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The myth of "The Absolute Sound"


barrows

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5 minutes ago, fas42 said:

do planes fall out of the sky because the best pilot wasn't in command, the engines weren't big enough, or the hostesses weren't in sexy enough uniforms ... or because some worker neglected to check some little item, because the pressure was on to finish what he was doing?


But you are telling in the in the hands of Frank -  the pilot - with few solder tweaks, could make a tiny Cessna reach 35000ft outperforming even the 777 or 747. 

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4 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Oh, brother! Would that it were true, and not Frank living in his fantasy world again (still?)!

 

You also keep forgetting that this is exactly what happened for me over 3 decades ago. Which meant that I spent a decade taking the recordings that delivered this to play on the best systems I could easily access, back then - to check what was going on. And was always disappointed.

 

The point is not that ancient recordings, yes, even at shellac level, or earlier again, sound pristine. Rather, that the sense of what was going on in front of microphones is powerfully conveyed; a full strength dose of the "I'm there!" vibe happens in the room ... a particularly telling track I have is from one of those BBC cover disks from a magazine; it's the debut performance of an Ireland composition, with the man himself in charge. Below par status, it's a small AM radio experience; at decent playback quality, it comes alive, the majesty of the piece rises up, and delivers the specialness, the power of a symphonic work - in the listening.

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16 minutes ago, STC said:


But you are telling in the in the hands of Frank -  the pilot - with few solder tweaks, could make a tiny Cessna reach 35000ft outperforming even the 777 or 747. 

 

I don't know how much further you could stretch yourself to completely miss the point ... 😜.

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On a serious note, one of the worst myths, for the industry as a whole, is that 'magic' amounts of money have to be shelled out, to get a kick arse experience ... umm, no. One of the most damaging aspects of this is that outsiders think that the enthusiasts are deranged - and dismiss the whole exercise of trying to get better sound as pretty silly.

 

It's the industry's loss ...

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2 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Frank, Frank, Frank... I’m forgetting nothing. I simply don’t believe you. Now don’t get pushed out of shape here. I’m not intimating that you are lying or are making this up. I firmly believe that YOU believe what you say to be true. But if the path to audio nirvana were as simple as you seem to think it is, others would have stumbled upon it ages ago. To my knowledge, no one else has ever asserted what you spend your days here asserting. That tells me that there is something else, other than an audio epiphany going on here with you.

 

Who's saying it's simple? ... In fact it's mighty difficult, at the moment - because most equipment, even the most expensive stuff, has lots of weaknesses built in; because the makers don't believe that they have to do any more than what everyone else is doing ... which is why it has been left wide open for tweakers, and makers of "enhancement " gizmos, and, yes, snake oil merchants - to drive their trucks through ... just take the crappy RCA connectors that everyone has to put up with - first job, rip them out and throw them in the bin; then I might be interested in how the rig sounds, 😉.

 

Other people have noted that it's possible to get stereo to throw a thoroughly convincing soundstage - and I've pointed to them on numerous occasions ... so, I'm not going to do it, again ... 😜.

 

The local audio 'buddy' has learnt that 'cheap and nasty' stuff can do remarkable things, if the right areas are looked at - yet, he has never hit the heights I talk of - because it ... is ... hard.

 

The 'slight' advantage that I've been interested in this for 35 years, and spent quite a lot of time investigating so many areas of this circus sorta counts for something, IMO - time spent truly trying to understand what's going on is what makes 'magic' happen, in all facets of life, 😉.

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1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

or selecting thru dozens or hundred of caps, etc. to find ones that are really close to spec., or matched...

 

This sort of fussiness is completely unnecessary, IME - yes, it may help when one is right on the boundary of getting the SQ good enough; but it isn't a key requirement. But one area where maximum fussiness as regards parts quality counts is power supplies - huhh??!! Well, unfortunately, most audio gear is far too twitchy to the quality of the mains coming in, and the stability, noisiness of the voltage rails feeding the key circuitry ... the first competent rig used a monster Perreaux power amp - and the power supply was a key weakness for it. Hence, over time it was steadily butchered, to become visually a mess - to sort this issue.

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1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

or selecting thru dozens or hundred of caps, etc. to find ones that are really close to spec., or matched...

This is a marketing ploy, and not at all necessary to SQ. Having designed and built many amplifiers, both valve and SS over the years, I can say with confidence that +/- 10% for resistors and +/-20% for capacitors make absolutely no difference to performance. After all, before about the mid 1970’s, engineers used slide rules to design electronics. Slide rules are very imprecise, most resistors were 10-20%  off of their designated values and the design calculations were “guestimates” at best.

George

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2 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

This sort of fussiness is completely unnecessary, IME - yes, it may help when one is right on the boundary of getting the SQ good enough; but it isn't a key requirement. But one area where maximum fussiness as regards parts quality counts is power supplies - huhh??!! Well, unfortunately, most audio gear is far too twitchy to the quality of the mains coming in, and the stability, noisiness of the voltage rails feeding the key circuitry ... the first competent rig used a monster Perreaux power amp - and the power supply was a key weakness for it. Hence, over time it was steadily butchered, to become visually a mess - to sort this issue.

On that we can agree.

