Can You Trust Your Ears? By Tom Nousaine

[March Audio]

That is not an answer to the question I am asking you.



My question does not involve processes on the recording side of the chain. In fact I specifically limited the question to the playback part of the audio chain.



Again, never said it was and again this is not an answer to my question.



Really? Your replay system has no added cross talk? How did you manage to prevent any of the sound coming from the left speaker from entering your right ear and any of the sound from the right speaker from entering your left ear? You must be listening on headphones then. Because I am pretty sure that no loudspeaker system/playback room completely prevents this sort of cross talk. Only headphones do that.

I have no idea what you are asking. You have been told my views on the subject (which appear to be shared by others here and supported by research), yet you repeatedly keep trying to argue points regarding the recording side of the chain. These points are acknowledged, however are not considered relevant to the validity of neutral playback.

No you didnt provide a cogent argument against Tooles research. You keep trying to misconstrue what is said by implying everything is and has to be related to the original performance as would be heard by an individual if they were in that space. How many times do you have to be told that is not the case?

Oh BTW this crosstalk is a complete red herring. Any speaker monitoring will have crosstalk. In a studio or at home. Whats your point? My room has known acoustic properties, I designed it to minimally interfere with the sound. To make it as neutral as possible. This will not sound identical to the studio. We do not know what the studios acoustic or speaker properties. This however has no relevance to the validity of a neutral speaker and system.

 

[March Audio]

No, being on a crusade to point out what everyone in your audience in this thread already knows doesn't bother us. It just diminshes the importance and credibility of what you have to say on this or any other topic.

This

 

[Frank Dernie]

This is getting daft.
My take on the changes in hifi fandom over the 50 years since I bought my first record deck is that it is largely a fashion business.
Products and approaches that are popular vary from time to time and from country to country, pre internet the rated kit in the UK, USA and France differed substantially, depending on the magazines and marketing, ime, rather than any reality.
Things get tribal quite easily.
Since the proliferation of the internet things have got quite/very absurd IMO, with hifi being one of the first victims of the fake news which makes getting wise and accurate information about almost anything impossible these days.
I find this forum to be a complete breath of fresh air, largely full of people who understand what they are writing about talking sense.
It is unlike almost all the other forums which are almost entirely peopled by enthusiasts who wouldn't know fact from the knock on the back of the head with a cloggy hammer.

Hifi is not that complex and deals with well understood technology most of which has been established for decades. I have seen nothing, for example, in the field of record players which were not well known when I started working on them in the 1970s, but there are new and absurdly expensive items appearing still today which don't address these well known issues but are styling excercises which probably work OK in most cases.
I was taught, by my old friend and mentor Keith Duckworth for those of you who know of him, that and engineer was somebody who could make for 5 bob (5 old english shillings) what any fool could make for a quid (an english pound).
Hifi today is awash with people selling products which expand this anecdote by a couple of orders of magnitude.

 

[Frank Dernie]

"Classic" distortions like the ones you mention are less 'evil' then signal dependent, low level distortion or noise artifacts - the latter are much harder to deal with, normally; and are the reason that sound replay typically always sounds 'fake'.

Nearly all power amplifiers 'compress' at higher volumes - and this is bad ... it takes hearing a unit that doesn't have this weakness to appreciate what all the rest get wrong ...

I am not sure I agree with these 2 points.
Firstly, low level distortion and noise artifacts are rife in a lot of nice sounding hifi systems IME. Everything about LP manufacture and replay adds distortion, often quite a lot, and noise, yet LPs sound very nice to me in a lot of cases. Many years ago I even tried to look into why, despite the poor performance with respect to noise, crosstalk and frequency response, they sounded as good as they did.
The only clear repeatable conclusion from this was that adding noise adds to the impression of stereo depth (which may explain the popularity of devices which add noise, though most claim to be doing the opposite).
In the case of amplifiers I think most SS amps are linear until they clip, so there is no mechanism for the compression you mention. Many, but not all, valve amps certainly start to go non-linear before they clip, and since most are less powerful this probably happens a lot but people usually like the effect rather than seeing it as a weakness. I have been using a 1000 watt amp into 109dB.watt speakers recently, so certainly haven't been suffering from that
OTOH all loudspeakers are non linear to a greater or lesser extent due to the influence of heat and the detail design of the magnetic circuit and the suspension of the moving element. For some this means they are really poor at high levels even if excellent at low levels, the Spendor BC1 for example.

