I disagree. The limitations of stereo are not enough to stop us getting close enough to natural reproduction to be able to feel it.
Metoo
The distortions of the piano sound annoy me a lot. I have never heard a loudspeaker that is capable of producing it as well as I hear them in my head by the memory of a concert hall. I remember very vividly how Brendel, Ashkenazi, and Andsnes sounded live - pure magic - but at home, there is always something wrong.
Generally, a grand piano is a very complicated instrument. The harmonics do not fall on f*N, there are multiple strings on a note, and the way they are tuned "properly" depends on ... so many things, etc, etc.
At the same time, good studio headphones can reproduce piano almost perfectly. After measuring the LTI residual, I discovered that headphone's LTI distortions are < -80dB, while loudspeakers are -50dB at the very best. Often it is as bad as -20. And these LTI distortions sound exactly like what has been bothering me for 10s of years. For my ear, a grand piano is the best test case for loudspeakers. Opera (or simply good) signing is another. Freddy Mercury has always sounded somewhat nervous and amateurish. Then I discovered that this had nothing to do with him, but purely with my loudspeakers. On headphones, his voice is silky smooth, and he is really on par with the best opera singers. A different meaning opened up...
You may have guessed that a perfectionistic obsession with [non-] LTI distortions actually makes quite a bit of sense to me. I know that most other people are permanently obsessed with social status, violence, sex, food, the pursuit of so-called "happiness" or bodily pleasures, etc. Those obsessions are considered normal and right, which I have some doubts about, while I do not see anything harmful, unhealthy, or destructive in the pursuit of low audio distortions.
Hi,
Highly directional and low distortion speakers(e.g electrostats) can create impression of a show of real instruments.
However, after many experiments with those kind of speakers my conclusion was, room reflections are super important.
The more directional the speaker is the less reflections and more realistic the representation on axis IMO. Like headphones.
Regards
Highly directional and low distortion speakers(e.g electrostats) can create impression of a show of real instruments.
However, after many experiments with those kind of speakers my conclusion was, room reflections are super important.
The more directional the speaker is the less reflections and more realistic the representation on axis IMO. Like headphones.
Regards
So the EDM DJ spinning for 10-20-30k people at an event isn’t and artist in creating and atmosphere so intense and connecting because the music he’s playing is a package product? An audiophile who assembles a system over decades to create a synergy amongst the signal chain isn’t an artist?…..and why completely disregard my initial reference that art is the ‘creation’….throughout the process…….why reduce the point.
So in other words, there is no reference for input signal as complex music. No holes, no argument…..just clarity.
That’s the best chance one has of reproducing the recording as the artist and engineer intended…..the original sound field of the 3D space as produced( fake or not….it does not matter). But of course, this has the limitation on the listener to stay put….on the listening axis….and enjoy……what a difficult concept that seems to be lost here.
So much jibber jabber about the limited vertical window of certain drivers……who cares?…..the less floor or ceiling bounce the better. Wanna get up and dance around the room?….have at it….enjoy the physical expression…..but leave the fault of the speaker out of it please! Lol
So what are ‘good studio headphones’ if you care to share…..what makes them ‘good’?Metoo
The distortions of the piano sound annoy me a lot. I have never heard a loudspeaker that is capable of producing it as well as I hear them in my head by the memory of a concert hall. I remember very vividly how Brendel, Ashkenazi, and Andsnes sounded live - pure magic - but at home, there is always something wrong.
Generally, a grand piano is a very complicated instrument. The harmonics do not fall on f*N, there are multiple strings on a note, and the way they are tuned "properly" depends on ... so many things, etc, etc.
At the same time, good studio headphones can reproduce piano almost perfectly. After measuring the LTI residual, I discovered that headphone's LTI distortions are < -80dB, while loudspeakers are -50dB at the very best. Often it is as bad as -20. And these LTI distortions sound exactly like what has been bothering me for 10s of years. For my ear, a grand piano is the best test case for loudspeakers. Opera (or simply good) signing is another. Freddy Mercury has always sounded somewhat nervous and amateurish. Then I discovered that this had nothing to do with him, but purely with my loudspeakers. On headphones, his voice is silky smooth, and he is really on par with the best opera singers. A different meaning opened up...
You may have guessed that a perfectionistic obsession with [non-] LTI distortions actually makes quite a bit of sense to me. I know that most other people are permanently obsessed with social status, violence, sex, food, the pursuit of so-called "happiness" or bodily pleasures, etc. Those obsessions are considered normal and right, which I have some doubts about, while I do not see anything harmful, unhealthy, or destructive in the pursuit of low audio distortions.
