Since you asked
Given how trivially easy it is to fool an audience with a live classical instrumentalist or singer between two fairly good loudspeakers at a performance theatre, it is equally easy to explain the above challenge scientifically.
Start with human perceptual processing bias. (It's a biggie and needs to be studied with humility if serious about understanding audio listening experiences.) Very few forum-posting denizens seem to have even the most rudimentary grasp -- and some have such an 'attitude' about the topic that they only learn enough to draw spectacularly wrong conclusions and argue in favour of those conclusions ad infinitum. Too big a topic to address properly, but suffice to say here that perceptual bias is just as often at the root of 'vinyl sounds great, digital sounds flawed' arguments as it is at the root of 'live sounds great, recorded sounds bad' arguments.
Throw in the challenge of producing loudspeakers with a sufficiently flat response and sufficiently wide beam all the way from 20-20kHz, and with enough power handling linearity at all those frequencies to cope with all the dynamics of music. Yes, our speakers are rarely as good as they need to be if we aspire to high standards.
Add the further challenge of playing back in a smaller room than the recording space, and dealing with the deleterious effects of short reflection times from interior walls and floor and ceiling in small rooms, extreme bass nulls and nodes in small rooms, and erratic reflectivity coefficients around the room in close proximity to the ear. The current state-of-the-art approaches to this challenge involve substantial and sophisticated equalization and delay protocols, considerable room treatment, and the use of multiple discrete audio channels. The idea that you can go from attending the theatre, home to a 2-channel hifi with an allergic reaction to the presence of any tone controls, then make pronouncements about how awful audio is, is positively arrogant.
The main challenge for our electronic sections right now is to have sufficient power into all load conditions that our speakers present them with, to deal with the power demands to deal with the full dynamics of music after equalization has been applied to meet the challenges inherent in the above two paragraphs. With few exceptions this means several hundred watts per channel -- even with active amps the biggest amp per channel will need several hundred watts to fully meet the demands stated above.
And DO NOT, repeat DO NOT, waste time focusing on the wrong areas of concern, such as digital playback imperfections. Not if you're a serious student of audio in terms of getting your in-room playback system as advanced as possible in the areas that need most attention. The GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) mentalities that were good wisdom for bygone eras, such as vinyl, are no longer right for the current era when front ends are so much better than the gross errors that are still not being addressed further along the chain.
Given how trivially easy it is to fool an audience with a live classical instrumentalist or singer between two fairly good loudspeakers at a performance theatre, it is equally easy to explain the above challenge scientifically.
Start with human perceptual processing bias. (It's a biggie and needs to be studied with humility if serious about understanding audio listening experiences.) Very few forum-posting denizens seem to have even the most rudimentary grasp -- and some have such an 'attitude' about the topic that they only learn enough to draw spectacularly wrong conclusions and argue in favour of those conclusions ad infinitum. Too big a topic to address properly, but suffice to say here that perceptual bias is just as often at the root of 'vinyl sounds great, digital sounds flawed' arguments as it is at the root of 'live sounds great, recorded sounds bad' arguments.
Throw in the challenge of producing loudspeakers with a sufficiently flat response and sufficiently wide beam all the way from 20-20kHz, and with enough power handling linearity at all those frequencies to cope with all the dynamics of music. Yes, our speakers are rarely as good as they need to be if we aspire to high standards.
Add the further challenge of playing back in a smaller room than the recording space, and dealing with the deleterious effects of short reflection times from interior walls and floor and ceiling in small rooms, extreme bass nulls and nodes in small rooms, and erratic reflectivity coefficients around the room in close proximity to the ear. The current state-of-the-art approaches to this challenge involve substantial and sophisticated equalization and delay protocols, considerable room treatment, and the use of multiple discrete audio channels. The idea that you can go from attending the theatre, home to a 2-channel hifi with an allergic reaction to the presence of any tone controls, then make pronouncements about how awful audio is, is positively arrogant.
The main challenge for our electronic sections right now is to have sufficient power into all load conditions that our speakers present them with, to deal with the power demands to deal with the full dynamics of music after equalization has been applied to meet the challenges inherent in the above two paragraphs. With few exceptions this means several hundred watts per channel -- even with active amps the biggest amp per channel will need several hundred watts to fully meet the demands stated above.
