mwaters10 said:
well, therein lies the rub.
to my recollection, everything in the reproduction side of things is irrelevant to you.
on the other hand, i just did a gig where i forgot to bring my mixer, and so was forced to sing acoustically. the room was about forty ft. square. luckily for me, there were lots of windows, and a vaulted ceiling.
at the end of the night, a guy who turned out to be a pro guitar player came up and asked me if i was using a mic or not. they were looking for a lavalier or a really well hidden headset mic. and, as a tip of the hat to you, i really enjoyed singing acoustically for a change. mind you, i was the source, so i couldn't walk around the room and listen to me, but i have been behind enough PAs that i know what the room sounds like from the stage.
the single difference is dynamics. the other is directionality. the human voice does not just come from the mouth. it comes from the nasal cavity, too. and, when you move your head and face in different directions, you are completely changing the way your voice interacts with the room. i mean, sure your chest and your shoes are resonating along, too, but that is pretty much (dare i say it!!) inaudible (i said it).
any acoustic instrument is the same. they project sound in all directions. a muted tome comes out of the back of a stringed instrument, but it is still coming out.
bi-polar speakers (and other brilliant designs, like omnipolar) are a smart invention, because they can emulate this omnidirectionality.
when you try and put a microphone onto something to capture it's 'sonic essence', you need to be aware of everything. that said, it IS possible to capture the essence of an instrument, and a performance.
isn't that why we're having this discussion in the first place? because even second or third hand good music is still good music? because some recordings HAVE captured the essence of some performances?
if you say no, buy an accordion instead of a hifi, next time.
edited to change "pre guitar player" into "pro guitar player". man, if only actually going from pre to pro was this easy, we wouldn't need stereos.
Key said:
Similar has been done for a long time... Peter Walker did this and i've heard they even did it in the gramaphone days ... the audience couldn't tell the difference then either.
dave
The cocktail effect may come into play. I think it's hard for us to imagine a time without speakers. But everything would have a visual cue. With speakers localization at the box even with a precise monitor as opposed to a diffuse one is not considered a good thing. At least not with stereo. You want both speakers to work together to produce an image.
Anyway I think this one absence can make music via speakers to be perceived as imaginary or abstract - I like to close my eyes. Speakers and records have probably also influenced the way musicians play just as much as the way musicians play have influenced how we record, mix, and broadcast music.
I think i read somewhere that when photographs first were popular people started thinking in black and white for the first time. People who were not color blind would have dreams in B&W where they would have never imagined such a thing.
So while I do try and mix and choose equipment that I think sounds "real" - whatever that is - I also think that there is a strength in the recorded format because of it's abstract nature. If you embrace recordings as being just that and not a reproduction of live sound you can get into some very interesting and original territory.
Anyway that's why this is an Art and not Rocket Science. Rocket Science has an answer, with Art as soon as you find the answer it changes.
Anyway I think this one absence can make music via speakers to be perceived as imaginary or abstract - I like to close my eyes. Speakers and records have probably also influenced the way musicians play just as much as the way musicians play have influenced how we record, mix, and broadcast music.
I think i read somewhere that when photographs first were popular people started thinking in black and white for the first time. People who were not color blind would have dreams in B&W where they would have never imagined such a thing.
So while I do try and mix and choose equipment that I think sounds "real" - whatever that is - I also think that there is a strength in the recorded format because of it's abstract nature. If you embrace recordings as being just that and not a reproduction of live sound you can get into some very interesting and original territory.
Anyway that's why this is an Art and not Rocket Science. Rocket Science has an answer, with Art as soon as you find the answer it changes.
dukeoyork said:there are many elephants in the room. with audio, you don't know the problems until you hear something that doesn't have them, and then they become obvious.
phase shifts are pretty obvious once you know what they sound like.
phasing since the seventies, ....on purpose.
seriously, though, just a TINY delay is easy to hear, once you know what it sounds like. the 'untrained ear' i hear so much about may think it sounds great, and would never notice the incoherency in certain frequency bands . how else to account for the popularity of pitch corrected vocals in dance music?
So you can hear the difference blind. If you can, Mark would probably PM you the results of the test. I have yet to tell a difference, and no one else could.
But I agree. I'll ask Mark if he will post some tracks with the accurate phase shift labeled on them so we can learn the difference. Then, he can have test tracks so people can test themselves. Thanks for the tip ... makes sense.
http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php4?t=32280
mwaters10 said:
Shucks, I'm making a remark on making a hi-fi sound 'real' and you have to distort the whole thing and make a big isue out of it.
I believe everybody else here know what I was getting at, suggesting that hi-fi sound 'real' means that you can close your eyes and there are enough directional clues, detail and ambience to create an illusion of the artist being there, right in front of you.
I believe nobody would even try to recreate a live show to sound EXACTLY the same as the original event, even there the sound differ depending on where you sit. It is however very possible to make it sound realistic enough to get the feeling of the artist being right there with you, feel like you can get up and touch the string of the guitar playing.
