The Devil is in the Detail

[bonzo75]

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

You need to DIY coffee. Don’t get too hooked by baristas, they are like audio, charging too much for roasts not good enough. Get v60 cup and filter, and French press cafetière, and go with your subjective preference. For espresso the espresso machines, I am not into espresso myself. Keith Purite did some good ones.

 

[ssfas]

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 heard a piece of orchestral music by Kalevi Aho (I forget the piece) that featured quite a lot of percussion at Harpa in Reykjavik, one of the best modern concert halls in the world. You do can hear a lot more into the music in such a place. We also had Bruckner 7, that was pretty special as well.

 

[the sound of Tao]

You need to DIY coffee. Don’t get too hooked by baristas, they are like audio, charging too much for roasts not good enough. Get v60 cup and filter, and French press cafetière, and go with your subjective preference. For espresso the espresso machines, I am not into espresso myself. Keith Purite did some good ones.

I’ll admit I’m old school and love the ritual of full analogue vintage espresso… and have had only E61 head based ECM espresso machines (the Altec dual flh of the coffee world) in at home since the early 90’s. V60 pour over is a bit more like full range open baffle. May still get one as a second system.

Back in 2014 I did try (briefly) Stillpoints under my Giotto… it didn’t accentuate the detail in the beans but did bring out the bass notes in the boiler when stretching milk…

 

[the sound of Tao]

I heard a piece of orchestral music by Kalevi Aho (I forget the piece) that featured quite a lot of percussion at Harpa in Reykjavik, one of the best modern concert halls in the world. You do can hear a lot more into the music in such a place. We also had Bruckner 7, that was pretty special as well.

Was interesting to read a while back in a Dave Hurwitz review (can’t remember which one unfortunately) a discussion about the context of music written to be performed in previous periods and the significant increasing size of performance spaces since then and how the experience is changed in terms of detail versus blending of the sound. That baroque and romantic period music was traditionally written to be experienced in smaller spaces and that chamber music was mostly about experiencing music in homes as an intimate participant or as a player yourself right in the middle of it all. Also changing from period to contemporary instruments has shifted other aspects of timbre and tone. How detailed live music is for us is such a highly variable issue of the context of design and nature of performance spaces for sure.

 

[dcathro]

I think that quite a bit of debate centers around the use and meaning of words - a big part of the problem with discussing music reproduction.

For many the term detail means the micro-dynamic information the gives music texture and reality. To infer that there is too much emphasis would therefore imply that music reproduction is too real and needs to be softened and made bland.

For others, like myself, there is a preference for different terms like resolution, nuance, texture, flow, etc. Then the term detail is seen as meaning something addition or extraneous to the musical message. Now, listening to the same thing, there will still be disagreement as to whether this additional information adds value or distracts, and for me this is the core aspect of debate ( not the debate over the use and meaning of terms).

 

[Lee]

I think that quite a bit of debate centers around the use and meaning of words - a big part of the problem with discussing music reproduction.

For many the term detail means the micro-dynamic information the gives music texture and reality. To infer that there is too much emphasis would therefore imply that music reproduction is too real and needs to be softened and made bland.

For others, like myself, there is a preference for different terms like resolution, nuance, texture, flow, etc. Then the term detail is seen as meaning something addition or extraneous to the musical message. Now, listening to the same thing, there will still be disagreement as to whether this additional information adds value or distracts, and for me this is the core aspect of debate ( not the debate over the use and meaning of terms).

I think while audiophiles may talk about detail and indeed some are obsessed with it...most audiophiles listen to a wide variety of aspects of reproduced sound.

When I first heard the WAMMs at Dave Wilson's house, the ability to resolve detail was incredible but the musical engagement involved so many other things like dynamics, soundstage, instrument timbre, etc.

 

[dcathro]

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

That is interesting, because I see the weakness of much modern digital replay as the opposite

 

[the sound of Tao]

I think that quite a bit of debate centers around the use and meaning of words - a big part of the problem with discussing music reproduction.

For many the term detail means the micro-dynamic information the gives music texture and reality. To infer that there is too much emphasis would therefore imply that music reproduction is too real and needs to be softened and made bland.

For others, like myself, there is a preference for different terms like resolution, nuance, texture, flow, etc. Then the term detail is seen as meaning something addition or extraneous to the musical message. Now, listening to the same thing, there will still be disagreement as to whether this additional information adds value or distracts, and for me this is the core aspect of debate ( not the debate over the use and meaning of terms).

