The Devil is in the Detail

[Al M.]

the clue is that the details don´t stick out from the rest, but is presented as part of the whole

Which is exactly what I have been saying in my previous posts.

That doesn't mean that detail should not grab your attention. It does mine when I go to a live concert (I am talking mainly about classical concerts of unamplified music here).

 

[ssfas]

With live music imaging is largely visual. I recently changed my DAC after trying and failing to listen to Martinu's Nonet No. 2, having heard it live in fabulous venue (Snape Maltings) a few days earlier.

With opera and ballet you rarely see any of the musicians, obviously you do see the singers, but the lack of an image to the sound does not detract from the musical experience. My local jazz club is Ronnie Scott's, go there from time to time, the music is amplified, but even so the brain images the music visually.

So if the intention is to replicate the live experience, really we should have at least two audio systems, one with extreme detail and imaging, and another one with a greater emphasis to overall presentation and tonality.

But I'm just starting. We need a different system for different venues. The mellifluence of Wigmore Hall and the hard but thrilling Ragged Music Festival at the Ragged School Museum in London (before moving to Amsterdam this year). That's before we try and build a system to replicate the wonderful Bold Tendencies at Peckham Levels, a music season held in an open air multi-story car park. Once recital was delayed by a fire alarm at a freezer food store and last time Johan Jalene's score ended up in my wife's lap (a gust of wind), fortunately he was playing Arvo Part so he was able to continue from memory.

Personally, I like a system that has sufficient detail, natural warmth, relatively modest bass and no brightness. And of course a decent room acoustic.

A tale of two Handel's Messiah. The Barbican Hall in London, modern acoustics that for me kills the details in the sound (although this was fine performance under Neville Marriner) and St Martins in the Fields, where the detail rings out, tempered by a full house (this was Harry Christophers).

 

[PeterA]

Except, when I go to the concert hall, sitting in a good, relatively close-up position as I prefer, I get hit with a ton of detail, it's inescapable. So yes, with actual live music my mind goes to detail right then and there, and I love it. That happens with an obviously balanced presentation.

But that's just me, everyone perceives things differently.

yes Al, I think we all hear differently. When I attend a live concert in a great hall like in Boston, my attention goes to the music. When trying to describe the sound. The first thing that comes to mind is the clarity that distinguishes it from The sound of most systems. My mind goes to details in the sound only when I will it, because I find something interesting in that aspect of the presentation and I’m trying to learn something relative to my interest in the Audio hobby. It is more of a conscious effort.

If a systems presentation takes my mind immediately to imaging and detail, as I think the opening post discusses, I think there is something a bit artificial about the presentation and it is not the system for me.

Now, if my initial impression of an unfamiliar system is of how natural the presentation is and how it reminds me of the live experience including clarity, then we are talking.

 

[microstrip]

I see Detail as a negative word, because, to me, it implies dissociation. To my mind, information needs to have meaning and be connected or related to the other information around it. The more information the better as long as it is part of the connected fabric of music.

Sorry, it is again your particular semantics that will please a few. As I pointed and quoted, the most usual concept of detail does not imply dissociation at all.

It is curious that, in the early days of poor digital reproduction, audiophiles often referred the loss of detail as its weakest point.

 

[microstrip]

I am not anti detail and anti imaging. I just think there is more to music and an enjoyable listening experience.

I think every one agrees with you. We all ask a lot more ...

The OP is a critique about the direction, the sonic priorities or attributes, of much of the current high end gear. Some of it seems to emphasize details and precise imaging above all else. It is the impression with which one is left after some demos of new gear. IMO, this is a bad direction for the high end.

Ok, now it is just some anonymous gear that emphasizes details and precise imaging above all else, not the majority. Can you put a name on these brands and equipment?

A highly resolving system has exceptional detail and realistic imaging (scale, location, separation) but they are presented in a natural way, so the listener is not distracted by them for the sake of the music. They are an integral part of the music along with everything else and but a subset of a systems ability to resolve the information captured by the recording. The listener should be left with more. He or she should be relaxed and free to have the mind wander at will to focus on different aspects of the performance, just like when listening to live music.

As natural is an extremely ambiguous concept endorsed by the majority of reviewers - each of us has his "natural" sound and loves it - we can also easily agree on this one.
I would however add to your sentence "The listener should be left with more. He or she should be relaxed and free to have the mind wander at will to focus on different aspects of the performance, just like when listening to live music with open eyes".

