blackmorec has achieved most of the behaviour displayed by competent playback through careful choice of the hardware, and plenty of extra effort in refining its setup - exactly the philosophy I espouse. Of course he has his own slant on what is critical, in that he believes somewhat extreme fussiness in dealing with reflections is essential; as a contrast, another enthusiast who achieved truly invisible gear had the attitude that it was all about the speakers - since his interest was in the design and building of speakers it made perfect sense that he would think this way ... now, what's that story again of trying to understand what an elephant was in the dark, and depending upon where you felt, your opinion was completely different? ... underneath it all there is always the integrity of the elephant, and it's always remains so, irrespective of what people think they've got ...

 

The simple truth is that recordings have all the information for full blown, immersive presentations to be generated - no prettying up, makeup is necessary ... just the data of what's been captured is good enough - can you handle it?

[fas42]

13 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Actually Frank and I are not far off on agreeing on most things actually because I hear this sonic picture where loudspeakers as a source totally disappear, replaced by high focused images of instruments playing in free, independent space, according to where they were placed by sound engineers.  I also find this ability to hear the sound differently is like a switch....its either there or not, like a switch,  rather than it slowly coalescing from the ether. And I realise that in order to achieve this sonic Nirvana, you have to remove a lot of the extraneous noise, distortion and inaccuracies from your system.  Once you do, the sonic picture changes entirely and you get a highly focused soundstage with width, depth and height differentiation. But this illusion isn’t static. It can be brought into greater focus, its timbral information can be improved,  the air between instruments can be imbued with sonic character,  instruments can change from being sounds in space, to sounding like actual instruments playing the music or actual people singing the songs. 

 

Thanks for that rundown, Blackmorec, it gives me an excellent handle on where you're at.

 

13 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

So is this some kind on alchemy? No, of course not. Its electronics, physics and psycho-acoustics and is the goal of most audiophiles and audio manufacturers  Now Frank says that i’m obsessive about reflections and room treatments but that is not entirely correct. I really only use diffraction on the wall behind the listening position because I find it really takes away a fairly obtrusive room identity to the sound caused by delayed reflections,  and leaves a very neutral space that will support rather than mask whatever acoustic is on the recording. 

 

Not obsessive ... people could, would say I'm obsessive in worrying about system integrity - it's merely that one has "cornered" a key factor about what's important, and so a lot of effort is spent on dealing with that.

 

13 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

 

But now we get into areas that Frank and I disagree. Frank believes that once you get the illusion, suddenly nothing else, like speaker position, listener position etc  matters. The listener hears the magic no matter where they sit/stand etc.   Now I do get this, partially, in that when I move I don’t suddenly hear 2 loudspeakers as sources. Rather sounds are still independent of the speakers....there’s not suddenly 2 loudspeakers playing music, but when I move, the depth, the width, the height, the image specificity, the acoustically charged air between instruments, in other words, the entire soundstage collapses, or at least makes a lot less sense.  

 

There's an excellent, historical reason for why I think the way I do - when it happened for me, I got the whole shebang; there was no collapse or diminution of soundstage when I moved around, none whatsoever ... I lucked on getting a 'premium' version straight off - there appeared nowhere to go, in terms of "making it better!"

 

The big drama for me was to stop the gear from losing that peak tune that made such happen - that's always been the battle.

 

13 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

 

Now for me, getting that soundstage, something that can sound altogether bigger than my room, with acoustics that are all about the venue and nothing about the room was a labour of several decades, this despite buying equipment with no obvious shortcomings. But, and here Frank and I agree again, I did do a few simple things during those decades that enhanced my SQ far beyond the £££ paid. Dedicated earth was one, dedicated mains with really good quality cabling another, a really good rack to avoid vibration a third, improved power-supplies for my network etc.  And most probably soldering interconnects would be up there if I was prepared the sacrifice $000,s and never again sell the gear I own (or sell it for 0,0x on the $ 😫. 

