"How can we ever truly know if we are hearing exactly what is on the recording?"

[the sound of Tao]

You lost me @ klavier (harpsicord). I can’t stand that instrument. Argh!

Lol

 

[BruceD]

You lost me @ klavier (harpsicord). I can’t stand that instrument. Argh!

Yes it can be an acquired taste but if you sample some good Baroque--where the Klavier was prominent --like say--

Monteverdi, Falconeri,Kapsberger,Cazzati,Merula,Hidalgo-- these being slightly away from the mainstream -may pique your interest?

As a sampler-- TAPAS Taste of the Baroque /The Brandenberg Orchestra.

BruceD

 

[tima]

As for Mary Had a little Lamb in item 2--are yes well all learnt that at 6yrs-- basic and simple Slowly and Pianonissimo --then a Fortissimo on the last chord--my old brain can figure that one

Actually the double-forte on that last chord is the !Surprise! after a simple melody at an easy pace played double-piano; it occurs during the second movement of Papa Haydn's Symphony No.94 - aka the Surprise Symphony.

He lures you in then bam!

Listen from around 0:18 - 0:35.

Follow long reading the second line which is the first violin part.

 

[accwai]

You lost me @ klavier (harpsicord). I can’t stand that instrument. Argh!

Assuming you're referring to the Stockhausen Klavierstücke, those are piano pieces, not for harpsichord. In fact, the German word klavier is piano:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klavier

Harpsichord would be cembalo:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cembalo

[...] Monteverdi, Falconeri,Kapsberger,Cazzati,Merula,Hidalgo [...]

And many, many more. It's however quite fashionable these days to wonder out loud how these composers would feel had they got access to modern pianos. By and large these old pieces would transplant quite well to piano. But their obscurity tends to limit them to specialized collectors, like myself, who the performers tend to assume have serious distaste for piano. That's not always the case actually. There are however specific forms that simply would not budge, mostly them related to stylus fantasticus and style brisé, e.g. Frescobaldi and Froberger respectively. These are forms that tend to have the deepest, most profound feelings unfortunately. Here's a little taste:

Johann Jakob Froberger: Lamento sopra la dolorosa perdita della Real Maestà di Ferdinando IV Rè de Romani
Alina Rotaru

J.S. Bach's keyboard works generally translate well to piano, but some of them aren't so easy, especially those leaning heavily towards stylus fantasticus. For example, BWV 903 tends to work much better on harpsichord:

J.S. Bach: Chromatic Fantasia, BWV 903/1
Alina Rotaru

And Bach's keyboard toccatas BWV 910-916 are even harder. Among the available piano recordings, only one is acceptable to me. But, go to any local level piano competition and chance is good that these toccatas would stuff the ARCT Bach non-WTC category. I once heard an adjudicator said in the comment session to one toccata player "I'd like to hear you play Chopin some day." Good Grief!

 

[accwai]

The link now works. Must have been a temporary outage of EarthLink domain websites (it affected another one of mine too). [...]

Link is working now. Thank you very much.

Actually the double-forte on that last chord is the !Surprise! after a simple melody at an easy pace played double-piano; it occurs during the second movement of Papa Haydn's Symphony No.94 - aka the Surprise Symphony.

He lures you in then bam! [...] Follow long reading the second line which is the first violin part.

View attachment 61384

Also note that the ff is on a weak beat, and there is a half beat rest before it. This makes things even more jarring. That being the case, it's also surprising that the entire last bar is a single chord. The kaboom is in dynamics only. There is no tonal change. The other thing is the setup before the bang isn't completely simple minded. The second beat on the second last bar is a secondary dominant. While the dominant at the end is indeed an imperfect cadence, the V/V to V is also a perfect cadence in the dominant key.

As for the Handel Passacaglia, it's the do-fa-ti-me-la-re-sol-do descending fifths sequence over and over. So in essence the whole thing is just one big series of variations. Until the part in the video that says secondary dominants, accidentals in the score all seem to be related to the harmonic and melodic minor only. That is, no serious modulation of any kind in 3+min of music. That's rather crazy...

