Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

[mppix]

That was the only point, where you insisted on changing it into "but Ella recorded in 2021 would be better than Ella recorded in 1962", which I think everyone already agreed with, and, as far as I can tell, has never contradicted.

Actually
... only in theory yes.

In practice, the lable would put the record theough the compression chamber so that it sounds good in an airport played in mp3.
Or she would play jazz bars and never sell such vulgar numbers of albums.

It is an objective fact that musicians struggle to produce quality music becaus of market presures. She'd be subject to that.

 

[MattHooper]

Went to a local record op up shop ad saw some amazing things :females and youngsters. in abundance!

Two of the ladies were soaring their opinions of Sinatra albums. Good crowd.

The shop guy would play pressings for people even used a Superhphon Reveletion III preamp, a very chromey Dynaco 70 amp, a Grace cartridge and a vintage Technics table: keep in mind, he did not claim it was the highest fidelity, or that it could compete with some Atmos system, it was just kinda hanging around with other people and chatting about records.

I got some new records, socialzed, went to lunch with a couple guys from our local audio club. We don't do that so much at the downloading or streaming pop ups: come to think of it, there aren't any!

LP facilitates that sort of thin, the tangible part is another point people have mentioned.

(I am making no claims about how any of that stuff measures, and it is of obviously inferior fidelity - no need for the high fidelity police to condemn all the poor deaf people at the pop up.)

One guy is a George Harrison completest and he was showing us an album that George played on using using a pseudonym.

So, the renaissance, as people have mentioned, has a tactile/social aspect, as well.

Plus, I got a mint copy of St. Germain's album '2000.'

I have 6 record stores in my walkable neighbourhood, and tons more in the city. The clientele are usually quite mixed, more young (teens to under 40s) than old.
My youngest son, 21, is not a record collector but some of the city's record stores are among his favourite places. Loves the vibe, the pop culture merch, being among
other "cool" people and all that.

I have a surprising number of friends, old and new, who have become record enthusists, often telling me of their newest finds or acquisitions. It's fun.

 

[goat76]

Actually
... only in theory yes.

In practice, the lable would put the record theough the compression chamber so that it sounds good in an airport played in mp3.
Or she would play jazz bars and never sell such vulgar numbers of albums.

It is an objective fact that musicians struggle to produce quality music becaus of market presures. She'd be subject to that.

We can only speculate if she would have gone for fame or not if she was an artist of this time and age.

I think Ella as an artist even in 2023 would still be a jazz singer and follow the recording trends for the jazz genre, which is still in most cases, recordings trying to catch the sound of "a band in a room" with minimal compression and limitation. Do you really think she would have gone for Adele's type of music, aiming for the top charts and trying to sound louder than everyone else?


I must say I’m not completely sure why the discussion has shifted towards modern audio production trends vs. how things where done in the past. How things are done in today's audio production will in most cases affect the vinyl release the same way as the same brick-wall limited master is often used for all the releases.

 

[Newman]

Very much possible. Down/upsampling is not an exact science and the HF sensitivity of a listener matters a lot.
Perhaps more objective, did you analyze the fft of the residual?

Perhaps you are falling into the “anything measurable is potentially audible” fallacy?

A lot of work has been done on audibility thresholds. If claims of inaudibility are consistent with those thresholds, they should be respected. Any argument against them should be supported with experimental data, by the person making the argument.

cheers

 

[Newman]

I really don't see it that way.
As everyone here knows and I think would admit the High End media is awash with claims of vinyl still being the "audiophiles choice" and the gear to use for SOTA sound in 2023. It's as much BS as all the claims for cables, grounding boxes, USB widgets, and all the rest. Its all been driven by the High End boys club where the media advertising money and their income ultimately determines what anything sounds like.
Someones got to call a spade a spade, ASR is not the place to be further supporting that line of crap.

Fully agree.

