The Nature of Sound

[microstrip]

That's not what I meant.

High fidelity means exactly what is stated, and I didn't mean it to be interpreted in any other way. Literally, high fidelity, as in getting the most information out of the recording and presenting it in the way the recording artists intended. Reducing distortion, going to extreme lengths in cabinet construction and driver engineering, etc. A good example is the folks who build the speakers you own, Wilson, and he's also a recording engineer as I'm sure you know. So your whole thing about ""HIFI" school and most professionals" or "downgrading" makes no sense to me unless you'd consider that to be said of your own system and everyone who build high fidelity gear, like YG, Magico, etc, etc...

How do we know exactly what is really "the way the recording artists intended" considering the industry has no standards and the artists seldom have knowledge about the capabilities of the high-end?

Nice to know you thing highly of Dave Wilson efforts, not everyone agrees with us.

Also, you misinterpreted what I said about the statement I quoted being an insult. As I've stated many times I think people should do whatever pleases them. What I think is an insult to the recording industry is referring to recordings as having to be "liberated from it's coffin" to paraphrase, I don't think this is the case and think it's an odd point of view to hold. In my post, the main thing I asked is, exactly how does this "liberation" take place if the goal is not simply to reproduce what's on the recording?

OK, IMHO you just interpreted too litteraly the liberation sentence. Question of semantics and style.

Not sure if I can't communicate clearly, but you misinterpret everything I wrote. Seems strange, but I hope the above clarification makes more sense.

Sorry, again for me the HIFI word is meaningless. Thanks for your answer.

 

[PeterA]

How do we know exactly what is really "the way the recording artists intended" considering the industry has no standards and the artists seldom have knowledge about the capabilities of the high-end?

Al M. and I just discussed this very topic the other day. That is indeed a fascinating question. Also, how can we ever truly know if we are hearing exactly what is on the recording? It is interesting that this is the stated goal of quite a few people in this hobby. This might make a good thread topic for a different discussion.

 

[kach22i]

I would love you to hear Oliver Goebel’s Epoque Aeon Reference bending wave speaker!

I would love to hear those, just a bit disappointed that the bass/low frequencies were not attempted via the same technology like Magneplanar Bass Panel (DWM) are to the full range Maggies .

 

[kach22i]

How is it possible to "liberate the music from it's coffin also known as the recording"? This seems like a very odd point of view to me.

My views are my own (until I discover similar viewpoints), I am not a measurements kind of guy and look to the end result which should be an emotional reaction via the human limbic system.

The recording is a coffin in that it is dead, an inert series of groves, pits or series of ones and zeroes to be brought to life though brilliant equipment.

https://ugsmag.com/vinyl-record-grooves-under-an-electron-microscope/

Extending this viewpoint further I contend accurate stereo will be that of recorded music, but the next leap forward will be to go beyond the recording and somehow reverse engineer or recreate in a manner that is a real event on to it's self.

Picture a drummer with headphones on playing along with his/her favorite song. This person is recreating that drum track using a drum kit similar to the original used in the recording studio and getting a good facsimile.

Now imagine a loudspeaker that can do the same.

Possible with amplified Rock and Roll that is performed with cone drivers and tube gain amps, harder to do with acoustic instruments that have resonating bodies and most challenging of all, the human voice with chest cavity, larynx and voicebox.

Reproducing sounds the same way they were originally generated is the only solution I can seem to make sense of.

Short of the two graphic examples above, the tension membrane loudspeaker holds the most potential for success in my opinion.

Full disclosure, ten years ago I built 6 different prototypes exploring this forgotten technology, perfecting it with limited resources proved too large of a task, other demands of life took over.

My goal is to one day pick up where I left off.

Maybe when my wife gets tenure at the college she teaches at I can weigh my options. The Great Recession gave me the time to be a kid again and discover/invent, but there is a time for play and a time for work, and I still have to work.

 

[Barry2013]

A while ago I posted my impressions on listening to very high end turntables at Miks, namely a La Luce, CS Port and his heavily modified Rocport Sirius. All three had Etsuro Gold cartidges with one using his Bordeaux.
The sound from all three was superb but clearly different. I would have happily had any one of them.
More recently I visited him again and we listened to the SME 30/SME V with a Glanz cartridge and a Systemdeck Precision with a Koetsu cartridge. The SME 30 had been Aikmans personal deck and we listened to it with the original older platter and with a newer platter. The sound from both was excellent, but the different platters changed the sound. With the old platter the sound was richer and more relaxed compared with the other platter,
The Systemdeck was noticeably different. Brighter, faster and a little leaner. If pushed to choose that would have been my choice but I could equally see others preferring the SME 30.
Both visits reinforced my view about the importance of personal taste. A mid priced turntable is never going to excel a much more expensive turntable unless someone has made a complete mess of system synergy. But when you are comparing similarly priced kit, or when someone is comparing your system with their own of a very similar standard I am pretty sure that the decision on which is best is very likely to be determined by individual preferences including tastes in music.
We are all quite rightly trying to get the best sound we can from our resources and we are naturally a competitive bunch . It is part our DNA. That said I do believe that in our debates about what kit is or is not the best we can all too easily forget the plurality of what is best in the context of individual preferences. Of course even within those preferences there are genuine examples of something new and different which can sound better.

