What do you think of this video

What do you think of this video. And this is not directed to those who think every mobile phone video is trash, thanks. Please listen to the end for the brass and the woodwinds

 

I've just tested the frequency response of the built-in speaker on my Samsung S10+, and here is it:

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This is truly terrible performance.

Using a phone's speaker is fine for listening to a voice over a call, but no way to playback and evaluate full-spectrum recordings of music systems. I mean, you've lost everything from the lower mids down. It will be shrill and bright and nothing like the recording.

(The phone's built-in mic has far better specs than its speaker.)

Mani.

Exactly. The midbass and lower bass will be horrible on Samsung playback. And this is consistent when some people I know switched their listening from mobile to headphones, they got to correctly assess the midbass and below.

 

Btw, that graph is exactly how I visually expected it would be based on the mobile sound. There is no midbass, so thin.

 

I think I'm getting confused with semantics.

There's noise and there's distortion. Noise is uncorrelated with the music. Even when there's no music playing, there's still noise - the noise floor. Distortion is correlated with the music. You only hear distortion when music plays.

I think the mistake most people make is in thinking that the music signal sits 'on top' of the noise floor - as long as you can't hear the noise floor when music plays then all is good. I don't think our hearing works like this - for example, you can hear a tone imbedded in noise. A better way of looking at this is to imagine the noise floor 'riding on top' of the music signal. The signal gets increasingly 'muddy' the higher the noise floor. So, you may not be able to actually make out the noise when the music plays (as you can when there's no signal and you can hear the noise floor), but it will have a detrimental affect on the sound.

This is why I think it's important to strive for having an inaudible noise floor at full gain.

Distortion is another matter...

Mani.

I've no real technical background but I'll give this my best shot.

If what you purport about noise floors were true, then because you hear silence at your drivers, you could most likely legitimately claim that you've arrived at a SOTA-level performance - as could many others. I think you're confusing noise with audible noise when in fact noise is synonymous with distortions of any kind that compromise the fidelity of the input signal.

If noise or noise floors dealt only with audible noise only, then a noise floor in photagraphy would be meaningless and non-existent. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, a noise floor in photagraphy carries essentially the same defintion it does with audio.

For example. Here's a blurred picture of a car along with a much less blurred picture of the same car.



As in audio, that which is above the noise floor remains visible and that which is below remains invisible. I would not consider the noise floor on the left as severe, yet it still is severe enough that you cannot read the license plate, the manufacturer's insigna or model, many of the detailed lines are hazy, skewed, and barely visible, and some might even consider the car on the left to be slightly wider than that on the right. Since noise (distortions) blur the image including its boundaries, the boundaries become enlarged. Regardless everything about the presentation on the left has been compromised by the noise floor. Then again, everything about the presentation on the right is also compromised by a noise floor though much less severe.

Just as important is to understand that it's really nothing more than a percentage thing. Assume for the moment that both pictures above were taken with a 3 meagpixel digital camera and due to a raised noise floor the picture on the left shows visible only 85% of the picture info quanity of the one on the right. Now pretend you double the resolution by using a 6 megapixel digital camera, then a 12 megapixel camera. Sure the image on the right will continue to marginally improve as will the picture on the left, but with the same noise floor / distortions unremedied, the picture on the left will still only show 85% of the picture on the right's info quantity. So long as the distortions remain unaddressed the visible percentage of picture info quantity of the left remains unchanged at 85%.

This I think is an excellent example and explanation of how high-end audio's hi-res formats are generally only marginally better than Redbook PCM (a 3 megapixel camera). 85% remaining audible at the speaker is still 85% regardless of the format. 85% of a single music note remains 85% of a single music note regardless of format. In fact, this is exactly why MQA's initial out-of-this-world performance claims were for the birds and if MQA were truly interested in resolving high-end audio's performance issues, they were barking up the wrong technology tree altogether. Besides, other more legitimate hi-rez formats had already been invented and they too did very little to resolve high-end audio's primary performance issues. For the exact same reason. So long as the distortions remain unaddressed, 85% quantiy audible at output still remains 85%.

It's also important to note that both pictures contain the exact same size and exact same info even though they appear different. It had been asked, does the picture on the left contain the same amount of info as the picture on the right and the answer was yes but 15% of the info remains invisible due to the raised noise floor. I agree with that. Take for example, the positioning of speakers or subwoofer within a room and note how the bass changes for better or worse. Though you may hear changes in the bass better or worse, the speakers and/or subwoofer are still outputting the same exact signal.

IMO and IME, noise floors in high-end audio are much more severe than the noise floor of this car illustration which I consider mild. How bad? I would guess that if one were to purchase the best audio system they could find for $500k, had it expertly set up including speaker positioning, allowed the entire system to fully burn-in and break-in, the final sonic presentation of music info remaining audible at the speaker would probably be not much better than 60 or 65% of the music info read from the recording. Assuming of course that 100% of the music is read / retrieved from the recording medium and sent on its way toward processing. Have you ever heard of the term "hi-fi sound"? Or have you ever attended an audio show?

