Avantone CLA-10 (Yamaha NS-10M Clone) Review

[Zensō]

Ok, I’m a little confused about this discussion. Can someone explain to me why a great sounding mix made on good speakers (good in ASR terms) needs to be checked and/or optimized to sound good on ****** speakers? Shouldn’t something optimized to sound it’s best on good speakers, sound fine on everything else?
If not, doesn’t that mean we have to end up with a compromised product?
Admitted “mixing ignoramus” here, so go easy on me.

One example would be boosting the harmonics on the kick drum so that it can still be heard on phone speakers and other devices with severe bass roll off. Mixing entails a whole host of compromises like this.

 

[amirm]

I’m not sure what the benefit of creating a specific phone mix that only included 300Hz-8kHz is?

Wouldn’t that be a disincentive for phone manufacturers to improve how low and high their phones went?

That is why I said there will be multiple profiles. Such profiles will encourage the industry to stretch and provide maximum compliance. Also, things like loudness, distortion, etc. will still be left for companies to innovate on.

 

[amirm]

Ok, I’m a little confused about this discussion. Can someone explain to me why a great sounding mix made on good speakers (good in ASR terms) needs to be checked and/or optimized to sound good on ****** speakers? Shouldn’t something optimized to sound it’s best on good speakers, sound fine on everything else?

That would be ideal but it is impossible and it is the reason we have issues today. We have to reduce the variations of playback from millions to a handful as far as tonality. Once there, the mix can be checked to be optimal on all. A full-range track can sound very shrill on a device that can't produce bass below 200 Hz. Such a mix can be tuned to have less highs to still sound balanced and as intended by the creators. Such profile would be small amount of metadata instructing the player to apply a standardized target curve.

 

[Ported]

It may have changed but in my day the record companies that influenced master engineers to tailor a mix to sound good on the radio and smaller systems as that's potentially where the music would be mostly consumed. It is possible to produce a mix on big wide systems with slightly overblown midrange that sound fine on big bins .. but hear them in the car or on a small speaker and they sound thiner, honkey and annoying. That's what they were paid to avoid. And then there is a separate master for vinyl that can't be cut with some density of frequencies and any big stereo in the bass.

 

[Zensō]

It may have changed but in my day the record companies that influenced master engineers to tailor a mix to sound good on the radio and smaller systems as that's potentially where the music would be mostly consumed. It is possible to produce a mix on big wide systems with slightly overblown midrange that sound fine on big bins .. but hear them in the car or on a small speaker and they sound thiner, honkey and annoying. That's what they were paid to avoid. And then there is a separate master for vinyl that can't be cut with some density of frequencies and any big stereo in the bass.

I think these types of considerations are still very much a thing.

 

[amirm]

And then there is a separate master for vinyl that can't be cut with some density of frequencies and any big stereo in the bass.

I meant to mention how we have a proxy for this proposal in the form of LP mastering where the profile as you say is forced onto the content. Lots of extra work goes into creating the LP yet nothing is being proposed for creating truly audiophile recordings. Or at the other extreme, a profile for very limited response devices.

BTW, the idea of a profile applied at the player could be extended to be model specific if the producers wanted. To that end, they could choose to create profiles for airpods and such. They would test, optimize for that device and release the small bit of metadata that the player would automatically use once told what device it is playing on.

 

[Mnyb]

One example would be boosting the harmonics on the kick drum so that it can still be heard on phone speakers and other devices with severe bass roll off.

Is not this kind of thing something that would change the kickdrum sound to the worse on capable equipment, in my limited experience a natural kick drum has a good deal of harmonics anyway unless your into the habit off stuff the kickdrum with something ? What’s usually missing from most songs is the impact of the kickdrum it’s always lessened on to many tracks , the body smack of it is gone ?

 

[Zensō]

Is not this kind of thing something that would change the kickdrum sound to the worse on capable equipment, in my limited experience a natural kick drum has a good deal of harmonics anyway unless your into the habit off stuff the kickdrum with something ? What’s usually missing from most songs is the impact of the kickdrum it’s always lessened on to many tracks , the body smack of it is gone ?

Always compromises. I think most successful engineers consider their primary audience and make whatever compromises are necessary to appeal to that group (I’d venture this partially explains the so-called “loudness war”).

The nice thing about being a nobody hobbyist like myself is that I can do whatever the heck I want as long as it sounds good to me, on my system*.

*Just kidding, I do of course pay close attention to translation and the other usual considerations.

 

[dfuller]

Ok, I’m a little confused about this discussion. Can someone explain to me why a great sounding mix made on good speakers (good in ASR terms) needs to be checked and/or optimized to sound good on ****** speakers? Shouldn’t something optimized to sound it’s best on good speakers, sound fine on everything else?
If not, doesn’t that mean we have to end up with a compromised product?
Admitted “mixing ignoramus” here, so go easy on me.

Simple, because most of the people out there listening to your music don't have thousands of dollars - or even more than maybe $200 at most, if you count the ubiquitous Airpods - of listening equipment. They're listening on compromised systems.

You are in your best interest to make sure that no crucial elements are lost on poor speakers. Sure, maybe the bottom "thump" of a kick doesn't translate to a bass challenged system, but it should still have enough impact that losing that LF information won't make it disappear. This might involve accenting the upper presence beater attack with EQ between 1.5-5k, for example.

