Simple sexist visual analogy, Put gauze over your eyes, (that is a non revealing speaker) look around, the girls (CDs) look/sound great. Take off the gause.(that is a revealing speaker) Oops! Some girls (CDs) don't look/sound so great) I suggest you take off the gauze before last call.
It also depends on what kind of flaws we're talking about. A strong hiss isn't going to get better. But too much energy at a certain frequency will be less of a problem with a balanced and good system.
Difficult to explain. Maybe it's one of those things one simply have to experience.
Difficult to explain. Maybe it's one of those things one simply have to experience.
Guys, it's very simple.. A good system does not add too many flaws to something already flawed, that's about it basically..
Well put lolo. Take frequency balance in recordings as an example. Typical 80's pop productions were often considered "bright". They usually do have a lot of energy in the high frequency range, but they may sound brilliant on a good system, and very harsh on a bad one.
The thing with "audiophile" recordings is that they usually don't provoke all the nasties in the playback system....
The thing with "audiophile" recordings is that they usually don't provoke all the nasties in the playback system....
No Chaos.
Jan Didden and I had an brief exchange on the subject over the the "Tube Sound" thread. Don't know if Jan has heard it, but he did understand concept.
Yes, I know what he means. But he does not understand what we are talking about. It's more complex than that. Almost all electronics and speakers add garbage to the signal. Piled on top of a bad recordings, that sounds very bad indeed. But strip away the garbage and you will find many recordings are not as bad as you think. 🙂
Jan Didden and I had an brief exchange on the subject over the the "Tube Sound" thread. Don't know if Jan has heard it, but he did understand concept.
This may be the best way to put it, Pano.
So if I offer a scenario..an uneven midrange issue that may affect sibilants and where an octave might feel unsupported by the one below. A microphone resonance could compound with this. Obviously it may go either way.
A common argument is that a good speaker will make some material sound exceptional and some, terrible.
Discriminating between recordings (of similar level) might be cause by an issue at a fixed frequency. Having come to the aforementioned conclusion before, I'm thinking it's a linear issue.
IIRC, nothing I've done along these lines since has disproven the idea.
So if I offer a scenario..an uneven midrange issue that may affect sibilants and where an octave might feel unsupported by the one below. A microphone resonance could compound with this. Obviously it may go either way.
A common argument is that a good speaker will make some material sound exceptional and some, terrible.
Discriminating between recordings (of similar level) might be cause by an issue at a fixed frequency. Having come to the aforementioned conclusion before, I'm thinking it's a linear issue.
IIRC, nothing I've done along these lines since has disproven the idea.
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This is arrogant. We don't understand each other, that is for sure, but you are forgetting your Kanneman to assume that it is you that is correct and I am wrong.
Adding bad to bad does make it worse, and stripping away bad that is caused by the audio system will make it better. But an audio system that so changes a bad recording such as to make it sound good is wrong.
Adele is a good example of how bad a recording can be. The voice is just wrong. Live performances are nothing like this and shows her world class voice unadulterated.
But yes it's a loop of what's wrong, my speakers or the recording. Around and around we go on that merry-go-round.
If any speaker system does GI, T-Bone steak out you better run and guickly get a patent on those speakers! 😱 That would truly be a miracle and one we've all longed for. 😀
My own hearing doesn't go above 12kHz these days, so I'm probably not qualified to say! But it sounds tonally right to me. I've had one apart and it is very well made with a proper spider and no ferrofluid. 😀
I'm in the happy position of being able to quickly switch between mylar DT 94 domes and the TW 70 paper cones on the same second order phase aligned crossover. This is because both tweeters are about 0.15mH Le and about the same efficiency. The cone tweeter wins night and day for clarity! It possibly helps that I get a nice top end load of 12 ohms that is kind to any transistor amplifier's slew rate.
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The cone has less dispersion, but absolutely NO spit and sizzle. You can actually boost the treble without any fatigue, rather than turn it down to a sort of BBC dip that is standard with domes. Experience tells me to boost the top end about 3dB with the TW70, and I'd like to try a steeper filter on it to take the Fs of 1500Hz much lower in level. I can't recommend enough that you read Robin Marshall to understand why the dome tweeter measures so well but sounds so rough.
It's odd that the mylar dome has very little real energy at the top, it doesn't shimmer at all with cymbals and sounds like it rolls off at about 7kHz despite the measurements saying otherwise. A polite tone. The TW 70, on the other hand has lots of top end energy and resolution.
I suspect that I could revive the AR-MST style with this tweeter, which addresses the dispersion issue:
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I see you are meaning the system making bad things worse, adding it own linear or nonlinear distortion. Well it is very true that good speakers and amp may make some bad recordings more listenable because they are not adding any more distortion. It's going to be a very efficient speaker and great amp that has a shot at that one at all though. It will still be GIGO but the garbage out may be more palatable [
Fair enough but once it's botched there is no going back unless the original got messed up in the mastering process. What garbage are you stripping away from the electronics and speakers?
