Does DSP belong in State of the Art Systems?

[SeagoatLeo]

Ugh, I prefer my ears any day of the week compared to the absolute dreck of sound that comes from most microphone feeds. I’ve been attending live concerts for 35+ years and collecting CDs etc. for the same length of time. There’s just no comparison between the beauty of live sound and the pale shadow of live music that is in the bits of a CD or a flac stream.

I've been to about 400 live opera performances, recorded in major venues in Los Angeles for symphony, chamber and choral works (about 200+) and performed in same. I am amazed at how good many of my LPs and CDs sound (35,500 of them). Sure, I am disappointed at the recorded/mastered sound quite often, but just as often, recordings are beautiful and thrilling, studio and live. I find that most symphonic recordings from the 1970s on typically have an overabundance of reverb which does NOT make them sound like a live performance, more like a canned performance. That's a shame because of good performances not recorded with the clarity (I don't mean resolution, detail, etc. because a live symphony is an amalgam of sound, not individual instruments) of sound. I have found many excellent modern symphonic recordings on minor labels where the recording engineer and mastering engineer do provide clarity and reduce the reverb, natural and added. Hanging mikes in the middle of a large hall is not a good idea, especially for chamber and solo performer recordings. Maybe some audiophiles like non-present, distant sounding recordings, but not me or a dozen of my audiophile friends.

 

[SeagoatLeo]

When I go to concerts there's normally no sign of a microphone unless the concert is being recorded and no sign of any loudspeaker. Violins built in the 17th century are the absolute best and, as far as I'm aware, that was long before any mic or speaker had hit the light of day. Same goes for most acoustic / orchestral instruments. All created with only one aim in life - to offer ultimate pleaseure to the ear - not to the microphone.

PS - Still a bit of a leg pull, but I'm simply making the point that measurements are secondary to the music, though of course accurate transducers are essential.

The best orchestral halls were designed and built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, pre-electronics and using basic acoustic measurements, mostly in a shoebox design. After the most elaborate and expensive halls were built in the last quarter century, they have significant problems and have been acoustically altered to provide better sound.

 

[SeagoatLeo]

I don't use DSP. I spent a small fortune constructing a custom listening room which eliminated bass problems and minimized side and ceiling wall reflections without dampening dynamics. I can use lesser quality speakers which are relatively flat and low in distortion to provide similar sound to a DSP altered system. I have several friends who built very synergistically related components which provide a highly involving and musical sound in lesser listening rooms which are shoebox dimensioned (and excellent speakers). I've heard the AvantGarde Trios with triple basshorns in a $1 million system. Unfortunately, it was like hearing soloists without a complete or involving picture. It was probably due to very bad choice of components (an equipment swapper). The owner is never satisfied with his system (I don't disagree, he visited my system and his jaw dropped on hearing his own records on my system. He just throws more money at his system).

 

[Atmasphere]

When I go to concerts there's normally no sign of a microphone unless the concert is being recorded and no sign of any loudspeaker. Violins built in the 17th century are the absolute best and, as far as I'm aware, that was long before any mic or speaker had hit the light of day. Same goes for most acoustic / orchestral instruments. All created with only one aim in life - to offer ultimate pleaseure to the ear - not to the microphone.

PS - Still a bit of a leg pull, but I'm simply making the point that measurements are secondary to the music, though of course accurate transducers are essential.

Let's be real for a moment: Without the measurements audio would not exist. At. All.

The most basic measurement is done with a Voltmeter or Ohmmeter. These tools are as basic to audio as a screwdriver might be to a mechanic. Science is at the bottom of it; with out that tubes, transistors, metallurgy, AC power and so one would simply not exist.

I prefer my ears any day of the week compared to the absolute dreck of sound that comes from most microphone feeds.

You should see if you can listen to the direct microphone feed sometime. You might be amazed at how realistic they actually sound. Things tend to get messed up with the recording media and especially if there is mixing and processing involved.

 

[marty]

How many piano tuners use electronics to do their job?

You obviously do not know many piano tuners. The answer is...all of them! I know several tuners that regularly tune pianos in the NYC area from Carnegie to Lincoln Center, Broadway theaters and other performing venues. They ALL use electronics to some degree to facilitate piano tuning. None that I know use it exclusively however. For example, null frequency resonance tuning, which is common, is typically done by ear by skilled tuners for fine tuning. But nobody is throwing away their electronic tuning equipment.

 

[ecwl]

I don't use DSP. I spent a small fortune constructing a custom listening room which eliminated bass problems and minimized side and ceiling wall reflections without dampening dynamics. I can use lesser quality speakers which are relatively flat and low in distortion to provide similar sound to a DSP altered system. I have several friends who built very synergistically related components which provide a highly involving and musical sound in lesser listening rooms which are shoebox dimensioned (and excellent speakers). I've heard the AvantGarde Trios with triple basshorns in a $1 million system. Unfortunately, it was like hearing soloists without a complete or involving picture. It was probably due to very bad choice of components (an equipment swapper). The owner is never satisfied with his system (I don't disagree, he visited my system and his jaw dropped on hearing his own records on my system. He just throws more money at his system).

