I used to pooh-pooh the vinyl and SET movement, because, you know, distortion. But anymore, I can see that it isn't so clear. Speakers, rooms, and (mostly) the concept of putting a few mics in a room expecting them to preserve EVERYTHING, are so far from providing absolute sound reproduction that there is no reason at all to assume that higher fidelity in one small piece (say amplifiers) is going to mean a more convincing illusion of a performance. Some added distortions could be like salt on food - it is a corruption if you want to see it that way, but it also could be something that could mask some tastes that would otherwise make the whole less satisfying.
Saying something like that around here sometimes brings out snide comments like "I want accuracy, but, heym if YOU just want an EFFECTS machine...". But every bit of improved accuracy isn't necessarily a step closer to a convincing illusion (which is all this can ever be), it doesn't add up like a mathematical thing.
Saying something like that around here sometimes brings out snide comments like "I want accuracy, but, heym if YOU just want an EFFECTS machine...". But every bit of improved accuracy isn't necessarily a step closer to a convincing illusion (which is all this can ever be), it doesn't add up like a mathematical thing.
keep it simple
But not too simple, please. There is a historical aspect to music recordings that is being ignored here. How are we to know what Fritz Reiner did with the Chicago Symphony except through recordings? What if we don't live near a perfect hall with brilliant players? How do we learn the subtle bits of how this music works except through many hearings of different interpretations? Most of what any of us has to say is itself a reproduction our belief system anyway.
Listening to David Dubal at the moment...
But not too simple, please. There is a historical aspect to music recordings that is being ignored here. How are we to know what Fritz Reiner did with the Chicago Symphony except through recordings? What if we don't live near a perfect hall with brilliant players? How do we learn the subtle bits of how this music works except through many hearings of different interpretations? Most of what any of us has to say is itself a reproduction our belief system anyway.
Listening to David Dubal at the moment...
phivates, I couldn't agree more. It is wonderful that our illusion machines can transport us all over the world, to distant times and places. That is why I am so glad that audiophile standards don't need to be met in order for me to enjoy the musical qualities of recorded performances.
But when the sound isn't realistic, the brain must work to make up the difference. For some reason, oftentimes I find it easier to listen to such recordings on low-resolution systems.
Gary Dahl
But when the sound isn't realistic, the brain must work to make up the difference. For some reason, oftentimes I find it easier to listen to such recordings on low-resolution systems.
Gary Dahl
I'm right now listening to Seattle Opera's Gotterdammerung on King FM over cable and I have to say, however they slung their mics around, they certainly did a hell of a good job! Excellent sound capture. Great performance.
(It's online as well and probably sounds better than cable, but I'm too lazy to hook up the puter).
Gary, after fifty years of opera nuttiness my conclusion about listening to it reproduced is that stereo won't do, not even with a centre channel and subs. Have to have "surround", (or, at least more point sources), because opera - all big music - is a super normal stimulus performed in venues created for the purpose of producing a super normal acoustic environment.
The illusion doesn't work if some facsimile of that outsized acoustic space is not created.
Years ago I did crude experiments using two side and two back channels with appropriate delays and roll offs, no other processing, and got a pretty good approximation of a large performing space.
These days HT people are all over this kind of stuff and I can't understand why audio folk aren't also.
(It's online as well and probably sounds better than cable, but I'm too lazy to hook up the puter).
Gary, after fifty years of opera nuttiness my conclusion about listening to it reproduced is that stereo won't do, not even with a centre channel and subs. Have to have "surround", (or, at least more point sources), because opera - all big music - is a super normal stimulus performed in venues created for the purpose of producing a super normal acoustic environment.
The illusion doesn't work if some facsimile of that outsized acoustic space is not created.
Years ago I did crude experiments using two side and two back channels with appropriate delays and roll offs, no other processing, and got a pretty good approximation of a large performing space.
These days HT people are all over this kind of stuff and I can't understand why audio folk aren't also.
Martin,
Glad to see that, unlike (RAAL) ribbons and (Beyma and Mundorf) AMTs, integration is apparently that seamless. And also with the AH425s? But am I missing something, or like the AMTs, the Fostex T900 apparently have poor off-axis response? https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/bullet-tweeters/fostex-t900a-top-mount-horn-super-tweeter/ And the new step up model measures no better https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/bullet-tweeters/fostex-t500amkii-super-tweeter-new-version/
But is that also much the case with most (Le Cleach?) horns (AS 425)?
