Audio "Digititus" inducing music?

[fas42]

An endemic problem with digital playback - not the recording side of it! Certain recordings, with their particular mastering style, will provoke this - but it's not the fault of the recording.

 

The real question is,

 

Audio "Digititus" inducing systems?

[fas42]

24 minutes ago, Rexp said:

You're the only person on this forum that believes this. I guess it makes you special. 

 

The reason is pretty obvious, to me - people have been conditioned over decades to believe this, and the way they assemble systems only acerbates the behaviour ... it's a perfect feedback loop ... 😛.

 

The only way to break out of the loop is to stop believing this; and understand that nearly all digital based setups inject the type of distortion which causes "digititus"; from the playback chain - the ones that achieve, "magic sound", are those which have eliminated this type of distortion.

 

Which is why someone like me has no time for many high end rigs - the distortion they inject is so obvious; they are, "unlistenable" ...

[fas42]

1 hour ago, Racerxnet said:

Franks real response,

 

Which is why someone like me has no money for many high end rigs - the non-distortion they don't inject is so obvious; they are, "enjoyable"...

 

I might remind you, that a vinyl setup I heard in the 1980's, using Infinity RS speakers, Goldmund TT, and Audio Research electronics, demonstrated what SQ a well sorted setup could produce, using the money approach ... what is interesting is understanding where one can cut corners, to deliver an equivalent presentation.

[fas42]

7 hours ago, hopkins said:

 

In my experience, listening fatigue is a result of the system, not the recording. 

 

So I would tend to agree with Frank on this (!) BUT I don't agree with his assessment that this is a caracteristic of most "high end" systems.

 

 

I'll use the requisite car analogy 😁, to make the point ... this in fact happened to me, many decades ago: I went on a test drive in the top of the range version of the big new car model that was the big news of the moment. And I found it very unsettling ... why? Lots of noise reduction everywhere in the cabin, so it was nominally super quiet - but, I could now hear the suspension working! Over a roughish road, there was a irregular chatter of those mechanical bits doing their thing; which lent a nervous quality to the going down the road. Which would have been missing in the normal model, where there would be constant background noise from other, more 'relaxing' sounds.

 

This is where the "high end" of anything can fail - there always has to be a balance between all the qualities; get it wrong, and it can easily be worse, subjectively, than something of average quality.

[fas42]

5 minutes ago, hopkins said:

 

The way I see things, and this is of course a personal point of view, is that audio today is submerged with equipment that are inherently incapable of producing high quality sound, regardless of price. I like this "audiophile's" approach: http://www.high-endaudio.com/philos.html  (though when it comes to "digital" I don't think he has enough experience to be relevant).

Maybe this explains your pessimistic outlook about "high end" today.

 

Yes, I have looked at his website a couple of times ... his thoughts on what is achievable are spot on, in many areas - but of course his understanding of the digital side of things completely misses the mark!

 

I'm not pessimistic about "high end" today! The steady launching of high performing digital speakers, each of which lifts the standard a touch more, is an excellent sign ... 15 years ago, I was aiming to to do this very thing myself - but lazy sod that I am, I let others catch up with me, 😆 ...

 

My Edifiers project is a budget version of doing it now - and shows how good the raw parts are, for getting it right.

[fas42]

Finally tracked down Salvatore's latest thinking ... and, he's making good progress!

 

http://www.high-endaudio.com/RC-Digital.html

 

Much of what he says about his experiences with digital sound matches what I hear with "other people's systems" ... only tweaking at the level of fastidiousness that he uses will get the best from, say, CDs - but, it is worth it ... 😉.

[fas42]

Hmmm ... there has been a pretty gung ho distaste for 'digital' LPs, over the years. That is, recordings made for the digital age, and transferred to vinyl bring with them the qualities that upset a lot of people - so, putting the data into a physical groove is no guarantee of moderating the issues that make people dislike certain recordings.

[fas42]

13 hours ago, hopkins said:

 

Here's a track that was quite irritating (not to my taste, but that's besides the point) - I doubt it had anything to do with the recording:

 

 

https://storage.googleapis.com/cloudplayer/samples/04 camélia jordana %26 baptiste trotignon - i'm a fool to want you.flac

 

 

Pretty obvious ... the vocal style, her technique, and the miking add up to creating the impression that the recording studio is swimming in spit ... 😆

[fas42]

 

2 hours ago, Confused said:

Note that although I am referring to a "darker" sound here, the treble and presence range in the recording are still as prominent as they should be, and indeed these frequency ranges become clearer, sharper and cleaner.
 