And DO NOT, repeat DO NOT, waste time focusing on the wrong areas of concern, such as digital playback imperfections. Not if you're a serious student of audio in terms of getting your in-room playback system as advanced as possible in the areas that need most attention. The GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) mentalities that were good wisdom for bygone eras, such as vinyl, are no longer right for the current era when front ends are so much better than the gross errors that are still not being addressed further along the chain.
Hehehe. You OTOH seem to be biased towards digital in this digital versus vinyl discussion.
As someone who is not on any side, I didn't necessarily think gabdx cannot accept the truth. What I saw in his post is a genuine truth...
I saw that for some reason, some people like gabdx (even Joel, the thread owner) really like vinyl. They own CD player and they own vinyl player and they still prefer vinyl. As someone with an inquiring mind (thanks AndrewGM) I would of course ask "why"?
Blurred speech... bad choir... weak bass... interesting observation really, and I can relate that in some implementations (I'm not saying that CDP is worse, you digital guys!)
Interesting what people perceive as "resolution" when someone has stated that vinyl is equal only to 12dB of resolution...
But the key word from this observed phenomenon is "high pitched bells"...
Yes, and there are a lot more things going on at loudspeaker chain.
No matter how wrong these speakers are, they can be made correct or impressive at a few functions. It is these "few" things that make them acceptable. It can be the ability to produce the sound of a mouse running on the back stage, which is very fascinating 😀
Did you do that with a simple speaker? I believe so.
With most top quality speakers, which are multi-way, you have more problems inside the speaker itself, so what you fix in the front end may or may not have an affect to the final sound until you fix the speaker.
What makes a sound "fatiguing", "disturbing", not a delight to listen to, is because the sound is MODIFIED into something that is not ear-friendly.
From many listening tests, I have found that the characteristics of this fatiguing sound is very similar. It can happen in speaker chain, digital chain, even amplifier chain... All sound similar.
It is the modification of sound into something "sharp". Understand what "finger nail on a chalk board" is? Press hard any piano key above 1kHz, you don't hear any fatigue. Then listen to the recorded piano strike and you will hear HOW this sound is modified into steely sound, very sharp and painful.
The above is a typical sound of inter-modulated sounds (usually in HF), which can happen anywhere in the chain...
The sound coming from super high frequency sampling, even if you think you have "decoded" back into the original analog, it is rarely the same with the original analog signal anymore...
But speakers are a LOT worse...
Listen to radio stations. When changing from station to station you may hear disturbing noise (unless you employ anti-noise IC in your receiver). Or when the signal reception is weak, you may hear disturbing noise... But don't you know that this noise can be disturbing or not depends on how "wrong" your speaker is?
It's like listening to a pure white noise. With a proper speaker, you can listen to noises without feeling disturbed. But listen to this noise when produced by almost all high end speakers using lightweight cone material!!!
I'm not so sure about the Physics (tho as an engineer I also studied Physics) but I'm sure about what I hear...
And I'm suggesting all experts like Marce and others to investigate on IMD, and stop closing your ears when those with better ears talk about what they can hear (explicitly or implicitly).
I'm sure that gabd post was entirely sarcastic, Jay.
And it would have been 12 bits of resolution for vinyl. Not 12 dB. Unless someone mistyped.
And it would have been 12 bits of resolution for vinyl. Not 12 dB. Unless someone mistyped.
Really. English is not my mother tongue, so I didn't know.
Yes, 12 bits. My mistake.
Maybe before you start putting me in one category and using patronising statements such as you digital guys, you aught to read what I have posted in the past on this thread... Being aware of reality does not make me a supporter of one system over another.....
High pitched bells, we are all mostly I should imagine not in our youth and you go on about high pitched bells... As to digital and vinyl resolution there has been plenty of information put up on the forum regarding this, if people want to dismiss facts to suit their own agenda that is their problem and a common trait amongst some audiophiles.....
Jay, we do agree that audio sound often has a degraded quality, but we disagree on what the main causes are ... but that's fine, 🙂 - so long as a determination to improve where audio is at remains fired up in enough people then eventually the good stuff will come ... 😉.
Yes, piano is a good test ... much reproduction fails to get the attack right - the subjective impression should be one of pleasurable intensity, but it often fails to be so - perhaps dull, weak, or aggressive, unpleasant, irritating. But I've never solved that by changing a speaker configuration 🙂 - this is usually a shortfall of the amplifier; changing the speaker may then alter the sound by impacting how badly the amplifier distorts, and how readily the defects are heard - but is not the real, long term solution.