And that’s why the Vinyl Defensive on ASR have to let go of their notion that They Are Being Attacked, and also that They Should Be Left Alone To Quietly Enjoy Their Hobby Their Way Including Endless Posts About How Fabulous Vinyl Sounds.

The truth is the opposite: it is the vinyl critics who should be left alone to restate the sonic facts about vinyl as often as necessary, without having to deal with an ocean of emotional pushback along the lines of, Nothing You Can Say Will Change My Mind About Vinyl, along with, I suspect, reporting vinyl critics every time they get a bit frustrated with all the subjective bias masquerading as sonic truth.

@Galliardist, some audio mathematics:-

Nothing You Can Say Will Change My Mind About Vinyl = trench warfare

Restating the sonic facts about vinyl as often as necessary ≠ trench warfare

cheers

 

[Anton D]

Fully agree.

And that’s why the Vinyl Defensive on ASR have to let go of their notion that They Are Being Attacked, and also that They Should Be Left Alone To Quietly Enjoy Their Hobby Their Way Including Endless Posts About How Fabulous Vinyl Sounds.

The truth is the opposite: it is the vinyl critics who should be left alone to restate the sonic facts about vinyl as often as necessary, without having to deal with an ocean of emotional pushback along the lines of, Nothing You Can Say Will Change My Mind About Vinyl, along with, I suspect, reporting vinyl critics every time they get a bit frustrated with all the subjective bias masquerading as sonic truth.

@Galliardist, some audio mathematics:-

Nothing You Can Say Will Change My Mind About Vinyl = trench warfare

Restating the sonic facts about vinyl as often as necessary ≠ trench warfare

cheers

Hello, Newman.

Atmos ain't it, either, my good friend. Nor is that deplorable bastard child we call "home theater." Mathematics will also show you the terrible things those giant screen things do to the sound of a room: now, there is a worthy perseveration for you to undertake! Look how many o our fellow silly sound lovers have fallen for that canard. It is a sonic bummer, but why call anything 'trench warfare.?'

There are different people enjoying the hobby in different ways.

Please drop the "trench warfare" stuff, it's unbecoming. This is people enjoying an utterly unnecessary leisure pursuit. Maybe go start trench warfare about which wine measures best?

Such a lovely ethos: "Nothing You Can Say Will Change My Mind About Vinyl = trench warfare."

"Trench warfare," an insult to people who have faced actual adversity.

I wish you good listening, not 'trench warfare,' friend and fellow audiophile.

 

[Newman]

Hi Joe, welcome to ASR!

I’m not sure where you are at in your journey into this hobby, nor your journey into learning what science has to say about sound reproduction...although your post below contains a few hints in relation to the latter journey. So, I have a few comments based on what I can gather from your post:-

I want my system to faithfully reproduce what I hear live.

For complex reasons this is completely impossible as long as you are sitting in your home and there are no live performers in there with you, but instead, some recording is being played. So, may I ask, what do you want that you can have?

There is something lost during a recording.

Of course. But in addition to that, something psycho-perceptual is added by being in a venue with musicians, which is unrelated to the sound waves that reach your ears.

The goal of my system is to try and add back that something that was lost, not flawlessly reproduce a recording that is by nature ”lossy” from the start.

Let’s say the recording and playback was so perfected that we could deliver to your ears, in your home, the exact sound waves that were arriving at your ears if you were attending the live performance at the venue. You will still insist that something was lost, because the thing that your mind has added when attending live, is not there anymore. You are describing that as something lost, but it is actually something not added. And it is not a tiny added thing, it is huge.

In real life, of course, playback isn’t perfect, so, like you say, something is missing from the sound waves, and that is the second contributor to a sense of something being lost from the live experience. But, since repeated demonstrations show how easily we are fooled into thinking a singer in front of us is singing when in fact he/she is miming and an audio system is playing, we don’t want to overstate the role of playback imperfection in this sense of something being lost.

