Resolution is something that happens at the court.in music the closer you can get to the real thing.
What Do We Mean By "Resolution"?
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
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I find my Magnapan 30.7s to be very high resolution as you can easily hear the difference in recordings. Bad recording sounds terrible as the high resolution shows it of and high quality lps and cds sound amazing As it was live in the room.
Don't most speakers allow you to hear the differences between recordings? What do you think is the relationship between this observation and resolution?
Yes most speakers let you hear the difference between recordings but is it in a high resolution way.not always I believe.
A to H is talking about the difference between good and bad recordings (bad might sound compressed, for example). This is different from another difference in recordings, where the ambience and stage and venue of the concert differs from record to record (assuming all good quality records). The latter is not shown on most speakers/systems as systems force a certain stage over the recordings. I call this transparency to recordings, not resolution.
even my cheap bedroom system shows of good and bad recordings but not in a high resolution way.nothin on it sounds like music is live in the room.high resolution makes a good recording sound live.
tima,
I know that you are much more knowledgeable and sophisticated and your rather aphoristic comments above surprised me but, at least, your ...."Dorothy Dix" questions, by accident rather than intent, gives me an opportunity to express some views.
With due respect, this is a simplistic generalisation and therefore inaccurate and incomplete. Sit in the middle or at the rear of the hall and the sound is progressively warmer, softer and more rounded with decreasing detail, due to the increasing acoustic reflections, absorption and reverberations of the ambient space, with decreasing resolution of the stage sound. Sit at the front rows and you have the exact reverse phenomenon - the sound is more vivid, direct and with far greater inter-instrumental clarity and detail including stage ambience, that is there is greater resolution of the stage sound and individual instruments. Move and walk around the performers ( during a rehearsal perhaps ) and you will witness a different manifestation of resolution yet again.
Now, consider how recordings are made - usually with microphones placed ON THE STAGE ( almost always with spot-miking, although I am aware of minimalist set-ups but still on-stage configurations ). Do you know of any recordings where the microphones were placed in the middle of the hall? I can assure you that the resulting cavernous, amorphous, indistinct sound-wall will not be to your liking.
So, ...."if you sit in an audio room, listening to an orchestral performance" what should you hear is the pertinent question; the answer is that your audio system should reproduce what the microphones naturally picked up, i.e vividness, clarity, detail, directness and the stage perspective.
Transparency and resolution are inextricably inter-related, even semantically blurred by many audiophiles. In the triptych "transparency \ resolution \
detail", one element is a pre-requisite for the next: transparency will facilitate resolution and this, in turn, will scan out and isolate the embedded detail.
Visualise a recorded performance as a densely-woven sonic tapestry. A transparent, highly resolving system should have the ability to make every thread in this densely-woven sonic tapestry clearly and accurately audible as a separate entity. This separate entity of the sonic threads lose their "separateness" as we move away from the performance stage and ( given how recordings are made ) so do our systems move away from attempting to replicate the performance.
I value systems that excel at these characteristics of reproduced music and, by obvious extrapolation and definition, such systems will "approach" naturalness \ recorded "beingness" but of course will never be an exact facsimile of it!
Cheers to all, Kostas.
Hi Kostas -
I have to chuckle - as you were writing your post to me, I was writing a note to PeterA, part of which was about multi-mic'd recordings. What a coincidence!
Maybe you lost sight of the distinction made in my post between a person attending a concert hall performance and the same person listening to a stereo system. It was not about a recording engineer making a recording of a concert hall performance and someone listening to one through an audio system. But that's okay.
I tend to think of DG as the queen of multi-mic'd recording though it may be more prevalent with other recording labels nowadays. In essence breaking a performance into more parts when it is captured, then an engineer puts the parts back together, usually with some agreement from the conductor and others. Not entirely different from a digital capture of a performance, with the opportunity to manipulate the output in many many ways.
I am not an expert on recording or mixing technique, but there was a time - the so-called Golden Age of Recording - when recordings were made with a minimal number of microphones, sometimes just three. Consider the Mercury Living Presence catalog made by Bob and Wilma Fine. Alot of that was done with three-track tape or 35mm film. Many of these remain among the finest recordings ever made. Or there's the RCA Living Stereo catalog. Their recordings of Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony made by Richard Mohr and Lewis Layton used three widely spaced microphones. Originals of these are highly sought after as among the most realistic recordings ever made. Much is left to the talent of engineers in mixing three tracks into two.
