Time to close the thread for a bit again. Too much misbehaving going on here and I don't have the time for it right now so go do something else for a while.
OK, final try. If we feel the need to close the thread one more time, it will be the last. It's up to you guys. And, we will not hesitate naming the ones we feel have caused us to close it permanently.
Fair enough?
Fair enough?
Well it's no wonder that you're not posting here. Some dumb moderator forgot to unlock the thread. Should be good to go now.
Well, a couple of posts got dumped although I don't consider them against forum "regulations" so I'll re-post one thought that I feel is important when talking about recordings and realism.
No, I would expect to hear what the recording/mixing/mastering engineer intended. If realism is your goal then only binaural recordings will be satisfying. Recorded music is like painting a picture - photorealism is seldom the goal. To appreciate the art our view at the picture should be the same as the artist's view. That's accurate "reproduction". Changing lighting, using a pen to add things to the painting to satisfy subjective preference is not.
Best, Markus
No, I would expect to hear what the recording/mixing/mastering engineer intended. If realism is your goal then only binaural recordings will be satisfying. Recorded music is like painting a picture - photorealism is seldom the goal. To appreciate the art our view at the picture should be the same as the artist's view. That's accurate "reproduction". Changing lighting, using a pen to add things to the painting to satisfy subjective preference is not.
Best, Markus
listening accuracy
I believe yours is an overly restrictive position here re: listening experience, which presumes the artist (or engineer) somehow anticipates the room, equipment, and mental state effects compounded on the listener. No way that will ever be accurate.
Personally, I most enjoy the reproduced music when it evokes a sense of some sort of real performance venue in my listening room. As I've continued to improve my system over 4 decades, I increasingly reach this level of enjoyment on more and more music; I doubt that the original artist and/or engineers would have a clue as to what that level would require in the mix.
What I currently have with (RD 75" dipoles) with multiple subs for 15 yrs. in a 7.1 provides a significant "jump factor", experienced by those who've listened critically to it. Often, especially with female vocals and orchestral symphonic works, it's a "they are here" experience. Cables have not entered into any of these improvements, other than the need to have something to transfer the signal between components.
John L.
I believe yours is an overly restrictive position here re: listening experience, which presumes the artist (or engineer) somehow anticipates the room, equipment, and mental state effects compounded on the listener. No way that will ever be accurate.
Personally, I most enjoy the reproduced music when it evokes a sense of some sort of real performance venue in my listening room. As I've continued to improve my system over 4 decades, I increasingly reach this level of enjoyment on more and more music; I doubt that the original artist and/or engineers would have a clue as to what that level would require in the mix.
What I currently have with (RD 75" dipoles) with multiple subs for 15 yrs. in a 7.1 provides a significant "jump factor", experienced by those who've listened critically to it. Often, especially with female vocals and orchestral symphonic works, it's a "they are here" experience. Cables have not entered into any of these improvements, other than the need to have something to transfer the signal between components.
John L.
Well, if the mics were in the piano, I would assume it would be similar to sticking your head inside, would it not?
Ask a recording/mixing/mastering engineer what his job is - he will answer exactly that.
I'm right there with you. 😀 I enjoy traveling from venue to venue. Always get a kick out of it.
I've talked to plenty of recording engineers who are very happy and proud to make a piano sound like a real piano. If they have to stick a mic inside to achieve that, they will! (Pianos are notoriously hard to record well)
Hmmm..... having known and worked with quite a few, I find that highly unlikely.
not sure if we are saying the same thing...but I touched on this recently (no one bit, presume they were more interested in mud slinging? else cal would not have had 'work' to do🙂)
I look at this point and wonder sometimes. I can fully understand the artist/engineer/both making a mix that works well on the boombox, or in the car, just as long as it sells.
They have no idea of the system it is going to be played on, and *we* here would be in a vanishingly small minority that care about how it sounds when played back well.
Sooo, reversing that, it makes me wonder what is in it for the guys who DO make a recording that sounds great, yet would be purchased by (usually) by someone that does not give two hoots about quality.
Case in point, the latest Caribou album...Ok hardly mainstream yet equally not something I would imagine is normally bought by 'audiophiles'??? But by crikey, it sounds absolutely magnificent.