The gear too often thrusts upon the listener details and imaging over all else. This is not a natural or realistic listening experience, but it seems to be preferred by some.

Yes, we see many systems doing it, particularly in shows. In a noisy and bustling environment manufacturers often focus in these aspects to attract listeners - shows are not silent concert halls and are not directed specially to classic music listeners.

 

[PeterA]

I think every one agrees with you. We all ask a lot more ...

you are the one who said “some are anti-detail and anti-imaging.” I took issue with that and said that I am not anti-detail and anti-imaging and only now you claim that everyone is going to agree with me. Come on. Your comment was very strange.

Ok, now it is just some anonymous gear that emphasizes details and precise imaging above all else, not the majority. Can you put a name on these brands and equipment?

take it up with the OP. He initiated the discussion and shared his opinion. If you don’t agree with it, you might address your comments to him.

When you write “some” don’t like detail and imaging, can you put names behind your claims?

As natural is an extremely ambiguous concept endorsed by the majority of reviewers - each of us has his "natural" sound and loves it - we can also easily agree on this one.
I would however add to your sentence "The listener should be left with more. He or she should be relaxed and free to have the mind wander at will to focus on different aspects of the performance, just like when listening to live music with open eyes".

“Natural“ is not an ambiguous term to me. I wrote what I mean. You are free to change it for your purposes.

Yes, we see many systems doing it, particularly in shows. In a noisy and bustling environment manufacturers often focus in these aspects to attract listeners - shows are not silent concert halls and are not directed specially to classic music listeners.

yes, we see many systems doing it. That’s what the original post describes. No show, and no listening room either, is a concert hall. Do you think people buy equipment that is designed specifically to cut through the chatter at an audio show?

 

[morricab]

I see Detail as a negative word, because, to me, it implies dissociation. To my mind, information needs to have meaning and be connected or related to the other information around it. The more information the better as long as it is part of the connected fabric of music.

Can’t agree that detail implies dissociation…there is nothing in the definition or in the way it is normally used to suggest this.

I do think detail is misunderstood in audio and there are artifacts in reproduction that are called detail when in fact they are not.

There are phenomena in audio that accentuate leading edges of notes and there are phenomena that truncate the full note development and decay and this leading edge/ lack of decay is often called detail…it is not it is accentuated over the original signal and thus artificial.

They best analogy I can think of from a visual perspective is a sharpness control on a television. Turn this up even a little bit too much and it suddenly looks very artificial and tiring to look at.

A lot of audio does this accentuation and quite a bit of audio in rejection of audio, with the sharpness turned up, deliberately smooths over recorded detail to make a more pleasing sound. This works initially but ultimately grows boring as the other side grows quickly tiring. Truly excellent hifi (a VERY small % of gear out there) gets the balance right and is both pleasing and long term satisfying.

 

[Ron Resnick]

They best analogy I can think of from a visual perspective is a sharpness control on a television. Turn this up even a little bit too much and it suddenly looks very artificial and tiring to look at.

I like this analogy.

Truly excellent hifi (a VERY small % of gear out there) gets the balance right and is both pleasing and long term satisfying.

Isn't this balance point different for different people (based on their different subjective preferences)?

To put it economically but, I'm pretty sure, meaning the same thing -- different points on the same indifference curve?

 

[morricab]

I like this analogy.


Isn't this balance point different for different people (based on their different subjective preferences)?

To put it economically but, I'm pretty sure, meaning the same thing -- different points on the same indifference curve?

Well, to stretch my analogy a bit, I guess most people end up at about the same setting for both sharpness and contrast on a given TV (this point my change with a different make/model). A little more here or a bit less there…but very few will like the extreme ends of the spectrum.

With audio though, it seems that there is a fairly large population that is pursuing the high “sharpness “ end of the spectrum and calling this high fidelity. To me it sounds like throwing away music for one specific overemphasised trait.

 

[Al M.]

I like this analogy.


Isn't this balance point different for different people (based on their different subjective preferences)?

To put it economically but, I'm pretty sure, meaning the same thing -- different points on the same indifference curve?

The balance of transient sharpness is also different depending on where you sit in the concert hall. The further away you sit from the musicians, the softer perceived transients become, more or less. Yet this also depends on the type of instrument played.

While there are these gradations in live music, I do agree with Brad. Excessive sharpness of leading edge of notes is a problem in audio. Transients in live music obviously are never "too sharp" as they can be in audio reproduction. And on the other hand, excessive smoothing in reproduction for the sake of a "pleasant" sound is a problem too.

