Coppertop
I used to believe that phase was not a factor but I don't anymore.
David Griesinger (see his website) shows how important phase is in the range of 700- 7000 Hz. It could well be that poor phase control in this range would cause the brain to fatigue try to make sense of an unnatural phase relationship.
I used to believe that phase was not a factor but I don't anymore.
David Griesinger (see his website) shows how important phase is in the range of 700- 7000 Hz. It could well be that poor phase control in this range would cause the brain to fatigue try to make sense of an unnatural phase relationship.
That certainly seems plausible.
Would it be as simple as using an impulse convolver that fixes phase during playback to test this?
Of course it might be a long test.
Would it be as simple as using an impulse convolver that fixes phase during playback to test this?
Of course it might be a long test.
jeez, I run live sound, small to medium hall, on a large variety of systems with a large variety of different brands and a mish mash of gear etc. Ear fatigue is the constant bane of the profession. Its not the gear, its what you do with it. Because of the variety of gear I run pink and meter the gain structure across what ever the system is, from input to FOH.
I use an RTA and post EQ to flatten the system response to 0db (Vu) in what ever room it is. Then I apply a fletcher/munson curve with a post processor, afterwards I still have to make a variety of pulls around the mids and upper mids to accommodate the room and the listening area. Take a look at the Fletcher/ Munsons curves, the ear is most sensitive from around 1k to 6k, if your getting fatigued, review you system set up and EQ. You might find your getting spiked by upper mids in your listening position, some times it only takes a slight pull to alleviate the problem. One thing I've learned is that if you can hear thats its bright, its too bright.
I use an RTA and post EQ to flatten the system response to 0db (Vu) in what ever room it is. Then I apply a fletcher/munson curve with a post processor, afterwards I still have to make a variety of pulls around the mids and upper mids to accommodate the room and the listening area. Take a look at the Fletcher/ Munsons curves, the ear is most sensitive from around 1k to 6k, if your getting fatigued, review you system set up and EQ. You might find your getting spiked by upper mids in your listening position, some times it only takes a slight pull to alleviate the problem. One thing I've learned is that if you can hear thats its bright, its too bright.
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Double blind of course. But the very act of listening intently for something like this may be the primary cause of listening fatigue. I am not convinced that audiophiles are capable of avoiding it.
I can listen to a portable radio all day, or watch/listen to a TV all evening with cheapo satellite speakers and subwoofer through a dubious home theatre receiver, and after a three hours of film or Proms concert or Glastonbury coverage I don't find myself thinking "Gosh my ears are tired". But I'm not playing it as loud as I would proper hi fi speakers.
Sit down in front of my mega-system, and I can't help but start listening to it, and not the music. Audiophilia is very unhealthy!
Do we know that live music is not just as fatiguing to the ears as hi fi systems? Does a small, muffled bandwidth-limited speaker help our ears by cutting down on the detail they have to take in - like children (and some adults!) preferring to watch a cartoon on the telly rather than a full-on art film at the cinema?
My current system involves very big sealed enclosures and large woofers and does the phase correction thing, and I am under the impression that it is much less fatiguing than any pair of commercial, elegant and slim floorstanders I've owned - but it's difficult to be scientific about it. As you say, it could take a long time to perform such a test convincingly.
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listening fatigue?
even when you´re satisfied with sound your equipment gives.
it makes you want listen more and more, and morning you realize it played all night long when you fell asleep in early morning
even when you´re satisfied with sound your equipment gives.
it makes you want listen more and more, and morning you realize it played all night long when you fell asleep in early morning
Where does he ever say 700-7000 Hz ?
He is talking about "The phase coherence of harmonics in the vocal formant range, ~630Hz to 4000Hz"
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/mult...rmonics-vocal-formant-range-630hz-4000hz.html
On my own system, if I start listening to it, then there's something sufficiently wrong with it to warrant attention ... the elements of the music you're hearing should fill your inner "listening space" ...