That there's so much confustion and misunderstanding about noise floors I think substantiates my claim that noise floors are rather severe in high-end audio. Except for luck of the draw, one cannot sufficiently remedy a problem if they don't even know the problem exists, right?

Below is Wiki-pedia's definition of a noise floor which I think sufficiently describes matters.

"In signal theory, the noise floor is the measure of the signal created from the sum of all the noise sources and unwanted signals within a measurement system, where noise is defined as any signal other than the one being monitored."

This is why I stressed earlier, audible distortions but especially inaudible distortions.

 

Shehno, As far as audio goes, I think you're making good points, but the photography analogy is not applicable. The photo on the left is not the result of "noise." That is not what digital noise in photography looks like. Digital noise in photography is seen as colored pixels. That image looks to be either the result of poor focus or camera shake or a combination.

 

Shehno, As far as audio goes, I think you're making good points, but the photography analogy is not applicable. The photo on the left is not the result of "noise." That is not what digital noise in photography looks like. Digital noise in photography is seen as colored pixels. That image looks to be either the result of poor focus or camera shake or a combination.

It's just an illustration of a noise floor in photography, wil. I did not specify digital noise. Whether the distortion is caused by poor focus or anything else, it's still an excellent visual of what a noise floor does at the signal output.

Let's not lose focus.

BTW, I've been called many things, but Shehno was never one of them. A new first.

 

Cell phone speakers are geared toward the intelligibility of voices. The old Western Electric psychoacoustic dictum is that if you present a robust upper midrange signal, the brain apparatus tends to reconstruct the lower octaves by default. I suspect rolled off response below 500 Hz on speakerphone would be expected and would be a design feature.

I never listen to these You Tube music recordings without headphones. I didn't think that many people would listen to them otherwise, but I guess they do.

 

I never listen to these You Tube music recordings without headphones. I didn't think that many people would listen to them otherwise, but I guess they do.

Not they sir. Just me.

 

Not they sir. Just me.

I listen on phone and sometimes laptop speakers and very occasionally I’ll be in a work space and so just go headphones. I do find with all three you can hear the essential characteristic spirit of the system. I guess if I was trying to analyse exactly I might go to a hphone but mostly it usually starts with just listening for the music itself via iphone.

I’m not sure what the people in our Telstra telecommunications store are going to think of me bringing in my horns and amp to check out how the new phone records a blistering drum solo... but it does sound a bit like a good day to get video of.

 

Not they sir. Just me.

Like Marc will forever defend his Zus, you will your Samsung

 

Cell phone speakers are geared toward the intelligibility of voices. The old Western Electric psychoacoustic dictum is that if you present a robust upper midrange signal, the brain apparatus tends to reconstruct the lower octaves by default. I suspect rolled off response below 500 Hz on speakerphone would be expected and would be a design feature.

I never listen to these You Tube music recordings without headphones. I didn't think that many people would listen to them otherwise, but I guess they do.

I don't use headphones either, just whatever device or computer I'm browsing with at that moment. I know what I'm looking for.

david

 

Cell phone speakers are geared toward the intelligibility of voices. The old Western Electric psychoacoustic dictum is that if you present a robust upper midrange signal, the brain apparatus tends to reconstruct the lower octaves by default. I suspect rolled off response below 500 Hz on speakerphone would be expected and would be a design feature.

I never listen to these You Tube music recordings without headphones. I didn't think that many people would listen to them otherwise, but I guess they do.

The being essentially centre-weighted in the midrange and then coherently equally going out from there is a characteristic that for me makes a birch or wood horn kind of compelling... that was the first impression that I got of the Animas and why I like the birch iwata radial in the Pap horn. Not perfect yet but maybe duke will have a go at the concept.

The composite horns maybe can sound a touch more immediate but that kind of tone wood centre mid really puts you in touch with the core in the music and then the rest just either underpins or floats across the top.

 

Like Marc will forever defend his Zus, you will your Samsung

You should know better Bonzo. I do not defend Brand.
I only tell what I do.

 

Yes in hifi you don't. So it's funny you are going to be defending your Samsung listening

 

I don't use headphones either, just whatever device or computer I'm browsing with at that moment. I know what I'm looking for.

david

Gosh. Are we relative from past life K. David? That is exactly what I do.

One thing I find is the word "practical" is never in an audiophiles vocab.

 

Yes in hifi you don't. So it's funny you are going to be defending your Samsung listening

Again. If I use iPhone, I would still say I listen to videos through iPhone. You buy me iPhone. I will use it and stop saying Samsung. I use what is available.

 

Gosh. Are we relative from past life K. David? That is exactly what I do.

One thing I find is the word "practical" is never in an audiophiles vocab.

You never know Tang, part of my heart is always tied to Thailand!

David

 

Deep purple child in time .
Not the cleanest recordings often but hey it is what it is , better then CD i think

 

Totally different genre .

Thelonious monk tape project Mono recording iirc

 

The Bruckner D2D vinyl on my office system:

(Samsung phone with in-buit mic.)

Mani

 

A bit of acoustic guitar (vinyl):

(Samsung phone, in-built mic.)

Mani.