So if you take two of the same manufactured machines by the same company, identical builds with the same parts # can you hear the difference between the two devices, are the QC controls so good that any two machines sound identical? Can you hear the difference between them, how acute do we really think most peoples hearing really is at this level, some of the claims for hearing things seem to be at this level of discrimination, at least that is how I am reading some of these hearing claims.
Personally I will say the problem with actually teaching yourself to have the ability to hear distortions at this level comes at a real cost. Every time you are listening to music you will be cluing into these learned distortions and the enjoyment of the music goes out the window as you just become an analytic listener, not the way people who enjoy music normally listen. I haven't gone to a live concert with a PA and rock or other band for some time, I just hear the distortions and can't enjoy the music, so again I say super acuity in listening can be a real problem for listening to most commercial music and most audio systems. Where do you draw the line?
Now if I was a recording engineer I would want to know and understand all these distortion generators and how to control them and what is causing any you didn't want, but this is a different condition than a normal listener and not someone who is creating original source recordings.
Personally I will say the problem with actually teaching yourself to have the ability to hear distortions at this level comes at a real cost. Every time you are listening to music you will be cluing into these learned distortions and the enjoyment of the music goes out the window as you just become an analytic listener, not the way people who enjoy music normally listen. I haven't gone to a live concert with a PA and rock or other band for some time, I just hear the distortions and can't enjoy the music, so again I say super acuity in listening can be a real problem for listening to most commercial music and most audio systems. Where do you draw the line?
Now if I was a recording engineer I would want to know and understand all these distortion generators and how to control them and what is causing any you didn't want, but this is a different condition than a normal listener and not someone who is creating original source recordings.
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I don't if anyone has seen this:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/part...me-sound-opamp-v5-experience.html#post4921883
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/part...me-sound-opamp-v5-experience.html#post4921883
I agree with you. So, I would not say that people should learn to hear distortion unless they are willing to accept whatever comes with it. I also find it very hard to watch many movies and live theater for similar reasons. For the years I did live sound, I also worked in many theatrical situations, and occasionally as a stage hand on sets when they needed extra crew, since I knew all those guys in the union from working with them on live shows when I was doing sound. The magic seems to go away to some extent when you have seen too much how it works behind the scenes.
For Movies I have to consciously turn on willing suspension of disbelief or I am analysing the sound or focus pulling or the cgi. And of course the 'physics doesn't work that way ' things. Again needs learning!
Daniel, You got that right, I watched someone making sausage meat the other day, it wasn't what you want to think about when your eating one! I've been doing some design for food equipment lately so have gotten an eye full of what is going on in these production facilities, but of course we all have to pay the bills so I take the work. A percentage of each machine sold is fine with me in perpetuity. I actually am doing a meat grinder as one of the machines I have to design.
Mark, Yes I worked PA sound when much younger when I could still help move those big bass bins and stacks of horns. It does make it hard to listen to live PA once you learn what your hearing to and what is creating problems, it ruins the experience at some point of just enjoying the music. But it did lead me to designing what I considered better horns and now dynamic drivers. For the average consumer none of what we are talking about makes a bit of difference in what they listen to or enjoy, they don't have to be critical, just enjoy what they like. Otherwise there would never have been a Bose company, a learned listener could never listen to one of those systems and not come away disappointed.
Mark, Yes I worked PA sound when much younger when I could still help move those big bass bins and stacks of horns. It does make it hard to listen to live PA once you learn what your hearing to and what is creating problems, it ruins the experience at some point of just enjoying the music. But it did lead me to designing what I considered better horns and now dynamic drivers. For the average consumer none of what we are talking about makes a bit of difference in what they listen to or enjoy, they don't have to be critical, just enjoy what they like. Otherwise there would never have been a Bose company, a learned listener could never listen to one of those systems and not come away disappointed.
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for audio transducers, some(most?) mics and essentially all commercial headphones and loudspeakers even serial production units vary in frequency response by more than established human hearing thresholds, even when including "audiophile", "SOTA" products
for recording/playback technologies "pure analog" mastering via mag tape and or direct to disc also have clearly audible variation between makes, devices, even serial replays that were long ago documented before the comparison with digital was possible
and yes early digital was being stretched to match the very best of the latest, best analog audio of the time but there has been 30 years of electronics development since the CD
audio frequency analog electronics may not have had a Moore's Law 18-24 mo doubling price/performance over that time but still has evovled, improved - and a lot of digital audio does leverage that 30 years of digital progress
Yes, packed.
When they become decommissioned, we'll raid them for parts!!
You have email... with the appropriate information...
_-_-
As far as I am concerned there is no point in trying to agree on "tracks".
Other than the potential for some tracks/albums to be recorded in a way that either masks seriously into the "bad zone" or others that mask seriously into the "euphonium zone", it makes not much difference.
If you, yourself, don't know which tracks are which in your world, I don't know what to say about that.
Now there are some albums/CDs, that come off as somewhat "grainy" and "sibilant". A big question is IF that ought to be that way when played back, and how much so - ie. what is "accurate"?
I do not know any way to know this one way or the other.
My experience has been that when otherwise "normal" albums, and tracks that one might deem somewhat "grainy" or "sibilant" are played thorugh a system/gear/opamps that somehow "resolve" all that into the form that sounds most nearly natural, that those very questionable ones also magically seem to fall in line, and become inside the boundary that one being critical finds "acceptable" or better.
