Now I understand. Now what if the consumers don't like your work in the recording studio?
Take for example the most expensive recordings that I have ever purchased. Whatever my sound system, I have never liked those recordings. They are impressive, yes, but that's not what I'm looking for.
Now listen to the customer's voice:
I always believe that it is all about sensitive ears. You can perceive what is wrong or you don't.
John was talking about the Stax electrostatic headphone.
I own one. It is fantastic to analyze the slightest details of any source. But it has very personal characteristics in the same time.
It smoothen any source: i have never the solidity of kick drums, the harshness of snare drums, the weight of the electric basses, it makes strange things in the treble (adding 'air'), it lose the "metal" and weight of the cymbals and i can always ear the plastic sound of the thin membrane.
It is like a holographic reproduction, instruments not 100% *opaques*, floating in the air.
I own one. It is fantastic to analyze the slightest details of any source. But it has very personal characteristics in the same time.
It smoothen any source: i have never the solidity of kick drums, the harshness of snare drums, the weight of the electric basses, it makes strange things in the treble (adding 'air'), it lose the "metal" and weight of the cymbals and i can always ear the plastic sound of the thin membrane.
It is like a holographic reproduction, instruments not 100% *opaques*, floating in the air.
Now this is interesting ... I've just noted Sy's comment, and to conceptualise it, consider a very sophisticated DSP algorithm: a recording is only available as a transcription from a 78 LP, and it's full of pops and crackles. The processing software patiently, over and over again, refines the recording to the point where only, repeat only, those particular distortion elements are removed - if you did a difference comparison the remainder would have no musical or recording acoustic content whatsoever, it would be purely noise elements.
In this case, which is the "correct" recording ...?
Frank
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Not having tried them, I can't say. But, are you saying, if you were in the room with the drummer, having just recorded his cymbals; and you listened to him again playing live, and immediately compared that to playback of the same material through the Stax, that the headphones would be quite "wrong" ...?
Frank
Shame on me or shame on the the studio's monitors. Dot.
Listen to his own mixs is a nightmare, there is always some details you are not happy with, nobody's perfect. Which is reassuring is that nobody else seemed to noticed or worried about them, at the time, so i could continue to practice my profession for a living. Vinyls were an help to mask the defects too
With the time, everybody change his mind, focus to different interests and change its tastes.
Equipments changes too.
Looking to an old photography of you, you can find your hair cut ridiculous.
In fact i cannot listen to my work as a pleasure, too much sweat.
I have written several times that some people (including me) need to listen to a new system for a long time to decide if it is the sound that I like or not.
Also, it is not always apparent if one sound is different with others. Assume that even the golden ears are not accurate. So why risk your choice based on your poor golden ears? The point here is, some think that when the measurement tool (aka golden ears) cannot measure, why bother with the options because they should be equal. This is wrong.
Listen for preamp A for 1 month. Then change to preamp B for another month. You should be able to feel the difference. One day is not enough because who knows if your body is tired on that day, you're not in the mood, etc.
And it is only a "little" reason why such blind test is useless if you want accuracy.
Some of you are strange. Have you ever enjoyed listening to music at all? Have you ever stayed up late everyday just to listen to your music. Have you ever missed your system more than you have ever missed your girlfriend?
Seriously, many audiophiles enjoy listening to recorded sound of helicopter, glass breaking, etc. through their transparent system. Is that their music? Remind me of my work with Photoshop. Original picture often need a touch of Photoshop. Took me times to do this kind of thing, because the original picture is always "rich" in tone, texture, etc...
My preference on TV display (calibration) is different than the majority. I understand their preference, but a little of them understand the preference of people like me. Because I see what they don't. Emotions in a picture. Same in music.
It is a little more complicated than that. Recording a cymbal of a drum kit is not a hifi process. You can tweak the sound in many aspects to create the make believe (we are obliged to). A luck that some *real thing* can remain across correctors, and compressors, noise gates etc...
What i try to explain is, when you had worked to create a cymbal with the attack of the stick (and the weight on it) and a certain size and weight of the cymbal, a certain feel of the metal, when this has been reproduced on the studio monitor and different other monitors, you can reasonably believe it is in the recording.
And i feel some of the weight is lost in the Stax reproduction. Very high frequency trebles or high distortion added ?
You know, those dome tweeters, transforming the 'Kaaaiiihh" ot a cymbal in a sort of "psiiissss" ? Loosing the 'bell' for a sort of thin metal paper sound ?
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Esperado, I am only a DIYer, but with definite experience. I do not like to offend anybody, but what you are saying about possibilities of ICs...
Only the very beginner could expect, that schematics and active parts, THD and IMD determine final sound. These beleifes are justified for those staying at Mid Fi. John Curl is absolutely wright, making accent on topology, passive components, power supply, wiring, case design, etc., the things that are not sitting at head of a student just graduated from university. These side things result from really long-period experience. After reading many papers by Malcholm Hawksford, I was impressed by how honest he is, saying after dozens of top-rank publications on audio schematics, that success of his amps depends on listening of every passive part at the test rig.
Excuse me, but I find your pressure on John Curl is either a sign of not sufficient experience, or of some other "bias"
Perfect example.
I'm in concern with street-photography. One of the members of my forum ( Street photo et Cie. Site et forum sur la photo de rue. ) just bought the last Nikon full frame.
And was bored, because it was too sharp, colors in the back ground too shiny etc... Until he noticed that it was just an 'enhancing feature' set by default.
