"Natural" Sound

[Diapason]

In terms of audio reproduction, 'natural' means absolutely nothing, no more than sterile, clinical, steely,warm , etc etc.

All of those terms mean something to me and to many others, and I have far more intuition for how such terms sound than "I have a 4dB rise at 12kHz". As I've said to you before, none of those terms mean "absolutely nothing". They mean plenty of things, people use them to communicate ideas all the time and understand them perfectly well. You may not understand them, or you may pretend not to, but just because an expression isn't scientifically well-defined it doesn't make it "absolutely meaningless". As much as I enjoy a pantomime villain, such comments just come across as being wilfully obtuse IMO.

 

[Al M.]

Amir, we do know what a violin sounds like and what a truthful version sounds like. I think you are trying to make a different point, but I am not talking about the system reproducing exactly what the recording session sounded like. If we were not there, we can not know that. This point has been discussed many times before. The thread is about a subjective term being used to describe how real an instrument sounds through a system.

[…]

All of those threads about the alphabet soup of digital connections and specifications are the antithesis of threads like this which are about the subjective beauty and a listener's emotional connection to the music. That can not be easily measured or broken down into specifications or data points about amounts of distortion or perfect copies of files.

Well said, Peter.

Yet it is obvious that people here are talking past each other. Those to whom the term 'natural' means nothing will never understand it, and they will keep talking in terms of FR etc.. Those to whom it is meaningful have more or less a common understanding of it, especially when they have extensive experience with the sound of unamplified live music.

 

[amirm]

Amir, we do know what a violin sounds like and what a truthful version sounds like.

We know as a category what it sounds like, not in the specific. We have a two-stage memory system. Short-term memory records just about everything that comes in. Its data rate unfortunately is very high and nothing like that can be stored for our lifetime. So what happens is that a massive lossy filter is applied to the short-term memory, classification happens by extractions of "features" and that is what is stored in our memory. That classification lets us distinguish between guitar and piano. So in that general sense you are right but this doesn't help us in this situation.

Take a person playing a guitar. I set up two instances of that. One with the mic 2 inches from guitar, and the other 5 inches. I then record that you and you listen. These two would sound different and you would be in no position to know if that difference is due to change of microphone versus your system and room creating the difference. Your experience hearing other guitar presentations live does not help you one bit in this situation.

When I hear a natural sounding system, and when people I know say that a system sounds natural, I am, and they are, saying that they are able to suspend their disbelief to some meaningful level and they are less aware or perhaps even completely unaware of the system in front of them. They have lost themselves to the music because it sounds natural to them.

I get that and said that is what the word really means. That they had an enjoyable time. If so, they should just use that word: great time/enjoyable time, etc. Don't attempt to give us qualitative words like "natural" when the person actually stopped analyzing the sound they were hearing and so were not in a position to be critical enough to find flaws that for sure still existed.

Let me give an example in video. Professional monitors have a button on them that turns the picture black and white. Taking away the color instantly makes the video unattractive. But doing so also lets us see if there are any artifacts in the black and white part of the view which is more important to our perception of images than color. This is using our eyes to critically analyze things and find and fix problems. In that sense using your most favorite tracks is likely a bad idea when it comes to testing audio systems. You want revealing tracks, not those that make you melt in your seat and stop evaluating.

We also have the problem of western culture where no way on earth anyone would go to some high-profile person's home, dine on their food and hospitality and come to a forum and say bad things about their system. We simply do not make that a comfortable situation for them. I can tell you that in private, such criticism comes out and strongly so. The value is lost unfortunately to the membership at large.

 

[Al M.]

Note microphone placements. The only mics that are close to 10 feet from the musicians are above whole sections. Is that where Mr. Cordesman gets his reference? Floating above the violins? Because that's where they are recorded and yes, they will capture more detail (and more accurate tonality) there than they would at the listening position, and more, in fact, than we will hear sitting out in the concert hall. There is a reason for this: microphones don't hear the way human ears do. Recording technology does not process a signal the way a human brain does. When the engineer moves the microphones closer to the musicians it's because he'll get a better recording there.

And I'm not sure I understand the "10 feet" thing at all. 10 feet from an instrument is representative of what live listening experience?

While I may not agree with you on everything you say here, the point about microphone placement is an important one.

 

[Steve williams]

Al and Peter. You are both so on to the concept. Sadly an objectivist can't grasp the concept because they need to analyze everything which IMO is nothing more than HiF.

Brendon (853guy) IMO is also dead on in his response to Keith. It's not something you can measure. It's something you know when you hear it.

 

[PeterA]

Well said, Peter.

Yet it is obvious that people here are talking past each other. Those to whom the term 'natural' means nothing will never understand it, and they will keep talking in terms of FR etc.. Those to whom it is meaningful have more or less a common understanding of it, especially when they have extensive experience with the sound of unamplified live music.

The key, as you and David point out, is knowing what real instruments sound like. The non audiophile who attends acoustic concerts or has a child taking piano lessons, knows what a piano sounds like and he will know how to answer the question of whether or not a stereo sounds natural. Ron's description in the OP gives me a better sense of the sound of Steve's system than I had reading through much of his system thread. Steve's description of David's system tells me the same.

 

[amirm]

The non audiophile who attends acoustic concerts or has a child taking piano lessons, knows what a piano sounds like and he will know how to answer the question of whether or not a stereo sounds natural.

Can you share any survey or research that shows this?

 

[Steve williams]

Can you share any survey or research that shows this?

common sense perhaps

 

[andromedaaudio]

 

[amirm]

Al and Peter. You are both so on to the concept. Sadly an objectivist can't grasp the concept because they need to analyze everything which IMO is nothing more than HiF.