I think your comments summarizes the discussion about whether DSP can be State of the Art.
Your system clearly sounds State of the Art, with great room acoustics and no DSP.
Your friend/owner of AvantGarde Trios has equipments that are state of the art but the sound is definitely currently not state of the art. Now he refuses for whatever reason to build a dedicated listening room that allows for good room acoustics so he can hear his system produce state of the art sound. If he is willing to use DSP to correct his major room acoustics issues, it is likely that he would get significantly better sound. So the question then becomes, if he uses DSP in his room and the sound is significantly better, would people consider his system sounding State of the Art at that point?
To me, who am I to say that he should not be allowed to use DSP to get his system to sound State of the Art (or at least close to it)? Who am I to say that he has to physically improve his room acoustics which may involve buying a new house and building a new room to get his system to sound State of the Art?

 

[morricab]

If you just grab the high SN DAC from the ASR measurements then you will get something technically good measuring but listeners would disagree that it sounds very good.
Well, then something else is terrible wrong in the system. 99 % it will be speaker/room related.

No it won’t be speaker/ room related…demonstrated this countless times to people. You are Welcome to come to Switzerland and I will show you too what I mean.

 

[morricab]

Microphones captures everything we need to know, ears not so much.

Hearing is mostly with the brain…

 

[godofwealth]

Let's be real for a moment: Without the measurements audio would not exist. At. All.

The most basic measurement is done with a Voltmeter or Ohmmeter. These tools are as basic to audio as a screwdriver might be to a mechanic. Science is at the bottom of it; with out that tubes, transistors, metallurgy, AC power and so one would simply not exist.


You should see if you can listen to the direct microphone feed sometime. You might be amazed at how realistic they actually sound. Things tend to get messed up with the recording media and especially if there is mixing and processing involved.

Stereophile back in the day produced a great test CD with their founder, the late Gordon Holt’s voice recorded using two dozen or so different microphones as he spoke from a written text. It is the most useful set of tracks in the whole CD. It was astonishing to hear his different his voice sounded through the different microphones. Some mikes made his voice sound nasal like a duck quacking. Others made his voice sound gravely. Some mikes added incredible sibilants to his voice. Only towards the end with very high quality microphones — a Neumann tubed mike, for example — did the most obvious colorations go away.

The idea that a live microphone feed gives you an accurate reproduction of a human voice, let alone a whole orchestra, is laughably ludicrous. Only in the most exceptional circumstances with the best of mikes do you get anything that marginally resembles a voice. We are a long long way from having accurate microphones. I listen quite often to concerts of the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Hall. Many of their concerts are recorded live onto multichannel SACD. Walking around the front stage during intermission, you see the live mike feeds labeled with DSD channel and mike numbers. Their mikes are pencil thin and chosen, I imagine, more for their discrete look than any particular sound quality. The results are hardly surprising. Their SACD Mahler recordings with Michael Tilson Thomas are terrible compared to the live sound you hear in Davies Hall when he conducts Mahler, which he did each season while he was still the conductor. The discs doesn’t come close to the live sound, it’s so bad that sometimes I feel like throwing the disc out the window. Harsh, unmusical and brittle for the most part.

Just buy a set of mikes and tape your own voice or your spouse or your kids. You’ll be shocked how terrible it sounds. Or record a single guitar. A piano. The simpler the better. We listen around these colorations because most of our lives is spent listening to awful sound, in airports, cars, restaurants, and of course, Apple earbuds. Most people can’t tell anymore what live music or a live voice sounds like. It’s like being unable to tell the actual scene from a digital picture. In 35+ years of listening to high end audio, I have never heard a system at any price that sounded to me like the real thing. It’s always a fake thing. But we live with accepting this compromise because we learn to listen around the obvious colorations.

 

[SeagoatLeo]

I think your comments summarizes the discussion about whether DSP can be State of the Art.
Your system clearly sounds State of the Art, with great room acoustics and no DSP.
Your friend/owner of AvantGarde Trios has equipments that are state of the art but the sound is definitely currently not state of the art. Now he refuses for whatever reason to build a dedicated listening room that allows for good room acoustics so he can hear his system produce state of the art sound. If he is willing to use DSP to correct his major room acoustics issues, it is likely that he would get significantly better sound. So the question then becomes, if he uses DSP in his room and the sound is significantly better, would people consider his system sounding State of the Art at that point?
To me, who am I to say that he should not be allowed to use DSP to get his system to sound State of the Art (or at least close to it)? Who am I to say that he has to physically improve his room acoustics which may involve buying a new house and building a new room to get his system to sound State of the Art?