 

You see, and very unfortunately ... that simple hardwiring of the whole chain could be the one last major obstacle to getting the next level of SQ. Every rig along the way that I've played with has always had that happen as the first step - because it's always transformed the playback from something that I couldn't tolerate for any length of time, to a status where most recordings could be thoroughly enjoyed at some volume level - plenty of issues still, yes, but the sense of 'musicality' was in the room.

 

13 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

But nowhere along the way have I EVER felt that the room doesn’t matter, because with or without the illusion, the room will always DOMINATE proceedings if its colorations, and it ALWAYS has colorations are not sufficiently benign to allow the recording acoustics to dominate.   Essentially you are always listening simultaneously to 2 performances, the musicians as they played on the recording and the recording as it plays in your room. The recording contains a portion of the recording venue’s acoustics and the recording playback contains all your room’s acoustics. If the latter is too intrusive, it will overpower and blot out the former. This is just logic. 

 

That's the theory - but my experience is otherwise. The performance of the room is secondary, as far as the ear/brain is concerned - in the same way as if you had a live rock band - no PA - squeezed in to your living room; as compared to being set up on a sports oval, the sound of what you hear changes, but the integrity of the primary sound makers doesn't alter. In the case of a recording, the primary sound makers are the music plus the captured or manipulated acoustic; and that is what dominates - it nulls out the room contribution, subjectively.

 

13 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

In the end, this is ONLY about the soundwaves reaching our ears, nothing else. All this room treatment, speaker placement, vibration control, reworking mains supply etc etc is only so we can deliver GOOD vibes to our ears such that our Psycho-acoustic system can create a believable illusion of musicians playing instruments and singing songs. The better and more accurate the vibes, the better the illusion....also just simple logic.

 

 

The soundwaves reaching out ears are split, by our mind - one lot is attached to the recording event; the rest is the reaction of the room to the former. In the same way someone can talk to you at the same time as you listen to live music, and you will never mistake that as being part of the music making - so also can our minds discard what it evaluates as not being part of the primary sound of the recording.

 

The big problem normally is that the mind has to work too hard to separate these two sound streams, so it gives up - it's too much of a jumble; so then you have to apply acoustic treatments, solutions to aid the listening brain focusing on what you want as the primary stream. But, the good news is that if one achieves a high enough attenuation of distortion artifacts in the replay chain, then this is adequate for the mind to do full separation, without acoustic aids.

[fas42]

13 hours ago, STC said:

 

@fas42, did you hear the male on the left. Try the headphones. The stereo cues presented there are 100% accurate as encoded in the recordings. 

 

 

 

 

Couple of points: the replay quality of the laptop is never going to be a bit above reasonable; the imaging in fact pulls quite strongly to the left with many recordings, appearing to occur in the range from strongly left to centre of the speakers - which appears to a combination of the relative quality of the channels, and all the bits and pieces of stuff around and almost over the laptop - and finally, the only headphones I have are very, very, very ordinary, old ones; they are far too irritating, and awkward to use with current gear.

[fas42]

8 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Well there’s one point there that I have to say has merit and that’s the removing of connectors. Not something I would ever do given that my system is a substantial investment that I like to recoup some of when I upgrade, but you are right that in total there could be some substantial degradation and therefore gains......non-gas-tight pressure contacts......especially those network plugs that i always view with dark suspicion.  

 

I'm rather chuffed that you thought one concept bore merit ... .

 

The story is that on my first ambitious rig, 35 years ago, it was quite obvious that the quality of connectors had a big bearing on what I was hearing, very early in the piece - every time I pulled them apart and meticulously cleaned them, with alcohol, the SQ went up. Now, having a few bits of stuff upstairs , I decided that it was important to make this part of everything work better - repeatedly cleaning was very annoying, and of short term benefit; next step was contact enhancers, the liquid ones - which were a mixed bag: longer term stability, but the end quality was worse! So, it was sorta obvious what I had to do - I did the hardwiring in a way that could be reversed, by removing connectors if necessary and feeding the cables straight through to the board traces ... voila, no more SQ issues from this aspect.

 

From then on, I could readily pick up the signature of a bad connection - an edge, unpleasantness, irritating 'offness' to the overall sound - far too important to eliminate this, than to worry about "money matters"

[fas42]

Hmmm ... looks very quiet around here, 😄.

