The myth of "The Absolute Sound"

[gmgraves]

2 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Nope ... that's the great thing about the music recording archive that we have - there's enough information on every one of them for most of us to be able to enjoy a subjectively captivating listening experience.

Again Frank, that's your unsupported and, I must say, unfounded opinion. 

2 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The real myth is that "your high fidelity system" is in fact, accurate - it's not, and not by a long margin - less than pristine recordings make all the shortcomings of the playback chain extremely obvious - unfortunately, that's where that dreaded 'sorting' is required ... 😜.

And "your" system is about as far from High-fidelity (short of a portable radio) as one can get. Accuracy, like Fidelity is to a degree. There's always room for improvement until there is no gap between real and reproduced. No one believes that we are there yet, and it's more than possible that we will never get there (although I'm not saying that it's impossible).

[barrows]

59 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Of course, if all one listens to is pop and rock, then I can understand the indifference because, by definition, the original “sound field” doesn’t exist anyway

I am not sure what you mean here?  A sound field (or sound stage) created in a studio, is still a sound stage, and an accurate reproduction of it is still something to evaluate in a music playback system (of course to have an "accurate" reference for it, one would have to listen to the monitor feed the engineer used to create that soundstage-but this is not different from the need to have the same accurate reference for the sound stage of a symphony orchestra).  Ditto for a recording of a live Rock Band if they actually care enough about their performance sound to and have the engineering chops to create such with the the PA at hand; I have seen a few rock acts which indeed create a remarkable sound stage and sense of space within a theater environment from a PA system, although I do realize this is somewhat rare.  

And by no means do I only listen to pop and rock (as previously mentioned)...  I have been working a bunch today, and building a new I2s input adapter for my discrete DSD DAC project, so the only thing I listened to today was some 4x DSD from Rachel Podger/Brecon Baroque over coffee this AM.

[barrows]

3 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

There's always room for improvement until there is no gap between real and reproduced. No one believes that we are there yet, and it's more than possible that we will never get there (although I'm not saying that it's impossible).

I suspect that our current understanding of physics would likely have to change to get there, at least as long as transducers have mass, and wires have resistance.  Although nothing is "impossible" ultimately, and our understanding of physics is subject to change!

[fas42]

13 hours ago, STC said:

Audiophiles already knew that even a few cms difference in the speakers or listeners position the sound changes. It is the same with microphones and recordings. You are hearing the sound that happened at a very different place where you nor the recording engineer would have heard. And we are by nature always try to decode sound to have a definition (accuracy and even placement) based on prior knowledge . They or the musicians may perceive it to be true to life sound but a person who wasn't there may perceive otherwise.

 

 

This sort of subjective aspect in the listening is a giveaway that the rig is not working at optimum - what one is trying to do with these sort of positioning tricks is attempt to reduce the impact of distortion anomalies arising within the electronics of the playback chain.

 

Just as with live, unamplified sound, one can move around freely with a competent rig, and the subjective impression of what one is hearing does not vary - the ear/brain does the job that it's been trained to do over the decades of hearing things, and automatically compensates for all the technical variations in the structure of the waveforms, as they impinge on the ear.

 

Yes, inner prior knowledge  is everything - unfortunately, below par playback is too tainted for unconscious decoding to happen - and we are aware of only a typical stereo system in operation, trying to imitate life.

[semente]

15 minutes ago, barrows said:

I am not sure what you mean here?  A sound field (or sound stage) created in a studio, is still a sound stage, and an accurate reproduction of it is still something to evaluate in a music playback system (of course to have an "accurate" reference for it, one would have to listen to the monitor feed the engineer used to create that soundstage-but this is not different from the need to have the same accurate reference for the sound stage of a symphony orchestra).  Ditto for a recording of a live Rock Band if they actually care enough about their performance sound to and have the engineering chops to create such with the the PA at hand; I have seen a few rock acts which indeed create a remarkable sound stage and sense of space within a theater environment from a PA system, although I do realize this is somewhat rare.  

