What is Hi Fi sound?

[DaveC]

Sometimes it seems to me that in many cases a more natural sound is less detailed. In fact, when I go to live performances of an orchestra for example, the sound seems to be much duller I guess. Of course, I never stand on the podium so I do not have that experience of how the orchestra sounds from the podium.

Sure, the less detail you have the more "other stuff" you have covering it up, and often this is warmth which is not irritating or "HiFi", but it's also not a part of the recording... it's the flip side of the "HiFi" coin.

Warmth obscures both "HiFi" type artifacts or aberrations as well as detail on the recording. IMO, the best systems present excellent resolution without "HiFi" characteristics, and the extra stuff they add may even be very close to what the ear expects to hear, which can enhance clarity and the feeling of the sound being natural. So, there are many different sounds a system can add to the recording, some are bad ("HiFi"), some are ok in moderation ("warmth" and 2nd order distortion), and some may even be desirable if it fits psycho-acoustically.

Also keep in mind that many/most recordings are not an attempt to recreate live sound, and have close-mic'ed information that contains a lot more detail vs sitting halfway back in a hall listening to a full orchestra. So imo you need to look at the intent of the recording since they are not all the same. A simple stereo mic at a good position in the hall is all that is needed many times to get good results if the intent is to recreate a live listening experience.

 

[Folsom]

Good observation, I know what you are talking about.

And violins don't sound screechy either.

They do on some old albums...

 

[Al M.]

Sometimes it seems to me that in many cases a more natural sound is less detailed. In fact, when I go to live performances of an orchestra for example, the sound seems to be much duller I guess. Of course, I never stand on the podium so I do not have that experience of how the orchestra sounds from the podium.

Depends on where you sit. Quite close to the orchestra the sound can be highly detailed. If it sounds dull or not depends on both distance from orchestra and general hall acoustics, as well as the particular seat.

If in a chamber music performance you sit close by, the sound can be outrageously detailed. Few systems can get close to this level of detail.

 

[stehno]

Sometimes it seems to me that in many cases a more natural sound is less detailed. In fact, when I go to live performances of an orchestra for example, the sound seems to be much duller I guess. Of course, I never stand on the podium so I do not have that experience of how the orchestra sounds from the podium.

Exactly. Well, not that it's neccearily less detailed because it takes tremenous resolution and detail to produce a natural sound or presentation with a good distance between your ears planted well into the audience and the performance occurring up on the soundstage. A resolution where the abudance of ambient info already embedded in a given recording remains audible at the speaker.

But I think what you may be hinting at is a potential paradox. In other words, how could my ears possibly be a good distance away from the performers, yet I can overwhelmingly hear details of things as though they were only feet away? Better yet, how can my ears be planted well into the audience while simultaneously be planted on the soundstage? This paradox makes no sense, yet it seems many equate this paradox to capturing the live performance. Which I suppose really isn't all that surprising.

In fact, I just opened a thread entitled "Forest OR the Trees" about this exact topic a few days ago and surprisingly nobody responded to it. There I equated this seemingly paradox to a traffic light illuminating red and green at the same time. And that this paradox has as much to do with the recording techniques of the record label e.g. number of mic's, close proximity of mic's, etc, as it does with a playback system's ultimate resolution to sufficiently reproduce the performance as a collective whole in a recording hall.

 

[DSkip]

The thing is detail is not determined by that upper midrange hump. It’s throughout the frequency range but we seem to pick up on it better when it calls attention to itself. Once you equate that hump to the final say in detail it is extremely hard to break from it.

 

[morricab]

Sometimes it seems to me that in many cases a more natural sound is less detailed. In fact, when I go to live performances of an orchestra for example, the sound seems to be much duller I guess. Of course, I never stand on the podium so I do not have that experience of how the orchestra sounds from the podium.

Try to get first three rows of an orchestral concert...it won’t sound dull!

 

[the sound of Tao]

Try to get first three rows of an orchestral concert...it won’t sound dull!

Even immediately in the pit minimalist composerJohn Cage’s 4?33? (no play no pay classical music) is absolutely on the dull and dry side... but yes midway through a full blooded Shosta symphony in full flight is hardly a dull moment. Whether close up and detailed or distanced and more merged.