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Gary and Pierre thanks for all crossover and EQ info here
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/100392-beyond-ariel-1295.html
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/100392-beyond-ariel-1295.html
Yes. When it is not possible to get the reproduced sound to come close to the live performance, then it is fine to modify the input signal (electronically or mechanically) such that it can come close to the live performance, in term of musicality or whatever...
Using 2nd order distortion and using enclosure vibration are 2 common and easy approaches...
But I believe that such approaches are fine ONLY when the budget (and design skill) is so low that a reproduced sound can never be hi-fi enough.
For expensive stuffs, or cost-no-object systems, I think it is only fine for 2 reasons (1) The designer doesn't have sufficient capability to get a good accurate sound (2) Marketing purposes, such as to satisfy some taste requirements from certain market segment, even if small.
And the above is the exact reason why accuracy is a must! (for cost-no-object products). It is difficult to achieve objective quality and subjective quality at the same time. But when we have budget and skill, WHY NOT???
Even with subjectively small budget, my requirement for my perfect speaker has always been its ability to distinguish great performers (vocalists or musicians) from lousy performers...
Even if the recording is not perfect, I expect a performance from a diva to outperform a performance from diva-wannabe in an audiophile recording. Eric Clapton for example, with his "Wonderful Tonight" sung by many "gold-voice" singers, still stand out.
A great guitarists, they really have the feeling when they have to start strumming the guitar and with what pressure. It is a talent (those who know how to create musical voice and sounds). Same with vocalist. These microscopic aspects should be reproduced accurately. And how can we achieve that with non-accurate system???
Fortunately, anyone who can appreciate vocal and music, can judge if the speaker has this capability or not (to distinguish great performers from the average). Imagine you are an American Idol jury, can you judge from your speaker at home?
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That's the sad truth.
You nailed down the experience I tried to convey.
This is the bottom line of what I miss, while not having enough words to describe all the aspects of the 'negative coloration'.
This is a 'magic' that cannot possibly be reproduced by electro-mechanical means. The 'enchantment' that Lynn referred to.
At times it's not only 'the combined sonorities', not only the totality of the auditory impact – it's also the collective musical and human 'atmosphere', an 'atmosphere' which cannot possibly be recorded and reproduced, or recreated.
This will require connection of the reproduction system being made "directly" to the brain. We will probably not have the pleasure to experience ("hear") it but I'm certain it will happen within 100 years.
//
Oh yes, I remember the Stravinsky performance.
The entire performance was just so beautiful. I'm not a big fan of 20th-Century classical music, particularly the more atonal styles. The surprise was the beauty; it sure didn't sound that way on any recording, and on any system, that I'd ever heard before.
As Gary and I walked out of the concert, I realized with some sadness that a good-sized portion of the modern repertoire was, and is, effectively unrecordable. Sure, in a mechanical way you can capture the changes in air density, but the entire musical sense of the piece is destroyed. A recording of street noise would make as much musical sense.
We are not out of the woods yet. We just aren't. A large part of the 20th-century classical repertoire is condemned to reproduction so harsh and ugly it deters all but the most determined listeners. Same thing for just about all of opera; electromechanical reproduction is a travesty compared to the real thing.
James Boyk is 100% right; live acoustic music, performed by musicians inspired by a receptive and eager audience, is stunningly beautiful. The overwhelming sensation of beauty, which can leave you completely without words at the performance, is not just absent, but replaced by a grating and harsh ugliness with most recordings and on most hifi systems.
There are musical styles where beauty isn't important; it's all about impact, loudness, and the physical sensation of bass. Performed live, this kind of music emerges from multi-kilowatt PA systems. If the system at home isn't all that beautiful, it isn't a great loss; the performance and the recording aren't about beauty, but something else. No put-down is intended here; different types of music use different means to induce different states of consciousness in the listener.
Beauty is really, really hard. Ask any artist working in any medium. It's not prettiness; it's creating an intense emotional sensation in the listener, and takes consummate skill on the part of the composer and performer.
This is why I get annoyed at snide comments from reviewers about "euphonic coloration". It is damned difficult to get a hifi system to sound even a little bit sweet, never mind approach the emotional depth and intensity of a live performance. "Accuracy" in the audiophile sense is completely besides the point; a better question is, does it sound even a little bit beautiful?
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Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring? The Charles Dutoit digital recording is one of the first CDs I purchased way back in the 80s. Critics raved about it. I was never able to listen through the whole thing. The emotion it generated on my system at the time was closer to torture than pleasure.