George

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45 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

This is a marketing ploy, and not at all necessary to SQ. Having designed and built many amplifiers, both valve and SS over the years, I can say with confidence that +/- 10% for resistors and +/-20% for capacitors make absolutely no difference to performance. After all, before about the mid 1970’s, engineers used slide rules to design electronics. Slide rules are very imprecise, most resistors were 10-20%  off of their designated values and the design calculations were “guestimates” at best.

 Hi George

 I disagree as far as Input capacitors go such as high quality Polypropylene etc. , in that the type and tolerance of the capacitors can cause some imaging problems, or even quite noticeable differences in SQ.

 I feel certain that Alex Crespi would agree too, with their range of MusiCap Film + Foil capacitors.

 

Kind Regards

Alex

 

How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file.

PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020

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I was lucky enough to start buying Hi-Fi News just before Ben Duncan wrote his spot on series of articles on capacitor characteristics, and parasitics. I read and reread those pieces of prose so many times, and it formed the basis of a huge amount of my thinking, back then ... sometimes, you just pick the right moment to tune into something, 😉.

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8 hours ago, gmgraves said:

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

 

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

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

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

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

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On 10/2/2019 at 5:54 AM, 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 you need to know the test methodology.  Professional violinists hear their instruments under their chin, which isn't how the audience hears them, and isn't how the instrument itself is intended to be heard. And hundreds of years ago, the violin was mostly played in chamber settings, which isn't how we often hear it today. 

 

All of that makes a difference.

Main listening (small home office):

Main setup: Surge protector +>Isol-8 Mini sub Axis Power Strip/Isolation>QuietPC Low Noise Server>Roon (Audiolense DRC)>Stack Audio Link II>Kii Control>Kii Three (on their own electric circuit) >GIK Room Treatments.

Secondary Path: Server with Audiolense RC>RPi4 or analog>Cayin iDAC6 MKII (tube mode) (XLR)>Kii Three .

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Living Room/Kitchen: Ropieee (RPi3b+ with touchscreen) + Schiit Modi3E to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. 

All absolute statements about audio are false :)

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8 minutes ago, firedog said:

Of course you need to know the test methodology.  Professional violinists hear their instruments under their chin, which isn't how the audience hears them, and isn't how the instrument itself is intended to be heard. And hundreds of years ago, the violin was mostly played in chamber settings, which isn't how we often hear it today. 

 

All of that makes a difference.


They also conducted the experiment with over 130 listeners judging the two violins played by world class violinists. 

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17 hours ago, Jud said:

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

 

Sorry if it came out somewhat confusing but I'm on the phone at lunch break.

 

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

 

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

 

In my view, the absolute sound is live unamplified music played live in a space with natural decay characteristics.

But I don’t see why prior knowledge/exposure to a particular model or individual acoustic guitar should be a requirement when listening to a recording when the goal is to determine the realism of its reproduction; all that’s needed are recordings made using adequately distance minimalist mic’ing and not having been subject to objectionable levels of manipulation or processing.

No recording is perfect so it’s important to average the assessment using a sufficient amount of recordings. A varied sample of instruments and vocals, solo, small and large scale is important to provide as much challenge to the system as possible.

 

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

 

What do you/they mean by “off”?

If the tonal balance is wrong, and/or if the system is adding harmonic or intermodulation or inharmonic distortion, and/or if the transients are being “smoothed”, and/or if the low level detail is being masked by noise instruments then it is “off”...

 

You could argue that you don’t need a classical music recording to hear those issues but such recordings, at least the good ones, are meant to document reality, whilst studio productions tend to be heavily processed and not always make use of better equipment or best practices (i.e. mastering, spot-mic’ing) or are hyper-realistic (i.e. many audiophile productions).

 

And if you have no experience with live acoustic sound then you are not well equipped to judge which recordings are fit for purpose nor to determine if the sound of an instrument is “off”. The Audio Tekne piece I posted above makes a reference to this - people only used to listening to effects sound.

 

The choice of mics and mic’ing techniques are the determining factors of how realistic a recording can be (I am referring exclusively to real 2 channel stereo).


 

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

 

It is a very interesting experiment but as I’ve mentioned in reply to your post perhaps the students didn’t have the right training and/or the recording quality was poor and/or the playback system quality was poor.

 

There are many aspects to sound besides tone/colour, and the sound of acoustic instruments depends on the shape, the material they are made, the mechanism which produces sound. So you get different dispersion patterns, different harmonic patterns, different dynamic ranges, different decay patterns, etc.

 

Then there’s the question of space, how instrument sounds relate with the venue, which proves cues to the size of the venue and the distance from the mics.

 

The reason I dislike the sound of samplers is because they don’t sound like music made by people using acoustic instruments in a natural (real) acoustic environment. They sound fake.

 

4 - There are two points to #3:

 

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

 

I agree that removing the attack and release should make a huge difference. And as I’ve mentioned previously one can identify instruments playing over a pocket radio or an old analogue phone.

Again, realism depends on the recording. A more accurate system will reproduce a good recording more accurately. And good recording of classical music is in my view a better instrument to assess accuracy than a good studio production for the reasons mentioned earlier about mic’ing and processing, etc.

 

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

 

Is that the point of using absolute sound as reference? I don’t think so, at least not for me.

 

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

 

I agree, although sound is a lot more than just tonal balance.

 

Would you use a Disney animated film to judge image quality?

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

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P.S. the reason I think for some people not to like the way Mario's recording of the drum kit or the rock band is because it doesn't sound like a recording but a lot more like live music.

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

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