My friend keeps pushing me to do it. Closest concert hall may be at UC Davis, a fair drive from Auburn for me. He says it important to visit occasionally at rehearsal time so you can walk the hall and listen from all positions including from on the stage. Fortunately he is one of my trusted listeners.
That said, I have a pretty good collection of instruments here, all sorts of things actually. Some of Adrea's visiting group ogled a couple of instruments on the way in to listen. So there's always those for reference.
Beyond that, I have learned to recognize weird sounds dacs make that most people would not notice. Linear amplifiers don't produce effects like aliasing, jitter, noise modulation, etc. I'm better at hearing those types of artifacts than my friend.
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Next question is how do you know what the recording is supposed to sound like? It will never sound exactly like human hearing in the same space, unless maybe the recording was binaural mic'ed and the playback earbuds are compensated for your particular ear canal shapes. Rarely is it done that way. More often a classical concert would be mic'ed with two large diaphragm condensers. They don't have the same pickup patterns as human ears. They don't turn their heads during the performance either. So less spatial information than a human would perceive live.
The closest we can usually come to knowing what sound was actually recorded is when the event is available in both analog and digital formats. Yes, mastering differences will exist. Yet its still about the best we can do.
The closest we can usually come to knowing what sound was actually recorded is when the event is available in both analog and digital formats. Yes, mastering differences will exist. Yet its still about the best we can do.
That is the $64,000 question confronting subjectivism. Even should a live sounding reproduction be achieved, how would one know that it sounded like the original live event did? Which still would constitute a huge advance in my view, BTW. The answer, I think, is to be found in - wait for it - some set of specifications.
Such specifications would first have to accurately reflect the subjective sound heard via reproduction. I suspect that once we have an accurate set of specifications which describe the reproduced sound experience, not which merely describe certain parameters of the signal transfer path, then such specifications can be utilized to confirm that the reproduced sound is subjectively the same as was the live-event’s sound.
As it is now, there’s the widespread presumption (IMHO) that existing objective specifications of the signal transfer path already confirm whether the reproduced sound is therefore accurate to the live-event’s sound. I suppose, a pretty good debate is to be found in the defining of, “accurate to the live-event’s sound”. Whatever the definition, my ears tell me that the sound of a reproduction, and the sound of a live-event typically don’t sound anywhere close to each other.
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How much do we really want the truth? To remain in contented ignorance with the blue pill, or to take that red one and learn the potentially unsettling and life changing truth. What if instead of the limp body of Neo flushed down into the drain, all that remains of you is a head with some umbilical chord. It breaks off and you roll down in the great flush into the unpleasant bottom. You look around and all you see is all the other heads having expired after making a poor pill choice.
But your hearing is still in tact and in the last few hours of your life you are left listening to your catchy favourite tune "Death Don't Have No Mercy (in this land)" by Reverend Gary Davis, this in perfect reproduction. And you are asking yourself "Was it worth it?" As the tune goes:
Y'know death don't have no mercy in this land
Death don't have no mercy in this land, in this land
Come to your house, you know he don't take long
Look in bed this morning, children find your mother gone.
I said death don't have no mercy in this land.
Death will leave you standing and crying in this land,
Death will leave you standing and crying in this land, in this land, yeah!....
But your hearing is still in tact and in the last few hours of your life you are left listening to your catchy favourite tune "Death Don't Have No Mercy (in this land)" by Reverend Gary Davis, this in perfect reproduction. And you are asking yourself "Was it worth it?" As the tune goes:
Y'know death don't have no mercy in this land
Death don't have no mercy in this land, in this land
Come to your house, you know he don't take long
Look in bed this morning, children find your mother gone.
I said death don't have no mercy in this land.
Death will leave you standing and crying in this land,
Death will leave you standing and crying in this land, in this land, yeah!....
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For the recordings I made of my partner's choir when she still had one, the main difference I heard was the reverberation. I heard more reverberation in the recording than in reality, probably because it all comes from the front with a conventional stereo recording. I used two cardoid condenser microphones (AKG C900) in an ORTF set-up (17 cm distance, 110 degrees angle), a DIY microphone preamplifier and a Fostex FR2-LE field memory recorder.
And thats why, especially someone who doesn't regularly listen to live music, should be a bit careful about absolut ranking of sound quality. mk4, you must understand that you are in the entertainment business and not in the strict reproduction game - all your SQ statements is about what you like, not what is a correct sound - as you don't posses the reference needed to do so. My understanding is that you also listen to mostly studio productions which further disqualifies from being able to evaluate the hifi properties of an audio system.
I think you should be more upfront with this or tune down your statements so that when someone reads your confident messages, expressed with the "right" lingo, understand this. Many do this here of course so why are you specifically pointed out - well, you speak with such a confident "voice", almost like a salesman or a pro, so you have to be extra careful.
