Here is how I look at bass: Each popular genre has found a formula to that give cues to what all the instruments are doing even on a cell phone, whether or not listening on the phone speaker or with bass-boosted earbuds. It is a complicated problem with limited solutions. In a common pop music the bass region is home to bass guitar, synth, piano, lower guitar registers, kick drum, bigger toms, etc. There is very little frequency real estate down there in which to fit everything. It is complicated by speakers and rooms have dips and peaks at unpredictable frequencies.
The first mode of attack is in the musical arrangement. Don't have all the instruments using all the same frequencies at the same time. Try to convince the band they have a problem with their original compositions.
Second mode of attack is to choose instruments sounds carefully so that the sounds fit together when played at once and each uses different parts of the frequency spectrum, at least on a per channel basis, but bass often treated as monophonic for reason I will skip for now. Try to convince the guitar player his 'signature' deep low note sound is a problem. Ha!
Find parts of low frequency instruments that can be slipped into higher frequency real estate to clue in listeners with small speakers. e.g. Put some kick beater ball sound at 4kHz. Make a hole there in the frequency space for it. Maybe synthesize some 2nd harmonic for bass guitar to bring it up into a range where some of it will come though on small speakers, etc.
For the standard genres, there are pretty fairly standard techniques that will give a workable solution. Of course, then a band walks in and proclaims they have the greatest new idea ever for an incredible sound. It will feature the biggest fattest bass guitar ever heard on a recording, the biggest, fattest drums ever heard on a recording, the biggest...
Oh, and of course everybody plays constantly, they only learned to play notes, not rests.
EDIT: I left out the 300Hz rule. Only one instrument at a time at 300Hz is the safest way to go. With great care sometimes it make be possible to get a slight blending there, but 300Hz is center of mud for human hearing. Too much at once there and it sounds like mud. Cutting 300Hz is a common post facto fix.
2nd EDIT: Anyway, wanted to point out that if all one knows about is speakers, it may seem natural to blame mix problems on speakers. There can definitely, even usually be other reasons speaker guys might not have heard mentioned before.
The first mode of attack is in the musical arrangement. Don't have all the instruments using all the same frequencies at the same time. Try to convince the band they have a problem with their original compositions.
Second mode of attack is to choose instruments sounds carefully so that the sounds fit together when played at once and each uses different parts of the frequency spectrum, at least on a per channel basis, but bass often treated as monophonic for reason I will skip for now. Try to convince the guitar player his 'signature' deep low note sound is a problem. Ha!
Find parts of low frequency instruments that can be slipped into higher frequency real estate to clue in listeners with small speakers. e.g. Put some kick beater ball sound at 4kHz. Make a hole there in the frequency space for it. Maybe synthesize some 2nd harmonic for bass guitar to bring it up into a range where some of it will come though on small speakers, etc.
For the standard genres, there are pretty fairly standard techniques that will give a workable solution. Of course, then a band walks in and proclaims they have the greatest new idea ever for an incredible sound. It will feature the biggest fattest bass guitar ever heard on a recording, the biggest, fattest drums ever heard on a recording, the biggest...
Oh, and of course everybody plays constantly, they only learned to play notes, not rests.
EDIT: I left out the 300Hz rule. Only one instrument at a time at 300Hz is the safest way to go. With great care sometimes it make be possible to get a slight blending there, but 300Hz is center of mud for human hearing. Too much at once there and it sounds like mud. Cutting 300Hz is a common post facto fix.
2nd EDIT: Anyway, wanted to point out that if all one knows about is speakers, it may seem natural to blame mix problems on speakers. There can definitely, even usually be other reasons speaker guys might not have heard mentioned before.
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Yes, I remember, and your memory isn't that bad after all 🙂
I do listen near field, but my speakers are also dipoles, and I've found the best imagery I get in my room is sitting quite close to them so I'm also getting the reflected sound from the front wall as well, albeit well delayed and diffused
That is the big challenge, and i refer to the Max Headroom concern about the "bass foundation".
How to keep an acceptable tonal and musical balance with a mix listened on a speaker system with an extended frequency response played at high level, and a little radio receiver in a kitchen.
May-i add a little (very personal) remark about what some call "high end" hifi. If you own this kind of very precise system in a very good acoustically treated listening room, there is a chance that you will be annoyed by a lot of little defects in various mixes that this system will reveal. While the same records can sound nicely on an other (tube based as an example) "high end" or a "midfi" system or in your car.
Small spots on wonderful pieces of music.
So what ? Lets exchange in a friendly atmosphere about the tips "that works" we have discovered or experienced and that can improve our listening pleasure, instead of fighting like integrists about an absolute truth that is a pure fantasm.
EDIT: Of course, all true (too ;-) in your last post. May I add an other tip ? When we play alone a difficult to focus instrument at the beginning of the tune, the audience will continue to feel the details of its sound, even when it will be drowned in the mass.