Photography is exactly the same than music recording and reproduction. You artificialy create émotions, make believe of some false reality, but you want audience to see your photography as you have intended to create-it. You lie on the accuracy of your monitor, and hope audience will have the same than you. What i call 'transparency' and my explain 'objectivist' side. And you don't want people to look at your photo with added sharpness or 'vibrance'. See what i mean ?
And people like me say, why do you have to do this? If I placed a high quality B&K mic at the distance that you were listening live in that example, and recorded the performance faithfully, no processing whatsoever, what would be so terribly wrong with the end result? Would it sound completely different from the live impression, on playback?It is a little more complicated than that. Recording a cymbal of a drum kit is not a hifi process. You can tweak the sound in many aspects to create the make believe (we are obliged to). A luck that some *real thing* can remain across correctors, and compressors, noise gates etc...
Having listened to a huge range of standard, active studio monitors in an exercise recently I have zero faith in them, a pretty useless standard to compare against, IMO.
I can understand the weight thing, the inability of most setups to reproduce the subjective intensity of sound is the problem here ...
Frank
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I don't put ANY pressure on John ...when he don't talk about snake oil like burning cables.
Please read carefully my words. and if i had given this feeling,( due to my lack of good English ? ) i apologize.
I cannot answer about my experience, nobody have enough. I can just propose my points of view acquired after a full and long life dedicated in electronic, professional audio design (for big consumer or pro companies like AKAI pro), professional recording studio designs and management, and, my passion, music recording. They are not worth what they are.
I don't say OPAs are good, i said some (rare) are accurate for the purpose, on my opinion, and can be even better than most of the 'audiophile high end' commercial products i have heard. With, of course, great care of the way you implement them. And, yes, components matters, and, yes, you can measure many of their defects and limitations. And have to measure. Anyway, they are 10's or even 10's behind each detail of most of the music we listen to.
We all agree on that ? I don't thing i'm biased in any way, nothing to sell, nothing to defend, not even my image, i post under a pseudo. Just a fight against obscurantism and myths.
At the end, we are just talking about tools to reproduce music. Not a big deal, even if it is difficult to achieve. No need to full moon secret reunions, or poems, let's stay reasonably objective and scientific.
Because, like photography, music is a creation.
Even electric live performances are 'created' by the sound stage engineer.
If some try to record the way you propose, you will have poor sounding, boring and incoherent records.
Just to give-you an idea: how can-you hear a singer in the same time than a heavy metal guitar ? No way.
You have to tune their levels, presences, reverberations, to create a credible landscape. Some instruments are masked by others in the mixs, to let you able to listen to some details of those ask a huge work, torturing their response curves and dynamic.
Some instruments are poor sounding, and the work of the sound engineer is to make them very nice.
At the end, the record you feel recorded in a huge hall, had often been recorded in a little studio, and many musicians had not even meet them during the recording sessions.
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OK, that is the key point, you believe that scientific background of audio reproduction is already complete enough. Many others, and me among them, are sure that science has touched an audio only very little.
About cables, when I come in the listening room of a distributor, selling 100 000 bucks components, and see a CD player connected by 4m balanced interconnect cable, I simply do not listen to his explainations that "balanced interconnect does not pick up any noise", I simply go to another distributor, who knows some "snake oil" about interconnects.
Very little? Is this gross exaggeration or severe ignorance?VladimirK said:
Solid-state physics tells us 'very little' about transistor design?
Circuit theory tells us 'very little' about circuit design?
Electrostatics and statistical mechanics tell us 'very little' about valve/tube design?
Thermodynamics tells us 'very little' about thermal noise?
I could go on, but I will bore the wise and only amuse the foolish.
Did i say that ? I said that it is a minimum AND a requisite, and *need* to be correlated by listening.
Need to fight on this endless and ad nausea ?
The stuffs you bought are made that way, and the poetic fictional marketing argues printed after, often by marketing specialists with no connection to the real product or laughing themselves of the joke.
And about cables, please, i was manager of a rental big PA system. I have a little Idea about connections, cables noises and deteriorations of sound reproduction they can induce.
And it was not about 4 meters, but hundreds, between mikes and mixing desk. The live performance record you are listening to.
Your reaction about the symmetrical CD cable seems a nonsense to me. For various reasons, one is you don't know which they are, how they are driven and received witch is uncorrelated with their look.
There is a luck they behave better than your 1000$ cryogenic virgin handcrafted teflon asymmetrical one, if you run for that kind of myths. While your cable will work better than any active part plugged before or after it.
... If contacts are good enough (big smile here)
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Well, you could always learn, or use, APL ...
Frank
What is APL??? Sounds like A Programming Language..
Learned that back in '73. Well, as much as anybody can say they learned it.. Luckily, I forgot all of it. I don't thing the IBM 360 is around either..
Darn, I was amused... guess that calls me out...
jn
Just this thought about subjective and scientific approaches:
Most of the time, subjectivists ignore the technical and mathematical bases, while scientist knows all about the 'audiophiles' argues.
Most of the time, audiophiles does not have measuring instruments, while most of the engineers have two ears.
Taste for music and the hearing are randomly allocated among them
Most of the time, subjectivists ignore the technical and mathematical bases, while scientist knows all about the 'audiophiles' argues.
Most of the time, audiophiles does not have measuring instruments, while most of the engineers have two ears.
Taste for music and the hearing are randomly allocated among them
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