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The myth of "The Absolute Sound"


barrows

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6 hours ago, Allan F said:

However, it can be used as a reference to assess how accurately a system can reproduce sound. 

 

I suppose I am not getting how something can be used as a reference if you don't know how it's supposed to sound. That's like using a TV anchor's face as a reference for a monitor's color reproduction when you don't know her skin complexion or what makeup she's wearing. It may reveal gross errors, but you really have no way of knowing with any precision how accurate that monitor is.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

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3 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

What exactly is an "original soundfield"?

 

Just pointing out that the language leads the mind to a complexity and diversity that does not in fact exist.  There is but one waveform to rule them all... 😉


The room response of the venue(s) in which the original recording took place is what I understood as the “original soundfield.”

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

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19 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Is captured in the recording to a greater or lessor fidelity depending upon several factors (technical, methodology, etc.).

 

These realities do not convict "the absolute sound" in any way...

 

 

 

Yes, I agree.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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2 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

Most people, including you I suspect, do know what acoustic instruments sound like, and can therefore judge whether what they are hearing from an audio system closely matches what they know. In my previous post, I attempted to emphasize that the assessment is not based on any particular recording - the sound of which may not be truly known - but rather on a sample of many recordings of acoustic instruments. With respect, in view of the foregoing, IMO your analogy is not appropriate.

 

How many times in your life have you seen a woman wearing makeup? Certainly far more often than you have heard any musical instrument played live. If the analogy is not appropriate based on frequency of general experience, it would then be because one ought to be far more able to assess the quality of a monitor vs. that of an audio system.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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13 minutes ago, semente said:

 

There are many different sonic parameters which you can evaluate.

The same is true for video.

If you use several recordings you can improve the accuracy of your judgement.

 

But in a way you are concluding that humans are not very good at evaluating accuracy and realism, particularly if they haven't been trained, don't use the right methodology and don't have solid references of both live and high quality reproduced sound.

 

I (and I think barrows) are going a shade beyond that to say unless you not only intimately know the sound of a particular model of, for example, acoustic guitar, but also the sound of the mic feed for that guitar in the particular recording session, there is no absolute reference.

 

Can some useful information be gathered? Possibly; I wouldn't rule it out. But if you want to try something, set up your home TV by eye, then look up the Imaging Science Foundation settings for your model and see how close you got. Or set up room equalization software by ear, then use the recommended setup procedure and again, see how close you got.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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4 minutes ago, semente said:

 

I think that most of us would be able to distinguish between a violin and a viola or between a piano and fortepiano listening through the earpiece of an old analogue phone despite the narrow frequency bandwidth, the absence of spatial reconstruction or limited dynamic range. But perhaps those who have never listened to these instruments might struggle a bit.

 

If you can't, then we are probably not talking about the sorts of subtle differences that ought to distinguish two high end pieces from each other. Because whatever else HP was talking about, he was referring to "the absolute sound" as a reference for the performance of high end systems. But I think you would be extremely surprised at how fallible the instrument identification abilities of even practiced musicians are in the absence of certain non-tonal cues. Have a look at Table 2 here, where a violin was identified as an oboe 8 times more often than it was identified as a violin by college music students in a test that removed the attack and release portions of the notes: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3345201?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

 

Quote

We are not listening for pleasure and recordings are just tools for sound assessment.

 

 

Did you mean to say the reverse?

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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4 minutes ago, Jud said:

But I think you would be extremely surprised at how fallible the instrument identification abilities of even practiced musicians are in the absence of certain non-tonal cues. Have a look at Table 2 here, where a violin was identified as an oboe 8 times more often than it was identified as a violin by college music students in a test that removed the attack and release portions of the notes: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3345201?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

 

This is a really entertaining and informative article (decades old, but still very worthwhile), and I highly recommend it. Do you think your audio system would enable you to distinguish between the tones of a saxophone and a flute? Based on pure tone identification, without attack and release, of 114 college music students (I don't know if they were from Oberlin, @ARQuint ;) ), 33 identified a flute as a flute, 30 identified the flute as a saxophone, and 15 identified the flute as a trombone(!). Now think about the claim that a musician ought to be able to evaluate the performance of a high end system due to familiarity with the tone of an instrument. Yes, in your system you've got the attack and release to work with. But how bad does a system have to be for attack and release to be mostly or entirely absent? What this scientific experiment shows is that people, even musicians, who believe familiarity with the sound of an instrument gives them a reference to compare the quality of high end systems in reproducing the tone of that instrument are fooling themselves.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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Just now, crenca said:

 

Um, why?  It does test that at all...what's your reasoning to draw your conclusion?

 

What the experiment shows is that attack and release are critical to instrument identification, tone surprisingly little. If differences in tone cannot even enable college music students playing and hearing these instruments every day to hear differences between oboe and violin, or between flute, saxophone and trombone, then exactly what audible differences are you relying on to distinguish the quality of two high end systems from each other? Attack and release? Even mid-fi and some lo-fi systems ought to be able to reproduce that. So again, what qualities are you evaluating to compare two high end systems if reproduction of the tone of an instrument (main tone and harmonics) is very plainly insufficient?