Unfortunately, he did build a $500,000 custom listening room which is very good but not at my level. Also, unfortunately, DSP alone cannot help his system-it's a bad mix of components and (formerly terrible cabling). The cabling was upgraded from expensive High Fidelity ICs and power cables. The improvement was immediate as to tone and warmth but it still had the weird soloists sound versus a complete recorded picture. When he heard my system, it was in my previous listening room/home which was about as good as his (built in 1993 for $60,000).

 

[SeagoatLeo]

Stereophile back in the day produced a great test CD with their founder, the late Gordon Holt’s voice recorded using two dozen or so different microphones as he spoke from a written text. It is the most useful set of tracks in the whole CD. It was astonishing to hear his different his voice sounded through the different microphones. Some mikes made his voice sound nasal like a duck quacking. Others made his voice sound gravely. Some mikes added incredible sibilants to his voice. Only towards the end with very high quality microphones — a Neumann tubed mike, for example — did the most obvious colorations go away.

The idea that a live microphone feed gives you an accurate reproduction of a human voice, let alone a whole orchestra, is laughably ludicrous. Only in the most exceptional circumstances with the best of mikes do you get anything that marginally resembles a voice. We are a long long way from having accurate microphones. I listen quite often to concerts of the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Hall. Many of their concerts are recorded live onto multichannel SACD. Walking around the front stage during intermission, you see the live mike feeds labeled with DSD channel and mike numbers. Their mikes are pencil thin and chosen, I imagine, more for their discrete look than any particular sound quality. The results are hardly surprising. Their SACD Mahler recordings with Michael Tilson Thomas are terrible compared to the live sound you hear in Davies Hall when he conducts Mahler, which he did each season while he was still the conductor. The discs doesn’t come close to the live sound, it’s so bad that sometimes I feel like throwing the disc out the window. Harsh, unmusical and brittle for the most part.

Just buy a set of mikes and tape your own voice or your spouse or your kids. You’ll be shocked how terrible it sounds. Or record a single guitar. A piano. The simpler the better. We listen around these colorations because most of our lives is spent listening to awful sound, in airports, cars, restaurants, and of course, Apple earbuds. Most people can’t tell anymore what live music or a live voice sounds like. It’s like being unable to tell the actual scene from a digital picture. In 35+ years of listening to high end audio, I have never heard a system at any price that sounded to me like the real thing. It’s always a fake thing. But we live with accepting this compromise because we learn to listen around the obvious colorations.

I'll second the Thomas/Mahler recordings versus live. I heard his 3rd and 1st live-wonderful. The recordings are mediocre sounding and I don't listen to them. So, it was the poor miking that did it. I thought it was poor mastering or recording technique.

I have experience in recording as you may have read. Plus, having heard over 400 opera performances live and performed at Disney Hall, Royce Hall, Bridges Auditorium, many churches, other venues, I know what a live performance sounds like, unamplified. You are correct that most people don't have experience with live vocal sounds.

Kevin Gray recorded about a dozen of our symphony/choral and chamber performances using AKG tube mikes C12/c24 from the 50's (possibly Neumann M-47/49s too). Wow, were those great sounding recordings, available only to the performers as the musicians guild would have cost us a fortune to publicly release them (and limited audience appeal as well).

 

[schlager]

I see my microphone vs ears comment, was misunderstood quite a bit. My point was, that to study and analyse what a hifi setup does in a room, we should use a microphone (calibrated) and not our ears.

A frequency sweep gives us a graph to look at peaks and dips, so you can quickly see the problem. It is rather difficult to hear the difference between 2000 and 3000 hz by ear, so with a mic you can pick out the problem and be in control.
If something is off in the sound, it would be quite difficult to point out, by ear, where the problem is. This example only goes for the actually sound (frequency), if we put phase, decay, resonances etc. into the mix, it becomes impossible to sort out by ear.

A microphone then becomes a very strong tool, for the user, for further analysis.

 

[schlager]

I worry about the 130 to 300 Hz 5db dip. That's really concerning.

A lack in the mid bass where most instruments have their fundamental, will give a lean sound. Most hifi speakers suffer from this, because of lack of capacity (small drivers) and bafflestep kicks in. With the Avantgarde horns the problem is, that the midrange horn don´t load enough in that area, combined with floor bounce cancellation.

 

[schlager]

I've heard the AvantGarde Trios with triple basshorns in a $1 million system. Unfortunately, it was like hearing soloists without a complete or involving picture. It was probably due to very bad choice of components (an equipment swapper).

