Live, acoustic sound stinks of audible "defects" - scraping of feet, shifting on chairs, audible mutterings; I've listened to one of the better known classical guitar players from about 10 feet away, and the amount of extraneous noise is quite amazing - the sound of the movement of the fingers on the frets alone would drive you crazy, if you chose to be bothered by it.
So, 'real' music is not perfect, get over it! That sort of issue should be irrelevant, what counts is whether the reproduction convinces you that you're listening to an reconstruction of the 'real thing' - that's what matters to me ...
Lately. I've been setting up guys with laptops. They are buying IK Multimedia Amplitube and running in real time (less than 3ms round trip latency) and this through USB! The drivers are getting really good.
Those are not recording imperfections they are inherent. I'd love to hear them with a "straight wire with gain room and speaker. It's not giong to happen. Those little things are the good things.
I would beg to differ - it does happen! That's the sort of sound I'm always chasing, that's at the heart of my interest in the game ...
An example: take Nellie Melba - ultra primitive recordings, lo-fi to the max, normal playback just sounds weird, like some sort of parody of opera singing. But, if a system is lifted to a sufficient level of quality, and those recordings are played at full, realistic levels - then someone who was well out of earshot, down the hallway and in another room, could be easily convinced that there was a real opera soprano singing in another part of the building - that's the sort of reproduction that's worth pursuing ...
An example: take Nellie Melba - ultra primitive recordings, lo-fi to the max, normal playback just sounds weird, like some sort of parody of opera singing. But, if a system is lifted to a sufficient level of quality, and those recordings are played at full, realistic levels - then someone who was well out of earshot, down the hallway and in another room, could be easily convinced that there was a real opera soprano singing in another part of the building - that's the sort of reproduction that's worth pursuing ...
Yes, I'm interested. The data for the TW70 shows quite a big peak up there at about 14 kHz, and I think it appears in your speaker's measurements. Is this a problem worth worrying about?
TW 70 - 8 Ohm
Willing suspension of reality? Hell yes we are living it. Shouldn't be too much of an issue to accept an aural version of it over speakers.
For me the key is how easy it is to accept the illusion - if you have to sit in the right spot, the room has to be exactly right acoustically, then as far as I'm concerned it ain't there yet ...
If the volumes are realistic, and you can walk around anywhere in the listening room, anywhere in your home, do anything, change focus at will - and all times the illusion is maintained, it always sound 'right' - then an acceptable 'reality' is happening ...
If the volumes are realistic, and you can walk around anywhere in the listening room, anywhere in your home, do anything, change focus at will - and all times the illusion is maintained, it always sound 'right' - then an acceptable 'reality' is happening ...
Yes, the super compressed recordings of today seem to be beyond hope. It seems very difficult, if not impossible to recover anything good from them.
No, you do not "get it". You've said over and over that you do - but believe me, you do not.
There have been some good explanations of this over the years and thru the threads, and even a few nice ones between your post and this. Read them, they may give you some idea of what it's about.Beside, I thought that you don't care what it sounds like anyway. You don't use listening to judge audio, right?
Surprisingly, they can be rescued ... at first I thought too they were a lost cause, but I was motivated to persist, and if absolutely everything is done right the atrocious density of the mix can be unraveled. In one sense they form a perfect suite of test recordings, because if one can get these recordings to make sense, and cleanly, then all other types of recordings will also be good.
The biggest headache - perhaps, pun intended, 😀 - is that the playback system needs to be able to deliver sustained high intensity sound - if there are problems with power supplies and suchlike, these recordings will ruthlessly expose such. The amplifier absolutely must be able to deliver the continuous average power that playback of these require, with no added distortion - something like a Bryston monoblock should show what's possible here ...
Again, to some people's despair most likely, I haven't found the speakers to be lacking here - I've been able to get my ears starting to send warning signs within 5 minutes, to back off, when playing these sort of tracks, and listening at normal distances.
Fas42. This is a big one.............
