Sound Quality Vs. Measurements

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diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
Hi,

Thx, Frank.

Whilst I'm not familiar with either one of them, the Sheffield Lab recordings are generally great. Often a bit lacking in air and HF extension (subjectively) but otherwise fine. Avoid the demo type recordings and go for the great classical works.

Telarc...Yikes. The typical digital sound. Spectacularly unnatural.

Cheers, ;)
 
Telarc can be fine, this was a demo style effort, with a very strange, "toy" acoustic piano on it, and massive drum hits - perfect for all those subwoofers out there!! The Sheffield Lab had the deadest string section I've ever heard - are these supposed to be violins, I thought ...

Another effort, can't recall the details, had a solo acoustic piano inside the biggest cathedral they could find, it seems - a single note would last for minutes, bouncing around the place ...

The point being, that they all sounded very deliberately manipulated, the fiddling to get the right effect was obviously much more important than the music ... manipulation is fine with pop showpieces, because it's meant to have grandiose, or "clever" impact - that's the point of the music.

An example of the latter, which has amazing dynamics, is the soundtrack for the film Moulin Rouge - this can sound pretty dreadful if the system is not in good shape, it has huge volume swings which many setups won't handle well ...
 
Fig 8 looks interesting.

That's the one, John, that's the schematic being beaten to death locally, Hardly surprising, as it sounds really good, and for small money.

It is, in my view, very musically satisfying as long as you don't require a lot of power, meaning that you either like listeing at low levels, and/or have above average efficiency loudspeakers (i.e. 90 dB SPL/2.83V/1m and above).
 
Frank, a poor recording is a poor recording, and unles you do some serious processing, it will always be a poor recording.

A neutral sounding, high load tolerance audio system will only show up its shortcomings better, make them more obvious. This is for LPs.

For CDs, some surprises are possible. Just to keep my feet on the ground, I still keep a Philips 721 CD player, costing around 90 pounds/150 DM in its day, which was aroud 1995/1996. It grabbed the attention of the audio fans because it was one of those rare devices which cost little, was widely available and played music just as well as its competitors costin 3-5 TIMES its price. Mine is "upgraded" only insofar that the original NJR op amp was replaced by an AD 275 Butler front end op amp, which for reasons I cannot explain, somehow always makes Philips/Marantz CD plyers sound better.

The only game I played with it was to once connect separate analog and digital fully electronically stabilized PSUs. Just for kicks. And, hardly surprising, this produced an even better sound. I should have kept it as such, but that would make it quite different from the original and I'd lose my comparison reference.

Anyway, moving from this one up the scale to my Yamaha CDX 993 (never offered on the North American market, no idea why), bad recordings are simply exposed even more as bad recordings. A few times, the opposite was true, what sounded bad on the Philips sounded a little better on the Yamaha, but that was very rare. Just to remind you, the Yamaha has discrete buffers and output amps, very generously executed.

Correcting that would take some serious processing.
 
AX tech editor
Joined 2002
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I was fortunate enough to talk to him a few times (tube stuff mainly). He's typically French in answering questions, he'll give you an answer that only those that would have no need to put the question would understand. :D
Ciao, ;)

Same here. A very modest likeable man.
He retired from the magazine and last time I saw him a year ago he was designing speakers for some japanese company (Jean Hiraga has Japanese ancesters and speaks the language).
He also used to pop up at the European Triode Festival as 'mystery guest' and then do an impromptu very nice presentation.

He was kind enough to test my Spitsbergen amp and put it on the cover of La Nouvelle Revue du Son. Gave it 39 out of 40 points, I was thrilled :cool: !

Jan
 
Dejan, this is just one of those things where you have to be there - I never said it was easy, I gave up years ago listening to expensive digital setups trying to make sense of some of my test CDs - it's not pretty hearing pretentious gear vomiting all over the music. And simply hooking up gear that nominally does very well, without taking the extra steps necessary, is pretty well guaranteed not to get you past the post.

A key point is, that the "bad" recordings will usually sound worse and worse as the system "improves", until a critical level of quality is passed, then everything slips into place. I don't care if the design is "magnificent", the parts used are the "best available", every "tweak you know of" has been applied - if the sound doesn't happen as I decribe then there still remains a problem ...

Digital playback is a savage taskmaster - if there is one tiny little thing awry then it can sound like sh!t, I've been there hundreds of times. Fix that one tiny thing, and you have "magic" - it's like an on/off switch in behaviour; another analogy is like using extremely powerful binoculars, at a great distance - unless the focus is spot on, and you hold them absolutely still, what you get is blur - complaining that it's hard to see anything doesn't cut any mustard; unless you use them precisely correctly it just won't work ... but do get it right and you are amazed at the detail you can see ... ;)
 
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Joined 2010
Does evil exist?