How do you know the primary fault was the speaker system?……could the distortion come from the amplifier?…..too much input stage gain creating clipping?……not hard with todays digital input streams without a viable reference beyond LuFS.
yes….microphones will NEVER completely represent a live grand piano experience….the best of the best engineers know all they can do is capture what sounds best to them in the moment. Adding room mics helps but again, never to replicate what your ears experienced live………remember…..your outer ear is a very complex bio engineered waveguide…..no such apparatus on condensor mics……….just a capsule with a polar pattern.
Piano is extremely dynamic……and to process it, it requires dynamic compression…….which through limiting adds distortion……very frequency dependent…….hard to blame a ‘speaker’ over a headphone ‘speaker’ without considering the response ……maybe the headphone has a deep null at 6.3k surpressing the objectionable distortion where the speaker is more linear in that range…..again….no real reference.
Last edited:
Where the speaker/room gets out of the way so you can hear the recording unimpeded. Where the image is clear enough that you can perceive the details from one instrument or voice by direction alone.
This means where listener fatigue has been effectively removed (important, but difficult to achieve).. and where the output is balanced so that if it's possible for something to sound as though it is actually there, it can.
From this argument, the listening experience inside an anechoic must be super.
The BBC tried this in the early 70s including with electrostats. The sound was terrible. Much worse than in a listtening room. And stereo was terrible too.
It only started sounding OK when they put a floor down in the anechoic
Hi EdGr,
Kindest regards,
M
Could you please give a reference to such recordings, e.g., label, pressing, etc.?
Kindest regards,
M
Headphones: Audiotechnika M50x and up, in the same or above class from AKG, Bayer, Sony, Focal, Sehn. They all sound approximately the same, it is not easy to tell them apart while blind-testing them. They measure pretty well except that FR is not (scientifically speaking) measurable because it heavily depends on the pressing force, location, and skin. The LTI distortions (energy-wise) in mid-range are < -80dB, very smooth, with no Barkhausen noise, and nothing to offend your ear.
The guys who design these headphones say that despite their high cost ($250 and up) these are sold well below cost because the amount of their R&D is simply insane while the sales volume is miserable.
The source - Marantz SA8001, superaudio. Tried and tested, measured by many, and found beyond regret.
Preamp - passive DIY
Amplifier - Naim
Speakers - many, starting with entry-level generics like B&W 30x and all the way to Focal 908.1 (the 918 brother was the best speaker in the world in 1994) and B&W 80x circa 2008. You can tell if the engineers trusted the ears or "designed-to-numbers".
Room - about $3000 worth of Sonex and Auralex, RT60 < 150ms for f > 130Hz.
AFAIK, whenever the room is taken care of, the bottleneck is loudspeakers. Inside loudspeakers, the tweeter is not a problem if crossed out at 5kHz and above, the woofers are also not a problem whenever you have sufficiently many of them. The port must be blocked (or you will have -20dB distortions). Midrange is THE offender. BTW, IMHO, 2-ways are not worth listening to unless you listen to podcasts.
Microphones are not perfect but they are not the bottleneck in the hands of a gifted devoted sound engineer. I much prefer "live" recordings without any compressors, limiters, noise gates, automixers, etc. Just static gain/pane setup with RMS at -30dBFS. A bit noisy but I can live with it. What these guys are doing is often amazing (alas, not always). You have to sit at the 5th-row center to have a similar sound picture. Sometimes, they create a soundscape with total immersion like you are in the middle of the orchestra. I have no idea how they do it, and I admire their talents.
Compression of the piano was a must during the LP era. You simply could not fit 30dB of the dynamic range of artist expressivity on LP. So people in the audio industry invented a listening room phenomenon: at home, listeners need much less dynamic range than in a concert hall. Hmm... what did they smoke?
I do not know about BBC and the 70s, but in the 00s, I tried it many times myself and it was simply supreme.From this argument, the listening experience inside an anechoic must be super.
The BBC tried this in the early 70s including with electrostats. The sound was terrible. Much worse than in a listtening room. And stereo was terrible too.
It only started sounding OK when they put a floor down in the anechoic
After a couple of hours in the anechoic chamber, your hearing adapts to the lower noise level and can lower the RMS volume down to ~60dB SPL, which also lowers some of the high-order distortions. Then you turn the lights off and the magic begins.
However, you will hear all the imperfections of performance, recording, and reproduction. If you try to listen to MP3s/etc, even at a high bit rate, you will hear a distinctive cloud of noise in the very center... at least I did
Hi mayhem13,
No, the DJ is not an artist. That person is a performer and he/she is using material as part of his/her performance. I wouldn't call what they do something you would listen to by yourself, it's a group thing. He/she is throwing a party, period. I've done enough work for DJ's, and most think they are great and talented. Most are simply an ego driving a loud, poorly performing audio system. If that is an artist to you, you have an extremely loooooow bar.