So we are not just looking at the replay but then clearly also about shifting approaches to recording.

The question is has there been a generational shift in the expectation and need for the amount of obvious recognisable information in our recordings that gives us a more out of context apparently detailed signal that allows us to actively identify all the separate parts cleanly versus the balance of a whole more distant more passive perspective that leads us to hear a more integrated and blended sum experience of the whole of music. Have we become addicted to the buzz of micro (apologies Francisco) and lost the settling perspective of macro.

If the focus of engineering since the last mid century is into recording more and more of the individual parts separately and in ways making each technically more perfect and overtly more recognisable and in highlighting them.. and so using multi-miked multi-track in acoustically highly engineered recording studios at the cost of stepping back and using more minimal miking and simple live recording in more typical live performance spaces… the approaches that gave us some of the greatest recordings in the earlier golden age of analogue.

Have we become addicted to the exploded unreal and the over hyped?

 

[Ron Resnick]

I think that quite a bit of debate centers around the use and meaning of words - a big part of the problem with discussing music reproduction.

For many the term detail means the micro-dynamic information the gives music texture and reality. To infer that there is too much emphasis would therefore imply that music reproduction is too real and needs to be softened and made bland.

For others, like myself, there is a preference for different terms like resolution, nuance, texture, flow, etc. Then the term detail is seen as meaning something addition or extraneous to the musical message. Now, listening to the same thing, there will still be disagreement as to whether this additional information adds value or distracts, and for me this is the core aspect of debate ( not the debate over the use and meaning of terms).

I remain content with where we (but not Peter, who bakes a bunch of other attributes into his definition of "resolution") left off last time on the definition of resolution:

The 6th definition of "resolution" in the American Heritage Dictionary provides: "6. The clarity or fineness of detail that can be distinguished in an image, often measured as the number or the density of the discrete units, such as pixels or dots, that compose it."

I apply this visual concept to sound, and so my definition is: the clarity or fineness of detail that can be distinguished in reproduced sound.

Resolution is a substantially objective concept, analogous to pixels in video (more pixels per inch equals greater resolution). Think of resolving power as in a telescope or a microscope, but in the context of sound.

I do wish this definition of "resolution" did not include the word "detail."

How do we distinguish "resolution" from "detail"?

An example of a detail is how far back from the microphone recording of a live jazz performance can we hear a glass clinking in the distant background? If we can just barely hear that distant glass clink in one system, but not in another system, is the former system more resolving, or more detailed, or both?

If the answer is "both," does that mean that resolution and detail overlap so much that we might as well just treat them as synonyms?

 

[the sound of Tao]

An example of a detail is how far back from the microphone recording of a live jazz performance can we hear a glass clinking in the distant background? If we can just barely hear that distant glass clink in one system, but not in another system, is the former system more resolving, or more detailed, or both?

Or do resolution and detail overlap so much that we might as well just treat them as synonyms?

But should we step back and ask about function, purpose and meaning… is this a recording of the music or of the crowd… is this just more a function of a failure in the art of achieving appropriate balance in recording or is the clinking glass just being over highlighted and or maybe are some systems also contributing in making that highlight too obvious. We perceive what and also where we are led or directed to perceive. I do think there is a very fine line in the tipping points between right and not yet right and it always lies in appropriate balance.

Engineers and producers are making these phenomenal choices for us but we may also just be choosing systems that are prone to highlighting bad choices in recording. Maybe the best thing about Jazz at the pawnshop is the drunk crowd and the workings of the wait staff.

 

[Ron Resnick]

But should we step back and ask about function, purpose and meaning… is this a recording of the music or of the crowd… is this just more a function of a failure in the art of achieving appropriate balance in recording.

Respectfully, this question does not make sense to me. Of course the recording is of the music.

A recording engineer is not going to mic separately or highlight deliberately table noise.

Is the clinking glass just being over highlighted and or maybe are some systems also contributing in making that highlight too obvious.

A system with a tilted-up frequency balance may make a glass clink subjectively more prominent or more noticeable than a system with a "bottom up" frequency balance. That goes back to David's opening post.

I generally will not like a system with a tilted-up frequency balance which over-emphasizes high frequency details like a glass clink.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Respectfully, this question does not make sense to me. Of course the recording is of the music.

A recording engineer is not going to mic separately or highlight deliberately table noise.