Despite my simplistic generalisation, I am aware that sound can vary in a concert hall depending on where you sit and one will get a different presentation from row 3 than one does from the loge. Having once been a musician I am aware of the sound of individual instruments close up. I stand by my view that reality is not reproduction and the perception in a concert hall and in an audio room will be different. If a recording engineer opts to spot-light something that I would not hear as spot-lit when listening live, I may find the spot-lit presentation less natural than what I will hear in the concert hall. Some of that is inevitable, the price of enjoying reproduction but it does not deny that greater emphasis or over emphasis is less natural.
One thing to consider beyond recordings is the impact of audio systems on sound. For example, different equipment can emphasize or de-empasize different parts of the frequency spectrum giving some the impression of more information (detail) in that frequency region. So many sonic experiences are available from the plethora of audio equipment in different combinations that it is not surprising that many do not sound like what I hear in the concert hall.
Both hi-fi systems and recordings have their own inherent resolution so you can listen to a high resolution recording on a low resolution hi-fi, a low resolution recording on a low resolution hi-fi, a high resolution recording on a high resolution hi-fi and so on. A high resolution hi-fi system will allow you to hear greater (clearer) differences between low and high resolution recordings. Changes in the linearity of frequency response is not the same as changes in resolution. The former will colour all recordings, the latter will reveal greater differences between recordings.
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As a photographer, my experience over the years, is that modern digital capture and printing surpasses film/dark room in every one of the parameters you cited above— including naturalness. It all depends on who’s doing the work.
I am an actionable individual. As such I look at a thread like this and think, what can I do to optimize resolution in my system.
I reciently upgraded my PAP trio 15 horn to the Trio 15 Coax 10. This new center driver delivers a lot more, what I would call, balanced presentation. Detail and/or resolution is higher across all frequency.. Where the horn was beautiful in presenting a string or reed instrument, it buried subtle instruments such as a harpsichord. The coax reveals more of all of the original recording. Enough so I am now more aware of the interaction my room has on my speaker. I am more aware there is more there, but I also hear the timing reflections in the room.
Being actionable, i have now reached out to Jeff Hedbeck. What I dont want to happen is my room become over damped. In an effort by some to increase resolution by eliminating reflection, as well as bass issues, rooms can become lifeless and the natural/realness of music is lost. Your just left with detail. Resolution?? You can hear every word, but the musicality of the system is lost.
I don't believe that resolution is necessary for a system to present as natural and real. I believe a better system will have resolution, as well as presenting natural and real playback. The question then becomes, how much can be done to bring out resolution without robbing muicallity. Others such as AJ Soudfield have shown me a few links that seem to indicate we can measure pretty much all we hear. The question then becomes, can we plan for a minimum amount of room treatments to assist in bringing forth as much resolution as our equipment is capable of, without taking from the whole of the musical experience.
Rex
I reciently upgraded my PAP trio 15 horn to the Trio 15 Coax 10. This new center driver delivers a lot more, what I would call, balanced presentation. Detail and/or resolution is higher across all frequency.. Where the horn was beautiful in presenting a string or reed instrument, it buried subtle instruments such as a harpsichord. The coax reveals more of all of the original recording. Enough so I am now more aware of the interaction my room has on my speaker. I am more aware there is more there, but I also hear the timing reflections in the room.
Being actionable, i have now reached out to Jeff Hedbeck. What I dont want to happen is my room become over damped. In an effort by some to increase resolution by eliminating reflection, as well as bass issues, rooms can become lifeless and the natural/realness of music is lost. Your just left with detail. Resolution?? You can hear every word, but the musicality of the system is lost.
I don't believe that resolution is necessary for a system to present as natural and real. I believe a better system will have resolution, as well as presenting natural and real playback. The question then becomes, how much can be done to bring out resolution without robbing muicallity. Others such as AJ Soudfield have shown me a few links that seem to indicate we can measure pretty much all we hear. The question then becomes, can we plan for a minimum amount of room treatments to assist in bringing forth as much resolution as our equipment is capable of, without taking from the whole of the musical experience.
