AES Paper Digest: Differences among Several High Sampling Digital Recording Formats

[oivavoi]

So perhaps they show themselves better at discriminating against known differences (who chose the differences and why?), perhaps more repeatably and reliably - less 'noise'.

But a piece of test equipment would be superior on these counts by orders of magnitude. Why don't we ask it what its preference is?

I think preference testing can have a role to play in things which go beyond "straight wire with gain", where there's no clear rational answer as to how one should do it. That could mean things like speaker directivity and stereo vs multichannel, for example, or dry vs lively acoustics. Still, nothing wrong with just trying out different things (omni vs narrow directivity or stereo vs multichannel), and see what one personally prefers. As for fidelity to the signal in the electronic domain - EDIT: And the basic strive for speakers to be linear in all aspects - I see no need to go beyond measurements.

 

[Wombat]

I meant more like "who programmed the programmer..."

That is 'education'. Thankfully we get something rational and practical out of it, against all odds(human beliefs).

 

[Cosmik]

I think preference testing can have a role to play in things which go beyond "straight wire with gain", where there's no clear rational answer as to how one should do it. That could mean things like speaker directivity and stereo vs multichannel, for example, or dry vs lively acoustics. Still, nothing wrong with just trying out different things (omni vs narrow directivity or stereo vs multichannel), and see what one personally prefers. As for fidelity to the signal in the electronic domain, I see no need to go beyond measurements.

Yes, I agree that one might have preference for different types of neutral...

As Bruno Putzeys explains in his paper regarding the Grimm LS1, with respect to directivity, there is no right answer. Some recordings are going to be more objectively and subjectively 'wrong' with certain setups than others, but only the listener can make the judgement. Having said that, I suspect that not many people would notice a problem with a typical system (not too directional, not too omni) because most people are concentrating more on the music than whether the brass sounds "ghostly" or not. I have a pair of three-way box speakers with fairly wide baffles and it's not something I ever think about. I think your 8c will be just fine...

 

[oivavoi]

Yes, I agree that one might have preference for different types of neutral...

As Bruno Putzeys explains in his paper regarding the Grimm LS1, with respect to directivity, there is no right answer. Some recordings are going to be more objectively and subjectively 'wrong' with certain setups than others, but only the listener can make the judgement. Having said that, I suspect that not many people would notice a problem with a typical system (not too directional, not too omni) because most people are concentrating more on the music than whether the brass sounds "ghostly" or not. I have a pair of three-way box speakers with fairly wide baffles and it's not something I ever think about. I think your 8c will be just fine...

Yeah, that paper from Putzeys is characteristically lucid Putzeys-style in its explanations! I also think this is something that most people don't think about too much when listening. I think about it though. The reason is probably that my interest in hifi started with the quest for recreating real acoustic musical events in my living room. And I do think that's a tough challenge, even with SOTA speakers. To me, almost all speakers have the fatal flaw of sounding like speakers (I think it has to do with how speakers interact with the room, vs how acoustic instruments interact with the room). That includes the D&Ds, as far as I can tell from my listening so far (even though they do a better job at not sounding like speakers than most of the other speakers I've auditioned). Will probably write a bit about that when I get time to listen more and write down a quasi-review of the D&Ds.

 

[oivavoi]

I wrote about that in this post btw: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-ears-by-tom-nousaine.1669/page-29#post-54719

(but this is a somewhat different topic from what we're discussing here)