Videos of Acoustically-Coupled Audio Recordings

[Al M.]

Well sure, now you have some awareness since I showed you the error of your ways. And you're welcome. But honestly, I did it more for me than you as there's nothing worse than some bloke making half-cocked erroneous sound quality accusations about others' playback systems or their presentations / videos. Especially when some of us have spent years performing serious due diligence to address hopefully every significant performance aspect of a playback config.


I never said you were the only one prone to error.


I appreciate you sharing this strategy but bear in mind that others may have better more efficient ones.


Thanks, Al. But don't act too surprised as I posted that exact same video two years ago in the male video thread. IOW, that video's sound quality hasn't improved since then but maybe some of our perspectives have?

Anyway, glad you're finally coming around to the concept of in-room videos and some of the potential value they offer.

I'll let others decide what they think of tone and content of your post.

 

[DasguteOhr]

Speaking of fun, here’s my bass driven track. The iPhone mic may be overloaded and the ’reverb‘ on Pat’s voice may be enhanced a touch over what I hear in the room. Comments + or — please.
Delay on the addition of master fuse, sorry.

Looks and sounds pretty good, but i'm not a barber fan.
One little question sub setting 20,30 or 40hz and xover point what do you use in your room? Did you ever tried cpc technology xover?

 

[Al M.]

yesterday i did receive the Sennheiser HD-400 Pro headphones i purchased based on the recommendation of @hopkins. on Amazon around $200.

in the last day or so i've quickly grabbed them 7 or 8 times to listen to a You Tube or other video that i happened on. they quickly plug into my laptop and it drives them just fine.....using around 40%-50% of available volume. also listened to a number of You Tube video's i've listened to many times already to get a feel for the difference.

no; this is not my big rig performance. but it's much more complimentary to the video than the laptop speakers or i-phone 13 Pro; i get a more top to bottom balanced sound, more micro dynamics and clarity/detail, and the listening experience is more true to the source IMHO. an improved tool for the job.

if we are going to take YouTube videos seriously, at $200; not at least acquiring these is a mistake if you are now commonly using your phone or laptop for judging the merits of videos. not saying this is more than it is, but it's certainly a common sense thing to do. you are reducing the degree of error to a valuable degree. differences between different video's is clearly more apparent.

i've owned $30k plus headphone rigs. so i know how they can sound. this is not all the way to that. but it's far enough to matter.

and i could also see reviewing your own video's with these prior to posting to get a better idea of what you are sending out.

Great post Mike.

As for your last point. It never occurred to me that people might be so unreflective that they don't properly review the videos that they post, but you may be on to something here. It may explain why some proudly post videos that sound quite poor.

If you evaluate your own videos over computer or phone speakers then you may not realize how inadequate they sound if they do. Don't be surprised then if those of us who use headphones for listening to them scratch our heads.

 

[Blue58]

Looks and sounds pretty good, but i'm not a barber fan.
One little question sub setting 20,30 or 40hz and xover point what do you use in your room? Did you ever tried cpc technology xover?

Fanboy here, seen her 3 times. Once stood not 12ft from the bass and it’s powerful but soft, not tight or hifi-ish.

My subs are at 20hz and xover about 165hz (according to the dial, not measured). They have the Omega upgrade but replaced the cpc with a Miflex copper bypassed with Duelund Tin/copper and a Jantzen copper foil inductor.
Replaced internal wiring, damped the ’tubes’ and upgraded the binding posts. The bass cabs have upgraded IEC inlets, SR Blue fuses (the best at the time of build) and new posts. Laser aligned, of course, not by sight etc etc. Giant Herbies gliders to decouple from the suspended floor.

Thanks for the kind comment and questions.

Blue58

ps. The amps run EML globe 45 v4, Tungsram ECC83 Nickel plate and Amperex 5as4a.

 

[morricab]

Great post Mike.

As for your last point. It never occurred to me that people might be so unreflective that they don't properly review the videos that they post, but you may be on to something here. It may explain why some proudly post videos that sound quite poor.

If you evaluate your own videos over computer or phone speakers then you may not realize how inadequate they sound if they do. Don't be surprised then if those of us who use headphones for listening to them scratch our heads.

The seeming fact that someone would be listening to these videos only with another phone or built in laptop speakers is in itself a bit shocking to me. I only listen with headphones or at least my car system.

