I'm suprized there doesn't seem to be any interest in Binaural recordings given the amount of headphone lisenting going on
not as good as persoanlized HRTF but can be impressive compared to standard loudspeaker stereo recording played over headphones - can be added with processing but few DAP "crossfed" work very well for me
in fact many headphones have built in "diffuse field" EQ to sound better with loudspeaker targeted stereo source
not as good as persoanlized HRTF but can be impressive compared to standard loudspeaker stereo recording played over headphones - can be added with processing but few DAP "crossfed" work very well for me
in fact many headphones have built in "diffuse field" EQ to sound better with loudspeaker targeted stereo source
Sad to hear the comments of having to appease the neighbors WRT noise. Music played at reasonable volumes on quality speakers is better than headphones, IMHO. One of the perks of owning a home.
My son listens to music alot. He was using Dr. Dre headphones ('cause of the kool factor....) and the cable broke. Cheap cr*p...... I couldn't fix it so as a gift I bought him Audio Technica ATH-M50 as replacements, knowing that they are so much better than the Dr. Dre cr*p. He was blown away by the sound quality, even though he listens to MP3. I think I converted him.
My son listens to music alot. He was using Dr. Dre headphones ('cause of the kool factor....) and the cable broke. Cheap cr*p...... I couldn't fix it so as a gift I bought him Audio Technica ATH-M50 as replacements, knowing that they are so much better than the Dr. Dre cr*p. He was blown away by the sound quality, even though he listens to MP3. I think I converted him.
Bang on!!!
High and Hifi is available to those who have pocket full of money and lot of skills , lesser mortals has to live with whatever is thrown at him and he has to force convince himself that , life in all about this much.so unfortunate present world is.
More and more cheaper and poorer quality stuff is flooded in market where in Better ones are lost in Oblivion.
Clever advertisement and reckless lifestyle should be blamed possibly.
but isnt that true of the status quo in anything? there are more high quality headphones being produced now than at any other time in history. beats, bose and (just about) all of the monster headphones are universally panned as crap by anyone who would actually call themselves a headphone enthusiast; rather than just someone who likes to appear as if they can buy 'the best', most stylin headphones and cares not for the sound
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I've recently taken to headphones, mostly because my house is too small to fit proper sound in. Loads of jazz recordings put part of the mix in just one ear, which is really annoying. Being inside the piano is a common problem with orchestral music.
That's with music recorded for domestic stereo systems. Much recent music is pure confection and never existed in real space. I guess it's mixed by people who listen both in a studio and with headphones. The inside your head sound is a legitimate presentation.
Most headphone use is mobile. If you create an external sound image and move your head, the performers move at implausible speed around the landscape. I think pilots had the same problem. Modern military headsets have gyros I believe, so the image stays put.
Why can't I buy gyro-equipped headphones, with enough DSP so simulate space in real time, but without the talking weapons system and matching targetting goggles?
The more I think about this,
The more I wonder if its already dead and we are the only ones that are not aware of it yet...
Music is the sound of civilisation. What did you expect? Not dead yet. Just done, finished. Mission accomplished.
Like any other aspect of human development and consciousness, including all the things we aren't allowed to talk about here. Like music itself, everything's done, dusted, and wired in to the fabric.
There is some possibility still that the Orient can inspire another movement or two. Otherwise this is the coda. The last chord just hangs forever.
The death of the album is hugely significant I think, but it will take some time to discover how and why. The vaunted increase in freedom of choice is an illusion: in fact, picking songs from the air is thoroughly alienating. Now the next track is much more tightly and immediately controlled by social forces.
High fidelity lasted for long enough to make all this happen. It was an elite and elitist fetish necessary for technological development. Now there is no high because there is no low, and vice versa. Everything is what it is, MP3 included. If everyone who listens hears the same sound, surely that is perfection.
DIY audio is for historical idealists and individualist guerillas.
I suspect that the overall lowering of fidelity levels began when the CD was first introduced. The cost to record companies in transferring their processes to digital was enormous. Studio owners had the same fiscal problems as record companies were no longer using their services to the previous extent. Yet there was a high spending target market to satisfy. For this reason music which cost little to nothing to produce - often recorded in garages, kitchens etc. on very cheap equipment became very heavily promoted and targeted at the young.
