Merry Christmas
This always knocks my socks off:
http://ia600401.us.archive.org/2/it...del_MessiahHwv56-EvryValleyShallBeExalted.mp3
This always knocks my socks off:
http://ia600401.us.archive.org/2/it...del_MessiahHwv56-EvryValleyShallBeExalted.mp3
And yet... just my subjective opinion, having recorded with B&Ks and listened to many recordings made by others, but the most realistic sounding recordings I've heard were made using other mikes. The B&Ks are very good (and terrific instrumentation mikes), but it's not like that bandwidth really got me anything with regards to sonics when recording music.
I would note that I wasn't recording gamelan...
A 2013 survey for accessing preference for band-limited or no freq limited listening to music?
I think that diyaudio.com participants are the right mix of people (and what a large number of people!) for such a survey.
Some musical wav files, a report sheet and a questionnaire to be answered (e.g. age, sex, reproduction equipment used ect).
Some participants may use their affiliation with universities or research institutes for proper organizing the survey and processing the answers.
My best wishes to All of You
George
I think that diyaudio.com participants are the right mix of people (and what a large number of people!) for such a survey.
Some musical wav files, a report sheet and a questionnaire to be answered (e.g. age, sex, reproduction equipment used ect).
Some participants may use their affiliation with universities or research institutes for proper organizing the survey and processing the answers.
My best wishes to All of You
George
Sy,
I was referring to the B&K mics for instrumentation purposes. If you are analyzing a speaker above 20Khz there isn't anything much better than their 1/4" capsule for that. I wouldn't think you would use that for a recording mic myself. Flattest instrumentation mic I know of across the board. Probably wouldn't put one on a drum kit though. Everyone seems to have their favorite mic for vocals and certain instruments for live and recorded sound. That is more of an artistic choice though, music recording is a very different animal to instrumentation.
Hope you aren't getting to much snow, but a white Christmas is a special thing. Roast some chestnuts an have some hot eggnog.
I was referring to the B&K mics for instrumentation purposes. If you are analyzing a speaker above 20Khz there isn't anything much better than their 1/4" capsule for that. I wouldn't think you would use that for a recording mic myself. Flattest instrumentation mic I know of across the board. Probably wouldn't put one on a drum kit though. Everyone seems to have their favorite mic for vocals and certain instruments for live and recorded sound. That is more of an artistic choice though, music recording is a very different animal to instrumentation.
Hope you aren't getting to much snow, but a white Christmas is a special thing. Roast some chestnuts an have some hot eggnog.
What amazes me is the inconsistency of SUBJECTIVE opinions on mikes, compared to ACTUAL MEASUREMENTS.
For the record, Crystal Clear Direct Disc Records used 1/2'' B&K 4133 microphones for all their recordings, including: 'Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops', 'Virgil Fox', 'Charlie Byrd' and a hundred other recordings. These microphones have a useful response to 40KHz, virtually unmeasurable distortion at almost any level, and almost unlimited headroom.
The transient response of these microphones were independently verified by Herr Manger in an AES paper presented in Montreux in the mid. 80's, and it was the best of all the types measured.
Does this make them 'perfect'? Of course not, that is in the HEARING, but it sure shows the weight of a subjective opinion from certain people here, who denounce subjective opinions as 'useless'. Just goes to show you, trust yourself when it comes to listening. '-)
For the record, Crystal Clear Direct Disc Records used 1/2'' B&K 4133 microphones for all their recordings, including: 'Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops', 'Virgil Fox', 'Charlie Byrd' and a hundred other recordings. These microphones have a useful response to 40KHz, virtually unmeasurable distortion at almost any level, and almost unlimited headroom.
The transient response of these microphones were independently verified by Herr Manger in an AES paper presented in Montreux in the mid. 80's, and it was the best of all the types measured.
Does this make them 'perfect'? Of course not, that is in the HEARING, but it sure shows the weight of a subjective opinion from certain people here, who denounce subjective opinions as 'useless'. Just goes to show you, trust yourself when it comes to listening. '-)
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When you record some live event capturing both direct sound and reverberation frequency response of the mike for different angles matter more than just on-axis response in an anechoic chamber. That's why subjective opinions differ from objective measurements, because as usual not everything is properly measured objectively in order to know how well it will sound subjectively.
