The myth of "The Absolute Sound"

[esldude]

2 hours ago, barrows said:

Here legendary engineer Al Schmidt talks about the process of recording Diana Krall:

 

https://www.mixonline.com/recording/diana-krall-capitol-430107

 

Note the use of the Bricasti M7 reverb unit...

 

 

The convolution reverb I had in mind, which isn't used often, is where I (or some other recording person) goes to where I am recording someone or wish to have it sound like I did, and I run an impulse or sweep to get the impulse.  Then convolution creates my own custom reverb for the real space.  I could then close mike and place people in this real space.  

 

For instance before moving in my house had a 50 ft long 8 ft wide concrete storage area under a porch.  I recorded sweeps in there and can create the reverb from that for my own space.  You can do that with any place you might wish to have the reverb from.  If I wish to be really picky I can do that in stereo with the microphones I intend use recording the musicians so it all matches.  And I can send the file to someone else if they have a use for it. 

 

In this case Schmitt used an echo chamber plus the Bricasti.  If I had the impulse from the same echo chamber I could presumably get close to the real thing.

[barrows]

1 hour ago, jabbr said:

If you think a cable sounds better it actually sounds better.

Haha!  The fact that visual stimuli allow us to perceive a much more precise "soundstage" in a live performance has very little to do with the differences in performance between analog audio cables.  Looking at a cable, gives me absolutely no idea of what it might sound like!

While certainly, expectation bias can color subjective listening experiences, it can also be controlled for pretty easily by those who have trained themselves to do so, but we must always look out for it when subjectively evaluating gear...

 

As an aside (as the OP I will not allow any further discussion of cables here): For those who do not believe audio analog cables matter, I would suggest a (blind if you prefer) comparison of your average consumer cable, with the 4x4, OCC, XLR cable from Iconoclast cables.  These cables are designed by a long time cable design engineer from Belden, they are designed specifically by science and measurements, not by subjective listening.  The designer shares the measurements, and makes comparisons between the measures of Iconoclast and standard Belden audio wire, and shows the measured differences.  But the real truth is in the listening (I am currently evaluating the XLR cable here).  Iconoclast allows for free (maybe you have to pay shipping) 30 day in home trials, so there is very little to lose in trying these.  Anyone who has a better than average system should consider trying these cables.

 

OK, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

[STC]

You don’t need the actual hall impulse. In fact, most of them comes with the own set of impulse response. Even if you had the actual hall, it is still won’t recreate the exact sound of that place with two speakers. Even among regular classical concert goers no one really can agree which hall really sounds like the absolute reference. 

[fas42]

9 minutes ago, barrows said:

Haha!  The fact that visual stimuli allow us to perceive a much more precise "soundstage" in a live performance has very little to do with the differences in performance between analog audio cables.  Looking at a cable, gives me absolutely no idea of what it might sound like!While certainly, expectation bias can color subjective listening experiences, it can also be controlled for pretty easily by those who have trained themselves to do so, but we must always look out for it when subjectively evaluating gear...

 

 

Not going to enter a cable fetish circus, 🤨 - but achieving TAS will nearly always require upgrading, or ensuring the integrity of the playback chain; cables can play a part if poorly implemented - and this usually is because the connections at each end lack integrity, or the shielding is sub-optimal, or the materials and construction are adding some type of low level noise.

 

Worrying about room acoustics, say, lies way, way below this factor, IME - the brain can adjust for how the room reacts - but struggles to filter out noise artifacts contributed by integrity of the signal path issues.

[gmgraves]

3 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Let’s take that recording as an example. Sounds on a recording, especially those with close frequency specta are separated for the listener by frequency, time and position. When certain elements like positional information are missing, closely related sounds start to interfere with one another and the one with greater amplitude will tend to dominate and mask the lower amplitude instrument. When the lower amplitude signal is not heard separately its heard as part of the higher amplitude signal, basically as distortion. Play that recording through a system that does not image well and the recording will sound veiled and the tonal accuracy distorted by the unresolved low amplitude signal. 

