your right about certain things and I do not want to even propose that my system is golden and yours not and thats why you complain about realisitc level are needed to have a lifelike presentation because your system sucks.
I honestly have never really experienced listening fatigue in the way the highs were so harsh that I couldnt enjoy the music for example. What I have experience however is that some system are not involving musically and that creates lstening fatigue because you actually have to concentrate real hard to still apprecitae the songs you enjoy even with a ipod and 30$ sony headphones; then you know that there is a problem in the chains, rather be amp doesnt work well with speakers or whatever. but I think that listening fatigue has more to do with theres something wrong in the system (whatever it is) and not because you dont listens to the music at a realistic level. However, I may be wrong as I have not experience a lot of hi fi system. What I do know, is that a damn ipod and a damn 70's marantz, connected to a good speaker, like tannoy 15 inch red, will makes music sounds definitely lifelike (add all the objecties you want) and quite involving, scarily involving indeed no matter the db your listening at.
Live music sounds so good, so big, so real, that I dont think a system can really acheive a realistic presentation at least I have never heard one. The way the cymbals sounds, the hi hats, the bass drum pounds your chest, the definition of a real saxophone, pfff I do not beleive a sound system can sound like a real band in your room. BUT, you cant get surprisngly close, enough at least that you really enjoy your system more then any cheap systems.
indeed, audiophilia is bad if you cannot help youself, everytime in front of your system, to listen to the system rather then the music. One could be all his life not happy with the sound he has, and that has probably have to do more with himself rather then the system he listens to.
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So the truth makes you vomit ..... 🙂
Typically, SS amplifiers hit their sweet spot at approximately 33% of rated power before THD takes off ...
The tweeter is easily overloaded and the first to receive junk from the electronics, blame the messenger...?
Plenty truth there ....... 🙂
well, I go to concerts often, and some sounds pretty bad, depending on musicians, room acoustics, soundman...some are awesome
I have heard systems (high water sound so instance) which sound as good or even better than live music
remember, playback not necassary has to be like original live music, who said so that I have to play it as accurately as live music, I can adjust it to my taste, so in a sense it can (for me) sound better than live music
(I was at many bad sounding rock concerts, and even bad sounding jazz concerts... yet, I have their cd which sounds better that their live concert)
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live amplified concerts are not a reference for live sound , well unless you want a PA system in your listening room ..
🙂
🙂
what I described in my previous post with amplifier swap was all far from clipping, faaar from clipping
I was listening at moderate level with PA speakers (~98dB), at 80-85 dB during listening (each amp was set to the same loudness using pink noise and SPL meter)
I was using 200-500 mWatts of power on peaks, just by observing the power meters (at least 3 amps had power meter, ...even those may not be accurate, but none ever showed more than 1 watt)
just for clarification...
and it was all done for fun
I was listening at moderate level with PA speakers (~98dB), at 80-85 dB during listening (each amp was set to the same loudness using pink noise and SPL meter)
I was using 200-500 mWatts of power on peaks, just by observing the power meters (at least 3 amps had power meter, ...even those may not be accurate, but none ever showed more than 1 watt)
just for clarification...
and it was all done for fun
yeah, indeed amplified concert is not a reference. Try a jazz trio is a small bar. I do not think that a system can even get close to the dynamics, the power, the presence of a real band. Am I wrong here? You can have the "impression", you can see the musicians, feel their presence, good tone, nice dynamics, beautiful stable soundstage, but still its so far from what you can hear from a little trio jazz live that I wonder if the claims of realistic presentation should ever be discussed. Some render enough to have a good impression, but more then that, I do not beleive it to be possible.
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You are wrong here, fortunately for all! Obviously you have a very nice setup there which does very well indeed at lower volume levels, but the key is what happens when you start upping the volume control - if everything is in order then the intensity of the sound will steadily build to the point that it will sound like the live trio. If this is not what happens, but instead the sound starts to flatten, become unpleasant, fall apart, then you're hitting a weakness of the system
As you suggest, this is typically a power amp problem - most are not capable of running cleanly at their theoretical maximum power.
Coppertop said:
In any non-contrived situation, as he moves further from the source(s) the listener receives a lower and lower proportion of direct sound vs. reflected. As any amateur tape recordist knows, as they move away from the child prodigy playing the piano, into the audience, the recording takes on different tonal and time-domain characteristics compared to a close-miked recording - quite unlike turning down the volume. In other words, turning down the volume will not make a close-miked recording sound like a distant-miked recording; it will sound like listening to a piano from close to, but strangely quiet.
What about an anechoic situation where it might be claimed that distance simply attenuates volume? Well even then, the source has a certain physical size. It may be a voice, guitar, or ensemble. As a listener moves away, the soundstage merges towards mono. Even a solo voice listened close to will provide the left and right ears with subtly different signals compared to listening in the distance. Turning down the volume doesn't merge the stereo towards mono. So it sounds artificial.
Add the Fletcher Munson stuff to that, and it is plausible that there really is a 'correct volume' for many recordings.
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Good points. I would acknowledge that the presentation will vary in the sense you describe, but I was focusing on the quality of 'lifelikeness', which shouldn't diminish. I find for myself that my hearing adapts to any alteration in those balances, and I don't get a sense of it being "artificial".
Frank there is no hifi system that can reproduce the dynamics of live music, not even that of single instruments ...
Or up ....🙂
Guess you haven't been there then, 😀.
Have heard or got it many times when I put the effort in ... and some off the shelf systems can now do it. I've mentioned listening to the Bryston setup at the hifi show, and that was fully capable of doing it. It's getting the intensity of sound happening without audible distortion, which is where 99% of systems come unstuck ...
This statement is virtually 100% true. Remember that increasing the dynamic range just 9 dB increases the power requirement 8 times; 12 dB increase requires 16 times the power. This does not even take into consideration the dynamic compression of the speakers; 4 dB compression is considered excellent.
It adds up.
This is the standard argument, but it doesn't stack up. If you do the maths it's not hard, at a theoretical level, to get somewhere over 105dB peak with a reasonable system, and well over 110dB peak with something more ambitious. This is sufficient for practically all musical instruments during normal playing - yes, they can hit above that if the players pull out all the stops and you're standing right next to them - but this is relatively rare. If they were all so intensely loud, all the time, then everybody who plays an instrument would be stone deaf ...
So why don't your hear live dynamics when listening? Well, because the system is distorting, in just those ways which cripple the subjective impression of realistic intensity ...
So why don't your hear live dynamics when listening? Well, because the system is distorting, in just those ways which cripple the subjective impression of realistic intensity ...