 

[microstrip]

The balance of transient sharpness is also different depending on where you sit in the concert hall. The further away you sit from the musicians, the softer perceived transients become, more or less. Yet this also depends on the type of instrument played.

While there are these gradations in live music, I do agree with Brad. Excessive sharpness of leading edge of notes is a problem in audio. Transients in live music obviously are never "too sharp" as they can be in audio reproduction. And on the other hand, excessive smoothing in reproduction for the sake of a "pleasant" sound is a problem too.

Analogies are always a dangerous process - sharpness is a misleading word when applied to detail discussion in audio and acoustics, as it addresses the high frequency contents and what we are addressing is mainly due to distortions and artifacts that are used to manipulate sound reproduction.

And IMO many times a "sharp" sound as we are calling it does not sound detailed, on the contrary it can mask real detail.

 

[Al M.]

Analogies are always a dangerous process - sharpness is a misleading word when applied to audio and acoustics, as it addresses the high frequency contents and what we are addressing is mainly due to distortions and artifacts that are used to manipulate sound reproduction.

And IMO many times a "sharp" sound as we are calling it does not sound detailed, on the contrary it can mask real detail.

I do think that sharpness of transients is an appropriate term. At the same time, I fully agree with your characterization of sharpness also as artifacts, distortion and even masking -- the latter is an important problem too, indeed.

 

[microstrip]

I do think that sharpness of transients is an appropriate term. At the same time, I fully agree with your characterization of sharpness also as artifacts, distortion and even masking -- the latter is an important problem too, indeed.

Apologies - I typed too fast and missed the critical words "applied to detail", something that changed the sense of my sentence.

Just wanted to stress that the word already had a proper meaning.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Can’t agree that detail implies dissociation…there is nothing in the definition or in the way it is normally used to suggest this.

I do think detail is misunderstood in audio and there are artifacts in reproduction that are called detail when in fact they are not.

There are phenomena in audio that accentuate leading edges of notes and there are phenomena that truncate the full note development and decay and this leading edge/ lack of decay is often called detail…it is not it is accentuated over the original signal and thus artificial.

They best analogy I can think of from a visual perspective is a sharpness control on a television. Turn this up even a little bit too much and it suddenly looks very artificial and tiring to look at.

A lot of audio does this accentuation and quite a bit of audio in rejection of audio, with the sharpness turned up, deliberately smooths over recorded detail to make a more pleasing sound. This works initially but ultimately grows boring as the other side grows quickly tiring. Truly excellent hifi (a VERY small % of gear out there) gets the balance right and is both pleasing and long term satisfying.

Artificial accenting is maybe another way to describe the issue at the heart of what is being discussed.

Maybe it’s not only correlating to sharpness adjustment on the television but also can be a range of incorrect attributes more like turning up the contrast or bolstering a specific hue or colour frequency or applying some selective filter that creates an emphasis on part as a tone or colour a bit like a tobacco filter. Or maybe like turning on a cinema or film filter or any other (visual) performance shaping filter mode on a modern tv.

I guess the opposite might be more like when I was working in film and television production we’d sometimes use a fog filter or smear Vaseline on a filter over the lens to create what we called back then the Doris Day filter where edges of the image where softened and smoothed out to cover over information. Kind of being anti-detailing but in a true sense.

I agree as many have already said proper detail on its own is not problematic it’s just when there is an imbalance or an over emphasis created that highlights an area of the sound that causes us to focus unnaturally and misleads our focus at the expense of a balanced proper and full perception of the whole of the sound, its harmonic relationships or even the overall form and structure of the music.

I’m like most I guess and don’t see true and proper resolution at all an enemy just that false highlighting or exaggeration of any part of the signal at the cost of hearing a proper balanced relationship of all the parts so our perception is drawn astray so that we miss the proposed integrated experience of the sounds.

For me if the intended focus and the blend and flow isn’t right rather than being led by the music the way the composer or the performers intended (and the best composition is alchemy) then as Tima wrote earlier we are distracted and mislead from the encompassed whole of the music. Any artificial and forceful highlighting or unnatural spotlighting of some elements of the sound modifies the orchestration of the music so that we are hijacked from the real and intended musical journey. Worst case scenario is that we are left with plenty of fascination of sound but then the music just doesn’t come together to connect to us.

 

[morricab]

Analogies are always a dangerous process - sharpness is a misleading word when applied to detail discussion in audio and acoustics, as it addresses the high frequency contents and what we are addressing is mainly due to distortions and artifacts that are used to manipulate sound reproduction.

