Effects Generator - long...again (sorry!)
Um...duh? As was mentioned in another post, training can allow an individual to detect and in the process normalize to many sonic signatures. For instance, I could hear the slight wobbling effect due to bad bearings in a cassette recorder which few others could. But geesh, after thousands of hours listening to the damn things, apparently my dumb brain finally fingerprinted the perturbation and allowed me to intentionally pick it out.
One thing which was strongly evident mastering thousands of recordings, many with the mixdown engineer present, was that the sonic signature of that engineer's own studio system was what they were looking for from our systems. It was nigh impossible to convince many of them that our transfer was sonically agnostic, and their original "sound" would be present on the final replica.
People's hearing apparatus from pinnae through cortex processing and including their reproducing system are what teach them to hear. It is that learning history (processing algorithm?) which is then applied to subsequent listening. As an audio engineer at a replication plant one of my jobs was to help train QC and mastering engineers to listen critically. It was amazing the variation of capabilities which were presented in that context! As such any discussion regarding subtle sonic attributes which one can hear and others cannot can only be met with "that's nice for you!" (or not as the case may be). Because each of us has that curse.
For instance, when I had my last set of deep-canal plugs molded for my Ety 5s (my dog ate the previous pair...*urp*), my audiologist noted I have slack eardrums. This has the effect of making my hearing easily distort in low frequency high SPL environments, making loud bass sound like crap. This is not to be confused with loud bass actually sounding like crap.
Another instance more relevant to the discussion at hand, I was involved at AMI with trials held by Philips and Sony when they were developing their MPG and ATRAC compression schemes respectively. I listened to so much of that crap I ended up being able to hear phantom pilot tones in early MPG music which Philips claimed were inaudible, yet I and another mastering engineer at AMI reliably picked them out. I do not hear them in the last decade of MPG encoders, so MPG encoders have improved...
I have little doubt people are hearing the things they say they do, but whether it is an actual attribute of the sonic energy impinging their pinnae or a result of the processing from that point onward, the point is moot. And as someone who has likely conducted more ABX testing than others here, I will state it is not foolproof in that the state of mind and other factors affects the ability to hear at any given time. Stressing people by making them take a test can reduce their ability to discern, I have seen it a hundred times. A quick ABX may be reliable for identifying gross phenomena, but the ability to learn to hear subtleties of the type we have been worrying to death requires far more training and control of variables.
In addition to mental attitude these variables include whether you are breathing in, out, or holding your breath, which has a large affect on back pressure on the eardrum and causes large shifts in hearing. The position of your jaw determines whether your eustachian tubes are more open or closed as does relative amount of nasal mucous, greatly affecting hearing. Keeping your head at the exact same position and angle is critical, Bright light causes a lowering of abilities to discern subtleties as well. And overarching all, learned hearing...
This is the main reason I am only interested here in the relative documentable performance of the equipment designed by you geniuses. I have listened to a lot of it and I'm blown away by how good it sounds, even if I do not hear some of the things attributed to them (see above).
Just my $0.02 worth!
Cheers,
Howie
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill, NC
WXYC Chapel Hill, North Carolina - 89.3 FM
Um...duh? As was mentioned in another post, training can allow an individual to detect and in the process normalize to many sonic signatures. For instance, I could hear the slight wobbling effect due to bad bearings in a cassette recorder which few others could. But geesh, after thousands of hours listening to the damn things, apparently my dumb brain finally fingerprinted the perturbation and allowed me to intentionally pick it out.
One thing which was strongly evident mastering thousands of recordings, many with the mixdown engineer present, was that the sonic signature of that engineer's own studio system was what they were looking for from our systems. It was nigh impossible to convince many of them that our transfer was sonically agnostic, and their original "sound" would be present on the final replica.
People's hearing apparatus from pinnae through cortex processing and including their reproducing system are what teach them to hear. It is that learning history (processing algorithm?) which is then applied to subsequent listening. As an audio engineer at a replication plant one of my jobs was to help train QC and mastering engineers to listen critically. It was amazing the variation of capabilities which were presented in that context! As such any discussion regarding subtle sonic attributes which one can hear and others cannot can only be met with "that's nice for you!" (or not as the case may be). Because each of us has that curse.
For instance, when I had my last set of deep-canal plugs molded for my Ety 5s (my dog ate the previous pair...*urp*), my audiologist noted I have slack eardrums. This has the effect of making my hearing easily distort in low frequency high SPL environments, making loud bass sound like crap. This is not to be confused with loud bass actually sounding like crap.
Another instance more relevant to the discussion at hand, I was involved at AMI with trials held by Philips and Sony when they were developing their MPG and ATRAC compression schemes respectively. I listened to so much of that crap I ended up being able to hear phantom pilot tones in early MPG music which Philips claimed were inaudible, yet I and another mastering engineer at AMI reliably picked them out. I do not hear them in the last decade of MPG encoders, so MPG encoders have improved...