(again, not talking about a reduction in HF energy/dulling)
Why this happens, is part of the conundrum of possible opamp sonic differences.
So, other than putting up selections that are "well recorded" and another list of selections considered to fall into the above latter category of being "problematic" on most systems, but resolve somehow in some cases/some systems, I'm not seeing any benefit to listing tracks...
_-_-
PS. for example Dafos, Gates of Dafos is excellent for determining dynamic capability and LF energy (and "space/air"), but the sticks hitting the drums sounds rather different on almost every system I have ever played it on - so not terribly useful as a reference WRT what we're looking at - or at least what I think are the audible diffs of opamps...
Originally Posted by Kindhornman
I haven't gone to a live concert with a PA and rock or other band for some time, I just hear the distortions and can't enjoy the music
There is two different people. Those who can tune a piano and those who can tune a guitar.
I though that the goal of rock was distortion... how would you be able to listen to rock without hearing distortion...
I haven't gone to a live concert with a PA and rock or other band for some time, I just hear the distortions and can't enjoy the music
There is two different people. Those who can tune a piano and those who can tune a guitar.
I though that the goal of rock was distortion... how would you be able to listen to rock without hearing distortion...
gabdx,
Immediately the vocals on the PA will tell you how bad the distortion is. The drums can sound like mud and the cymbals have no sheen, many other distortions more than overpower the sound of a great guitar player, with and without effects pedals. Even rock and roll can have distortions that the musicians never intended, that is what I hear, on top of some fairly horrid FR from the PA.
Immediately the vocals on the PA will tell you how bad the distortion is. The drums can sound like mud and the cymbals have no sheen, many other distortions more than overpower the sound of a great guitar player, with and without effects pedals. Even rock and roll can have distortions that the musicians never intended, that is what I hear, on top of some fairly horrid FR from the PA.
Beware Mooly I've seen discrete FET op-amps using SJ74's (25V) with +-24V supplies. 🙄 Also in general the typologies are ho-hum.
All around great recording (with even with a little that real ambient feel of Prof. Johnson) I use "Dreams Less Sweet" by Psychic TV. The cut where they bury two microphones in a casket and shovel the dirt slowly over it is un-nerving in the dark to say the least. They worked with Zuccarelli Holophonics though I have never really tried using it binaurally. You would be a lucky stiff to find a mint original LP.
For power drumming with a purpose I always turn to Test Dept, "Kick to Kill" off of the boxed 45rpm set is a good example.
wouldn't it be best to listen to an acoustic drum kit recording without guitars and PA voice amplification?
I am talking about the fact that a poor audio system can make a rock band sound great, but a jazz band sound strident and horribly fake.
Personally I see a listening A/B test session with rock sound track or pop songs as invalid.
I found also headphones too poor at finding distortion if music sound great (Grado) or too detached from the music (sennheiser) to judge of a particular opamp in the circuit.
How about on different speakers in the same room??
...does that work for you?
Or, same speakers, different room?
That too.
Or different amps, same room, same speakers?
Or, a different opamp in the gear in the same room, same speakers?
However particular speakers tend to have a recognizable "signature" (assuming you know the speakers) regardless of the room. This assumes that you happen to think that speakers sound different from each other?
All that I was saying is that Dafos is not a good album for discerning certain things, as far as I am concerned, and WRT to the issues at hand.
Quads, vs Kleinhorns, vs Magnepan MG1 what do you think? What could be more different, though I can enjoy almost anything save horns most of the time. My lab speakers near field MET 7's and a 20W T amp allow me to enjoy almost all the music I like. I don't get very excited about what could or couldn't be.
Something has changed and I'm curious, for years on my old Pioneer TT and Hafler electronics Coltrane's "Impulse" LP's sounded fine. Now even on my kickstarter TT and $75 Grado frankly they sound like shite but I still enjoy listening to them. You do have to understand that I'm blue collar DIY through and through the chance of me spending serious money on any of this is nil, seriously nil.
The tube of 797's will be in the mail before Christmas, I could not source any 845's but I will keep looking (the designer has left the building).
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Have you tried troubleshooting? My system started sounding funny and after checking electronics, finally found a bad tweeter in one NS-10. The frequency response had changed, not sure what happened mechanically. Replaced tweeters in both speakers with new ones (not expensive), and now both sides very well matched. (Note: had already replaced caps in crossovers with better ones some time ago.)
No, this is more overall bad everything, like the recording was always bad and I never noticed. BTW your last long post was very thoughtful, these issues are always difficult, I have experience with color space matching and device color gamuts from a past life so I could nit pick your example but that would not be productive, let's just see if anything comes of this. Right now the most I can contribute is to help the participants get some of the more expensive parts.
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That seems in some way a dramatic observation. As though though more information that was always present is now being presented to conscious awareness. In a way, it seems parallel to my experience going from some original state to a state of noticing more distortion, that was also always there. Just that the starting and ending points are different.
If there is come continuum like that, I hope the changes stop before more things become less enjoyable. Other people have described a lack of enjoyment associated with too much learned awareness. (Learned in the sense of the brain developing some ability to present into consciousness more detailed and voluminous information about something than before, including in cases where it may not be wanted.) Examples given by some previous posters involving less enjoyment of movies or music come to mind.
Of course, at some point we need return to the question of what perceptions can be proven scientifically. Since I think we have agreed to wait and see whatever might develop on that, I will leave off on that topic here.
Still, your observation about possibly noticing more remains interesting. In that sense, welcome to the club!
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