I fully agree that there is much in live acoustic music that even very high end stereo cannot reproduce. As a regular operagoer, to me the difference is all too obvious. Sadly the same holds true for simpler acoustic music.
A few years back, at the Montreal audio show, the MBL company offered a live versus recorded music comparison. After waiting in line for a while I was able to enter their modest sized room. Vincent Bélanger was sitting there, his cello in hand, between the two speakers. The MBL team had recorded Vincent in the very same room the evening before, on an impressive-looking reel-to-reel tape machine. I had some modest hope that the demo would fool me to some degree. After all, shouldn’t a cello be easier to reproduce than a piano or a live orchestra? The room had been acoustically treated. The conditions seemed right for magic to happen. Alas the demo did not fool me. The stereo system reproduced music, but it was easy to tell that it was just that, a reproduction. It lacked sparkle and detail. It sounded flatter, duller. It had less emotional depth. More importantly, listening to Vincent playing his cello live gave me more pleasure.
Still, I enjoy stereo for what it is. My indicators of DIY audio “success” are not accuracy or measurements. (I see these as left-brain instruments that help achieve right-brain emotional pleasure.) My indicators of success are the amount of time I enjoy listening to my system, and how many recordings I purchase. When I stop spending time listening to my stereo, this tells me something is off. When the music produces goose bumps. When it entertains me late at night and I struggle to quit listening, then I take it to mean that my stereo system is in what I would describe as a “sweet spot.” In my experience, the classical music sweet spot is hard to achieve. The orchestral music one harder still. When my system is in such a sweet spot, I fear that making any change to it will make it worse instead of better. So the urge to tweak or to “improve” goes away – for a while.
I fully agree that there is much in live acoustic music that even very high end stereo cannot reproduce. As a regular operagoer, to me the difference is all too obvious. Sadly the same holds true for simpler acoustic music.
A few years back, at the Montreal audio show, the MBL company offered a live versus recorded music comparison. After waiting in line for a while I was able to enter their modest sized room. Vincent Bélanger was sitting there, his cello in hand, between the two speakers. The MBL team had recorded Vincent in the very same room the evening before, on an impressive-looking reel-to-reel tape machine. I had some modest hope that the demo would fool me to some degree. After all, shouldn’t a cello be easier to reproduce than a piano or a live orchestra? The room had been acoustically treated. The conditions seemed right for magic to happen. Alas the demo did not fool me. The stereo system reproduced music, but it was easy to tell that it was just that, a reproduction. It lacked sparkle and detail. It sounded flatter, duller. It had less emotional depth. More importantly, listening to Vincent playing his cello live gave me more pleasure.
Still, I enjoy stereo for what it is. My indicators of DIY audio “success” are not accuracy or measurements. (I see these as left-brain instruments that help achieve right-brain emotional pleasure.) My indicators of success are the amount of time I enjoy listening to my system, and how many recordings I purchase. When I stop spending time listening to my stereo, this tells me something is off. When the music produces goose bumps. When it entertains me late at night and I struggle to quit listening, then I take it to mean that my stereo system is in what I would describe as a “sweet spot.” In my experience, the classical music sweet spot is hard to achieve. The orchestral music one harder still. When my system is in such a sweet spot, I fear that making any change to it will make it worse instead of better. So the urge to tweak or to “improve” goes away – for a while.
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Firstly, we can condense much of this very frank, yet friendly honest experience and opinion. It all melds to form a composite picture of the human aural experience of reproduction versus the real thing at our level.
Secondly, if we take say a piece of popular guitar music composed for and played with say a Stratocaster electric guitar through a Marshall valve amp in a large hall, record it on the best recording digital FLAC and Analogue 1" Ampex ( open to opinion).
Then replay using the digital, analogue recordings, with agreed best replay electronics, and repeat the live perfomance, all in a good size room with acceptable proportions, reverb, time, all through the same speakers, in the same floor position, etc
Do they sound the indestinguishable or different to a selection of listeners in the room? Are we anywhre near true fidelity.
That is the paradigm in a nutshell.
In what way are they different? Try the same thing with a piano, string quartet, other genre, then finally an orchestra.
So do the Stratocaster recordings sound the same similar or different?
What is missing or changed
Or more difficult, what about the orchestra?
Most of us could not even begin to carry out this type of comparison. And most of us do not have the room, or the equipment or master recordings that are truly state of art repro quality.
