The myth of "The Absolute Sound"

[Fitzcaraldo215]

14 minutes ago, semente said:

 

When you are sitting in a venue there is direct sound from the instruments and reflected sound from the surrounding surfaces and room reverberation. You are immersed in sound.

 

At home both direct sound and the reflected sound and room reverberation are coming from the same plane between the speakers, hence the systems inability to recreate the original soundfield.

 

In my home, not me.  I listen overwhelmingly to discretely recorded multichannel.  What you say is completely valid, though, in home stereo.

 

It was 12 years ago, and I heard my first Mch system. I heard a much, much closer approach to the idealistic “absolute sound”, considerably narrowing the gap between my live classical experience at concerts and my home system.  I remain a complete devotee of multichannel.

[semente]

2 hours ago, Jud said:

 

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.

 

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.

[semente]

5 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

In my home, not me.  I listen overwhelmingly to discretely recorded multichannel.  What you say is completely valid, though, in home stereo.

 

It was 12 years ago, and I heard my first Mch system. I heard a much, much closer approach to the idealistic “absolute sound”, considerably narrowing the gap between my live classical experience at concerts and my home system.  I remain a complete devotee of multichannel.

I haven't had the opportunity to listen to a good multi-channel system and whilst with the right recordings it will perhaps sound more convincing/realist than a 2channel stereo setup it will not be able to reproduce the original soundfield for the reasons I mentioned previously.

[Jud]

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.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Just now, semente said:

I haven't had the opportunity to listen to a good multi-channel system and whilst with the right recordings it will perhaps sound more convincing/realist than a 2channel stereo setup it will not be able to reproduce the original soundfield for the reasons I mentioned previously.

Who cares about the original sound field?  It betters the stereo paradigm by a fair bit, at least for classical music.

 

By that I mean two things.  Objectively, by having sound sources better able to reproduce the enveloping surround and a center channel to improve imaging.  Subjectively, on an “absolute sound” scale, it delivers clearly more realism.  

[semente]

1 minute ago, Jud said:

 

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.

 

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.

 

I have never read anything written by Harry Pearson though I did watch an interview on YouTube so I can't really comment in his reasons but to me adequately mic'ed live unamplified acoustic music is meant to sound as much as possible like the real thing and this makes it more adequate for judging realism than any other, as mentioned previously.

It's also arguably better for judging many other aspects or parameters of performance but personally I see merit in complementing with other genres. We are not listening for pleasure and recordings are just tools for sound assessment.

 

[gmgraves]

21 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

 

better tell Kal...

I’m sure that Kal knows about those Bell Labs experiments.

[semente]

16 minutes ago, Jud said:

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.

 

I agree that there is no absolute reference.

But then you are not listening to a recording of the instrument in anechoic chamber but playing in a natural acoustic environment which will then be complemented/distorted by the acoustic interference produced by your listening room.

 

But it helps to know what pianos and violins and vocals sound in real life. I dare say that if you have never listened to live unamplified music you are less well equipped to judge realism, though one could argue that if you only listen to the "artificial" sound and "fabricated" ambience of studio productions then realism may not rate very highly compared to say excitement.

[semente]

12 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Who cares about the original sound field?  It betters the stereo paradigm by a fair bit, at least for classical music.

 

Who cares about HighRes? if Redbook betters the mp3 paradigm by a fair bit, at least for classical music.

 

Naa, it makes no sense.

[ARQuint]

1 hour ago, barrows said:

 

 

1 hour ago, Allan F said:

 

Simply, I play acoustic guitar and hear the sound of that instrument virtually every day. I also regularly attend piano concerts. I know what an acoustic guitar and a piano should sound like. I can therefore tell whether the output of an audio system, over a sample of recordings, corresponds to what an acoustic guitar or a piano sounds like. This is not intended as an absolute judgement, for example, to the extent that one should be able to readily distinguish a Martin from a Gibson acoustic guitar or a Steinway from a Yamaha concert piano. It refers to the unique timbre of the instrument, generally, as opposed to that of any particular brand, and whether that timbre is reproduced faithfully.

1 hour ago, barrows said:

The above is simply incorrect in practice.  What you actually know, is what the sound of your guitar is like, up against your body, as you play.  this has very little relationship to the sound of someone else's guitar, as heard in a recording.  

I have a Taylor 12 string here which belongs to my GF, which I play a bit from time to time.  I know what it sounds like, both up against my body as I play, and from a small distance as she plays it.  But this is no "absolute" reference for the sound of some other guitar in a recording.

 

It appears here that some seem to think all guitars, or pianos, or any instrument really, sound alike!  Of course we all know that is not true.  Then you add in the additional differences which are the result of recording techniques, and it is easy to see that there is no "absolute" reference for the sound of anything.  We are talking about high end systems here, certainly anyone can tell the difference between a guitar (what is a guitar supposed to sound like...) and an Oud, for example, even on a cheap bedside clock radio.  Those are huge differences and not relevant for evaluating a high end system.