 

Talking about liking reverb, what many don't seem to appreciate is that you can have a recording that is a mix of two acoustics - one extremely intimate, "right there" in a tiny spot in front of you; combined with a massively deep space, that extends "for miles". The two co-exist, and your mind has no trouble seeing the two very precisely, with no confusion between the two - this is a type of Art, and is pleasurable to experience.

 

However, an ability of the playback to resolve the detail that maintains these two auditory spaces is essential - attempting to manipulate what comes from speakers, by multi-channeling in some fashion, is doomed to failure of course, if the intention is to improve the presentation - because separation of of the combined spaces that the recording contains would have to be done first - currently close to impossible, even with the best software.

[fas42]

13 hours ago, STC said:

 

 

 

Reverbs and the relation of its use is far too complex. Even Blauert cautioned in his book that the observation detailed in his book was only correct under lab condition. I have given the recording technique used in your reference YouTube videos. They were manipulated with a lots of reverbs (echoes). No one here (including me) could accurately tell the depth of an instruments accurately based on the reverbs of an instruments as they do not provide accurate information of depth but only an approximation. You will use your learning experience to fix an arbitrary depth. I will not respond to your reply unless you want to take up the challenge where you can identify the depth of an instruments in the sample that I provide.

 

 

Here, you are confusing the competence of the listener, with that of the playback system - if I listen to your sample on a low grade setup, like my current laptop, I most likely will have problems with your "challenge". Conversely, if a high performing replay happens, then people who have not the slightest interest in such affairs will have little difficulty picking up the depth cues.

 

The point is, that competent playback renders the distance cues very clearly - this is one of the 'obvious' markers that occurs. Formerly confused information as to "what's going on" becomes startlingly clear - and the layering of the various sound elements is easy to 'see'.

 

Quote

 

 

A speakers should not manipulate. It should produce the same. How is multi channel related to this? Are you one also in the category that who believes a recording is capable of capturing all the spatial information accurately?

 

All the spatial information that matters is captured. It won't be all the information, but it will be sufficient for the mind to decode it, completely unconsciously - if you haven't experienced the radical transformation that occurs in the subjective presentation when a rig is good enough, you won't understand this; having heard this for three decades is why I can listen to poor quality playback of some track and 'know' what it should sound like ... here, I'm consciously translating what I hear.

 

Quote

 

Firstly, if at all a recording is capable of capturing ( I am confining to musical performance only) 100% then pick any of the live performance of the recording and ask them why the applause is coming from the front stage. A true accurate recording shouldn't be producing the applause of the audience which in most cases comes from behind the microphones. Yet you can see even accomplish recordists insist a single pair of stereo microphones captures accurate spatial cues and close to the original event.

 

I also would not respond to your reply to this unless you want to start with explaining why the applause is coming from the front when in the actual event it supposed be from the rear. (This probably will give you a cue why multi channel playback is more accurate).

 

 

 

Whether the applause comes from the back or the front to me is irrelevant ... since it has nothing to do with the thrust of the performance. I'm far more interested in whether it "sounds like applause" - and actually, it usually appears like it's all around me - it fills the space I'm listening in; just like the real thing ... 😜.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, 4est said:

Gosh, my stereo in 1980 could do all of that. Is this what all of your hubbub is about?

 

You say this, but then ...

 

8 hours ago, zacster said:

Whenever I go to a live acoustic concert, whether orchestra, opera, acoustic band, guy/girl on a guitar, or just my daughter playing our grand piano at home, I realize that nothing I play on my system or any system I've ever heard comes close to reproducing that sound.

 

says that ... so, which is it ??

 

"That sound" is what I'm interested in - it emerged 35 years ago, for me; and I'm not interested in anything that is of a lesser standard.

[fas42]

Questions? You only asked two in the post I replied to - the first one was this, "How is multi channel related to this? " ... I responded by pointing out that adding an extra acoustic space, by multi-channel manipulation, will create a confusing auditory experience, with many recordings ... you disagree?