The myth of "The Absolute Sound"

[Blackmorec]

34 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

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.

Hi GM, I see now where your and my ways diverge. You are looking for perfect recording to play on your system. I am looking for a system that makes every recording sound as great as possible .

The other difference is that while you’re judging each recording to see if it fits your mental model of what a perfect recording should sound like, I’m just plain old boogieing along with some fantastic music, without doing any mental comparisons or judgements. My system simply grabs me by the neurons and fills my head with glorious music.  My only criteria is how much I’m enjoying what I’m hearing and if the answer is = or > a lot, i’m good.  I go to quite a few live concerts....they are very different to what I’m doing at home. For example at a concert I never close my eyes...at home my eyes are always shut.  The experience of being in the presence of and listening to the Vienna Philmarmonic is Soooo different to listening to the VP via a recording that comparison is frankly meaningless. What isn’t worthless is that I want to enjoy both immensely...the recording for the great music and performances and the concert for the whole anticipation,  spectacle and afterglow.  

 

BTW, I don’t think the sound engineer has yet been born who would close mike every violin in an orchestra. That’s simply misuse of the technique; although I do take your point....overdo it and multiple miking can really spoil the pudding. 

 

Watch a conductor on his podium. While he’s conducting what do you notice?  He swivels his head a lot. That’s to align his ears with a particular instrument he wants to focus on in that moment.  What does the audience all do when a soloist starts to play? They turn their heads towards the soloist.  They centre the soloist in their vision, which has the effect of balancing the input to both ears so they get maximum focus and clarity. Given that I’ve yet to see microphones installed in animated heads, how would you go about reproducing what the conductor and the audience hear? Using a single microphone is not going to deliver any of the focus and intensity that a pair of animated ears is going to pick up, so the risk is the music sounds slightly dull and uninteresting. Using multiple microphones at least gives some control over maximising focus, intensity and s/n. 

[Blackmorec]

Hi STC,

I think the expression is ‘They are here’ where the performers sound like they’re in your room and ‘You are there’ where it sounds like you’ve been transported to the original venue. 

 

Both require that the artistes are very well reproduced because in both cases they are ‘heard to be present either in your room or theirs. 

 

In my opinion, ‘They are here’ is what I get from recordings that do a stellar job with the artistes but capture no venue information like reverb, audience noises etc. In such a case there’s no acoustic information to create the impression of a venue, so by omission of any other information they sound like they’re playing in my room. 

However, as soon as there’s any venue acoustics information reproduced my room is replaced by the impression created by the venue. 

 

‘You are there’ are the recordings I very much prefer. The very best are able to create a very accurate sonic picture of the venue, with the right reverb and decay times to indicate walls and ceilings, with audience noises and air with a texture and atmosphere. Typically the venue thus created will have very different dimensions to your listening room and listening to such recordings often feels like a sudden change in reality....you’re in a different space, with a different acoustic, there’s an audience present and there are musicians playing great music.  This can be especially weird  at the beginning of a listening session when you go from zero to -14dB in a heartbeat. 

 

Where this whole thing breaks down, is when your room has a strong sonic identity of its own, which will tend to dominate proceedings and create mainly ‘They are here’  performances, with the replay room dominating the acoustics you hear.  You’ll know if this is the case, because most recordings will lack a unique sonic venue in which the performance happens and all recordings will sound like they were recorded in a similar venue. 

The other way this breaks down is when your system loses a lot of subtle information about the venue’s acoustics, so cannot create that sonic ‘space’ 

[semente]

1 hour ago, STC said:

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.

 

A multi-channel stereo is stereo with an extra central channel and a few more rear channels (usually) added to pick up ambience; most importantly each channel is reproduced by its own speaker.

 

A multi-mic'ed recording is a bit like listening to a musical event from several places at the same time (next to the violins and next to the violas and next to the cellos and next to the double basses and next to the woodwings and next to the brass and next to the percussion and next to the...) then play back the resulting mishmash-mix over a pair of speakers or 5.

[Blackmorec]

39 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

is when your system loses a lot of subtle information about the venue’s acoustics, so cannot create the impression of sonic ‘space’ in your mind. 

