Videos of Acoustically-Coupled Audio Recordings

[stehno]

This is where it gets kinda frustrating.

I used my judgement to comment on Peter's video. Unlike you did, I did not use some you tube or third party video as a compare to Peter's.

Yup, I only used my judgment too and in my case it took maybe 5 or 10 seconds to realize pretty much the opposite of what you realized. Then I hunted for some type of "official" youtube video before commenting because without the "official" youtube video, it's forever a he said/she said. But with an "official" youtube video we can often times cut to the chase while better substantiating points / positions.

For me anyway, these in-room videos are potentially less frustrating because they are often times far more telling than mere words. Big time saver.

 

[bonzo75]

I think each of us is allowed to define the standards each of us chooses to apply to our various activities.

The fact that you have a standard where you go to a physical demo only in a tuxedo and in a Rolls means nothing to whether it was set up well and sounds good or not.

My point was that the enture motive for the statement you made to mislead the forum into thinking that only one way works, the other way does not, and that you were right to ignore previous videos and are right only to pay attention to ones made by a good mic.

You still haven't shown is the use of the mic, as you haven't recorded differences/changes with both iphone and Shure. If you prove that iphone does not pick up relevant things and the SHure does, I will accept.

Till then, I am going to ignore all your videos that are not recorded by iphone. I hope others who record with iphone join me in doing the same. You can then exchange PMs with Al

 

[Al M.]

Till then, I am going to ignore all your videos that are not recorded by iphone. I hope others who record with iphone join me in doing the same.

LOL

 

[tima]

You still haven't shown is the use of the mic, as you haven't recorded differences/changes with both iphone and Shure. If you prove that iphone does not pick up relevant things and the SHure does, I will accept.

I'd be surprised if there were not differences between native phone and externally mic'd phone. I'd also be surprised if the externally mic'd phone resulted in such a different sound that it gave a different character to the system sufficient to change an assessment about it. I speculate a greater sonic difference from the variety of playback devces than from phone or phone+mic.

 

[bonzo75]

I'd be surprised if there were not differences between native phone and externally mic'd phone. I'd also be surprised if the externally mic'd phone resulted in such a different sound that it gave a different character to the system sufficient to change an assessment about it. I speculate a greater sonic difference from the variety of playback devces than from phone or phone+mic.

Completely agree. Ron's audiophile brain is focusing on the differences in resolution in the recording between the two mics. Maybe he is scarred from debate with Peter on resolution. But he does not seem to be getting that all we need is a representation of the system or understand the differences due to changes that happen in a system. So he is giving zero reply to the fact, does the iphone suffice for this. His logic seems to be Shure shows higher information. Which, Ron, does not negate that iphone suffices for the cause.

 

[Al M.]

I'd be surprised if there were not differences between native phone and externally mic'd phone. I'd also be surprised if the externally mic'd phone resulted in such a different sound that it gave a different character to the system sufficient to change an assessment about it.

There are massive differences resulting in very different character of sound. Ron has posted IPhone mic video vs external mic. I actually prefer the tonal balance over the iPhone mic, Ron thinks resolution is better with the external mic. Maybe Ron can link to the post in his system thread, it would take me a long time to find it.

I would also want to ask Hopkins to post the link to his extremely informative post where he compared a variety of recording equipment for capturing the sound of his system. Unfortunately I did not bookmark the page. Different recordings from iPhone, external mic, external recorder etc make the system sound like different systems each time. Same with Ron's two types of recordings.

 

[bonzo75]

There are massive differences.

Which isn’t the point

 

[hopkins]

There are massive differences resulting in very different character of sound. Ron has posted IPhone mic video vs external mic. I actually prefer the tonal balance over the iPhone mic, Ron thinks resolution is better with the external mic. Maybe Ron can link to the post in his system thread, it would take me a long time to find it.

I would also want to ask Hopkins to post the link to his extremely informative post where he compared a variety of recording equipment for capturing the sound of his system. Unfortunately I did not bookmark the page. Different recordings from iPhone, external mic, external recorder etc make the system sound like different systems each time. Same with Ron's two types of recordings.

