You would be incorrect.
IME, those are pretty lousy places to do serious evaluation. Unfamiliar rooms, unfamiliar systems, poor setup (at shows, especially)... and, of course, lots of subtle and not-so-subtle coaching by people who have something to sell.
BTW, just to dispel an incorrect assumption, the moderators are not chosen because of their fabulous systems, their long experience in audio, nor engineering skills. Their opinions are worth no more or no less than any other member.
Holographic Sound
SY
My apologies.
I agree that many demonstrations at HI-FI shows were in small
rooms, and they were often poorly setup,and relied mainly on their glossy brochures. The better demonstrations "DownUnder" were usually in much bigger rooms with seating,but still not ideal.
My friends and myself, often have listening sessions in each other's homes, doing comparisons, especially after modifications.We also use a compilation CD,as well as other high quality material. We often had access to some high end equipment for comparison purposes, including an AU$6,000 Krell Preamplifier, and a Mararantz SA11 SACD player (AU$4,100 currently) .
I must admit that I did think that the moderators were usually chosen for their depth of experience in a particular area, so as to inject a degree of leadership into some discussions. This often does appear to be the case in many instances,but perhaps because they have been involved for some time ?
SY
My apologies.
I agree that many demonstrations at HI-FI shows were in small
rooms, and they were often poorly setup,and relied mainly on their glossy brochures. The better demonstrations "DownUnder" were usually in much bigger rooms with seating,but still not ideal.
My friends and myself, often have listening sessions in each other's homes, doing comparisons, especially after modifications.We also use a compilation CD,as well as other high quality material. We often had access to some high end equipment for comparison purposes, including an AU$6,000 Krell Preamplifier, and a Mararantz SA11 SACD player (AU$4,100 currently) .
I must admit that I did think that the moderators were usually chosen for their depth of experience in a particular area, so as to inject a degree of leadership into some discussions. This often does appear to be the case in many instances,but perhaps because they have been involved for some time ?
tubewade said:
Imaging can be affected by a gain mismatch between channels of an amp. This basically has the same effect as a balance control in that it can shift the image off center. You also have to take into account channel separation over the audible frequency range. A fully dual mono amp is as good as you can get in terms of channel separation. A fully dual mono signal chain before the amp would be nice too!
The main things we can experiment with to obtain good imaging are speaker placement, listening position, and room acoustics. Of course the quality of the recording is paramount, but rarely do we ever have control over that.
Sandy, OT stuff first: Moderators (all volunteer) will have basic competence in electronics, enough so to follow discussions, but are mainly there to keep things on track. They are chosen from active participants. Any post showing the cop icon is an official moderator message. Any post without it is just the moderator posting as an ordinary member (which we are, first and foremost).
On topic: I've managed over the past 40 years or so that I've been building hifi equipment to listen to some pretty exotic systems in private homes and in commercial settings, including the personal systems of some pretty well-known high end designers. What that has done, sadly, is to cause me to judge things on how they sound compared to live music, not what their reputation is, what they cost, what the back story is, or what the designer or builder thinks I should be hearing.
If you think that you can perceive differences in depth or dimensionality between different amplifiers (assuming basic competence in distortion, bandwidth, separation, and noise, and a level-matched comparison within the amps' power ratings), then set up a controlled test, show a significant result, and your paper in JAES will be one of the most-cited. And you'll be in line for the Randi Foundation's million dollar prize. Please send me 10% for making the suggestion.😀
On topic: I've managed over the past 40 years or so that I've been building hifi equipment to listen to some pretty exotic systems in private homes and in commercial settings, including the personal systems of some pretty well-known high end designers. What that has done, sadly, is to cause me to judge things on how they sound compared to live music, not what their reputation is, what they cost, what the back story is, or what the designer or builder thinks I should be hearing.
