Can you perfectly mimic a real piano on playback?
- Thread starter fas42
- Start date
This may be just an esoteric argument. If you goal is an illusion ,how can the ear be fooled? You just keep altering the illusion until it be comes as close as possible to the real thing. That's the problem if your goal is a perfect replication of the source you run in to all the problems Tom is trapped by. If your goal is a perfect reproduction of a piano in real space you encounter a different set of problems.
The answer is, no it will never be perfect. Can we get it good enough where the brain can fill in the blanks? Yes. I have heard it done very well.
The answer is, no it will never be perfect. Can we get it good enough where the brain can fill in the blanks? Yes. I have heard it done very well.
The good news is that you understand it's not a real word. It must have been fun grading your spelling papers when you were in primary school.
Now, this is an interesting thing. The friend I visited yesterday who is making very good headway has components which are intrinsically quite superior to what's in the HT. And many times while listening this is very obvious, there is an extra level of clarity, for want of a better word, to the sound. And his rendition of piano shows all the traits of that 95% level, on vinyl, and going to the other end of his house it's totally realistic in level, dynamics, etc; would easily fool someone. Yet in front of the speakers, partly because his TT is extremely modest, a low end Pro-Ject, the speakers are not invisible. Getting very, very close, but just not quite at that point.
By comparison, my HT is capable of transcending its very low calling because of the amount of work done on it. Side by side, if you were a tonal freak you would pick his system; if you appreciated the development of the illusion you would go for my mine ...
One thing, he's well and truly caught the "no such thing as a bad recording" bug; he's pushed through that barrier so many times now to realise that the contrary view is a nonsense, an easy excuse for a system not quite right.
Frank
By comparison, my HT is capable of transcending its very low calling because of the amount of work done on it. Side by side, if you were a tonal freak you would pick his system; if you appreciated the development of the illusion you would go for my mine ...
One thing, he's well and truly caught the "no such thing as a bad recording" bug; he's pushed through that barrier so many times now to realise that the contrary view is a nonsense, an easy excuse for a system not quite right.
Frank
I think Tom has his head wrapped around the core of the problem better than anyone so far, but even if his ideal recording/playback system could use all those mics to capture all those waveforms and play them back through many speakers, creating many distinct waveforms, and even if a way could be found through all the driver coherency and crossover problems...well, the drivers for the piano would have to be omni directional, drivers for trumpets would need narrow dispersion patterns. drivers for a cello would need to be omni direction with a very different FR off the front than the sides and the back (and with a dead spot in the middle of the back where the player's body goes). It is infinitely complex. And there is loss at every step - your "information density" issue -and there are dynamics challenges, though I think these are minor problem compared to the simple fact that microphones to not hear like ears, speakers do not play like instruments, and even more challenging - no ears hear or instruments play like each other. Really, if we think something as simple as an audio system - mono, stereo or multi channel, is actually reproducing the real sound of something as complex as a piano, all of us are suffering expectation bias. It doesn't matter if you're Steve, with his Lamms and Wilsons, or Frank with his HTIB. Best to just suspend reality and enjoy the music.
Tim
Tim
Luckily for everyone you're fundamentally wrong, Tim, and the people who have experienced the "big" sound, the grand illusion, always know from then on that your thinking is misguided. It's just unfortunate that you haven't been somewhere at just the right time to experience how good reproduced sound can be, and when you can up the volume to realistic levels then that's just cream on the top. One of these days ...
Frank
Tim,
Apologies, but it is reality that makes me enjoy the music much better. But you are addressing an interesting point - really fantastic that a system such as stereo can mimic enough aspects of reality to systematically cause the same type of perceptions and emotions as listening to real music.
Sometimes the type of music you listen and you listen to it life helps your audio. I listen mainly to classical and vocal, with some jazz and always choose a seat at about one third of the hall length - never too close. Surely if I was a row A listener I could not mimic the experience in an domestic audio system.
I also can enjoy music in systems that are very far from reality, but I enjoy more from really good ones.
But that is an amazing experience, demonstrating what the environment is like for the musicians. I listened to Beethoven's Seventh in the Sydney Opera House many, many years ago and I was about a dozen feet away from violinists. The energetic movement was literally mind blowing, the sense of it sticks with me now, and I vividly remember at the finish, strands and strands of the bows' strings hanging down everywhere, the vigour of playing had taken a savage toll. This is what the energy and power of a musical moment can be enlarged to, not saying at all that I have got that now, but a worthy goal down the track ...
Frank
Out of interest, because of that other thread, I had a glance at The Tape Project website. The comments of listeners are fascinating, nicely encapsulating the sense of what a system working properly should be like. Of course, you know what's coming next, that it in fact it's possible to be able to make those sort of comments about replay using other media, and specifically digital. Again, for a number of reasons, R2R has a head start in many key areas, but that doesn't preclude other media, even vinyl going up the scale just as far. A key point they make is that the factory replay electronics in the replay side of the machines used and sold, no matter how professional, are pretty dismal, "suck" is the word they use.
Of the top of my head I see yet another market opportunity: they only deal with pure analogue masters, equivalent quality tapes derived from digital sources may be attractive to some, anyone interested?
Frank
Of the top of my head I see yet another market opportunity: they only deal with pure analogue masters, equivalent quality tapes derived from digital sources may be attractive to some, anyone interested?
Frank
Experiencing those perceptions and emotions, in spite of the physical shortcomings, is the suspension of reality I'm talking about, micro. No playback system can do what I described; they all fall short. But your mind can take you the rest of the way. Or close enough.
Tim
Yes, Frank, henceforth all who have experienced a HTIB dispersing piano sound into a room exactly like a piano while simultaneously dispersing a trumpet into the room exactly like a trumpet can know that my thinking is misguided. Actually, anyone who has experienced that was welcome to think my physical reality was misguided at any time.
Tim
I'm a little bit on your side today, Tim, the system was not really on song: very painful balancing on a razor blade. Ah, well, as someone once said I think, tomorrow is another day ...
Frank
Frank
Similar threads