 

Th clue, to me, is your use of the words, "clearer, sharper and cleaner" - this is always the result when something is done that reduces the level of audible distortion, IME - and suggests that the mode change of the Devialet, altering its operating characteristics, is enough to improve its performance.

 

A thought that comes to mind, to test this, is to play some track which is already pure mono - does activating the tone adjust still give this change - or not?

[fas42]

Okay, the diyaudio thread - one which I hadn't come across before - is specifically discussing one of the markers of competent sound - or, rather, the lack of such! 😉

 

The "phantom center" having "a darker tonal balance" is an easy indicator of distortion being too prominent, too audible. How it works is that the speaker drivers are the source of that distortion, as in, the way the distortion of the playback chain gets into the listening space; and this distortion is usually manifested by the speakers being "brighter", "more in your face". So if your attention is focused on something which is in the area of the speaker, you hear both the source sound, and the playback distortion, on top of each other. OTOH, the phantom center is a creation in your mind, and the attendant distortion is largely discarded - it's actually closer to the true sound of the recording, subjectively ... hence the variation across that span.

 

Fully competent SQ has no such differences between the centre, and the speaker sides - the soundstage is truly outside the speakers, at all times ... one way to think of it is, you have a phantom centre and a phantom left and a phantom right - there is nothing else that your mind can conjure up, 😄.

 

Which also means, that the darker tonal balance is in fact the true sound of the recording - so, if one has tilted the FR down to make it subjectively more pleasant, to deal with the subpar SQ, than one has to reverse that kludge, to 'normalise' the playback.

[fas42]

6 hours ago, Confused said:

You've posted on it! 🙂  

 

(Although to be fair, that was six years ago)

 

Call it a senior moment, okay ? 😅  ... So much under the bridge ... 🙂.

[fas42]

6 hours ago, Confused said:

I have not yet had time to study the above in any detail, but I did notice something that has given me another idea of something to try.

 

This is to listen with just one ear.  Sounds crazy, but it might be a method of observing the subjective influence of comb filtering effects or similar.  Is there something to be learnt from observing subjective changes in a system, say when flicking between mono and stereo reproduction, and then comparing the same one ear to two?  I am not sure, but I am intrigued enough to at least try it and see what might be observable.

 

Has never worked for me, 😉 .. there's a huge amount of blather out there, about this huge array of scieeentic things goin' on in ya ears ... none of which has ever made sense to me 🙂. Luckily, I was getting convincing SQ before I ever came across all the blubbering about phase effects, shape of cranium, combs and brushes - so I never worried about it 🙂. It's pretty simple, actually ... when the integrity of the playback hits its straps, part of the brain which does all the processing of 'natural' sounds fully switches on - and from then on your mind reorganises what it hears, and the illusion of the recording always makes sense. This is when the speakers truly become invisible - the brain can't locate them, no matter how you try listening, in order to be able to point to them.

[fas42]

12 hours ago, Confused said:

 

So I am now scratching my head a bit wondering what I might have changed in my system, either deliberately or inadvertently, that might have reduced the influence of the effect.  Maybe a mysterious external effect, changed something in the room, phase of the moon , or maybe the local electricity supplier has upgraded to supplying super clean power.

 

12 hours ago, Confused said:

Considering the subtleties of comb filtering effects and similar, I am even wondering if it is not my system but my very own ears.  I did have a minor sinus issue a while back, now thankfully 100% resolved, so who knows?

 

 

IME, it has never been "my ears" ... at times it's taken a long time, for me, to understand the influence of something in the system, or in the environment - but it's always ended up being a meaningful cause - can be unbelievably frustrating at times to work out the link; and the why the influence has the impact it does still be mysterious - to this day 🙂. But it's there. And if it's not taken into account, then the SQ is always below what it could be ...

[fas42]

16 hours ago, Confused said:

An interesting comparison.  I definitely preferred the JCF to the Apollo, although to me the difference is not quite as stark as you seem to have observed.

 

33 minutes ago, Rexp said:

Ha, I preferred the Apollo. At least I do like PCM recordings, some die hard analogue fans can only bare DSD. 