Just a clarification on what is actually creating the sonic space. 

[barrows]

1 hour ago, Blackmorec said:

The experience of being in the presence of and listening to the Vienna Philmarmonic is Soooo different to listening to the VP via a recording that comparison is frankly meaningless. What isn’t worthless is that I want to enjoy both immensely...the recording for the great music and performances and the concert for the whole anticipation,  spectacle and afterglow.  

Yes, this is where I am at as well.  And much of the reason for the original posting of the topic.  While nice in concept, and a worthy goal, the ideal of the "Absolute Sound" does not really exist as a reliable reference in practice, and the best we can really do is make our systems sound as enjoyable as possible, playing all the types and recordings of the music we love.

[Blackmorec]

1 hour ago, barrows said:

Yes, this is where I am at as well.  And much of the reason for the original posting of the topic.  While nice in concept, and a worthy goal, the ideal of the "Absolute Sound" does not really exist as a reliable reference in practice, and the best we can really do is make our systems sound as enjoyable as possible, playing all the types and recordings of the music we love.

As a music lover and audiophile, which statement would we most like as our hi-if goal statement?

• I want my system to sound like the mental memory model I have for how live music should sound? Or
• I want my system to make me ecstatically happy each time I listen to it? 

For me, Statement 1 has me comparing my system to a mental memory of live music and hopefully ticking all the boxes. Sounds like it would involve quite a lot of analytical listening which really isn’t my cup of tea. 

To achieve Goal 2 all I have to do is lay back and bask in the glory of the music 

Both lead to upgrading and improving the system to achieve either goal and both should end up with a really good system that makes their user happy in terms of meeting their goal. For me its just that I find it tiresome being in constant comparison mode....’does this sound like live’ judgements.

Personally I just want to sit back and enjoy the music without judgements, just appreciation and joy

[semente]

1 hour ago, barrows said:

Yes, this is where I am at as well.  And much of the reason for the original posting of the topic.  While nice in concept, and a worthy goal, the ideal of the "Absolute Sound" does not really exist as a reliable reference in practice, and the best we can really do is make our systems sound as enjoyable as possible, playing all the types and recordings of the music we love.

 

There are things that stereo can do and other things that stereo cannot do.

For this reason I see "The Absolute Sound" not as a goal but as a reference which I use for assessing playback performance.

 

But I completely agree with your last sentence: the ultimate goal of a system is to provide listening enjoyment to its owner.

[Albrecht]

1 hour ago, barrows said:

Yes, this is where I am at as well.  And much of the reason for the original posting of the topic.  While nice in concept, and a worthy goal, the ideal of the "Absolute Sound" does not really exist as a reliable reference in practice, and the best we can really do is make our systems sound as enjoyable as possible, playing all the types and recordings of the music we love.

Right...

We listen to recordings on our home stereo, - which are an "interpretation." When I was recording and producing my band's songs, - our focus was on doing what we needed to enhance the "song," - not to make the song sound like how we would play it live on stage. We never had 1/2 of the studio tools on stage that we would have available in the studio.

Every CD is at least, (minimum), 5 different generations of what those instruments sounded like when we played them standing in front of the amplifiers, going to the 2" rough-mix tape.

Finally, - don't know what your local Opera/Classical music venue acoustics are like. But I can tell you that the San Francisco OPERA house is a pile of SHITE for acoustics. I have never heard any "live event" at the SF Opera sound "good." What a garbage dump. The acoustics of recordings of Opera sound sooooo much better than that nightmare.  And, - you don't get half-dead old housewives coughing and clapping and yelling "WOOT" at the most inappropriate times. Every Opera performance has a mic-ed PA, - and again, - I don't know about other places, - but the SF Opera PA is complete SHITE, - filled with noise, hissing, crackling, and over-driven "hot-to-tape" noise....