Rob🙂
If the guitarist wants his "tone" (puke)to dominate the midrange, if the mixer can't steer him away, if the mastering lab let a 3k peak slip by, and your monitors have a peak there and your wife likes this certain mirror in this certain place you are going to have an issue. In a nutshell.
I think a lot of this discussion about system fatigue and more recently whether a system suits poorer recordings is about bandwidth and general treble levels (rising, flat, falling).
I went through a long period where I was interested in AM radio. In Toronto we could pick up a Buffalo station of NPR (since moved to FM and no longer obtainable) that I enjoyed. I spent a lot of time sampling different radios and playing with variable bandwidth IFs and such. I found that AM could really sound surprisingly good with the better radios. Flat response and extension to near 5000Hz was the key. A smooth rolloff at the treble end was a plus.
Some of the better AM radios, in a way, sounded better than typical FM. Sure FM was wider bandwidth and lower noise floor, but studio practices being what they were the extra octave or two added as much distortion as signal. The narrower bandwidth AM signal was always pleasant and smooth. FM was frequently harsh.
At the beginning of the HiFi era there was a lot of debate about bandwidth. The old guard thought that bandwidth should be limited and a number of listening tests had the public voting for lesser rather than greater bandwidth. I'm guessing these were using normal AM radios or even 78 rpm records as sources with either wide or narrow reproduction.
It wasn't until RCA did a test with live musicians behind a flipable curtain (that was configured as a switchable low pass acoustical filter), that the public voted for wider bandwidth rather than narrower. (see Olson)
The only possible conclusion was that wider bandwidth with the available sources and playback equipment gave more distortion at a level where it was a negative benefit. Only with the live musicians did they have the chance to hear low distortion with either wide and narrow bandwidth.
Its easy to believe that a system with a little narrower range or a somewhat subdued HF presentation will be better suited to poorer material than a more revealing system. It may be a choice between "accurate" and "pleasant".
David S.
I went through a long period where I was interested in AM radio. In Toronto we could pick up a Buffalo station of NPR (since moved to FM and no longer obtainable) that I enjoyed. I spent a lot of time sampling different radios and playing with variable bandwidth IFs and such. I found that AM could really sound surprisingly good with the better radios. Flat response and extension to near 5000Hz was the key. A smooth rolloff at the treble end was a plus.
Some of the better AM radios, in a way, sounded better than typical FM. Sure FM was wider bandwidth and lower noise floor, but studio practices being what they were the extra octave or two added as much distortion as signal. The narrower bandwidth AM signal was always pleasant and smooth. FM was frequently harsh.
At the beginning of the HiFi era there was a lot of debate about bandwidth. The old guard thought that bandwidth should be limited and a number of listening tests had the public voting for lesser rather than greater bandwidth. I'm guessing these were using normal AM radios or even 78 rpm records as sources with either wide or narrow reproduction.
It wasn't until RCA did a test with live musicians behind a flipable curtain (that was configured as a switchable low pass acoustical filter), that the public voted for wider bandwidth rather than narrower. (see Olson)
The only possible conclusion was that wider bandwidth with the available sources and playback equipment gave more distortion at a level where it was a negative benefit. Only with the live musicians did they have the chance to hear low distortion with either wide and narrow bandwidth.
Its easy to believe that a system with a little narrower range or a somewhat subdued HF presentation will be better suited to poorer material than a more revealing system. It may be a choice between "accurate" and "pleasant".
David S.
Thanks very much for the info. In terms of the problem with dome tweeters, how does it manifest itself to you? Is it something that's there even at low volumes? In what sort of music would you notice it the most?
Yes, Adele 21 is a 'perfect' test album - I deliberately bought the CD, because of all the ranting on another forum of how atrocious it was, I wanted to see what could be done to "rescue" it. And, yes, it's hard work, the level of studio processing and fiddling is full on - the result is that when a system is 98% there the sound is unrelenting, it has a very aggressive, beat you into a pulp tonality about it - not something to be listened to for pleasure ...
So, unfortunately, that last 2% barrier has to be crossed, and then finally, finally, the added 'dreck' in the recording itself can be subjectively bypassed - amazingly, the album can then be listened to at substantial volumes, and enjoyed as an entity, a creation in itself - say, in the same way as DSOTM.
My philosophy for a long time has been that it's always the playback system that's wrong, never the recording, because that then forces me to 'fix' up what I can do something about, it's the "No excuses!!" technique - and I have always benefited from that approach. Always. I regularly listen to recordings which sound horrendous on 'good' systems, and marvel how the latter manage to do such a brilliant job of mangling everything that's worthwhile in the recording ...
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