Why is it that those who claim to strive for 0.001% or less (which can, allegedly, be heard but not always measured) often seem to design, or tolerate, gross circuit design errors which create lots of other easily heard and easily measured problems?
I would find these claims easier to believe if they related to designs and designers who added 'audio gold plating' to already state-of-the-art designs (by normal engineering standards). All too often, highly rated items have basic design errors. One is forced to the conclusion that it is the errors, clearly modifying the sound, which are causally related to the high rating i.e. they are subtle (or not so subtle!) FX boxes.
I would find these claims easier to believe if they related to designs and designers who added 'audio gold plating' to already state-of-the-art designs (by normal engineering standards). All too often, highly rated items have basic design errors. One is forced to the conclusion that it is the errors, clearly modifying the sound, which are causally related to the high rating i.e. they are subtle (or not so subtle!) FX boxes.
This will forever trap you in the closed circle of conventional science, where data and controlled listening tests are one's meager nourishment. You will miss the richness of chasing imaginary issues, of feeling a sense of accomplishment for achieving nothing, of having an impregnable sense of superiority without actual knowledge.
I pity you.
Forget it marce, hes beyond help. these guys can prove a hypothesis by simply believing it to be real. they have heard it with their own 2 ears, the jitter at -140-150db down at an unknown frequency that changes imperceptibility each time it is reenacted. they cite a select few others, who are similarly convinced, as evidence.
It cannot be measured and mostly not heard by rational humans, with only the vaguest suggestion of a theory that if true has no solution and has nothing to do with the interconnection or transport (unless this position changes again). yet is continuously mentioned in relation to one interface or another, or software...
that there is no method for the demons to travel on this interconnections does not shake their belief in low level broadband noise, that selectively causes error in higher (audio and audio related only frequencies and encoding). it appears only to those with select sufficiently high end systems and super-exclusive-human hearing, without affecting error in any reliable or measurable way.
It causes interference on ground, even in galvanically isolated connections, it causes error in bit perfect files, it causes jitter encoded in systems that have no timing element; it is a miracle!
It cannot be stopped by buffering, cannot be stopped by isolation and its subtle, unnamed and invisible quantum level effects are widely known and accepted as factual amongst those in the know.... expensive ethernet cables though, they help to solve this problem, leaving only just enough to continue to fret about.
That only a small percentage of people 'hear' it, serves to reinforce the superiority of their audiophilia, rather than the more likely suggestion they are hallucinating. That they all have different theories, different causes, different effects, does not shake their resolve, rather ties them together in a brotherhood of the unknown.
It cannot be measured and mostly not heard by rational humans, with only the vaguest suggestion of a theory that if true has no solution and has nothing to do with the interconnection or transport (unless this position changes again). yet is continuously mentioned in relation to one interface or another, or software...
that there is no method for the demons to travel on this interconnections does not shake their belief in low level broadband noise, that selectively causes error in higher (audio and audio related only frequencies and encoding). it appears only to those with select sufficiently high end systems and super-exclusive-human hearing, without affecting error in any reliable or measurable way.
It causes interference on ground, even in galvanically isolated connections, it causes error in bit perfect files, it causes jitter encoded in systems that have no timing element; it is a miracle!
It cannot be stopped by buffering, cannot be stopped by isolation and its subtle, unnamed and invisible quantum level effects are widely known and accepted as factual amongst those in the know.... expensive ethernet cables though, they help to solve this problem, leaving only just enough to continue to fret about.
That only a small percentage of people 'hear' it, serves to reinforce the superiority of their audiophilia, rather than the more likely suggestion they are hallucinating. That they all have different theories, different causes, different effects, does not shake their resolve, rather ties them together in a brotherhood of the unknown.
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simulation? dont make me laugh, if you dont know the mechanism and its different at every moment you repeat it, you really think you can simulate what you cannot measure? model with more detail and at a higher speed, more consistently than reality?
a model only has the attributes you give it, so you would need to know the mechanism to model it. so what is the mechanism?
a model only has the attributes you give it, so you would need to know the mechanism to model it. so what is the mechanism?
