Sound Quality Vs. Measurements

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Thanks DVV .
gpapga . Thanks also for Callas in Paris 1958 . Not Citroen DS for the arrival ! The commentary was very like the BBC which helped .

This link is a recording that was made just made in time . The lady always wanted to perform this piece . Her teacher was doubtful she would ever succeed having discovered her ability later in life than many ( 16 ? ) . In many ways wrong , in important ways how it should be done ( from the heart ) . Oh how I wish the Telefunken engineers had done it .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p77JoONFX8U
 
A slight branch-line here . Did anyone ever try an infrasonic sub woofer ? I am told it works very well . My friend made them from solenoids with digital delay to the main speaker .This was tuned by ear to suit the dance venue . He said it added colour and size to music .

File:Graham Holliman Velocity-Coupled Infra Bass speaker design.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My father when I was young was obsessed by a low frequency noise which he heard late at night . He thought it might be lorries filling with fuel at the garage 1 kM away . He would walk out at night to see what it was . I read recently about some people hearing the sound of gas being pumped . On the farm next to our house was a little cabin . When asking it was galvanic protection for a very big gas main . Dad was right and he was highly sensitive to subsonic's . I went to Didcot power station . The resonant frequency of one its chimneys is 5 Hz . The guide said people liked standing in area . I did although I could not say why . It felt great although nothing obvious was happening .
 
Interesting and logical about subsonic's and danger. My experience in the big chimney was good ( 5Hz ) . I was told that buildings which parapsychologist check often have subsonic noise . Now there will be a divide on that as to how and why . Personally I think it is just noise . This brings me to a point .

I am more interested in sounds and noise than most people . That is like saying a veterinarian is more interested in animals than most . Hardly surprising . It makes what I say next more believable . Simply put I was in my car one day when I jumped and THEN heard a car backfire . The time delay was small yet noticeable . I was told our fascinating for sound is related to man having lived in the forests of this world . Imaging which we love in music is about locating sounds . The other ability is transients which make us prepare to run . The spatial music was bird song .

I would imagine if we studied real music ( not amplified ) we would find much more subsonic's than we would imagine .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWEpnHZ9XFE&feature=related
 
Subsonics are sometimes found where we do not expect them.

Not too long ago, I was fooling around with a Technics 570 digital tuner. Quite by accident (or was it?), I looked at my left loudspeaker box and noticed some quite extraordinary cone excurision actvity. On the surface of it, I heard nothing, yet that cone was pumping air from the, er, airwaves. Eventually I did actually hear a low down THUD.

Somewhat perplexed, I dug up the Technics User Manual and went straight to the specifications page, where indeed I found that the frequency response was quoted as: "20-15,000 Hz +/- 0.5 dB, 5-18,000 Hz +0.5, -3 dB". 5 Hz? Where the heck was it coming from?

Then I noticed I had the subsonic only when the radio show host was talking, i.e. using the studio microphone.

Lastly, I pushed the "Subsonic filter" switch on the preamp (Luxman C-03) and the cone movement was greatly reduced, now down to hardly noticeable, meaning I hd to get near and look hard to notice any real movement.

All this left me perplexed. First of all, I have no idea how that subsonic got through the airwaves all the way to me. I would never have thought that was possible, yet I saw it myself. Obviously, this hapened in the studio, and I cannot remember ever seeing any microphone for a radio studio with a response down to 20 Hz, let alone lower. Then again, I haven't exactly been researching the subjcet.

I was also surprised by the frequency response of the tuner - the specs are usually given for the 20-15,000 Hz range, so it never really occured to me that it's possible for the tuner to go much lower than 20 Hz, probably in an attempt to avoid phase funnies if using a sharp cut-off filter. Or something.

Lastly, I wondered if other users had even noticed it. Never mind if they actually saw the cone make large excursions as I did, perhaps their speakers didn't go as low as mine (-3 dB at 38 Hz), yet the very presence of it would load their bass drivers trying to reproduce something they couldn't.

Is that even legal?
 
This is a very good subject to study . It seems to me we should never ask a conventional speaker to do it . Digital delay is appropriate to get it right .

I suspect all timing on all speakers could be better . It is not about reproducing exactly what was there . This is about making it sound right as best we can ( tunable ) .

When I was 28 ( half my age now ) I was asked to help an old Jesuit priest with some digital electronics . He was far above me and I suspect only wanted to say hello . He showed me how the tone colour of the organ was due to subsonic timing . Remember this guy understood electronics . He called it hetrodyning . Thus if we get the hetrodynes as good as we can some magic starts to happen ( openness and dynamics , no extra power required ) . Just as inappropriate subsonic's can suggests ghosts , not having any suggests no tone colour and robs transients . One of my major criticisms of valve amplifiers is no real sub bass . I built one that had it . I was great ( when it worked ) . Some say that 5Hz - 3 dB total is the goal .
 
Really low frequencies on FM broadcasts are theoretically possible (FM goes down to DC) but in practice certainly were unlikely as FM transmitters often used a phase modulation method which has a built-in high-pass action. Newer transmitters probably use digital techniques so DC may be possible in practice nowadays.

FM detectors usually go down to DC, so it is only coupling caps which limit LF.

Older 'analogue' FM tuners could have a response peak in the subsonic region due to poor design of the AFC loop. A 'digital' FM tuner might not need AFC so this peak should not occur.