 

The Apollo 'rounds' off the sound - to a guitarist, the JCF captures what he hears when playing the guitar ... if you look at the comments on the YT page, most preferred the JCF, because the sense of the guitar tone is better defined.

[fas42]

18 hours ago, Rexp said:

At least you can fix it with tweaking, you are so fortunate. 

 

We all do tweaking - but I use a very different approach from many; as I am reminded regularly by posters, 🤣.

 

The hardest thing to convey is the mindset, I've found - and this makes it difficult for other people to understand the approach.

 

Which is:

 

Step 1: The system I, or anyone who has a half decent audio rig, am looking at in the listening area is inherently capable of delivering exceptional SQ.

 

Step 2: The only thing stopping that happening are small flaws in the setup, which are severe bottlenecks to that quality being audible.

 

Step 3: "Bad" recordings are your best friend ... they are telling you in the clearest way possible that firstly, you do have a significant problem; and secondly, they will guide you to making the right moves to rectify the playback chain; removing the bottlenecks, one by one.

 

Most audiophiles choke and splutter at what I say in some or all of these steps - as do you, 😉. But they are what work - I am "fortunate", because I believe in those steps ... okay?

[fas42]

36 minutes ago, Racerxnet said:

 

Of course the room does'nt matter (in Franks case), and if there is a null at 37 hz, 74hz, and multiples there after, the bass suckout would not be OK. Not all rooms are created equal, and measurements should be an integeral part of the system set-up. There isn't anything that could correct the cancellation without REW, Accourate, Audiolense or other software. This is a gigantic error to overlook. Room modes can be ignored, but when correcting where the room dominates in the 16 to 500hz area, it also cleans up the top end as well. Overlooking this important aspect is not achieving the best experience.

 

This is the best bang for the buck "tweak anyone can do. Umik 1 is $100.00 USD and REW/Rephase is free. 

 

Without measuring the playback chain, you don't know what you are missing... because you never bothered to investigate.  

 

 

 

This is the obsession with bass response, which I have never understood - whenever I listen to live, acoustic sound "the bass!" is one the least interesting aspects of what I hear; the impact of what's happening in the other 99.9% of the sound is where the action is - and to this day I have not come across any rig which clarifies what the fascination with bass behaviour is all about ... 🙂.

[fas42]

36 minutes ago, Racerxnet said:

 

This your own misunderstanding of what matters in the room and where the room mode dominates during replay. The 15 to 500hz area is where room interaction takes place.  It's not about the "bass".. per say. 

 

 

 

 

Just look at that graph - from a bit over 100Hz on, everything settles down, there are very few dBs in it. And that's what my ears tell me - in the musically important parts of what is typically on a recorded track, what part the room plays in it is pretty irrelevant. The odd very low note pops up now and again, and is what it is - only my current Edifiers dig low enough so that on some tracks the intensity of the felt, rather than heard, vibration makes it feel a bit queasy in some parts of the house. "Bass boom" as something that is irritatingly obvious just doesn't figure in my world - which is to do with how I stabilise the cabinets ... this is something I worked out decades ago - and so is never an issue, I've found.

[fas42]

11 minutes ago, Rexp said:

If, as you believe, the Apollo doesn't capture the correct tone of the guitar, it will be a bad recording. Will that bad recording be saveable through your rig tweaking? 

 

Yes. The recording is what it is, and everything from prior to, say, 1950 had major limitations in its technical quality. How much the Apollo differs from the other is very minor compared to that; and those recordings pre-1950 are certainly 'saveable'.

 

The problem is using the word "bad" - no recording can ever be perfect, so what counts is whether whatever has been captured can be experienced as pleasing, satisfying in a listening session. If one has no reference to "how good" the actual event was, then why fuss about what you do have - of course, as soon as you have two versions, two recordings, of an event then there is every likelihood that one is better than the other. For you. And that's fine  - as far as I'm concerned.

[fas42]

20 minutes ago, Racerxnet said:

 

You failed to answer how to correct for any room nulls, step response, phase, etc.. Again, its not about the bass response as you try to make it to be. You are avoiding a tremendous opportunity to significantly improve the replay chain. If the room is the weakest link, don't you want to address it?

 

If I had a system that I couldn't tweak - and the room it was in was making things worse - then I would certainly consider it. But my experience is that the most effective way of improving it is to work on the playback chain - it's worked for over 30 years, for me, so why should I change my method?