Here you go:

Videos of Acoustically-Coupled Audio Recordings

When I think of "balanced" I think of a see-saw. A see-saw is balanced only when the pivot point is in the middle of an equally-bisected, equally-weighted board. Balanced sound understood as a teeter-totter? That may be what is holding you back. balanced - adjective 1. fairly or equally...

www.whatsbestforum.com

 

[PeterA]

Hi,

First of all, before attempting to answer, I just want to say that I totally "get" what you are trying to accomplish (I read your thread about "Natural Sound") and in a sense I am trying to accomplish the same thing! In an ideal world, we would have speakers that offer very low level resolution, are highly dynamic, and with a perfectly flat frequency response. But that does not exist (not that I am aware of), so we have to make choices.

I love this video (possibly also because it reminds me of time spend in Japan) - a bunch of audiophiles in awe over a 1950s single driver speaker:

Apparent contradiction ? No.

But to get back to the subject matter...

There is no doubt that system recordings are never going to fully capture the in-room experience. So even if the author of a video claims that the sound is representative of what he/she experiences live (meaning, in the room), that cannot be the case. He/she is probably refering to one aspect of the sound, just as we may be focusing on one aspect when we watch the playback. Recordings, especially with the microphones used here (iPhone build-in mic, MV88+, my Superlux 502s...) do not have the resolution of our ears. Microphones, ADCs, introduce distortions (frequency response, dynamics..). Also, the way a microphone captures the sound is not how our ears and brain "hears" it.

Once that recording is made, whether you listen to it on headphones, or on speakers, this is not going to change any of the above. You cannot recreate what has been lost.

What will change is whether you are adding the reverb of the room or not, and the extent to which you are introducing more distortions (other than the rooms'). This has been covered before, and I don't think we need to go over it again.

So we are limited in what can be assessed from a video, and I doubt that in the video I included above, we can get a real feel of what it was like to be in that room. As a result, we can only use videos to evaluate some aspects. Whether people who watch and use these videos are aware of this, I don't know.

So to answer your question, provided the digital version is of reasonable quality, I don't think it is much of an issue to use it to compare with a vinyl playback in the original room, because the recording of the system itself is never really going to capture the in-room experience anyway, and those subtle differences between sources will probably be lost anyway. I know some people will disagree with this - I am exaggerating thins a little bit to get my point across, you can always find some examples to contradict all this, and it remains a point of view.

Hopkins, I appreciate this long response to my simple question, but I don’t see how it answers that question. The Sonny Rollins recording, “way out west“, is an analog recording from the late 1950s. When you say you want to compare my system video to the original recording, and you provide a digital YouTube video and call it the “original”, what do you mean? What is original about a digital recording used as a reference that is made much later than the original analog recording was made? The fact that it is additional means it cannot be original. It Hass to be adjusted for the digital format. It might be remastered or reengineered. In what sense is it “original“? I’ve also seen people refer to these as “official releases”. In this case, why would you use something like that as a reference against which to compare to someone’s system video?

 

[Al M.]

Here you go:

Videos of Acoustically-Coupled Audio Recordings

When I think of "balanced" I think of a see-saw. A see-saw is balanced only when the pivot point is in the middle of an equally-bisected, equally-weighted board. Balanced sound understood as a teeter-totter? That may be what is holding you back. balanced - adjective 1. fairly or equally...

www.whatsbestforum.com

Thanks!

 

[PeterA]

I'd be surprised if there were not differences between native phone and externally mic'd phone. I'd also be surprised if the externally mic'd phone resulted in such a different sound that it gave a different character to the system sufficient to change an assessment about it. I speculate a greater sonic difference from the variety of playback devces than from phone or phone+mic.

Ron wants to impose a standard playback method on each of us. He wants us only to listen to these videos through our main systems. And yet we have different systems in different rooms. I wonder if he will also ignore any comments from those who listen through headphones or desktop computer speakers the way he is now going to ignore all videos recorded with an iPhone mic. Will people have to declare how they make the video and listen to the video before Ron will give it any attention?

Al M. shouted “All videos suck” and told us he would not watch and comment on system videos. Now he is an active participant on the video thread telling us what he thinks about each video.