 

[DasguteOhr]

Fanboy here, seen her 3 times. Once stood not 12ft from the bass and it’s powerful but soft, not tight or hifi-ish.

My subs are at 20hz and xover about 165hz (according to the dial, not measured). They have the Omega upgrade but replaced the cpc with a Miflex copper bypassed with Duelund Tin/copper and a Jantzen copper foil inductor.
Replaced internal wiring, damped the ’tubes’ and upgraded the binding posts. The bass cabs have upgraded IEC inlets, SR Blue fuses (the best at the time of build) and new posts. Laser aligned, of course, not by sight etc etc. Giant Herbies gliders to decouple from the suspended floor.

Thanks for the kind comment and questions.

Blue58

ps. The amps run EML globe 45 v4, Tungsram ECC83 Nickel plate and Amperex 5as4a.

Thanks for information, a lot mods you done to it.
You need +21 db from the amp to get 20hz that's why they gave the two 10-inchers a 1000-watt amplifier so that they have a sensitivity(SPL) that comes close to that of the horns. Sometimes it's better to set it to 30Hz as this has the benefit of giving the music 9dB more dynamic range. I use the purple fuse, really a good product to hear straight away. snergistic have a lot of good stuff like power cord, grounding block in their program. Have fun nice sunday

P.S cpc caps need to be minimum 250volt dc dielectric strength

 

[Ron Resnick]

PeterA has graciously applauded me several times for posting videos and for exploring and comparing external microphones to improve audio capture quality, and to make the videos more representative of the sound I perceive live in the room, even though I am skeptical of the value of videos except in narrow circumstances.

I applaud Mike, another video skeptic, for experimenting with video playback and for trying to make video playback more useful to him.

If advocates can begin to persuade skeptics I think interesting progress can be achieved on all sides.

 

[bonzo75]

If advocates can begin to persuade skeptics I think interesting progress can be achieved on all sides.

give us 5 more years. If we loop this thread enough times I am sure Al side all will get it

 

[Al M.]

give us 5 more years. If we loop this thread enough times I am sure Al side all will get it

LOL! There is nothing to "get", frankly.

 

[andromedaaudio]

LOL! There is nothing to "get", frankly.

There isn t .
This whole industry is a bunch of baloney to be honest .
Your " cheap " octave system might just as well compete with anything out there regardless of price .
Who knows!
The rest is all about built quality / bling bling look what i ve got .

Im sorry if i sound deprimental but thats my conclusion.
50 K wil get you just as much audiophile heaven then 500 K ..

 

[Mike Lavigne]

PeterA has graciously applauded me several times for posting videos and for exploring and comparing external microphones to improve audio capture quality, and to make the videos more representative of the sound I perceive live in the room, even though I am skeptical of the value of videos except in narrow circumstances.

I applaud Mike, another video skeptic, for experimenting with video playback and for trying to make video playback more useful to him.

If advocates can begin to persuade skeptics I think interesting progress can be achieved on all sides.

i just followed @hopkins.

made sense as a simple easy step.

 

[Ron Resnick]

give us 5 more years. If we loop this thread enough times I am sure Al side all will get it

Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back just yet. The corollary of this is that, to bridge the divide, video advocates should be willing to adopt the audio capture quality improvements, and the playback improvements, and to stand in favor of the standardization efforts, the late adopters/skeptics are advocating.

I agree with Tim that one reasonable philosophy (but by no means exclusive objective) here is to seek to maximize in the video the sonic representativeness of what is heard live in the room. It took some time to get on the paper, but, by evaluating different external microphones, by selecting one of them, and then by EQing that mic to get closer to what I hear in the room, I think I found a formula that at least resembles in terms of resolution and in terms of tonal balance what I hear in the room.

But this experimentation also taught me that I think the internal mic in the iPhone is not as resolving as the Shure MV88+. I personally will pay more attention to videos of comparisons recorded with external microphones which are EQed for tonal balance representativeness of the in the room sound.

I think video posters should solve their own equations for a combination of external microphone and mic EQ which they believe achieves the greatest representativeness of their live in the room sound, and then employ that formula consistently.

 

[wil]

You're off to a good start, Al.


Well, you were off to a good start but alas...