Dull as assessor relates it could be more the specific music or the performance but certainly not inherent in the nature of classical music itself which either can experienced more near field or from up in the balcony and can be very engaging from both perspectives for anyone who relates to classical music.

Certainly the further away you are seated from the band the more removed (maybe even objectified at a stretch for wanting a better way to define the shift in perception) the experience as individual players start to sonically meld and merge. To some degree this loss of detail happens with most music but even more so with unamplified music. There is also the loss of visual immediacy that comes from the distancing and then reading the players physical expressions so there is even less sensory feed in and input into experience.

Things are clearly less dull when the lead singer plunges in and crowd surfs. Less likely an event with your more composed kind of classical conductor so the spirit of the performance plays in here as well.

Setup with the system can mirror this in some ways with a near field approach or a more distant setup with speakers in a larger room so could be gear but also room and arrangement factoring in this. Also amps, preamps and sources definitely have varying staging perspectives.

So immediate and more detailed or distanced and more merged perspectives can both sound natural. It probably seems wrong when part of the signal say the mid bass is one yet the bass or mids are then the other. So coherency is critically in play here as well with regards to the notion of natural versus a more synthetic rendering.

 

[RogerD]

I think on a big high resolution system that captures the emotional nature of the piece, some might not miss live music. Would that be considered Hi Fi? You can certainly get a rush and to me I like the intimacy that a system can produce. Todays high fidelity is not the high fidelity of the 1950's. I have really fond memories of soundtracks at movie theaters in the late 50's and 1960's.

 

[assessor43]

It's hard to describe. I sit 5 rows back with the podium right in front of me in one of the worlds best orchestras concert hall. The orchestra actually is quite a bit higher than where I sit. It is true that many recordings are not true to the (source) reality of how an orchestra playing live actually sounds. As an example some of the earlier RCA Living Stereos do seem to get it pretty close especially the ones of the Chicago Symphony under Fritz Reiner. High frequencies do seem to be overdone on many recordings which makes me wonder more about the sound coming from the source itself having more of an influence on the sound than the system reproducing it. A better system may emphasize the shortcomings of the source recording more so than others making them sound more HiFi?

 

[the sound of Tao]

It's hard to describe. I sit 5 rows back with the podium right in front of me in one of the worlds best orchestras concert hall. The orchestra actually is quite a bit higher than where I sit. It is true that many recordings are not true to the (source) reality of how an orchestra playing live actually sounds. As an example some of the earlier RCA Living Stereos do seem to get it pretty close especially the ones of the Chicago Symphony under Fritz Reiner. High frequencies do seem to be overdone on many recordings which makes me wonder more about the sound coming from the source itself having more of an influence on the sound than the system reproducing it. A better system may emphasize the shortcomings of the source recording more so than others making them sound more HiFi?

Perhaps here again miking and mixing is likely fundamental in this so having a benchmark of recording is important. But the Decca, RCA, Harmonia Mundi, Deutsche Grammaphon, ECM, BIS etc house sounds of engineering are all so very different... even at different periods of their history.

But also I find listening to the kinds of gear reflective of the type originally used in the recording’s monitoring process can help quite a bit here and may then very well influence/shape the era of recordings that you tend to listen to as well.

Horns and SET and early vintage recordings as an average seem generally a far better marriage and yet also this combo can be just as good/even more right to my ear also with good, transparent contemporary recordings... but if there is too much processing of the performance, multi-tracked or just that the miking is too complex this then becomes immediately less synergistic.

Also generally the horns and SET give (to me) an easier fidelity to the musical performance and so generally less hifi (hifi here as a descriptor in terms of the highlighting of the limitations of electro mechanical process and so sounding more obviously processed or synthetic and then generally less like natural musical instrument sounds and of less of a sense of them playing together in a correlated physical space, scale and time).

The modernist engineers (1900 to 1960’s approx) also generally practiced the less is more approach, the post modernist (1970s onwards through to contemporary) mixing may likely be more governed by a producer or even performer rather than engineer and has clearly been a time of practicing more and more the more is more mantra when it comes to manipulating the recorded signal.

