How should music sound?

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This question arose after reading a few EQ and directivity threads in the multiway forum.

How should music sound in my environment when reproduced through my stereo system?

1) How the mastering engineer intended it to sound.

2) How the voice(s)/instrument(s) sounds live in the environment targeted by the mastering engineer.

3) How the voice(s)/instrument(s) sounds live in an environment I prefer.

4) How I want it to sound.

Or supply your own answer. "It depends" is not allowed! :)
 
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I'll take the first half of answer 3. How Voices and Instruments sound live. Once that's nailed, everything else seems to fall in place.

I don't give a hoot how the mastering engineer intended it to sound, 'cause I have no idea what that might be. He was working to his clients tastes and preferences that day, not mine.
 
IMHO, mastering engineers are full of themselves, and it's a case of the tail wagging the dog. I would prefer things sound the way the mixing engineer/producer intended, but as Pano notes, that's usually in the category of "insufficient information".

So, I go with 3, since that's what I know and can reasonably target. My "preferred environment" is a studio control room, however, as I most often listen to recordings for which that is the "reality". That is, if I can close my eyes and believe I'm hearing the main monitors that the band listened to (or the PA, in the case of live recordings), I'm happy.

Someday, maybe, I'll try building an omnidirectional speaker for listening to my old mono records and see if I can create a real "they here in the room" experience since that stuff was pretty much recorded direct to tape without all the sideboard processing.
 
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Hi,

I'm sorry but it does "depend", very much on your own
preferences, seeing your talking about directivity and EQ.

It also "depends" on room size and listening position.

Some people like an "in your face" immersion, others
an "over there" panoramic vista to the soundstage,
usually the latter is far more multiple listener friendly.

Of course either way you want "realistic" reproduction.

rgds, sreten.
 
One of my fave tests for hifi is listening to speech.
A few years back I got a female singer / song writer friend into a studio and recorded her and myself speaking, using nothing more than a half decent mic and a Sony Datman Pro - No compressors, Eq'ing etc. She only lives 3 miles away, so when I audition a new component I invite her round for dinner, we chat and then listen to her recorded voice.
My mother plays piano, clarinet and sings in the village church choir.
I have several friends who play guitar, steel guitar, cordobro and banjo, two very very good drummers (one is Royal school of music / BMA trained percussionist), two flautists, a harp player and a lass who's trained as an Opera singer.
Listen to as much LIVE ACOUSTIC music as possible. At 20ft, some thing like a double bass sounds really big, does your system reproduce this scale?
Listen to street buskers, they might not be the best singers or instrumentalists, but their live, doing it and FREE (I always give em some change, the better they are, the more they get) - some even sell cd's, these can be well worth the few £ / $'s as they are (usually) simple recordings
If you don't have access to live, listen to simple music like duets, trios and quartets.
I've found the worst people to ask round for a listen are pro audio people, they say things like 'you dont have a 6,000 band eq, so how can your system sound any good!' - but then maybe I've not found one who's head isn't deeply inserted you know where!
I've also found that woman above the age of 20 are good judges of overall sound balance / quality, even better if they've born children. When they come into your environ, they see big boxes on the floor or in a rack and 'speakers - they don't care a jot if it cost £/$ 50 or 50,000, can pump 50amps / 1,000w to your voice coils, they will judge your system purely on it's sound.
Just my way / thoughts...... hope this helps.
 
Each and every original artist (singer/instrumentalist/composer, painter, writer) I have talked to has conceeded that the value of his work is not in what he has put into it, but in what people can take out of it. An artwork that doesn't communicate anything to anybody is worthless.

In this light every work of music should sound in a way that you can enjoy it best. This would probably be 4).
Fidelity in music media reproduction that will take the original intention of the artist without fundamental changes up to your ear is a myth - it does not exist anywhere except in the live performance.

If your goal is not personal enjoyment, but the best documentation of some musical event, it is probably 1)
Nobody is able to make a music file that anticipates all environments of all possible buyers/listeners.

Rudolf
 
I'll take the first half of answer 3. How Voices and Instruments sound live. Once that's nailed, everything else seems to fall in place.

I don't give a hoot how the mastering engineer intended it to sound, 'cause I have no idea what that might be. He was working to his clients tastes and preferences that day, not mine.



I'd go farther, the system used to master the recording is different, the speakers are different and the acoustics of the recording studio is different.
 
1) How the mastering engineer intended it to sound.

The mastering engineer is not the original artist. S/he is an editor dealing with tools to try and subjectivepy reproduce the original recprding. And since there are millions of recordings and thousands of mastering people, which one, specifically, is "right"?

2) How the voice(s)/instrument(s) sounds live in the environment targeted by the mastering engineer.

How can stereo contain the necessary information for this?

3) How the voice(s)/instrument(s) sounds live in an environment I prefer.

Most paramount I would say is that the system be timbrally believable. Timbre is everything, along with dynamic range. the rest - Imaging/Soundstage is too recording specific a goal to really concern oneself with beyond "believable". That means one violin should not sound like a quartet, a close mic'd vocalist should not automarticaply be 15 feet tall and wide, and the sound should not draw much aggressive attention to its physical location. "Diffuse yet Concise".

Beyond those sheer "hyperbole" moments, I don't normally care.

4) How I want it to sound.

As long as you want it to sound organic and accurate - not exaggerated or artificial or forgiving. ;P

if your favorite genre is electronik then you may not necessarily "care" about timbral accuracy but you'll find that it regardless translates to increased resolution and clarity.
 
I go for:
1) How the mastering engineer intended it to sound.

And here is my strategy, I prefer to have the recording exactly reproduced and then go for switching different sound engineers and not systems or parts of my system.