Rex
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Fully agree and when both come together the magic starts and you can call it " high end audio "
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I think subjective impressions of resolution may well come from the speed of loudspeaker drivers.
AER BD4 is a fast driver, I believe, and you can hear it certainly is very high resolution.
Not many drivers can track a square wave input well. Planar magnetic / true ribbons loudspeakers at least make a decent go of it.
You can certainly hear this speed I think in Alsyvox and Apogee speakers. Less so in Maggies but there's less force per unit area in those as they use fewer magnets.
AG horns sound pretty quick to me and I reckon they must be 'fast' too.
AER BD4 is a fast driver, I believe, and you can hear it certainly is very high resolution.
Not many drivers can track a square wave input well. Planar magnetic / true ribbons loudspeakers at least make a decent go of it.
You can certainly hear this speed I think in Alsyvox and Apogee speakers. Less so in Maggies but there's less force per unit area in those as they use fewer magnets.
AG horns sound pretty quick to me and I reckon they must be 'fast' too.
I fully endorse your sentiments and experiences. I also play string instruments and make relatively high quality recordings. Having, in addition, the very trasparent, highly resolving, low distortion and linear Martin Logan CLX Art electrostatic speakers, allows for playback levels ( of well-recorded acoustic music in general ) to reach peak SPLs of around 107 dBs ( C-weighted, Fast ), without system and room compression, which magnifies the complete personality of the instrument ( very fine timbral nuances, inflections and micro dynamics ) to a level of enjoyment and awe that transcends \ "surpasses" the life-size instrument.
I agree, looking at a frequency graph, relative linearity does not indicate that one component has greater resolution than another. However, emphasis in a frequency range can give some the impression of greater resolution compared to a component without that emphasis.
Freq response accuracy should be mandatory for the prices you pay in " high end audio "
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Just to mention, there are no square waves in music….but your point is still valid that the majority of speakers can’t provide the dynamic response required to track the initial percussive attack of many instruments
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Yeah you got the point totally - that's the point of the square wave test. Obviously it can be performed at various different frequencies but to be great the speaker must perform well over the entire frequency range.
You can't have resolution if the speaker can't track the input signal. For that speed is critical. And for that high force per unit area and low mass drivers are critical.
I joined Ron's Audiophile Cafe last night where he and member Al M. were co-hosting a discussion about this very topic of "resolution" in the context of audio. There was a recording engineer, a musician, and some other technically oriented guests. The first interesting comments were that most of the participants would not use the term "resolution" to discuss or describe the music listening experience from an audio system.
They also seemed to avoid the analogy with video/print resolution with their pixel count, dots per square inch, specifications. There was some chat about digital resolution with bits and sample rate, but most agreed that higher specifications do not necessarily correspond with more musical information or satisfaction. There was also a comment about just how much can we perceive with our ears and/or eyes. What is possible technically, may not be what we actually experience. Perception seemed to matter relative to degree of resolution.
Most of the participants seemed to equate the concept of audio resolution, or resolution in general, with measurements. Ron asked a very interesting question about how a listener would determine which system in two different rooms has higher resolution. I suggested that the listener simply go into each room, listen to each system, and compare what he hears from each system with his memory of what live music sounds like. The system that sounds more like live music in a defined space is the one that has higher resolution. What seems rather obvious to me seemed somewhat lost on the other participants. They were more focused on and wanted to discussed room measurements, system deviation from flat frequency response, measured noise levels relative to signal, etc.
This is when I realized that people really think differently about this stuff, both about resolution specifically, and audio in general. Some approach it from a top down perspective. For me and them, music is a holistic experience, a gestalt, an emotion. Musicians produce energy from their instruments that flows outward and impacts the listener. The meaning of a term like "natural" sound is clear. Others seem to want to break things down, analyze them, assign values and attributes, break apart music into bits and pieces and think the term "natural" is too vague and therefore meaningless.
It all makes for some rather spirited discussions, but after about an hour, I left that audio chat room to set up an old cartridge on a second tonearm while listening to music as my guide as I made adjustments. At one point, everything clicked, the music grabbed my attention because it suddenly sounded natural. I knew and cartridge/arm was set up. I spent the rest of the evening enjoying some records played by a wonderful old cartridge.
Peter, are you saying you prefer listening to music reproduced naturally to talking hypotheticals? I've never heard anything so outrageous.
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