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And another thing.
Still, systems that test to inaudible levels of distortion do not produce music indistinguishable from an acoustic musical performance, even with real blind testing. Just because we have no test equipment to measure it, does not mean it is imaginary. It means we need better tests.
In the meantime, charlatanism for profit abounds claiming to address the problems. For those with a solid working bullsh1t detector, it just irritates. For others, well, you know what happens to a fool and his money.
So, what's going on? Micro-dynamics? Dispersion? Another culprit: microphones. I did an exhausting tweak of a church sound system after getting my equipment specification through committee (buying what I couldn't sell them on). My test subject would speak at the pulpit for a half-minute, then speak to the side of it (unidirectional mike) for as long and back again.
After a few hours of this I had as close as I could get. It involved:
1. Expansion of the sound -18db and below so as not to pick up the bell choir behind. (softer sounds even softer)
2. Compression of the normal speaking levels 3x so people of different heights (fixed boundary mike) could be heard but never blast. Distance less critical for the shy. Peak cutoff for shouters.
3. Tube simulation which seemed to restore lost timbre to voices (adding harmonic distortion?)
4. Notch de-essing filter to get rid of what I call the snake effect.
5. Gentle treble hump: Equalization to bring out consonants for intelligibility for the people in the back row. This after EQing the space to flat before the person reading showed up.
After all this, the person through the system sounded the same from the 10th row as he did unamplified from the first row. Near as I could get it and my subject was protesting. I gave up.
Now I knew what sound engineers do. Like women with makeup, it takes a lot of work to look like they aren't wearing any. When we strive to get to the music, we've got a lot of things in the way before we even have the chance. It's baked into the file.
The result? Parishioners didn't know the system was on, but did say they could understand the sermon when before they couldn't. Very gratifying. I got compliments years later, especially after people visited other churches and heard a travesty of a sound system elsewhere.
And this correction was for a good mike to sound approximately natural. For the curious the mike was Crown, the amp Yamaha, the processor Behringer and the speakers Tannoy Pro (just two 6" coaxial drivers for the whole 100 person space plus a monitor and a 5" for the choir. Choir people behind the pulpit didn't follow the sermon at all before).
Still, systems that test to inaudible levels of distortion do not produce music indistinguishable from an acoustic musical performance, even with real blind testing. Just because we have no test equipment to measure it, does not mean it is imaginary. It means we need better tests.
In the meantime, charlatanism for profit abounds claiming to address the problems. For those with a solid working bullsh1t detector, it just irritates. For others, well, you know what happens to a fool and his money.
So, what's going on? Micro-dynamics? Dispersion? Another culprit: microphones. I did an exhausting tweak of a church sound system after getting my equipment specification through committee (buying what I couldn't sell them on). My test subject would speak at the pulpit for a half-minute, then speak to the side of it (unidirectional mike) for as long and back again.
After a few hours of this I had as close as I could get. It involved:
1. Expansion of the sound -18db and below so as not to pick up the bell choir behind. (softer sounds even softer)
2. Compression of the normal speaking levels 3x so people of different heights (fixed boundary mike) could be heard but never blast. Distance less critical for the shy. Peak cutoff for shouters.
3. Tube simulation which seemed to restore lost timbre to voices (adding harmonic distortion?)
4. Notch de-essing filter to get rid of what I call the snake effect.
5. Gentle treble hump: Equalization to bring out consonants for intelligibility for the people in the back row. This after EQing the space to flat before the person reading showed up.
After all this, the person through the system sounded the same from the 10th row as he did unamplified from the first row. Near as I could get it and my subject was protesting. I gave up.
Now I knew what sound engineers do. Like women with makeup, it takes a lot of work to look like they aren't wearing any. When we strive to get to the music, we've got a lot of things in the way before we even have the chance. It's baked into the file.
The result? Parishioners didn't know the system was on, but did say they could understand the sermon when before they couldn't. Very gratifying. I got compliments years later, especially after people visited other churches and heard a travesty of a sound system elsewhere.