 

20 minutes ago, Racerxnet said:

 

The graph is a representation of room/speaker interaction. You are intentionally taking it out of context to make a baseless claim. It is not a capture of an actual system..  You look foolish doing so.

 

I interpreted the graph as per it being "a representation of room/speaker interaction" - which indicates that the room counts far less strongly after 100Hz; as I stated.

[fas42]

6 minutes ago, Racerxnet said:

How do you know you made any improvement without measurements. Maybe you made it worse.. Measured with your ears?? 

If the room is the weakest link, don't you want to fix it??

 

What counts is whether the sense of "realness" improves - measurements of peaks and nulls have nothing to do with this; because the brain automatically compensates. If this were not so, then every real piano in a real, everyday room would sound awful - because nobody had run around, and did the million calculations, and fiddled to the n'th degree with the setup of the room ... makes sense? 

[fas42]

7 minutes ago, Rexp said:

If, as you say, the Apollo version wouldn't be 'pleasing' to a Guitarist, would your rig tweaking fix it? 

 

Probably not ... because he is chasing 'tone' - he is a creator of the musical sounds, and wants it, just so. As a 'non-perfectionist' listener I would not be so fussy - and accept what's on the recording.

 

The creator of the sounds is on an endless journey; he always wants his instrument to "sound better" - and he is perfectly entitled to be like that. But once a particular performance is locked in, via a recording - that's it ... doesn't mean that he shouldn't keep chasing a better encoder, for use in the next recording of his playing on the instrument, 🙂.

[fas42]

48 minutes ago, Racerxnet said:

 

Nope. Audio science/psychoacoustics has proven how we hear and what it takes to acheive the goals we are looking for. Speakers are engineered with solid science. Nulls and peaks have a lot to do with our perception of the replay chain. Maybe you could convince Toole, Mitchco, or others of your stance????  You could'nt hear the piano accurately as we do without the science behind speaker development as well as room interaction. They both play an integral part of the listening experience and the science is related. 

 

Well, I disagree, strongly, with Toole for a start 🙃 ... I have access to his book, and in all the key areas where he talks of what he thinks is important, I start shaking my head, 🙂.

 

When a system is working right, a recording of a piano sounds like a piano - as in, someone comes to the front door, and says, my goodness, who's playing your piano! That's what I'm after - why playback usually fails to convince is that there are quite audible anomalies in the sound, which instantly kills the illusion - flattening nulls and peaks doesn't fix that, I'm afraid ...

 

48 minutes ago, Racerxnet said:

 

I doubt adding a 100 ft extension cord would provide the improvement that DSP could do for the room. Don't suggest that the Edifiers are not using DSP as part of the crossover design. DSP, used in the proper manner is a wonderful tool that has helped move this hobby forward. 

 

Anyhow, your statement that nulls and peaks have nothing to do with hearing perception is a crock of baloney. 

 

Yes, I've already posted that the DSP in these is effectively 'transparent' - that is, switching in different curves did nothing to enhance, or degrade the SQ; its effect was, subjectively, invisible.

 

I need to get rid of the remaining interference effects - and it was obvious very early in the piece that mains noise was highly significant to this setup ... the silly lengths of extension cord are a quick and easy workaround, for the moment, to (mostly) cancel out that influence. My philosophy is to do cheap and dirty experiments to work out what's important - tarting up the final configuration can come in at the end.

[fas42]

Not set up very well, of course - plenty of issues with the SQ, as should be obvious ... so, unfair to comment on the DSP curves; they merely adjust the level of annoying artifacts in the sound - so, pick the setting which makes the SQ least objectionable for the particular track, 😉 ... . And, why oh why, do they use these genres of music for this sort of demo ... 🙄

[fas42]

To balance that previous clip, here's a chap talking about the S2000's,

 

 

He nails everything I like about them - and the very things he notes as possibly being downsides, that they can be 'forward', and not project the lowest bass notes, are precisely what I have addressed with my tweaking. "Bold" speakers are perfect candidates for taking reproduction to the highest levels; because they haven't had the key characteristics kneecapped for the sake of always "sounding nice", and "inoffensive" ...

[fas42]

And, rather nifty, found a very recent posting of the latest version of these speakers - which gives a much better sense of how they perform. Particularly noteworthy, the recording of the speakers is followed by the source file used to feed them, for each track clip,