[Ralf11]

maybe the next earthquake will destroy it - you could always picket with a sign too

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Hi GM, I see now where your and my ways diverge. You are looking for perfect recording to play on your system. I am looking for a system that makes every recording sound as great as possible

Well, I too want a system that makes every recording sound as great as possible. But I was illustrating a point with my two examples. The point was that few recordings, either today or yester-year, are as good as they should be or can be. A great sounding recording, one that is, sonically, state-of-the-art, is easy to do. Much easier than is the complex, convoluted junk that most record companies, large and small, put out. Again, for instance, multi-track, multi-miked symphonic recordings came about because somebody got it in their heads that it’s cheaper to set up a forest of microphones, get the expensive “talent” (the musicians) in, quickly capture the performance on as many tracks as possible and then get the talent out. Then the producer and the mix engineers could fiddle with the balances of each instrument ‘till their little hearts’ content! 

J. David Saks, when he was producing recordings for RCA Victor in the mid-to-late 70’s, sync’d TWO 48 track, 2-inch analog tape decks together for a total of 94 channels to capture Carlo Mutti and the Philadelphia Orchestra (one track from each tape machine had to be sacrificed for the SMPTE time code in order to sync both recorders together, that’s why there are 94 tracks of music instead of 96). The results were terrible. All those mikes, all those channels, each adding a layer of noise/distortion to the recording. All those channels of Dolby A noise reduction to keep calibrated, all that maintenance on the 94 tracks of both tape recorders, etc. All they needed was two channels and a stereo mike for the orchestra, maybe a pair in the back of that old Philadelphia church where Saks recorded the orchestra for ambience and perhaps an accent mike or two where needed. How much simpler can you get? And the result would have been stupendous! Great sound, great performances, but no. The route taken yielded recordings that are ludicrous.

[Blackmorec]

5 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

Right...

We listen to recordings on our home stereo, - which are an "interpretation." When I was recording and producing my band's songs, - our focus was on doing what we needed to enhance the "song," - not to make the song sound like how we would play it live on stage. We never had 1/2 of the studio tools on stage that we would have available in the studio.

Every CD is at least, (minimum), 5 different generations of what those instruments sounded like when we played them standing in front of the amplifiers, going to the 2" rough-mix tape.

Finally, - don't know what your local Opera/Classical music venue acoustics are like. But I can tell you that the San Francisco OPERA house is a pile of SHITE for acoustics. I have never heard any "live event" at the SF Opera sound "good." What a garbage dump. The acoustics of recordings of Opera sound sooooo much better than that nightmare.  And, - you don't get half-dead old housewives coughing and clapping and yelling "WOOT" at the most inappropriate times. Every Opera performance has a mic-ed PA, - and again, - I don't know about other places, - but the SF Opera PA is complete SHITE, - filled with noise, hissing, crackling, and over-driven "hot-to-tape" noise....

My God Albrecht, what a post! I nearly pissed myself 

[STC]

6 hours ago, semente said:

 

A multi-channel stereo is stereo with an extra central channel and a few more rear channels (usually) added to pick up ambience; most importantly each channel is reproduced by its own speaker.

 

A multi-mic'ed recording is a bit like listening to a musical event from several places at the same time (next to the violins and next to the violas and next to the cellos and next to the double basses and next to the woodwings and next to the brass and next to the percussion and next to the...) then play back the resulting mishmash-mix over a pair of speakers or 5.

I guess than there is no point asking about channel or object based recording and production....

 

 

[fas42]

7 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

In my opinion, ‘They are here’ is what I get from recordings that do a stellar job with the artistes but capture no venue information like reverb, audience noises etc. In such a case there’s no acoustic information to create the impression of a venue, so by omission of any other information they sound like they’re playing in my room. 

However, as soon as there’s any venue acoustics information reproduced my room is replaced by the impression created by the venue. 

 

Why I don't relate to the "They are here" is because there is always some "venue acoustics information" - recordings are never made in an anechoic chamber 🙂, no studio goes to that extent, and so the environment in which the musicians were recorded does leave an imprint on what you hear. It may be subtle, hard to hear on a sub-par setup, 😜 - but it most definitely is there. Which means that I am always going to the place where the recording was made - even if it is a boring recording booth, 😄.