 

 

I'm with Allan F on this. You'll be able to appreciate how well a recording or loudspeaker represents a given instrument's sound whether your experience with "the absolute sound" comes from actually playing in an orchestra, small jazz group, or a band—or from being an audience member (and whether you sit in Row D or Row ZZ.) Our experiences with one version of "the absolute sound" or another can inform our sonic preferences. I loved the visceral sensation I got playing in a big orchestra as an undergraduate at Oberlin and, decades later, it drives my choice of seats in Verizon Hall when I go to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra—we've sat in the front third of the Orchestra for 30 years, Row L in Verizon for the last 18 years. Similarly, I enjoy stereo recordings that provide a "conductor's perspective" or, when multichannel's on the table (hi Fitz!), even an "immersive" approach. There's a participatory sense that's very exciting to me. Getting the tonality and dynamics of real instruments and voices as close to the "absolute sound" is especially important if a close-up sonic viewpoint is your thing.

 

So, yes, there is an "absolute sound". But like the blind men's elephant there are different takes on it, based on experience and preferences.

 

Andrew Quint

Senior writer

TAS

[barrows]

4 minutes ago, semente said:

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

Wait, what?  Hahaha, I am assuming this is a joke, and it illustrates my point.  I listen for pleasure, so changes to my system which increase my pleasure are changes for the better.  I would rather evaluate changes on this basis, than on the basis of some (virtually impossible to have a true reference for) theoretical "absolute".

 

8 minutes ago, semente said:

but to me adequately mic'ed live unamplified acoustic music is meant to sound as much as possible like the real thing and this makes it more adequate for judging realism than any other, as mentioned previously.

I would love it if you could provide some examples of such "adequately mic'ed" recordings?  I have one example which might pass muster:  Charlie Haden and Antonio Forcione's "Heartplay" from Naim recordings...  Still, not being present at the sessions, I admit to really not knowing what this recording "should" sound like, despite my experience with guitars and basses.

[Jud]

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?

[barrows]

8 minutes ago, semente said:

But it helps to know what pianos and violins and vocals sound in real life. I dare say that if you have never listened to live unamplified music you are less well equipped to judge realism, though one could argue that if you only listen to the "artificial" sound and "fabricated" ambience of studio productions then realism may not rate very highly compared to say excitement.

Agreed, it is just not "absolute" as a reference.

[semente]

Just now, barrows said:

Wait, what?  Hahaha, I am assuming this is a joke, and it illustrates my point.  I listen for pleasure, so changes to my system which increase my pleasure are changes for the better.  I would rather evaluate changes on this basis, than on the basis of some (virtually impossible to have a true reference for) theoretical "absolute

 

Listening for pleasure and assessing performance are different tasks with distinct objectives.

When I am evaluating performance I listen for shortcomings and for realism; but I often identify problems when listening for pleasure.

 

When I pick up a photography book I can do the same: focus on the quality of the printing and editing, or enjoy the artistic and conceptual qualities of the photos.

[semente]

5 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

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

 

 

Did you mean to say the reverse?

 

No because I was referring to evaluation of performance. When you are assessing performance you are not listening for pleasure..

 

 

I'll repost what I've just written:

 

Listening for pleasure and assessing performance are different tasks with distinct objectives.

When I am evaluating performance I listen for shortcomings and for realism; but I often identify problems when listening for pleasure.

[semente]

9 minutes ago, barrows said:

Agreed, it is just not "absolute" as a reference.

Of course not. If Pearson thought like that then I disagree with him.

[Jud]

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.

[crenca]

1 minute ago, Jud said:

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.

 

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

[gmgraves]

21 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

The recording chain is not "perfect" - and never will be ... however, the sins that are committed there are not the ones that 'sabotage' the quality of "realness" that most aspire to hearing. This is clearly so when one listens to a succession of different recordings, that come from different eras, using various techniques and all sorts of qualities of gear - each recording causes you to enter a different "listening world"; it's almost a shock at times at how much it changes with each new album you put on ... but what happens is that one's hearing very rapidly adapts, and it still "sounds like the real thing". An analogy might be meeting someone you know, who has changed by the passage of years, or is wearing completely unfamiliar clothes, or makeup - the underlying person is still exactly as before, and never comes across "as fake" - the person is always a real person, not an android ...

I’m just responding to your assertion that “As I've said many times, the recording process has always worked well enough.” Because I seriously disagree. The recording process has not always “worked well enough”. Most recordings are, in my estimation, incompetent. This is not because the people involved don’t know what they’re doing, but because of (in most classical music) an often ego-driven belief that they can make recordings that are “better than real” (hint: they can’t). Or, with pop music, their efforts are being guided by other than musical choices (such as the desire to make their recording louder than anyone else’s or their desire to play with their electronic toys, or some dope-addled pop star’s desire to experiment with a new “sound”).