 

[March Audio]

I don't buy into this idea that "reproduction" is a difficult concept. Just as with a video monitor, there is no pretence that it's going to truly replicate some actual event. Nor is there any hard and fast rule about the exact environment in which the replay will take place. All I am saying is that I don't want the screen obscured with coloured glass or a partially translucent filter. I don't want it letterboxed or distorted into some peculiar aspect ratio. I don't want the screen to be only 2" across, or 200" if I am viewing it from 6 feet away. I don't want the monitor set up with a strange colour balance, brightness that varies with image content, or weird sharpening algorithm. In other words, I want it neutral so I can fully appreciate the content.

This

 

[Analog Scott]

I have no idea what you are asking. You have been told my views on the subject (which appear to be shared by others here and supported by research), yet you repeatedly keep trying to argue points regarding the recording side of the chain. These points are acknowledged, however are not considered relevant to the validity of neutral playback.

No you didnt provide a cogent argument against Tooles research. You keep trying to misconstrue what is said by implying everything is and has to be related to the original performance as would be heard by an individual if they were in that space. How many times do you have to be told that is not the case?

Oh BTW this crosstalk is a complete red herring. Any speaker monitoring will have crosstalk. In a studio or at home. Whats your point? My room has known acoustic properties, I designed it to minimally interfere with the sound. To make it as neutral as possible. This will not sound identical to the studio. We do not know what the studios acoustic or speaker properties. This however has no relevance to the validity of a neutral speaker and system.

Looks to me that you just don't want to deal with the reality that you can't reconcile the fact that added crosstalk from the speakers and room is an added distortion that is not present in the original recording and as such meets every criteria of distortion that you have asserted is always bad. And yet without this crosstalk what we would have would be the equivellant of headphones and we know that with headphones imaging goes to crap. It pretty much runs completely contrary to your assertions. And here are some examples of those assertion in quotes.

"If you add unquantified distortions at replay you only worsen fidelity."

"If an applied fixed replay distortion is unquantified ref the original, then the end result is random."

"No one is arguing the variabilities of the recording part of the process. One of my criticisms is the lack of conformance to a standard for monitoring in studios. However, randomly adding further distortions at replay does nothing to improve the situation, it exacerbates it. Whatever flavour you choose to add for one recording will be wrong for another.
Not to mention the Toole research shows that people still prefer playback neutral systems regardless of recording. Im not sure as to why this is contentious for some."

 

[March Audio]

Looks to me that you just don't want to deal with the reality that you can't reconcile the fact that added crosstalk from the speakers and room is an added distortion that is not present in the original recording and as such meets every criteria of distortion that you have asserted is always bad. And yet without this crosstalk what we would have would be the equivellant of headphones and we know that with headphones imaging goes to crap. It pretty much runs completely contrary to your assertions. And here are some examples of those assertion in quotes.

"If you add unquantified distortions at replay you only worsen fidelity."

"If an applied fixed replay distortion is unquantified ref the original, then the end result is random."

"No one is arguing the variabilities of the recording part of the process. One of my criticisms is the lack of conformance to a standard for monitoring in studios. However, randomly adding further distortions at replay does nothing to improve the situation, it exacerbates it. Whatever flavour you choose to add for one recording will be wrong for another.
Not to mention the Toole research shows that people still prefer playback neutral systems regardless of recording. Im not sure as to why this is contentious for some."

I am fully aware that there are differences in the acoustic of my listening space to that of the studio. Why do think I am not? As I have said, my listening space has been acoustically measured, I know what is going on, it is far from random, it IS quantified and issues have been addressed as far as is practicable. However there is of course a limit to what can be achieved and it will not be the same acoustic space as the studio. However this does not invalidate the benefits of having a neutral speaker and system. Why would it?

You really dont appear to be able to separate the concepts of trying to make your system as neutral as possible to retain fidelity to the recorded sound and tuning the sound to a fixed un-quantified personal preference, even though this is always by definition a moving target.