I’d suggest more recent dynamic cone and box monitor style speaker systems (especially highlighted when powered by SS) approach an easier ‘apparent’ linearity in terms of more sonic parameters like frequency extension.

Contemporary dynamic speakers with more complex crossovers seem to be more at home/or a better marriage with more contemporary recordings than they are at vintage recordings.

Which kind of gets to the issue of some types of systems just being good at revealing problems rather than at being good at showcasing strengths or in revealing the underlying treasure.

 

[Folsom]

The modernist engineers (1900 to 1960’s approx) also generally practiced the less is more approach, the post modernist (1970s onwards through to contemporary) mixing may likely be more governed by a producer or even performer rather than engineer and has clearly been a time of practicing more and more the more is more mantra when it comes to manipulating the recorded signal.

I'm sorry but that 's 100% nonsense. Engineers aren't applicable to societal movements, with audio.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Folsom, Aren’t engineers part of society... aren’t they part of culture? Don’t they respond to the way the world is? Not sure how you’ve arrived at the nonsense thing other than it being just another opinion. Different culture, different time.

 

[Folsom]

No no and no.

You don’t know enough engineers. Where to begin... Engineers are almost exclusively interested in highest objective performance. Why do you think there’s so much very bad sounding low distortion amps from 70’s? Lack of selling gear forced them to figure out how to make low distortion sound good or go back to tube, or lose job.

SET designers where never trying to make lower performance but charming amps, they were working with what was available. Any post modernist notion of stereo gear starts with choosing subjective qualities. But there is no modernist equivalents because earlier designers were not trying to make moral points, there wasn’t enough information/differentiations to even make choices, to define anything. Audio went post-moderinst to modernist. They went from asking if gear needs objectionist strengths to strong philosophy of what kind of gear they want, and stick to it. Although notable is the phase after post-modernism follows modernism in audio. Time line is screwy. It’s based on purchase pattern, not engineering.

But engineers still like to design objective, but not all jobs ask for that in audio. In other fields it’s pretty exclusively objective. I’ll try to stop here...

 

[stehno]

It's hard to describe. I sit 5 rows back with the podium right in front of me in one of the worlds best orchestras concert hall. The orchestra actually is quite a bit higher than where I sit. It is true that many recordings are not true to the (source) reality of how an orchestra playing live actually sounds. As an example some of the earlier RCA Living Stereos do seem to get it pretty close especially the ones of the Chicago Symphony under Fritz Reiner. High frequencies do seem to be overdone on many recordings which makes me wonder more about the sound coming from the source itself having more of an influence on the sound than the system reproducing it. A better system may emphasize the shortcomings of the source recording more so than others making them sound more HiFi?

Good points.

We're talking listening perspectives here. If you're in row 5 and I'm in row 20 you should hear a bit more of the individual instruments, a bit more detail, a bit more of the soundstage's ambient info, and a bit less concert hall ambient info than I. Me sitting 15 rows behind you I should hear a bit less individual instruments, a bit less of the soundstage's ambient info, a bit less individual detail, and a bit more of the concert halls interaction with the music or a bit more holistic sound,. And the couple sitting 20 rows behind me even more so.

Common sense would seem to dictate it's a ratio thing involving distance and venue. But it just doesn't jive to hear all of the detail as if one is at the conductor's podium while simultaneously hear all of the concert hall's ambient info as if they are seated in row 40.

The ratio being:

A lot of this and a little of that. (nearfield)
or
A little of this and a little of that. (mid-field)
or
A little of this and a lot of that. (far-field)
but never
A lot of this and a lot of that. (funky-field)

But it seems some prominant record labels thrive on this funky-field and it seems the more one lacks the ability to discern / interpret what they hear, they find this version quite impressive and quite musical and ultimately quite "realistic". Even though in reality no such perspective exists, execpt in people's heads.

As for your last commet about sounding hi-fi, I always attribute a hi-fi sound as distortions crippling a playback system so that nothing really sounds musical regardless of the music, engineering quality, record labels, recording techniques, etc. A hi-fi sound to me is rather lifeless, dull, almost 2-dimensional, flat, lacking dynamics, and potentially inducing ear fatigue if one ever dared playback at near live performance volume levels.