 

[andromedaaudio]

I do am a measurement kinda guy , it stems from my working background .
And while you certainly cannot measure everything in a loudspreaker , tonal balance FR is one thing one can measure and is very important .
Mine measure correct i ve posted graphs on my system thread and in the measurement threads.
Its very important to know its correct , because otherwise you can get easily lost (endless gear/cables swapping trying to solve it)

 

[Carlos269]

Also, how can we ever truly know if we are hearing exactly what is on the recording?

BINGO!

 

[DaveC]

My views are my own (until I discover similar viewpoints), I am not a measurements kind of guy and look to the end result which should be an emotional reaction via the human limbic system.

The recording is a coffin in that it is dead, an inert series of groves, pits or series of ones and zeroes to be brought to life though brilliant equipment.

https://ugsmag.com/vinyl-record-grooves-under-an-electron-microscope/

Extending this viewpoint further I contend accurate stereo will be that of recorded music, but the next leap forward will be to go beyond the recording and somehow reverse engineer or recreate in a manner that is a real event on to it's self.

Picture a drummer with headphones on playing along with his/her favorite song. This person is recreating that drum track using a drum kit similar to the original used in the recording studio and getting a good facsimile.

Now imagine a loudspeaker that can do the same.

Possible with amplified Rock and Roll that is performed with cone drivers and tube gain amps, harder to do with acoustic instruments that have resonating bodies and most challenging of all, the human voice with chest cavity, larynx and voicebox.

Reproducing sounds the same way they were originally generated is the only solution I can seem to make sense of.

Short of the two graphic examples above, the tension membrane loudspeaker holds the most potential for success in my opinion.

Full disclosure, ten years ago I built 6 different prototypes exploring this forgotten technology, perfecting it with limited resources proved too large of a task, other demands of life took over.

My goal is to one day pick up where I left off.

Maybe when my wife gets tenure at the college she teaches at I can weigh my options. The Great Recession gave me the time to be a kid again and discover/invent, but there is a time for play and a time for work, and I still have to work.

Ok, gotcha! Thanks for that, makes much more sense... my interpretation was quite different!

 

[kach22i]

I do am a measurement kinda guy , it stems from my working background .
And while you certainly cannot measure everything in a loudspreaker , tonal balance FR is one thing one can measure and is very important .
Mine measure correct i ve posted graphs on my system thread and in the measurement threads.
Its very important to know its correct , because otherwise you can get easily lost (endless gear/cables swapping trying to solve it)

I think that is a good "baseline" starting point and do NOT dispute it's value.

However, if product development stops there I think we all have a problem.

I'm not asking that a speaker be voiced to any one room or any one supply chain upstream, just suggesting that pleasing human ears are the end goal.

And that I admit is subjective..

 

[PeterA]

I started a similar thread on a different forum to get an idea of what some other people not on WBF think of this topic. I renamed the OP to "Is Sound Diffuse or Focused" in order to shift the discussion away from the particulars of my system and what I have done and toward the more general topic of how we perceive this aspect of sound.

Here is a link to that discussion: https://www.audionirvana.org/forum/the-audio-vault/general-audio/130918-is-sound-diffuse-or-focused

One particular quote I found in the thread captures my observations quite well:

"It's my personal belief that with my speakers in my room and using no toe in more closely resembles live sound vice the "focused purity" approach. The soundstage is bigger and has realistic air assuming it was captured on the recording. Yes, the sound is more diffuse just like it is in a live venue."

 

[andromedaaudio]

Its a baseline but certainly not correctly done at all brands .
A lot is indeed done by ear ( i think )call it voicing whatever .
Its what atracts a type of customer to a certain brand .
The philosophy/ sound appeals to the customer.

 

[BruceD]

One particular quote I found in the thread captures my observations quite well:

"It's my personal belief that with my speakers in my room and using no toe in more closely resembles live sound vice the "focused purity" approach. The soundstage is bigger and has realistic air assuming it was captured on the recording. Yes, the sound is more diffuse just like it is in a live venue."

Hmm Interesting--That synopsis is at odds with the Wilson WASP setup method that has the Drivers shooting directly at the listener.
I personally have never completely liked that approach myself so I find myself in the above writers camp.

