Ok, I didn't consider synth vibrato in my example as being only pure single sine modulation, apart from that you are correct.
Randomly noisy clocking presents as scattering/broadening of the fundamental as you note.
Yes, uncertain clocking causes energy shift away from the fundamental.....IOW loss of power of the fundamental at low frequencies where clocking 1/f noise dominates, and energy spread in the form of 'doubling' beat notes that add sense of 'pace/speed' as expressed by some.
Witness when running a good clock the sense of 'solid power' delivery into the room in the bottom lows that simply evaporates when surprisingly low amounts of jitter/uncertainty/noise/scatter is in the equation.
Oscillator scatter (jitter) is driven by current noise/scatter of the devices and stages around it (including psu feed, ground noise etc).....control the oscillator stage current noises and you control the oscillator scatterings.
For a stable sine wave oscillator control voltage, Yes.
I hear you on your assessment that noisy clocking (multiple noise sources and interdependencies) causes boring sound....more so to me this presents as 'irritating' sound (and not only because I have heard better).
By 'can be boring' I mean program is presented as recorded (v low jitter) and some recordings are boring in themselves....sometimes content, sometimes tracking/mixdown/mastering gear signature.
We don't have economical perfect clocking which means we all have to suffer jitter to some extent and of some kind of nature....noise modulation is inevitable.
An interesting and instant A/Bable method of controlling the nature of this remnant noise is what I have explored....the right sounding remnant noise adds 'life' back into the playback, 'life' that is missing in most systems.
Sure, but not here.
Dan.
Who...
Reading this thread made me think that there must be lots of audible problems with playback that I haven't heard of.
Of cause talking the talk is easy, but my skeptic mind will wait for someone to walk the walk. And for that someone to teach others how to detect the artefact.
Until then, it's popcorn time.
Reading this thread made me think that there must be lots of audible problems with playback that I haven't heard of.
Of cause talking the talk is easy, but my skeptic mind will wait for someone to walk the walk. And for that someone to teach others how to detect the artefact.
Until then, it's popcorn time.
Bill, cymbals are a very good 'figure of merit' imho. Unless the program is death metal those cymbals are not going to be continuously hit at anything like that kind of level in the live natural acoustic mix or in the recorded and reproduced mix. Where the merit is to me is in the clarity of the tone (purity) and the clarity of the enveloping (adsr)......bad systems (jittery) present cymbals as gated bursts of white noise somewhere/everywhere in a wall/mash of sound, good systems make reproduced cymbals sound like the real thing and discretely defined in 3D space.
Dan.
Last edited:
How interesting , babies miraculously not developing "perceptual narrowing". How about all new compounds entering the environment in the last 50 years. care to give your baby a bath in Roundup . Two ways to go , either get an autistic "bat listener" or brain damage.
Is greed and 21'st century capitalism just taught "excessive perceptual narrowing" ? Typical 21'st century "innovator" could be considered autistic. Good ol' type 2 bipolar Elon Musk ....
"The brains understanding" - that is the key. Same analog eardrum , but a spread of connections count in the the brain center that varies enormously. Brain analysis on LSD (for some , not for others) , connections appear between centers - even ones that normally do not exist . Sometimes connections to the unused(under used) sector (the big one - sub-conscience). Even more localized connections. Could be confusing and scary to some. Hearing could be enhanced by multitudes - clear conversations from great distances. Animal level hearing. Undefined connections to the sub-conscience can create "6th senses" and much more efficiency among in the standard 5.
Not a proponent of hallucinogenics. For some there is no hallucinating. Most have genetic or environment (or learned) induced "excessive narrowing" they just can not handle all the new connections (and perceptions). For the former group , this is why hallucinogenics are class 1 DEA. Those 10% would change the world (and ruin it for the current 1% !!!). hmm , Hallucinogenics create a special kind of autism ??
As I stated earlier abnormal "perceptual narrowing" is taught , comes in drug form from big pharma , and is dumped in many forms all around as products we buy and dispose of.
As far as "macro perception" some brains can macro and "micro" , the better savant musicians can see the forest AND every individual tree , even meticulously reordering or thinning out said trees. Simultaneously -" on the fly" . All due to connections.