At the same time 'clubbing' was becoming very popular and any music with a strong rhythm sold well. Such music seldom puts any real challenge to the replay system makers in the 'affordable' market sector.
Consequently the record companies put their budget for serious music into reissuing back catalogue into digital format, and made their money selling what are now, with the much more advanced digital replay systems available, absolutely unacceptable recordings.
Gradually the standard has improved for the serious music listener and will with any luck require a large drop-off in the quantity of high profit bilge turned out by the 'music factories'. There is a lot of good popular music out there but it seldom gets heard and is virtually unpromoted.
At the same time 'clubbing' was becoming very popular and any music with a strong rhythm sold well. Such music seldom puts any real challenge to the replay system makers in the 'affordable' market sector.
Consequently the record companies put their budget for serious music into reissuing back catalogue into digital format, and made their money selling what are now, with the much more advanced digital replay systems available, absolutely unacceptable recordings.
Gradually the standard has improved for the serious music listener and will with any luck require a large drop-off in the quantity of high profit bilge turned out by the 'music factories'. There is a lot of good popular music out there but it seldom gets heard and is virtually unpromoted.
while I agree your scenario is more real than we would like to admit, its certainly on the cynical side of reality. as mentioned above; i'm not sure its done and dusted just yet, you need to get out more and by that I dont just mean real space. there is good music being made every day and I believe as the technology for hires recording and its distribution becomes more and more transparent to the individual, there will be communities fostered around it once more
i've already linked this twice and jcx has mentioned it twice also. its called the Smyth Realiser A8 heres an in depth review to help you 'get your head around it' but basically its exactly what you are talking about. not portable but I suppose its only a matter of time before a satellite could be used as the reference (actually that could be done now i'm sure) i've got my eye/ears on the system, i've tried it at a meet and its quite something.
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Not cynical. I'm sure we've saved the best bit 'til last. There is indeed lots of new good music around: for me it only needs to be fresh and well executed. But I do think it is colouring in a completed artwork.
I don't think, like many seem to, that most modern music is rubbish. It's just that it seems inevitable.
I should listen to more music from Japan, Korea and especially China. They've got some different notes, but I don't know if they will abandon them or manage to weave them into a new epoch. I was much impressed by the cultural integrity of the last Olympics. Watching reports of the English queen's jubilee celebrations, I don't hold out much hope for art in London this year. The queen looked like she would agree. The only bit of original art was the wonderful horse puppet. The song is an absolute disgrace.
Go out more? Where to? This is Bradford, where the dominant culture has for centuries supressed all music except devotional wailing and drumming at special weddings.
The headphones are interesting, mainly because I'm surprised that the objective is to emulate a room sound system, rather than to better it. And what's wrong with gyros? I only need orientation in an arbitrary direction, so a satellite seems a bit OTT, as it were. Gyro chips are cheap and seem to work well.
I agree - in principle - some of the modern kids stuff has some merit, but it is - as is so much these days - soon forgotten and then disposed of to thrift shop or wherever. On the other hand we are now well past the days of first transpositions of back catalogue to digital. The general quality of both serious (read; proven long term sellers) and classical has started to improve and this trend seems to be gathering apace.
I was in London when the first rush to transpose back-catalogue was in full progress. I visited a new "re-mastering suit" in an office block under the main flight path to Heathrow airport. The "suite" had no sound treatment, most remixing and tweaking was carried out on headphones! The "main monitors" were home hi-fi Spendor speakers powered by an ancient Quad power amp. I have heard from reliable sources that this was the average set-up in that temporary industry. I bought a mid market player and a few favourite disks. They were exceptionally nasty and I returned to my extensive and admittedly good turntable based system.
I have to admit that for a variety of reasons I prefer that system even today, but am forced to admit that my present CD system is very very close in overall performance...and that the gap is closing at a rapid rate. The latest straight to digital recordings are excellent, and if I did not already have a big library of good ol' albums I would not bother with other than a digital system.
Occasionally I listen to one or two of those first generation transcriptions to digital...they really were every bit as nasty as I first believed.