YVMV
BruceD

 

[bazelio]

My observation is generally not that live music is diffuse, but that the scale of live music is just much bigger in all dimensions. To me, creating diffuse stereo playback is at best a poor man's approximation. I guess I'm just not under an illusion that stereo playback can ever convincingly reproduce live music in all aspects, particularly not in scale nor space. I don't ever expect to close my eyes and suddenly be transported to Carnegie Hall. No system will do this. So instead, the sound attributes I take from live music are mainly timbral and tonal. And, I prefer focused reproduction over blended or diffuse because it provides better spatial cues within the confines of an ordinary listen room. Zero toe in generally creates imaging anomalies in the edge regions of the sound stage. I see this a lot at audio shows. Furthermore, zero toe in as a general prescription seems too generic since tweeter off axis response varies greatly based on design. And obviously, how far off axis you are depends on the distance between the tweeters as well as the distance of your seat from the speakers. In my case (an equilateral triangle seating arrangement), I'd be 30 degrees off axis with zero toe in. That'd be fairly severe in terms of measured response. I have a second smaller system in which I use speakers with soft dome tweeters that are designed to have flat response at the listening position at 15 degrees off axis. They actually do sound harsh on axis, so I don't position them that way. There is no one size fits all.

 

[andromedaaudio]

All the times i went to a classical orchestral live event , the sound was distant / somewhat diffuse /murky coming from a distance .
It sounded quit rolled of , may be if you re in the first row its somewhat different .
Now in a recording its different you never know where they have placed the mikes , and how they mixed the end result of what you end up hearing at home

 

[Kingsrule]

No one will ever know if u are hearing whats recorded unless the recording engineer listens to a individual system.

What u can and will know is if a system sounds like real music. That is as close to an absolute as it gets. I'll take real vs. worrying about things we can't know anytime. Amazing hi-fi isn't real sounding and I venture to guess 99% of everyone here has that or strives to attain it. Pin point imaging, air, body, layering, etc. isn't real. Its what we learned in the beginning from analogue sources. It was/is the grail for most.

But no longer for some....

 

[Folsom]

All the times i went to a classical orchestral live event , the sound was distant / somewhat diffuse /murky coming from a distance .
It sounded quit rolled of , may be if you re in the first row its somewhat different .
Now in a recording its different you never know where they have placed the mikes , and how they mixed the end result of what you end up hearing at home

Ya, pretty much. The presentation at live orchestral is much smoother overall than recording mics up close. I kind of like that you can have two different types of experiences. But I also like some recordings that sound more live, they can be relaxing, more natural, too. There's lots of fun to be had.

 

[microstrip]

I can't understand why we should listen to music at home as if we were listening blindfolded in the music-hall. The objective of sound reproduction is recreating experiences, not physical facsimiles of sound waves. IMHO, considering that stereo reproduction gives us only a little of what we have in the real performance, surely when deprived from sight and the ambient of the concert we need other stimulus, such as a better focusing and better outlines and an increased feeling of the hall acoustics. It is where recording and mastering engineers , audio designers and system builders meet to our great enjoyment.

Again IMHO, no sound reproduction can surpass the experience of being present in a real concert, but great systems can help in conveying the emotion of music.

As always in this subject, YMMV.

 

[Tango]

I can't understand why we should listen to music at home as if we were listening blindfolded in the music-hall. The objective of sound reproduction is recreating experiences, not physical facsimiles of sound waves. IMHO, considering that stereo reproduction gives us only a little of what we have in the real performance, surely when deprived from sight and the ambient of the concert we need other stimulus, such as a better focusing and better outlines and an increased feeling of the hall acoustics. It is where recording and mastering engineers , audio designers and system builders meet to our great enjoyment.

Again IMHO, no sound reproduction can surpass the experience of being present in a real concert, but great systems can help in conveying the emotion of music.

As always in this subject, YMMV.

What is YMMV?

 

[Folsom]

Your mileage may vary

 

[kach22i]

........... IMHO, considering that stereo reproduction gives us only a little of what we have in the real performance, surely when deprived from sight and the ambient of the concert we need other stimulus, such as a better focusing and better outlines and an increased feeling of the hall acoustics. It is where recording and mastering engineers , audio designers and system builders meet to our great enjoyment.

Purposeful coloration and distortion but in a just cause - and that is to entertain us more?

I think in many ways what you wrote is more radical and controversial than my music lays dead in a coffin to be brought to life, or my tension membrane loudspeaker rant.

Good work, and I mean that seriously, you let the cat out of the bag.

It's all an illusion and the bigger/ better the illusion the more we will be willing to pay for it.

Bring on the salt, bring on the pepper, time to spice this music mix up a bit said the head engineer.