What percentage of purchasers would have a system that it could actually sound magnificent on I wonder....most would listen on their Ipod or car radio if you follow me.
I guess that is what a mastering engineer gets paid for, to produce a recording that translates well over a range of systems.
Or Massive Attack. More widely known (I presume) and more critically acclaimed...but the engineering is of such a high quality that very very few systems can do it justice...what is in it for them? Surely not to be that darlings of yet an even smaller subsection of audiophiles?? (as most 'audiophiles' would not touch them)
Just makes me scratch my head whilst I am thankful the recordings are that way.
That's what they are "supposed" to do. And what most would like to do. But talk to any mastering engineer today and they'll tell you, much to their chagrin, that they get paid to make it loud. Most would rather not, but that's what the bands and the producers want. Loud.
Interesting comparison. You know it used to be the goal of painting to be "photo-realistic", but then they didn't know what a "photo" was. And even now it is surprising how many people still judge painting on this ability, even though no modern painter would claim this as a desirable characteristic let alone a goal.
I think music might be the same. In the early days it was "realism" that was the goal and much of the current dogma and biases come from that legacy. But today, as you say, almost nothing is made with "realism" of some actual event in mind. The 1% of recorded music that is classically based is I suppose.
I once wanted to record some friends of mine who were a pianist and a cellist. I wanted to record them directly off of electronic instruments with no room acoustics and then simple pan the two sources to two channels with some cross feed. Having heard this same pianist play back on my system in my room with this same technique it was as if the piano was in the room. There was no confounding "source acoustic" to mess up the perception. I wanted to try this with two instuments.
But the musicians found it untenable. It did not fit with their concept of "musical performance" and didn't want to do it. They were both classically trained muscians and just could not see the point of a non-acoustic recording. To them, "realism" was only being in a performance hall. There was no such thing as bringing them into "my" listening room. It did not compute.
I'm sure that many here have the same opinion.
Great posting guys but only one of the eleven posts from you this morning even mentions cables.
John wins the 'on topic' prize.
John wins the 'on topic' prize.
I wrote most of this response the day the thread got locked, I'm hoping most of the posts that it pertained to are still here.
"Odd you don't discuss why wildly improbable accounts of 'surreptitiously' swapping out speaker cables for 'soldered' coat hangers with subjects still in the room is accepted as viable, or the questionable approach of coaching test subjects on the answer."
You are quite clearly asking for a peer reviewed paper that disproves the imaginary. Tell me, where is the paper that disproved big foot? Or the paper that disproves the pants stealing garden gnomes? That's the problem with anything that doesn't manifest in reality, there isn't any degree of proof that's enough. Science isn't in the business of disproving fantasies, it's not something that can be done because there isn't a standard benchmark for the supernatural. I can compare this subject to fairly tales because both lack supporting evidence. You claimed the comparison with the teapot orbiting the sun was unjust, but by all available evidence it's just as likely of a scenario. I'm just trying to demonstrate that your understanding of the scientific process differs from how it actually works. Anything that doesn't require a quantifiable manifestation to exist can't be differentiated from fantasy.
I'll give you an example. One speaker decays faster on the low end but has a lot of distortion on the highs and has a poor crossover design which gives it a slight dip where the midwoofer and the tweeter crossover and doesn't roll off as quickly on the highs. Which of the measured results would be good and which are bad? Good and bad are subjective, a steeper roll off on the highs might be preferred for people who don't like a shrill high end, lower decay on the lows might be preferred by people who don't like the bass masking the highs. Because there are many factors to take into account there are elements of every speaker that some people will like and others won't. Which makes terms like good or bad subjective.
Again with the false dichotomy. If I don't take it with me it must prove that I think everything sounds the same, right? I think a small amount of common sense is enough to figure out a reasonable answer to the question.
