It seemed the logical response.Agree, Art. I'm finding that more and more. The room is a big contributor to listening fatigue. It's hard to play at realistic volumes in a small room, unless there has been extensive, and well engineered, room treatment.
Could you elaborate? If I take a good microphone, feed it into a good pre-amp and thence into a high quality ADC into memory, where does this compression come from? I can see that many, if not most, commercial recordings have compression applied deliberately as a separate process - maybe to reduce the dynamic range for vinyl, or to take part in the loudness wars, but if an audiophile recording states "No compression" are they lying?
I started a thread on this, but quickly found I had opened myself up to the charge that there must be something wrong with my system - because if I had found 'the secret' to good audio, my ears would never be fatigued.
Basically, I was suggesting that although a newly-assembled system starts off well in a room, the never-changing characteristics of the room begin to wear the listener down over time, so that after a few weeks the system has lost its shine. Moving the speakers around seems to help a bit (and maybe it's a placebo, too) but I was suggesting that those lucky enought to possess DSP-based speakers might be able to keep the sound fresh by tweaking a few parameters - crossover frequencies, slopes, delays, driver phase correction - rather than having to move their speakers or room treatment around.
I really should have kept quiet about it, because I could have patented the idea of a speaker system that randomly changes its settings every time it is used, within some pre-defined range. I could have given it a snappy name and a little logo, licensing the idea to all the other active speaker manufacturers that will be along any time soon.
Actually vinyl has more dynamic range , the reduction is necessary for both , if not very very few systems would be able to reproduce the recordings due to
1. Noise floor
2. Dynamic compression
No compression as in zero as opposed to conventional is hard to believe ....
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Yes room reflections will lead to fatigue , but it is not the cause, the better the speaker the less you charge the room.....
IMO what causes listening fatique
1. Electronics ( signal /amplfication)
2. Speaker ( frequency aberration )
3. Room ( due to speaker )
Can you supply some typical figures? I'd have said typical digital sound card 100dB, vinyl 60dB on a good day.
Take the average PC sound card and plug in a microphone and record a child playing the piano, or a busker in the street. No compression, and your speakers can play it back comfortably. Am I missing something?
Yes, you're missing making money. Most people don't want and will not buy high dynamic range recordings. It has to be tamed and homogenized for the general public. After all, how many music buyers have systems that are comfortable with large dynamic range? I know one thing, I don't want it in my car.
Take that same microphone and place it 20 feet from a passing train, record it without compression Now Playback thru your PC system, sound the same ..?
Now add compression and playback again , better now ..... 🙂
Now add compression and playback again , better now ..... 🙂
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No, I realise all that, but there are quite a few so-called audiophile recordings that claim "No Compression". The discussion centred around the assertion that "All recordings are compressed".
Yes, but assuming the recording level was set correctly, it will still play back on my stereo system OK. If I keep the volume down, the consequences are that (a) it won't be as loud as the real thing, (b) I won't be able to hear the birds singing before the train passes (they'll be too quiet), and (c) the Fletcher Munson stuff will give me an impaired frequency response.
In the case of the street busker or child playing the piano played back at realistic volume, my compression-free recording may sound just fine. This thing about dynamic range can be a bit academic: if I took the street busker and recorded him playing in a studio, you might be saying "Aagh! Look at that dynamic range! It's 90dB - your system can't cope!" But I could add a whisper of air conditioning noise, and suddenly the dynamic range is only 70dB. Played back on an ordinary stereo system most people wouldn't even notice the difference between the recordings, yet in one case you might be advocating applying artificial compression based on a dynamic range measurement that increases not because of the 'useful' dynamic range, but merely based on the very, very low level noise performance of the equipment. A full orchestra may be different: the 'useful' dynamic range will be wider and, yes, if we want to hear it all in the car or on a small audio system then we'd need to compress it. But the owner of large amplifiers and speakers might feel cheated and, yes, 'fatigued' in a different way, by the compression.
Edit: thinking about the Fletcher Munson stuff, to the listener's ears, modulating the dynamic range with compression is also modulating the EQ, which does sound like a recipe for eventual listening fatigue. Maybe the EQ should be inverse Fletcher Munson'ed at the same time as the dynamic range compression modulates the amplitude.
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Realistic presentation, yes thats possible, but you cannot say that if the band was there, your system vs the band would be indistuighable. Come on.
The demonstartion made "demonstrated when speakers behind a screen and live performers have been interchanged without the audience reliably telling the difference" is not really fair. How far where the listeners?
Me, I am talking if you put a band in your listening room and then put the speakers. You honestly think that your system could be as good?
About listening fatigue and room reflections, I finally have a dedicated room for my listening room, so I will apply treatment asap. Cant wait to have my new room!
The demonstartion made "demonstrated when speakers behind a screen and live performers have been interchanged without the audience reliably telling the difference" is not really fair. How far where the listeners?
Me, I am talking if you put a band in your listening room and then put the speakers. You honestly think that your system could be as good?
About listening fatigue and room reflections, I finally have a dedicated room for my listening room, so I will apply treatment asap. Cant wait to have my new room!
Hi
Spot on!
There could be a problem when insulting >90% of the worlds population that buys this ......
Jan
Spot on!
There could be a problem when insulting >90% of the worlds population that buys this ......
Jan
Did you take the AVR out of Dolby mode ? My Arcam AVR300 sounds awful if left in Dolby Mode but isn't too bad if in Stereo mode.
No it wont , in order to capture the sound of the train passing at full tilt
You would have to turn it down to the point where it will not sound correct and you will not be able to hear the event of the train approaching and leaving , the lower level stuff will be lost in the noise floor ...
Not even discussing realism of presentation ...
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I thought I said all that almost exactly, at the start of my post..? (I said "birds singing" where you say "train approaching" etc.)
As I said in my post, I think the the "noise floor" is a red herring in this case. Even if the recording and playback system had 200dB of dynamic range relative to its noise floor, I still couldn't play back the train at realistic levels on most speakers, and then the problem hearing the "birds singing" isn't the noise floor of the equipment, but literally the sensitivity of the ears and the background noise in the listening room, brownian motion of air molecules on the ear drum and so on.
But I'm not disputing the desirability of compression on a recording of a train for most situations, just the assertion that all recordings are, or need to be, compressed.
Murphy,
There have been a number of different demonstrations in different size rooms with various types of music with the audience at different distances from the speakers behind an acoustically transparent screen with live performers interchanged without the audience reliably telling the difference.
Whether these type of demonstrations would be convincing to you is really immaterial as far as I'm concerned regarding listening fatigue.
My present home stereo is not capable of the dynamics of a live band in my listening/recording room, though I used to use speakers that are capable of similar dynamics as a live band.
I don't use them anymore, and I don't miss the dynamics, as playback at live band levels in my small listening room causes me listening fatigue.
The point is, whether the source is live performers playing acoustic instruments in my small listening/recording room, or recorded music played through a playback system, listening fatigue occurs for me at the same SPL level.
The listening fatigue is source independent, but room specific.
That said, even though I have to retreat to my control room to keep my ears from hurting, the performers have no complaints of listening fatigue.
Sensitivities vary widely..
Art