 

7 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

‘You are there’ are the recordings I very much prefer. The very best are able to create a very accurate sonic picture of the venue, with the right reverb and decay times to indicate walls and ceilings, with audience noises and air with a texture and atmosphere. Typically the venue thus created will have very different dimensions to your listening room and listening to such recordings often feels like a sudden change in reality....you’re in a different space, with a different acoustic, there’s an audience present and there are musicians playing great music.  This can be especially weird  at the beginning of a listening session when you go from zero to -14dB in a heartbeat. 

 

Yes. Try the opening of Hot August Night for a special one of these ...

 

7 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

 

Where this whole thing breaks down, is when your room has a strong sonic identity of its own, which will tend to dominate proceedings and create mainly ‘They are here’  performances, with the replay room dominating the acoustics you hear.  You’ll know if this is the case, because most recordings will lack a unique sonic venue in which the performance happens and all recordings will sound like they were recorded in a similar venue. 

The other way this breaks down is when your system loses a lot of subtle information about the venue’s acoustics, so cannot create that sonic ‘space’ 

 

I have yet to encounter this - it's automatic for me now when I get hold of a new rig to play with 😉 to immediately start resolving anomaly issues; so hearing the level of detail that allows the sonic space of the recording acoustic to manifest occurs very early in the process.

[STC]

7 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Hi STC,

I think the expression is ‘They are here’ where the performers sound like they’re in your room and ‘You are there’ where it sounds like you’ve been transported to the original venue. 

 

Both require that the artistes are very well reproduced because in both cases they are ‘heard to be present either in your room or theirs. 

 

In my opinion, ‘They are here’ is what I get from recordings that do a stellar job with the artistes but capture no venue information like reverb, audience noises etc. In such a case there’s no acoustic information to create the impression of a venue, so by omission of any other information they sound like they’re playing in my room. 

However, as soon as there’s any venue acoustics information reproduced my room is replaced by the impression created by the venue. 

 

‘You are there’ are the recordings I very much prefer. The very best are able to create a very accurate sonic picture of the venue, with the right reverb and decay times to indicate walls and ceilings, with audience noises and air with a texture and atmosphere. Typically the venue thus created will have very different dimensions to your listening room and listening to such recordings often feels like a sudden change in reality....you’re in a different space, with a different acoustic, there’s an audience present and there are musicians playing great music.  This can be especially weird  at the beginning of a listening session when you go from zero to -14dB in a heartbeat. 

 

Where this whole thing breaks down, is when your room has a strong sonic identity of its own, which will tend to dominate proceedings and create mainly ‘They are here’  performances, with the replay room dominating the acoustics you hear.  You’ll know if this is the case, because most recordings will lack a unique sonic venue in which the performance happens and all recordings will sound like they were recorded in a similar venue. 

The other way this breaks down is when your system loses a lot of subtle information about the venue’s acoustics, so cannot create that sonic ‘space’ 

The space is all about the ideal reverberation. About room acoustics, think about the principle behind MP3. It can be masked for “You are there” situation. It is more complex but I don’t think people really cared. 
 

Thanks for the engagement. 

[fas42]

8 hours ago, gmgraves said:

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.

 

I can give you an "every kind of wrong" - recent, classical, recordings where there was poor attention paid to making sure the recording gear was at the same circuit stability for each take. Short violin snippets, many tracks - successive items were dramatically different in tonality, disturbingly so ... lousy track, excellent track, good track, poor track, ..., ... - "recording is liike a boox of chocolates" ...

[fas42]

5 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

As a music lover and audiophile, which statement would we most like as our hi-if goal statement?

• I want my system to sound like the mental memory model I have for how live music should sound? Or
• I want my system to make me ecstatically happy each time I listen to it? 

For me, Statement 1 has me comparing my system to a mental memory of live music and hopefully ticking all the boxes. Sounds like it would involve quite a lot of analytical listening which really isn’t my cup of tea. 

To achieve Goal 2 all I have to do is lay back and bask in the glory of the music 

Both lead to upgrading and improving the system to achieve either goal and both should end up with a really good system that makes their user happy in terms of meeting their goal. For me its just that I find it tiresome being in constant comparison mode....’does this sound like live’ judgements.