Just as an example, the reverberation time of my room compared to EBU3276 standards

 

[Analog Scott]

I am fully aware that there are differences in the acoustic of my listening space to that of the studio. Why do think I am not? As I have said, my listening space has been acoustically measured, I know what is going on, it is far from random, it IS quantified and issues have been addressed as far as is practicable. However there is of course a limit to what can be achieved and it will not be the same acoustic space as the studio. However this does not invalidate the benefits of having a neutral speaker and system. Why would it?


You really dont appear to be able to separate the concepts of trying to make your system as neutral as possible to retain fidelity to the recorded sound and tuning the sound to a fixed un-quantified personal preference, even though this is always by definition a moving target.

So if the added distortion is "quantfied" then it's OK?

 

[March Audio]

So if the added distortion is "quantfied" then it's OK?

OMG, the context of "quantified" is so that problems can be minimised to make it a neutral as reasonably practicable, yet noting that there are limits to what can be practically achieved. Also that noting that people tuning by component selection are really working in the dark.

Look, it's obvious you are now at the stage of being argumentative because people in this thread dont agree with your view that "anything goes". Do you think that does much for your credibility?

 

[Analog Scott]

OMG, the context of "quantified" is so that problems can be minimised to make it a neutral as reasonably practicable, yet noting that there are limits to what can be practically achieved. Also that noting that people tuning by component selection are really working in the dark.

It really doesn't matter that you have measured your room. Your room and the speakers are still adding distortion. distortion that you can eliminate by listening to headphones. But this is the problem. It's euphonic distortion. When you eliminate that distortion using headphones the imaging goes to crap.

Look, it's obvious you are now at the stage of being argumentative because people in this thread dont agree with your view that "anything goes". Do you think that does much for your credibility?

People? No...on this particular subject pretty much just you. Do you think that trying to attack my credibility makes your arguments any better? That's a classic logical fallacy.

 

[March Audio]

It really doesn't matter that you have measured your room. Your room and the speakers are still adding distortion. distortion that you can eliminate by listening to headphones. But this is the problem. It's euphonic distortion. When you eliminate that distortion using headphones the imaging goes to crap.



People? No...on this particular subject pretty much just you. Do you think that trying to attack my credibility makes your arguments any better? That's a classic logical fallacy.

Of course it matters. By understanding the distortion you can take action to minimise it. Of course my speakers are adding distortion. Again, what is your point? Do you actually have one? Headphones don't help as they provide a completely different spatial experience to listening to speakers. It is unlikely that the studio mixed using headphones - so that takes you even further away.

You are just going around in circles with nothing to say, and if you read the thread again multiple members do not agree with your "anything goes" philosophy. I can point to the posts, and indeed already have. I don't need to attack your credibility, you are doing fine by yourself going round in circles arguing about nothing.

OK, tell us what you think speaker should do in your view, what frequency response it should have, what polar response it should have and why?

 

[Analog Scott]

Of course it matters. By understanding the distortion you can take action to minimise it. Of course my speakers are adding distortion. Again, what is your point? Do you actually have one? Headphones don't help as they provide a completely different spatial experience to listening to speakers. It is unlikely that the studio mixed using headphones - so that takes you even further away.

You are just going around in circles with nothing to say, and if you read the thread again multiple members do not agree with your "anything goes" philosophy. I can point to the posts, and indeed already have. I don't need to attack your credibility, you are doing fine by yourself going round in circles arguing about nothing.

OK, tell us what you think speaker should do in your view, what frequency response it should have, what polar response it should have and why?

You seem to be quite rattled by all of this. And I am sorry about that. I do understand the strong emotional attachment so many audiophiles have with their belief systems which makes it very uncomfortable to question those belief systems and basic axioms upon which they are based. And that is natural. Audiophiles are generally quite passionate about the hobby and have made a tremendous personal investment of their time, energy and money based on their beliefs about audio. Challenging axioms can be very uncomfortable for some because of that investment.

So that aside, I do have some questions about the Toole research. Toole does seem to claim universal transference of results from the testing they do of speakers in one room from one position in mono using a very small number of recordings to the vast array of rooms and recordings in stereo out there in the world. Where can I find the actual research he did that supports his assertion of universal transference?