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I worked at a stereo store (The Sound Company in Springfield, MA) right out of HS, and we sold Bose. We had more returns on Bose 901s than any other speaker we sold. We were under strict instructions by Bose to set them up in a separate room (giving them quite the cache), set the speakers up just so, and treat the wall behind the speakers with absorption. This seemed counter-intuitive at the time, since 8 out of 9 drivers faced the rear, but I think Bose realized in a demo speaker room the rear energy would be too high. I attributed the returns to the fact that they were so expensive, and once they were set up at home, the rear energy overwhelmed the front facing driver, giving indistinct imaging which was the primary complaint. When we set up 901s in our regular speaker demo room they sounded very weird...
The sad thing was their little 301 bookshelf speaker, when properly set up was a pretty good little speaker for the price despite the steering vane in front of the phenolic ring tweeter.
Howie
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Here's the reason of my "aggression": the AC filter was presented as a device that would always improve the sound of an audio system (if anybody needs direct quotes to support this just let me know). I find in particular insulting the statement that an AC filter will always reduce the HD and IM distortions of a (pre)amplifier.
This is IMO blatantly misleading; i believe nobody sane would deny that there are AC mains network that are heavily polluted, and there is a bunch of badly designed (pre)amplifiers that have a poor PSRR. The interaction between the signal and the mains (harmonic) noise that enters through the bad power supply could of course lead to intermodulation products that could be very well audible.
For each and every of such cases, an AC filter may help. But before jumping in and purchasing an expensive AC filter (btw, I would expect that the efficiency between a 1000 and say 50 quid AC filter would be minimal, if both a correctly designed) any prospective buyer should try to figure out if he really needs it (I, for example, don't) and if the investment is really worth the money and trouble; I would expect that for 1000 quid one could buy a (pre)amplifier which is not affected by the mains noise even in the worst AC mains conditions.
I don't think there's more than perhaps 1% of the total audiophile population that would really benefit from an external AC mains filter, after all, audio components have to comply to certain regulations that severely limit the AC mains ingress and egress effects. Exception are the boutique devices like the Blowhard, which have by design zero PSRR and are built like an antenna waiting to collect junk.
Now, if the service offer would be "let me check your AC mains for pollution and your (pre) amplifier for sensitivity and then I'll make a recommendation for improvement" that would be fair game. But, given the 1% above, I certainly doubt such a stance will generate much sales; it's probably much more effective pushing snake oil and FUD all over the potential customers, make them buy something they don't really need, then claiming some illusory "sound improvement".
Final word, this is not about stadium sound systems with 100's of KW of audio power and 1000's of feet of power and signal cables, as much as it is not about recording studios that may have very specific situations. We are talking about individual customers that are targeted, once again, by a shameless snake oil propaganda.
Trying to read-you for a while: again an aggressive message.
My last answer to one of your posts, cause both of your remarks are surrealistic for me.
1- The fact that Richard is not the only experienced audio professional here to try to help people here and shares its experience does not detract from the laudable intentions of his approach and does not excuse the aggressiveness he had to subbine.
2- When you know what parameter is improved in a system, with a little experience, you know *were* people will feel the difference. As simple than this.
If we don't know the threshold of audibility of each of those parameters, we know what is clipping, HD, IM, Noise, hum etc., how they affect the listening as we are able to identify them. Some more accurately than others.
I dont sell. I design. but, if the marketing and selling is guaranteeing the customer get a benefit in the way of clearer sound, more accurate sound.... this is certainly a salesmans pitch and is not true. None-the-less, a customer can return it as doing nothing for him if he/she was 'over sold' a product. All units included surge protection on ac lines but also on CATV line which is another selling point an reason not to return it. AND, it prevent audio and video system connecting together and causing a ground loop noise problem.... very common occurrence. many reasons to buy it.
In the major retail chains.... not small Hi-End stores... these were also sold. In fact in all the biggest American chain stores. In order to get into a chain... you have to demonstrate the product and show it does what you say it does or the sales people wont have confidence in it and sales will be low. hearing for ones self is the best selling method. There are enough people who think it improved the sound in the store's display system to say OK we will give space to it. Of course in a big store full of gear all On.... the line noise may be a lot higher than inside the home. But they gave it a chance and the sales were in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year. To average Joe citizen as well as high-end.
Certainly, it makes a difference -- but to everyone? Of course not. And, even if only the highest quality systems can tell the difference... for that customer, it is worth having it in than not.
I only mentioned Mark here because he is knowledgable in electronics, music and sound and has a critical hearing for distortions. He also listens near-field. Mark has at least two products... the DAC and the PA ...both with smps in them. It makes a difference -- greater accuracy.
Your mileage may vary. So, I suggested here that DIY try an easy and cheap way to determine if it will matter in their system/environment. No guarantee comes with it.
THx-RNMarsh
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I can see at least 3 situations where it will not make any noticeable difference:
1- When there is no parasitic ground currents between none of the pieces of gear connected together (never seen this ;-) or all symmetrical connections + no HF components in the mains.