This has nothing to do with being an objectivist or subjectivist. Just as many objectivists think that there comes a time when your system reproduces a live presentation. I know because I have had to explain this simple concept of "known unknowns" to both camps. It just happens that objectivists listen more to the logic and most eventually change their point of view. The more expensive a subjectivists' system, the more they are reticent to accept that all that money still did not get them to hear the live presentation.

It is a tough pill to swallow for sure but every bit of data points to it being right. Just read Tim's post here.

And oh, I would be proud to have a high *fidelity* (HiFi) system. Because that would say I am playing what is recorded on the track. Saying you would be happy with something else means to be in love with anything than natural...

 

[PeterA]

C’mon, Keith.

“Natural” is what we as a species have been experiencing for roughly the last 42,000 years. That’s if the dating of a pair of flutes - one made from bird bone, the other from mammoth ivory - is anything close to accurate.

Music as a socio-cultural phenomenon predates Edison’s first attempt at playing back prerecorded sound by several dozen millennia, while the ability to playback sound in a commercially-available format has only been with us for less than 150 years.

From an evolutionary point-of-view, we have been singing, drumming, and blowing hollow objects for way, way longer than we have been sitting in front of inanimate objects playing back ghosts. So it’s difficult for me to conceive that we don’t know what “natural” is or should be.

If memory serves me correctly, I recall you’ve posted before how a system “knows” what it’s playing. No system does, of course. It does not possess sentiency. But we do. We’ve been making music for a very, very long time, so as a species, we’re already neuro-biologically wired and predisposed to identify what music is as distinct from, say, someone quoting Shakespeare or an explosion in a cutlery factory (cue Einstürzende Neubauten jokes).

So we are always the arbiters of what “natural” is, because there is no other thing on earth that has the capacity to make a distinction between music and non-music. And defining it is not difficult. That is, if one is open to move beyond rigid objectively-defined and adhered-to dogma as to what constitutes the listening experience, and allow that without the subjective human experience, music has no meaning, and “natural” has no value.

I love your posts, 853guy. You always make a lot of sense.

 

[PeterA]

Can you share any survey or research that shows this?

Look outside your window. If the sun is shining, is the sky blue?

I suggest you take a random sample of people outside of the BSO or picking their kids up from piano lessons. Then post the results in the science forum to convince others who also doubt my statement.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Regarding piano , i think tape/ convergent/ and my own speakers do a pretty good job ,after a bit of spooling there is music , digital buh/puke no thanks



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swb632kjhxQ

 

[ddk]

I haven't heard the Silbatone amps here, so you may be right they could be dreadfully coloured , but every 'long' horn I have heard has been coloured, whether WE or more contemporary GOTO variants.
Keith.

Gotto variants have other issues and more often than not the people who own them lack the knowledge to build such a speaker to begin with. I've had access to original WE horns in the past, they're limited in frequency response but definitely not colored. In fact with proper electronics and setup in a blind test you wouldn't be able to guess its age, they sound fantastic and "Natural" within their range.

david

 

[amirm]

Look outside your window. If the sun is shining, is the sky blue?

It isn't. It is cloudy. How blue does a picture of the sky here needs to be for you to determine the photograph is natural versus not?

I suggest you take a random sample of people outside of the BSO or picking their kids up from piano lessons. Then post the results in the science forum to convince others who also doubt my statement.

So you want me to go and prove or disprove your statement? Does everyone else agree here? That a kid that took piano lessons is superior to you all who did not take such a test in determining the naturalness of your audio system?

 

[bonzo75]

However, the recent trend here would seem to describe anything with valves as being unnatural by definition due to distortion, which leads us back to the whole question of why so many people's subjective sense of "natural" is improved by the addition of distortion, myself included. And round and round we go.

One way to guess an unnatural system by just looking at gear is if you see a pure SS system, or Odin type cabling

 

[amirm]

One way to guess an unnatural system by just looking at gear is if you see a pure SS system, or Odin type cabling

Ouch, that hurt.

Do all audiophiles agree with this?

 

[853guy]

I have never posted that a system 'knows' what it is playing ,quite the opposite.

Sorry, I should have been more clear: I recall you’ve posted before that a system can’t “know” what it’s playing - and I was saying I agree with you.

In terms of audio reproduction, 'natural' means absolutely nothing, no more than sterile, clinical, steely,warm , etc etc.
If you'd want to describe the sound of your room, post a screenshot of the FR from your listening position.

If have no interest in engaging in an discussion with you where you insist I adopt your worldview. I once owned a lot of olive-badged boxes and it was tiring enough extracting myself from that club/cult without needing to enter into another just so we can discuss the merits of a single specific term related to a phenomena that predates our control over electricity.

Like I said above, we, the human species, are always the arbiters of what “natural” means apropos the musical experience, and if that term is to have any meaning we need to move beyond the reductive dogma of “yeah but, show me your (insert objectively-defined variable here)” in order discuss whether it has any meaning for us who have been practising the art form known as music for a lot, lot longer than we’ve been able to measure time, pitch and amplitude - or anything for that matter.

My point was, “knowing” what a system is playing is socio-culturally prescribed and resides within the domain of the collective subjective human experience. That is, it’s continually defined and redefined by us as a species, and not any extrinsic objective quantifier, and certainly not by a FR plot of anyone’s room, mine included.

 

[andromedaaudio]

NO , i like solid state , and cables dont hurt they just cost a lot off $$$ and look nice

 

[ddk]

'Natural' means nothing as has already been stated it could mean anything , now if you say the system has a 4dB lift at 8kHz then everyone understands exactly what you are saying.
Keith.

That's not true at all, "Natural" is the starting point and you should be familiar with it. The 4db lift at 8khz is the nothing, just a miniscule measurement of who knows what.

david