There are some few speakers I can listen too all day and not feel tired of the music - setup just as you describe in a triangle. I can even listen to music with "bright" parts with lots of treble such as the plucking of high pitch metallic strings (as in Fleetwood Mac's Never Going Back Again: https://mog.com/m#search/never going back again )
(Listening to the "Super Deluxe" version now and wondering why I can't hear the vocal part and it sounds weird - is this some kind of 5.1 mix that's not playing properly on my stereo headphones?!?)
It's probably too much trouble, but if not, it'd be great if you could do either one or both of: A) show FR measurement of before & after, B) have a friend help you do a blind listening test switching the Zobel in and out...
If this is true, then it is quite a revelation! I will have to follow up and discuss with my old friend John Strohbeen. (He's done more reading & research on these topics for the last ~40 years than anyone else I know) We were discussing phase some time ago and it seemed to be the consensus that you could only "hear" something being out of phase rarely, with things such as a finger snap...
Forgive us absent minded, but hopefully still useful old(er) farts. 🙂 I think he had the right idea, good for us to actually follow up and check the source though, thanks!
Odd, because, back when my sources were TT and Tape, I never experienced listening fatigue (my system then was a pair of 2-way paper woofer / paper tweeter bookshelf speakers powered by a Dyna tube amp)
But... I do not experience listening fatigue listening to any sort of quality live (un-amplified) acoustic music, do you?
I propose any speaker system which actually could reproduce the sound authentically would not cause much listening fatigue for either of us (unless we simply DISLIKED the music 😛 ) even if we previously had different opinions on which speakers we preferred?
And let me end (for now) by saying, It makes me happy to see when my threads reach 20+ pages without flaming and other sorts of insults! Yay.
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I think maybe a simple answer to the subject question is "harmonics normally unassociated with natural harmonic content. However, the source of such can manifest anywhere in the system, just need to track it down. If they do not reasonably show up in standard tests, then it is really more stimulant dependent.
Compression and clipping. I doubt electronics contribute much. Speakers perhaps a little bit, aside from boominess and treble harshness.
Crowhurst very much blamed electronics in '57. The only thing that's changed is we've now added of AB transition regions and clock jitter to the list-o'-sins. And we're generating way more "hash" in the power supplies.
Speakers - a lot. Especially breakup modes and mechanical resonances (metal cones or wizzer gaps). General non-linearity of the generic driver
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I suspect the room contributes a good bit. And I know that amps can.
Bad tonal balance is the biggest culprit for me, tho.
Bad tonal balance is the biggest culprit for me, tho.
I pretty much agree.
I suspect listening fatigue can be attributed mainly to resonances in the loudspeaker response and by a too strongly (frequency dependent?) contributing room. I have found that an unnaturally dead room can cause fatigue as well. In contrast to you amplifiers are less of an issue to me, as long as they don't clip.
EDIT: I don't think loudspeaker compression is an important factor in this. I have set up and listened to loudspeakers in a pretty large garden several times. In order to get similar sound levels as inside you have to turn the volume up much higher. With a compact 2-way it has to be turned up to a level where the speaker just has to compress. However, it sounds much cleaner and less fatiguing than if it were listened to at the same sound level (but with less power delivered to the speaker) indoors.
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I have not found a dead room to cause fatigue, but actually reveals other flaws that cause fatigue. Listening in an all glass room does cause fatigue, I suspect it's due to room modes that are not in line with the instrument harmonics.
Agreed, a dead room causes much less fatigue than a life one. Most acoustically dead rooms I've been to are only dead in the higher midrange and treble though. Perhaps that's what causes some of the fatigue I experience.
Aren't these more or less the same thing? I like to think of them as a distraction..
After thirty-some years in this field, I think the biggest culprits are -by far- the speakers. Colorations, phase and transient related problems causing your brain to do excess work, while trying to enjoy the music. You can read an excellent article about this subject by Mr. Manger (no, this is not a promotion, just a well executed explanation and reasoning about the perception mechanism of human hearing) on this website: Manger Audio - Speakers ,titled "acoustical reality". Of course bad sources and amplification can ruin your listening experience, but nearly not as much as a mediocre speaker. Since (besides microphones) speakers are the most technically outdated electro-mechanical devices in the reproduction chain, here the number of possibilities to fail are countless.