Natural Sound

[LMR-Miguel]

The same vinyl system, playing a bass heavy track and captured directly through the RCA outputs of the phono stage directly into a digital capture card doesn't sound bloated at all

 

[PeterA]

Like before, I do not wish to pollute the thread or comment on the system. It is very fine. As a horn traveller for close to 3 decades, I remain fascinated at how different various horns can sound. I really spark fury on my side if "Industry experts" generalise.

For the record. I do not have this on vinyl, fine or otherwise. The replay is therefore the lowliest of the low: a 7.5 ips 1/4 track commercial release from back then. 2. To try and get the playing field straight it is a simple iPhone (not current) with no extra microphones.

The purpose, again is only to show differences in horns, not what is better than what. For the record, I have a pair of fettled and modified K Horns and the recorded sound is very close to the original video. Not as refined of course for the ancillaries in the original are impeccable

Wow, four systems and four very different horn solutions recorded via phones. They do indeed all sound different. Thank you jdza, Miguel, and Tim for sharing your videos here all playing the same music. These system videos from hobbyists who live all over the world demonstrate a range of approaches and sound. Sharing such systems with others is a great aspect of the hobby.

 

[tima]

Thank you for your kind words: Yes, I agree and often wonder how meaningful these phone recordings are (particularly in the bass region where the tiny phone mics are easily overpowered/saturated and how that in turn pollutes the overall recording).

The same vinyl system, playing a bass heavy track and captured directly through the RCA outputs of the phono stage directly into a digital capture card doesn't sound bloated at all

Thank you for your comments Miquel. They make sense to me.

Capturing music with a phone is different than capturing music with your ears. The former requires subsequent intervening steps to produce sound through playback whereas the latter is simultaneous with the sound's production. With the phone as an ADC whose output is uploaded to the likes of YouTube then streamed to the listener who plays it back on whatever, there should be no surprise at differences between the in-room recordist's experience and the streaming listener's.

Capturing to a digital file directly off a turntable may be technically interesting, but it is not a capture of sound in space; there is no audio system of which it can be somewhat representative. It is interesting to hear different people's audio systems and learn from comparing them even when listening to YouTube videos. Recordings made without microphones don't support that.

As to the value equation ... We know phones have limitations, as do desktop playback systems. The phone is widely available and it makes it easy to make and share videos. As long as the person recording the video finds it "sufficiently representative" of their system what we gain by sharing can outweigh the mechanism's limitations. Or so goes the rationale for using phones to share experiences. Sociability is a need for many in a hobby otherwise largely private and personal.

 

[LMR-Miguel]

Thank you for your comments Miquel. They make sense to me.

Capturing music with a phone is different than capturing music with your ears. The former requires subsequent intervening steps to produce sound through playback whereas the latter is simultaneous with the sound's production. With the phone as an ADC whose output is uploaded to the likes of YouTube then streamed to the listener who plays it back on whatever, there should be no surprise at differences between the in-room recordist's experience and the streaming listener's.

Capturing to a digital file directly off a turntable may be technically interesting, but it is not a capture of sound in space; there is no audio system of which it can be somewhat representative. It is interesting to hear different people's audio systems and learn from comparing them even when listening to YouTube videos. Recordings made without microphones don't support that.

As to the value equation ... We know phones have limitations, as do desktop playback systems. The phone is widely available and it makes it easy to make and share videos. As long as the person recording the video finds it "sufficiently representative" of their system what we gain by sharing can outweigh the mechanism's limitations. Or so goes the rationale for using phones to share experiences. Sociability is a need for many in a hobby otherwise largely private and personal.

This is something I give quite a bit of my focus and obsession: how to capture the essence of a sound system and share it over the internet in a way that once reproduced through a high quality enough reproducing chain is representative of what my ears sensed while I recorded it. I think that affordable semi professional field recorders offer quite a bit of a step up to a phone. That’s what I use when I want to get a bit more serious of grabbing a live room recording , for example here:

or here:

I believe that recording signal sources directly is also interesting: in the sense that it captures just the essence of that signal source (well the ADC can’t be escaped in any case) without other variables which in their total add a signal imprint or deviation from the original signal being generated at the source, being these the capturing microphone, speaker system, room liveness, amplifier, cables…all of these elements will imprint their character in the captured signal…but this exercise only makes sense when isolating a particular element of the signal chain (something i often do: isolate and compare single elements of the signal chain to track minute changes in circuit components, trying out different capacitors, or different topology options without distractions from other elements in the chain being recorded).