This would only be the case if the consistent results were either not noticed or ignored, which is unlikely in the case of a DBT being run by a person with a bias in favor of cables. Or if there was only one test subject, where there couldn't of been a preferential split, like I mentioned in the post before. It's not to say it's not possible, but if that was really what was limiting the DBT results we'd of seen other results by now. As I stated before, if you feel this was the reason why all the tests that came before presented a result differing from your point of view, you are welcome to host your own and publish each individuals test results and the summation of the whole. This way if there was a consistent trend it would be evident.
No one mentioned positive tests? Unless I'm misunderstanding you. Your last couple replies have been difficult for me to understand, both in terms of logic and grammar. You quite clearly talk about devious practices in DBT's that don't conform to your world view:
"Odd you don't discuss why wildly improbable accounts of 'surreptitiously' swapping out speaker cables for 'soldered' coat hangers with subjects still in the room is accepted as viable, or the questionable approach of coaching test subjects on the answer."
You haven't cited a logical fallacy, the best you have is my justified assumption that you're likely to ignore the results of the upcoming test. You on the other hand have been making odd non-sequiturs, like mentioned how you never brought up positive test results when no one mentioned it to being with? Or the assumption that a peer review would be required to validate a negative? Or the association that my expectation of you rejecting the results some how would correlate to not requiring peer review? One has nothing to do with the other. I don't point this out to assault you, just to point out the incongruities in your arguments.
You are asking me to highlight comments that suggest you don't understand the Socratic method? Here is one for example:
You are quite clearly asking for a peer reviewed paper that disproves the imaginary. Tell me, where is the paper that disproved big foot? Or the paper that disproves the pants stealing garden gnomes? That's the problem with anything that doesn't manifest in reality, there isn't any degree of proof that's enough. Science isn't in the business of disproving fantasies, it's not something that can be done because there isn't a standard benchmark for the supernatural. I can compare this subject to fairly tales because both lack supporting evidence. You claimed the comparison with the teapot orbiting the sun was unjust, but by all available evidence it's just as likely of a scenario. I'm just trying to demonstrate that your understanding of the scientific process differs from how it actually works. Anything that doesn't require a quantifiable manifestation to exist can't be differentiated from fantasy.
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Let's be honest tho, there is a lot more that goes into this subject than the cables alone. How content is intended to be hear, the ability of our minds to perceive this process and a consensus of the process and facts that create the foundation of the arguments. I'm just happy people have remains fairly civil, lol.
Some recordings are meant as paintings, some not. The first are largely irrelevant in judging system fidelity. Binaural recordings? Why? The argument you're making appears to be only the full environment envelope counts, absent that you might as well do anything you want and aiming for maximum fidelity of the frontal wave is a fool's quest. That's a value judgment. You also miss the obvious fact that artists rarely hear what the audience experiences, and often have no input to the sound of the recording. A violinist's on an orchestral work is an example of the latter.
The irony is your 'photorealism' complaint is equally valid against photography. Since we'll never have the perfect film, lens, CCD, jpg compression or displays, it's all foobie dust until the invention of the perfect virtual reality visor/helmet. Much of your argument is analogous to 'since photographs are 2D and will never be perfect, focus is elitist illusion.' Sounds nihilistic.
kareface, chasing all your bad reasoning - unproven logical equivalence between Bigfoot, space kettles, garden gnomes and cable effects, which again have been shown to blow up amplifiers, are classic straw men - will meet your evident goal of shutting the conversation down. I don't intend to.
A straw man argument implies that I was claiming you made the comments about bigfoot, space kettles, ect. Again, you are misrepresenting an aspect of logic. I'll reaffirm your understanding of logic seems to contain some gaps, which hinders our ability to have a proper discourse. I would like to see the documentation about the cables that have destroyed amps, not because I don't believe you but because I suspect the cables used are likely very low gauge. It is possible when the net impedance from the speaker and high resistance cables is too great it'll damage an amplifier. However this is a poor comparison as it's clearly something that's documented and isn't disputed. It's a non-sequitur to imply that because one aspect of cable that's well documented exists, that this other completely undocumented aspect of cables should also exist. They don't necessarily relate to each other. It would be akin to me saying it's well documented that a better exhaust system will increase the horse power in my car, therefor if I get a nice enough exhaust system my car will fly.
