What does the term musical mean?

[RUR]

I'd like to see the study from which that conclusion was drawn because my own experience contradicts this. Like most men, as I've aged, I have lost some sensitivity to higher frequencies. If I use an equalizer to boost the higher frequencies, it certainly does not sound harsh and unnatural.

Again, we need Kal or someone like him, but here's the theory...

Assume that you go to a live concert. Further assume that you have hearing loss in the 600-800Hz region. Despite that loss, your brain tells you that what you're hearing sounds correct, natural.

Now assume that we place a microphone between your eyes. That mic records a true representation of the event in terms of FR. If we play that recording in your room, which we'll assume has a flat response, you're still experiencing it in the context of your hearing loss and it still sounds natural to you. If we then EQ out your hearing loss by adding volume in the area of that loss, we're adding to the original event and, in theory, it should no longer sound natural.

Does that make sense, Rob?

 

[Steve williams]

But Ken if you EQ for someone without a hearing loss why doesn't it sound unnatural to them.

 

[rsbeck]

Assume that you go to a live concert. Further assume that you have hearing loss in the 600-800Hz region. Despite that loss, your brain tells you that what you're hearing sounds correct, natural.

Not necessarily. There are at least a few possibilities I can imagine. One, it is doubtful that this music concert is the only reference and even more doubtful that it can serve as a reference for accuracy unless a whole lot of things are accounted for including room interactions and frequency responses, distortion at the listener position, etc. So, it would still only serve as one data point and probably not an ideal data point in a sea of other data points.

If we play that recording in your room, which we'll assume has a flat response

How many rooms have a flat response?

you're still experiencing it in the context of your hearing loss and it still sounds natural to you.

How do you quantify the hearing loss? Were you born with it or did it degrade over time?

If we then EQ out your hearing loss by adding volume in the area of that loss, we're adding to the original event and, in theory, it should no longer sound natural.

It would not sound natural to someone who has perfect hearing, but how do we know it doesn't match some data point in the listener's head -- even if it is only an idea of what sounds right in his or her head? And how do we know that that idea is incorrect?

Another problem I can see with this theory is that increased bass or treble or other tone controls are what is being called into question here, correct? Why do some people with normal hearing experience deviations from flat as pleasurable? Why wouldn't a person with some hearing sensitivity or insensitivity experience a system and room that was tuned to compensate also find it pleasurable -- for the reason that it make the system sound more accurate according to an internal picture that may in fact be accurate and we have no way of knowing for sure?

Also, we never did deal with the idea that some amount of distortion may be necessary for suspension of disbelief.

And -- in your hypo above, what if some of the musicians were using tube gear, would the sound of tube distortion also become a reference for natural sound?

 

[RUR]

But Ken if you EQ for someone without a hearing loss why doesn't it sound unnatural to them.

Steve, I am not and will not dispute anyone's belief that a deliberately-chosen non-flat response may sound more natural to them. Indeed, I do that myself, though I do take pains to start from a measured flat response, adjusted for room gain, and then to make deliberate, measured changes which sound subjectively good to me. After all, my ultimate goal is enjoyment, not FR accuracy in and of itself.

What I am suggesting in my posts above is that EQ changes made solely to compensate for hearing loss are unnecessary. Now, whether or not I've got my facts straight, Kal will have to decide.

 

[Ron Party]

Steve, I am not and will not dispute anyone's belief that a deliberately-chosen non-flat response may sound more natural to them. Indeed, I do that myself, though I do take pains to start from a measured flat response, adjusted for room gain, and then to make deliberate, measured changes which sound subjectively good to me. After all, my ultimate goal is enjoyment, not FR accuracy in and of itself.

IMO, the perfect approach.

 

[RUR]

Not necessarily. There are at least a few possibilities I can imagine....

Rob, you've rejected my hypothesis and I'm not all that interested in a lengthy discussion of the finer points. Feel free to consider me wrong and to compensate for hearing loss, if you believe that's of value to you.