 

[stehno]

Let's have some fun...

I haven't thought this all the way through so I may change my consideration, but, for the moment, I'm very leery of this question being useful. We see the question (posed rhetorically) a lot, often mid-squabble. It's kinda an expression of sheer scepticism that can be used to thwart any attempt to come to a conclusion. We also see it associated to a list (Ron's ?) of 4 Types of Audiophiles, one being those who seek reproduction true to what is on the recording, or some such.

Microstrip's formulation (above) taken from Dave C's cue asks about the artists' intent. This is somewhat problematic because intent is difficult to gauge through listening. If they're still around, we could ask performers - "does this recording exhibit what you intended?" Suppose they say 'yes' or 'no' - what does that tell us? That the recording is faithful to their idea of what they wanted it be? Huh? What does that tell us?

Inspired by remembering that Descarte's scepticism ("How do I know that I exist?) was ultimately the cause of his certainty (cogito ergo sum), I'll rashly answer the question. :-O

We start with the notion that at such-and-such a time and place the XYZ Orchestra of the Air along with The 4th Street Belmont Singers performed Brahm's Schicksalslied Op.54 and that was captured by microphones, etc. and put on tape.

There was an act of recording; the verb. But is that 'the recording' ? If it is, all the scepticism boils down to saying we cannot relive the past, so we can't really know. Even if we could, that's not the recording of a performance, it is the performance.

Is the so-called 'master tape' the recording? No, it's a magnetic tape on a metal reel. Even if you hold it close to your ear you won't hear the Song of Destiny. Not even a pre-echo.

I reject the notion that "the recording" exists as some kind of timeless objective Platonic Form that is The True Recording, that it is something we can never truly know, something that at best we can only grasp as 'shadows' of the recording. This seems to be the angle where the question is coming from.

Music is performance art. It exists in time and is transient. A recording must be performed to hear music. It moves from the potential (media) to the actual through time - when the recording is performed, when the record is played. Every time you play a record you hear exactly what is on the recording.

We can't and we never will. And the reason is pretty fundamental. Even if all our playback hardware was designed to perfection, every last playback system would still fall way short of sounding EXACTLY like what's on the recording. For the simple reason that every last component, speaker, line conditioner, cable, etc is incomplete in its design. This incompleteness is far and away the greatest dificiency in high-end audio.

Completing a design is entirely outside the scope of the designer but well within the scope of the consumer. Think noisy AC, unwanted mechanical energy, speaker placement, room acoustic anomalies, etc. Even the best product designers don't realize how incomplete their designs are. For example. One highly-regarded designer admitted in another forum that all his designs as well as all others' designs contained at least one serious unknown flaw and measuring instruments were of no value in this regard. I never listened to any of this designer's products but I assured him that his designs contained no such serious unknown flaws but rather they were simply incomplete.

IME, these are the primary causes:

1. Audible and inaudible distortions. (Most catastrophic distortions)
----------------------------------------------------------
We know for a fact that any given recording, good, bad, or ugly contains exactly 100% of all the music we hope to hear via our playback systems. With digital we know the exact size of a given recording down to the bit.

System-induced distortions have numerous sources but the most catastrophic distortions are induced the moment we power up our playback systems while some others are induced the moment we push play. Regardless, all distortions combined determine a given playback system's noise floor. The noise floor is key it determines the percent of music info at the speaker that remains audible above the noise floor and inaudible below the noise floor.

IOW, it's a percentage thing. If (and it is so) all recordings contains exactly 100% percent of the music info we can potentially hear, then these audible and inaudible distortions will reduce the amount of music info remaining audible at the speaker to say 50 or 70% depending on the playback system. That implies 30 - 50% of all the music in a given recording remains inaudible. For those who think a higher rez format containing 3 or 4 times the quantity of music info embedded in its Redbook counterpart changes things, you're wrong. 60% of a single music note remaining audible remains at 60% of a single music note. Especially since a given format does nothing to address these distortions, it can do nothing to change these percentages. Except that the 60% of a single hi-rez music note remaining audible may be now be just a tad more musical. But it's still 60%.