Upgrading speakers or amps will only help if there is some sort of dynamic issue to begin with, in the speakers or amp. You can make the stuff more bearable by not adding any *more* crappy compression, Trust me on this. We use brickwall limiting every day on all sorts of pop music. It is used at the source by guitarists, it is used in mixing, it is used especially during mastering We use it liberally, we try to use it artistically (CLA is good at that in his mixing) we use the crap out of it, we use it almost all of the time. *We are forced to do this by market pressure*
You can't un-schiit.... a tu... well you know. The thing is you can *not* get back the original dynamic range once it has been compressed without a *complete mirror image expansion* of the original signal. In fact this is exactly what we did in the old tape days on less than stellar machines. It was called DBX companding also Dolby and Dolby C although Dolby was band limited while DBX was overall.
What you can do is add an *expander* type plugin if you are card based or a hardware unit if you are not and TRY to re-expand the f'd up compressed signal somewhat. You will however, not achieve 100% success, but you may, on certain recordings, find an acceptable compromise. Hi my name is (insert the lot of us by market pressure) and I'm a compressoholic.
Go to Bob Katz's site, he can rant on this waaay better and with more authority than I can, but this schiit has been going on forever starting with vinyl because it was 100% necessary, (see Fairchild compressor history) Needles would jump out of the groove! You can't fix it with speakers and amps. What you can do is make *damn sure your system has headroom so you don't make the bad worse* This is why so many of us favor high efficiency speakers whether they know the reason or not. Dynamic compression/distortion is damn near impossible to avoid with small speakers in a larger room at anywhere near "concert levels" This is the dirty little secret of high efficiency speakers, this is what you are mostly hearing, (or not hearing) not all the other BS. The nasty little secret is the old horn speakers had it right to begin with, all we can really do now is repackage them in some sort of container that "the other half" will give the ok to, or else keep telling ourselves that our little speakers sound great. Yeah they might sound good enough, but do not kid yourself, a good high efficiency speaker will eat them alive. Oh yes I too have had "Great sounding" tiny speakers driven by humoumgously big fine amps/ But a friend of mine put it this way. Once you've had sweet potato pie, you aint eatin punkin pie no mo.
Upgrading speakers or amps will only help if there is some sort of dynamic issue to begin with, in the speakers or amp. You can make the stuff more bearable by not adding any *more* crappy compression, Trust me on this. We use brickwall limiting every day on all sorts of pop music. It is used at the source by guitarists, it is used in mixing, it is used especially during mastering We use it liberally, we try to use it artistically (CLA is good at that in his mixing) we use the crap out of it, we use it almost all of the time. *We are forced to do this by market pressure*
You can't un-schiit.... a tu... well you know. The thing is you can *not* get back the original dynamic range once it has been compressed without a *complete mirror image expansion* of the original signal. In fact this is exactly what we did in the old tape days on less than stellar machines. It was called DBX companding also Dolby and Dolby C although Dolby was band limited while DBX was overall.
What you can do is add an *expander* type plugin if you are card based or a hardware unit if you are not and TRY to re-expand the f'd up compressed signal somewhat. You will however, not achieve 100% success, but you may, on certain recordings, find an acceptable compromise. Hi my name is (insert the lot of us by market pressure) and I'm a compressoholic.
Go to Bob Katz's site, he can rant on this waaay better and with more authority than I can, but this schiit has been going on forever starting with vinyl because it was 100% necessary, (see Fairchild compressor history) Needles would jump out of the groove! You can't fix it with speakers and amps. What you can do is make *damn sure your system has headroom so you don't make the bad worse* This is why so many of us favor high efficiency speakers whether they know the reason or not. Dynamic compression/distortion is damn near impossible to avoid with small speakers in a larger room at anywhere near "concert levels" This is the dirty little secret of high efficiency speakers, this is what you are mostly hearing, (or not hearing) not all the other BS. The nasty little secret is the old horn speakers had it right to begin with, all we can really do now is repackage them in some sort of container that "the other half" will give the ok to, or else keep telling ourselves that our little speakers sound great. Yeah they might sound good enough, but do not kid yourself, a good high efficiency speaker will eat them alive. Oh yes I too have had "Great sounding" tiny speakers driven by humoumgously big fine amps/ But a friend of mine put it this way. Once you've had sweet potato pie, you aint eatin punkin pie no mo.
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Oh yeah and just one more thing as Columbo used to say,. Make no mistake, my "revered" 801's are still just harmonically accurate pumpkin pie. I've had sweet potato pie before and big horns were always somewhere in the recipe.