Also is there any literature from Toole that addresses the transference of testing competing speaker designs all from the same position in thier testing room? Most speaker manufacturers have very specific beliefs on optimal positioning of their speaker designs and optimal rooms for their speaker designs. The HK testing facility does not seem to account for other speakers varying ideal rooms and positions in a room. How is this addressed by Toole?

 

[Jakob1863]

Controversial, I would say. In the past I've recorded my own little bits and pieces of music, monitoring on headphones, or maybe not-so-good speakers. In later years I have been quite keen to hear the music played 'properly' on a good system. Sometimes the result has been "Wow! It sounds so much better when you hear the slam of the bass". Maybe once or twice it might have been "Oh dear, there's too much bass", but I'm just throwing that in as a possible outcome in principle - I can't actually think of an example.

In my opinion, the aim shouldn't be to mimic the monitoring in the studio, but to maximise the integrity of the various elements of the recording. Maybe the recording was made with 27 microphones, some of which were artificially compressed, and some of which were EQ'ed, etc. Maybe the monitoring in the studio was much louder than I want to listen at, with crappy speakers. But that's no reason to just say "Anything goes" with the replay, or the convincing-but-mythical notion of "I will maximise my preference through my choice of coloured gear" - it doesn't work on so many practical levels.

If I have a neutral system, I at least maximise the separation of the various elements of the recording, and I maintain the integrity of each of those elements. If the people making the recording didn't hear it so well, that's their bad luck. They couldn't have 'corrected' things like distortion and poor stereo imaging so that I hear it 'over-corrected' on my better system. Conceivably they might have got the EQ wrong - but I suspect that if they know their job, they won't have gone too far off. If I really feel strongly about it, I could maybe play with tone controls, but I certainly won't feel like swapping between speakers, cartridges, valve amplifiers and transformer taps on a per-recording basis! (which is surely the logical implication of "I will maximise my preference through my choice of coloured gear".)

It´s just that a (?totally?) linear reproduction system is a good starting point therefore, as already answered to BE718, i don´t object to a "linear" loudspeaker nor to "linear" amplifiers, cd-players and other gear.
Wrt "high fidelity" it nevertheless might be a nonoptimal choice for recordings done on nonlinear or "not so linear" production system.

In fact "anything goes" is obviously true, simply due to the fact, that sound reproduction is mostly listened to by human listeners who want something they like.

If we choose the record as an artificial reference point it is a convinient but still a oversimplificated choice. But if it works for you it is fine, it might not work so well for others but is that a problem?

Btw, i don´t think that "audiophiles" (looks still like an obsession ) wouldn´t accept tone controls, but maybe they just demand the same quality from tone control circuits as from the other signal processing circuits. Something like the rare - althoug quite famous - Audio Palette wasn´t dismissed by "audiophiles" afair.

 

[Jakob1863]

I'm sorry but you are still under the impression that myself and others are trying to recreate the sound field as would be heard by an individual if they were in the performance space. WE ARE NOT.

Of course, you are not, but others still do, as said before the, that is the core of the binaural approach.

Fidelity is in reference to the RECORDED sound. The recorded sound is the art and there is nothing wrong with Tooles premise. You are misinterpreting it.

You ´ve linked Toole´s speech, but did he really say/write what you´ve said above?
In fact he said/wrote "sound production is producing the ART" while "sound reproduction is preserving the ART" .
As he did not invent a new term "ART" he most likely meant the same by using the term "ART".
Therefore i´d say he meant that fidelity is in reference to the original event (i.e. the ART) not to a arbitrarily chosen new "RECORDED art" .

Which is btw the same approach that Wolfgang Hoeg expressed in his statement that i cited some posts before.

 

[Cosmik]

You ´ve linked Toole´s speech, but did he really say/write what you´ve said above?
In fact he said/wrote "sound production is producing the ART" while "sound reproduction is preserving the ART" .
As he did not invent a new term "ART" he most likely meant the same by using the term "ART".
Therefore i´d say he meant that fidelity is in reference to the original event (i.e. the ART) not to a arbitrarily chosen new "RECORDED art" .

Which is btw the same approach that Wolfgang Hoeg expressed in his statement that i cited some posts before.