But - back to the topic! It seems that more young people now are gaining a true interest in music and will - in time - replace the die-hard "hi-fi" ranks as they advance in their experience of sound. Many may well become DIYers! If so this website is safe!!!
I was in London when the first rush to transpose back-catalogue was in full progress. I visited a new "re-mastering suit" in an office block under the main flight path to Heathrow airport. The "suite" had no sound treatment, most remixing and tweaking was carried out on headphones! The "main monitors" were home hi-fi Spendor speakers powered by an ancient Quad power amp. I have heard from reliable sources that this was the average set-up in that temporary industry. I bought a mid market player and a few favourite disks. They were exceptionally nasty and I returned to my extensive and admittedly good turntable based system.
I have to admit that for a variety of reasons I prefer that system even today, but am forced to admit that my present CD system is very very close in overall performance...and that the gap is closing at a rapid rate. The latest straight to digital recordings are excellent, and if I did not already have a big library of good ol' albums I would not bother with other than a digital system.
Occasionally I listen to one or two of those first generation transcriptions to digital...they really were every bit as nasty as I first believed.
But - back to the topic! It seems that more young people now are gaining a true interest in music and will - in time - replace the die-hard "hi-fi" ranks as they advance in their experience of sound. Many may well become DIYers! If so this website is safe!!!
Gyros can really only tell you relative motion, you have no reference point. Gyros also suffer from sensor drift because you're integrating the sensor result. What you ideally need is Innertial Measurement Unit that does sensor fusion for accelerometer, gyro, compass, gravity (to know which way is down) and maybe GPS. At a pinch this video is the best thing I can think of that describes the process you'd really want to pull this off. Image processing they look to be using in that system is computationally simpler than the above I believe.
I believe one part of the sensor fusion process to limit the long term sensor drift is to implement kalman filter, which isn't a trivial exercise on its own.
gyros add weight and a mechanism to go wrong, i'd rather do without adding to an already OTT portable headphone system, adding any actual hardware is much more OT. besides if you wanted to use gyros there would be no need for anything other than an iphone app to utilize the gyros already in there, combined with periodic gps updates to reset the gyros reference to and integrate it with your music app.
you'll excuse me if adding to the catalog of hard or popular rock and classical doesnt excite me all that much. hopefully it does continue to gain momentum and hires becomes standard, its only a matter of time before it actually becomes more economically viable to do so instead of having to make a separate mix for low res as they do now.
regarding using the realizer to emulate speakers, thats not all they can do, but can you suggest a viable and easily accessible alternative reference with which to calibrate the system to? it has to be able to calibrate to a known reference and YOU personally need to be able to respond to stimuli from this known reference so that it can calibrate your response.
you'll excuse me if adding to the catalog of hard or popular rock and classical doesnt excite me all that much. hopefully it does continue to gain momentum and hires becomes standard, its only a matter of time before it actually becomes more economically viable to do so instead of having to make a separate mix for low res as they do now.
regarding using the realizer to emulate speakers, thats not all they can do, but can you suggest a viable and easily accessible alternative reference with which to calibrate the system to? it has to be able to calibrate to a known reference and YOU personally need to be able to respond to stimuli from this known reference so that it can calibrate your response.