I can relate to Blue 58‘s comment that he is just going to stop sharing videos because Ron keeps trying to impose all these standards on him. Suddenly an anti-video guy who only shared videos of his system because people asked him to, is now trying to tell them how they should do it.

It is fascinating how this thread keeps getting longer and how the topic is gaining in relevance. Bonzo must be smiling.

 

[hopkins]

Hopkins, I appreciate this long response to my simple question, but I don’t see how it answers that question. The Sonny Rollins recording, “way out west“, is an analog recording from the late 1950s. When you say you want to compare my system video to the original recording, and you provide a digital YouTube video and call it the “original”, what do you mean? What is original about a digital recording used as a reference that is made much later than the original analog recording was made? The fact that it is additional means it cannot be original. It Hass to be adjusted for the digital format. It might be remastered or reengineered. In what sense is it “original“? I’ve also seen people refer to these as “official releases”. In this case, why would you use something like that as a reference against which to compare to someone’s system video?

Just to be clear, I did not provide the digital recording, and I meant "original" in opposition to "recorded speaker playback" rather than implying that the various CD/LP versions are identical, which of course they are not.

Lets forget about system recordings for a moment. Say you were to compare in your room an LP version of that album, played on your turntable with your speakers, against a CD version of that album played on your speakers as well. Do you think the tone of the different instruments would be significantly different ? I assume they would be pretty close. Some other aspects may be different (mono vs. stereo, dynamic range, resolution, clicks and pops, noise reduction if applied on the CD version, etc...).

With a system recording some of these differences will be overshadowed by the loss of quality inherent to the recording and playback process.
You can never really get a sense of what it was like listening to the system in the room - you get closer to it with better microphones and better playback equipment, but still you cannot recapture the "magic" of the live experience.

 

[Al M.]

Al M. shouted “All videos suck” and told us he would not watch and comment on system videos. Now he is an active participant on the video thread telling us what he thinks about each video.

You keep on deliberately misrepresenting my stance, Peter. Like others I have always maintained that videos can be a useful tool to hear *relative* differences *within the same system*, especially when it is something more obvious like general tonal balance. So I have not said that "all videos suck" in a categorical manner.

Yes, I am glad when I hear a decent sounding video and I find it entertaining, but on an absolute level it mostly tells me rather little about the system. And indeed, for assessing the *absolute* performance of a system "all videos suck".

How else could it be, given that they are a low quality replica of the sound of a system, which is a subversion of the very idea of the High End? A tell-tale sign is that posters of videos, also on this thread, feel the need to explain where the video falls short compared to what they hear in person from their system.

 

[Carlos269]

Just to be clear, I did not provide the digital recording, and I meant "original" in opposition to "recorded speaker playback" rather than implying that the various CD/LP versions are identical, which of course they are not.

Lets forget about system recordings for a moment. Say you were to compare in your room an LP version of that album, played on your turntable with your speakers, against a CD version of that album played on your speakers as well. Do you think the tone of the different instruments would be significantly different ? I assume they would be pretty close. Some other aspects may be different (mono vs. stereo, dynamic range, resolution, clicks and pops, noise reduction if applied on the CD version, etc...).

With a system recording some of these differences will be overshadowed by the loss of quality inherent to the recording and playback process.
You can never really get a sense of what it was like listening to the system in the room - you get closer to it with better microphones and better playback equipment, but still you cannot recapture the "magic" of the live experience.

You are talking around in circles here; and for someone like you who likes to post videos of your system to this site, you sure are diminishing their relevance. First it was the necessity of playback through headphones then it wasn’t. First system videos convey the character of the system recorded, now they don’t. When you establish a firm position, then let us know and state what your opinion is, but in the meantime spare us the rollercoaster ride.

 

[PeterA]

Just to be clear, I did not provide the digital recording, and I meant "original" in opposition to "recorded speaker playback" rather than implying that the various CD/LP versions are identical, which of course they are not.

