Encouraging 🙂
Ahh, a chance to rant on this. My son asked me to play this for him (I was getting into it anyway). When I did I almost said ok, let's go back and listen to it through your iPod dock, which did sound 'better'. I've since lost all interest and potential enjoyment from that song.
Pretty easy ... that which lacks audible distortion, of the non-linear variety. Live, acoustic sounds automatically don't have it, which is why it comes across the way it does. IME, FR and all the other things people talk about around here are almost irrelevant, the distortion aspect is that which goes directly to the head and registers the key fact - that ... sound ... is ... wrong!
I had the 5 rooms out of 100 sounded OK experience too, at the recent Sydney audio show - but my take is different. The 'stink', the smell of the underlying distortion is the first thing that hits me, immediately puts whatever I'm listening to way, way behind the eight ball. Also, as soon as people say that the 'volume wasn't right' you know that crappy distortion was kneecapping the sound - there is no such thing as the 'correct' level, when sound reproduction is working correctly ...
Now you are right, and a blade of grass by itself is a thing of beauty. In the desert it is a thing of beauty and rarity. What is happening is this desert has sprouted into a lawn and good clean high powered amps are getting to be the grass. I love grass too, but I've seen a lot of it. It's getting hard not to find in my yard, so thinking speakers are flowers now, all different worthy of closer examination than all of that beautiful grass (-:
Seriously!? You are completely unaware of the research in this regard?
I know, science doesn't matter if it is inconvenient for my beliefs.
Sorry, the research doesn't cut it, in terms of what it is actually there - the end result that people have to live with, what is actually on the ground. Normal hifi sounds like hifi, not the real thing, because of excess, and too obvious, distortion - once a person experiences a system genuinely bereft of the irritating artifacts, then everything else from then on always sounds somewhat defective, lacking, not really in the game ...
The simple answer as to why research doesn't "know" this, is because they never use systems sufficiently capable - unless you have an example of a setup good enough, you can't 'test' people's reactions to that, compared to one that's not good enough ...
The simple answer as to why research doesn't "know" this, is because they never use systems sufficiently capable - unless you have an example of a setup good enough, you can't 'test' people's reactions to that, compared to one that's not good enough ...
Plants'n things not an issue here but some new HIFI networking protocol, read something back some months ago about blah blah blah. I'm totally there. Said to deal with latency issues etc optimized for this purpose specifically. Some one must see $$$ signs, we needed this 20+ years ago and wasn't out of the reach then. Active speakers, no wires dangling everywhere. perfect! Next DIY
I'm saving it to demonstrate the difference between quality in = quality out and garbage in = garbage out 😀
I mean OMG the more accurate the speaker the worse it gets! 😱
Sorry, isn't this the first practical thing addressed with a test like this, and the first thing verified later?
My experience is normally more the opposite to this so yeah, it's a little disturbing. I was listening to something random the other day (techno) and it had a sound similar to cones bottoming out played along with the bass which I found 'interesting'.
A little more to it besides that sort of distortion. Hopefully skipping superfluous academic explanations of common sense. This is beyond the great illusion of stereo.... Lets take two instruments. An upright bass is going to be hard because it has to light up the room everywhere it radiates from. A speaker has no chance of doing that regardless of radiation pattern because the bass itself is a uniquely shaped emitter. To reproduce it you have to have a driver that can do exactly the same thing in exactly the same radiation pattern, Not going to happen. A soft trumpet would be easier for example is basically one point. Trumpets are dynamic, there are better examples. The human voice would be a great example of an easier objective instrument if we were not so very, very sensitive to minutia in it. But it boils down to distortion. Yes! But it has more to do with spatial distortion, the other kind is easier to whip. Actually it just is not possible nor will it ever be. I would say an electric guitar amp is within our grasp of 100% fooling ourselves. But wait, correction.... a "closed back amp" electric guitar. 🙂
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Ok, it would take more than two speakers to replicate this in my room. What if I were to reduce the interaction of my room and focus on straight stereo, it all comes back. I hear their room, I hear that room's rendition of the hourglass instrument with its 3d cues. I hear the limitations of stereo and the limitations of their recording, no more/no less.
I know this comes down to a choice, but what am I missing?
Obviously it should be, but the literature always seems to indicate otherwise. There is always an almost throwaway line or two, about using equipment that is "adequate" or "meets performance requirements". In other words, they look up the spec sheets, of the amp say - that's good enough, 0.001% distortion at 1kHz, perfectly sufficient for the needs of the 'testing'.
I would love to hear of an objective test where they really, really burrowed down to make sure that the gear they were using was truly artifact free in every audible respect - rather than just assuming it was, because the "specs said so" ...
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OK. I'll admit that I've had some trouble in the past getting my head around some of these 'proven' facts. If there's one thing I've noticed about Earl, he seems to be as concerned about these particular details as perhaps you or I would want to be.
If any doubt remains with me, it is an order of magnitude down from the test results and probably has more to do with the differences between average people, and those more like ourselves (so to speak).
If any doubt remains with me, it is an order of magnitude down from the test results and probably has more to do with the differences between average people, and those more like ourselves (so to speak).
I think you need to spend some more time reading and less time shooting from the hip then Frank!
And no way to eliminate your room. Binaural recording with in ear mics? Headphones? probably as close a we will ever get. Speakers/rooms are ever a compromise and I would say electrical distortion is moving way down on the list of enemies. Said before, move mechanical things up the enemy list and electrical things down.
So give people a knob that randomly varies distortion in likely thd pattern and have them say stop! When they can reliably hear least and most. Note, rinse repeat. Probably been done already. Someone please link here.
So, obviously you can link me to a study where very careful evaluation of what I mentioned has been done, then ...?
I can get close enough, with practical considerations. Eg. I currently have a ceiling/diffraction thing happening between 200/500Hz but it doesn't noticeably have an effect on imaging (not as sensitive there anyway). it has an effect, and who knows what I'll think once I fix it but my imaging appears to me to ignore my room walls, and doesn't have kinks or anything where it extends beyond them.
Thanks for that, Allen ... however, I already have those file, along with a number of others of similar content.
And in one of those an example of what I described occurs. From "Auditory Perception of Nonlinear Distortion":
That is the full explanation of how that apparatus was chosen for the tests ...
And in one of those an example of what I described occurs. From "Auditory Perception of Nonlinear Distortion":
That is the full explanation of how that apparatus was chosen for the tests ...