 

Play that same recording through a system that is able to tease out more positional information and that same recording will sound less blurred and less distorted as the listener will hear both high and low amplitude signals separately and therefore more clearly. 

My experience with thousands of records and CDs, SACDS, Blu-Rays, downloads and streams is that if it isn’t on the recording (and most of the time, it isn’t) no amount of “teasing” will pull from the recording, that which isn’t there.

[botrytis]

21 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

My experience with thousands of records and CDs, SACDS, Blu-Rays, downloads and streams is that if it isn’t on the recording (and most of the time, it isn’t) no amount of “teasing” will pull from the recording, that which isn’t there.

 

It is amazing what can be heard, on a good system. I was just listening to a recording of Jose James: Yesterday I had the Blues (96/24 FLAC - amazing jazz recording) and on track 5 What a little Moonlight Can Do for You - there were small little things I haven't heard before - players egging each other on in the background. It is pretty neat, when things can be heard like that.

 

My system is by no means stellar but it does have an amazing synergy.

[fas42]

52 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

My experience with thousands of records and CDs, SACDS, Blu-Rays, downloads and streams is that if it isn’t on the recording (and most of the time, it isn’t) no amount of “teasing” will pull from the recording, that which isn’t there.

 

The thing is, it is on the recording - the "teasing out" happens because the brain understands what the sometimes tiny sound cues mean - and the proper relationship with the gestalt is established. "Blurring" and subsequent discarding by the brain of those clues will make the information 'invisible', subjectively.

 

I have also heard "thousands" of recordings - and the same process happens, every time ... 😉

 

The great joy is hearing all sorts of Easter eggs in the most unassuming recordings - "The clever bastards! Hear what they have just done there!!" ... 😊

[jabbr]

1 hour ago, barrows said:

OK, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

 

My point is that despite the actual audio, the brain modulates the perceived sound, including soundstage, in its own ways. That said it remains very difficult to modulate the SQ of a recording to give the realistic impression of actually being there.

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

upgrading, or ensuring the integrity of the playback chain;  lack integrity,  sub-optimal, adding some type of low level noise.

 

Worrying about room acoustics, say, lies way, way below this factor, IME - the brain can adjust for how the room reacts - but struggles to filter out noise artifacts contributed by integrity of the signal path issues.

 

La de da de de, la de da de da

[botrytis]

49 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The thing is, it is on the recording - the "teasing out" happens because the brain understands what the sometimes tiny sound cues mean - and the proper relationship with the gestalt is established. "Blurring" and subsequent discarding by the brain of those clues will make the information 'invisible', subjectively.

 

I have also heard "thousands" of recordings - and the same process happens, every time ... 😉

 

The great joy is hearing all sorts of Easter eggs in the most unassuming recordings - "The clever bastards! Hear what they have just done there!!" ... 😊

 

A bad room can make a stellar system sound bad and a good room can make a mediocre system sound good. The brain can only do so much, after a while is it all mush.

 

Hence why even with the penultimate equipment, room treatment are essential.

[barrows]

36 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

My point is that despite the actual audio, the brain modulates the perceived sound, including soundstage, in its own ways. That said it remains very difficult to modulate the SQ of a recording to give the realistic impression of actually being there.

No doubt...  As mentioned, my belief is that the live experience can never be realistically approached by a recording, regardless of the quality of the recording and the playback system.  Even if it were possible (in some distant future) to have every aspect of the sound of the recording present in the playback, the actual experience is only a mere shadow of what is possible in a live performance.  The reason for this is simple: a live performance is of the moment, it is ephemeral, and fleeting.  It exists in the moment only, as an interaction between performers, listeners, and the third element (muse, grace, whatever name one might like to give to the external force which is music).  Without the live element, and interaction, all we have is a reproduced facsimile.

This does not mean that recorded music playback has little to offer, quite the contrary, but it will never come close to the sublime possibility offered when capable musicians put aside their egos, listeners are willing to be in the moment (turn off those phones folks), and when grace descends from the heavens. 