There is another factor at play here, that impacts one’s choice of goal in this hobby. Because the best audio/studio engineers understand the psycho-perceptual science and its effect on the listener at home, they realise they have to create a sonic experience for the home listener, since the stuff that the mind adds only when attending a live audience will never be added when listening to a recording at home. This sonic creation of theirs is an artistic creation, using sensitivity and emotion, so we have musical art interwoven with sonic art to create a total art experience. The goal of wanting that at home (wanting what they heard in the studio with their final studio master) is both sensible and achievable. [edit: I expanded a bit on this point a few months ago, link]

One goal is impossible, futile, and leads one down a path littered with snake oil, fraud, and misunderstandings about what is really in the sound waves and what is not. And the other goal is sensible and achievable. Your choice, of course.

Vinyl seems to do some of that when the pressing is top notch and the setup is top notch, however also has some inherent drawbacks.

Vinyl isn’t doing that by sonic means: if you say it is doing that for you, it is by non-sonic means. In other words, your contextual awareness is creating sonic impressions that are not drawn from the sound waves, but from your cognitive biases about vinyl vs other, and your mind assigns the source of that perception to the sound waves, and hides from you the fact that it has made up the perception.

You see, audio science isn’t just about taking measurements: it is also, dare I say mainly, about increasing our understanding of such mechanisms as I am describing above.

If you are in the camp of having the same goal, building a system is a bit more of an artistic than a technical exercise.

Let’s be clear: the goal you are stating is actually impossible with sound waves. If you think it is happening for you (even partially) with particular gear, it isn’t in the sound waves but in your cognitive biases. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that approach to building your system, but there is something wrong with thinking it was in the gear and its sound waves. It simply isn’t. And calling it artistic vs technical is completely wrong.

Measurement folks don’t like opinion based assessments and more artistic folks don’t get judging base on measurements.

I strongly disagree with your labels and with your description of the characteristics that go with your labels. Science is simply about investigating nature, and learning truths about nature. People dedicated to science or engineering are very, very often also highly drawn to art, including music. There is no divide here.

The only divide here is when people state things as true that are not, and when that is pointed out to them, they refuse to learn.

No right or wrong. What’s important is not criticizing the other camp.

If one, ahem, ‘camp’ is wrongly insisting things are present in the sound waves, then wrong is wrong, and pointing that out is not a criticism of a person. You are attempting to create divisions that need not exist.

The only reason for these divisions to continue to exist, is if truth is of no interest to some people. In which case, why be on this particular website?

cheers

 

[Anton D]

I want my system to faithfully reproduce what I hear live. There is something lost during a recording. The goal of my system is to try and add back that something that was lost, not flawlessly reproduce a recording that is by nature ”lossy” from the start. Vinyl seems to do some of that when the pressing is top notch and the setup is top notch, however also has some inherent drawbacks.

If you are in the camp of having the same goal, building a system is a bit more of an artistic than a technical exercise. Measurement folks don’t like opinion based assessments and more artistic folks don’t get judging base on measurements.

No right or wrong. What’s important is not criticizing the other camp.

Welcome, don’t let the bullies get you down.

‘Trench warfare’ is for people trying to kill each other. Have fun, tell people what you enjoy without fear of reprisals.

 

[tmtomh]

Very much possible. Down/upsampling is not an exact science and the HF sensitivity of a listener matters a lot.
Perhaps more objective, did you analyze the fft of the residual?

In this case I'd say it's more than possible. It's simply the case, as long as the resampling software/algorithm is properly implemented.

I used to believe that non-integer sample-rate conversion could not and did not produce a 100% audibly identical result in the audible range, because when I lined up 44.1kHz and 96kHz versions as best as I possibly could in Audacity and ran a null test, the difference mix was clearly audible, albeit at low level.