If you think that you can perceive differences in depth or dimensionality between different amplifiers (assuming basic competence in distortion, bandwidth, separation, and noise, and a level-matched comparison within the amps' power ratings), then set up a controlled test, show a significant result, and your paper in JAES will be one of the most-cited. And you'll be in line for the Randi Foundation's million dollar prize. Please send me 10% for making the suggestion.😀
OzMikeH said:
Compression should not affect imaging unless the compression involves merging the channel information. This is one reason to never encode/compress using a joint stereo option. It merges closely correlated stereo information into a mono signal in order to obtain a higher compression ratio.
Holographic Sound
BWRX
Maximum channel separation and balance. is far more important than it is usually given credit for. A good attenuator such as the DACT2 will give you this, as well as much higher bandwidth than any dual volume control.Mono construction can be very worthwhile, as can very low impedance supply for the front ends. I don't just mean the usual voltage regulators either.Lowest possible noise in all components is also necessary to extract the ambience information, which is often at a very low level.
DTV audio is particularly hard to extract a good soundstage from, as it starts out around -25dB maximum level. But it can be done,with due attention to the switchmode PSU bridge rectifiers etc. in the STB.There is no single "magic bullet". A good soundstage is the result of attention to detail in many areas. Yes, the speakers and room acoustics are very important too.
SandyK
BWRX
Maximum channel separation and balance. is far more important than it is usually given credit for. A good attenuator such as the DACT2 will give you this, as well as much higher bandwidth than any dual volume control.Mono construction can be very worthwhile, as can very low impedance supply for the front ends. I don't just mean the usual voltage regulators either.Lowest possible noise in all components is also necessary to extract the ambience information, which is often at a very low level.
DTV audio is particularly hard to extract a good soundstage from, as it starts out around -25dB maximum level. But it can be done,with due attention to the switchmode PSU bridge rectifiers etc. in the STB.There is no single "magic bullet". A good soundstage is the result of attention to detail in many areas. Yes, the speakers and room acoustics are very important too.
SandyK
I just searched "Ambisonics" in Amazon.com looking for the albums SandyK mentioned, I got many, many pages of books.
Then I Googled it. Still reading.. Very interesting.
I see what you mean, subtle faint little echoes in the recording add to the ambience. Don't forget to switch off the air conditioner too!
Then I Googled it. Still reading.. Very interesting.
I see what you mean, subtle faint little echoes in the recording add to the ambience. Don't forget to switch off the air conditioner too!
Holographic Sound
OzMikeH
Yes, or the PC over the other side of the room. As you further improve bandwidth , and lower overall system S/N the effects are less fragile. Some other good recordings (among many) are :
Neil Diamond-Hot August Night. This is excellent,despite the age of the recording."Soolaimon" is an excellent example from this album. Papa Doo Run Run-California Project: most of the Telarc album, especially "I Get Around" and even more so, "Good Vibrations" This is how the Beach Boys should have sounded !
The bonus DVD from the deluxe version of the Norah Jones album
"Not Too Late" has excellent 48KHZ LPCM audio. You are even able to compare the Music Video with the original live performance, which BTW, is markedly better, particularly in dynamics Don Dorsey's "Ascent" in my friends , and my system fills the complete listening area with sound. (Telarc? )
The Telarc album "Beethoven or Bust" from Don Dorsey is also very dimensional ("Digital and other authentic period syntesizers")Track2 "Mixed Bagatelles" has a synthesized "Car Smash" right out of the blue, at the end. It is guaranteed to frighten the
SH-T out of you if you don't know it is coming!
These are just a few of numerous examples.
As I said previously, the quality of the amplification IS important .
My equipment is Class A solid state preamplifier ,and 15W/Ch
Class A Amplifier. It is fed via a highly modified Musical Fidelity
X-DAC V3, which resamples to 24 bits 192KHZ.