-RM

What a strange question.. perhaps for another topic.. perhaps not.
_______________________________________________

The interesting thing is as stated there seems to be levels of good reproduction and OK reproduction.
But its dependant on, are you after the original sound or reproducing the source.. of original sound.

It was said some time ago "if it sounds electronic is it HIFI ?"..an interesting quote.

Then there is the question what is HIFI reproduction.. when I stand outside the room is it:

I can't tell if its a person in the room or a recording.
Or is it the measurements say its perfect..within limits.

And we are back to the complex smear or the Girl and Guitar..
You would think that in 2014 we can make or manufacture equipment that is indistinguishable from reality..:D
If you want to take it further (in a blind test)

Regards
M. Gregg
 
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I only mentioned yesterday where I'm coming from - http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/lounge/200865-sound-quality-vs-measurements-1478.html#post4041510. The "awfulness" of normal audio irritates me intensely, so I work to eliminate that - and when I reach that point all those recordings which sound "bad" ... no longer do so ...


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But its dependant on, are you after the original sound or reproducing the source.. of original sound.
Personally, if I can get every recording to work, ie. not to sound "bad" , then that's good enough for me. Then I have the feeling I'm in the space where the musical event took place, so whether the sounds are true to anything is pretty irrelevant, I find.
 
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diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
Hi,

He was kind enough to test my Spitsbergen amp and put it on the cover of La Nouvelle Revue du Son. Gave it 39 out of 40 points, I was thrilled !

I can imagine. Congrats, Jan.:cool:

Does evil exist?

Evil distortions: those you know are there somewhere but can't seem to measure somehow? :p

But Frank (fas42) has very different measures of subjective quality. This would last forever

The man could make a fortunate if it can be made to work on something other than a humble PC speaker system, right? :treasure:

Cheers, ;)
 
Then there is the question what is HIFI reproduction.. when I stand outside the room is it:

I can't tell if its a person in the room or a recording.
Or is it the measurements say its perfect..within limits.
There's a next step: it's convincing outside the room; then you walk into the room, go right up to the speakers - is it still just as convincing? This is key - you have to be able to submerge yourself in the full intensity of the sound, and it still has to work - this is a marker of the transition to convincing sound ...
 
The man could make a fortunate if it can be made to work on something other than a humble PC speaker system, right?
Out of 30 years of playing around with audio, I've only tried a few experiments with PC sound for less than a year - give us a break!

Seriously, the biggest headache is working out smart ways of optimising, so that it's robust; the fragility of optimum sound has been a major struggle all the way through, it's been a continual learning curve, to this day. And because interference factors are getting worse and worse the problems are compounded, it's a Spy vs. Spy thing ...
 
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Perhaps the future of HIFI,

Is the computer simulation..ie I can be in a room with a projection in front of me and it looks and sounds real..

I read in an old book somewhere..(can't remember the name of it)..it was old..it is now possible to create a sound that is indistinguishable from a person talking in a room..I am pretty sure it was in the book..

High Fidelity Sound Reproduction...introduction was by H. J. Leak. Published in 1958.
And now most systems can't achieve that?
However our ability to measure things and equipment is vastly superior?
Or is it that the music is now so complex...

I found it comical that in the Film Oblivion, sanctuary (The shack in the forest) an old HIFI and records had been lovingly saved and as he lay by the pool the sound was from the past...:D

Regards
M. Gregg
 
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There is an analogy with image processing, which may give some clues where things are going wrong ... you can have a normal image, but it is not sufficiently striking, it hasn't got enough "punch" ... so, what do you do? You give it the ol' 1-2 with the Sharpen tool, the Contrast tool - there, it's got lots of punch now, I can "see" everything ... but, is it 'real' ...?
 
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The question has to be..

What are we trying to achieve..

Are we trying to create a convincing "Image" call it what you will, that is as close as possible to the "Real" thing even if that is a creation by the sound engineer.

Or it doesn't matter if it "sounds" real as long as it measures well.

Ie if you use tone controls you are moving the measurements to make it more realistic or pleasing.

So what is it we want..

What would be the point of a simulation except to get closer to a real experience. Or fool you into thinking its real..
Is HIFI not a simulation? Music without emotional content<<what would be the point?

Regards
M. Gregg
 
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