It seems impossibe though. We can't even get to the exact sound that emanated (what a funny word) from the monitor speakers in the studio. I am pretty sure that amongst engineers there are allot of guys with good taste for sound and balance. What we get is that 90% of the recordings are making us try to figure out where is the problem.
One and the same system, play an album on CD and there are questions and many "qurious" things about the sound. Play the same album from an LP and then the only questions are about the art of music...

But sometimes... there are recordings and not systems that bring the orchestra infront of you... and that is the moment when you should figure it out ;) that the recording is all ;) Once on an Expo I listened to big MBL's driven by god knows what amplifiers, the record was an LP of Metallica and the sound was rubish... On another occasion I listened to a pair of vintage 2-ways say 40hz-16 Khz, a berilium transistors 15 watt amplifier and a smallish and simple beaten old turntable and it was fantastic.

Moral: Make big speakers! For many reasons, nicer to look at, pleasure for the neighbours (don't be egoist), great extension and closer to life dynamics with lesser distortion... Imaging is room/placenemt/record dependant either way and phase anomalies only occur in the crossover regions, so this all are ghosts made-up to scare small children. ;)

And my rule: At least ten new records for every system upgrade or new component!

Best regards!
 
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interesting responses!

If I want #1, it seems like no speaker will ever reach this goal unless I'm sitting in the actual recording studio listening to the monitors used by the mastering engineering. So all this talk of the directivity and how it can make the sound of one speaker more accurate and/or desirable than the other is not so meaningful in the context of this answer.

If I want #3, that's also a challenge. The voices/instruments could be in environments that are on opposite ends of the % of reflected to direct sound scale. For example, small highly reflective room and a very large outdoor venue.I suppose we can make the latter sound like the former but not visa versa?

I'm leaning toward #4 because the other answers seem to contain too many unknowns and/or variables.

But #4 doesn't direct me to my desired solution because I can't hear what I like with all genres of music using one type of speaker in my environment.

I enjoy the open airy live sound of speakers with good off-axis energy when listening to concert recordings or classical music. I like the highly defined and dynamic sound of speakers with controlled or high directivity (horns) when listening to music with lots of percussion. I guess the answer is I need to split this down the middle and use a speaker that is a balance of both.

Is my target speaker monopolar, dipolar, bipolar or omnipolar?
 
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Moving target. No matter what you go for you'll not always achieve the desired result on every recording. Maybe that's why there always seems to be the same old tracks played at hifi shows and found throughout audiophile collections.

I'd lean towards #1 because at least there is some accepted standards there but even that's got a lot of open ended interpretation.
 
But #4 doesn't direct me to my desired solution because I can't hear what I like with all genres of music using one type of speaker in my environment.

I enjoy the open airy live sound of speakers with good off-axis energy when listening to concert recordings or classical music. I like the highly defined and dynamic sound of speakers with controlled or high directivity (horns) when listening to music with lots of percussion. I guess the answer is I need to split this down the middle and use a speaker that is a balance of both.
The airyness of the classical concert or the precise definition of percussion should be in the recording - and not a property of your room or speaker. If your speaker's directivity is sufficiently controlled and room reflexions subdued (compared to the direct sound), you will hear the recording and not the characteristics of your room or your speakers.

Rudolf
 
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Since we are talking EQ, a system that is free of large peaks, has not too many dips and follows the old Bruel & Kjaer curve will sound well balanced. Do that, and you'll find that most recordings sound right.

Not many home systems follow that EQ, tho.
 
All the variations that contain the words "How the voice(s)/instrument(s) sounds live"; the fiddling by the engineers has little impact on that unless those sounds can been put through high level mangling devices -- which, of course, there is plenty of these days!!

As said by many, the voice is key and the easiest to pick, you've got references to what this is really like every day of your life, in spades. Simply put, a person's voice should always sound right, never have an edge or artificial tinge to it; if it does then at least something in your system is not right. If you get to the point where voices always sound real then, as also said here, every other element will also fall into place ...

Frank
 
How should music sound in my environment when reproduced through my stereo system?

2) How the voice(s)/instrument(s) sounds live in the environment targeted by the mastering engineer.

(INSERT: Followed by: )

1) How the mastering engineer intended it to sound.

"2. CRITERIA OF LOUDSPEAKER PERFORMANCE

2.1. Terms of Reference

It is assumed that the ideal to be aimed at in the design of a sound reproducing system is realism, i.e. that the listener should be able to imagine himself to be in the presence of the original source of sound. There is, of course, scope for legitimate experiment in the processing of the reproduced signals in an endeavor to improve on nature, however, realism, or as near an approach to it as may be possible, ought surely to be regarded as the normal condition and avoidable departures from this state, while justified upon occasion, should not be allowed to become a permanent feature of the system.."

Title: THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH-QUALITY MONITORING LOUDSPEAKERS: A REVIEW OF PROGRESS

Source: BBC (1958)


This was an internal paper written for conference specifically for the creation and use of a Monitoring Loudspeaker for Studio use.

.."the original source of sound" references the "Listener", which necessarily includes the environment the original source of sound is produced in.

However when the "source of sound" has no "Listener", or more specifically was never intended to be a performance in a "live" space - it falls on the intentions of the engineer.

Despite this "fall-back" position (number (1) above), the paper also references that goal of the engineer should "avoid departures" from a result different than "the original source of sound". This essentially "loops back" to our number (2) above.

The exception would be those *intended* departures from the "original source of sound". These intended departures are of course common-place today depending on the genre of music. Today's "Club" music would be a good example - and would characterize an occasion for number (1) above.
 
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