What determines "believability of the reproduction illusion"

[fas42]

IMHO it is not a question of being right or wrong - we report our opinion based in our experiences. None media can be considered "perfect", as in some aspects one is better than the other and vice-versa in other aspects.

In my experience in my system and other people systems, using excellent quality recordings listened in both vinyl and CD, almost systematically the vinyl wins in the main aspect being debated in this thread - believability. Something that puzzles me is how critical the matching of the digital source can be in a system - I have listened to the Vivaldi system some people consider to be the "best" sounding really "believable" with ordinary CDs and the same Vivaldi system sounding miserable, artificial and aggressive.

When I say "perfect" - and the quotes are very relevant there - I mean that there is nothing in the sound that disturbs me; if I have a sense in any way that the playback is not "effortless" then in my book something is 'wrong'. I may not know what that something is, but I won't be happy with the system until the issue is resolved.

Your issue with the Vivaldi is a perfect example as to why the digital headache continues, for many people. In simple terms, the overall system has to be at a very high order of competence, in many crucial areas - otherwise, the sound can be a disaster, subjectively! Those areas include resistance to interference, by every part of the chain; quality of connections; quality of mains power; quality of internal power supplies; too many static issues - get a single one of these wrong, and the sound can be awful, irrespective of the cost of the components.

I've battled these variables for years, and experienced great frustration at times - the one clear truth that has always shone through is that if one knocks over every one of those problems, that then the sound comes alive, meets all criteria one could reasonably have for listening satisfaction. The key ingredient for the enthusiast to have is perseverance - it may take some doing, but will always be possible to achieve.

 

[FrantzM]

IMHO it is not a question of being right or wrong - we report our opinion based in our experiences. None media can be considered "perfect", as in some aspects one is better than the other and vice-versa in other aspects.

In my experience in my system and other people systems, using excellent quality recordings listened in both vinyl and CD, almost systematically the vinyl wins in the main aspect being debated in this thread - believability. Something that puzzles me is how critical the matching of the digital source can be in a system - I have listened to the Vivaldi system some people consider to be the "best" sounding really "believable" with ordinary CDs and the same Vivaldi system sounding miserable, artificial and aggressive.

Agreed to a point but your vinyl bias have you avoid the point that any medium can be made to sound as you put it "miserable, artificial and aggressive". The matching depending on the person is critical regardless of medium.

 

[DaveC]

Didn't hear that way at all. What do you mean by "proper" geometry?

You'd need the right cable to do an A/B comparison with to tell I think. My D4 is one and you're welcome to try it. On geometry, a ribbon can only really be placed one atop the other or side-by-side, one atop the other is used by Goertz for speaker cables because it almost eliminates inductance, but it has very high capacitance so a correction network is required at the speaker. On interconnects the only practical geometry is side by side or one atop the other with a far amount of space in between the ribbons to reduce capacitance, this is awkward, virtually impossible to shield and the geometry does not cancel noise, which is a feature of twisted or braided geometries, which are superior imo.

OTOH you could do FAR worse than a silver ribbon ic cable, they are a good design for home use, simple to DIY and get great results from. Silver ribbon doesn't have the harshness some round wires can have and there's a smoothness to the sound that can work out great for a lot of systems. I'm not sure exactly why ribbons have this smoothness, which is more evident in copper ribbons than silver, but ime they do.

 

[the sound of Tao]

I am wondering if it might be good to better define the level of believability... are we talking kind of believable or completely believable. Without wanting to seem too random clearly the benchmark for our belief is likely to be highly variable between all of us.

One person's believable sound could easily be quite unbelievable to another.

Also many of us have probably heard systems that are musically convincing though not necessarily absolutely realistic in purely sonic terms and also systems that are quite impressive sonically however have not seemed to be musically real at all.

I am wondering do the electronics set the limits on naturalness and musicality and then speakers more set the limits on how ultimately realistic as well that signal sounds. That the soul of the music lies in the original performance and that spirit of the music comes through the source and generating electronics and that the reality of all that comes to us generated through the final stage of speakers and the room.