But when I posted about this here in the forums, @danadam explained to me that you can't do the comparison that way, and instead have to do it the way @board describes: downsample the 96k to 441.k and then re-upsample it to 96k, as that's the only way one can line up the timing of the two different versions to do a null test.

So I did that and was flabbergasted to get the result board describes - total silence. There is indeed a difference between the two versions - but it's all in the ultrasonic region above the 22.05kHz Nyquist limit of the 44.1kHz sample rate. It's that ultrasonic content in the difference file that makes the VU meters move.

 

[JoeHTGuy]

Hi Joe, welcome to ASR!

I’m not sure where you are at in your journey into this hobby, nor your journey into learning what science has to say about sound reproduction...although your post below contains a few hints in relation to the latter journey. So, I have a few comments based on what I can gather from your post:-

For complex reasons this is completely impossible as long as you are sitting in your home and there are no live performers in there with you, but instead, some recording is being played. So, may I ask, what do you want that you can have?

Of course. But in addition to that, something psycho-perceptual is added by being in a venue with musicians, which is unrelated to the sound waves that reach your ears.

Let’s say the recording and playback was so perfected that we could deliver to your ears, in your home, the exact sound waves that were arriving at your ears if you were attending the live performance at the venue. You will still insist that something was lost, because the thing that your mind has added when attending live, is not there anymore. You are describing that as something lost, but it is actually something not added. And it is not a tiny added thing, it is huge.

In real life, of course, playback isn’t perfect, so, like you say, something is missing from the sound waves, and that is the second contributor to a sense of something being lost from the live experience. But, since repeated demonstrations show how easily we are fooled into thinking a singer in front of us is singing when in fact he/she is miming and an audio system is playing, we don’t want to overstate the role of playback imperfection in this sense of something being lost.

There is another factor at play here, that impacts one’s choice of goal in this hobby. Because the best audio/studio engineers understand the psycho-perceptual science and its effect on the listener at home, they realise they have to create a sonic experience for the home listener, since the stuff that the mind adds only when attending a live audience will never be added when listening to a recording at home. This sonic creation of theirs is an artistic creation, using sensitivity and emotion, so we have musical art interwoven with sonic art to create a total art experience. The goal of wanting that at home (wanting what they heard in the studio with their final studio master) is both sensible and achievable.

One goal is impossible, futile, and leads one down a path littered with snake oil, fraud, and misunderstandings about what is really in the sound waves and what is not. And the other goal is sensible and achievable. Your choice, of course.

Vinyl isn’t doing that by sonic means: if you say it is doing that for you, it is by non-sonic means. In other words, your contextual awareness is creating sonic impressions that are not drawn from the sound waves, but from your cognitive biases about vinyl vs other, and your mind assigns the source of that perception to the sound waves, and hides from you the fact that it has made up the perception.

You see, audio science isn’t just about taking measurements: it is also, dare I say mainly, about increasing our understanding of such mechanisms as I am describing above.

Let’s be clear: the goal you are stating is actually impossible with sound waves. If you think it is happening for you (even partially) with particular gear, it isn’t in the sound waves but in your cognitive biases. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that approach to building your system, but there is something wrong with thinking it was in the gear and its sound waves. It simply isn’t. And calling it artistic vs technical is completely wrong.

I strongly disagree with your labels and with your description of the characteristics that go with your labels. Science is simply about investigating nature, and learning truths about nature. People dedicated to science or engineering are very, very often also highly drawn to art, including music. There is no divide here.

The only divide here is when people state things as true that are not, and when that is pointed out to them, they refuse to learn.

If one, ahem, ‘camp’ is wrongly insisting things are present in the sound waves, then wrong is wrong, and pointing that out is not a criticism of a person. You are attempting to create divisions that need not exist.

The only reason for these divisions to continue to exist, is if truth is of no interest to some people. In which case, why be on this particular website?

cheers

 

[Newman]

Hello, Newman.