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, botrytis said:

 

It is amazing what can be heard, on a good system. I was just listening to a recording of Jose James: Yesterday I had the Blues (96/24 FLAC - amazing jazz recording) and on track 5 What a little Moonlight Can Do for You - there were small little things I haven't heard before - players egging each other on in the background. It is pretty neat, when things can be heard like that.

 

My system is by no means stellar but it does have an amazing synergy.

Obviously, the info was on that recording. When I auditioned the Chord Hugo 2, I heard things on one of my own recordings that I had never heard before. Those things are obviously on the recording, but it took a superior DAC to uncover those things.

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

The thing is, it is on the recording - the "teasing out" happens because the brain understands what the sometimes tiny sound cues mean - and the proper relationship with the gestalt is established. "Blurring" and subsequent discarding by the brain of those clues will make the information 'invisible', subjectively.

 

I have also heard "thousands" of recordings - and the same process happens, every time ... 😉

 

The great joy is hearing all sorts of Easter eggs in the most unassuming recordings - "The clever bastards! Hear what they have just done there!!" ... 😊

[gmgraves]

10 minutes ago, barrows said:

No doubt...  As mentioned, my belief is that the live experience can never be realistically approached by a recording, regardless of the quality of the recording and the playback system.  Even if it were possible (in some distant future) to have every aspect of the sound of the recording present in the playback, the actual experience is only a mere shadow of what is possible in a live performance.  The reason for this is simple: a live performance is of the moment, it is ephemeral, and fleeting.  It exists in the moment only, as an interaction between performers, listeners, and the third element (muse, grace, whatever name one might like to give to the external force which is music).  Without the live element, and interaction, all we have is a reproduced facsimile.

This does not mean that recorded music playback has little to offer, quite the contrary, but it will never come close to the sublime possibility offered when capable musicians put aside their egos, listeners are willing to be in the moment (turn off those phones folks), and when grace descends from the heavens. 

I agree. But that doesn’t make it any less of a worthwhile goal. We just strive-on.

[STC]

33 minutes ago, barrows said:

The reason for this is simple: a live performance is of the moment, it is ephemeral, and fleeting.  It exists in the moment only, as an interaction between performers, listeners, and the third element (muse, grace, whatever name one might like to give to the external force which is music).  Without the live element, and interaction, all we have is a reproduced facsimile.

How would a blind person fit in this description? 
 

In audio reproduction, there are two concepts involved. “ You are here” and “ You are there”.  A typical audiophile soloist or small ensemble falls in “You are here” category. Your playback should produce the illusion that they are in your room. For large ensemble, you cannot create the “ they are here” feel because your room acoustics would not be able to produce the feel. In those circumstances, the Ideal playback should able to generate “ You are there” feel. 
 

No playback system could do the two jobs adequately without you changing the playback method. Some audiophiles, have different setups in different room which excel in one genre over the other. This is where the reconstruction via multi channels aspects comes in. 
 

It is strange that the staunchest proponent of double blind tests failed to ask themselves on what basis they are insisting that a recording ( and that too with a single stereo microphone) were identical to the live event?  Can they do a quick A/B switching between live and recording to confirm their observation?

 

We are wired to decode sound to provide information. Even the most absurd and meaningless noise can be decoded to have some previously known word or rhythm. 
 

The best we  could do is to recognize a sound whether it is , say ,a real piano or does it sound fake. I could swear that my Fisher minicombo sounded real enough when I was 15 year. I swear I heard a person was in my room in my previous setup. All these were true until you hear another better  system and able to compare them side by side. Until then let the debate continue because for most there are nothing much they could do with their system and this kind of debates provides some self assurance.   

[fas42]

39 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

A bad room can make a stellar system sound bad and a good room can make a mediocre system sound good. The brain can only do so much, after a while is it all mush.

 

Hence why even with the penultimate equipment, room treatment are essential.

 

Nope. If a "stellar" system sounds bad, then it ain't stellar - no matter how much ego and money have been thrown at it 😉 ... it you listen to a live musician playing, then no matter how 'bad' the place is for him, and no matter how 'bad' the place is for you, it never just sounds like a bad "hifi" 😜 - what happens with a system that's in the zone, is that it never comes out of the zone - your hearing adjusts for what it sounds like just as it would for the real thing; the listening experience is the same ...

