yeah just that as a musing...so many things about the subjective evaluations of everything audio are just that....relative to everything else...?
Your memory keeps music impressions multiplied on the your psycho-emotional conditions and in the inverse order of your age.
Now you listen music to reveal those impressions and the more listening equipment are able to reproduce remembered sounding - the more realistical impressions and remembering will be.
sorry don't share the same experience as for the greater part of my carrer/life has been spent doing live sound i find most efforts at reproduction fail in comparison to LIVE but i'm all about chasing the illusion...
Sound waves travel relative to a definite medium which carries it. So there is definitely a change in how the sound propagates as the source moves relative to the medium. An example: a sonic boom by an aircraft moving faster than the speed of sound of the medium.
Light waves do not require a medium and travel at the speed of light for any observer, even if the source of light is moving relative to the observer. Effects like time dilation, length contraction, and the difference in time between two events change so that the speed of light is constant for every observer. This is what Einstein was talking about with his special theory of relativity.
Incidentally, Cherenkov radiation is the "sonic boom" effect when radiating particles are moving faster than the speed of light IN A MEDIUM. For example, when electrons are passing through water (rather than vacuum), the speed of light in water is about 3/4 of that of vacuum, and so electrons moving faster than 3/4 of the speed of light in water can produce a "light" boom which is the equivalent of a sonic boom in air.
Light waves do not require a medium and travel at the speed of light for any observer, even if the source of light is moving relative to the observer. Effects like time dilation, length contraction, and the difference in time between two events change so that the speed of light is constant for every observer. This is what Einstein was talking about with his special theory of relativity.
Incidentally, Cherenkov radiation is the "sonic boom" effect when radiating particles are moving faster than the speed of light IN A MEDIUM. For example, when electrons are passing through water (rather than vacuum), the speed of light in water is about 3/4 of that of vacuum, and so electrons moving faster than 3/4 of the speed of light in water can produce a "light" boom which is the equivalent of a sonic boom in air.
Its not about Live, Its about audio recording playback! Similar to video, it's not about live, but video recording playback.. Both video and audio have qualities and characteristics captured on the individual recordings. The goal is to play them back as accurately as possible, without noise and coloration.. I guess for me this means there should be nothing relative about playback.. anyway, just my thoughts when I read the OP. 🙂
I yearn for the time when the secrets of animal/human consciousness are uncovered. What is known about consciousness is it requires large scale neuronal synchrony and the presence of 40Hz signals from the brain stem. If one thinks in terms of electronics, the brain stem seems to host the oscillator which drives the thalami and the large hemispheres. In fact, I remember, reading about an experiment with a comatose patient who has his entire large hemispheres intact but a damaged brain stem/thalami. Subjecting the patient's large hemispheres with a stream of 40Hz electronic waves mimicking brain stem waves, caused the patient to regain some consciousness. However, the experiment was abondoned for ethical reasons as the patient showed signs of suffering.
I wonder if there's any jitter in the 40 Hz signal and what that does? Maybe one day you'll be able to get an "clarifying" implant that fixes that, with a nice FIFO buffer...
The periodic pressure oscillations in the air around us are objective physics and can be characterized as to their frequency, pressure variation, etc. Your ear-cochlea-brain translation of these oscillations into your experience of the sense of sound is necessarily subjective as are all perceptions.
To me, dynamics has to be one of the factors between live and memorex. As soon as the pressure wave hits the microphone diaphragm, some compression occurs. As soon as the microphone signal get amplified, some compression occurs. As soon as that signal goes onto some recording medium, some compression occurs.
Nevermind what happens as a bunch of instrumental / vocal tracks are all mixed down to fit together within a dynamic range window of some recording medium.
Nevermind what they deliberately do to the mixed signal in order for it to "fit" into a comfortable dynamic range for general populace listening.
I understand you have to modulate some of these mediums near the top, in order for the noise floor to virtually drop away. Why they never put another channel pair to carry a time shifted dynamic range envelope on a sub carrier - and used that to modulate the two compressed channels is beyond me. That way a listener could simply dial in the dynamics however they want, from compressed, to live, to a bit over the top.
I guess they figure most listeners are in a car or working next to a bunch of exhaust fans listening through a boom box...
Nevermind what happens as a bunch of instrumental / vocal tracks are all mixed down to fit together within a dynamic range window of some recording medium.
Nevermind what they deliberately do to the mixed signal in order for it to "fit" into a comfortable dynamic range for general populace listening.
I understand you have to modulate some of these mediums near the top, in order for the noise floor to virtually drop away. Why they never put another channel pair to carry a time shifted dynamic range envelope on a sub carrier - and used that to modulate the two compressed channels is beyond me. That way a listener could simply dial in the dynamics however they want, from compressed, to live, to a bit over the top.
I guess they figure most listeners are in a car or working next to a bunch of exhaust fans listening through a boom box...
It's unfortunate that, unlike Einstein's theory of special relativity, subjective evaluations of audio can not be expressed in the language of mathematics.
Interestingly enough, like light there is a maximum theoretical velocity for sound propagation
(through a solid), calculated to be 36 km/s.
(through a solid), calculated to be 36 km/s.
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That depends on the goal. If the goal is sel-fi (not to be confused with selfie), then it's whatever the listener prefers. If the goal is hi-fi, then the accuracy to reference is the judging criteria.
Relativity is there (see above). Just different.
Sure it can be expressed. There are many books like this one (It's Saint Valentines weekend here in the US).