Atmos ain't it, either, my good friend. Nor is that deplorable bastard child we call "home theater." Mathematics will also show you the terrible things those giant screen things do to the sound of a room: now, there is a worthy perseveration for you to undertake! Look how many o our fellow silly sound lovers have fallen for that canard. It is a sonic bummer,

Dolby Atmos arrived in 2015 and is directed at cinematic and home theatre.

Dolby Atmos Music arrived in 2019, and is about music. Not about home theatre, or giant screens. Look it up. Thus, your comments above are misdirection, and hopefully you now know that.

As for "the terrible things those giant screens do to the sound of a room", there has been a lot of science and engineering put into that issue, and I haven't come across anything that supports your assumption. Those words, along with "that deplorable bastard child we call home theatre", reek of bias and exaggeration, and actually sound like someone entrenched in a position and engaging in battle. Which is so ironic, considering what you wrote below.

but why call anything 'trench warfare.?'

That wasn't me, that was Galliardist. Please read with comprehension.

There are different people enjoying the hobby in different ways.
Please drop the "trench warfare" stuff, it's unbecoming. This is people enjoying an utterly unnecessary leisure pursuit. Maybe go start trench warfare about which wine measures best?
Such a lovely ethos: "Nothing You Can Say Will Change My Mind About Vinyl = trench warfare."
"Trench warfare," an insult to people who have faced actual adversity.
I wish you good listening, not 'trench warfare,' friend and fellow audiophile.

That wasn't me. Please read with comprehension.

My 'ethos' is clearly stated 4 posts up #5228, that all this divisiveness is unnecessary. You should be giving me likes, not the above nonsense.

And, if you wish me good listening and I'm your friend, why has one of your recent posts making accusations at me been deleted by the mods? #curious

There is little about your posts on this forum that I am finding anything more than unbecoming, including your latest insinuation that a recent post of mine is bullying. You are treading a very fine line, trying to find out just what you can get away with by way of name-calling and stated/implied accusations without getting banned, and IMHO that's not how it goes here ... words that I hope ring a bell for you.

 

[JoeHTGuy]

I use REW all the time to measure the curve of my subwoofer and mains. I know the exact curve I prefer… it’s incredibly predictable. There is all kinds of debate that a flat curve is the correct curve, yet many prefer something more heavy in the lower end. People really into it create a “house curve”. The point is that a measurement can accurately state what is, but not right or wrong when preferences are in play.

 

[antcollinet]

In real life, of course, playback isn’t perfect,

Do you mean recording, rather than playback? Because of course, with digital, playback can be pretty damn close to perfect.

 

[antcollinet]

I am speaking hear as a regular listener to vinyl (though probably only about 10% of my listening)

I want my system to faithfully reproduce what I hear live.

Not possible - either with digital or vinyl, because as you say:

There is something lost during a recording

The goal of my system is to try and add back that something that was lost, not flawlessly reproduce a recording that is by nature ”lossy” from the start. Vinyl seems to do some of that when the pressing is top notch and the setup is top notch,

Also not possible. Yes vinyl adds something to the recording. It adds noise (in spades) and distortion (Less audible to me at least, but distortion none the less). To expect those two added things - which have no relation to the sound in the auditorium/studio - to somehow reverse the losses in the recording process is (frankly stated) magical thinking. The noise and distortion added by the vinyl processes between master recording and speakers are simply more losses. They cannot add something back that was lost between the performance and the master.

I think @Newman above has already pointed out the most likely reason you might perceive this as closer to the live sound is a result of congitive biases, and I concur. This is not a criticism of you: Everyone is subject to hearing the effects of cognitive bias and it is not possible to avoid it. It is simply a part of being human - it is how humans are built. What we perceive as sound even when the sound reaching our ears is unchanged, is impacted by how we feel, what we know, what we believe and what we see (etc etc) - and all those variables being tweaked by what we have experienced from the day we were born. The sound we perceive is literally altered by the subconscious processes in our brain before reaching our conscious brain.