I believe you will find something to disagree on again, just remember that your experience isn't the only one that exist or count, all I'm trying to do is telling you there are more IF you care to find it.
We did an absolute phase test using music extracts that we modified in audacity to have flipped absolute phase. Several testers on hifiwigwam listened to them, a few heard an identified a difference with a significant statistical accuracy.
90%+ couldn't hear ****.
I think maybe 90%+ of all cables do genuinely sound the same, and for the other 10%, well 99.9% of you have varyingly unstable amps, and the rest might just sound different... lol
90%+ couldn't hear ****.
I think maybe 90%+ of all cables do genuinely sound the same, and for the other 10%, well 99.9% of you have varyingly unstable amps, and the rest might just sound different... lol
sq225917 said:
If you are talking about playing the music in phase or 180deg out of phase, I agree there are very little or no difference (providing you switch phase at the source), what is very important is phase variations (faults) between channels.
The only two cables I found that sounded the same was two identical cables. 😀
Re: "Real thing". "Real thing" is diferent from person to person.This is where ,except perception, hearing comes in,for audio.
So, from the context you bring up that effects box, I take it that you don't know how it works?
This was a study of Ohashi et al. using EEG and PET scans to investigate the effects of spectra above 22kHz:
http://jn.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/83/6/3548
@ SY,
in the Sturm experiment trial no.3 serves in both heats as a negative control; the listening panel was in fact listening to the same cable twice, while the switch over to the other source was only pretended.
http://jn.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/83/6/3548
@ SY,
in the Sturm experiment trial no.3 serves in both heats as a negative control; the listening panel was in fact listening to the same cable twice, while the switch over to the other source was only pretended.
Now this post raises some serious questions.
SY does raise a good point, tho. It is so very often painfully obvious when you hear live vs Hi-Fi from outside the room, or even the bulding. Walk by a house where someone is practicing music and there is no doubt it's live. Is it the lack of speaker cables?, probably not! Even live amplified music sounds different.
This has facinated me for years. Why is it so easy to tell? There are a lot of reasons, but dynamics are the big thing. Recording techniques are another.
From time to time I have heard systems that would fool you from outside the room, as well as inside. Heard one at T.H.E. Show in Vegas recently. Drum solo, from outside. I kept thinking, oh, it's live - no, it recorded, no, live, not sure.... That's impressive. I just wasn't sure. Could have been a drum kit in one of the rooms. It wasn't.
All of the "fooled me" systems have been very big, high efficency and rather expensive, tho not top dollar. That seems to be what it takes. And why I like BIG speakers.
Tho 20 some years ago I had built a little pair of TQWT with a 6/5" FR driver.* Those little speakers fooled a lot of people passing by. Even musician friends of mine. Always surpised when they opened the door and did not find live music. Or my neighbors would compliment me on my saxophone playing. (I was a good as Desmond, Getz and Archie Shep rolled into one!). So those speakers could do it - but only on small music.
Or maybe it was those great speaker cables I had....
*Triangle T17FL project, Audiophile Revue #38.
SY said:
- What is SY doing in Butte, Montana? I thought he was a Napa Valley guy.
- Butte is Irish? Who knew? Well, Terry-O knows, but he kows everything. (Be careful, he "reads" your mail)
- Why was SY walking home in a blizzard?
- Too much to drink, or not enough?
- How many pubs does he pass on the way home?
SY does raise a good point, tho. It is so very often painfully obvious when you hear live vs Hi-Fi from outside the room, or even the bulding. Walk by a house where someone is practicing music and there is no doubt it's live. Is it the lack of speaker cables?, probably not! Even live amplified music sounds different.
This has facinated me for years. Why is it so easy to tell? There are a lot of reasons, but dynamics are the big thing. Recording techniques are another.
From time to time I have heard systems that would fool you from outside the room, as well as inside. Heard one at T.H.E. Show in Vegas recently. Drum solo, from outside. I kept thinking, oh, it's live - no, it recorded, no, live, not sure.... That's impressive. I just wasn't sure. Could have been a drum kit in one of the rooms. It wasn't.
All of the "fooled me" systems have been very big, high efficency and rather expensive, tho not top dollar. That seems to be what it takes. And why I like BIG speakers.
Tho 20 some years ago I had built a little pair of TQWT with a 6/5" FR driver.* Those little speakers fooled a lot of people passing by. Even musician friends of mine. Always surpised when they opened the door and did not find live music. Or my neighbors would compliment me on my saxophone playing. (I was a good as Desmond, Getz and Archie Shep rolled into one!). So those speakers could do it - but only on small music.
Or maybe it was those great speaker cables I had....
*Triangle T17FL project, Audiophile Revue #38.
Yes, this is necessary since audiophiles like to hear changes. It was the basis of an egregious error in a Stereophile test some years ago...
I'm having some trouble understanding your earlier post on this test.