Secondarily, we need to consider system-induced distortions not only make a large percentage of music inaudible below a much raised noise floor but they also may corrupt the fidelity of the portion of music that remains audible above the noise floor. Additionally, when distortions cause a large percentage of music info inaudible at the speaker may also may cause the audible musical to seem distorted when it is not.

If you've ever wondered why so many playback systems have that "hi-fi" signature sound, unaddressed system-induced distortions is why. This also explains why the early out-of-this world MQA performance claims were entirely untrue. This is also why a closely-mic'ed sharp piano strike in the upper registers can cause ear fatigue. This is also why so many of us have trained ourselves to listen at lower than live music volume levels. This is why some unsuccessfully opt for multi-channel. I could go on with many more examples. as system-induced distortions and the resulting noise floor and percentages of audible vs inaudible music info at the speaker will sufficiently explain maybe 80-90% all all deficiencies within high-end audio.

2. Inaudible Music Information Leaves Audible Music Info Sounding Distorted (shortcomings).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For example. There is no substitution for THE optimal full-range speaker / subwoofer placement and tuning within a given room when it comes to truly musical bass reproduction. When we fall short of optimal speaker positioning / tuning a subwoofer, in either case a good percentage of bass info remains inaudible while much of the audible bass remains underemphasized, ill-defined, lack-luster, etc. When this happens, the overall music presentation becomes rather unbalanced hence, the presentation can seem overly bright, etchy, or even borderline ear bleeding fatiguing. But if corrected, the bass becomes vibrant, dynamic, deep, tight, fast, well-defined, and ultimately extremely musical. IOW, it becomes the foundation of the performance and often times the most exhilarating part of the entire playback presentation. And it just so happens that the overly bright, etchy, fatiguing and almost distorted miss and highs disappears at least with some systems.

In summary, a single playback system alteration adjusts the noise floor up or down a few percentage points and likewise the amount of audible vs inaudible music info at the speaker resulting in a more or less musical presentation. IOW, it's all really just cause and effect.

Cause: System-induced distortions determine a given playback system's noise floor level.
Effect: Determines the percentage of audible vs inaudible music info remaining at the speaker.

Cause: System shortcomings render some of the music info inaudible.
Effect: Audible music info is less musical and/or seemingly distorted.

The point being, without properly identifying every last distortion and shortcoming and without applying the perfect remedy for each, there is zero hope of ever hearing EXACTLY what's on a recording. And since the hi-fi sound is so prominent, many couldn't even hope to hear anything remotely close to what's on a recording.

Anyway, though there are others, these are the primary reasons why we'll never hear EXACTLY what's on a given recording. But once we realize how catastrophic some of these distortions and shortcomings really are, we'll also realize other things like why hi-rez recordings are only marginally (think small percentage) more musical than Redbook PCM, why (much like hi-rez formats) the hardware itself actually matters far less than we thought, why room acoustic anomalies matter far less than we've been taught, along with maybe 20 or 30 other why's. Not to mention putting many a folklore to bed once and for all.

Besides, even if we had the ability to hear EXACTLY what's in a given recording, who has the ears to fully appreciate such perfection?

 

[andromedaaudio]

Lets look at it this way , who had thought 200 years ago ,one could record an event and put it on a medium and play back a reasonable convincing portray of this event any time you wanted .
Imagine 200 years from now , we might have a hologram concert in our house , with a complete different techniek then the elektro acoustic system we use now .
I think we have come pretty far actually.

 

[BruceD]

Imagine 200 years from now , we might have a hologram concert in our house , with a complete different techniek then the elektro acoustic system we use now .
I think we have come pretty far actually.

