Please enlighten us, what will make the sound more effortless? We are an ignorance of such words like effortless, dynamic, etc...
"Natural" Sound
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
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Please enlighten us, what will make the sound more effortless? We are an ignorance of such words like effortless, dynamic, etc...
I had the tab open on this post and kept forgetting to answer it. So I will take a shot at it if you don't mind.Keith , here is a pic of my system measurement at listening position
the light blue is uncorrected , the orange is my target curve and the green is the corrected response
Please tell me how my system sounds uncorrected and how it sounds with my target curve...
will it sound "natural"?
The first thing we look at is the uncorrected response in bass frequencies up to about 300 Hz or so (in blue). There, we see that you have swings that are as low as about -14 db to +18 db for a total variation of 32 dB. Perceptually in bass frequencies every 10 dB or so means twice as loud. You have three times as much so the variations are 6 to 1. This means that if I played a set of notes and one hit at 22 Hz and the other at 110 Hz, the former would sound 6 times louder than the latter! It is exactly as if you took an EQ and turned the slides for each frequency shown in your graph up and down by those massive amounts.
As the infomercial goes, that's not all!
What you are showing us is frequency domain. In time domain every one of those peaks causes the sharp notes to elongate. A drum hit that was say, 0.1 second in duration now may last up to 1 second or even more! The bass will sound bloated and lose to use subjective terms. Some may also call this "slow" bass.Note that the effect does not stop there. Bass content of music has the highest amplitude in music. As a result, every one of those notes that hangs on for that long, obscures lower amplitude content at higher frequencies such as vocals, ambiance, etc. Your soundstage also suffers for the same reason.
All of this is clearly observable from that graph. And importantly, is almost completely function of your room! If I were not so lazy, I could easily work backward and tell you the approximate dimensions of your room! The speed of sound and dimensions of the room determine those peaks. What doesn't get involved is your loudspeaker! You can upgrade that unit as much as you wanted and those peaks and drops will persist. The room is a giant equalizer in bass frequencies and completely transforming the sound that your loudspeakers are producing.
So are you hearing natural bass? No way. Take the same loudspeakers outside and then you will hear natural bass. If you did that, you will notice that the bass becomes very tight and distinct. So now we get "fast bass" without changing a single thing in the loudspeaker! Only where it is playing. What you will immediately notice is that you need gobs of amplification power to get proper levels of bass. Without the room "reinforcing" the bass, you need a lot more power. No tube amp may apply I am afraid.
Note that you can change the stand under your amps, get a different DAC, change your wires, get new amps, etc. and none of will change any of this. What we see on the graph tells us the whole story and physics of it disbars any other equipment from impacting this.
Your room of course is different than the sum total of millions of different rooms that your music is recorded in. In that sense, you are never hearing bass the way it was heard in production of your music.
Of course you are not alone. Unless you have a meticulously designed room, if no equalization is used, the bass would be wrong in it. That is true of my room, and all the other members here. It would be a heroic effort to get say, +-3 dB variations.
I suspect you know all or some of this as you would not have deployed Dirac EQ whose display we are looking at there. Diract makes a multi-microphone measurement and attempts to then reduce these variations. And while it is at it, it gives you a chance to create a tonal balance for your system using the "target curve" which is shown as the orange line with dots in it.
There, you have set the system to give you more bass than mid frequencies. And a sharp drop off above 17 Khz or so. Why? That is because research shows that it is this kind of response, not a flat one, that seems "right" for us. Or if you will, "natural." A flat response that will seem more "accurate" will sound wrong.
The beauty of your system is that you can get any sound you want. You can experiment with flat, or different variations as you wish. What you will end up with is something that sounds right most of the time to you. For other times you can create other graphs and using the Dirac controller, switch between them.
That is great except that you have no idea if what you just created is the same as what was used in producing your music. This is actually quite fine by me. Since we never know what was heard when the music was produced, might as well aim for what we like.
Now let's get to the correct response. Unfortunately there we are looking at a lie. The Dirac software implies that the green line is that measurement of the sound you are hearing once it has made the corrections and applied the target curve. Problem is, that is only a computed graph, not measured! Dirac has the same fault that other systems that use multiple measurements do (e.g. Audyssey). It is impossible to go back and remeasure 6-times at the same spot. But let's say you could, you would immediately see that what it computed is not nearly as good as what is actually being produced by your system! That would garner complaints from users so you are left in the dark.