Lets forget about system recordings for a moment. Say you were to compare in your room an LP version of that album, played on your turntable with your speakers, against a CD version of that album played on your speakers as well. Do you think the tone of the different instruments would be significantly different ? I assume they would be pretty close. Some other aspects may be different (mono vs. stereo, dynamic range, resolution, clicks and pops, noise reduction if applied on the CD version, etc...).

With a system recording some of these differences will be overshadowed by the loss of quality inherent to the recording and playback process.
You can never really get a sense of what it was like listening to the system in the room - you get closer to it with better microphones and better playback equipment, but still you cannot recapture the "magic" of the live experience.

Thank you for clearing that up Hopkins. I was distracted by your use of the term “original“. In the case of this Sonny Rollins recording, it is not “original“ in any sense. There’s nothing original about it. So it’s just some random recording you’re using as a reference to judge someone’s system video.

I’ve done numerous analog video comparisons and systems which have both sources. There are always many differences, and one can be the way the tone of the instruments is presented.

I know understand that you and others are simply using some YouTube video that is not of someone’s actual system as a reference against which you judge the sound of someone’s system.

People have all sorts of different approaches to how they assess what they are hearing from a system video. Using some random digital official YouTube video as the reference is a very different approach from the one that Tim and I use.

Thank you for explaining that in more detail.

 

[bonzo75]

Even if you record a LP from the phono directly using Tascam and compare it to the video coming out of the speakers, there will be a massive difference and you will not be able to connect the two sonically.. So how can one compare the video of a system to the video of a randomly digitally played back file?

 

[PeterA]

You keep on deliberately misrepresenting my stance, Peter. Like others I have always maintained that videos can be a useful tool to hear *relative* differences *within the same system*, especially when it is something more obvious like general tonal balance. So I have not said that "all videos suck" in a categorical manner.

Yes, I am glad when I hear a decent sounding video and I find it entertaining, but on an absolute level it mostly tells me rather little about the system. And indeed, for assessing the *absolute* performance of a system "all videos suck".

How else could it be, given that they are a low quality replica of the sound of a system, which is a subversion of the very idea of the High End? A tell-tale sign is that posters of videos, also on this thread, feel the need to explain where the video falls short compared to what they hear in person from their system.

Al, videos have never been a substitute for the hearing the actual system. My greater point was that you declared you would not be commenting on system videos. Now you are. I conclude that they must provide some value to you as you are spending your time now discussing them. And Ron is now sufficiently interested in videos to offer advice to others about how to make them and replay them. I simply notice the change in both of you.

 

[Ron Resnick]

The fact that you have a standard where you go to a physical demo only in a tuxedo and in a Rolls means nothing to whether it was set up well and sounds good or not.

The is just not an apt analogy. The microphone I use to make the recording affects the resulting sound. What I am driving to the system or wearing does not affect the sound.

My point was that the enture motive for the statement you made to mislead the forum into thinking that only one way works, the other way does not, and that you were right to ignore previous videos and are right only to pay attention to ones made by a good mic.

This I genuinely did not mean to do. I really intended to be speaking only about myself going forward. I definitely did not intend to mislead the forum or to move the forum in one direction.

I thought it was obvious that just because I think about making a policy decision does not impel anyone else to follow me.

 

[bonzo75]

The is just not an apt analogy. The microphone I use to make the recording affects the resulting sound. What I am driving to the system or wearing does not affect the sound.

It does not matter. That's the point. This is not like an AR Ref 3 to AR Ref 10 comparison, or Aesthetix lower model phono to higher model model IO Eclipse. We are not saying the better model won't make a difference. In playback, if it does, you should get the upper model for your stereo system if you can afford it.

The question now though, is not if the lower model is lesser, but does the lower model imply the system will not play? Similarly, will iphone recording imply that the person who receives that recording cannot make a fair assessment? Sorry, but you are clueless here if you think yes, and a better mic will change the balance. If not, the better mic has no more use than wearing a tuxedo while recording.

 

[PeterA]

I thought it was obvious that just because I think about making a policy decision does not impel anyone else to follow me.

Ron, I thought you were trying to convince the forum to follow some kind of standard both in the recording of a video with a specific microphone and also in the playback of the videos through main systems. Are you no longer trying to establish those standards?