Well maybe-I attended the Grundig demo of a Ballet projected via Hologram as a performance in the round at the Berlin RundfunkBestellung show in 1972

Never made the light of day--wonder why

BruceD

 

[Atmasphere]

Magnetic tape makes all recordings sound better than the original as it compresses the high frequencies and gives you a nice bass bump. It is this magnetic tape saturation/equalization that, in my opinion, is a big factor in our allure with the sound of vinyl records.

The above is common myth and is false. A good tape machine does not have 'head bump' as it is sorted out by the tape machine's electronics. There is no compression of highs either with tape or vinyl.

Tape does have a 3rd harmonic that it adds. Since this is treated by the ear as the 2nd is, it does add a bit of warmth, but only appreciably near saturation.

************************************

One time I did an on location recording using my old Ampex 351-2 and a set of RCA ribbon mics.

Some audiophile friends accompanied me on this effort. At one point I realized I wanted the mics further back and so went through the stage door and moved them. But because ribbons can get a bit excited when you move them, I said to the microphone stand 'I'm moving the mics now' so if someone was listening, they were prepared for it. By coincidence that was the same thing I had said prior to going through the stage door.

When I got back, the guy wearing the headphones at the time looked like he had seen a ghost and the other was having a good laugh at his expense. Headphone Guy had seen me go through the door, but realized that somehow I had gotten right behind him without his figuring out how when I repeated my words. He snapped around to look in surprise but there was no-one there!

He had been completely fooled.

We are closer in some ways than one might think.

 

[microstrip]

The above is common myth and is false. A good tape machine does not have 'head bump' as it is sorted out by the tape machine's electronics. There is no compression of highs either with tape or vinyl.

Tape does have a 3rd harmonic that it adds. Since this is treated by the ear as the 2nd is, it does add a bit of warmth, but only appreciably near saturation.

************************************

One time I did an on location recording using my old Ampex 351-2 and a set of RCA ribbon mics.

Some audiophile friends accompanied me on this effort. At one point I realized I wanted the mics further back and so went through the stage door and moved them. But because ribbons can get a bit excited when you move them, I said to the microphone stand 'I'm moving the mics now' so if someone was listening, they were prepared for it. By coincidence that was the same thing I had said prior to going through the stage door.

When I got back, the guy wearing the headphones at the time looked like he had seen a ghost and the other was having a good laugh at his expense. Headphone Guy had seen me go through the door, but realized that somehow I had gotten right behind him without his figuring out how when I repeated my words. He snapped around to look in surprise but there was no-one there!

He had been completely fooled.

We are closer in some ways than one might think.

Ralph,

What is your opinion on this often quoted article on the subject? http://www.endino.com/graphs/ ?

As far as I have read the bump compensation is machine specific and once we read the tape in another kind of machine we can get bumps. Also, due to the complex physics of the flux in the very low frequencies some well considered calibration tapes can be unreliable to calibrate a machine in the very low bass. Most audiophiles use tape head amplifiers that are not compensated for particular speeds and heads - a point highlighted by Fred Thal of ATAE in this forum . Unfortunately reality sometimes can be different from theory.

 

[wil]

We can't and we never will. And the reason is pretty fundamental. Even if all our playback hardware was designed to perfection, every last playback system would still fall way short of sounding EXACTLY like what's on the recording. For the simple reason that every last component, speaker, line conditioner, cable, etc is incomplete in its design. This incompleteness is far and away the greatest dificiency in high-end audio.

Completing a design is entirely outside the scope of the designer but well within the scope of the consumer. Think noisy AC, unwanted mechanical energy, speaker placement, room acoustic anomalies, etc. Even the best product designers don't realize how incomplete their designs are. For example. One highly-regarded designer admitted in another forum that all his designs as well as all others' designs contained at least one serious unknown flaw and measuring instruments were of no value in this regard. I never listened to any of this designer's products but I assured him that his designs contained no such serious unknown flaws but rather they were simply incomplete.

IME, these are the primary causes:

1. Audible and inaudible distortions. (Most catastrophic distortions)
----------------------------------------------------------
We know for a fact that any given recording, good, bad, or ugly contains exactly 100% of all the music we hope to hear via our playback systems. With digital we know the exact size of a given recording down to the bit.

