Not at all, when people claim things that are downright impossible, i.e. the room doesn't matter if the electronics are good enough, then sorry, it's just not believable.
What determines "believability of the reproduction illusion"
- Thread starter jkeny
- Start date
Not at all, when people claim things that are downright impossible, i.e. the room doesn't matter if the electronics are good enough, then sorry, it's just not believable.
You forget the fact that he has been able to match his electronics perfectly based on what he heard 30 years ago, we will need 30 more years to get there, if ever. Plus the fact that he stopped going to Sydney Opera House because his system sounded better
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
People are forgetting that Frank's statement about the EA room cases in what he heard was that the room sucked. I beg to differ. That was my only point. You are all forgetting his original comment about the room which IMO was spectacular. There has yet to be a explanation.
So like Al and DaveC I gave up.
So like Al and DaveC I gave up.
A few of us noticed this interesting aspect and tried to highlight it, but I agree Frank did not make thinks easy.
It is difficult to debate believability without addressing a particular system, and then the discussion risks becoming closed to those who have some familiarity with it.
The list of those who have chosen to give up or rather to ignore is long...
He just tries to make things smaller, less complex and less violent ...
IMHO people such as Frank are needed in audio forums. Even if I disagree with most of what he says, he helps me understanding the other side of this hobby. And yes, we all have skeletons in our cupboards ...
Of course it was unlikely, but I fluked it at the time - because I had spent so much time "debugging" the system. If you reference ddk's comments that's exactly the process he had to go through too - it doesn't come automatically just because the components are well made in themselves.
Two things, that I've mentioned many times: that original system used B&W speakers, Perreaux amplifier, and the best Yamaha CDP around, in today's money the player cost nearly $5K - it wasn't a low brow system; in many ways similar to Al's setup ... and in the same period I visited the home of a hifi retailer, who had probably the "best", vinyl system in Sydney - nearly every analogue system I've heard since, to this day, falls well short of what I heard then.
The point being, that it's a combination of gear with the inherent capability, and near fanatical attention to detail that pulls the believability card out of the deck - unless the latter step is taken then the chances are very poor; if convincing sound did happen to pop out without doing this then it would highly likely be, another fluke.
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I'm sorry Dave, but that's exactly how it does work - unless you experience it personally it's highly unlikely that you will ever understand. I've taken bits of gear which sound awful in the raw state - and steadily pushed them up the quality ladder until their version of convincing sound emerges - no, it won't have fabulous, deep bass, nor go extremely loud, but within its limits it presents a very coherent, musical, and yes, believable picture ..,
When I started with my current NAD system it showed potential straight away, but the level of "dirtiness" in the sound was pretty dreadful - impossible to listen to for any length of time. It's now in a state where it's pretty decent, but it still has a long way to go.
Frank,
What it the opinion of other listeners about your current system, as it is playing now?
The only one who has heard it in any serious sense is my wife - it's set up in the "work" room, in such a way that it's easy to fiddle with. She's heard it sounding everything from mediocre to getting nicely into the "zone". The point being, that it's not in a fit state to show off, it's a work in progress - for a start, the volume level is fixed! The pot was poor quality, so has been bypassed.
To get a feel for what it does, people can check out a couple of videos on my channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzkx85ez3DVxRAnpkbQEA2w/videos. Listen at 720p, and that should give people a sense of what I'm after ...
To get a feel for what it does, people can check out a couple of videos
on my channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzkx85ez3DVxRAnpkbQEA2w/videos. Listen at 720p, and that should give people a sense of what I'm after ...My own interpretation of Frank's results is that he is getting things wrong as often as he is getting them right. I base this on having listened to some of the example tracks he has listed. They tend to be older tracks with various faults - limited bandwidth, high distortion, uneven frequency response. Tweaking a system to minimise the audible effect of such faults may well result in an audibly better reproduction of these tracks, but the resulting system is not high fidelity. I see this as an explanation for his constant tweaking, the fixes for one track do not necessarily apply to another.
I do however appreciate his philosophy of getting the best sound possible out of lower-end components. I sink my meagre disposable income into content before components. Most of my gear was obtained from thrift shops, for example my $10 Sony CDP-502ES II player with its politically incorrect headphone output of 2 watts per channel into a 32 ohm load.