I think you know much better than I do in ELECTRONICS, that's why I considered you are an expert. I'm not trained in EE by my education and professional job and I have never claimed myself as an audio expert. But I have no problem saying that I am if it is necessary.
I have been referred to as an "expert" in several subjects by several friends, but honestly I have never felt that I am. I have above average IQ (some test even put me in genius category) which makes me a fast learner, and I have read a lot, and I like to learn, and I'm above 40... The only reason I have never become an expert is I think because I've learned and studied a LOT of unrelated things in life.
I myself don't think that we have disagreement. "Main" cause can change, depends on where we stand, or how many weakest links we have left behind.
As for amplifiers, I have hundreds, I have designed my own, I have tried almost all configuration, have heard many different topologies... Also, I have never used cheap metal film resistors, never used cheap capacitors... Also, I'm allergic to opamps and IC regulators... And I have plenty of capacitor stocks... So in my case I would say that amplifier is not a main cause.
You are in Ostripper's amplifier thread. What tweak can you suggest to the amplifier built by him? Having good ears is fun, isn't it? We can build other people creations and select by our own ears which one to prefer 🙂
I don't think anybody claimed that. At least I didn't.
The test does one thing and one thing only: It shows how much added THD one can hear.
So I assume that if I keep the THD of my stereo to well below that THD ceases to be an issue but it says nothing about other forms of distortion.
Haven't found a test for IM so far that gives me an audibility level.
But what are the chances that if I can't hear 3rd harmonic 70dB down that I hear IM distortion at that same level down?
Either way it is fairly easy to keep electronics well below as long as no valves are involved. Which might go some way to explaining why I never liked valve amps in my replay chain however much I love them as instrument amps or that I never had a problem with digital audio. To my ears convertors sound much more alike than transistor amps run within their comfort zone. I assume perceived differences between convertors are mostly due to the analogue circuitry surrounding them rather than the convertor itself.
Speakers however are a completely different beast and it is quite difficult to keep them below my audibility level.
As it happens though I did have my hearing checked. Turns out I am overly sensitive to frequencies around 3kHz which I hear about 6-7dB louder than 1kHz which was the reference frequency.
Don't hear much beyond 17k anymore which given my age is pretty good.
fas42, do you know which cd players I used to think my cd player is flawed?
When I chose my turntable I listened to recordings in vinyl and CD. It was clear to me that on the turntable things sounded wilder but for most recordings the imaging was better and it had as much resolution or more.
The 'in your face' differences in sound in my home system cannot be attributed to vinyl added resonances or my 'poor flawed CD players.
Like for you, if the medium isn't flawed, a combination of bad down-sampling from the Metal tape to CD and better sound engineering only explains the better sound of vinyl.
When I chose my turntable I listened to recordings in vinyl and CD. It was clear to me that on the turntable things sounded wilder but for most recordings the imaging was better and it had as much resolution or more.
The 'in your face' differences in sound in my home system cannot be attributed to vinyl added resonances or my 'poor flawed CD players.
Like for you, if the medium isn't flawed, a combination of bad down-sampling from the Metal tape to CD and better sound engineering only explains the better sound of vinyl.
gabdx;
Record your vinyl with 16bit or 24bit device and listen to recording; either will capture everything your TT has to offer, and they will sound just like the vinyl.
Record your vinyl with 16bit or 24bit device and listen to recording; either will capture everything your TT has to offer, and they will sound just like the vinyl.
We are really sure of this ? I am sure that in the AD and DA passage something will be lost. I read about a test with a high end Korg digital recorder. The copy was sounding quite fine but still the virtual soundstage was a little shrunk compared to the direct feed.
regards, gino
Ginetto, the only way you can know is to actually do the test, and do it blind. I did that same test years ago, and satisfied myself that I cannot hear any difference.
If you are "sure" going in that you will loose something, and you know which you are listening to, you will surely hear that.
If you are "sure" going in that you will loose something, and you know which you are listening to, you will surely hear that.
You don't even have to be sure, as it is the unconscious bias that will affect you.
You can try to convince yourself that you are immune to it, because you "expected nothing", but that would be incorrect..... irrespective of what you consciously think, your unconscious bias is in charge.
Sometimes, your unconscious and conscious thoughts can agree. Don't take that as a sign that you are immune to bias or are somehow in control of it.
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