Am I wrong? It seems like there's one significant thing left that could improve audio playback for everyone

[IPunchCholla]

Listen to more live music, ideally acoustic, and ideally in a good hall. That is the baseline.

The baseline for what? What does distortion have to do with dynamic range? Have you used a modern compressor? Given the tools in a modern DAW and now semi-standard LUFS targets, you can use compressors to increase DR.

As was pointed out up thread. DR as it is commonly used is not a very good measure of dynamic range. Its is in essence biased towards classical as you are comparing the overall volume (RMS) to the loudest peak. With many pieces composers are using long stretches of pianissimo against short bursts of forte. So yeah. The measure well under that system.

I can watch the second by second the DR of any piece of music. If we measure it that way, the difference between modern recordings of acoustic and electronic disappear, in my own casual observation.

 

[EJ3]

I am a big fan of Noel Gallagher - but I cannot listen to his albums on my (relatively speaking) high end separates. They are flat, soulless, and no amount of EQ will make them sound enjoyable. This type of production is aimed at and best suited to bluetooth/wifi speakers the like of which most "music" fans have purchased over the years. I save my separates system for albums with high production values - that way, I get the best of both worlds.

Except that my "separates" systems are the only ones I have.

 

[EJ3]

IEM, with the M for Monitor, and Bluetooth together? Paradoxum!

Perhaps convoluted oxymoronic? Kinda' like the fact that I was an ARMY guy on a Navy ship for 17 years (military intelligence)?
Apparently that trades endless marching for endless fire and boat drills.

 

[Hatto]

The baseline for what?

Dynamic range, timbre, absolute lack of harmonic and intermodulation distortion.

 

[ThatM1key]

Looks like someone hasn't been paying attention? Dolby Atmos has like -18 LUFS loudness limit on the encoder. buy an Apple TV and an AVR if you're interested in these mixes.

Don't take Dolby Atmos music seriously on these streaming services. Those DA tracks are based on Dolby Digital Plus, which is just Dolby Digital (DD is lossy). There is Dolby Atmos music that is actually lossless, which is based off of Dolby TrueHD. A good example would be the "INXS: Kick 30th Anniversary" Blu-ray which features lossless Dolby Atmos.

 

[IPunchCholla]

Dynamic range, timbre, absolute lack of harmonic and intermodulation distortion.

Dynamic range, timbre, absolute lack of harmonic and intermodulation distortion.

I'll give you IMD, but not DR or Timbre, or HD. Timbre is just a fancy way of saying intentional and culturally acceptable distortion. DR as it is usually measured now isn't psychoacoustically accurate, nor an inherent advantage to acoustic music. IMD doesn't seem to be an issue for me at least.

But really, it is just that the idea of having to go to a bunch of live acoustic shows to somehow become better at hearing music, well, I'd rather be deaf.

 

[EJ3]

But really, it is just that the idea of having to go to a bunch of live acoustic shows to somehow become better at hearing music, well, I'd rather be deaf.

I have been & will be going to hundreds of live (acoustic & otherwise) shows (my mother has sung on a local/sometimes regional basis all my life) and I cannot say that it does or does not make me better at 'hearing' music.
It probably makes me have certain preferences in style of music that I like & don't like so much (or not at all) though.
There is a lot of music that I like that my mother and my wife do not like. So, exposure doesn't mean that you will prefer it, either.
To each their own!

 

[robwpdx]

The baseline for what? What does distortion have to do with dynamic range? Have you used a modern compressor? Given the tools in a modern DAW and now semi-standard LUFS targets, you can use compressors to increase DR.

As was pointed out up thread. DR as it is commonly used is not a very good measure of dynamic range. Its is in essence biased towards classical as you are comparing the overall volume (RMS) to the loudest peak. With many pieces composers are using long stretches of pianissimo against short bursts of forte. So yeah. The measure well under that system.

I can watch the second by second the DR of any piece of music. If we measure it that way, the difference between modern recordings of acoustic and electronic disappear, in my own casual observation.

I was very fortunate to listen to and record music for an average of about 2 hours a day, 7 days a week for about 3 full years. There were also some 9AM-2AM days. One of my favorite was the Guarneri Quartet, very simpatico with great instruments. Our concert grands were tuned and voiced by one of several full time tuners before every concert.