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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Just now, crenca said:

If anything, the conclusion drawn from this test is the opposite from what you have it:  it shows the importance of non-distorted high fidelity playback of the entire waveform in the audio band...

 

Why no, that's exactly what it does not show. What it shows, again, is very precisely this: If you thought the tonality of an instrument was important to you being able to identify it, you were quite wrong. What is actually (and very surprisingly) critical are the attack and release of the instrument.

 

Thus if you thought accuracy in frequency enabling proper reproduction of fundamental and harmonics would enable you to distinguish between a violin and oboe, let alone a violin and viola, in your audio system, you would be incorrect.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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1 minute ago, semente said:

There are many attributes that one has to focus on to determine how realistic a playback system reproduces music, and by realistic I mean lifelike or what one would hear from the audience, the attributes that make up timbre and the spatial cues.

 

This is generalizing. The experiment reduced it to specifics.

 

Do you suppose, as I do, that any reasonable high end system ought to allow you to distinguish between a flute and a trombone? What has been shown by scientific experiment is that the part of the sound that enables you to make that distinction is the attack and release of the notes. This difference in attack and release between the two instruments is a very large scale difference, so large that any reasonable high end system can reproduce it and thus enable you to distinguish the two.

 

There is virtually no difference in attack and release between a viola and violin, let alone one model of violin and another, let alone playback of the same violin (or acoustic guitar) recording on two different high end systems. So what are we left with? Subtleties of tonality, perhaps. Yet the experiment shows even large differences in tonality, such as between a flute and trombone, cannot be reliably identified even by experienced musicians, so what hope do we have of reliably determining which is the "correct" tonality between two different systems playing back the same violin/acoustic guitar/flute/trombone?

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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5 minutes ago, semente said:

 

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Yes - very large measured differences, which one would intuit would then reliably indicate to listeners, especially instrumentalists, which was which, eh? Just like one would intuit a heavier object would fall to earth faster. Too bad ugly little science experiments negate our beautiful intuitions.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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1 minute ago, semente said:

 

Either those experiments were made with very low-fi systems or I have very good ears, which I actually do have. At least according to the choirmistress of the choir I used to be a part of. 😁

 

I love the sound of acoustic instruments, it's part of the pleasure of listening to music.

 

There are sites on the web where one can reproduce these experiments. You might find one and try it.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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22 minutes ago, ARQuint said:

 

Actually, it was Allan F who said this, and I agree. But I'd go further—with the best gear, you should be able to distinguish a Martin from a Gibson.

 

I have two recordings that I find extremely helpful when evaluating equipment. The first is Tone Poems, which has David Grisman and Tony Rice each playing, respectively, a different mandolin and guitar on 16 different selections. The second is demo disc 3 that came with a coffee table book called The Miracle Makers, which celebrates the Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu instrument making families. On that disc, a single violinist (Elmar Oliveira) plays the opening minute of the Sibelius Violin Concerto on 30 instruments—15 Strads and 15 Guaneris. If an audio system makes every guitar and every mandolin sound kind of the same or you can't, with a little practice, tell a Stradivarius from a Guarneri, that system is not an elite one, at least when it comes to the parameter of tonal accuracy. A biggie, when it comes to delivering "the absolute sound".

 

Andy Quint

 

It would be interesting to see how many people have elite systems after a little practice without knowing the answers beforehand - which sample of 5 or so belong to one violin, which to a different violin.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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Just now, ARQuint said:

I've done the experiment using my own system, the "subjects" being audiophiles, violinists, a recording engineer student, and several others. My procedure was been to play a series of the Sibelius snippets, identifying the make of violin. The participants are allowed to take notes. I then play a random series of unknowns, all of them not duplicating the identified violins.

 

I'd love to enlarge the "N" - though I would use a smaller number of examples than I did with earlier tests.

I'd provide 18 of the the one minute Sibelius extracts

 

 6 identified as to violin - 3 Strads and 3 Guarneri del Gesu

 

12 unknowns (and not necessarily 6 Strads and  6 GdGs!)

 

Anyone see a Fair Use problem here?

 

AQ

 

 

I'd love to see it. No way I'm going to opine on the legal question. You might consider asking the label.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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17 hours ago, STC said:


Then how come scientists and professional violinists were so incompetent? 
 

But Claudia Fritz (a scientist who studies instrument acoustics) and Joseph Curtin (a violin-maker) may have discovered the real secret to a Stradivarius’s sound: nothing at all.

The duo asked professional violinists to play new violins, and old ones by Stradivari and Guarneri. They couldn’t tell the difference between the two groups. One of the new violins even emerged as the most commonly preferred instrument.

