It would be easier to understand your preferences about mastering if you provide a music sample that has been mastered by you with your equipment or has been mastered following your preferences.
I have to reiterate my belief that in a good loudspeaker, nonlinearity is below the level of audible significance. Hence it cannot be a major factor in a loudspeakers perception.
Saying that Thd in a good loudspeaker is marginally low thus not a factor is the same as saying polar issues in a good loudspeaker is marginally low, thus dispersion is not a major factor in loudspeaker perception.
I said that Thd and Dispersion are the core elements but I do use Thd in an abstract way. Thd is marker of level and low frequency extension limitations, thus a major factor in all loudspeakers.
I said that Thd and Dispersion are the core elements but I do use Thd in an abstract way. Thd is marker of level and low frequency extension limitations, thus a major factor in all loudspeakers.
Im not psychic but I'll roll the dice and predict that all the systems you consider satisfactory have marginally low thd and polar issues. Correct me if this is untrue
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I find this logic faultless. I have often thought the same.
The problem is that "good loudspeakers" by those measures are actually surprisingly few and far between.
For instance, most of the typical mini-monitors (and many slim mini-towers) that often get rave reviews in Hi-Fi mags have atrocious distortion figures below 200Hz or so. And yes, anyone who has heard correctly reproduced bass would notice.
This^
Is Thd only subjectively correlated with low end extension and headroom? I'm using it as if its always related to those aspects.
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I'd say that they have negligible Thd and minimal polar issues.
The rest of your comments are not worth replying to.
To my knowledge Thd has not been subjectively correlated to anything perceptual.
I'd call this (hopelessly) naive and potentially dangerous. Although the transhumanists will warmly welcome your worldview.
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I would need to know more about what you mean to say. Obviously thd is perceivable, and I am missing the point.
Im not looking directly at thd in terms of a percentage vs perception. I am using thd to measure excursion. In particular excursion in relation to the issues excursion causes...
I know what you are doing...
Ok fine, I change my statement...
Dispersion and Excursion are the 2 major elements of a loudspeaker... that does not take away that one can use thd percentage as a precursor to perceivable issues, simply because as excursion goes up in proportion to its physical limitations, so does thd. So as thd goes up, you start to hear something, even if not thd itself.... why even talk about it then? Because thd is easily measured and displayed in my software lol.
If thd is low whatever other distortion you want to point the finger at for actually changing the sound, is low too... agreed?
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You talk about "excursion" when I think that you mean volume excursion (excursion x area), or a physicist term"Volume Velocity" (VV), which is how a physicist would rate source strength. At LFs - the only place that excursion (VV) is an issue - I get with area yielding large VV headroom and no excursion issues.
Not if its practitioners accept the limitations, which scientists like Bohr, Einstein, Planck etc. did.
They would most likely shake their heads and chuckle at this statement:
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I'm sure excursion (VV), and hence THD also, is not an issue in your systems (utilising suitably large woofers, and subwoofers too).
Sadly, though it IS a MAJOR issue in many (even most) other commercial Hi-Fi designs. Hence the relevance of measuring THD as a quick and easy proxy to highlight the issue.
I don't think there's any disagreement there.
It's just that you'd dismiss most commercial Hi-Fi systems as "poorly designed" (and rightly so!).
You are of course correct that, once a system is correctly designed to avoid VV issues in the first place, then THD becomes irrelevant beyond that.
Than I would redo a course of physics, because that statement is exactly what these guys were about.
hint: start with understanding what order of magnitude means, scientific significance and read a bit on Enrico Fermi
But believe what you want to believe.
It's silly to argue about things that are even more silly.
Case closed, don't want to ruin Camplo's topic with this kind of silliness.
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I think the issue is more that there has never been a lot of research done on it.
@gedlee rightfully so brought up that just THD is an extremely poor measure for perception of distortion.
But every since there hasn't been much research done on it.
A few papers can be found on the known research societies (like AES), but none of them have a really satisfying approach and a sample size that is of any significance.
To some extend we can all guess why many companies are not really enthusiastic about it.
Have you read our papers in AES? The sample size was very large >50 and the study was blind. It was certainly statistically significant and had valid conclusions that I hold to to this day.
The impression that I get is: "We know that THD is meaningless, but it's so easy to do!" Like looking for your keys only where there is light even though that's not where you lost them.