And by no means do I only listen to pop and rock (as previously mentioned)...  I have been working a bunch today, and building a new adapter for my discrete DSD DAC project, so the only thing I listened to today was some 4x DSD from Rachel Podger/Brecon Baroque over coffee this AM.

 

I disagree.

 

Amplified music comes out of speakers. It doesn't exit in real life without electricity or a transducer.

At the gig you are listenig to the music over the PA system, but this sound cannot be reproduced at home nor recreated. The recording of said gig almost surely picked the feeds directly from the instruments, not from the amplifiers, and was subsequently pan-potted and EQ'd and reverbed and...

At the studio the signal, which is the same as saying the recording or the final mix or the music, needs speakers to be listened to and it's reproduction will be as accurate as the studio monitors can make it. If they're not as high-fi as possible there's no point in using them as reference even if they could classify as the reference.

 

Regarding soundstage, studio productions and overly processed classical music recordings have a far more defined soudstage that real life.

One could argue that the mix is trying to compensate for the absence of visual cues but with multi-track, spot-mic'ed classical music recordings my ears say that it doesn't sound right...I mean realistic.

[fas42]

14 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Again Frank, that's your unsupported and, I must say, unfounded opinion. 

 

All one has to do is track down accounts of people who have come across 'magic' systems - not mine, 😉 - and carefully read what they say about the experience - there's a common theme, that such rigs transport the listener to a place well beyond just hearing reproduction in action. That's exactly what happened to me 35 years ago - and you never forget the impact of that moment.

 

It just turns out that there are levels of capability - "poorer" recordings just require finer 'tuning' of the playback chain - which makes sense. Year by year, I "knocked over" recordings which I thought were "unrescuable" - and I shook my head about this happening, every time, for a while ... 🙂.

 

14 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

And "your" system is about as far from High-fidelity (short of a portable radio) as one can get. Accuracy, like Fidelity is to a degree. There's always room for improvement until there is no gap between real and reproduced. No one believes that we are there yet, and it's more than possible that we will never get there (although I'm not saying that it's impossible).

 

You keep wanting to forget that my first competent rig was pretty close to top of the tree for the time - apart from the speakers ... my curiosity developed along the lines of, "Well, what exactly stops a more down to earth rig from creating this special listening experience?". And it turns out that one can go down quite a long way before the effort needed to "sort" the setup becomes pointless ... as an absolutely current example, I've had to move to a "new" laptop, and its internal sound system is intrinsically too mediocre to think about wanting it to "sound better".

[fas42]

38 minutes ago, barrows said:

I suspect that our current understanding of physics would likely have to change to get there, at least as long as transducers have mass, and wires have resistance.  Although nothing is "impossible" ultimately, and our understanding of physics is subject to change!

 

More like our current understanding of how our listening to meaningful sound content works, I would say ... I suddenly realised that the level and type of low level distortion anomalies is absolutely critical to achieving a "fool your brain!" moment, over 3 decades ago - and nothing since has changed my thinking on this, one iota ...

[barrows]

39 minutes ago, semente said:

Regarding soundstage, studio productions and overly processed classical music recordings have a far more defined soudstage that real life.

One could argue that the mix is trying to compensate for the absence of visual cues but with multi-track, spot-mic'ed classical music recordings my ears say that it doesn't sound right...I mean realistic.

Agreed.  One could argue that the mix is trying to compensate...  Yes, I have often though that.  At a concert one often perceives a highly detailed sound stage, but try this for awhile at a concert, close your eyes, at first the positions of the instruments seem fixed in the soundstage the same as when your eyes were open, but after awhile, the visual cues are likely forgotten, and the soundstage collapses to a degree and becomes much less distinct, as the only cues are now auditory.  Open your eyes again, and presto, the highly detailed sound stage is back!  The human brain is the most incredible DSP.

 

On the other hand, when it comes to music being reproduced by a PA live, or by an engineer in the studio creating a sound stage, remarkable and enjoyable effects can be created which, when done well, increase the enjoyment and meaning of the music.  I see no need to chastise this approach as some kind of heresy!  This is the use of the recording studio as a part of the creative process.  Such things can be done well, or they can be done poorly (as is the case with any creative venture).  But the notion that musical expression which is created/manipulated in the studio somehow has less validity than a "pure" recording of only acoustic instruments (perhaps with only two microphones, etc) is a bunch of BS.  Just as is the idea of some classical music snobs that classical music is the only "real" music.   What kind of music would Bach be making today if he were of our time, go ahead Bach scholars, have at it... 