The way to do this then is to use a program like REW to measure before and after as I have done post running Dirac. Sadly you will see that a lot of bass problems remain. Far less than you had before but nothing as good as its computed response.
Now let's talk about frequencies above bass. There we can quickly make an observation that your loudspeaker is well designed in one aspect: there is no dip in 2 to 5 Khz. Why would there be a dip there? Often there is a big size difference between the mid-woofer and tweeter. The classic bookshelf speaker with an 8 inch woofer and 1 inch tweeter has such a design. What then happens is that the woofer has to play at too high a frequency before it hands the signal to tweeter. When that happens, its sound gets directional meaning what you hear direct is direct is a lot more powerful than what bounces around the room. This causes the overall response (room plus loudspeakers) to be lower in mid-frequencies.
What is at mid-frequencies? Usually the most important part of music: the talent singing. So the last thing you want is to have a dip there. You don't have this problem. To confirm, I looked at your signal and notice you have the G1 loudspeaker. Looking at its design, it is a 4-way loudspeakers with drivers closely sized and hence one hands off to the other directionality ("beaming") sets in.
What else can we tell about the tonality of what you are hearing above bass? If we had a graph from REW we could see absence of problems like resonances that panel loudspeakers may have introduced. The one by Dirac uses some unknown level of smoothing that may be hiding such things. Outside of that, the sound you hear is dominated by the loudspeaker. Visually it looks good in the graph we have in front of us but tiny variations there can change what we hear that would not be seen by looking at the graph. Two ears and brain are far more sophisticated than a measurement mic.
On that front, Dirac uses mixed phase filters as to correct "timing" responses. In my experience, it can create very artificial sounding output which while pleasant, may not be accurate. The output may look pretty on an impulse response but I am not one to let the EQ try to second guess what my loudspeaker designer had put in. So in many respects if you have a superbly designed loudspeaker, you may want to turn off all corrections above bass. As a minimum you want to experiment to see if there is true improvement or not.
I will stop here and note what a rich discussion we had about the "sound" of your system by providing just one graph to us. A lot was conveyed and feedback given to potentially improve the system performance. No subjective accolade of "great harmonic structure, natural sound, fantastic microdynamics" would have gotten us anything whatsoever. This is why I say might as well throw all of those pretend terms out the window and just say you heard great music reproduction. Let's not provide technical terms that at the end of the day are not actionable in any way.
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I thought he was referring to an attenuator on the back of a speaker for changing tweeter response
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
My point Keith is that hearing the same music on two different systems at the same SPL (different gain control) there was an ease about David's sound that I didn't have. To me his was far more effortless
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Effortless
My definition of "effortless": the ability to enjoy the music & be in a state of bliss for hours without fatigue.
zz.
My definition of "effortless": the ability to enjoy the music & be in a state of bliss for hours without fatigue.
zz.
It's interesting that horns fill the room with sound by NOT filling the room with sound, you get that massive, unlimited soundstage with horns because you are hearing more direct sound which includes spatial cues in the recording at a higher level than room reflections.
Coupling
"big" is not necessarily the reason. "conventional speakers" couple to the room of the air immediately. The driver of a horn couples to the air that is stationary in the throat [the small section next to the driver] of the horn. The air at the mouth of the horn [the section with the greatest area] couples to the air in the room. Different methods of creating the final sound.
zz
"big" is not necessarily the reason. "conventional speakers" couple to the room of the air immediately. The driver of a horn couples to the air that is stationary in the throat [the small section next to the driver] of the horn. The air at the mouth of the horn [the section with the greatest area] couples to the air in the room. Different methods of creating the final sound.
zz
Yes, but the beauty of having a preamp @ low volume is in a well designed one where the distortion is @ its peak minimum.
Most preamps exhibit the less distortion @ very low volume level...then delivering a "pure natural sound". :b
If you actually understand this why did we have that drawn out issue with driver size vs excursion previously?
Does this mean that once time and frequency response anomalies with respect to a given system in a given room have been addressed, that's the end of the inquiry? That any set of components that meet those measurements will sound the same? That's where I'd get stuck- and I'm not cheerleading for one school over another. I've heard music reproduced over industrial gear that sounded lifelike and via uber 'boutique' gear that sounded too 'hi-fi' for me.