I wish that there would truly be a recording standard which would make all of our room recordings directly comparable…it would be the next best thing to a flight and stayover at eachothers place I mean when I sense excitement from someone in the forum about some new change in the signal chain I have to rely on his verbal description of what he senses…it would be leaps more engaging if accompanied by his words there would be a standardized recording method/equipment that could be directly comparable with others

 

[hopkins]

This is something I give quite a bit of my focus and obsession: how to capture the essence of a sound system and share it over the internet in a way that once reproduced through a high quality enough reproducing chain is representative of what my ears sensed while I recorded it. I think that affordable semi professional field recorders offer quite a bit of a step up to a phone. That’s what I use when I want to get a bit more serious of grabbing a live room recording , for example here:

or here:

I believe that recording signal sources directly is also interesting: in the sense that it captures just the essence of that signal source without other variables which in their total add a signal imprint or deviation from the original signal being generated at the source, being these the capturing microphone, speaker system, room liveness, amplifier, cables…all of these elements will imprint their character in the captured signal…but this exercise only makes sense when isolating a particular element of the signal chain (something i often do: isolate and compare single elements of the signal chain to track minute changes in circuit components, trying out different capacitors, or different topology options without distractions from other elements in the chain being recorded).

I wish that there would truly be a recording standard which would make all of our room recordings directly comparable…it would be the next best thing to a flight and stayover at eachothers place I mean when I sense excitement from someone in the forum about some new change in the signal chain I have to rely on his verbal description of what he senses…it would be leaps more engaging if accompanied by his words there would be a standardized recording method/equipment that could be directly comparable with others

Excellent sound coming from your system! Congratulations. What field recorder do you use?

 

[LMR-Miguel]

Excellent sound coming from your system! Congratulations. What field recorder do you use?

Thank you, it’s a Tascam DR-100Mk2, the internal unidirectional microphones are quite decent

 

[hopkins]

Thank you, it’s a Tascam DR-100Mk2, the internal unidirectional microphones are quite decent

Short digression... The recording is very quiet. Is your listening room very quiet or are you playing louder than usual?

 

[LMR-Miguel]

Short digression... The recording is very quiet. Is your listening room very quiet or are you playing louder than usual?

Not really incredibly loud, I’d say at probably close to 90dbs peaks at the listening position which is about 4 meters away from the speakers. The house is detached and in a somewhat remote area so the ambient noise floor is naturally low most of the time

 

[tima]

I wish that there would truly be a recording standard which would make all of our room recordings directly comparable…it would be the next best thing to a flight and stayover at eachothers place I mean when I sense excitement from someone in the forum about some new change in the signal chain I have to rely on his verbal description of what he senses…it would be leaps more engaging if accompanied by his words there would be a standardized recording method/equipment that could be directly comparable with others

We've been through that discussion somewhat extensively -- and probably do not want to rejoin it in Peter's system thread. While there is no consensus, the vast majority of videos posted on this forum are regular phone videos. Seems the defacto standard ... at least today.

You may want to consider this thread:

Videos of Acoustically-Coupled Audio Recordings

Acoustically-coupled cell phone recordings of high-end audio systems make no sense to me personally (except in the narrow and limited scenario where an iPhone is fixed in position in a single system and the same track of music is played at the same volume and one thing (and one thing only) in...

www.whatsbestforum.com

 

[jdza]

What worries me is that I listened to all 4 on headphones with my Apogee headphone amp ( nowhere near SOTA but quite revealing). I came to a certain conclusion. I then listened to the same in my TV room through a huge pair of horn Kinoshita-inspired TADS. What sounded very nice on the one sounded awful on the other. I just do not have the strength to listen to the iPhone itself.

Bottom line; I fail to see how this little experiment can make anyone reach a valuable conclusion. I think one would be absolutely stupid to reach a final decision on any purchase from a phone video but I thought it would at least put you on the road where to go. Seems not.

Thank you for tolerating this nonsense on your thread but it may have helped me, personally, to reach a conclusion of what I should have realised long ago.

 

[tima]

Bottom line; I fail to see how this little experiment can make anyone reach a valuable conclusion. ...

Thank you for tolerating this nonsense on your thread but it may have helped me, personally, to reach a conclusion of what I should have realised long ago.

Sounds like it helped you reach a valuable conclusion.

Earlier you said about your own posted video: "The purpose, again is only to show differences in horns, not what is better than what." With Peter and others offering their videos from their systems using horns, do you think that purpose was accomplished? I do.

