I think I differ to you guys. I think a small and judicious amount of room treatment is nigh on essential. I am not talking about creating a horribly dead studio type space but similarly listening in an overly live and reflective “swimming pool” acoustic totally robs your systems ability to communicate effectively with you. Imho ymmv etc.
Natural Sound
- Thread starter PeterA
- Start date
There is no black background in live music. There is however, the ease you hear in a well mic’d and well mixed live presentation. I think black backgrounds is an audio term that is unnatural.
Generally I'd agree, but the starting state of a room may vary drastically. Without understanding the characteristics of the starting state in terms of a waterfall plot or RT60 we can't communicate what we are experiencing very accurately.
I get that the "natural sound" protocol involves more reflective surfaces and longer decay to the point you psychoacoustically perceive the sound as "room filling", which I have experienced. (correct me if I'm mistaken here)
Personally, I like a greater proportion of direct sound because I believe it provides a more "you are there" type of presentation but I definitely understand the correlation between live sound and longer decay times because we often listen to music in reflective spaces.
And on another topic, I think once again the recording is more than a little relevant as many are not attempting to convey the live experience, they are conveying an "improved" version and unless the recording is 2 mics in the audience the correlation to live music is somewhat questionable, imo. In a perfect world I want the 2-mic live recording to sound exactly like I was there, but I also want to hear the "doctored" and multi-mic'ed recordings to sound exactly like the recording artists intended. Can you have both?
True, but there should be in play back to be able to hear the (non existing black background) on the recording (in case it is a HQ live recording),
See also post #488
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I agree with your statement. It really is room dependent, where "small and judicious" room treatments are used to fix issues with the room.
This makes sense. Each room is different and may have different needs. A swimming pool swarm of reflections can't be good, and I am certainly not advocating for a dead sounding studio space. I have found that I prefer less absorption to more, that is all I'm saying. Start slow and go from there.
I am lucky in that I have extremely good room acoustics in all three of my listening rooms. No treatment needed...at least with somewhat directional speakers.
How does the average garden variety audiophile know what their room requires in terms of “room treatment”? Let’s take this even further, a room does not create sound of its own, it has to be energized, which means that the room’s response is system dependent on the excitations. This whole room treatment becomes a chicken and egg exercise carried out by people that are frankly not technically astute.
A triangular seating arrangement that emphasizes the direct sound will yield good results in most domestic rooms.
The whole bespoke custom built listening rooms that I have seen don’t even take into account the step-function response of the systems going into them, and yet we claim that no one size fits all. How can that be? Sorry but the room’s contributions is not the answer in most cases.
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You also have a natural horn in one of your rooms. I would be dangerous if I lived there. There would be madness ensuing with my room becoming that bass horn lol
Did you read my post? Of course it's an audio term, but it's not unnatural; what's "unnatural" is noise and other artifacts added by the reproduction system, just as I posted. If you can't eliminate that you are missing out on important aspects of the recording. The term has nothing to do with live music. Just because some people misuse a term doesn't mean the idea is wrong.
The variety of factors contributing to that system noise can and has been dealt with in many other topic threads.
I'm not sure if this is what you're talking about, but ambient noise at Disney Hall is in the 30s. It's very quiet.
Would you describe that as a “black background“? Is Disney Hall considered to have good acoustics? Unfortunately, I’ve only seen the outside and they wouldn’t let me inside to even take a look at the lobby without a ticket for a performance.
Crazy design genius... must shape next room differently
... the last house I went wood house box modernist with a concealed roof... next time big arse skillion and whole room of horn gain Peter,
You are not understanding the usual use of the word in the high-end community. It has been used since decades ago in a subjective sense, meaning something that surely does not strip harmonics or information - the contrary, in reality. Well known reviewers and audio writers wrote long texts on it and were not able to correlate it with signal to noise ratio - sometimes products with inferior specifications were able to present more information and detail than better measuring ones.
Most know reviewers use it - see for example a few quotes from online reviews of the Grand Prix Audio Monaco turntable that you can easily locate. Many people have referred that we need new words to describe the performance of current top high-end systems, but IMHO we need new words, not just re-defining the accepted ones for the WBF community, isolating us from the audiophile debates. See the above example, that you can easily locate (analog planet and theaudiobeat).