2 - Or a system so bad, with such a distortion, that the improvement will be as noticeable than the loss of one hair on the head of Bob Marley.
;-)
3 - If you are deaf.
More seriously, of course the efficiency of a Vacuum cleaner will be more spectacular if a room is covered of durst since decades than if the maid just cleaned the room one hour before.
There are amazing DSP plugins today that allow you to completely modify the response of your monitors to mimic various less than ideal setups (assuming your monitors are better than what you're trying to emulate, have been EQed flat to start with and you're working in a decently treated room). With a click of a mouse, you quickly see how things translate. How to make a mix properly work on various setups now, that's a wonderful skill and not one I claim to possess. In any case, the problem is not really technical (unless you're working on a very limited budget).
Still, it always strikes me how the methods, gear and tricks of the recording process are extremely blunt compared to the things which are usually discussed here. Their impact is certainly not at the limits of what's measurable, as is the norm for hifi gear these days (speakers and room excluded).
Not at all. Convolutional emulation of mic and speaker frequency responses have been available in DAWs for almost 20 years. They just don't work very well in practice. Turn your head slightly with one monitor and it can sound very different due to diffraction and other effects, and things like that don't carry over in the modeling. Typically, neither do time domain responses.. Frequency response is not the same as impulse response, and flabby bass reflex sound doesn't turn into tight-bass sealed-cabinet sound by any modeling I know of.
If one place is more crude than the other it would probably be that listening skills here are crude and undeveloped compared to the training and practice that are found in the professional recording world. If fact, some people here say they don't want to learn how to listen more critically out of concern it may music less enjoyable.
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Obviously things aren't perfect and you've got to be aware of the limitations of your tools. And those tools are slowly improving.
I'm surprised you're quoting the second paragraph rather than the first though. How sound is shaped (EQ, choice of mics, position of the mics, distortion spectrum of sought after vintage gear, etc, etc) is what I had in mind in that paragraph. The impact of all that is orders of magnitude greater than the minutiae of capacitor sound or AC conditioning.
I'm surprised you're quoting the second paragraph rather than the first though. How sound is shaped (EQ, choice of mics, position of the mics, distortion spectrum of sought after vintage gear, etc, etc) is what I had in mind in that paragraph. The impact of all that is orders of magnitude greater than the minutiae of capacitor sound or AC conditioning.
People have been trying to use DSP for all of that stuff for ages. At first they claimed it sounded just like the real vintage analog device, moving a mic, etc. Then a while later they came out with more accurate models and said, "now it sounds closer than ever to the real thing!" After years and iterations of that kind of thing they finally say, "you can have a taste of the flavor of the real thing," or something like that. They don't bother to pretend it sounds the same because it doesn't and nobody is naive enough anymore to believe it is going to. It is well known that DSP emulations are for people than can't afford the real thing. Tough, but that's the way it is. The emulations are expensive enough actually with high powered DSP hardware and sometimes PhD written software. (The guy who writes the emulations for UAD has a PhD from Stanford, and they run on SHARC 21469 or SHARC 21369 processors, maybe 4 or 8 to a box, something like that.)
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I put up my hand, I've explained why, due to my personal experience when doing an art course I started to become unable to stand and stare without analysing the scene, it seemed for me to take away a simple pleasure and I admit to being a little afraid that if I started doing it too much whilst listening to music I would regret it.
@Markw4: on that we can agree. My point in the first § wasn't that DSP fix all problems or emulate everything. It was that DSP allow you to degrade your system to see how things roughly translate to a worse one.
edit: and obviously the only way to know how it translates to a Bose soundlink mini is to test it on one... Let's blame the DSP integrated into many low end speakers today.
edit: and obviously the only way to know how it translates to a Bose soundlink mini is to test it on one... Let's blame the DSP integrated into many low end speakers today.
If listening closer makes music less enjoyable, then it is a problem with your self-understanding, not with critical listening.
But the critical listening relates to the sound system not the music, at least that's how I see it, do you mean I'm not understand what it relates to or it's more personal than that?
Just before to unsubscribe, I want to greet the few rare nice friends, rare gentlemen, I have met here, Good luck to you.
I think you are confusing things. Classical musicians are often quoted as saying they can't listen to music for enjoyment as they are analyzing the performance. Much like your art analogy. That is completely different from critical listening. Just because someone explains to you how to listen for the tell tale signs of (say) one drum skin vs another doesn't mean you can't still enjoy the drummers output.
I think I get that, but listening to the sound of the drum skin is part of the music, when critical listening is mentioned I think of listening for distortions, is this where I'm not understanding the term?
It covers a lot more than distortions, that's just one of the things you can train yourself to hear, so when your 10k hours are up you can hear all sorts. My point was that music theory in too much depth OR actually being a musician can ruin your pleasure. Being able to isolate anomalies in the mix should enhance it. And at least according to Mark you can turn it off and still rock out with earbuds off your phone when required.
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