Personally I just want to sit back and enjoy the music without judgements, just appreciation and joy

 

Yes. If you have to switch on your analytical facilities to 'judge' the result, then you've lost. Immediately.

 

Why 'poor' recordings are an excellent means of assessing the status of a rig, is that if your automatic reaction is, "Poor!!" ... then the system ain't good enough - mighty simple, you see 😊.

[Ralf11]

7 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Yes. If you have to switch on your analytical facilities to 'judge' the result, then you've lost. Immediately.

 

Why 'poor' recordings are an excellent means of assessing the status of a rig, is that if your automatic reaction is, "Poor!!" ... then the system ain't good enough - mighty simple, you see 😊.

 

and the beat goes on

[fas42]

3 hours ago, gmgraves said:

 

J. David Saks, when he was producing recordings for RCA Victor in the mid-to-late 70’s, sync’d TWO 48 track, 2-inch analog tape decks together for a total of 94 channels to capture Carlo Mutti and the Philadelphia Orchestra (one track from each tape machine had to be sacrificed for the SMPTE time code in order to sync both recorders together, that’s why there are 94 tracks of music instead of 96). The results were terrible. All those mikes, all those channels, each adding a layer of noise/distortion to the recording. All those channels of Dolby A noise reduction to keep calibrated, all that maintenance on the 94 tracks of both tape recorders, etc. All they needed was two channels and a stereo mike for the orchestra, maybe a pair in the back of that old Philadelphia church where Saks recorded the orchestra for ambience and perhaps an accent mike or two where needed. How much simpler can you get? And the result would have been stupendous! Great sound, great performances, but no. The route taken yielded recordings that are ludicrous.

 

Carlo Mutti? ... or Riccardo Muti?

[fas42]

4 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

and the beat goes on

 

You just can't help yourself being that one person in the room who makes those sort of comments, can you ... Ralf?

[gmgraves]

32 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

I can give you an "every kind of wrong" - recent, classical, recordings where there was poor attention paid to making sure the recording gear was at the same circuit stability for each take. Short violin snippets, many tracks - successive items were dramatically different in tonality, disturbingly so ... lousy track, excellent track, good track, poor track, ..., ... - "recording is liike a boox of chocolates" ...

Again, posts like this are useless if you don’t give us at least the names and labels of these recordings. 

[gmgraves]

13 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Carlo Mutti? ... or Riccardo Muti?

Mea Culpa. It’s Riccardo Muti. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of Ormandy’s immediate successor. Sorry for any confusion.

[gmgraves]

28 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Yes. If you have to switch on your analytical facilities to 'judge' the result, then you've lost. Immediately.

 

Why 'poor' recordings are an excellent means of assessing the status of a rig, is that if your automatic reaction is, "Poor!!" ... then the system ain't good enough - mighty simple, you see 😊.

Mighty wrong too!

[kumakuma]

17 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

You just can't help yourself being that one person in the room who makes those sort of comments, can you ... Ralf?

 

He's just articulating what others are thinking.

[fas42]

35 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Again, posts like this are useless if you don’t give us at least the names and labels of these recordings. 

 

Would be quite difficult -  over the years I have gone through a lot of borrowed CDs, from the libary, etc - this is some years back - Harmonia Mundi is a reasonable guess; two female, Chinese violinists - someone else may know the album ...

[fas42]

45 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

He's just articulating what others are thinking.

 

This is a thread on what's needed for, or the myth of, TAS - IME, highly focused attention to detail is vital, and the closer you get, the easier it becomes to assess in any situation whether the playback is nailing it, or not. George wants what I'm after also, in terms of the SQ, but while he keeps poo-pooing my "way" he will keep missing the opportunity to make greater headway ... that's just the way it is, from my POV.

 

Obviously Blackmorec is on a very similar wavelength to me, but because everyone is an individual their approach, and thinking will differ; so he won't see eye to eye with me on a number of things. And one of them is an attitude I've built over many, many years - that the recording is King; and it's up to me, and the system to get the best of of it ... an attitude that any poor playback is the 'fault' of the recording kneecaps the thinking that is necessary to achieve TAS ... IME.