Anyway, take a position or be quiet. All you're doing is attempting to challenge people who do know what they are doing and I seriously doubt by this point that you have the foggiest idea. If you continue with this posting style ... well. Read the rules please.
Once again you are confusing things, perhaps on purpose judging from your attacks on everyone.
No, the DJ is not an artist. That person is a performer and he/she is using material as part of his/her performance. I wouldn't call what they do something you would listen to by yourself, it's a group thing. He/she is throwing a party, period. I've done enough work for DJ's, and most think they are great and talented. Most are simply an ego driving a loud, poorly performing audio system. If that is an artist to you, you have an extremely loooooow bar.
Anyway, take a position or be quiet. All you're doing is attempting to challenge people who do know what they are doing and I seriously doubt by this point that you have the foggiest idea. If you continue with this posting style ... well. Read the rules please.
But you can't know that without the dreaded "V & V".
I actually did a search, and it turns out that nobody has uttered the words verification or validation, or verify or validate in the entire 16 pages of this thread (the closest was "valid theory")... Interesting...
Kind of like the marketing team is sometimes thought to dictate terms to the engineers, here engineers must do subjective testing (or at least be responsive when somebody else does it) to find out whether or not their theories on what constitutes "accuracy" hold water.
The example I gave could even be mono mic'd. You seem to have missed the point that accuracy was defined by the audience's ears, not by routing the speaker output back into a microphone and checking the results on-screen. Checking the results against what?
One could argue that the maverick system was an effect box, but then they are both effect boxes. And what do we call pre-distortion or active EQ to undo some effect that was introduced elsewhere in the system? How about a compression codec that mitigates the damage from having to reduce the data rate elsewhere in the system?
Hi abstract,
May I disagree with "Accuracy is defined by the audience's ears"?
During a concert, we have an orchestra and ears. Then we put XY mics (DG preferred method) in place of the ears, add more mics closer to instruments, mix and channelize the recordings into L&R, and reproduce the sound in a listening room (or by headphones) to the same ears. As far as we have precisely LTI transport and only insert pure latency, we are set, The role of the ears in the concert hall and at home is exactly the same. Whether the ears are golden or led, does not matter.
Accuracy can be defined only in terms of LTI distortions' metrics.
May I disagree with "Accuracy is defined by the audience's ears"?
During a concert, we have an orchestra and ears. Then we put XY mics (DG preferred method) in place of the ears, add more mics closer to instruments, mix and channelize the recordings into L&R, and reproduce the sound in a listening room (or by headphones) to the same ears. As far as we have precisely LTI transport and only insert pure latency, we are set, The role of the ears in the concert hall and at home is exactly the same. Whether the ears are golden or led, does not matter.
Accuracy can be defined only in terms of LTI distortions' metrics.
My prior statement "accurate refers to the fidelity in recreating the sound field or sound pressures at the listener's ears that would have been apparent had the listener been sat at the microphone position in the original recording environment" clearly defines a reference.
If someone hypothesizes or theorizes, by definition they are inviting or some would say in the spirit of classic science demanding a challenge to their premise. You’ve somehow identified challenging questions as attacks…..I’m sorry you’ve characterized spirited debate as something so threatening as an attack.
Anyway….my position….is arbitration as I know enough to know what i don’t or cannot explain or support. Sure, absolutely…measurements matter…..very much….but NOT ALL…..NOT by a long shot. I know enough by the simple examinations of tens of thousands of speaker system designs built over decades that there is no empirical standard that measurements will ever establish. Not unlike today’s climate models, there’s simply too many ( in both cases exponentially) variables on both ends of the equation from the inputs as the source to the outputs as the listener……both being significantly subjective in nature.
I shouldn’t have to defend accepted science….I’m not the OP nor have i theorized THE answer. Simple observation is clear…..we are all physiologically unique. I have seen NO evidence in this thread or anywhere else for that matter that there exists a system of measurements that can establish a point of reference to the degree necessary that equalizes that uniqueness. One can and many have shared ‘observations’……but at the end of the day with a large enough data set, even the simple double blind falls apart………and that’s a profound result in itself…….and suggests we’re asking the wrong question(s). My question is Stereo…the core….the shining sun of how we’ve consumed music for decades…..the rock of which audiophilia has been built upon which is being defined here somehow as an accepted science……that notion is or idea is deeply flawed……not stereo reproduction, but the classification it has been given.