And, what about the source material? I hear huge differences in different pressings, masterings, etc. Some sound more lifelike than others, though all have their strengths and weaknesses. Where do these fit into the equation, other than to say that if the system 'measures well,' it will reproduce what is on the disc? You acknowledge that we are ultimately limited by the commercial recordings that are available to us, correct? I suppose you can EQ to correct some of that, but it is pretty 'gross' in the sense that you are dealing with an already mixed and mastered stereo (or multi-channel) recording. Questions are addressed to both Amir and to Tom, in the spirit of advancing knowledge, not 'winning' an argument.
bill hart
Yes! ...More effortless.
And to have full "swing" (rotation) to the master volume control 'steering wheel' on the front face of your analog preamp, you would need a bias adjustment switch for different speaker's impedance sensitivities...say 80-90 Ohms - 90-100 Ohms - 100-120 Ohms (3 control positions). ...And! The pot control would be a super precise analog type of the most prestigious architecture design. ...With total distortion @ less than 0.0001% THD when the master volume control is set low..between 0.0001 watt and say 10 watts. ....From 10Hz to 100kHz, into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 Ohm speaker loads.
Hey, "natural sound" reproduction...that's what this thread is all about...Mr. Keith sir. :b
For me "effortless" is like a whisper loud and clear. :b ...Like listening to music in the very best acoustically designed room.
...Where you can hear a pin dropping on the carpet floor... -::- ^_^
Of course you may comment, as may I, In my fashion. Having had my attention drawn to this individuals A Typical style in posting
#282/281, I thought that I would share with Steve my own 'view' of the forum that I find much more enjoyable with this particular individual excluded from it.
IMO, what we do in life we do it privately...without fanfare.
What we do publicly we do intelligently...talk about the content, not the poster (never/ever about the poster)...and we use wisdom and good positive humor.
That's just my opinion...because I have read Keith's posts and I saw smart stuff in them...and that, is what counts the post (most)...smart content. :b
That's a good 'natural' allocation. ...In my book of life.
They’re not “pretend terms".
They’re subjective qualifiers. What they’re not is objective quantifiers. The two are not the same, and neither do they serve the same purpose. Rodney’s screenshot of his room is an attempt at objective quantification, not at subjective qualification. (You made this distinction yourself in post #21.)
Alfa Romeos, Gewürztraminer, gin, three-grain wash vodka, hard-tail mountain bikes, 22” ride cymbals, PRS guitars, coated drum heads, hand-wired boutique guitar amps, James Gray films, Barnett Newman paintings, Meshuggah albums, Filet mignon, and sexual intercourse are all measurable in some degree or other, and can be easily objectively quantified. So too can the audio reproduction mechanism.
But the value I place on them is not necessarily directly correlated to their objectively quantifiable measurements. And in describing their value to others, I frequently resort to subjective qualifiers. That’s not to deny the reality that they all can be objectively quantified - if the discussion is centred around power-to-weight ratio, alcohol content, tensile strenght, output tube, number of reverse-angle edits in a sequence, polyrhythms and time-signatures, fat versus protein content and sexual stamina, then yes, objectively quantifiable measurements (hard numbers, if you forgive the pun) are incredibly useful.
But the value I give to them as a human being is sometimes best articulated by their qualities - the driving experience, after-taste, playing quality, emotional and intellectual content… feeling… The above all fail to be fully expressed by the numbers alone. This is especially true for me when discussing art (afterall, what purpose does art have if not to express via a medium that which cannot be expressed via any other medium?), and does not exclude the mechanism by which intentional sound and emotion is played back.
There's an infamous feline with a well known and documented system in Al's neighborhood which I've heard on several occasions and in different settings. On one level the system can't be faulted sonically because its all there, correct tone, timbre, dynamics, scale, presence, etc., very impressive but I can't call it "Natural". The system has all the right qualities but its also has a character that it imposes on the listener, which stops you from getting past the machine. The realistic sounds are very important to get right and essential but emotions are a natural part of the human experience and our subconscious will detect when something is off; "unNatural" if you want. The machine nature is different from ours and will act as invisible emotional barrier if not managed or hidden, hence less or more "Natural". Anyway this is my working theory.
I'm going to put an unadulterated plug for myself here
; you're partially correct 853guy in your assessment regarding some vintage components but that's only part of it, setup is the other half of the equation. You can change, make or break a system through setup as much as through the components, if not more. When I visited Steve the only thing we worked on aside from setting up his table was his setup and that's how his sound changed from what it was towards "Natural" transforming his listening experience and not changing the system. He continues to improve his sound by himself; more "Natural", by tweaking the setup more than we had time for. david
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