21 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

This is what a system capable of convincing playback presents - all the technical issues of the recording 'vanish' - and this is because human hearing is remarkably adaptive, given the 'right' qualities in the SQ.

Well, Frank, the problem with this statement is that you have never convinced many of us here, that you would know a “convincing playback” system if you heard one! Based on your description of your own system, that you could manufacture a silk purse from that collection of sows’ ears is an extremely dubious proposition. 

21 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Every audiophile who has had a shock hearing a recording they thought they knew well sound dramatically more impressive on a 'magic' rig is experiencing this - the system is not distorting the recording to make it "sound better"; rather, it's adding less disturbing artifacts, allowing you to be subjectively more aware of the intrinsic qualities of what was captured.

Equipment improvements can provide that shock, and that’s for sure. Recently, I had such an “epiphany”. I listened to one of my own recordings of Ravel’s “Daphne et Chloe”, the complete ballet with a full symphony orchestra and a full chorus. Now, I have listened to this recording many times, and I know it intimately, or so I thought. I plugged my HiFiMan Edition X, v.2 headphones plugged into a Chord Hugo 2 DAC/headphone amp, and my jaw dropped. I heard layers of detail and an “unpacking” of heretofore homogeneous sound that I was simply unaware even existed in that recording! So yeah, I agree with your characterization of the possible magic that we’re talking about here.

[Kal Rubinson]

29 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

I’m sure that Kal knows about those Bell Labs experiments.

Yes but (1) my recollection is that their minimum was 3 microphones but they recognized that a further reduction to 2 was more practical and (2) they were considering direct studio sound and not hall/venue ambiance.

 

[gmgraves]

21 hours ago, barrows said:

Sure, but at what distance?  In what room?  Played how?  Which trumpet?  These all can sound very different.  This is my point, that there is no absolute.

You still don’t get the concept, do you? Well, I can’t explain it any clearer than I have.

 

[crenca]

Just now, gmgraves said:

You still don’t get the concept, do you? Well, I can’t explain it any clearer than I have.

 

 

What part of "radical" do you not understand?  😋😉

[semente]

12 minutes ago, barrows said:

I would love it if you could provide some examples of such "adequately mic'ed" recordings?  I have one example which might pass muster:  Charlie Haden and Antonio Forcione's "Heartplay" from Naim recordings...  Still, not being present at the sessions, I admit to really not knowing what this recording "should" sound like, despite my experience with guitars and basses.

 

Anything that uses close mic'ing must be ruled out.

No one listens that close (except the players), and it changes the timbre by exaggerating the top end and capturing mechanical or mouth and breathing noises not heard by someone sitting in the audience. And the closer the mic gets to the sound source, the less ambience cues will be captured, reducing the realism.

Besides close mic'ed instruments are usually captured in mono and then pan-potted into a position somewhere between the speakers. Reverb, EQ and other effects are added to better isolate the instrument from the rest of the band and to create a sense of sonic soundscape. Fake.

 

Real stereo can only be achieved with a pair of distantly positioned mics into two tracks though for orchestra and large groups an extra pair of ambience mics is often used with good results.

 

Try BIS or Dorian.

I suggest comparing Dorian's "The Rite of Spring" with that if Reference Recordings. The latter will sound more exciting and detailed but nowhere near as realistic in terms of tone or perspective.

[Jud]

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?

[gmgraves]

21 hours ago, barrows said:

Yes, this is why most do not have any reference for the "Absolute"  My GF is a working musician, and I have the occasion to be in the studio with her, hear both the live in the room sound of her voice, and the mic feed, as well as the recording.  Live performances by her as well.  And sometimes i will use some of her work as a reference, but I want it to sound fantastic, not necessarily "accurate"!   

 Music recording is an art medium in itself, hence what you term "studio" (which is 95% or more of all recorded music) which really is a creative art form of its own, separate from, while being related to live music performance.  While some purists might suggest that such things are not "real" music (certainly they are not live music performances) this is such a narrow view, and leaves out so much very, very powerful and valuable music, that I would never live in such a deprived world.

Ah, but now you have brought the concept of taste into the discussion. Like the man said, “there’s no accounting for it”. That you, or others might not want “accurate” is another issue; one with which I have no complaint. My only horse in this race is that there is an absolute sound and that is the sound of real, acoustic instruments heard in a live space. Modern technology can’t reproduce that sound, and the ear can’t be fooled (for long) into confusing the two.the idea of the Absolute Sound is the pursuit of closing that gap, and believe me, it’s a worthwhile one, even if it might be, ultimately, unattainable.