I've followed the evolution of low-end speakers with interest - most of you will remember the cheap speakers from your youth, with indifferent drivers mis-matched to quite solidly built enclosures. These days it's the other way around - custom-designed drivers well matched to enclosures with paper-thin walls. With modern computer modelling it's easy to produce drivers to a specific set of parameters, allowing the crossovers to be simplified or eliminated. A typical cheap 3-way will have the bass driver running full range, a single capacitor to the mid driver, and a piezo tweeter. In most cases the bass drivers are well behaved when listened to in isolation, with little sign of break-up and "honk" at the top end. The small drivers used in cheap HTIB speakers usually sound much better when their small plastic boxes are replaced with correctly sized wood enclosures with appropriate damping material.
Getting back to the perceived quality of a phone video clip of a show system, a single microphone doesn't have the "cocktail party" ability to focus on the source. Well damped rooms and directional speakers are going to sound better than a live room and omni style speakers. Even where the rooms are similar, the speaker-room interaction differences will be exagerrated.
I do however appreciate his philosophy of getting the best sound possible out of lower-end components. I sink my meagre disposable income into content before components. Most of my gear was obtained from thrift shops, for example my $10 Sony CDP-502ES II player with its politically incorrect headphone output of 2 watts per channel into a 32 ohm load.
I've followed the evolution of low-end speakers with interest - most of you will remember the cheap speakers from your youth, with indifferent drivers mis-matched to quite solidly built enclosures. These days it's the other way around - custom-designed drivers well matched to enclosures with paper-thin walls. With modern computer modelling it's easy to produce drivers to a specific set of parameters, allowing the crossovers to be simplified or eliminated. A typical cheap 3-way will have the bass driver running full range, a single capacitor to the mid driver, and a piezo tweeter. In most cases the bass drivers are well behaved when listened to in isolation, with little sign of break-up and "honk" at the top end. The small drivers used in cheap HTIB speakers usually sound much better when their small plastic boxes are replaced with correctly sized wood enclosures with appropriate damping material.
Getting back to the perceived quality of a phone video clip of a show system, a single microphone doesn't have the "cocktail party" ability to focus on the source. Well damped rooms and directional speakers are going to sound better than a live room and omni style speakers. Even where the rooms are similar, the speaker-room interaction differences will be exagerrated.
Thanks for those comments, Don - why I concentrate on older recordings is that they help in highlighting where fixes are required; they emphasise where there are deficiencies. I can't make old recordings sound "high fidelity" if that is not their inherent makeup, but I can make them "believable" - nearly all standard setups, no matter how expensive, turn these types of recordings into mincemeat - the success of a system is its ability to not add anything of its own personality to the sound, if it does so then it certainly is not "high fidelity".
The fixes work for all types of material - once "difficult" recordings are tamed then pristine recordings also work - personally, I sometimes find the latter boring, because there is not much depth of musical interest in them.
My army of Doppelgangers is invading every square inch of this fair earth as we speak ...Wait a minute! Blizzard? ...is that you?
In fact, what I'm happy to do is have someone suggest a recording, which I also happen to have, that they think will tell them something about my system, and record the speakers playing that. Post that, along with an online link to a decent version playable online, for comparison. Then people can comment on what they think I'm getting "wrong" - both sides can benefit, then ... :b.
Fremer puts up some interesting stuff ... another comparison of vinyl and digital, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdbMEOPUfYg. At 720p, what do people think of this?
The gentleman who took the video @ the Newport audio show that Frank posted and commented on, his name's Mike.
• http://audiofederation.com/blog/2016/05/26/audio-federation-at-the-newport-beach-show#comment-41744
Mike's own feedback would be interesting here, in regard to what we are discussing, including Frank's analysis.
Mike has been in that room where Jonathan also was, and Mike shot that video with his Nexus 6 android phone.
So he has a good perspective on the room's sound by his physical presence versus the correlation of the recording from his android's microphone.
I'm sure that Mike has other video cameras more apt to the job, but this was a premiere, a new experimentation with his phone and walking us all through his journey @ that particular audio show, inside and outside...in his own style. I told him already that I like the "impromptu" (improvised) aspect of it.
I didn't have to tell him that a dedicated camera and mic would have been a superior experience visually and sound wise; but I did because that was honest.
Mike I just discovered recently is a member here, and looking @ his website for the very first time yesterday I was very pleasantly surprised.
His website has a great home page with a splendid presentation (beautiful images that changed).
And where he and his wife Neli live is a place of beauty all around with that natural décor surrounding them. Colorado is beautiful.