What you *can* do (if you wish) to try and create a more "like what I heard" feeling is use digital filters to recreate some of the auditorium sound characteristics.

For example, I went to see a performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons in Chester Cathedral. The acoustics of that building are amazing, with a reverb decay lasting seconds. The effect (combined with that particular music, and the emotions of that live event) was spine tingling.

Listening to the recording later was flat by comparison. I can add back some of the cathedral ambiance by using a reverb plugin and turning "everything up higher than everything else" and get pretty close to what I rember hearing. What I can't replace of course are the emotions of the evening.

 

[MattHooper]

Vinyl isn’t doing that by sonic means: if you say it is doing that for you, it is by non-sonic means. In other words, your contextual awareness is creating sonic impressions that are not drawn from the sound waves, but from your cognitive biases about vinyl vs other, and your mind assigns the source of that perception to the sound waves, and hides from you the fact that it has made up the perception.

You see, audio science isn’t just about taking measurements: it is also, dare I say mainly, about increasing our understanding of such mechanisms as I am describing above.

Newman,

If you are really that concerned with the proper scientific mindset you need to adopt suitable epistemic humility and stop overstating your case. When sighted listening occurs your default claim is “you are not evaluating the sound waves” and you simply assume sighted reports are bias effects as you have yet again here.

When it comes to differences that are audible you can say “without blind testing you don’t know for sure if your perception is correct or if it’s a sighted bias effect.”

What you can’t do is leap to your conclusions it is the bias effect vs a real perceived difference.

Vinyl tends to sound different from the digital counterparts, to a greater or lesser degree.
That opens the door for preferences and perceptual consequences for various listeners. As I’ve said I often find vinyl to have sonic characteristics that strike me as sounding more solid, more texture, etc which to me (sometimes) adds slightly more believability.

Joe may be perceived similar things in how vinyl affects his perception.

As much as you enjoy bursting subjective bubbles, if you were being properly, scientifically cautious you’d keep your claims to simply stating that it COULD be a bias effect, instead of writing as if you simply know it is one.

(And the one blind vinyl/digital study that has been cited before can not justify that you know any individual does not perceive vinyl in his particular set up to sound more believable in certain aspects).

 

[goat76]

What you *can* do (if you wish) to try and create a more "like what I heard" feeling is use digital filters to recreate some of the auditorium sound characteristics.

For example, I went to see a performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons in Chester Cathedral. The acoustics of that building are amazing, with a reverb decay lasting seconds. The effect (combined with that particular music, and the emotions of that live event) was spine tingling.

Listening to the recording later was flat by comparison. I can add back some of the cathedral ambiance by using a reverb plugin and turning "everything up higher than everything else" and get pretty close to what I rember hearing. What I can't replace of course are the emotions of the evening.

A side note to that: I like watching live performances of my favorite bands on YT and I often find them to sound pretty good for what they truly are (simple recordings made with a mobile phone in the middle of the crowd), but when shutting my eyes just listening it's clear to me that the sound is pretty bad.

It's fantastic how the visual cues I get from watching the musicians perform will trick my mind into believing the sound quality is way better than what it really is. Many times it's probably the same when attending a live performance in person, the visual cues of seeing, for example, the bass player plucking his strings can (thanks to the cocktail effect) "carve out" his playing in a way that you hear that particular instrument way better, even if the detail of that bass guitar is almost completely drowned out by all the other instruments.

Many times in audio productions, the separation between different instruments is exaggerated way beyond how they would sound in a live setting, but that is often a necessity because of the lack of visual cues just listening to the sound of the music.

 

[danadam]

Perhaps more objective, did you analyze the fft of the residual?

But when I posted about this here in the forums, @danadam explained to me that you can't do the comparison that way, and instead have to do it the way @board describes: downsample the 96k to 441.k and then re-upsample it to 96k, as that's the only way one can line up the timing of the two different versions to do a null test.