But Ron there is choice in the recording process in terms of mic placement and also in the final mix and how much incidental atmos is being used in the balance of the recording as well. Some engineers lean more into the experience’s incidental effects and getting the focus and balance right is the art.

How much highlight there is in the atmos isn’t always always a choice but it easily can be. Maybe as a recording it doesn’t become a good choice in terms of being a balanced benchmark since the atmos is continually (too?) prominent in the mix. Ultimately it comes to review and does this ultimately work or not. That is what rightness falls to.

A system with a tilted-up frequency balance may make a glass clink subjectively more prominent or more noticeable than a system with a "bottom up" frequency balance. That goes back to David's opening post.

I generally will not like a system with a tilted-up frequency balance which over-emphasizes high frequency details like a glass clink.

I also see the danger in a more tilted up frequency response. I currently have a two way horn OB system that is gently rolling off earlier than the Magnepan 20.7s and am finding more things right for me in total in my current approach than in my previous ones.

There are a lot of differences though more than just in the frequency response but still it is a fine tipping point between things being ultimately more right or less and what a tipped up balance ultimately leads you to listen to.

 

[the sound of Tao]

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).

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I’m definitely currently heading towards two systems… one for the scale and blended sound for large scale orchestral and the other for music at a more detailed close and more intimate scale… be it for jazz or chamber.

That just leaves occasional EDM and rock but I do think in my circumstances amp choices (and going with a choice of different SETs in systems) could get me flexibly around the issue of managing for the spirit of the music but working within two systems primarily contextualised around scale.

This would also tie in with room size although I am choosing to go with speakers that don’t interact as critically with the room which makes my options a bit more flexible for the future.

 

[dcathro]

So we are not just looking at the replay but then clearly also about shifting approaches to recording.

The question is has there been a generational shift in the expectation and need for the amount of recognisable information in our recordings that gives us a more out of context apparently detailed signal that allows us to actively identify all the separate parts cleanly versus the balance of a whole more distant more passive perspective that leads us to hear a more integrated and blended sum experience of the whole of music. Have we become addicted to the buzz of micro and lost the settling perspective of macro.

If the focus of engineering since the last mid century is into recording more and more of the individual parts separately and in ways making each technically more perfect and clearly recognisable and highlighting them.. and so using multi-miked multi-track in acoustically highly engineered recording studios at the cost of stepping back and using more minimal miking and simple live recording in more typical live performance spaces… the approaches that gave us some of the greatest recordings in the earlier golden age of analogue.

Have we become addicted to the exploded unreal and the over hyped?

There are choices all through the chain from the recording process, mixing (if done), master (original), or remastering. For example, compression and EQ can be used in mastering to bring out more detail - compression will increase the amplitude of the quiet background sounds.

 

[dcathro]

The 6th definition of "resolution" in the American Heritage Dictionary provides: "6. The clarity or fineness of detail that can be distinguished in an image, often measured as the number or the density of the discrete units, such as pixels or dots, that compose it."

I apply this visual concept to sound, and so my definition is: the clarity or fineness of detail that can be distinguished in reproduced sound.

Resolution is a substantially objective concept, analogous to pixels in video (more pixels per inch equals greater resolution). Think of resolving power as in a telescope or a microscope, but in the context of sound.

With this definition, resolution in image may defined in pixel size, but also in range of brightness, and colour accuracy (e.g. an Oled tv with the same number of pixels as an LCD tv may have greater resolution due to black level information.

For sound, I think of resolution in terms of having components - Micro-dynamics, dynamics, texture, tonal shading & timing.

How do we distinguish "resolution" from "detail"?

An example of a detail is how far back from the microphone recording of a live jazz performance can we hear a glass clinking in the distant background? If we can just barely hear that distant glass clink in one system, but not in another system, is the former system more resolving, or more detailed, or both?

If the answer is "both," does that mean that resolution and detail overlap so much that we might as well just treat them as synonyms?

Unless we were at the recording, we could argue about whether detail rightfully belongs in the reproduction. For example I generally prefer original releases, where others may prefer re-masters with more detail. I may argue that, for me, the original has better resolution (tone, texture, micro-dynamics & timing) of the event while someone else will say the added detail gives more meaning/interest to them.

The example of the glass clinking is a good one. Take for example Waltz for Debby, where the glasses and chatter can be easily heard in the background. For me, on my replay, the background information is integral to the event and does not distract from the performance. As Peter has mentioned in this thread, my mind can wander in the recording from the musicians to the audience and back again with out feeling distracted or annoyed. I believe that with greater resolution this relationship is maintained, whereas with greater detail it is disturbed.