I have spent a lot of time listening to music live in good halls.

Then I listened live in the control room processed through the microphones - C12A, 451, C24, 224, 202, 47, 49, 67, 87, and Schoeps (today, for what we did, people would use DPA and Schoeps SDCs for medium and distance micing, and some of the others for close micing) and a few oddballs, the console, the amps, the speakers and an acoustically designed room. The acoustically designed control rooms were built on independent of the rest of the building concrete foundations laid on a bed of sand.

And finally, I listened through the recording and playback process. We didn't use compression, though we had a few classic ones in the rack and in the consoles, occasionally we would add spring echo. EQ was extremely rare, we EQed by selection and placement of the microphones.

I certainly heard differences between individual instruments, I was familiar with the timbre of my girlfriend's instrument against the range of timbre for that instrument. Players of specific instruments were much much better at it. We once spent several hours with one of our violinists recording a very expensive bow audition.

So that is my personal baseline - live, against all the rest. I can't speculate on any one else's experience or baseline.

 

[HarmonicTHD]

I was very fortunate to listen to and record music for an average of about 2 hours a day, 7 days a week for about 3 full years. There were also some 9AM-2AM days. One of my favorite was the Guarneri Quartet, very simpatico with great instruments. Our concert grands was tuned and voiced by one of several full time tuners before every concert.

I have spent a lot of time listening to music live in good halls. Then I listened live in the control room processed through the microphones - C12A, 451, C24, 224, 202, 47, 49, 67, 87, and Schoeps (today, for what we did, people would use DPA and Schoeps SDCs for medium and distance micing, and some of the others for close micing) and a few oddballs, the console, the amps, the speakers and an acoustically designed room. And finally, I listened through the recording and playback process. We didn't use compression, though we had a few classic ones in the rack and in the consoles, occasionally we would add spring echo. EQ was extremely rare, we EQed by selection and placement of the microphones.

I certainly heard differences between individual instruments, I was familiar with the timbre of my girlfriend's instrument against the range of timbre for that instrument. Players of specific instruments were much much better at it. We once spent several hours with one of our violinists recording a very expensive bow audition.

So that is my personal baseline - live, against all the rest. I can't speculate on any one else's experience or baseline.

How useful is a baseline defined by one’s individual experiences and preferences (regardless if it’s yours, mine or someone else’s)?

Personally I find most live venues lacking in acoustics and sound setups and find the actual recording much better. Now what?

 

[robwpdx]

How useful is a baseline defined by one’s individual experiences and preferences (regardless if it’s yours, mine or someone else’s)?

Personally I find most live venues lacking in acoustics and sound setups and find the actual recording much better. Now what?

I have been fortunate to hear a lot in great halls, and even outdoors tastefully amplified. But I certainly have heard some rock in large terrible halls where a close mic recording would be better, as you say.

I took the original question to be, "one significant thing left that could improve audio playback for each individual." That is how I answered it.

If the question is the "single significant thing left that could improve audio playback for everyone," then my answer would be less ear damage!

 

[IPunchCholla]

I was very fortunate to listen to and record music for an average of about 2 hours a day, 7 days a week for about 3 full years. There were also some 9AM-2AM days. One of my favorite was the Guarneri Quartet, very simpatico with great instruments. Our concert grands was tuned and voiced by one of several full time tuners before every concert.

I have spent a lot of time listening to music live in good halls. Then I listened live in the control room processed through the microphones - C12A, 451, C24, 224, 202, 47, 49, 67, 87, and Schoeps (today, for what we did, people would use DPA and Schoeps SDCs for medium and distance micing, and some of the others for close micing) and a few oddballs, the console, the amps, the speakers and an acoustically designed room. And finally, I listened through the recording and playback process. We didn't use compression, though we had a few classic ones in the rack and in the consoles, occasionally we would add spring echo. EQ was extremely rare, we EQed by selection and placement of the microphones.

I certainly heard differences between individual instruments, I was familiar with the timbre of my girlfriend's instrument against the range of timbre for that instrument. Players of specific instruments were much much better at it. We once spent several hours with one of our violinists recording a very expensive bow audition.

So that is my personal baseline - live, against all the rest. I can't speculate on any one else's experience or baseline.

Thank you for the reply. