Natural Sound

[Al M.]

they are not so bad. i like them much better than the objectivist/ASR crowd, at least we have listening respect in common. and SET/Horn lovers come in all shapes, sizes, and fang length. so there is variety.

Fair point, to some extent. However, in terms of dogmatism some in the two camps are not that far apart.

Yet as you say, they come in all varieties. Some SET/horn lovers are entirely undogmatic. Unfortunately, their loudest voices on WBF are not that way.

 

[Al M.]

unlikely, and very high probability of no change. i love where i am and what i'm hearing. i just want this forever. but meteors do strike the earth....so who knows?

Same here. Happy with my sound.

 

[marty]

someday it might be me with SET's and horns....why not? i'm not anti.

I checked the calendar, looking for the date when hell freezes over. Couldn't find it.

 

[bonzo75]

Happy with my sound.

Not good enough for a vid though.

 

[bonzo75]

and SET/Horn lovers come in all shapes, sizes,

The consistent thing is they all came from cones and panels. And many quite recent

 

[Al M.]

Not good enough for a vid though.

No, never.

 

[morricab]

I'm not at all put off by those choices. I enjoy reading about those systems, I am often impressed by them. I appreciate the diversity of systems discussed in this forum.

I just had a knee-jerk reaction to the idea that you cannot evaluate a system as sounding "natural" unless you own season tickets to your local symphonic orchestra (to paraphrase things, and slightly exaggerate them...).

Well, it doesn’t hurt your ability to distinguish natural sound from “synthetic “ sound if you have those season tickets; however, you still need to have some ability to make the distinction…

 

[Kingrex]

I am sure you can find counter examples, as you have. What I meant more generally is that many people who listen to acoustical non-amplified music do choose a variety of systems, not just the typical SET driven high sensitivity speakers.

Totally agree. I'm open baffle with 40 watts of PP.

I find horns and SET have a sound that is somewhat close to live unamplified. But you know its a horn. At least all the ones I have heard.

I really enjoyed the Magnepan 20.7 with AR Ref250 driving them.

I like a lot of different systems at diffeeent times with different music.

 

[PeterA]

'Natural' and "Accurate' are exactly the same thing as I described earlier. Synonymous in every way. If its not accurate its not natural and if not natural certainly not accurate. What we cannot do is be truthful to the musical event. That is because whatever it was, the recording is all we have. But we can be truthful to that, so however the recording is, the reproduction will be as true to the recording as possible if its 'accurate' or 'natural'.

Put another way its possible to use engineering to design equipment that obeys the rules of human hearing just as its possible to design equipment that gets you good numbers on a spec sheet. That is what Vladimir was up to. Its also possible to design equipment that gets you good specs on paper and also obey human hearing rules. Its that last bit that a lot of people don't seem to understand. When it has good specs and also obeys human hearing rules then it will be both accurate and natural.

Ralph, if the two terms have exactly the same meaning, why say at the end of the second quote in bold that certain condions must be met for a presentation to be BOTH accurate and natural? This implies to me that if all qualifying conditions are not met, you will have one or the other, but not both.

 

[Atmasphere]

Ralph, if the two terms have exactly the same meaning, why say at the end of the second quote in bold that certain condions must be met for a presentation to be BOTH accurate and natural? This implies to me that if all qualifying conditions are not met, you will have one or the other, but not both.

Sorry- to be clear, if you have one you have the other. I'm using them in an inclusive way. One is not present without the other since they are the same thing.

I was addressing the rather silly notion that a sine wave generator making a G tone isn't natural but is accurate while a piano doing the same thing is natural but not accurate. Its pure nonsense- you can really tie yourself into knots that way. I was trying to address that without being as blunt as I am here.

 

[PeterA]

I'm not at all put off by those choices. I enjoy reading about those systems, I am often impressed by them. I appreciate the diversity of systems discussed in this forum.

I just had a knee-jerk reaction to the idea that you cannot evaluate a system as sounding "natural" unless you own season tickets to your local symphonic orchestra (to paraphrase things, and slightly exaggerate them...).

I don’t think anyone on this thread is telling others to buy season tickets to anything. There is just a lot is sharing of fun live music experiences. Those who choose acoustic instruments as their reference enjoy music just like everyone here does, and it can be in any form, live or recoded, and played over anything.

Al M and I go to concerts together: the symphony, the jazz group, and chamber music in small to medium rooms. Our systems could not be more different and they could not sound more different, well mostly. We both describe the sound of our systems as believable and convincing, certainly enjoyable. He would just never name his system thread, Natral Sound.

 

[PeterA]

A tone generator can emit a perfect G, most accurately. Whereas a grand piano can strike a G chord and although the multiple harmonics associated with that piano chord strike make it anything but accurate, it is however natural.

I see your point, but an electronic device and a real music instrument are two different things generating different sounds. They will have different characteristics just as different instruments or different pianos playing the same note will sound different.

 

[morricab]

Ralph, if the two terms have exactly the same meaning, why say at the end of the second quote in bold that certain condions must be met for a presentation to be BOTH accurate and natural? This implies to me that if all qualifying conditions are not met, you will have one or the other, but not both.

They don’t have the same meaning unless you can answer the question “accurate to what detector?” If an amplifier is accurate to electronic measurement instruments it might not (and according to Geddes, Cheever, Hiraga et al. Probably is not) be natural to a human listener…at least not as natural sounding as those that have distortion that fits an appropriate hearing model.

Good SETs work well because they are designed better than Ralph admits and have a distortion pattern that better fits a psychoacoustic model. Sure you can push them too far but they are far more graceful in overload.

Accurate to a model of hearing is likely to be closer to natural.

 

[PeterA]

I don’t see one in yours either, nor analog, but that is more to do with attitude

Kedar, Al is extremely satisfied with his system, as he was with his old system. He once thought he would only have stand mounts and subs. Well, things change and he discusses on his thread. Others should not try to tell him how to change. He, like many, makes his own choices.

He also enjoys horns, SETs and vinyl in other people’s’ systems, just like you do.

 

[PeterA]

Indeed, the whole attitude is off-putting.

Al, you extol the virtues of physical CDs and used to do the same for monitor/subs as much or more than the few actually here who own SET/horns. And many of those guys have now left. A solution is simply to not click on the few threads if it is so off- putting.

 

[hopkins]

I don’t think anyone on this thread is telling others to buy season tickets to anything. There is just a lot is sharing of fun live music experiences. Those who choose acoustic instruments as their reference enjoy music just like everyone here does, and it can be in any form, live or recoded, and played over anything.

Al M and I go to concerts together: the symphony, the jazz group, and chamber music in small to medium rooms. Our systems could not be more different and they could not sound more different, well mostly. We both describe the sound of our systems as believable and convincing, certainly enjoyable. He would just never name his system thread, Natral Sound.

Understood. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[PeterA]

Not good enough for a vid though.

Al might post a video of his system when you post a video of yours. Is anyone willing to bet which happens first?

 

[DasguteOhr]

I'm not at all put off by those choices. I enjoy reading about those systems, I am often impressed by them. I appreciate the diversity of systems discussed in this forum.

I just had a knee-jerk reaction to the idea that you cannot evaluate a system as sounding "natural" unless you own season tickets to your local symphonic orchestra (to paraphrase things, and slightly exaggerate them...).

Trying to reproduce a complete orchestra with a stereo system is doomed to failure. This requires a trinaural processor and three loudspeakers. This produces a mixed signal, a virtual center, so to speak. Then you have solved the problem in the sweet spot. The experience of an orchestra then comes into your living room. Playing tonally correctly is more a problem of the room acoustics and not of the loudspeaker. Unless it has an extremely wavy frequency response.
The best thing to do is to have the device demonstrated, ideally with three active speakers. You will be so impressed that your mouth will drop open.

Trinaural Processor — SST

Closer to the Live Event TRI-CHANNEL PROCESSOR The Trinaural Processor is a totally unique device that addresses what Jim Bongiorno considered an inherent flaw in the traditional music playback system—specifically, that it only produces sound in two channels. According to Jim, there is

www.sst.audio

 

[morricab]

Trying to reproduce a complete orchestra with a stereo system is doomed to failure. This requires a trinaural processor and three loudspeakers. This produces a mixed signal, a virtual center, so to speak. Then you have solved the problem in the sweet spot. The experience of an orchestra then comes into your living room. Playing tonally correctly is more a problem of the room acoustics and not of the loudspeaker. Unless it has an extremely wavy frequency response.
The best thing to do is to have the device demonstrated, ideally with three active speakers. You will be so impressed that your mouth will drop open.

Trinaural Processor — SST

Closer to the Live Event TRI-CHANNEL PROCESSOR The Trinaural Processor is a totally unique device that addresses what Jim Bongiorno considered an inherent flaw in the traditional music playback system—specifically, that it only produces sound in two channels. According to Jim, there is

www.sst.audio

I heard this a long time ago…it was impressive!

 

[pjwd]

Ĥ⁸

P.S. I guess I took your system video as an example in my post above. The video is nice. The comment about tonality was "theoretical".'..

Videos do often distort the frequency response due to microphones and room reflections which are sometimes emphasized (I don't know why).

That always troubled me with phone recordings.
I think that when a concert hall recording is made the mic placement is usually an acoustically calm location about 3m up in the air and 4m or so back.. not down among the sea of heads where we hear it. The hall ambience is the mixed in to the taste of the engineer. If it was recorded where we are it would include the cacophony of reflections our brain expects and processes. When we record in a listening space we hear the original hall ambience plus the overlay of the room acoustic....if this is a lively space we hear it as excessive reverb but we are not in that room and our brain can't process it as easily so it sounds overly reverberent. In the room it may be quite acceptable. Of course some rooms are more controlled either through design or luck ( or both) and you get cleaner recordings
My 2 pennies