And IMO many times a "sharp" sound as we are calling it does not sound detailed, on the contrary it can mask real detail.

You are mixing my analogy with sound. I never said anything about “sharp” sounds. I talked about sharpness adjustment on a TV as an analogy for detail.

 

[morricab]

Artificial accenting is maybe another way to describe the issue at the heart of what is being discussed.

Maybe it’s not only correlating to sharpness adjustment on the television but also can be a range of incorrect attributes more like turning up the contrast or bolstering a specific hue or colour frequency or applying some selective filter that creates an emphasis on part as a tone or colour a bit like a tobacco filter. Or maybe like turning on a cinema or film filter or any other (visual) performance shaping filter mode on a modern tv.

I guess the opposite might be more like when I was working in film and television production we’d sometimes use a fog filter or smear Vaseline on a filter over the lens to create what we called back then the Doris Day filter where edges of the image where softened and smoothed out to cover over information. Kind of being anti-detailing but in a true sense.

I agree as many have already said proper detail on its own is not problematic it’s just when there is an imbalance or an over emphasis created that highlights an area of the sound that causes us to focus unnaturally and misleads our focus at the expense of a balanced proper and full perception of the whole of the sound, its harmonic relationships or even the overall form and structure of the music.

I’m like most I guess and don’t see true and proper resolution at all an enemy just that false highlighting or exaggeration of any part of the signal at the cost of hearing a proper balanced relationship of all the parts so our perception is drawn astray so that we miss the proposed integrated experience of the sounds.

For me if the intended focus and the blend and flow isn’t right rather than being led by the music the way the composer or the performers intended (and the best composition is alchemy) then as Tima wrote earlier we are distracted and mislead from the encompassed whole of the music. Any artificial and forceful highlighting or unnatural spotlighting of some elements of the sound modifies the orchestration of the music so that we are hijacked from the real and intended musical journey. Worst case scenario is that we are left with plenty of fascination of sound but then the music just doesn’t come together to connect to us.

I was addressing specifically detail and not other perceived sonic attributes.

On thing I noticed from TVs though is that most TVs, no matter how you play with their adjustments, still have a very synthetic look. There is something in their digital distortion that ruins the otherwise seemingly flawless picture.

Let’s imagine that audio components all came with full adjustments, color, hue, contrast, sharpness etc. At a push of a few buttons. It still would not make, IMO, them sound more real…just like it can’t save a poorly made TV.

 

[bonzo75]

I was addressing specifically detail and not other perceived sonic attributes.

On thing I noticed from TVs though is that most TVs, no matter how you play with their adjustments, still have a very synthetic look. There is something in their digital distortion that ruins the otherwise seemingly flawless picture.

Let’s imagine that audio components all came with full adjustments, color, hue, contrast, sharpness etc. At a push of a few buttons. It still would not make, IMO, them sound more real…just like it can’t save a poorly made TV.

agreed. plasma TVs are relatively more natural in their colour

 

[the sound of Tao]

I was addressing specifically detail and not other perceived sonic attributes.

On thing I noticed from TVs though is that most TVs, no matter how you play with their adjustments, still have a very synthetic look. There is something in their digital distortion that ruins the otherwise seemingly flawless picture.

Let’s imagine that audio components all came with full adjustments, color, hue, contrast, sharpness etc. At a push of a few buttons. It still would not make, IMO, them sound more real…just like it can’t save a poorly made TV.

Possibly not just about the new panels attaining hi-res but also about the included image processing and overly accented image edge detailing… definitely not a filmic look and maybe that equates to artificial highlighting of the images. With the better plasmas it was also their refresh rates gave a greater naturalness to movement and also about the quality of their black… a bit like the way SET can do flow and have bass that has dimensionality rather than just one note.

 

[bonzo75]

Fwiw, I like sushi without wasabi and soy sauce, I use those when the sushi is not good, I like good coffee black (I put milk in coffee I don’t like), and I don’t like a good omelette with ketchup.

for some the ketchup is the detail, for some the flavours of actual ingredients are the details. But the ingredients need to be at a certain level to let the nuances of the flavours be enjoyed

 

[the sound of Tao]

I am guilty of pickled ginger (for the sushi but not for espresso so much) short black is my go but if I don’t trust the barista I’ll go straight to cappuccino (the chocolate helps if they also overheat the milk and not just burn the beans)… PS I think I know what an omelette is but what is ketchup