I have little doubt people are hearing the things they say they do, but whether it is an actual attribute of the sonic energy impinging their pinnae or a result of the processing from that point onward, the point is moot. And as someone who has likely conducted more ABX testing than others here, I will state it is not foolproof in that the state of mind and other factors affects the ability to hear at any given time. Stressing people by making them take a test can reduce their ability to discern, I have seen it a hundred times. A quick ABX may be reliable for identifying gross phenomena, but the ability to learn to hear subtleties of the type we have been worrying to death requires far more training and control of variables.
In addition to mental attitude these variables include whether you are breathing in, out, or holding your breath, which has a large affect on back pressure on the eardrum and causes large shifts in hearing. The position of your jaw determines whether your eustachian tubes are more open or closed as does relative amount of nasal mucous, greatly affecting hearing. Keeping your head at the exact same position and angle is critical, Bright light causes a lowering of abilities to discern subtleties as well. And overarching all, learned hearing...
This is the main reason I am only interested here in the relative documentable performance of the equipment designed by you geniuses. I have listened to a lot of it and I'm blown away by how good it sounds, even if I do not hear some of the things attributed to them (see above).
Just my $0.02 worth!
Cheers,
Howie
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill, NC
WXYC Chapel Hill, North Carolina - 89.3 FM
I was totally happy with a Nakamichi BX-1 IIRC and metal tape and of course being me I prefered to turn off Dolby etc all the time.
And you keep up the good work at wxyc!
Hi Scott,
Have you ever heard a BX-300 then? These would outperform the two head decks without any problem at all. I still have mine, and a BX-2 (why, I don't know).
The 1000ZXL was a long, involved job to calibrate, but once done it was amazing. Even for just turning off the lights to watch it go through the calibration twice for each channel. A really impressive machine.
I have often wondered what would have happened had Nakamichi developed a 2" 24 track for recording studios. That would give a Studer a hard run. Not sure which would come out on top, but the Nakamichi would have been quieter on playback. It would have displaced a few other machine brands for certain. Even a half track 1/2" mastering deck would have been extremely impressive.
-Chris
Have you ever heard a BX-300 then? These would outperform the two head decks without any problem at all. I still have mine, and a BX-2 (why, I don't know).
The 1000ZXL was a long, involved job to calibrate, but once done it was amazing. Even for just turning off the lights to watch it go through the calibration twice for each channel. A really impressive machine.
I have often wondered what would have happened had Nakamichi developed a 2" 24 track for recording studios. That would give a Studer a hard run. Not sure which would come out on top, but the Nakamichi would have been quieter on playback. It would have displaced a few other machine brands for certain. Even a half track 1/2" mastering deck would have been extremely impressive.
-Chris
Mine was actually a BX-2. I met the head of engineering at Nakamichi in 1988, a wonderful guy with ages of knowledge and a rarity at the time spoke perfect English. Never heard a BX-300 but I used mine exclusively for off air recording of FM broadcasts. My experience was that they got more onto the tape from something different do you know what it was (talking no Dolby or other processing)? Friends commented frequently on the difference between Pioneer, Philips, etc.
Hi Scott,
I was warranty service for Nak. right after Carsen lost the distributorship. Really top flite company (Nakamichi). I got into the problems that most techs didn't want to fix. The head amp circuit that Nakamichi used was very low noise, and they didn't need as much pre-EQ to get the highs on the tape. Your heads are a Sendust variety, which is far superior to the other kinds. Tascam went to Sendust in the 122MKII I think it was.
The real secret weapon was that the Nak decks pushed the pressure pad away from the tape and developed tape contact pressure the same way open reel machines did. The feed was controlled tension as was the take up. By getting rid of the pressure pad, FM noise was removed that resulted in much lower head and tape wear. No guides were used on the three head machines either. Everything was precisely aligned with the jigs and test tapes. The track from one machine would line up exactly with the heads of another Nak. deck.
There was one problem that was mis-reported. Their high azimuth tape was way off standard (the 10 KHz was bang on though), so once you set the azimuth up using the 10 KHz tape, or another good calibration tape, tapes made on a Nak played normally on other machines as long as they were in calibration. We reported that issue to Nakamichi and were sent a new tape that was correct. Apparently we were the second or third shop that noticed out of all of them. Why would you use another cal tape on a Nakamichi tape deck when the Nak cal tapes were the best? (and they were).
TDK is the bogey tape most machines are designed for. Maxell came back almost 5 dB hotter, which was great if you had head wear. Those were the best two tapes. Memorex was like a coarse lapping tape. Between it and metal formulations, more heads were torn up than by any other method. Agfa was filthy.