So you already had an awareness of this rather blatant sonic shortcoming but kept mum until I pointed it out? Why the delay? I was going to point it out much earlier but wanted to see if anybody else might notice this serious shortcoming. And now that I've pointed it out, you claim all of my videos sound bath-tubby/empty coffee cannish just like or perhaps worse than others? But wait a minute. How might I be able to discern this shortcoming in others' videos if I'm just as blinded by my own videos and in-room presentations being guilty of the same/similar shortcoming? Your logic does not seem reasonable here.

Anyway, I'm guessing the easiest most surefire way to confirm anybody's claims would be be to find an "official" Youtube version and compare for themselves. Assuming one possessed even the most basic listening skills, I can all but guarantee that if they don't hear that sound in any "official" Youtube video, they won't hear it in my video either. Frankly, it should be impossible.

Regardless, we obviously have entirely different interpretations of what we're hearing.


Interesting. Do you think you'd recognize the different between listening room reverb and recording hall reverb aka ambient info embedded in the recording? Based on your own words, I suspect you're not hearing any distinction between the two types. This potential truth may also substantiate my suspicion that most of our treasured audio memories ain't worth near as much as many of us think.

Morricab also accused one or more of my videos of essentially the same thing. As I said to morricab 6 or 8 months ago, the vast majority of this "way too much reverb" you think you hear is actually the ambient info embedded in the recording. To explain why that's possible and probable is irrelevant to this thread. And even though you and I clearly hear and/or interpret things differently, I still think I can demonstrate here whether you're hearing way too much reverb from my listening room or if what you hear in my videos is genuine ambient info embedded in the recording.

Crank up your computer's volume and put your best headphones on and just listen to the last 12 seconds to the very end when the music stops instantly. That should give good indication just how live/dead (think reverb) my room might be.

As I said to morricab, if this WAY too much reverb is coming from the room itself then logic dictates that it should be a constant 100% of the time for every note and every track. If for no other reason than my room changeth not between playback presentations nor has it changed since 2010. Again, logic should dictate this constant, right?

Now compare the amount of reverb from that last 12 seconds to the opening 12 seconds of this number. Surely you don't think my measely little listiening room or for that matter anybody elses room, is truly capable of generating this level of natural and musical reverb (ambient info) and be variable to boot, do you? If so, I'd love to hear your explanation. But hopefully, you can see/hear that that's exactly what it is (natural / musical) because it comes from the music info embedded in the recording and the end of the first video should substantiate my claim that my room isn't contributing much if any reverb at all. A direct contrast with your and others' claims.

IOW, should you notice the drastic differences between my two videos then shouldn't logic also dictate the bulk of this supposedly way too much reverb you claim MUST actually be coming from the recording itself? That's why I initially asked if you thought you could discern the difference between a listening room's reverb and the reverb/ambient info embedded in the recording.

IME, there most always is or should be a clear sonic distinction between the two reverb sources - provided one knows what to listen for. One source of reverb is cheap / "hi-fi" sounding and easy to achieve (think empty coffee can sound) while the other is actually quite natural / musical and more difficult/rare to achieve (think live music sound). If it were easy, everybody would be doing it, right? Yet, from my pespective you are incorrectly identifying / labeling sonic characteristics and attaching your allegience toward the more unnatural rather than more natural sound. The big question is why until now have you poo-poo'ed listening to a more natural/musical reverb embedded in a given recording? How can this seemingly obvious difference be so easily misinterpreted/overlooked?


Sure, it could be an exaggeration of sorts. But it could also be a few other things. Remember, the key considerations / differences between what we hear from an "official" Youtube version compared to an in-room video include...

1. An "official" youtube version is typically bit-streamed from the recording medium or other digital storage directly to a Youtube channel for our listening pleasure. In contrast, the music info of an in-room video first must pass thru two additional and substantial detours - our systems and our speaker/room interfaces. But those two additional detours are really two additional substantial noise floors and their thresholds. One noise floor is electrical having to do with electric current flow/input signal all the way from Hoover Dam to your speaker drivers' input and the other mechanical/acoustical noise floor starting at the speaker drivers and ending at the acoustical musical presentation influenced by the speaker/room interface. IOW, if we understand the severity of negative sonic impact these two noise floor thresholds induce, it really would be quite a feat when the musicality of an in-room video can get anywhere in the ballpark of an "official" Youtube video.

2. Though clearly part of the mechanical/acoustical-induced noise floor, the topic of distance / air between our speakers and the recording mic(s), this topic deserves special note. We may realize that speakers need certain room/space to breathe. But speakers don't really breathe, they actually broadcast and that broadcast is in some ways like a second live performance. IOW, the live performance is broadcast potentially throughout the entire recording hall as it's being captured at the recording mics and the in-room playback presentation is also broadcasting potentially throughout the entire listening room as it's being captured at our in-room recording mics.