 

[rsbeck]

Rob, you've rejected my hypothesis and I'm not all that interested in a lengthy discussion of the finer points. Feel free to consider me wrong and to compensate for hearing loss, if you believe that's of value to you.

Rejected sounds too harsh. I need an equalizer to find a mellower sounding word. I am not saying I use anything to compensate for hearing loss. I only mentioned that I have done so in the past and it didn't sound harsh or unnatural to me at the time and that deviations from flat often sound pleasurable to people with normal hearing so it stands to reason that it is possible that a deviation from flat that would compensate for someone else's hearing sensitivity or insensitivity could also be pleasurable -- and accurate (we have no way of knowing).

I don't see myself as adopting or rejecting any of these possibilities. I just see them as useful possibilities.

In my own practice I follow a methodology much like yours and Ponk's, although I do not use an equalizer in my listening room, only in my theater -- and I have gone to some length and expense to achieve rooms with excellent acoustics with accuracy as the goal. When I shop for speakers, I start by looking for flat frequency response and low distortion, but then I also listen to them (although my anecdotal experience ia that speakers that measure similarly can sound different).

So, I see myself more as a devil's advocate who is saying that I can see value in other approaches, too, based on what I suspect -- that despite all of the various stances, we all basically want the same thing. We want a system that sounds right and we have no way of knowing who is right or wrong when it comes to the ultimate result -- the sound in the ear of the listener in his or her listening room in the listening position.

 

[Ethan Winer]

You espouse Fletcher-Munson which is a model of human perception yet cling to flat like a sailor at sea clings to a life raft.

I don't understand the connection.

is totally flat in-room response your target?

Maybe, and not necessarily. It depends on a lot of factors such as the size of the room and personal preference. Many attempts that EQ'd rooms to be flat resulted in sound that's too bright. And many rooms use a "house curve" with a falling off at higher frequencies. My main interest in wanting a "flat" response relates to 1) the huge peaks and nulls and ringing in small rooms that are always damaging, and 2) the comb filtering that happens at mid and high frequencies due to strong early reflections. This type of "flat" is very different from an overall curve that rolls off at the high end.

--Ethan

 

[Ethan Winer]

Do you measure these (and other) things in the room at the listening position?

It depends on what is being measured. In-room frequency response is best measured where you listen. Though just today I was helping a customer with a harshness problem. To be sure the harshness isn't in his loudspeakers I asked him to measure the response very close to the speaker, to remove most of the room's influence.

how many systems can achieve 100% accuracy in the room at the listening position?

None, and I am serious. Even if you loosen the definition of "100% accuracy" to +/- 1 dB, the answer is still none.

What happens if the listener's ear is not 100% accurate?

It depends entirely on the nature of the deviation! A 6 dB broad boost at 100 Hz can sound full in a pleasing way. A typical 25 dB null at some bass frequency can be devastating, depending on the key of the music currently playing. Excess ringing always sounds bad no matter what frequency. Some types of distortion are easily overlooked or can even sound pleasing to some, where other types of distortion sound horrible to everyone.

Well.....you're guessing with that conclusion. It could just as easily be that the listener's ears are insensitive to frequencies above 3 KHz

I was talking about professional mixing engineers!

--Ethan

 

[FrantzM]

But Ken if you EQ for someone without a hearing loss why doesn't it sound unnatural to them.

Steve has touched an interesting point here... To put it simply we just hear and our brain compensate for the inadequacies of our physiology. Regardless of our aural acuities we are able to recognize the sounds of loved ones, of instruments, etc. Accuracy to the source means that to me: Reproduce what was recorded as precisely as possible and a real flat system. Let's call it linear because at the heart that what it should be does that... Reproduce that...
I think that the weakness in the reasoning is to thin that we are able to do that. Not yet, the speakers and system we have presently at our disposal do certain things better and not in a linear fashion, thus our preferences of some over others. We go toward that subset of accuracy (or should) that fit our preferences...
I remember a half-deaf audiophile called Phil. Something, (the old man passed me a great collection of Rock LP (200 of these I think by the way and I can't remember his last name ). He could hear the differences between speakers and amps but if you were to talk to him you had to shout. Of course he played everything a little louder than usual but not that much....