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I'm really into live performance. I like to listen to Jeff Beck, but you can't tell me watching him & Tal Wilkenfeld don't make it all the better. IMHO eventually live streaming, MTV, movies, TV, coimputing, porn, YouTube, Sirius, classical music, jazz, music education, and most music synthesis and performance and distribution etc. will converge and achieve very very high quality. I don't know exactly when LOL. We're at a critical tipping point where digital and switching-mode are approaching the quality of analog and...non-switching and that's going to make a huge difference as the efficiency, size, power requirements, and perfomance improve dramatically. That integration and standardization is far from complete. Look, in sound and media and video terms my youth was like publication was in the Gutenburg days, and yes hand-scribed transcripts were much more gorgeous than a .pdf When the printing press was invented the literate despised the low quality but got hooked on the convenience. Then the content improved in relevance and the quality just got better and better and the audience bloomed. It transformed society. Digital is at that stage, just barely becoming competent. I'm in the computer business, which did not exist when I was born. And electronics, well the old chemical photo business turned into the modern chip business and mass electronics are printed now, not even assembled. There's disposable paper smart cards with more processing power than ENIAC. That's the future; electronics is PRINTED in a chemical process more closely related to photography than to soldering. Get used to it. But it's still at an infant stage and exploding while we don't notice. Maybe someday there will be a DIY IC chip forum here, and Nelson Pass's granddaughter will be sharing innovative designs. How could so many mistake the very start for the end? When my dad assembled his Harman Kardon I & II kits it was really noteworthy because nobody in the neighborhood had ever heard anything like that. Blue Cheer just had big amps. Now I look at the proliferation of PA on a huge scale, and look at the high degree of quality in music production and I'm impressed. OK some markets shift and currently a video boom is overshadowing audio's own boom. Our generation was there from the begining and the beginning was a really big thing. When CSN&Y told us Nixon's soldiers were cutting us down it was a wake-up call to a generation and changed the world. But music is part of human life, so it's not going away. But it really is sad to see music education in school declining. In the '60's and '70's a lot of US schools had ROTC or band as a critical choice, and a lot of really good musicians started in those crappy public school bands
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Your comment has really struck a chord because back in the early 70s (72) I used to listen to music and feel very relaxed, and the enjoyment of music was almost like a spiritual experience. Many times as I lay there relaxed an image would come into my minds eye of the future of the music medium. The image was always the same each time. The main emphasis was that there were no moving parts but saw a flat and slightly oblong device about the size of four normal postage stamps that comprised of what I felt to be organic material within it. Because vinyl was the medium of the day then I could only imagine the concept of the music being encoded within the organic organic layers and the movement action while playing must, thinking about it now, be the flow of electrons through it.
At no point did I ever think of it being comprised of electronic components and do not know how it was played because it was never slotted to into anything it was always stand alone hovering on my right side (in my minds eye).
Later in the mid eighties I was offered solid state memory to play a short burst of audio for a proposed AV project but this was completely new to me and I had then wondered why I had totally missed the concept of electronic components being used and so concluded that I had got it all completely wrong.
So when you say that:quote (The future of) electronics is PRINTED in a chemical process more closely related to photography than to soldering. quote Then my immediate thought was that perhaps the next stage could be organic after all. Who knows?
Perhaps the recording process and the pre amp stage would benefit because of less physical components so allowing the transient nature of music to be reproduced well. Of course it is only speculation on my part as I have no experience in this area.
However it is a good question because I have recently bought a 4 CD set by Fleetwood Mac and have been very surprised at the quality they have managed to obtain from what is basically their back catalogue.
Whatever method they have used to achieved this,it is in my opinion a great leap forward in music reproduction and this is with equipment that we already own. It is as if the recordings are straight off the mixing desk with everything in the right place without exaggeration or emphasis. The reproduction is just so clear. I have some of the same tracks on other CDs and none are as clear as this compilation of their 25 years of music.
It seems that the veil has been lifted when compared with other recordings and it must be the case that other artists could benefit from adopting their technique whatever it may be. I have considered that it may all be in the electronic process. This set was only bought because it was part of an offer of £10 for one or £15 for two and thought why not.
Properly arranged and precisely structured, the latter may become a pathway...
...directly to the former but most likely, this will ultimately be used for far more than just audio and inevitably; driven initially by some other sector such as medical, military or WHY.
In fact; where it really matters, audio is already wholly organic. Presently, with only gaseous compression and rarefaction as the means of connectivity to the points of reception, transduction and neural excitation which eventually give rise to our conciousness of perception. We may reasonably anticipate that: in good time and with a fair wind this particular signal path will get a whole heap cleaner, faster and shorter.
As in Douglas Adams's story of the HHGTTG, the Vogons made planet wide perfect hi-fi emerge from dustbin lids and such. How much more could a well designed bio-nanonic implant (babel fish equivalent) do for the future human enjoyment of music? Within several fields of our collective endeavours, science fiction has a well established track record of precursion and prediction.
Before that all happens though, the many currently realisable nanoscale materials science processes, which are already progressing towards deployment in the manufacturing and production stages of their technology life cycles, will first play their roles in generally improving conventional methods through incremental parametric improvements to the electronic and mechanical specification and performance of audio and many other systems components. Basically, hardware will improve but probably even greater advances will emerge from within the domain which present day audio systems is most notably lacking, i.e. software.