What is the difference between the trial A1 and A5 for example? Or A6 and A1? The wires would seem is all of these to be No. 1 = GFI, No. 2 = C01.
The control is what I'd expect from an audiophile crowd- 81% identified a change that wasn't there.
Were the test subjects allowed to discuss or communicate in any way? How was "peeking" at nearby scores prevented? And did the study look at vote distribution with location in the room?
Personally, I'd never do the test with an unisolated group.
Important questions!
1. Making a living. The life of an inventor is a nomadic one.
2. Look at Wikipedia, it's no secret!
3. Because I didn't want to sleep in my office.
4. Not nearly enough. Without Morgan Jones and Pete Millett being bad influences on me, my drinking is quite limited.
5. By my last count, nine.
Hi Mike
I think that in general this is true. I have, though, been fooled by Quad ESLs (years ago, when my hearing was still good 😉 ), but it was on solo guitar. I thought a friend was playing in the living room, but it turned out to be the speakers.
Regards.
Aengus
I was responding to DukleberryYork, so why are you getting so cranky ?
I suspect that one of the reasons is, when someone challenges the notion of the possibility of perfect playback, it makes a mockery of the time and money they invested in their mission to achieve this aim. No, I'm not saying that hi-fi can't be enjoyable, or that some designs won't sound better than others, but the danger is that people get sucked into a never-ending sequence of infinite upgrades, and there has to be a point where you have to ask what it is you are trying to achieve, and what are the limitating factors to begin with.
If some on here can't accept the fact that the loudspeaker is replicating a compressed copy of the performance in a less than ideal way, then that's their perogative, but a spade is a spade in my book.
SY said:
As stated earlier, the preference for hearing a difference is an amazing but a constant factor in double blind tests done with untrained listeners.
If i remember right, the problem with the stereophile test was that they tried to find a correction factor for this "difference-bias" which is impossible.
In this test the "audiophile crowd" may be excused a bit, because they got a written description of the experiment, but the operator gave a verbal description too, and he salutates the panel with the words "Welcome to the exhibition room of sehring audiosystems and to a sound experiment: do you hear the difference?"
Remember, it was at first planned to do a 2-AFC (only answer "1 better than 2" and "2 better than 1"), and i suppose this salutation sequence was a leftover from that. During the preliminary tests listeners not hearing a difference did shout out loud and disturbed the other participants, so the author choosed to include a no difference answer and did in the end a 3-AFC.
The listener panel was instructed not to speak or peek, but there were no further precautions.
The listener seat positioning was marked and notified on the result ticket.
It was another hypothesis in this test that better listening position would result in better test results.
Yes, you´re right, cable C01 was no.1 in trial A2,A4 and A6.
The difference in these trials were the different music samples.
I think i´ve listed the music samples in the description.
Aengus said:
That would fit into the "Large and fairly expensive" catagory. 😀 (But not the dynamic one.)
FWIW, I listened to double stacked Quads for years. Magical things......
mwaters10 said:
should i get cranky, then? naw, i won't lower myself to name-calling and reciprocal angst. you can hold all those cyber cards.
mwaters10 said:
now, THAT is a good point. compression brings things closer, and that's why everything is so compressed these days. it's all 'in your face'.
the stage at which a recording sounds the most 'real' is before it is compressed, or EQed. applying all those audio tricks make the music (signal) more 'right' for 'safe passage' through miles and miles of electronics, and makes the sound easier for speakers to handle, while keeping the signal as far above the noise floor as possible.
i think it is totally possible to make a recording sound so 'live' that "audiophools" (which i proudly proclaim myself to be) couldn't tell whether it was live or memorex. the only thing is to avoid any dynamic control, which is something NO recordings do, and make sure you're (as flat as possible) system can easily handle the loudest peaks while maintaining a nearly inaudible noise floor, with is volume matched with the original volume of the acoustic whatever.
it would, as pointed out, probably only work for less complex signals.
SY, i do know how a phase shifter works. the signal is duplicated and then delayed by a millisecond or so, and the original and delayed signals are output together. i can't remember who it was that originally used it for good instead of evil, but this effect was discovered by hearing the problem on poorly aligned reel to reel machines.
i should point out that i don't claim ear superpowers, or anything. as i said before, there can be many elephants in the room with audio. the human brain is a wonderful thing, capable of ignoring just about anything. (this is most common in the 'wife' frequency band)
Then you understand that the "phase shifter" is an entirely different phenomenon than the phase shift test you were responding to. Comb filtering. Frequency response. Dull stuff like that.
The problem with the test was that they didn't account for it at all; they had more "different" trials than "same" trials, then claimed a statistical significance. Herman Burstein called them on it, recalculated the statistics to account for the difference in number of trial types, and lo and behold, back to random chance.
The problem with the test was that they didn't account for it at all; they had more "different" trials than "same" trials, then claimed a statistical significance. Herman Burstein called them on it, recalculated the statistics to account for the difference in number of trial types, and lo and behold, back to random chance.
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