System-induced distortions have numerous sources but the most catastrophic distortions are induced the moment we power up our playback systems while some others are induced the moment we push play. Regardless, all distortions combined determine a given playback system's noise floor. The noise floor is key it determines the percent of music info at the speaker that remains audible above the noise floor and inaudible below the noise floor.

IOW, it's a percentage thing. If (and it is so) all recordings contains exactly 100% percent of the music info we can potentially hear, then these audible and inaudible distortions will reduce the amount of music info remaining audible at the speaker to say 50 or 70% depending on the playback system. That implies 30 - 50% of all the music in a given recording remains inaudible. For those who think a higher rez format containing 3 or 4 times the quantity of music info embedded in its Redbook counterpart changes things, you're wrong. 60% of a single music note remaining audible remains at 60% of a single music note. Especially since a given format does nothing to address these distortions, it can do nothing to change these percentages. Except that the 60% of a single hi-rez music note remaining audible may be now be just a tad more musical. But it's still 60%.

Secondarily, we need to consider system-induced distortions not only make a large percentage of music inaudible below a much raised noise floor but they also may corrupt the fidelity of the portion of music that remains audible above the noise floor. Additionally, when distortions cause a large percentage of music info inaudible at the speaker may also may cause the audible musical to seem distorted when it is not.

If you've ever wondered why so many playback systems have that "hi-fi" signature sound, unaddressed system-induced distortions is why. This also explains why the early out-of-this world MQA performance claims were entirely untrue. This is also why a closely-mic'ed sharp piano strike in the upper registers can cause ear fatigue. This is also why so many of us have trained ourselves to listen at lower than live music volume levels. This is why some unsuccessfully opt for multi-channel. I could go on with many more examples. as system-induced distortions and the resulting noise floor and percentages of audible vs inaudible music info at the speaker will sufficiently explain maybe 80-90% all all deficiencies within high-end audio.

2. Inaudible Music Information Leaves Audible Music Info Sounding Distorted (shortcomings).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For example. There is no substitution for THE optimal full-range speaker / subwoofer placement and tuning within a given room when it comes to truly musical bass reproduction. When we fall short of optimal speaker positioning / tuning a subwoofer, in either case a good percentage of bass info remains inaudible while much of the audible bass remains underemphasized, ill-defined, lack-luster, etc. When this happens, the overall music presentation becomes rather unbalanced hence, the presentation can seem overly bright, etchy, or even borderline ear bleeding fatiguing. But if corrected, the bass becomes vibrant, dynamic, deep, tight, fast, well-defined, and ultimately extremely musical. IOW, it becomes the foundation of the performance and often times the most exhilarating part of the entire playback presentation. And it just so happens that the overly bright, etchy, fatiguing and almost distorted miss and highs disappears at least with some systems.

In summary, a single playback system alteration adjusts the noise floor up or down a few percentage points and likewise the amount of audible vs inaudible music info at the speaker resulting in a more or less musical presentation. IOW, it's all really just cause and effect.

Cause: System-induced distortions determine a given playback system's noise floor level.
Effect: Determines the percentage of audible vs inaudible music info remaining at the speaker.

Cause: System shortcomings render some of the music info inaudible.
Effect: Audible music info is less musical and/or seemingly distorted.

The point being, without properly identifying every last distortion and shortcoming and without applying the perfect remedy for each, there is zero hope of ever hearing EXACTLY what's on a recording. And since the hi-fi sound is so prominent, many couldn't even hope to hear anything remotely close to what's on a recording.

Anyway, though there are others, these are the primary reasons why we'll never hear EXACTLY what's on a given recording. But once we realize how catastrophic some of these distortions and shortcomings really are, we'll also realize other things like why hi-rez recordings are only marginally (think small percentage) more musical than Redbook PCM, why (much like hi-rez formats) the hardware itself actually matters far less than we thought, why room acoustic anomalies matter far less than we've been taught, along with maybe 20 or 30 other why's. Not to mention putting many a folklore to bed once and for all.