BTW, here's a little gem I discovered about a month ago from an old Telarc Sampler Redbook CD that I recorded using my iPhone. I suspect this listening perspective puts me near the tail end of the mid-field or perhaps the beginning of the far-field where the music has ample opportunity to interact with some of the concert hall's boundaries prior to reaching my ears. I never thought Telarc was an outstanding record label but they do have some gems every now and again and they are supposedly noted for using only 2 or sometimes 3 recording mics.

 

[the sound of Tao]

No no and no.

You don’t know enough engineers. Where to begin... Engineers are almost exclusively interested in highest objective performance. Why do you think there’s so much very bad sounding low distortion amps from 70’s? Lack of selling gear forced them to figure out how to make low distortion sound good or go back to tube, or lose job.

SET designers where never trying to make lower performance but charming amps, they were working with what was available. Any post modernist notion of stereo gear starts with choosing subjective qualities. But there is no modernist equivalents because earlier designers were not trying to make moral points, there wasn’t enough information/differentiations to even make choices, to define anything. Audio went post-moderinst to modernist. They went from asking if gear needs objectionist strengths to strong philosophy of what kind of gear they want, and stick to it. Although notable is the phase after post-modernism follows modernism in audio. Time line is screwy. It’s based on purchase pattern, not engineering.

But engineers still like to design objective, but not all jobs ask for that in audio. In other fields it’s pretty exclusively objective. I’ll try to stop here...

Folsom when I started work my first job was in film and television production. I worked for twenty years with many audio and lighting engineers and cinematographers, and some of them were from the old school... some from the early days (yes, guys who had started out in industry between the wars) when audio engineers in the recording field were very much involved in the new sciences and there was a fabulous guild like quality to the industry of audio and film.

Certainly producers became more and more involved in creative decisions later in the decades that followed. Creative calls over-riding technical decisions in recording was very much more a part of the stuff-the-rules spirit of the later 60’s and even more so in the 70’s and on. I do feel there was more the spirit of pure transcription in the early audio and visual recording. More interpretive and layered and at times down right trippy approaches to capturing music and vision developed later.

The spirit of the modernists was truth in specification, be it materials in building, revealing purity in structure, celebrating technology and the machine and about the new order of the modern technological world so it was absolutely completely in the realm of the artists and the architects and the engineers. Contextual truth in recording was easily more evident in early audio and film... for good or bad exploring boundaries with the rules was much more prevalent with the post modern gens (think Woodstock and mushrooms, the Beatles and the yellow submarine, Phil Spectres wall of sound... wow the lost treasure that could have been contained in genuine high fidelity recordings of performances by Donny Hathaway, sigh)... aiming for the highest ideals of true fidelity in transcription could have been a marvellous legacy to our ongoing record of music.

 

[NorthStar]

In Audio: the engineering society ... http://www.aes.org/

In Video: https://theasc.com/

Is Hi-Fi a certification? It never says in front of audio components and mechanical loudspeakers.

 

[RogerD]

Bottom line is it all comes back to the playback system and the level of fidelity that the recording is played back at. Someone mentioned London phase 4 recordings as HiFi, I agree and I enjoy them immensely. Capitol Records recordings made in the late 1950’s and early 60’s sound just as vivid, but mic’d differently,RCA too and many others.

 

[Folsom]

Sorry Tao, all I'm reading from you is today's perspective being put on the past (which obviously can never be). It doesn't compute.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Sorry Tao, all I'm reading from you is today's perspective being put on the past (which obviously can never be). It doesn't compute.

Sorry that you think computation has anything at all to do with what I have said... it’s all about understanding generational perspectives and also observations on the experience of a life lived.

If you haven’t lived something you might just have to accept that you might not actually fully grasp it. I don’t know how many audio engineers that you have actually worked with, or people that you have been mentored by who have lived through the modernist age or even you have spent much time with.

You can’t understand a past perspective by viewing it just within the framework of today’s perspective. You have to move outside this narrow band of understanding. You are not even trying to get the cultural value of the past. So how can you know it?

 

[Folsom]