Wandered across the desert "on a horse with no name" {bike} after Spinal stenosis surgery . Enhanced Hearing , eyesight (night vision) , memory of my geology , botany gave me no need to be connected. I just knew. Seen it , smelled it , read it ... it was there. 52 YO bio- HDD with full accurate instant access. 2 years before , almost quadriplegic (thought of Hawkins - read the internet). Brain related surgery also must trigger connections. Even strange new connections (shh!!! ... unknown skills). Imagine hearing the police dodge charger before you see it on the plains and know they will pull you over in every county to uphold the police state. They ask me where is my light - I point to the stars and the next city 50 miles away and laugh !!!
In light of these "outside the box" ideas , concepts . and experiences -Objective differences in audio equipment would be discernible to one only. A groups "wiring differences" could be averaged to weed out lousy hardware. Wire with gain sub ppm amp would be "tinny" or lifeless ,if someone was wired for Valve amps and a certain loudspeaker. Too many variables at the final destination bio-computer.
Some Musical Savants would be closer to the objective. I would trust Rush's Neil Peart (drummer) with almost a digital perception of timing. Less narrowing .... Audiophiles ....
- are corrupted and biased. (not all - musician audiophile??)
OS
I disagree with your suggestion on auditory perception. IMO, the video from the MIT guy (for me) is sufficient to understand the general working of perception. The timing, frequency (and amplitude) is sufficient.
The ear may behave as a filter and each individual may have different ears/filters but as long as the filter is constant or behaves consistently, what we perceive is a function of variables the engineers familiar with.
Look at it carefully and try to see the possibility that this is true, then I think you will see that there is one critical variable: timing/phase.
MM is probably pretty close to right, at least as far as we know. The research evidence I have seen would tend to support something along the lines of what he has been describing.
Which part? The 'jitter thing' or the 'measuring the wrong thing'?
People tend to believe something that fits with their logic. Problem is, what will we believe when some things just still don't fit with our own logic? We invent something of course.
To clarify about logic, and why everyone tend to believe whatever fits their logic.
Many engineer experts, with their knowledge and experiences, in order to make things logical, they have to invent something: "That's audio phoolery. There is no speed other than bandwidth."
Alas, those who can hear also had to invent something in order for all of he knows to be logical...
And MM statement "I would suggest that our auditory perception is actually working more at the macro, auditory object level, rather than at the finer frequency, amplitude, timing level which is why we find it more difficult to isolate & identify frequency, amplitude, timing changes in streams of music." is that invention.
Without making new inventions, what is the requirement in order for all of it to be logical (for both engineers and audiophiles)? I suggest to focus on timing/phase. In order for this to be logical, what is the requirement? Yes, the phase should be audible, more audible than what the engineers currently think.
Many engineer experts, with their knowledge and experiences, in order to make things logical, they have to invent something: "That's audio phoolery. There is no speed other than bandwidth."
Alas, those who can hear also had to invent something in order for all of he knows to be logical...
And MM statement "I would suggest that our auditory perception is actually working more at the macro, auditory object level, rather than at the finer frequency, amplitude, timing level which is why we find it more difficult to isolate & identify frequency, amplitude, timing changes in streams of music." is that invention.Without making new inventions, what is the requirement in order for all of it to be logical (for both engineers and audiophiles)? I suggest to focus on timing/phase. In order for this to be logical, what is the requirement? Yes, the phase should be audible, more audible than what the engineers currently think.
Have you read wesayso's thread The making of: The Two Towers (a 25 driver Full Range line array) ?A serious, practical thread with measurements about the all important speaker and room role in auditory perception in relation to this hobby
Not for orchestral music, which is my personal reference for goodness.
Clearly you are not a Led Zep fan. Bonham didn't 'do' quiet.
Another paragraph I cannot parse as it means nothing to me and the music you are talking about is totally synthetic therefore not to me a starting point for defining fidelity.
I did write it in English, others will understand.
Oh, and which music am I talking about that is 'totally synthetic' ?.
Dan.