And this correction was for a good mike to sound approximately natural. For the curious the mike was Crown, the amp Yamaha, the processor Behringer and the speakers Tannoy Pro (just two 6" coaxial drivers for the whole 100 person space plus a monitor and a 5" for the choir. Choir people behind the pulpit didn't follow the sermon at all before).
True, but signal transmission and boxes of gain which measure well cannot be distinguished "ears only." One can get a signal from point A in space-time to point B and make it larger or smaller with arbitrary accuracy and far better than humans can distinguish by ear. These are problems which were solved decades ago. The lack of realism in playback lies elsewhere- as an example, see some of the lively threads on polar pattern elsewhere on the forum for debates about issues that have actually been demonstrated to be audible.
Proponents of "everything matters" are singularly lacking in actual evidence and, until such evidence is proffered, may be safely ignored while the real work is done by others.
thats an odd parallel to make, we are arguing with the ability to distinguish and detect demons in a bitperfect system that mutate every time you play the same file. All within the box, no crossing of domains either.
that has very little similarity to the still imperfect ability of sound to be captured from a finite group of microphones, sampled and retransmitted from a direction other than where the eye can see its coming from, in a way that is indistinguishable from the real thing.
we have difference in time and space, a set of mics converting to electricity and are probably directional and designed to remove some ambiance and spray->mic-pre->perhaps ADC->EQ (perhaps digital crossover)->DAC->Amp->Speakers (perhaps electro-accoustic crossover)->Room
in your case perhaps a large room and the convolver IR is taken from a different spot in that room from where its heard to be replayed.
one is stated to be completely without error, but different. the other is practically full of room for error and multiple interfaces that are known and accepted to be imperfect.
that has very little similarity to the still imperfect ability of sound to be captured from a finite group of microphones, sampled and retransmitted from a direction other than where the eye can see its coming from, in a way that is indistinguishable from the real thing.
we have difference in time and space, a set of mics converting to electricity and are probably directional and designed to remove some ambiance and spray->mic-pre->perhaps ADC->EQ (perhaps digital crossover)->DAC->Amp->Speakers (perhaps electro-accoustic crossover)->Room
in your case perhaps a large room and the convolver IR is taken from a different spot in that room from where its heard to be replayed.
one is stated to be completely without error, but different. the other is practically full of room for error and multiple interfaces that are known and accepted to be imperfect.
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"we are arguing with the ability to distinguish and detect demons in a bitperfect system that mutate every time you play the same file"
Yup, that's silly. I was trying to move the direction to other sources of problems in sound reproduction that matter.
It's naive, I know, but I thought you paid big bucks to mike makers for fidelity. Yes, the mike was directional, but even used as directed was a mess. Are my standards too high?
Yup, that's silly. I was trying to move the direction to other sources of problems in sound reproduction that matter.
It's naive, I know, but I thought you paid big bucks to mike makers for fidelity. Yes, the mike was directional, but even used as directed was a mess. Are my standards too high?
haha and a valiant effort it was too, sorry
yep you pay the big bucks, but they only have so much they can do, you are still slicing up the large space into 2-10"2 diaphragms, then adding some filter to de-ess. then all the electronics and then you still have a difference in location.
youde have better luck giving everyone something like the JH3A and a virtualizer program to model the space, take it out of the equation. (I figure you know of the jh3a being a head-fier?)
infinite cash still just gets you closer, but there are real physical limitations that are not easy to solve.
The best a mike can do is sample the sound field it is given. That sound field is set by the speaker and the room. It always astonishes me that the simple act of speaking towards (not even into) a microphone seems beyond the capabilities of many, otherwise normal intelligent, people. I can't get all of them to understand that simply talking to the congregation, with a mike on a stand in front of them, is all that is necessary. They insist on either holding the mike (invariably then too close or too far from their mouth) or treating it as an ice-cream on a stand (I tell them "If you can lick it, you are too close!").
Sorry for maintaining the OT.
Sorry for maintaining the OT.