 

Applying this to the topic, there is no reason why acoustic instruments are any better than electric, or even electronic ones, for evaluating system performance.  While folks here will argue it, the fact is, one can just as easily (that is, it is very difficult to have) an "absolute" reference of the sound of a Fender Rhodes as they can a Yamaha Grand Piano.  Given that the Yamaha has to be recorded to hear it through the system, and the Rhodes has to be played via a speaker. 

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, semente said:

 

Why Live-versus-Recorded Listening Tests Don't Work

 

http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-live-versus-recorded-listening.html

 

He offers nothing as to why Live vs. Recorded is not a viable test, only some ancient history and a schmear of unsupported claims.  Considering the resources of Harmon, you'd think he'd try something...

 

[fas42]

1 hour ago, semente said:

Regarding soundstage, studio productions and overly processed classical music recordings have a far more defined soudstage that real life.

One could argue that the mix is trying to compensate for the absence of visual cues but with multi-track, spot-mic'ed classical music recordings my ears say that it doesn't sound right...I mean realistic.

 

My collection of classical recordings is nearly all from the European side of things - no problems here. However, I acquired a couple of ex-library CDs, of nominally audiophile labels, of classical pieces - they are, to my ears, fairly bizarre ... weird tonal manipulating, strange acoustic spaces - they were as "produced" as any funky 😉 pop recordings ...

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, barrows said:

I am not sure what you mean here?  A sound field (or sound stage) created in a studio, is still a sound stage, and an accurate reproduction of it is still something to evaluate in a music playback system (of course to have an "accurate" reference for it, one would have to listen to the monitor feed the engineer used to create that soundstage-but this is not different from the need to have the same accurate reference for the sound stage of a symphony orchestra).  Ditto for a recording of a live Rock Band if they actually care enough about their performance sound to and have the engineering chops to create such with the the PA at hand; I have seen a few rock acts which indeed create a remarkable sound stage and sense of space within a theater environment from a PA system, although I do realize this is somewhat rare.  

And by no means do I only listen to pop and rock (as previously mentioned)...  I have been working a bunch today, and building a new I2s input adapter for my discrete DSD DAC project, so the only thing I listened to today was some 4x DSD from Rachel Podger/Brecon Baroque over coffee this AM.

Perhaps you’ve never seen a pop/rock/(and often “studio jazz”) recording being made. There is no actual soundstage, (although there is obviously a “virtual one”). The drummer, for instance, in the studio, might be on the extreme left of his fellow musicians, but when the mix is finished, he might end up on the extreme right, or in the center, or perhaps, the high-hat will be on the right, and the kick drum might be in the center. The reason is because the physical location of the musicians does not matter. The engineer/producer will “pan-pot” their pickup (actual microphones or contact mikes, or direct instrument feeds) to wherever “in the mix” they are wanted. And truly, with such arbitrary and totally electronic placing of instruments and voices, who, indeed, would care about the “sound field”. It’s meaningless. With pan-potting, there is no image depth or image height, just left-to-right juxtaposition.

[barrows]

wow, really!  Umm, I am very experienced here and well aware of recording techniques.

 

To say that there is no actual soundstage in the finished product though is absurd.  As I am sure everyone reading this knows, the soundstage in a modern multi-tracked recording is created after the tracks are done, by the recording engineers, producers, and usually the recording musicians during mixing.  The end result is what matters here, not the fact the musicians are often not playing live, together.  The fact that there was no soundstage before the mixing is done does not matter.  The end result is still a soundstage and how the playback system represents that soundstage is important for evaluating a system.  It sounds like you might be skimming my posts rather than actually reading them?