Besides, even if we had the ability to hear EXACTLY what's in a given recording, who has the ears to fully appreciate such perfection?

It seems to me that all the music depleting distortions you speak of are of far less relevance compared to the quality of the recording -- the miking, the engineering, the mastering of the product we put through our systems. In other words, I believe I'd rather hear a high quality recording through a typically compromised high end audio system than a poor quality recording through your idea of a perfectly realized playback system.

It's too bad all the obsessive energy and money audiophiles throw at the playback system couldn't be funneled into improving the general state of the recording industry. But, sadly, we have no influence over the industry, so we do what we can do!

 

[Carlos269]

Ralph,

What is your opinion on this often quoted article on the subject? http://www.endino.com/graphs/ ?

As far as I have read the bump compensation is machine specific and once we read the tape in another kind of machine we can get bumps. Also, due to the complex physics of the flux in the very low frequencies some well considered calibration tapes can be unreliable to calibrate a machine in the very low bass. Most audiophiles use tape head amplifiers that are not compensated for particular speeds and heads - a point highlighted by Fred Thal of ATAE in this forum . Unfortunately reality sometimes can be different from theory.

Ralph,
I had a discussion with you on this matter back in 2010....I guess that you haven’t changed your mind on this subject since then:

The “great” sound of reel to reel explained

 

[Ron Resnick]

Ralph,
I educated you on this matter back in 2010....I guess that you haven’t learned anything since then:

. . .

Ralph is an industry titan and an honored guest whom we are very lucky to have participating on WBF.

Why this condescending sarcasm?

 

[Carlos269]

Ralph is an industry titan and an honored guest whom we are very lucky to have participating on WBF.

Why this condescending sarcasm?

No sarcasm intended. Ralph quoted me as falsehoods. Not sure how this is condescending. Need to question the neutrality of being allowed to openly respond to “industry titan and an honored guest” on here. If they are untouchable, then please state so.

 

[Ron Resnick]

No sarcasm intended. Ralph quoted me as falsehoods. Not sure how this is condescending. Need to question the neutrality of being allowed to openly respond to “industry titan and an honored guest” on here. If they are untouchable, then please state so.

I take you at your word. It certainly struck me as harsh.

No, no member is insulated from respectful and intellectually honest comment or criticism.

 

[andromedaaudio]

I am with ron on this one .
He is a respected amp designer lots of recording expirience , interesting info .
It came across as a bit disrespectfull.
I personally have enough tapes and high quality tape machines at home to know that the quality of tape is certainly not because it only has elevated bass , if thats true anyway .
What bass bump are you talking about?
+ 1 or 2 db and where does it starts from, what freq ?
The machines also have equalisation in the cards to adjust for a neutral response .

 

[Carlos269]

The machines also have equalisation in the cards to adjust for a neutral response .

I suggest that you go over to the gearslutz forum and enlighten the professionals on that forum about the neutrality of magnetic tape. Recording and mastering engineers use tape for it’s “sound” and pleasing affect. Often running recordings, specially digital, through tape just for “enhancing” the sound. I cannot count how many threads there are on this subject there and how many pieces of equipment there are to perform this “magnetic tape” sound.

I can understand the respect and reverence that a distinguished tube equipment designer deserves. I on the other hand have merely done work on power-supplies and electronic systems for the international space-station and upgrades to the space-shuttles’ telemetry systems, so I will bow down.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Sure i know about the tape effect , the guy i sold my A 80 rc to , used it in his recording studio only to run his digital recording through the tape recorder

You havent answered the question though.
How big is the bump , and from which to which freq??

 

[Carlos269]

Sure i know about the tape effect , the guy i sold my A 80 rc to , used it in his recording studio only to run his digital recording through the tape recorder

You havent answered the question though.
How big is the bump , and from which to which freq??

I suggest that you read through the following technical paper:

Magnetic tape recording

 

[andromedaaudio]

I will read it later this week.
I was hoping you could give me a direct answer though.