I doubt anyone posted a video with its intent to lead to a purchase decision. Imo sharing videos is just that, a means of social interaction. Listening to one person's system through a different system and through intervening data conversion is obviously a factor to consider. Imo postiing system videos simply offers another data point that allows one to draw whatever conclusions they do.

Your video woud have been more interesting to me if you said what components were involved. Nonetheless with many others too timid or unwilling to make a video of their system I give you credit for making and posting yours.

 

[jdza]

Thank you for your response. I own 3 horn systems in the same house. I Is as shown, 2 is a system with 2 15-inch TADs in a bass reflex and a horn-loaded TAD compression driver (Kinoshita RM7 SV sort of) and Klipschorns. In other words close to my own, yours and Peter's. I have in the past been shocked at how I can identify the sound of the Vitavox, even blind over a cell phone. It is so characteristic of a front-folded basshorn.



When listening ( to me) a. is of course tonality and b. is what every musician is doing and why. I am no musician so do not have filters and have to have it spelled out. With Analog, I have found this best. My video is of 1/4 track tape. With the headphones, it is startling as I can follow the bass and percussion as if I could play the pieces ( I am hopeless at it). On the big TADs, it is a muddled mess. If I listen to that same tape directly on the TADs, I can again follow all.

This brings me to another and even more controversial point. The consensus is that the best sound is the Avant Gardes. It uses digital playback recorded by the phone. Quite some time ago, someone posted a video of music, replayed on Analog. I posted the same but streamed. Everyone commented how good mine sounded. That makes me believe that recording Digital through a phone may be easier than recording Analog. To me, directly listening, Analog always wins, but it seems when imperfectly recorded, digital is better. Does it have less info to process?

 

[tima]

This brings me to another and even more controversial point. The consensus is that the best sound is the Avant Gardes. It uses digital playback recorded by the phone. Quite some time ago, someone posted a video of music, replayed on Analog. I posted the same but streamed. Everyone commented how good mine sounded. That makes me believe that recording Digital through a phone may be easier than recording Analog. To me, directly listening, Analog always wins, but it seems when imperfectly recorded, digital is better. Does it have less info to process?

I feel I can only do one approach well. So I am biased to listening to analog (records) directly given that I use no digital components other than a phone for recording.

Is it easier to record digital through a phone than analog? I cannot understand why it would be easier for one format over another. Recording sound waves coming from speakers would be the same for either. Or maybe I don't understand your question.

Would a video made from one format or another sound better? I'm not going there.

edit: I just saw your edit with the picture. Are those speakers a product or did you make them yourself?

 

[SlapEcho]

Yes, agree with the phone overload...I commented on this quite some time ago that I thought it was distorting what comes out.

To add, most cellphone MEMS microphones frequency response start to drop off around 50Hz so I tend to find the lowest bottom end of cellphone videos tend to be lacking.

 

[morricab]

Thank you for your response. I own 3 horn systems in the same house. I Is as shown, 2 is a system with 2 15-inch TADs in a bass reflex and a horn-loaded TAD compression driver (Kinoshita RM7 SV sort of) and Klipschorns. In other words close to my own, yours and Peter's. I have in the past been shocked at how I can identify the sound of the Vitavox, even blind over a cell phone. It is so characteristic of a front-folded basshorn.



When listening ( to me) a. is of course tonality and b. is what every musician is doing and why. I am no musician so do not have filters and have to have it spelled out. With Analog, I have found this best. My video is of 1/4 track tape. With the headphones, it is startling as I can follow the bass and percussion as if I could play the pieces ( I am hopeless at it). On the big TADs, it is a muddled mess. If I listen to that same tape directly on the TADs, I can again follow all.

This brings me to another and even more controversial point. The consensus is that the best sound is the Avant Gardes. It uses digital playback recorded by the phone. Quite some time ago, someone posted a video of music, replayed on Analog. I posted the same but streamed. Everyone commented how good mine sounded. That makes me believe that recording Digital through a phone may be easier than recording Analog. To me, directly listening, Analog always wins, but it seems when imperfectly recorded, digital is better. Does it have less info to process?

Or, the analog rigs are not all that afterall...

 

[LMR-Miguel]

Or, the analog rigs are not all that afterall...