Although you noticed that the LF seemed to be associated with speech, it might partly arise from multipath propagation. Multipath creates signal distortion, so the LF could be IM.
 
Really low frequencies on FM broadcasts are theoretically possible (FM goes down to DC) but in practice certainly were unlikely as FM transmitters often used a phase modulation method which has a built-in high-pass action. Newer transmitters probably use digital techniques so DC may be possible in practice nowadays.

FM detectors usually go down to DC, so it is only coupling caps which limit LF.

Older 'analogue' FM tuners could have a response peak in the subsonic region due to poor design of the AFC loop. A 'digital' FM tuner might not need AFC so this peak should not occur.

Although you noticed that the LF seemed to be associated with speech, it might partly arise from multipath propagation. Multipath creates signal distortion, so the LF could be IM.

Not so, I checked the multipath levels, they were way below any dangerous level.

Also, I noticed the subsonic signal was on the left channel only, nothing on the right.

Mind you, it's not really a problem because I can always switch on the subsonic filter on the preamp.

Also, nothing like that ever happens on the ReVox B760 digital synthesis tuner, nor on the Marantz 6000 digital tuner, nor on the Sony 3950 analog tuner. I tried them all on the same day. So it's only the Technics. That tuner has not been refreshes since its purchase, some 15 or 16 years ago. Perhaps one of its decoupling caps has given up the ghost?
 
Could be a coupling cap, or a resistor, or a bad solder joint. The association with speech could be an example of our brain's need to find patterns even when there isn't one. As it was just on the left channel it must be in or after the stereo decoder.

In your original post you said 'left', but as you didn't say 'not right' I assumed it was on both channels but you have only happened to notice it on left.
 
Could be a coupling cap, or a resistor, or a bad solder joint. The association with speech could be an example of our brain's need to find patterns even when there isn't one. As it was just on the left channel it must be in or after the stereo decoder.

In your original post you said 'left', but as you didn't say 'not right' I assumed it was on both channels but you have only happened to notice it on left.

Definitely not on the right as well, only on the left.

I do not associate it with speech as such, rather with speech related circuitry in the studio, as it was there only when somebody was talkning, and not when music was being played. That seems too much to be a coincidence to me, so I reckon it's something with mic amplification circuitry.

I believe it to be specific to that one station only, as it never happened anywhere else but there.
 
FM tuners always had frequency stabilizing feedbacks that controlled heterodyne by output of FM demodulator. This network could oscillate. Also, phase lock loop heterodyne could produce such oscillations, either in transmitter, or in receiver. If your amp had specs from 20 Hz that does not mean it stopped amplifying abruptly below 20 Hz. It means, that attenuation on 20 Hz is no more than stated in specs. The same about microphones, especially large diaphragm condenser microphones for studio usage. The closer is miking, the higher is level of so called "Pops".
 
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Possibly apropos: I once designed a system for boosting the bass and overall volume in response to the tachometer output of a vehicle, for a client who wanted to provide it as, potentially, an aftermarket product and possibly (very long shot in view of the stringent qualification requirements) an OEM product.

The thing worked well for music. When the DJ came on in between selections, the amount of bass boost was to my ears quite oppressive. I even began to investigate simple/cheap ways to detect speech so as to use them to reduce the bass boost at those times.

Whether some of this may relate to artifacts of the studio processing I don't know, but it seems plausible.
 
... If your amp had specs from 20 Hz that does not mean it stopped amplifying abruptly below 20 Hz. It means, that attenuation on 20 Hz is no more than stated in specs. The same about microphones, especially large diaphragm condenser microphones for studio usage. The closer is miking, the higher is level of so called "Pops".

Gee - REALLY, papa Wave? :D

And I thought that at 19 Hz, output was zero ... :p

Wave, since it happens on only one station, and only one channel of an otherwise unusually good quality FM sound which makes me spend 99% of my FM time on that station, I think it's fairly safe to conclude two things:

1. The fault is most probably in their studio, because of only one channel occurence, and only on that station, and

2. All my other tuners appear to have a much more sensibly filtered out subsonics.

Do you agree?
 
Unlikely to affect just one channel. For that you either need the problem to occur in one audio channel, or to achieve corresponding changes in both baseband and multiplex channels; I think the latter is unlikely.

Unlikely or not, it seems to be the case. How and why, I have no idea, but let me note that they seem to have frequent transmission "blackouts", they go off the air for 20...60 minutes, then come back on. Because of that, I suspect they have rather poor technical support staff, or a damn stingy boss who is unwilling to invest into decent repair and maintenance (this being a highly pronounced and most typical national trait, I'm sad to say).

Having hung around several local radio stations while I had my own Wednesday radio show for three years, I was unfortuately subjected to the specific torture of watching technicians having to install the cheapest possible elements into otherwise good quality broadcast equipment, and to listen to the said technicians ennumerate the boss's family in a a most unfavorable light.

@bcarso

It could very well be something like that, Brad, however in a more boring version, like sliding the bass slider on the mixer up to its max, and similar stupidities. I have never seen an add-on bass booster anywhere locally.
 
when I first got my behringer dbx 2496 it was giving me subsonics (sounded like distant thunder down in the folded horn).. What it turned out to be was the xlr connectors were not screwed tightly enough to the chassis.

can't remember if it was one or both channels

There you go, Frank! A small thing like that, and you have a problem.
 
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