His home is splendid, cozy looking, enchanteur paysage, ...brief everything is peaceful and relaxed. ...And music is great food for the soul, and there is plenty inside their home, plus the natural music outside...wind in the trees, birds, rays of light, rain, snow, wildlife, clouds, blue sky, eagles, deer, moose, ...just the type of place we all love to go camping around a fire under the full moon.
We can learn some magic from Mike and Neli; I invite them to share here with their own words of knowledge the correlation of being there versus being really there there. I am very very happy to discover this lovely couple, and because of Frank.
If Frank wouldn't have posted that Mike's video part one, I wouldn't have known what happiness meant more today.
* Addendum: Frank's point of view has some valid traits. They have to be interpreted correctly, and I know we do interpret them as he explained them. Other aspects we are right to have our own disagreements with, and we don't shy to say so; it's also our own opinion on what we consider a realistically different approach...like the inferior mic of a cell phone versus being there for the people who were. But it does not take away the valid traits of the process. We can work with what we have (Mike's phone and different approach), and we can also improve the illusion by sharing and discussing all other aspects, just like we're doing here.
Because we're all involved in life's discussions about a common passion; the music we hear from here and over there and everywhere.
And by the way, just by pure coincidence, Michael Davis here (audiofederation.com) has the same exact name as Michael Davis (Blizzard) who was here.
• http://www.miveraaudio.com/#!mivera-audio-forum/ycs0u
• http://audiofederation.com/blog/2016/05/26/audio-federation-at-the-newport-beach-show#comment-41744
Mike's own feedback would be interesting here, in regard to what we are discussing, including Frank's analysis.
Mike has been in that room where Jonathan also was, and Mike shot that video with his Nexus 6 android phone.
So he has a good perspective on the room's sound by his physical presence versus the correlation of the recording from his android's microphone.
I'm sure that Mike has other video cameras more apt to the job, but this was a premiere, a new experimentation with his phone and walking us all through his journey @ that particular audio show, inside and outside...in his own style. I told him already that I like the "impromptu" (improvised) aspect of it.
I didn't have to tell him that a dedicated camera and mic would have been a superior experience visually and sound wise; but I did because that was honest.
Mike I just discovered recently is a member here, and looking @ his website for the very first time yesterday I was very pleasantly surprised.
His website has a great home page with a splendid presentation (beautiful images that changed).
And where he and his wife Neli live is a place of beauty all around with that natural décor surrounding them. Colorado is beautiful.
His home is splendid, cozy looking, enchanteur paysage, ...brief everything is peaceful and relaxed. ...And music is great food for the soul, and there is plenty inside their home, plus the natural music outside...wind in the trees, birds, rays of light, rain, snow, wildlife, clouds, blue sky, eagles, deer, moose, ...just the type of place we all love to go camping around a fire under the full moon.
We can learn some magic from Mike and Neli; I invite them to share here with their own words of knowledge the correlation of being there versus being really there there. I am very very happy to discover this lovely couple, and because of Frank.
If Frank wouldn't have posted that Mike's video part one, I wouldn't have known what happiness meant more today.
* Addendum: Frank's point of view has some valid traits. They have to be interpreted correctly, and I know we do interpret them as he explained them. Other aspects we are right to have our own disagreements with, and we don't shy to say so; it's also our own opinion on what we consider a realistically different approach...like the inferior mic of a cell phone versus being there for the people who were. But it does not take away the valid traits of the process. We can work with what we have (Mike's phone and different approach), and we can also improve the illusion by sharing and discussing all other aspects, just like we're doing here.
Because we're all involved in life's discussions about a common passion; the music we hear from here and over there and everywhere.
And by the way, just by pure coincidence, Michael Davis here (audiofederation.com) has the same exact name as Michael Davis (Blizzard) who was here.
• http://www.miveraaudio.com/#!mivera-audio-forum/ycs0u
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Very noticeable difference in the quality of that synthetic sound at the start of the song - it has much more texture & interest in the vinyl replay - haven't listened to the rest of the song!
Bob, it will be interesting to hear what Mike has to say ... the first bits here, http://audiofederation.com/blog
I love the comment part way down:
This pretty well hits the nail on the head ... I've learned a lot about "optimizing the poop out of" over the years ...
Bizarrely, at the Sydney show it was server based music that was well ahead, the vinyl replay I heard was surprisingly disappointing, with no obvious reasons for why.
I love the comment part way down:
This pretty well hits the nail on the head ... I've learned a lot about "optimizing the poop out of" over the years ...
Bizarrely, at the Sydney show it was server based music that was well ahead, the vinyl replay I heard was surprisingly disappointing, with no obvious reasons for why.