 

[bonzo75]

I think too many people argue over the semantics of the words detail and resolution. We had many discussions on resolution.

i think it is clear that we need higher musical nuance in some systems/gear which can show intra note inflections more as well as help us understand what different sections of the orchestra are doing.

OP’s point was not to get in unnecessary detail at the cost of coherence and by accentuating and spotlighting certain frequencies, while compressing others required for music.. This cannot be misinterpreted with musical nuance unless we choose to pick on the logical meaning of the English word detail.

Apart from that rest is coffee chat.

 

[tima]

Was interesting to read a while back in a Dave Hurwitz review (can’t remember which one unfortunately) a discussion about the context of music written to be performed in previous periods and the significant increasing size of performance spaces since then and how the experience is changed in terms of detail versus blending of the sound. That baroque and romantic period music was traditionally written to be experienced in smaller spaces and that chamber music was mostly about experiencing music in homes as an intimate participant or as a player yourself right in the middle of it all. Also changing from period to contemporary instruments has shifted other aspects of timbre and tone. How detailed live music is for us is such a highly variable issue of the context of design and nature of performance spaces for sure.

I don't know if such music was written to be played in smaller spaces. Rather it was played in available spaces according to the number of musicians / orchestration required. Baroque was often found at court or church, with 10-30 players. For larger orchestras in the Classical period, sometimes as large as 120 performers, that often meant theaters, sometimes known as opera houses. As you say, acoustics were as variable as those today. Beethoven's 5th Symphony was debuted at the Theater an der Wien in 1808, one of the largest and most luxurious spaces of its day, which originally seated 2000. Schubert wrote a lot of haus music and indeed Schubertians (not the followers but the events, typically a music party) were held in parlors of patrons.

As much as performance space plays a role in what we hear, I'm thinking that recording microphone technique does so as well. I don't know who pioneered multi-mic'ing but Deutsche Grammophon certainly lavished in it, trying to capture more detail from individual sections and performers -- holism gets reconstructed by engineers and this may be quite different than what is heard by an audience in the loge. Compare that approach to the simplicity of the 3 omnidirectional microphone technique tree used extensively at Mercury by Wilma Fine. At Decca their 3 mic tree would hang over the conductor's head with other microphones placed to capture soloists and choruses. The relative balance of "sonic attributes" was in the hands of less or more talented people at the mixing boards. Is there an analog to those engineers for a stereo system? Where does the balance come from?

 

[Bonesy Jonesy]

You need to DIY coffee. Don’t get too hooked by baristas, they are like audio, charging too much for roasts not good enough. Get v60 cup and filter, and French press cafetière, and go with your subjective preference. For espresso the espresso machines, I am not into espresso myself. Keith Purite did some good ones.

Luuuuv my manual lever machine...the one and only....Olympia Express Cremina, hand ground beans with my manual Kinu M47 Hand Grinder grinding those lovely on-site roasted fresh beans from Bella Barista in Northampton, UK. .

 

[morricab]

Was interesting to read a while back in a Dave Hurwitz review (can’t remember which one unfortunately) a discussion about the context of music written to be performed in previous periods and the significant increasing size of performance spaces since then and how the experience is changed in terms of detail versus blending of the sound. That baroque and romantic period music was traditionally written to be experienced in smaller spaces and that chamber music was mostly about experiencing music in homes as an intimate participant or as a player yourself right in the middle of it all. Also changing from period to contemporary instruments has shifted other aspects of timbre and tone. How detailed live music is for us is such a highly variable issue of the context of design and nature of performance spaces for sure.

If you haven't heard chamber music in a home setting then I can tell you it is far more powerful than when heard even in a small hall. I had the good fortune to hear a number of concerts this way and honestly, it is more mind blowing than most big orchestral concerts.

 

[PeterA]

If you haven't heard chamber music in a home setting then I can tell you it is far more powerful than when heard even in a small hall. I had the good fortune to hear a number of concerts this way and honestly, it is more mind blowing than most big orchestral concerts.

indeed it is. And it is a very intimate experience because generally there are a few people in the room and you are right up close to the musicians and instruments and the room is small.

I recorded a string quartet in David Karmeli‘s home moments before and after listening to his system play something very similar in a room a short distance away. The comparison was very revealing.