Pano, what EG means is speakers must do GIGO and I agree. If they do garbage in and Tbone steak out, there is something terribly wrong with the speaker or room for certain. Now what many people prefer however is a high end rolloff and I can understand that because we ME's have had a tendency to over do the high end. There are about a zillion screwed up masters.I try my best not to do this.
Yes, the super compressed recordings of today seem to be beyond hope. It seems very difficult, if not impossible to recover anything good from them.
No, you do not "get it". You've said over and over that you do - but believe me, you do not.
Beside, I thought that you don't care what it sounds like anyway. You don't use listening to judge audio, right?
You want to hear even more clipping on more recordings? Seriously? Seriously? Listen on *even more efficient horn speakers*, All the HOMs Hums and even Hymns in the world are not going to cover up that sort of distortion. But I'm dead certain I am preaching to the choir here. Khorns are big and inconvenient but.......................
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Pete, I have played with that sort of thing, using software, and have been able to do a significant amount with a number of tracks - I didn't make the track worse in any easily discernable way, but got rid of the "I'm gonna headbutt ya into submission!" quality of them - it was a 'proof of concept' exercise ...
Agree 100% ...
You wouldn't want concert levels with the mordern, uber-compressed stuff, I have to back off the volume enormously on them, otherwise the subjective intensity hit is just too great.
Haven't heard too many "high efficiency" speakers - but the ones that work OK just sound, well, normal - clean sound that can take a bit of volume. Some Klipsch that I've heard are good, others not so ... haven't heard any decent JBL, the fancy effort at the recent audio show went into typical stridency as soon as the accelerator was put down ...
That's the whole deal! There is a huge hole to fill here. A Klipsch style *very high efficiency* reference monitor, and by high efficiency I do mean around 100db and well above. I see it as being used in conjunction in studios with a more average direct cone monitor. Outside of the mixing or mastering studio, I see it as very simply the right speaker to own.
I agree. It sort of goes both ways. When you introduce speakers and electronics that are transparent, it will be more revealing and flaws become more evident. Initially that can make bad recordings sound worse. If one however is able to combine this transparency with great measurements in listening position (frequency response, ETC, waterfall), those bad recordings stop being annoying, harsh, etc. and are actually more enjoyable in several ways. You hear deeper into them.
But it requires everything to be in perfect line. A little off track and it doesn't work. I don't think many people get there. It requires in most cases a dedicated room with a lot of treatment. A dip in the response or some high gain specular reflections is enough to throw it off board. When these things aren't more or less perfect, a system that is less transparent is preferred with bad recordings.
At least this is my experience. But who knows; Maybe I have some weaknesses in my system I'm not aware of (thinking mainly speakers/drivers) and are trying to cover up with everything else needing to be perfect. Unlike Dr. Geddes, I do for instance think a beryllium diaphragm with less breakup above 10Khz should make a difference. So I'm open to improvements I may have yet to experience. 🙂
I don't get it. A "good" system reveals errors in recordings which in turn make those recordings sound better? If I can hear compression, clipping, rumble, hiss, etc. pp. and more subtle errors (like bad miking) then this doesn't make the recording sound better to me.
Bound to make some kind of a difference whether audible is obviously the question.What would really make a difference? Getting the crossover low enough so you could cover all the midrange with one driver and do the VHF area with many suitable drivers. Again, PWK and the rest of the 3 way horn crowd knew what they were doing. But it does cost money. Here is a thought I've often entertained. Revise and refine the old piezo for vhf and spend the money on the midrange where people can actually hear it.
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A great system reveals those flaws easily but it's also more tolerable because it doesn't have strong weaknesses of it's own, making bad recordings actually more enjoyable then a poorer system. Those flaws in the recording one is hearing get's amplified by speaker and room issues. When these are removed, the flaws are still there but doesn't have the same negative effect. You hear them well, but they don't steal the musical enjoyment away from you anymore. And better resolution/openness also makes you hear "closed in" recordings with better clarity.
Perhaps badman's answer may help you:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/120847-what-causes-listening-fatigue-126.html#post3604046
Doesn't make sense to me. When a good system reveals errors then those errors weren't (consciously) detectable before. Maybe there was "something" wrong, something I couldn't name directly which I can with a "good" system. But, the recording still is bad. Just because I might be able to say "that's clipping on the bass track" doesn't make the recording more tolerable or enjoyable.