I've heard systems with great source, amp, power and cables through less than extraordinary speakers sound quite natural and almost believable still but never seem like almost real.

Equally without the right electronics I have heard great speakers sound still very impressive but never ultimately quite natural or musical.

 

[fas42]

Just to emphasise that my approach is completely different from DaveC - the "adjusting" of sound by playing with cables, etc, in the manner that he is doing is something I have never done. Which is not to say that there is anything wrong with his approach, just that I have found other, one could call them "technically appropriate", methods are far more effective, for me. My cables are never more than cheap, everyday items, but I take great care to get them in exactly the right position, twisted tightly if appropriate, and connected to the circuitry with a high integrity method.

 

[Al M.]

Something that puzzles me is how critical the matching of the digital source can be in a system - I have listened to the Vivaldi system some people consider to be the "best" sounding really "believable" with ordinary CDs and the same Vivaldi system sounding miserable, artificial and aggressive.

Same experience here. Can sound incredibly good, and on other occasions mediocre at best.

 

[Al M.]

Agreed to a point but your vinyl bias have you avoid the point that any medium can be made to sound as you put it "miserable, artificial and aggressive". The matching depending on the person is critical regardless of medium.

Agreed here as well.

 

[Al M.]

I am wondering if it might be good to better define the level of believability... are we talking kind of believable or completely believable. Without wanting to seem too random clearly the benchmark for our belief is likely to be highly variable between all of us.

One person's believable sound could easily be quite unbelievable to another.

Absolutely. We all have different priorities and benchmarks when it comes to establishing believability for ourselves. We all would even differ when it comes to applying the term 'completely believable' to what we hear. That is why there are so many vastly different systems and system approaches out there.

Just to name examples, for some timbre may rank above all, for others dynamics, for yet others rhythm or separation of instruments, or scale, or physical impact -- while we all may listen to the same piece of music.

 

[microstrip]

Agreed to a point but your vinyl bias have you avoid the point that any medium can be made to sound as you put it "miserable, artificial and aggressive". The matching depending on the person is critical regardless of medium.

Yes, all depend on matching but some are much more critical than others. I can connect my Forsell turntable or my Studer A80 to most systems and they will sound at less very good. In my my experience not for the Vivaldi or even my Metronome C2A DAC. During a long time I systematically disliked DCS until one one day I listened to it playing really great with my DG CD recordings. But unhappily most of the time I have listened to it it was not sounding good. Perhaps your experiences with DCS were luckier than mine.

 

[fas42]

I am wondering if it might be good to better define the level of believability... are we talking kind of believable or completely believable. Without wanting to seem too random clearly the benchmark for our belief is likely to be highly variable between all of us.

One person's believable sound could easily be quite unbelievable to another.

Also many of us have probably heard systems that are musically convincing though not necessarily absolutely realistic in purely sonic terms and also systems that are quite impressive sonically however have not seemed to be musically real at all.

I am wondering do the electronics set the limits on naturalness and musicality and then speakers more set the limits on how ultimately realistic as well that signal sounds. That the soul of the music lies in the original performance and that spirit of the music comes through the source and generating electronics and that the reality of all that comes to us generated through the final stage of speakers and the room.

I've heard systems with great source, amp, power and cables through less than extraordinary speakers sound quite natural and almost believable still but never seem like almost real.

Equally without the right electronics I have heard great speakers sound still very impressive but never ultimately quite natural or musical.

Nice overview, Tao ... it's always about the system, and will always be about the system - the believability is set by the tune of the system considered as a single entity, one piece of equipment.

The soul of the music is always captured in the recording - I have been quite struck, almost amazed at how even the "dirtiest" of recordings have still caught the elements that tell us how the people performing were feeling, the emotion and artistic creativity comes through loud and clear - if the system is good enough to allow those messages through ...