It's here, with spectrograms:

MQA: A Review of controversies, concerns, and cautions

It was actually true at the beginning despite being (successfully) attacked by wealthy companies who had inferior products to shift and no technology to make CD players. You guys are funny... Enjoy your CDs!! :-)

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Newman]

…What you *can* do (if you wish) to try and create a more "like what I heard" feeling is use digital filters to recreate some of the auditorium sound characteristics.
For example, I went to see a performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons in Chester Cathedral. The acoustics of that building are amazing, with a reverb decay lasting seconds. The effect (combined with that particular music, and the emotions of that live event) was spine tingling.
Listening to the recording later was flat by comparison. I can add back some of the cathedral ambiance by using a reverb plugin and turning "everything up higher than everything else" and get pretty close to what I rember hearing. What I can't replace of course are the emotions of the evening.

I don’t know about other brands, and I don’t know if they still do it, but Yamaha once went to numerous classical venues and numerous live/club venues with varied sonic characters, measured the sound fields of the venues, and developed sound field programs that they embedded into their AVRs of the time, with names like Hall in Munich, and Village Vanguard. The sound field characteristics that they were implementing included size of the sound field space, vertical/horizontal balance of sound field emphasis on walls vs ceiling, and whether the sound field atmosphere has a decay that is straightforward or more complex. For each sound field program they would apply maps that varied in initial delay, timing and spread of further reflections and their decay rates, reverberation times, and different maps to front vs side vs rear speakers.

In other words, a genuine and sophisticated attempt to do something serious for the listener.

Unfortunately, few audio hobbyists understood them properly and most assumed them to be another one of those “Rock EQ/Jazz EQ/etc” simple equaliser presets, and on that basis, dismissed them as a joke. And of course, if one is indoctrinated by audiophile forums that view anything HT related as the work of a “deplorable bastard child”, then one won’t give them a second glance. Good to see that you are not like that.

cheers

 

[Galliardist]

Welcome, don’t let the bullies get you down.

‘Trench warfare’ is for people trying to kill each other. Have fun, tell people what you enjoy without fear of reprisals.

I'm surprised at the turn this took. I made a comment that used "trench warfare" as a metaphor, but it was a response to a post I took to be about general society in different times, and about very strong behaviour I see in general society these days.

Strong as the disputes can be here sometimes, it was not remotely meant to be about ASR.

That several of you wanted to own that phrase here, to misuse it, misattribute it, weaponise it: not good.

Best I take a few days out, I guess. In the meantime, please will you all just avoid taking this particular strain of nastiness any further.

 

[antcollinet]

I don’t know about other brands, and I don’t know if they still do it, but Yamaha once went to numerous classical venues and numerous live/club venues with varied sonic characters, measured the sound fields of the venues, and developed sound field programs that they embedded into their AVRs of the time, with names like Hall in Munich, and Village Vanguard. The sound field characteristics that they were implementing included size of the sound field space, vertical/horizontal balance of sound field emphasis on walls vs ceiling, and whether the sound field atmosphere has a decay that is straightforward or more complex. For each sound field program they would apply maps that varied in initial delay, timing and spread of further reflections and their decay rates, reverberation times, and different maps to front vs side vs rear speakers.

In other words, a genuine and sophisticated attempt to do something serious for the listener.

Unfortunately, few audio hobbyists understood them properly and most assumed them to be another one of those “Rock EQ/Jazz EQ/etc” simple equaliser presets, and on that basis, dismissed them as a joke. And of course, if one is indoctrinated by audiophile forums that view anything HT related as the work of a “deplorable bastard child”, then one won’t give them a second glance. Good to see that you are not like that.

cheers

It is also possible to download impulse response recordings from some concert halls, cathedrals etc. If these are imported into a convolution reverb plugin, and applied to the music it's possible to get a sound that approximates to that recording played in that venue.