 

Careful. When I read one such study, the loudest instrument was preferred. Without controlling for loudness, all bets are off.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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1 minute ago, esldude said:

Yes, and one of the myths, apparently not so, is the old Italian violins "project more forcefully" in a hall.  I do believe the winning violin was carbon fiber, and likely much louder.   Dare I mention carbon fiber is an environmental problem versus wooden instruments. 🤐

 

Dang, and I like Formula 1.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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22 hours ago, semente said:

I could be wrong but it looks to me like @Jud could be trying to downplay the importance of tonal accuracy in a recording or playback system.

 

Not precisely, any more than I'd want to downplay the importance of color accuracy across the spectrum in a television monitor.

 

Let's go step by step, being careful not to extrapolate too far:

 

1 - barrows said there wasn't in practicality such a thing as an absolute sound, because you wouldn't know the exact sound of, for example, an acoustic guitar as it was played live in the studio, nor of room effects or whatever else changed the mic feed from that live sound.

 

2 - Several people said they'd know whether or not the sound of an acoustic guitar was "off" in their systems due to familiarity and experience with the sound of that instrument through playing and/or listening.

 

3 - I brought up an experiment where college music students confused violins for oboes, flutes for saxes or trombones, etc., because the inharmonic portions of the instruments' sounds - the initial attack, and the ultimate release - had been removed.

 

4 - There are two points to #3:

 

-- First, the presence or absence of a characteristic attack and release is a very large difference indeed. I'm not sure I've ever heard a system so lo-fi that it cut those out of the sound. We can expect any reasonable high end system to reproduce characteristic attacks and releases. So to the extent two acoustic guitars, let's say, differ in characteristic attack and release, telling them apart may not be that difficult. And since any reasonable high end system ought to reproduce those differences, this would not be a way to distinguish one high end system from another, or tell whether you were hearing the "absolute sound" of a recorded acoustic guitar.

 

-- Second, since we can't use distinctions in reproducing attack and release to differentiate among high end systems, what about the rest of the note - the harmonic portion? Well, even music students hearing instruments many hours per week experienced a lot of difficulty just telling an oboe from a violin using that part of the note, so what hope is there that you would be able to distinguish two high end systems rendering very close to identical reproductions of that harmonic portion, or tell whether one brought you closer to the "absolute sound" of a particular acoustic guitar?

 

Thus, the importance of the experiment is not in any sort of general notion that overall tonal accuracy isn't important for various purposes concerning your enjoyment of accurate sound from your system. Its importance lies in demonstrating one very specific thing: What many folks here intuitively thought in reaction to barrows' initial post - that subtle differences in things like overall tonal accuracy will allow one to distinguish by ear whether one system renders an acoustic guitar closer to the absolute than another - is almost certainly not possible.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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8 hours ago, gmgraves said:

That is correct. The winning violin, made by the Boston firm of Luis & Clark was, indeed, carbon fiber. The thing about the old Cremonese violins is that they make an incredible sound. Listen to the Rozsa Violin Concerto written for Jascha Heifetz with Heifetz playing his 1714 Stradivarius named the “Dolphin” on RCA Victor, and then listen to the Telarc recording from the 1980’s with violinist Robert McDuffie playing a good, modern violin. Notice the way the Dolphin sings. No matter what Heifetz asks it to do, it never sounds harsh or strident. It retains that crystalline top end with a sonorous midrange that just drips with honey! Now contrast that with McDuffie’s instrument. The playing is good, but the violin just doesn’t have that unflappable tone throughout it’s range that the Strad produces effortlessly. This is what these instruments are all about and why they are priceless!

 

If someone made a recording with the carbon fiber violin and told you it was a newly restored Heifetz, I wonder if you'd have the same description of the sound.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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4 hours ago, barrows said:

Of course, if you want to hear pinpoint imaging, and sit in one spot with your back held straight and your head locked in a vise they are not the speakers for you (Vandersteens are great for this).

 

'Struth!  😀

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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35 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

I've been to countless live performances of almost every genre. Some live amplified performances are absolutely awful and worse than the recording. If we throw out those performances amplified with a PA system, by and large they sound "live". Regardless of the seat -- although closer is vastly better, I try to get right at stage for  large amplified performances, and close to stage even for unamplified. Recorded music mostly doesn't even when played back in SOTA systems. I look for the "liveness" to shine through, occasionally we get glimses. "TAS" is about "thereness"

 

We hear differently from each other (with a lot of overlap, of course). Add to that our different audio histories, leading to wide variation in training by experience regarding what a really good system sounds like.

 

I've had Vandersteens for 30 years, and had similar speakers before. Imaging is therefore important to me by predilection and experience. If that part of the "absolute sound" doesn't work, I'm less disposed to think the system sounds real. For other people, Vandersteens' midrange hump is too off-putting. So not only do we have varying experiences of what live music sounds like, we also have different criteria for what takes priority in reproducing the "live" experience.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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3 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

This gets into the whole area of comparing a good recording of a good performance at a good venue to...

 

a poor  performance at a lousy venue or bad seats.

 

Sometimes it is best to avoid "thereness" or at least avoid "whereverness"

 

I'd very much like an excellent recording of the Beatles at the Cavern Club.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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