Oh ye DISBELIEVERS, putteth NOT evil devices that have been proven to SOUND BETTER in Blind Listening Tests in thy systems!
For thy BLIND Listening Tests are truly evil and science is but to confound the faithful.
Instead put thy FAITH in Il Papa Curl. Useth thou, devices hand carved from Solid Unobtainium by virgins, e'en the Virgin Mary.
The Prophet Curl hath declared these Holy, e'en in multiple SIGHTED Listening Tests. His Holy writ is omnipotent such that e'en WITHOUT listening, he separates the goats from the sheep by observing, with His Own eyes, the evil 4558 labels.
Listen ye NOT to those who tell you that these evil filters sound better to them. What has good sound to do with the True FAITH?
Instead besmirch not the purity of JC's devices. A few Aspirins are acceptable in His sight in case ye find your Blowtorch sound worse than evil 4558 with evil filters.
An excellent idea George.
How do we prevent subjects from cheating by looking at the spectrum?
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But to move towards when we can carry out such survey properly, anyone have a list of DSD recordings which are both musical and have significant supersonic energy?
I used to have such a list for sub 40Hz and also the highest slew rates for vinyl.
No need for this on Red Book CD with its well defined slew limits.
The DSD & DVD-A revolution happened while I was bush.
Hopefully, the list will include better music than the Direct Cut rubbish which represented the highest slew rates for vinyl.
An excellent idea George.
How do we prevent subjects from cheating by looking at the spectrum?
________________
<snipped>
Maybe you could put some unrelated (uncorrelated) high-frequency stuff up there, on the ones that are band-limited.
But I guess that might be a different experiment, then.I'd be more worried about people voting more than once.
It might also be interesting (and necessary) to have some number of people get sets of "placebo" test tracks, where both versions of each track were band-limited, and some where both versions were not band-limited. Or maybe include one or two tracks like that in every set of test tracks, to test the testers.
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OTOH as SY says some VERY experienced recording engineers (Harvet Gerst for instance) find B&K mics to make analytical and boring recordings. I find this in direct analogy to amp and pre-amp makers that follow all the rules of extreme care in construction and component selection but follow the "perfect op-amp with lots of feedback" design mantra.
Putting aside the OOB stuff for a moment, in my experience the list of recordings which are both DSD and musical is an empty one - with just a single exception:
Amazon.com: French Violin Sonatas: Music
I predict this one will turn out to have been incorrectly labelled as having been made with DSD
The ABC test, with 2 of the 3 presentations the same, caters for this but we can't tell the subjects this.
Instead I'll introduce the possibiltity that one presentation may have been sent through Blowtorch while the other two were via evil 4558 devices
This introduces an additional D2A2D stage but I'm sure the merits of Blowtorch will make up for any possible degradation.
Us evil speaker & mike designers can breath a huge sigh of relief
Did they check for any 19kHz pilot issues?
The mux oscillator stuff was disabled.
In fact, the unit was modified to make it as transparent as possible, just the filters and a high-quality relay to switch them in or bypass, high-quality RCA's installed.
IIRC the filter was flat within 0.1dB to 15kHz then 60dB down at 17kHz, but had a large in-band phase shift. So we were (still are not) sure whether what we heard was the amplitude filtering or the phase shift.
The effect is subtle and could only be heard by switching back and forth, in normal listening its (for us) undetectable. Which make sense, I mean, lots of people enjoy high-quality FM reception which is all brickwall filtered at 15kHz of course.
jan
Maybe you could put some unrelated (uncorrelated) high-frequency stuff up there, on the ones that are band-limited.
I'd be more worried about people voting more than once.
It might also be interesting (and necessary) to have some number of people get sets of "placebo" test tracks, where both versions of each track were band-limited, and some where both versions were not band-limited. Or maybe include one or two tracks like that in every set of test tracks, to test the testers.
You remember when I put up Malcolm Hawksford's teasers? Six tracks, with some manipulated, some not, pretty blind test I would say (they are still there).
No takers except just two here who really do trust their ears, like SY (who got it right btw).
jan
Scott, you might be interested in David Griesinger's findings here :
www.davidgriesinger.com/intermod.ppt
The executive summary, for those who don't want to view the whole ppt - it wasn't the transducers.
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