That fact alone implies our recording mics' are gonna' capture some additional air / space not present in any live performance. IOW, we should not be surprised if our in-room videos sound a bit more airy / reverberant, thinner, lighter, a bit more distant, etc. And of course whenever there's greater perceived distances between our ears and the sound source, we should expect some loss of warmth, tonality, umph, jump, etc. That would be natural.

In summary, and given the above, it's rather amazing any in-room video's sound quality can get in the musical ballpark of an "official" youtube video. And in sharp contrast with your claims and interpretations, I think you'll find perhaps all of my published videos easily within the ballpark. And for good reason.


I'm confused and since we're talking different fruits already I need to ask.... Should I be thinking thinking eggs over easy or Miami Heat over the Celtics? Does this mean you're using laptop speakers instead of headphones? Or headphones via computer?

Gotta' ask because some claim to use their computer's built-in or desktop speakers. Why I've no clue. If one realized the excruciating pain and time it can take to achieve a superior speaker/room interface in their primary system, how much more potentially excruciating pain and time it must take to achieve a superior acoustic coupling between desktop speakers and room - which I doubt is even possible?

Seriously, where does one even begin to address some of this?

I don't hear an excess of room reverb in Steno's in-room recordings. And this is something I think I'm particularly sensitive to in some other video's posted here.

 

[wil]

Here is a video of the song on my big Wisdom Audio Adrenaline Rush system with the Remastering process, from tonight’s listening session:

Sounds good, but I bet your DHT system sounds better and more lifelike.

 

[bonzo75]

Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back just yet. The corollary of this is that, to bridge the divide, video advocates should be willing to adopt the audio capture quality improvements, and the playback improvements, and to stand in favor of the standardization efforts, the late adopters/skeptics are advocating.

there is no corollary. We have been saying forever that you need to stream to a good speaker or headphones.

regarding capture, iPhone is sufficient to get the message across. The other mics might have more resolution, but are not required

 

[wil]

What do you think of this video

What do you think of this video. And this is not directed to those who think every mobile phone video is trash, thanks. Please listen to the end for the brass and the woodwinds

www.whatsbestforum.com

Perhaps this will give you some perspective where tima is coming from.

While the in room video in the above link is full of life -- it is also capturing a great deal of room coloration. It sounds like the speakers are playing havoc with the room. (I assume it sounds much better in person!).

I prefer what I hear from the straight YouTube recording. I'm curious what @tima thinks. Does he think the in room recording is more lifelike? Maybe it is (partly because of the room interaction) but the YouTube is surely a more realistic rendition of the studio recording.

 

[Carlos269]

Sounds good, but I bet your DHT system sounds better and more lifelike!

My DHT/SET/HORN systems certainly sound exceptional. My goal with my REMASTERING project was to dial in the big system to give me what the DHT/SET/HORN systems excel at, intimacy, detail and an organic presentation.

You say it sounds good, to me it sounds great, as it should considering that I dialed it in to sound exactly like I want the system to sound. After all, there is a smarter way:

There is a smarter way to achieve our sonic objectives

 

[wil]

Thank you Stehno. The space is only 9’ x 20’ and therefore soundstage width is restricted plus bass does tend to activate the room. The floor is floorboard over rafters on the 1st floor, can’t do much about that.

I bought the horns used 20yrs ago so had no choice in the colour and not a patch on what you can request now.

I’ll refrain from posting more until the SR Master fuse arrives.

I wonder if your room would benefit from a distributed bass array. From what I understand it can be an elegant and low cost way to balance bass modes in a small room.

info at:

DEBRA Distributed Enhanced Bass Reflex Array – James Romeyn

jamesromeyn.com

 

[Rexp]

Youtuber, HiFi Immersion, records with pro gear that easily differentiates between good and bad playback. Here's one of the few good digitally sourced systems in action:

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I wonder if your room would benefit from a distributed bass array. From what I understand it can be an elegant and low cost way to balance bass modes in a small room.

info at:

DEBRA Distributed Enhanced Bass Reflex Array – James Romeyn

jamesromeyn.com

or an Audiokenesis Swarm from WBF Member @Duke LaJeune