I'd be cautious about jumping into that conclusion (It's a postulation I also put at test frequently, but I'm constantly amazed by what small upgrades can bring to an analog chain, sometimes resulting in minute wins versus the digital reference chain). It's clear that it's easier (and of course consistent) to make a good digital source sound better than an analog one...to paraphrase Mike Moffatt from Theta/Schiit: "If you forgive the Freudian analogies: Sometimes you just want a low-maintenance, get out what you put in, easy going, well programmed humanoid, is always there when you need her, kinda mistress. There she is, digital. Damn good repeatable sound. But then again sometimes you really need an impossibly hard to live with, more maintenance required than a 747, round heeled, drop dead gorgeous except for that mole on her face, sword swallowing, owns a liquor store, on psych meds, howl at the moon, terabitch on her good days mistress. Yup, that's analog. I know, I know, but sometimes it's worth it.”.

To me, analog in this day and age is the ultimate expression of the hobby: palpable, electro-mechanical tweaking done by a modern "audiophile gentleman" can keep one's OCD busy and kept in check. It's something that demands experience, focus, study, intricacy, delicacy, dexterity and is appreciable by others in the house: my wife loves cooking, it's her hobby which also demands a similar set of skills and provides a similar set of outcomes (although she wouldn't readily agree on the paralellism I'm making).

Getting my DAC to its current level wasn't exactly easy either: I had to play with tweaking both its digital and analog output stages, but now it's in a state where it's hard to find any competition: analog or otherwise...the analog rig is where I spend my hobbying time: and once in a while, I can say assuredly that it sounds more organic|fluid|musical|believable|<insert worn adjective here> than my digital source, and I rejoice greatly when this happens: it's a big part of the joy of the hobby for me as I'm sure for most other fine hobbyists in this thread

 

[morricab]

I'd be cautious about jumping into that conclusion (It's a postulation I also put at test frequently, but I'm constantly amazed by what small upgrades can bring to an analog chain, sometimes resulting in minute wins versus the digital reference chain). It's clear that it's easier (and of course consistent) to make a good digital source sound better than an analog one...to paraphrase Mike Moffatt from Theta/Schiit: "If you forgive the Freudian analogies: Sometimes you just want a low-maintenance, get out what you put in, easy going, well programmed humanoid, is always there when you need her, kinda mistress. There she is, digital. Damn good repeatable sound. But then again sometimes you really need an impossibly hard to live with, more maintenance required than a 747, round heeled, drop dead gorgeous except for that mole on her face, sword swallowing, owns a liquor store, on psych meds, howl at the moon, terabitch on her good days mistress. Yup, that's analog. I know, I know, but sometimes it's worth it.”.

To me, analog in this day and age is the ultimate expression of the hobby: palpable, electro-mechanical tweaking done by a modern "audiophile gentleman" can keep one's OCD busy and kept in check.

Getting my DAC to its current level wasn't exactly easy either: I had to play with tweaking both its digital and analog output stages, but now it's in a state where it's hard to find any competition: analog or otherwise...the analog rig is where I spend my hobbying time: and once in a while, I can say assuredly that it sounds more organic|fluid|musical|believable|<insert worn adjective here> than my digital source, and I rejoice greatly when this happens: it's a big part of the joy of the hobby for me as I'm sure for most other fine hobbyists in this thread

Read again, it was not a conclusion…it was an alternative hypothesis for the observation.

 

[LMR-Miguel]

Read again, it was not a conclusion…it was an alternative hypothesis for the observation.

fair enough...but it did sound cheekily worded

 

[Argonaut]

I'd be cautious about jumping into that conclusion

I believe that @morricab was referring to the specific analog setups featured in the above audio vids rather that Analog per se

 

[PeterA]

This brings me to another and even more controversial point. The consensus is that the best sound is the Avant Gardes. It uses digital playback recorded by the phone. Quite some time ago, someone posted a video of music, replayed on Analog. I posted the same but streamed. Everyone commented how good mine sounded. That makes me believe that recording Digital through a phone may be easier than recording Analog. To me, directly listening, Analog always wins, but it seems when imperfectly recorded, digital is better. Does it have less info to process?

Or, the analog rigs are not all that afterall...

Ignoring the one video with no system, there are four horn based system videos playing Spinning Wheel. Tim's and mine use turntables, Miguels uses digital, and jdza's uses tape.

Brad is talking about the analog rigs, two turntables and perhaps the one tape machine. jdza clearly prefers the sound of analog when listening directly in his room. I think Brad is making an "alternative hypothesis" based on the Monaco and American Sound turntables. Perhaps he will elaborate on his comment.