It´s not exactly the same graph, as your version has some additional read-out information, but it seems to be based on the original publication from :
Green/Wier; Handbook of Physiology -The Nervous System III, 1984, Chapter 13, p. 569
Difference Limen is dependent on frequeny, presentation level and condition (means diotic or dichotic)
Just to step back a bit & realize that what we are listening to in music playback is an art form & should be considered/appreciated along these lines. I certainly don't want an orchestra to be recreated in my living room - it would be uncomfortable & inappropriate, just as I don't want a recreation of a herd of buffalos roaming through my living room when watching TV. So we have to realize in both instances that it's an illusion being generated - a case of being transported in the mind to some weak analog of the experience in real life.
Having said that, the only way the illusion works is because the auditory system analyses/processes the vibrations arriving at the eardrums using exactly the same mechanisms as used in the real world - the real world behavior of sound is auditory perceptions learning space.
So realism in playback is about how well this reproduced soundstream satisfies the criteria/models that auditory perception uses.
Seeing as we don't yet know the full mechanisms underlying this process, I believe we now need to progress the quality of this reproduced sound by a cross fertilization between auditory perception research & electrical engineering.
Having said that, the only way the illusion works is because the auditory system analyses/processes the vibrations arriving at the eardrums using exactly the same mechanisms as used in the real world - the real world behavior of sound is auditory perceptions learning space.
So realism in playback is about how well this reproduced soundstream satisfies the criteria/models that auditory perception uses.
Seeing as we don't yet know the full mechanisms underlying this process, I believe we now need to progress the quality of this reproduced sound by a cross fertilization between auditory perception research & electrical engineering.
I know the old adage that "to a man with a hammer everything is a nail" & we all are capable of falling into this.
But I'm basing my statements on research in the field - one of which is that it appears auditory processing uses statistical summary of the soundstream for analysis, for storage & for comparison. yes, the fundamentals of freq, amplitude & timing create the patterns but it's the patterns (the macro level) that is the focus in some (maybe lots) of cases.
Not quite.
A few years back I had a bad cold which meant that one of my ears was pretty blocked. As a result my stereo system sounded mono as in left channel only.
However outside I had no problems at all in locating sounds correctly.
My conclusion was that the brain uses mostly phase differences to localize sounds and only uses volume differences between left and right when plan A does not lead to usable results.
I´d think what Mark4 was referring to the distinction between perception triggered by auditory input (which relies strongly on interpretation by the brain) and the physical differences in this auditory input.
We know that vastly different soundfields nevertheless lead to the same (or at least similar) perception, which is the reason that traditional two channel stereophonic reproduction might sometimes seem to be quite "realistic", while otoh sometimes even miniscule differences can be detected and seem to be of importance.
"Timing" of course is imporatant as it gives us one of the clues needed for propper ASA as the fundamental and overtones are starting synchronously.
Choisel et al. reported in 2007 detection of intrachannel phase differences at much higher frequencies then previously thought (needs additional corrobation though).
Last edited:
But could it be that outside you were using sight as much as sound to localize, whereas with your playback system only one sense is possible, using ITD & ILD?
Ok I will dissect. Anything that uses pan potting to set stereo position is synthetic. Something like the redbird CD I do like to use to check realism as that is about as close to the actual performance as you can get with 3 people in their living room around a stereo ribbon mike. No messing, all sounds heard, from the tape motor to the sound of cars/dogs outside. Natural.
A tone is only pure when a sine wave?
ADSR is a 70s and 80s synth thing. You want drums to sound like an old analog synth? Real music has a far more complex envelope.
How were the cymbals recorded? If not with a stereo mike all bets are off as to 'space'. However even with the cheap and nasty dac I use (as does scott sometimes) I do not hear this 'noise burst'. Even vinyl with all its distortions doesn't present that.
Like I say does not parse. A mono drum track panned to a position is a half arsed attempt to reproduce a real event. IMO. which is why I do not use studio music personally to judge a system. YMMV.
The cycle home is in the dark this time of year. I am very sensitive to sounds and their directions in those conditions as useful to work out what is heading my way (distance, size speed). In the rain more so as have to ride nearer the crown of the road in a couple of places. Downside of this is that stereo becomes less attractive and more plastic.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.