As DYers we can, starting with the room or mini auditorium in the house, or we can build one. But we can surely get closer to true fidelity, if that is what we really seek rather than doctored reproduction which many people seem to prefer whether audiophile or Blutooth fanatic.
What is really the current status of the art of HiFi
Secondly, if we take say a piece of popular guitar music composed for and played with say a Stratocaster electric guitar through a Marshall valve amp in a large hall, record it on the best recording digital FLAC and Analogue 1" Ampex ( open to opinion).
Then replay using the digital, analogue recordings, with agreed best replay electronics, and repeat the live perfomance, all in a good size room with acceptable proportions, reverb, time, all through the same speakers, in the same floor position, etc
Do they sound the indestinguishable or different to a selection of listeners in the room? Are we anywhre near true fidelity.
That is the paradigm in a nutshell.
In what way are they different? Try the same thing with a piano, string quartet, other genre, then finally an orchestra.
So do the Stratocaster recordings sound the same similar or different?
What is missing or changed
Or more difficult, what about the orchestra?
Most of us could not even begin to carry out this type of comparison. And most of us do not have the room, or the equipment or master recordings that are truly state of art repro quality.
As DYers we can, starting with the room or mini auditorium in the house, or we can build one. But we can surely get closer to true fidelity, if that is what we really seek rather than doctored reproduction which many people seem to prefer whether audiophile or Blutooth fanatic.
What is really the current status of the art of HiFi
The whole point of a music playback system is to be an "effects machine", or said another way; a machine that creates an effective illusion of a performance. That system includes the room it's played in, plus the furniture in the room, plus the people, etc., etc.. (if I stand naked in my glass enclosed shower and talk, I can hear an echo. When I bring a towel into the shower, the echo is much less - and my hearing is marginal).
The brain does not measure like a linear device. Something that shows a fairly large deviation on a device may be ignored by the brain. Likewise, seemingly small deviations by measurement may be readily perceived by the brain. Tap on a speaker cone. It will have a characteristic sound based on its material of construction. Paper sounds like paper, metal sounds like metal. The voice coil is tapping on the cone too. Those subtle cues have to be transmitted during reproduction. And, depending on the instrument being reproduced can add to or subtract from the illusion. So also goes damping characteristics of amps, drivers, enclosures, crossover networks, etc..
And the beat goes on. If we had it all figured out for a universal application, then this forum would be superfluous and we'd have to find something else to do.
Sheldon
The brain does not measure like a linear device. Something that shows a fairly large deviation on a device may be ignored by the brain. Likewise, seemingly small deviations by measurement may be readily perceived by the brain. Tap on a speaker cone. It will have a characteristic sound based on its material of construction. Paper sounds like paper, metal sounds like metal. The voice coil is tapping on the cone too. Those subtle cues have to be transmitted during reproduction. And, depending on the instrument being reproduced can add to or subtract from the illusion. So also goes damping characteristics of amps, drivers, enclosures, crossover networks, etc..
And the beat goes on. If we had it all figured out for a universal application, then this forum would be superfluous and we'd have to find something else to do.
Sheldon
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Herein lies the quandary? How to reproduce a live event. There is just only so much you can do with a pair of speakers, any two speakers can only do so much. As many have pointed out for synthetic music like rock and pop that has no other point of view besides an amplified sound field things work. Now take those same pop songs and have a performer or group play those same songs in an acoustic manner and just try and recreate that sense of sound, just as you can't do it with Opera I don't think you can get that same intimate type of sound.
I have sat in the room with popular singers with an acoustic guitar, Kenny Rankin comes to mind, where you would just never be able to record and reproduce that acoustic event of just sitting next to him in a small room in his house and listen to that live voice and a nice Martin Guitar, I don't know how you can capture that kind of sound with a pair of microphones. A personal friend of mine, Airto Morrera, the number one percussionist for at least a decade can just make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck when I have sat in a room with him rehearsing. the sounds he can create from his many different instruments let alone a drum kit are just so different than those same sounds on recorded media. I don't know how you can capture the impact of those instruments or the shimmering of some of the sounds he can create, it makes it hard as others have said to listen to recorded music.
We can't simulate the sound field of a large venue on a recording and not smear that sound in a playback system when we reproduce that same sound field in a small room, the acoustics of the room take precedence and change the sound, our ears and minds are accurate enough to know someone is trying to fool us, we know it is a lie.