 

[RUR]

Rejected sounds too harsh. I need an equalizer to find a mellower sounding word. I am not saying I use anything to compensate for hearing loss. I only mentioned that I have done so in the past and it didn't sound harsh or unnatural to me at the time and that deviations from flat often sound pleasurable to people with normal hearing so it stands to reason that it is possible that a deviation from flat that would compensate for someone else's hearing sensitivity or insensitivity could also be pleasurable -- and accurate (we have no way of knowing).

Rob, here's an example of previous discussion which precipitated my post. That may not be a universal truth and such compensation may not sound "harsh and unnatural" to you.

I suspect we have a great deal in common in our beliefs and approaches.

 

[JackD201]

I don't understand the connection.

Simply that measured response and heard response are two very different things. So different in fact that there have been at least two major revisions to Fletcher and Munson's NELCs the latest being ISO 226:2003. To borrow from rsbeck, even the definition of "heard" flat is apparently a moving target.

Not very comforting if someone's belief is that all that is heard has been measured and explained by virtue of those measurements. That should come with a disclaimer that clearly states "to the present limits of human capability" or something of the sort. NELCs cover only pure tones. There are to my knowledge no large scale scale studies for more complex equal loudness source tones.

Maybe, and not necessarily. It depends on a lot of factors such as the size of the room and personal preference.

Okay.......

Many attempts that EQ'd rooms to be flat resulted in sound that's too bright. And many rooms use a "house curve" with a falling off at higher frequencies.

I must concur....

SO do you go for measured flat or sounding flat since no speaker-room interface can give flat as the signal response anyway?

My main interest in wanting a "flat" response relates to 1) the huge peaks and nulls and ringing in small rooms that are always damaging, and 2) the comb filtering that happens at mid and high frequencies due to strong early reflections.

Never been a debate on those two points.....

I did notice that like many traditional acousticians you advocate a lot of bass trapping. This solves many problems but creates some of their own. The main one being, if your room can't take the bass, don't put speakers that have it in the first place. You save on both your speakers and on bass traps requiring mainly midband and HF absorbers or diffusors.

I too would find two flat loudspeakers that measure flat from the midband to the high frequencies very similar in a room that effectively damps or absorbs 60 to 70HZ and below by say 9 or 10dBs or more.

This type of "flat" is very different from an overall curve that rolls off at the high end.

Such a curve would in fact run counter to both measured or assessed flatness.

 

[Ethan Winer]

there have been at least two major revisions to Fletcher and Munson's NELCs the latest being ISO 226:2003.

But the basic concept of 2 to 4 KHz sounding louder than other frequencies still applies, as does the change in perceived response versus SPL.

SO do you go for measured flat or sounding flat since no speaker-room interface can give flat as the signal response anyway?

I have no idea what most people do. My own living room system measures fairly flat with no HF roll-off, and the same for my larger home studio other than a roll-off around 17 KHz inherent in my JBL speakers.

I did notice that like many traditional acousticians you advocate a lot of bass trapping. This solves many problems but creates some of their own. The main one being, if your room can't take the bass, don't put speakers that have it in the first place.

Bass traps never cause problems. All they can possibly do is flatten the response and reduce ringing. I also don't know what a room that "can't take bass" means. Please be more specific. If someone's room has severe peaks and nulls below, say, 200 Hz, are you proposing to use speakers that go no lower than 200 Hz? If this is not what you mean, please clarify.

--Ethan

 

[JackD201]

Why do you meet me with jokes every time I ask you anything serious?

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

I think I have read every post in this thread, and I think far too many posts are taking the topic at hand to absolute extremes. For every post there is a counter-post and then another counter-post, and for what? To prove that your interpretation makes more sense or somehow has more validity? This thread has 13 pages and none of you have come to any conclusion as to what the term "musical" means. I don't profess that I do either, but rather than debating the point, which IMO has become excessively redundant, just enjoy what you have and take pleasure from the fact that you put together something you care about. Sitting in my small 2CH Analogue room every night for an hour or two and enjoying the wonderful sounds of my favourite recordings is what "musical" means to me. I tap my feet, I smile, I close my eyes and get completely enraptured in a world that my ears long to feed from.