 

[Robh3606]

Originally Posted by morricab View Post
It is fundamental in how digital works and humans will always sense that it is not of the natural world.

That's an interesting statement considering that you brain is digital. Neurons fire or they don't at different rates just like 1's and Zero's in an encoded stream just like a digital codec. Look at how your ear digitizes and sends the info to your brain. Digital is not natural? I have to wonder about that.

Rob

 

[NorthStar]

Lol, we were born digital, with DACs in our brain and a master clock. ...Ya right, and we orbit around in an analog universe.

 

[stehno]

Could any differences help explain why people seem to hear digital and analog distortions differently, and how might that relate to the current discussion about believability of the reproduced illusion?

It doesn't relate. At least not directly.

 

[opus112]

That's an interesting statement considering that you brain is digital. Neurons fire or they don't at different rates just like 1's and Zero's in an encoded stream just like a digital codec. Look at how your ear digitizes and sends the info to your brain. Digital is not natural? I have to wonder about that.

Brains aren't digital any more than classD amps are digital. Ears don't 'digitize vibration' and then send information to the brain. Rather the brain's a dynamical system - for background reading material I'd suggest 'How brains make up their minds' by Walter Freeman. He knows a thing or two about brains...

 

[bonzo75]

Lol, we were born digital, with DACs in our brain and a master clock. ...Ya right, and we orbit around in an analog universe.

I think Blizzard was born R2R, which is why he kept winding up people

 

[jkeny]

Yes, the question of believability is a difficult one particularly when we are talking about the illusion created by our audio reproduction system - I was aware of this when I used the phrase "believability of the reproduction illusion". It's made even more complicated by the fact that a lot of the material we listen to is not a recording of a group of musicians playing together at a particular point in time & in a particular venue but is purely a fabrication created in the studio of separate tracks recorded at different venues & at different times.

All this variety makes it difficult to nail down the "believability" aspect because we are often judging the art of the recording engineer in making these different tracks coalesce into a single unified performance & not judging the reproduction system's ability to portray a musical event & all the nuances that should be captured in the recording of such an event.

The other aspect is that believability is not a black & white impression - it arrives in degrees although there are certain jumps that seem to tack place along this spectrum of believability where things seem to snap into place - although these "jumps" in believability may just be the auditory processing's effect of "yes that's more like it"?

 

[jkeny]

That's an interesting statement considering that you brain is digital. Neurons fire or they don't at different rates just like 1's and Zero's in an encoded stream just like a digital codec. Look at how your ear digitizes and sends the info to your brain. Digital is not natural? I have to wonder about that.

Rob

People seem to confuse what "digital" actually means - it's simply an agreed protocol with agreed min & max thresholds that "represent" a binary 1 or 0 - the underlying concept being that information can be converted to & from these digital bits

When you drill down deep enough, everything has a threshold, even light which is consider to be both a particle (photons) & a wave but it is incorrect to conceive of "thresholds" as "digital" - they are totally different concepts

 

[Robh3606]

People seem to confuse what "digital" actually means

Hello Jkeny

Here is the definition

Digital data, in information theory and information systems, are discrete, discontinuous representations of information or works, as contrasted with continuous, or analog signals which behave in a continuous manner, or represent information using a continuous function.

Your inner ear converts the analog waveform into discrete packets of information that are sent to your brain in the form of electrical impulses down the nerves. Your nerves do not fire continuously as they are chemically charged and are for all intents and purposes are sampling the waveform. They are encoded in both frequency and amplitude. So is it really that different?? Seems to meet the definition as hearing certainly is a form of information for your brain to process. I see that as food for thought and not in anyway shape or form as a black and white.

Rob

 

[opus112]

So is it really that different??

Most certainly. The brain is not 'receiving information', its not a digital processor. Nerve firings are not 'about' anything - 'aboutness' being an essential characteristic of information.

 

[Robh3606]

The brain is not 'receiving information'

So speech is not information?? Don't we learn through our use of speech?? Well what is it then??

Rob