A very good example that money don´t overcome fundamental design problems. Because of the horns, for the different bandpasses, are scattered around i space with large center to center distance, the sound will have heaps of lobing, that no amount of DSP can recover. It should be obvious, that it has nothing to do with choice of up-stream components.

 

[SeagoatLeo]

A very good example that money don´t overcome fundamental design problems. Because of the horns, for the different bandpasses, are scattered around i space with large center to center distance, the sound will have heaps of lobing, that no amount of DSP can recover. It should be obvious, that it has nothing to do with choice of up-stream components.

That's why everyone seems to appreciate my two speakers despite their reduced cost and ages. The Legacy Focus and Signature III from the 90s have dual substantial sized mids and triple 12" (Sig IIIs 10") bass drivers. They are advertised as alleviating most of the floor bounce and very low distortion bass. I have great fundamental tones. My living room system is so sweet sounding with a modern voltage regulated tube amp, much like a McIntosh MC30s (which I also own) but with clean, articulate, dynamic bass (10" drivers are better than the Focus 12" except in extension).

I still claim that in the Trios/Basshorn system, the up-stream components wrecked the sound further as my friend and I substituted our pre-amp for his Ypsilon pre-amp and phono pre-amps which resulted in a more coherent sound (it is an analog only system). You are probably correct that DSP could not correct his system. I don't know why the Trios received such positive reviews by a few critics. Maybe they just love the dynamics without considering the lack of coherence of the sound.

 

[schlager]

I don't know why the Trios received such positive reviews by a few critics. Maybe they just love the dynamics without considering the lack of coherence of the sound.

Very expensive audio gear, never get a bad rap, no matter how badly it may perform, (not saying that TRIO Horns are a bad product). That lies in the nature of review - advertising - manufacture scheme.

 

[Hear Here]

Unfortunately, he did build a $500,000 custom listening room which is very good but not at my level. Also, unfortunately, DSP alone cannot help his system-it's a bad mix of components and (formerly terrible cabling). The cabling was upgraded from expensive High Fidelity ICs and power cables. The improvement was immediate as to tone and warmth but it still had the weird soloists sound versus a complete recorded picture. When he heard my system, it was in my previous listening room/home which was about as good as his (built in 1993 for $60,000).

Sounds like a job for Jim Smith to improve your room's set up. Peter

 

[Hear Here]

Very expensive audio gear, never get a bad rap, no matter how badly it may perform,

Well with a good reviewer, you can usually "read between the lines" to get a better idea of what he really thinks. I bought a Benchmark AHB2 power amp soon after they became available in the UK and before any reviews were available. In fact, by coincidence, I bought it unseen and unheard after rave recommendation by an Avantgarde Trio owner, who had previously owned many much more costly amps. I thought it should therefore be great with my AG Unos.

I found it drearily dull even after months of burning in, so I returned my SETs into the system - a breath of fresh air, where one is tempted to turn up the volume as opposed to turning it down with the Benchmark. On further investigation I established that my Trio chum was overwhelmingly obsessed with silent background and indeed, the Benchmark is dead silent.

Then Stereophile's review came out, and a couple of others, and I found that despite an overall big tick being awarded, these reviers had caviats, if you look carefully. Most suggested that this amp was very system dependent. My dealer kindly offered a full value credit which I used to buy a used GamuT D200 amp Mk III - hugely more rewarding.

 

[Atmasphere]

It was astonishing to hear his different his voice sounded through the different microphones.

You can't just place a bunch of different mics together and expect them to sound right- you have to know what sort of pattern they have and how to set them up accordingly (obviously the Stereophile recording is highly suspect)! My Shure SM58s sounds nothing like my Neumann U67s... mics have different uses (the SM58s are often used for close-mic'cing electric guitar cabinets for example).

The idea that a live microphone feed gives you an accurate reproduction of a human voice, let alone a whole orchestra, is laughably ludicrous.

You might be surprised how good the mics on Zoom recorders have become! I've had a set of U67s since the early 1980s and they do really well with the human voice if used properly. You have to set them back a little bit. And mindful of which pattern you're using.

I've had direct mic feeds fool very jaundiced audiphiles (when they've ventured along when I was doing on-location recordings) and they've fooled me more than once. The way you sound is like the only mics you've heard were junk.

 

[SeagoatLeo]

Sounds like a job for Jim Smith to improve your room's set up. Peter

It's NOT my room, it's a local wealthy analog only audiophile. He has great taste in music but not a good ear. It's definitely his equipment (as I indicated, switching out just the pre-amp and phono pre-amp make a significant improvement in coherence). From your personal experience with AvantGarde speakers, you found a good match. This guy had all his electronics on seismic boxes which were turned to .5 Hz and spring balanced (about $4k per box) and an expensive multi-device Schumann resonator for many $1Ks. His analog included the Contiuum Caliburn and Cobra table/arm ($200+K).