I'm guessing your machine still works Scott?
-Chris
I was warranty service for Nak. right after Carsen lost the distributorship. Really top flite company (Nakamichi). I got into the problems that most techs didn't want to fix. The head amp circuit that Nakamichi used was very low noise, and they didn't need as much pre-EQ to get the highs on the tape. Your heads are a Sendust variety, which is far superior to the other kinds. Tascam went to Sendust in the 122MKII I think it was.
The real secret weapon was that the Nak decks pushed the pressure pad away from the tape and developed tape contact pressure the same way open reel machines did. The feed was controlled tension as was the take up. By getting rid of the pressure pad, FM noise was removed that resulted in much lower head and tape wear. No guides were used on the three head machines either. Everything was precisely aligned with the jigs and test tapes. The track from one machine would line up exactly with the heads of another Nak. deck.
There was one problem that was mis-reported. Their high azimuth tape was way off standard (the 10 KHz was bang on though), so once you set the azimuth up using the 10 KHz tape, or another good calibration tape, tapes made on a Nak played normally on other machines as long as they were in calibration. We reported that issue to Nakamichi and were sent a new tape that was correct. Apparently we were the second or third shop that noticed out of all of them. Why would you use another cal tape on a Nakamichi tape deck when the Nak cal tapes were the best? (and they were).
TDK is the bogey tape most machines are designed for. Maxell came back almost 5 dB hotter, which was great if you had head wear. Those were the best two tapes. Memorex was like a coarse lapping tape. Between it and metal formulations, more heads were torn up than by any other method. Agfa was filthy.
I'm guessing your machine still works Scott?
-Chris
I gave it away I assume it still works. Tape went off the agenda with some reluctance, just like trying to maintain quality VHS, I concentrate my efforts on LP now. BTW your experiences fill in a lot of information gaps thanks for that.
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Male drummers, but still pretty good if you don't listen too close to the cymbals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l6dvPaTzD4
Happy New Year!
You are right. I actually have indentured slaves cranking out these things at pennies in an old building in Pacoima while I sit here in the Bahamas typing this to you from a Stuart Hughes iPad while sipping a mai tai. I allocated some of my massive profits to a lab that has 25 turntables running with my record clamp. I have high sensitivity mics monitoring each turntable for the slightest hint of bearing wear. Once I have my massive staff of scientists tabulate failure data I will publish it in the AES Journal.
All of the above reinforces my long-held beliefs in this topic. If reliably detecting some difference or defect in audio reproduction requires extensive training, possibly using some particularly "resolving" audio playback system, and if avoiding that "defect" is my goal, then surely simply avoiding the training will accomplish that goal. That is, if there is some sonic defect that I cannot currently hear, but that I could be made to hear through some rigorous course of training, and if the goal of audio reproduction is to not produce that defect at a level that can be detected by ear alone, then simply not taking the training will leave me unable to hear the defect, QED. So what are we even talking about?
Then throw in some solid evidence of audiophile true believers regularly detecting false positives (think AAX testing) and the whole project starts to fall apart. If only we could "just listen to the music" without special mental techniques!
In my case, I wanted to learn how to mix and master, and be good at it. Doing so required learning some new things. Also, many years ago, I worked for 7 years as a sound man. In that position I was also expected to be able to hear at what would be considered a professional level for that type of work. Nobody told me I would be here now talking about all this stuff here.
Also, when I first came to this forum, the problem was that people who claimed to hear things to some above average degree were being treated rather badly, IMHO. They were ganged up upon, again IMO, and there seemed to be some history of disagreements and escalation of tensions. Thankfully, issues about hearing currently seem to be taken more in a relaxed way and more consistent with what I think could be taken as scientific detachment.
In addition, we have been talking about opamps in another thread, and what may or may not be wrong with them. For audio, maybe there is an issue with audible distortion in some cases. There remains some skepticism in some quarters that could be possible, unless a circuity is badly designed or misused in some way. However, we have no data about all the commercially produced equipment out in the marketplace. Some may assume it is very well designed as they would do, so again, no problem should be possible. Those of us who seem one way or another on one end of the hearing bell curve have ears that suggest otherwise.
Unfortunately, this is very complex area to work in. Sometimes people do imagine hearing things that are not real. And, people first and foremost tend to believe their own ears, skeptics on both sides here included. A further complication is that we don't really know all that much about a lot of details of prior research in this area. Did they actually have amplifiers with vanishingly low distortion 40 years ago with which to do unassailable research? The skeptics who don't hear subtle distortion seem to feel more confident about prior research, and those whose ears tell them otherwise in that case are the ones who are more skeptical.
In any case, welcome and hope you enjoy the conversation.
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I knew it! I even heard through back channels you have a private jet. I bet it would be fun to take a ride in that...
...your friend,
Mark.
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