Hmmm ... at least I better understand what the strong negativity results from: the belief that the solutions lie with the transducers of the physical sound. Yes, obviously that's another piece in the armoury, it's a form of DSP so to speak, and certainly can do wonders if one hasn't the ability, for whatever reasons, to modify other elements in the chain.
However, that's selling the capabilities of the ear/brain well short. In my experience, and of a few other people as well, there's another way of producing "ideal" sound. And that's to reduce the level of certain types of distortion generated within the electronics of the playback system to inaudible levels; and when I say inaudible I mean that the distortion is most certainly still there, but it's at an intensity that the filtering mechanism of the hearing system can discard it without conscious effort. Sound is perceived as "natural" when the brain can process it without extra exertion beyond that used for "real" sounds; if the mind has to step up a notch to focus on, analyse the acoustic information then the problems of listener fatigue, boredom, loss of interest most likely will come into the equation at some point.
Yes, this is empirical evidence, no "data" that I'm aware of: this is the realm of psychoacoustics, I sure studies have been done of this sort of thing but they probably don't have the right titles to make obvious connections across to audio reproduction ...
Frank
However, that's selling the capabilities of the ear/brain well short. In my experience, and of a few other people as well, there's another way of producing "ideal" sound. And that's to reduce the level of certain types of distortion generated within the electronics of the playback system to inaudible levels; and when I say inaudible I mean that the distortion is most certainly still there, but it's at an intensity that the filtering mechanism of the hearing system can discard it without conscious effort. Sound is perceived as "natural" when the brain can process it without extra exertion beyond that used for "real" sounds; if the mind has to step up a notch to focus on, analyse the acoustic information then the problems of listener fatigue, boredom, loss of interest most likely will come into the equation at some point.
Yes, this is empirical evidence, no "data" that I'm aware of: this is the realm of psychoacoustics, I sure studies have been done of this sort of thing but they probably don't have the right titles to make obvious connections across to audio reproduction ...
Frank
One of the things that has particularly interested me over the years has been whether the output transducers, ie. the loudspeakers, drivers, are a limiting factor in creating high quality sound. With this in mind I deliberately went very down market, using speakers now that you wouldn't pay, say, $20 for, even new. And the remarkable result, for some, is that they don't. Provided the electronics supply them with a very clean signal they don't have a problem projecting a very impressive, convincing sound scape. Which means, that the type of distortion they add to the mix is of a type that doesn't overly offend the ear, unlike some which arises from subtle, high speed processing behaviour interfering with analogue stages ...
Frank
Frank
I was complaining about the need to de-ess at all. A microphone shouldn't over emphasize that consonant. Did you know that the average woman's S is 8Khz, and the man's 7.2Khz? Children? I'd have to make swiss cheese out of the region. I just went with those most likely to speak. I didn't want to readjust on the fly, which is what you would do if you were recording for money.
My hours long tweak of the church system happened AFTER I had EQ'd to the room. And I EQd it after optimal speaker placement. Well, it wasn't totally optimal. Aesthetic and safety considerations (bump on the head) had to be factors.
Did you know that Barbara Streisand will only record with a particular 1949 design Neumann? Sad thing is, she probably isn't crazy.
As far as people who can be satisfied with mid-fi speakers. I envy you. Put The Rite of Spring on on your spider scrapers at realistic volume levels next to anything serious. I dunno. These? THIEL SCS4 speaker review
If you can't tell the difference I envy you.
wouldnt the existence of the people in the room drastically change the response of the room? perhaps you should rent a crowd to do a proper setup, or have you already done this?
I dont have much by way of mics, though i'm looking to buy one for crossover setup that I can also use for recording, probably a Rode. can you recommend something? other than the behringer
I dont have much by way of mics, though i'm looking to buy one for crossover setup that I can also use for recording, probably a Rode. can you recommend something? other than the behringer
Personally, I'd try something like a recent Foo Fighter's album, at about 3/4 volume; this would mean an average volume level where you would have to think about shouting into the ear of the person next to you for them to understand you; this is the sort of thing that really starts to separate the ...
Frank
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