[Allan F]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

if you listen to a live musician playing, then no matter how 'bad' the place is for him, and no matter how 'bad' the place is for you, it never just sounds like a bad "hifi" 

 

I hope you intended to limit the above to an unamplified live musician playing, because a poorly set up sound amplification system - and I have heard too many - can make a live performance sound absolutely unbearable and much worse than any home hifi system.

[semente]

8 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

The sonic window starts at the vertical plane of the speaker pair, and lies beyond that. The musicians are never playing in my room, irrespective of how they were miked - my side of the speakers is attached to the space that the recording was made in, and the latter can be as empty, and flat as the production intentions made it. The interesting thing is that no matter how hard they try to excise any acoustic for the recording of sounds, there is still significant evidence of that space - so, I don't 'see' the musicians sitting in the end of my room; the latter is removed from the equation, always.

 

Now I'm sure we are not talking about the same things.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, Allan F said:

 

I hope you intended to limit the above to an unamplified live musician playing, because a poorly set up sound amplification system - and I have heard too many - can make a live performance sound absolutely unbearable and much worse than any home hifi system.

 

Of course!

 

As soon as amplifier and speakers are part of the performance, everything changes - when such are required as part of the live music, the obvious example is electric guitars, then that aspect of the sound has its particular tonality - the reproduction of a Marshall guitar amp, from on a recording, should fool one, just as much as straight vocals.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, semente said:

 

Now I'm sure we are not talking about the same things.

 

Okay, 🙂 ... I always see it as "being there" - whether the musicians are intimately close to me, or further back, or way beyond the wall of the room, they are still not part of the room I'm in - I'm just an intruder in the space where they happen to be making music; I'm listening to the world they're in.

[Blackmorec]

7 hours ago, gmgraves said:

My experience with thousands of records and CDs, SACDS, Blu-Rays, downloads and streams is that if it isn’t on the recording (and most of the time, it isn’t) no amount of “teasing” will pull from the recording, that which isn’t there.

And my experience is uniformly that our capabilities in recording are currently far better than our abilities in retrieval, which is why we can continuously make upgrades to the replay system based on the same recordings.

The point is, and why a lot of recordings sound bad is that they contain detail that has been masked, either by noise, lack of resolution, lack of detail preservation, crosstalk etc etc. So its not that the information is missing, just that its a challenge to hear due to shortcomings in both recording (possibly) or replay (certainly). 

 

I’ve noticed that you have a great many preferences when it comes to the type of material you like to listen to i.e what to you constitutes a great recording. Typically this high degree of selectiveness is because only a few recordings truly make musical sense on the replay system you have chosen and continue to evolve. You say “no amount of teasing will pull from the recording that which isn’t there”  

Lets examine that statement by asking the questions, ‘why can’t you hear it’ and ‘how do you know it isn’t there’. When you replay a recording and some fine detail is lacking, there are always 2 possible reasons why...it isn’t there, or, just as valid, it isn’t recovered or is masked by the replay system.  How do you tell which one? The simple answer is, you can’t, at least not definitively because we have no reference;  no means to measure musical content attributes against a known standard. 

In mass spectrometry, whenever we managed to find a new decade of sensitivity and resolution, we also found a whole bunch of new compounds....low concentration physiological proteins for example, that had been hiding in both the electrical noise and the chemical noise of the system. As soon as those 2 sources of noise were reduced, new information became visible. No different with recordings....removing noise reduces confusion and makes stuff easier to hear more clearly. An example...I have a Michael Franks recording Birchfield Nines...nothing particularly special. I’ve had that recording for years and I listen to it periodically to judge how my system has progressed. Yesterday was the first listen in maybe a year and I have made some significant upgrades in that period. Did I hear a difference? Absolutely!  In that year I’ve replaced all SMPSs in my network with high quality LPSs, added some super quiet network cabling and a superior server with better clocks and power supplies. So how did Michael sound? Far better...like you’d hope a remastered recording would sound, but rarely does. The music was far more transparent and detailed, some hidden reverb emerged that i’ve never heard before, the recording was far better spatially delineated and focused. Instruments sounded more real....for example guitar notes don’t just sound like a guitar....they sound like they’re coming from a guitar.....very different!  Michael’s voice was far more detailed...not in an analytical way but in a way that reveals far more of the natural sounds of singing, making him seem much more present, more real. The decay of notes was better as was the precision of the timing. All those improvements moved the recording on from what i would judge as good to what I now consider excellent, the difference lying in the information that was previously unrecovered or masked by the replay system.  If OK recordings can move to excellent, then there’s no reason why poor recordings can’t move to OK when the missing detail and information is better revealed.  