I have for a long time imagined a sound system that would in effect be that of a dome, a space around us where the walls of the dome are covered in discrete speakers, each a separate channel reproducing a specific part of the sound that would have been recorded in the inverse relationship to the playback system. A 360 sound field where we record that way and play it back in the reverse. This way we could capture the sound of the actual reverberant sound field, we could play it back the same way. but this is just a dream, I don't see us having rooms like this in our homes.
The closest we can come to that is a multichannel discrete sound system, something like a HT type system at a much higher level. That would require all the speakers to be full range, no band limiting like we have in home theater systems. This also requires the recording engineers to actually understand what it is they are needing to record, that is at least half if not more as important as the playback system, the knowledge of how to capture the event. I have only met a few recording engineers who even understand the requirements, if they do they don't have enough technical knowledge in how to do that.
This just leads me to believe that at this point in time we just can't reproduce those types of sounds of a live event that a two channel system is remotely capable of doing, we are asking for more than is possible. Our expectations are beyond the practical or possible, we have to be able to settle for an approximation of those events and know that is the best we can do. If you can live with that paradigm you can listen and enjoy the music, if you insist that the music be sonically accurate in its reproduction to a live event then I don't believe you will ever be truly satisfied.
I have sat in the room with popular singers with an acoustic guitar, Kenny Rankin comes to mind, where you would just never be able to record and reproduce that acoustic event of just sitting next to him in a small room in his house and listen to that live voice and a nice Martin Guitar, I don't know how you can capture that kind of sound with a pair of microphones. A personal friend of mine, Airto Morrera, the number one percussionist for at least a decade can just make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck when I have sat in a room with him rehearsing. the sounds he can create from his many different instruments let alone a drum kit are just so different than those same sounds on recorded media. I don't know how you can capture the impact of those instruments or the shimmering of some of the sounds he can create, it makes it hard as others have said to listen to recorded music.
We can't simulate the sound field of a large venue on a recording and not smear that sound in a playback system when we reproduce that same sound field in a small room, the acoustics of the room take precedence and change the sound, our ears and minds are accurate enough to know someone is trying to fool us, we know it is a lie.
I have for a long time imagined a sound system that would in effect be that of a dome, a space around us where the walls of the dome are covered in discrete speakers, each a separate channel reproducing a specific part of the sound that would have been recorded in the inverse relationship to the playback system. A 360 sound field where we record that way and play it back in the reverse. This way we could capture the sound of the actual reverberant sound field, we could play it back the same way. but this is just a dream, I don't see us having rooms like this in our homes.
The closest we can come to that is a multichannel discrete sound system, something like a HT type system at a much higher level. That would require all the speakers to be full range, no band limiting like we have in home theater systems. This also requires the recording engineers to actually understand what it is they are needing to record, that is at least half if not more as important as the playback system, the knowledge of how to capture the event. I have only met a few recording engineers who even understand the requirements, if they do they don't have enough technical knowledge in how to do that.
This just leads me to believe that at this point in time we just can't reproduce those types of sounds of a live event that a two channel system is remotely capable of doing, we are asking for more than is possible. Our expectations are beyond the practical or possible, we have to be able to settle for an approximation of those events and know that is the best we can do. If you can live with that paradigm you can listen and enjoy the music, if you insist that the music be sonically accurate in its reproduction to a live event then I don't believe you will ever be truly satisfied.
Many will including I in general agree with this what we can have and what is not possible yet.
It is helpful to us all considering all these good inputs either reticent or positive, as it allows us perhaps to form a more realistic tangible consensus of what we currently individually want and what also is possible for us in our own current circumstances.
I feel upbeat about it, because there is a growing confidence of a true fidelity approach or what we discover is our evolving preference, while seeing how far we can get along the way closer to the moving audio event horizon. SET and SS but only by revision with modern components and circuits, does give two distinct developable channels for improvement, and many of us are working on this.
For me the fidelity is closer than I have ever been, but I can see I am still well off the beach. But like most of us, the ongong joy at each new gust of wind that takes us closer.
It is helpful to us all considering all these good inputs either reticent or positive, as it allows us perhaps to form a more realistic tangible consensus of what we currently individually want and what also is possible for us in our own current circumstances.
I feel upbeat about it, because there is a growing confidence of a true fidelity approach or what we discover is our evolving preference, while seeing how far we can get along the way closer to the moving audio event horizon. SET and SS but only by revision with modern components and circuits, does give two distinct developable channels for improvement, and many of us are working on this.
For me the fidelity is closer than I have ever been, but I can see I am still well off the beach. But like most of us, the ongong joy at each new gust of wind that takes us closer.