Michael Fremer
The Monaco plinth's excellent rejection of outside energy, and the magnesium-alloy platter's ability to drain energy away from the stylus/groove interface, was evident in well-established aural images set against impressively black backgrounds. There was nothing soft or cloudy about the Monaco's reproduction of space.
Roy Gregory
I also experimented with the Stillpoints Ultra LP Isolator, my weight/sink of choice on my other record players, and achieved good results, with a tighter and more dimensional focus coupled to a slightly leaner, crisper and more immediate presentation, definitely preferable to the GPA -- if the Grand Prix clamp is overtightened. But use the GPA clamp properly and it offers a balance of dimensionality, depth and blackness to the soundstage background, naturally scaled dynamics, immediacy and instrumental textures that exceed anything else I had available. It also takes the edge off surface noise, without killing air or immediacy. It’s yet another example of just how complete a solution Grand Prix Audio provides, as long as you follow a few simple operational rules.
Roy Gregory
No product can please all of the people all of the time, and there will be those who will listen to the Monaco 2.0 and still choose an alternative player. For them, the Grand Prix ‘table might not be the answer, but at least they’ll know what they’re missing. Some products -- some quite famously -- just look the way they sound. Elegantly compact, planted and incredibly solid, in its latest form, the Grand Prix turntable has a physical integrity and sense of precision that are embodied in the music it plays. It’s not the most obvious association, given the airy transparency and super-black background generated by the ‘table, but then you need to look at what it isn’t as well as what it is. The absence of an oversized and overweight plinth, a platter the depth of a wedding cake, and more belts and braces than a Bavarian glee club contributes directly to that clarity, space around instruments, low noise floor and lack of spurious clutter.
End of quote.
BWT I listened to the Monaco a few times (just distributor demos in the shop large room) and can assure you that it does not strip harmonics or information from recordings.
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Peter
I must say I was releived when I did go inside ... the acoustic engineer must have had command as it was not a whacky Frank Ghery sculpture but a beautifull symmetrical interior.
I thought the acoustics were great and as Keith noted quite a low ambient noise level
This is the first thing you need to get right in a hall .. ideally below 30dB ...this limits masking of nuance and detail which provides the drama and dynamics of the music
If you have a dedicated room that is sound isolated it does exactly the same thing ... call it black blue or brindle
Phil
Chick Corea famously said that the venue was too quite and not suitable for jazz because of it.
I don’t know what to tell you Francisco. The noise floor of my current system is lower than was that of my former system. I hear more information and yet the backgrounds are not blacker. They are more full of information. Harmonics and resolution have increased with the lowering of the noise for while backgrounds are less black and absent of information.
There is less blackness in the soundstage. In fact the stage is more full of energy from the instruments. Roy Gregory describes the “blackness of the soundstage background” in his review. That sure seems like a reference to live music to me and not a lowering of the noise floor.
We can disagree about context and definitions all day long. This is my system thread and I’m simply sharing my impressions of the way I think about music and it’s reproduction. The descriptions are mine and I do not adhere to the audiophile lexicon.
Thank you for posting those three quotes. They are exactly why I stopped reading reviews. I do not hear components sounding the way they are described by many of these reviewers. In fact it is becoming more and more difficult for me to relate to the language these reviewers use to describe components and sound.
I understand full well that you hold in high regard the text books and reviews of well known people in the industry. That is fine. You can feel confident by agreeing with, supporting, and sharing their views.
I am no longer convinced by what you hold up as the popular view. I now have a better understanding of what I am hearing and I am describing that in the clearest way I know how.
This is what I suspected as soon as Keith quoted the low ambient noise level. You say “famously“. That must mean that he raised a few eyebrows with his comments.
Wonder what he meant ? ... musicians have praised the hall as they can hear each other.... an often overlooked issue
I do recall talking to some engineers about the fact that the sound reinforcment system was poor and they bought ATC in to solve it
Maybe he didnt like folks hearing every little mistake
Anyhoo sailing off topic..
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