 

And no, you are entirely wrong about depth.  Recording engineers can create depth as well, and height.  and these decisions are not at all "arbitrary", they are part of the creative process and a lot of consideration goes into the placement of sound/instruments in the stage.  Sometimes they create a staging that might be realistic, and sometimes they create a staging that might be more fanciful.  This is artistic creativity at work, you are free to like it, or not of course.  But it is certainly not meaningless, or arbitrary in any way. 

[fas42]

The subjective presentation of heavily produced pop recordings is that the individual acoustic spaces for each sound element or instrument is layered into the overall - and is moved laterally if pan-potting occurs; the associated acoustic is moved to a new 'position' on the perceived soundstage. An analogy with how image editors handle the multiple parts of what the final scene will show as a 2D viewing is appropriate - any decent editor will allow one to 'move' each layer, and at all times one can see just the one layer that is of immediate concern; the others 'vanish'. Which is what one hears in manipulated recordings - all the layers are there, and one can easily move one's focus, attention to just one 'layer'.

 

Michael Jackson's Bad album is as good an example to work with as any ... a competent playback makes all the layers very clear, and it is easy to just "listen" to what one layer is doing, and "see the space" it's in, to the exclusion of the other layers.

 

[ARQuint]

3 hours ago, semente said:

 

I think that ARQuint expressed in much better terms what I have been trying to say:

 

4 hours ago, ARQuint 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.

 

 

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

[barrows]

5 minutes ago, ARQuint said:

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.

Hey Andy, welcome.  One can only have an "Absolute" reference if one was present to hear the sound of the instruments acoustically in a real space.  A decent system will allow one to hear differences between those instruments, but one has no way (reference) to know if those differences are correct, or just different. 

[Jud]

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.

[STC]

All audiophiles could as long as they are not asked to do under double blind test. Never mind even the musicians themselves couldn’t. 
 

Interesting that this thread ran into 6 pages without clear definition of soundstage or amplified sound and most importantly what is the sound you are comparing with. 

[ARQuint]

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

 

[Jud]

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.

[STC]

9 minutes ago, ARQuint said:

Anyone see a Fair Use problem here?

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.

[barrows]

19 minutes 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.

Of course we all know the answer: Audiophiles know more about sound and music than mere musicians and scientists...

[STC]

15 minutes ago, barrows said:

Of course we all know the answer: Audiophiles know more about sound and music than mere musicians and scientists...

They actually believe that is true.  
 

 

[fas42]

Strangely, I have not the slightest interest as to what make of instrument was used, and whether I can pick up the characteristics that identify it, 😉. However, I am deeply interested in whether I can pick if the sound I'm hearing is obviously from a playback system, or whether it could be mistaken for the "real thing" - I find the need to distinguish makes of instruments as interesting as trying to decide from what regions the grapes came from, when poured from two separate bottles of mediocre red wine 😜.

 

When a system, falsely, highlights negative qualities in whatever is being listened to, then it becomes more like a medical instrument trying to analyse the qualities of the skin of two attractive women ... 🙂.

[fas42]

6 hours ago, gmgraves said:

 

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. 

 

Playing with sow's ears, in my case, is investigating "what matters!" - you learn so much more when you can be ruthless with the gear, and hack it to the point of it not working anymore ... its "sacrifice" has yielded much information, and so its passing will be remembered in a good way, 😉. Doing this with some status, 'Porsche', bit of kit is perhaps not the smartest move ...

 

6 hours ago, gmgraves said:

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.

 

Yep, that's what happens ... the 'miracle' is that this can be the case for just about every recording you have,😊.

[fas42]

13 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.

 

It's an interesting exercise getting the living room TV to render a decent standard of colour accuracy - TV presenters have to pass through the current thinking of the channel executives, who want to razz up the look. Here, it used to be that Trump orange was the go; but more recently cute pink was coming up strongly; even Prince purple has showed up at times ...

 

A good reference are news reports - it wouldn't be a good look to tizzy up the colouring of someone who has suffered some trauma; and many times there is vegetation in the picture, and streetscapes. If those scenes look spot on, and familiar, for colouring, then all the foolin' around by the different channel broadcasts of typical program stuff evens out - and becomes obvious.