[Allan F]

5 hours ago, semente said:

 

Now I'm sure we are not talking about the same things.

 

You are one up on me. I haven't got a clue what he is talking about.

[STC]

14 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

I entirely agree. In the same way that the visual system moves the eyes about so the high resolution macula "paints" a composite high resolution picture of the world, the head moves about painting the three dimensional soundstage. Different sounds originate from different 3D locations in the concert space. 2D projections don't have enough information to accurately represent -- unless of course the concert is mixed into R/L/C stereo and amplified, but for an acoustic unamplified performance, each instrument has its own x,y,z coordinate, and of course for the piano each string has its own unique line of origin.

 

This post got me thinking about how much we understand stereo. Technically, a stereo recording captures everything like our two ears. They probably could do a better job than our ears. And technically reproducing the same should sound like the real event. 
 
The above is only valid if the reproduction is from the same spot the microphones were. That is the reason why an acoustics event recorded using in-ear microphones sounds like the real event to the person who recorded them. It will sound almost exactly. Provided you use in-earphones where the exact microphones were. In practice, they still work for most despite different pinnae and a few cms difference in the position of the headphones' drivers. There is nothing wrong with stereo as it contains all the necessary cues when soundwaves entering the ear canals. were recorded/captured.

 

This aspect of stereo capturing is perfect and the only one capable of true 3D reproduction of the actual event. It is known as binaural. It is about the final results of an acoustics event reaching our ears.

 

The other aspect of stereo recordings involves reproducing the event so that they will sound like the real event. Here we want the reproduction to produce the real sound and also the sound that we will hear. We are now using the speakers to behave like the real trumpet, drum or all the instruments in the orchestra. This kind of recording is about recreating the original event. The difference is one capturing the final sound reaching the ears, and the other is recreating the original sound.

 

The second method is neither here nor there since the accuracy requires precise information of the original sound, which is impossible to be captured when the microphone is placed far away from the source. This kind of stereo recordings are not the actual sound heard by us but an approximation of the real sound of the source (instruments) and the ambiance. Hopefully, the mixture could give us an illusion of the actual event. This worked out pretty good for most except for some. Some traditional acoustic musicians could never be satisfied with the recording as they do not feel they are real and rightly so.

 

Stereo recordings used to recreate the real acoustics event cannot be accurate simply because it is not reproducing all the information. It could because not all the information was captured in the first place.

Going deeper, we now realize that stereo cannot adequately reproduce an acoustic event. Try listening to the 2L multi-channel recordings, and you will notice the huge difference. 

Once we grasp the above, then you will see why multi-mic'd recordings always sound more realistic than just plain stereo recordings.

 

Sometimes, it is just our reluctance to take the first step that stops us from getting better sound.

 

 

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

And my experience is uniformly that our capabilities in recording are currently far better than our abilities in retrieval, which is why we can continuously make upgrades to the replay system based on the same recordings.

The point is, and why a lot of recordings sound bad is that they contain detail that has been masked, either by noise, lack of resolution, lack of detail preservation, crosstalk etc etc. So its not that the information is missing, just that its a challenge to hear due to shortcomings in both recording (possibly) or replay (certainly). 