John

 

[Steve williams]

John

You couldn't have said it any better. I too have read very post in this thread and IMHO the term "musical" obviously means different things for different people

John hit it right on because for me what floats my sonic boat and that which "I" call musical is a "toe tapping experience and a smile on my face"" nothing more, nothing less.

YMMV

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

John

You couldn't have said it any better. I too have read very post in this thread and IMHO the term "musical" obviously means different things for different people

John hit it right on because for me what floats my sonic boat and that which "I" call musical is a "toe tapping experience and a smile on my face"" nothing more, nothing less.

YMMV

I agree as well. Which brings us full circle, back to the beginning. Evidently Stereophile's old attempt to establish a universal glossary of subjective audio terms didn't take: We have many meanings for what must be one of the most commonly used terms from that glossary (second, I would guess, to "warm"). And if it means something different to everybody, it doesn't mean much at all. It is certainly not a term that could be used effectively to communicate anything meaningful about a component's or system's performance.

P

 

[Gregadd]

As the initiator of this thread I turn my attention to one of the the elements that for me, without which it is difficult to consider a system or recording musical. Dynamic range or dynamic contrast. While we should not focus to much on any one element(hence the term, "can't see the forest fro the trees".) I think we all have different elements without which it is very difficult to create the illusion of real music. The Telarc recording of Fire bird Suite that builds form a whisper to a crescendo. Transient attacks like the striking of a triangle. Flora Purims Butterfly Dreams where her husband plays many and various percussion instruments, whistles and bird calls. A singer who belts out a tune. What does it for you? Bass? Imaging? Female Vocals? Do you just close your eyes and imagine?

 

[Gregadd]

I agree as well. Which brings us full circle, back to the beginning. Evidently Stereophile's old attempt to establish a universal glossary of subjective audio terms didn't take: We have many meanings for what must be one of the most commonly used terms from that glossary (second, I would guess, to "warm"). And if it means something different to everybody, it doesn't mean much at all. It is certainly not a term that could be used effectively to communicate anything meaningful about a component's or system's performance.

P

No surprise that I disagree. I think a glossary of terms that allowed audiophiles and reviewers to describe what they heard. Manufactures then took those terms and descriptions back to plant and created the equipment we have to day. It is one thing to say you don't appreciate where we are and quite another to deny the path that was taken. Some may have been lost and gone astray. Others may have intenionally taken a different path. IMO Most of us made it pretty close to the "promised land."

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

As the initiator of this thread I turn my attention to one of the the elements that for me, without which it is difficult to consider a system or recording musical. Dynamic range or dynamic contrast. While we should not focus to much on any one element(hence the term, "can't see the forest fro the trees".) I think we all have different elements without which it is very difficult to create the illusion of real music. The Telarc recording of Fire bird Suite that builds form a whisper to a crescendo. Transient attacks like the striking of a triangle. Flora Purims Butterfly Dreams where her husband plays many and various percussion instruments, whistles and bird calls. A singer who belts out a tune. What does it for you? Bass? Imaging? Female Vocals? Do you just close your eyes and imagine?

In my case most definitely... YES. I take the recording that I have for what it's worth. Do I know there are better recordings available? Do I know there is better equipment to interpret those sounds? Yes on both counts, but they don't grace my humble abobe and as such I'm not going to listen with a longing ear for more. I don't critisize the recording I have, but might take note that a better copy would be more endearing. If I find that copy.....great! If not, it still gets played with every bit of imagination I can muster. Same goes for the equipment I have. I am constantly tweaking and seeing what I can squeeze out of my components. Today, in fact, I decided that I needed better vibration/isolution control for my TT. So I went out and bought what I thought would do the trick. (It worked I might add).

Even if I hadn't done so, I'd still be listening and imagining. You see, it's the music that gives me pleasure...not the vehicle or software that most of us seem to be so obsessed by. The magic is in the music....the rest is gravy!