Edit: Also, simply stating that my arguments are "bad reasoning - unproven logical equivalence" doesn't make them so. You have yet to demonstrate a logical fallacy. I'm aware that repeating over and over again that something is wrong works to create false associations, but simply stating it doesn't make it so. You are welcome to highlight aspects of my arguments that violate logic, but broad claims like that don't serve the greater discussion. As an example, the comment I made about the teapot and cables, they are both related in a lack of supporting evidence, hence the logical correlation. Your defense of this was to cite something unrelated to the audibility of the cables, which in and of itself is a logical fallacy. You have to first demonstrate that the destruction of amplifiers somehow validates the phantom sounds heard by the pro-cable crowd.
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Ain't it quite ridiculous and meaningless to evaluate "cables", there's so many other factors that "colours" the sound, and even impair it, than a ******* cable!?!?
First you need a preamp that leaves the mixing of the song untouched, same with the power amp, and what has the biggest impact, is the speakers!
I've build speakers and audio "things" for more than thirty years, and I've made test with so called "Hi -End" cables, that cost about 20€/meter(~USD25) and .5mm2 "radio shack" speaker cables, and if you don't want to spend > €1000 per speaker and a Class-A amp, like JL Hoods, 15W design from the sixties(than it was single rail, with cap on the output), but he manage to revise it, in an article in "Wireless World" from 91(I think...). So it has +/-20V instead of the +40V. You want hear the difference! The different fq is carried by different layers in the cable, so yes the cable dose have an impact on the sound, but if don't need more than, say 10 meters, of cable, a "standard" $1/m cable will do fine! Remember that it should be made with twisted hair-thin threads, it can make a big different. But for the "common listener", a regular .5 - 1mm^2 cable is good enough!
And if your only playing compact formats, such as "mp3", "acc", "ogg", it doesn't matter what kind of an audio-rig you use, or cables. The songs are impaired to begin with... I use 2MHz sample rate on my ADC/DAC's, and it still can't compare with an LP-player. A sound-card in a modern Computer is set at 44kHz. It would take forever(or rather I think I'll bore you to tears...) to explain the how; compression works, what bit-rate really is and what "VBR" does, etcetera, and how the resolution of the analogue signal is sampled with an "ADC", and how the "DAC" recreate the sampled signal.
We live in an analogue world, and everything you "put in", and "take out" is ANALOGUE! And if you believe that $100/meter "Hi-Fi" cables makes your audio-rig(preamp to speakers) sound much better, then pay! You make your dealer happy 😀 !
First you need a preamp that leaves the mixing of the song untouched, same with the power amp, and what has the biggest impact, is the speakers!
I've build speakers and audio "things" for more than thirty years, and I've made test with so called "Hi -End" cables, that cost about 20€/meter(~USD25) and .5mm2 "radio shack" speaker cables, and if you don't want to spend > €1000 per speaker and a Class-A amp, like JL Hoods, 15W design from the sixties(than it was single rail, with cap on the output), but he manage to revise it, in an article in "Wireless World" from 91(I think...). So it has +/-20V instead of the +40V. You want hear the difference! The different fq is carried by different layers in the cable, so yes the cable dose have an impact on the sound, but if don't need more than, say 10 meters, of cable, a "standard" $1/m cable will do fine! Remember that it should be made with twisted hair-thin threads, it can make a big different. But for the "common listener", a regular .5 - 1mm^2 cable is good enough!
And if your only playing compact formats, such as "mp3", "acc", "ogg", it doesn't matter what kind of an audio-rig you use, or cables. The songs are impaired to begin with... I use 2MHz sample rate on my ADC/DAC's, and it still can't compare with an LP-player. A sound-card in a modern Computer is set at 44kHz. It would take forever(or rather I think I'll bore you to tears...) to explain the how; compression works, what bit-rate really is and what "VBR" does, etcetera, and how the resolution of the analogue signal is sampled with an "ADC", and how the "DAC" recreate the sampled signal.
We live in an analogue world, and everything you "put in", and "take out" is ANALOGUE! And if you believe that $100/meter "Hi-Fi" cables makes your audio-rig(preamp to speakers) sound much better, then pay! You make your dealer happy 😀 !
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