Funny how people can see the same words and interpret them completely differently! To me, he is clearly saying that the art is the combination of the event(s) and the production of the recording i.e. art occurs when a player plucks a single bass note in the studio, and art also occurs when the producer samples it, sequences it with a computer, adds some reverb and commits it to disk. Replaying the recording with high fidelity is not intended to add any art, just preserve what art is already in the recording.

 

[RayDunzl]

The HK testing facility does not seem to account for other speakers varying ideal rooms and positions in a room. How is this addressed by Toole?

He mounts his own speakers upside down.

 

[March Audio]

You seem to be quite rattled by all of this. And I am sorry about that. I do understand the strong emotional attachment so many audiophiles have with their belief systems which makes it very uncomfortable to question those belief systems and basic axioms upon which they are based. And that is natural. Audiophiles are generally quite passionate about the hobby and have made a tremendous personal investment of their time, energy and money based on their beliefs about audio. Challenging axioms can be very uncomfortable for some because of that investment.

So that aside, I do have some questions about the Toole research. Toole does seem to claim universal transference of results from the testing they do of speakers in one room from one position in mono using a very small number of recordings to the vast array of rooms and recordings in stereo out there in the world. Where can I find the actual research he did that supports his assertion of universal transference?

Also is there any literature from Toole that addresses the transference of testing competing speaker designs all from the same position in thier testing room? Most speaker manufacturers have very specific beliefs on optimal positioning of their speaker designs and optimal rooms for their speaker designs. The HK testing facility does not seem to account for other speakers varying ideal rooms and positions in a room. How is this addressed by Toole?

Why do you say I'm rattled? There is no emotion, quite the contrary, my views are based on science. What are yours based on? I think you are projecting.

WRT to your questions, you say you have ordered Tooles book, why don't you read that first? You should then gain some understanding. Just for your information, it is covered.

I note that you have completely evaded my question. You appear to avoiding any opinion of your own and resorting to further questions to obfuscate the point.


Tell us what you think a speaker should do in your view, what frequency response it should have, what polar response it should have and why?

 

[March Audio]

Funny how people can see the same words and interpret them completely differently! To me, he is clearly saying that the art is the combination of the event(s) and the production of the recording i.e. art occurs when a player plucks a single bass note in the studio, and art also occurs when the producer samples it, sequences it with a computer, adds some reverb and commits it to disk. Replaying the recording with high fidelity is not intended to add any art, just preserve what art is already in the recording.

Exactly how I interpret it. The two (performance and recording technique) are inextricably linked. Anybody that has ever performed any recording of musicians knows this, and it should be fairly obvious even to those that haven't.

 

[watchnerd]

Funny how people can see the same words and interpret them completely differently! To me, he is clearly saying that the art is the combination of the event(s) and the production of the recording i.e. art occurs when a player plucks a single bass note in the studio, and art also occurs when the producer samples it, sequences it with a computer, adds some reverb and commits it to disk. Replaying the recording with high fidelity is not intended to add any art, just preserve what art is already in the recording.

Exactly how I interpret it. The two (performance and recording technique) are inextricably linked. Anybody that has ever performed any recording of musicians knows this, and it should be fairly obvious even to those that haven't.

There is another layer to the production side -- translation, the idea that the engineers are trying to create a production that preserves some semblance of the core of the artistic intent across multiple reproduction systems.

 

[Analog Scott]

Funny how people can see the same words and interpret them completely differently! To me, he is clearly saying that the art is the combination of the event(s) and the production of the recording i.e. art occurs when a player plucks a single bass note in the studio, and art also occurs when the producer samples it, sequences it with a computer, adds some reverb and commits it to disk. Replaying the recording with high fidelity is not intended to add any art, just preserve what art is already in the recording.

Interesting. Sorry for stating the obvious again but I think we really have two catagories of recordings. Recordings of live music and studio productions. With live recordings you first have the actual performance stage where the live music happens in a real space or spaces followed by a second and seperate stage, post production. Post production on live music recordings can be seen as the "presentation" stage where the music recorded at the performance is mixed. edited and polished for storage as a final recording. Where as studio productions are pure production through and through and the mix of performance and post production are far more entangled and there is no original performance as in the case of recordings of live music.