 

[amirm]

BTW, video is not without its problem. HDR specifically is a mess (high dynamic range) where content is not optimized for any display. For a while there was a concept of having profiles for different model TVs that would allow optimization of dynamic range in the manner I spoke of. Sadly, that did not come to fruition. As a result, HDR optimization of a display is a mess. Interestingly though, the target for production is the highest dynamic range possible which is inverse of consumer audio where content tends to get produced for the masses with lower quality reproduction.

 

[goat76]

Is not this kind of thing something that would change the kickdrum sound to the worse on capable equipment, in my limited experience a natural kick drum has a good deal of harmonics anyway unless your into the habit off stuff the kickdrum with something ? What’s usually missing from most songs is the impact of the kickdrum it’s always lessened on to many tracks , the body smack of it is gone ?

No, the goal for most mixing engineers is already and has always been to make every single sound object be clearly heard in the mix, that's what most audiophiles want but there will always be a problem with frequency masking when 20 to 80 individual tracks are downmixed to a 2-channel mix.

"- Oh, did you hear all those details man, that's freaking insane how good these speakers are!".

I would say that most of us want the recorded music to sound more clear and cleaner than what the music actually sounds for real, maybe because "just listening" lacks the visual focus and the "cocktail effect" that we otherwise get from seeing the musicians performing live. Making everything audible and more balanced in the midrange will make the mix sound clearer on the better speakers systems too.

 

[ZolaIII]

BTW, video is not without its problem. HDR specifically is a mess (high dynamic range) where content is not optimized for any display. For a while there was a concept of having profiles for different model TVs that would allow optimization of dynamic range in the manner I spoke of. Sadly, that did not come to fruition. As a result, HDR optimization of a display is a mess. Interestingly though, the target for production is the highest dynamic range possible which is inverse of consumer audio where content tends to get produced for the masses with lower quality reproduction.

HLG (as part of HDR10+) to actual display capabilities is a solution for not just that but also regarding broadcast (making REC 709 to REC 2020 transform) as HDR broadcast ain't gonna happen especially not the Dolby Vision one (bandwidth and licensing cost). Yes Dolby is better and able to go much higher but let's be realistic displays (best and perspectively one's in development including micro LED's) are far from even getting to 4000 nits peak for 3% of surface.

 

[lowkeyoperations]

That is why I said there will be multiple profiles. Such profiles will encourage the industry to stretch and provide maximum compliance. Also, things like loudness, distortion, etc. will still be left for companies to innovate on.

So a profile for iPhone 14, iPhone 15 etc? Every device gets a unique profile?

One question I have is who is responsible for making all these profiles and ensuring they comply? And where is the money is coming from for all this to happen?

 

[lowkeyoperations]

You establish a standards and then hardware companies build products to comply. THX created such and companies followed. Such a standard would by definition include the technology companies anyway so it is part and parcel of the same thing. But the start has to be content producers, labels, etc. If they don't come, there is no point in creating a standard.

What specific steps would content producers and labels need to take though?

They could start making mixes that are aimed at iPhones but then that increases the cost of mixing if you’re making a few different mixes. But the. production costs will go up.

Is there a market there to recover those costs through consumer payments?

Are people listening to iPhones interested in audio quality so that they will pay for an additional layer of Spotify subscription that is “mastered for iPhone”?

What is the incentive that is going to drive people to get on board? I understand that real Hifi enthusiasts will always try to eek out the last few percent of performance from their systems, but for general listeners, I don’t see them caring much about it.

I think we are a niche in a niche of a niche. We like music, are prepared to spend a considerable amount of time and effort to creat a good sounding playback system and are prepared to keep improving it towards audio nirvana. I don’t see the whole industry restructuring to eek out the last few percent of performance from our audio systems, when 95% of music listeners have very little interest in paying for that.

 

[lowkeyoperations]

I could see the possibility of a headphone manufacturer giving away a hundred pairs of headphones to a select group of mix engineers and then setting up a “Mastered for Sennheiser” website. People who buy the headphones would then be able to hear the mix “exactly as the mix engineer did”. But it would be a big endeavour with loads of licensing problems.

Or possibly Apple with its ecosystem of hardware and music service could have a “Mastered for iPods” section of Apple Music to drive subscriptions away from Spotify. Pay the mix engineers to make a mix specifically using iPods, then add a little logo.

However, I see no reason why Apple would comply with any enforced standard though. I think they would only spend the money if it was a proprietary system that they developed and owned that benefited their subscription service and their ability to sell hardware.

 

[badspeakerdesigner]

The idea of "hearing what the engineer/musician" heard is dumb and short sighted.

 

[Deleted member 21219]

The idea of "hearing what the engineer/musician" heard is dumb and short sighted.

Please explain.

Jim

 

[dfuller]

Please explain.

Jim

Having made a bunch of records, I don't think anybody wants to hear what the engineer hears.

 

[amirm]

So a profile for iPhone 14, iPhone 15 etc? Every device gets a unique profile?

Ideally not. We would have a handful of profiles that are device independent and that would be that. Bonus and optional would be per device profiles that are also offered on top of the baseline. I would imagine a company like Apple would pay producers to create such versions for them.

 

[amirm]

However, I see no reason why Apple would comply with any enforced standard though.

They wouldn't have to. They can continue to play music as they do today. If they don't adopt, third-party players certainly will.