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The lack of reference is especially true with the often repeated mods or component recommendations based on listening tests (e.g. bypass caps, resistors, ferrite beads on PS lines). In most cases there is no practical way to arrange a comparison test for these evaluations so the normal procedure is:
1. listen to something
2. make a mod (e.g. change a component)
3. (after about 1-60 minutes) listen again and conclude that it sounds better.
Better compared to what? There is no reference so it is only a subjective opinion with heavy expectation bias especially if this mod was recommended by some "SQ guy".
1. listen to something
2. make a mod (e.g. change a component)
3. (after about 1-60 minutes) listen again and conclude that it sounds better.
Better compared to what? There is no reference so it is only a subjective opinion with heavy expectation bias especially if this mod was recommended by some "SQ guy".
@TNT, thank you for your thoughtful post. I will keep it in mind.
However, I would make two points in response:
1. Please go back and read very carefully what Daniel Kanaman says when he describes the mind as storyteller. What he says isn't just some guy's opinion. It is based on a lifetime of world class scientific research. Among many other scientific honors and acknowledgments, Daniel Kahneman was also awarded the Nobel Prize. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/02...ays.&text=Comment:,marvel, but a fallible one.
In that regard, you have constructed a coherent story. However its is fatally flawed, as I will try to explain in the next point below.
2. Your quote above is entirely an assumption on your part. In making that assumption you have chosen to ignore or dismiss things I have tried to explain many times before. They include among other things (a) my use of a listening panel, and (b) the distinction between listening for preference and listening for discrimination of technical factors. Please let me try to state the situation plainly: I don't speak of SQ based on my personal preference. Your assumption quoted above is incorrect. There is much you don't know about in terms what goes on here and that I am not at liberty to talk about. What I will say is there is much that underpins my statements that you don't know about. The real story is more complex than your story. However complexity comes with a price: Story coherence is not as high as can be obtained from simplistic stories which conveniently ignore available disconfirming evidence. Sorry.
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Perhaps - who knows, as you don't tell - but ok, I'll take your word for it. But then you need to balance your statements to what you have divulged. You cant play both games at the same time (without getting this kind of comments) - it's deceiving/confusing for the members.
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From post #544
Harmonic distortion is not of gain proportionality to the fundamental. It can grow and decay faster than the fundamental. In a system with clear background (non-masking) the dynamic contrasts are increased along with greater energy in the upper registers (the third harmonics) of all fundamental sounds. This can account for the greater front to back depth than that of perceived reality. Without dielectric masking the dynamic contrasts can become too great. IMO there must exist some form of balance between harmonic distortion and masking to create some form of realistic dynamic contrast presentation. One of the tell tale signs of such compensation is that the presentation requires setting the volume level. IMO better systems can be listened to at low levels.
The phenomenon described in the group testing by Markw4 goes beyond his personal preference (or bias), being a presentation by Mark4 of uncertainty. Notwithstanding other artifacts, many systems can be described as dull and lifeless, to bright and lean. These are not necessarily frequency response related (that IMO are mostly dielectric based). IMO there are two primary factors that contribute to these results, one is harmonic distortion and the other is masking (of variant kinds). For systems that seem dull and lifeless these can be viewed to have low harmonic distortion along with high level masking. Systems that are bright and lean the system can have low masking with higher levels of distortion.
Harmonic distortion is not of gain proportionality to the fundamental. It can grow and decay faster than the fundamental. In a system with clear background (non-masking) the dynamic contrasts are increased along with greater energy in the upper registers (the third harmonics) of all fundamental sounds. This can account for the greater front to back depth than that of perceived reality. Without dielectric masking the dynamic contrasts can become too great. IMO there must exist some form of balance between harmonic distortion and masking to create some form of realistic dynamic contrast presentation. One of the tell tale signs of such compensation is that the presentation requires setting the volume level. IMO better systems can be listened to at low levels.
Regarding some of the recent discussion and conjecture, I received an email from Andrea this morning. With his permission I will quote from it as follows:
"...all the people who attended the listening session at your home usually attend concert halls and listen to the most important orchestras such as NYPO, BSO, LSO, Berliner Philharmoniker and so on. ...Pandemic aside, we are always around listening to concerts. One of the Last was Yuja Wang with Orchestre de Paris. ...Also I have been playing piano for fun for almost 50 years, and in fact I have a baby grand piano at home. So they know what it means to listen to live acoustic music.
Listening impressions were more or less the same and consistent with your impressions."
"...all the people who attended the listening session at your home usually attend concert halls and listen to the most important orchestras such as NYPO, BSO, LSO, Berliner Philharmoniker and so on. ...Pandemic aside, we are always around listening to concerts. One of the Last was Yuja Wang with Orchestre de Paris. ...Also I have been playing piano for fun for almost 50 years, and in fact I have a baby grand piano at home. So they know what it means to listen to live acoustic music.
Listening impressions were more or less the same and consistent with your impressions."
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