SandyK
OzMikeH
Yes, or the PC over the other side of the room. As you further improve bandwidth , and lower overall system S/N the effects are less fragile. Some other good recordings (among many) are :
Neil Diamond-Hot August Night. This is excellent,despite the age of the recording."Soolaimon" is an excellent example from this album. Papa Doo Run Run-California Project: most of the Telarc album, especially "I Get Around" and even more so, "Good Vibrations" This is how the Beach Boys should have sounded !
The bonus DVD from the deluxe version of the Norah Jones album
"Not Too Late" has excellent 48KHZ LPCM audio. You are even able to compare the Music Video with the original live performance, which BTW, is markedly better, particularly in dynamics Don Dorsey's "Ascent" in my friends , and my system fills the complete listening area with sound. (Telarc? )
The Telarc album "Beethoven or Bust" from Don Dorsey is also very dimensional ("Digital and other authentic period syntesizers")Track2 "Mixed Bagatelles" has a synthesized "Car Smash" right out of the blue, at the end. It is guaranteed to frighten the
SH-T out of you if you don't know it is coming!
These are just a few of numerous examples.
As I said previously, the quality of the amplification IS important .
My equipment is Class A solid state preamplifier ,and 15W/Ch
Class A Amplifier. It is fed via a highly modified Musical Fidelity
X-DAC V3, which resamples to 24 bits 192KHZ.
SandyK
BWRX said:
Wrong! Joint stereo is a mid/side encoding that takes advantage of the common stuff contained in the two channels to enable BETTER quality for a given bit rate. Instead of encoding the two channels as two mono signals which have a lot of common info, the sum (L+R) and difference (L-R) are encoded. When you subtract the two channels you eliminate the common data, mainly in-phase low frequency stuff, thus reducing data required to represent the common stuff which is already encoded in the sum channel. The original channels are reconstructed by taking the sum and difference between the two signals (L+R and L-R). (L+R) + (L-R)= 2L and (L+R) - (L-R)= 2R. Playback recovers the both channels as they were before encoding (with compression artifacts, of course, if lossy compression is used).
You can read more about it here:
http://harmsy.freeuk.com/mostync/
Joint stereo is your friend.
I_F
I'm staying out of this debate for the moment.
I would like to mention a new CD that might interest some of you.
The Zenph "re-recording" of Glenn Gould "playing" his 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations.
If that doesn't make sense to you, see the following link:
http://zenph.com/sept25.html
This is a SACD disc. You can listen to it in stereo, surround and
binaural (tracks 33 - 64).
I think it is a fascinating technical accomplishment.
Gould without the humming, singing, tape hiss or the squeaky chair.
If you can't tolerate Glenn Gould (or Bach), then this will just be torture for you.
I would like to mention a new CD that might interest some of you.
The Zenph "re-recording" of Glenn Gould "playing" his 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations.
If that doesn't make sense to you, see the following link:
http://zenph.com/sept25.html
This is a SACD disc. You can listen to it in stereo, surround and
binaural (tracks 33 - 64).
I think it is a fascinating technical accomplishment.
Gould without the humming, singing, tape hiss or the squeaky chair.
If you can't tolerate Glenn Gould (or Bach), then this will just be torture for you.
I_Forgot said:
I_F, thank you for clearing that up! I was clearly misinformed and will now tell my source that he was misinformed as well 😱
zapnspark,
Sounds like 21st century Vorsetzer. I'm a little dubious but maybe I'll check it out. I hope they chose to leave out the vocal obligato !!!! I alway found that annoying.
If "re-recordings" or "recordings that never happened" are of interest consider "Ray Sings, Basie Swings". In real life they never performed together but here they are back from the afterlife together on a CD.
Sounds like 21st century Vorsetzer. I'm a little dubious but maybe I'll check it out. I hope they chose to leave out the vocal obligato !!!! I alway found that annoying.
If "re-recordings" or "recordings that never happened" are of interest consider "Ray Sings, Basie Swings". In real life they never performed together but here they are back from the afterlife together on a CD.
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