Beyond that expect a further generation of nanogenetic technological developments which will, by our current standards of expectation, be somewhat shockingly disruptive. However, even though these prospective elements of future reality haven't properly begun to crystalise clearly in the minds of corporate futurologists, let alone emerge as strategic industry forecasting. Because much of the basic research has already been done and as a great many of the scientific fundamentals and technical foundations are already in place then the time from conception to inception will likely be surprisingly shorter than we would, today, wish to imagine.
The rest of it, as always, is just a simple matter of managing and organising ever higher orders of complexity. Which, for the purposes of clarity and the avoidance of doubt is precsactly what computer systems were originally created to do.
But we can all be very sure of this: just like the internet and all the rest of that 20th century jazz. If left to it's own devices, as far as the future of 'audio' is concerned, in the immortal words of Bachman Turner Overdrive: b b b baby, you just ain't seen nothing yet!
Some of us may well live to see this and so much more, one day come about.
Cheers, Ian
...directly to the former but most likely, this will ultimately be used for far more than just audio and inevitably; driven initially by some other sector such as medical, military or WHY.
In fact; where it really matters, audio is already wholly organic. Presently, with only gaseous compression and rarefaction as the means of connectivity to the points of reception, transduction and neural excitation which eventually give rise to our conciousness of perception. We may reasonably anticipate that: in good time and with a fair wind this particular signal path will get a whole heap cleaner, faster and shorter.
As in Douglas Adams's story of the HHGTTG, the Vogons made planet wide perfect hi-fi emerge from dustbin lids and such. How much more could a well designed bio-nanonic implant (babel fish equivalent) do for the future human enjoyment of music? Within several fields of our collective endeavours, science fiction has a well established track record of precursion and prediction.
Before that all happens though, the many currently realisable nanoscale materials science processes, which are already progressing towards deployment in the manufacturing and production stages of their technology life cycles, will first play their roles in generally improving conventional methods through incremental parametric improvements to the electronic and mechanical specification and performance of audio and many other systems components. Basically, hardware will improve but probably even greater advances will emerge from within the domain which present day audio systems is most notably lacking, i.e. software.
Beyond that expect a further generation of nanogenetic technological developments which will, by our current standards of expectation, be somewhat shockingly disruptive. However, even though these prospective elements of future reality haven't properly begun to crystalise clearly in the minds of corporate futurologists, let alone emerge as strategic industry forecasting. Because much of the basic research has already been done and as a great many of the scientific fundamentals and technical foundations are already in place then the time from conception to inception will likely be surprisingly shorter than we would, today, wish to imagine.
The rest of it, as always, is just a simple matter of managing and organising ever higher orders of complexity. Which, for the purposes of clarity and the avoidance of doubt is precsactly what computer systems were originally created to do.
But we can all be very sure of this: just like the internet and all the rest of that 20th century jazz. If left to it's own devices, as far as the future of 'audio' is concerned, in the immortal words of Bachman Turner Overdrive: b b b baby, you just ain't seen nothing yet!
Some of us may well live to see this and so much more, one day come about.
Cheers, Ian
In fact; where it really matters, audio is already wholly organic. Presently, with only gaseous compression and rarefaction as the means of connectivity to the points of reception, transduction and neural excitation which eventually give rise to our conciousness of perception. We may reasonably anticipate that: in good time and with a fair wind this particular signal path will get a whole heap cleaner, faster and shorter.
Thanks for the insight Ian,into what could be happening on the horizon,
With reference to the quote above are you describing the process of listening to music through speakers (transducer) from which the generated vibrations travel through air (gaseous compression and rarefaction) before reaching our ears (points of reception).
Perhaps the future may be wi-fi connection to implants connected directly to the brain. However what nature has given us works very well. It would most likely be the signal source that needs to to be improved. speakers themselves have been improved no end but as we HI Fi enthusiasts know too well we always seek for better.
There is so much to be enjoyed from live acoustic music and I have always regarded this as 'raw sound' because it is difficult to replicate it exactly either because of limitations of equipement or decisions made by the mixing engineer. Just a thought.
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