 

I’ve noticed that you have a great many preferences when it comes to the type of material you like to listen to i.e what to you constitutes a great recording. Typically this high degree of selectiveness is because only a few recordings truly make musical sense on the replay system you have chosen and continue to evolve. You say “no amount of teasing will pull from the recording that which isn’t there”  

Lets examine that statement by asking the questions, ‘why can’t you hear it’ and ‘how do you know it isn’t there’. When you replay a recording and some fine detail is lacking, there are always 2 possible reasons why...it isn’t there, or, just as valid, it isn’t recovered or is masked by the replay system.  How do you tell which one? The simple answer is, you can’t, at least not definitively because we have no reference;  no means to measure musical content attributes against a known standard. 

In mass spectrometry, whenever we managed to find a new decade of sensitivity and resolution, we also found a whole bunch of new compounds....low concentration physiological proteins for example, that had been hiding in both the electrical noise and the chemical noise of the system. As soon as those 2 sources of noise were reduced, new information became visible. No different with recordings....removing noise reduces confusion and makes stuff easier to hear more clearly. An example...I have a Michael Franks recording Birchfield Nines...nothing particularly special. I’ve had that recording for years and I listen to it periodically to judge how my system has progressed. Yesterday was the first listen in maybe a year and I have made some significant upgrades in that period. Did I hear a difference? Absolutely!  In that year I’ve replaced all SMPSs in my network with high quality LPSs, added some super quiet network cabling and a superior server with better clocks and power supplies. So how did Michael sound? Far better...like you’d hope a remastered recording would sound, but rarely does. The music was far more transparent and detailed, some hidden reverb emerged that i’ve never heard before, the recording was far better spatially delineated and focused. Instruments sounded more real....for example guitar notes don’t just sound like a guitar....they sound like they’re coming from a guitar.....very different!  Michael’s voice was far more detailed...not in an analytical way but in a way that reveals far more of the natural sounds of singing, making him seem much more present, more real. The decay of notes was better as was the precision of the timing. All those improvements moved the recording on from what i would judge as good to what I now consider excellent, the difference lying in the information that was previously unrecovered or masked by the replay system.  If OK recordings can move to excellent, then there’s no reason why poor recordings can’t move to OK when the missing detail and information is better revealed.  

Experience tells me where the problem lies. For instance, my experience tells me that a Mercury Living Presence recording might sound good, but it will never image correctly because spaced omnidirectional mikes cannot capture a stereo sound field. Another example would be multi-miked, multi-channel recordings. They will never sound like music. A string section sounds like massed strings because the sound of the individual violins mix together in the air between the orchestra and the audience’s ears. If each violin is close miked with a mike per instrument or a mike per a group of violins, they get electronically mixed in the studio, and end up sounding like a dozen or so individual violins, but they will never sound like a string section. This is every kind of wrong. Record companies got away with it because many listeners simply don’t give a damn, and as I’ve said before, commercial recordings are not made for audiophiles, they are made for the lowest common denominator in listening environments.

[Blackmorec]

9 hours ago, STC said:

How would a blind person fit in this description? 
 

In audio reproduction, there are two concepts involved. “ You are here” and “ You are there”.  A typical audiophile soloist or small ensemble falls in “You are here” category. Your playback should produce the illusion that they are in your room. For large ensemble, you cannot create the “ they are here” feel because your room acoustics would not be able to produce the feel. In those circumstances, the Ideal playback should able to generate “ You are there” feel. 
 

No playback system could do the two jobs adequately without you changing the playback method. Some audiophiles, have different setups in different room which excel in one genre over the other. This is where the reconstruction via multi channels aspects comes in. 
 

It is strange that the staunchest proponent of double blind tests failed to ask themselves on what basis they are insisting that a recording ( and that too with a single stereo microphone) were identical to the live event?  Can they do a quick A/B switching between live and recording to confirm their observation?

 

We are wired to decode sound to provide information. Even the most absurd and meaningless noise can be decoded to have some previously known word or rhythm. 
 

The best we  could do is to recognize a sound whether it is , say ,a real piano or does it sound fake. I could swear that my Fisher minicombo sounded real enough when I was 15 year. I swear I heard a person was in my room in my previous setup. All these were true until you hear another better  system and able to compare them side by side. Until then let the debate continue because for most there are nothing much they could do with their system and this kind of debates provides some self assurance.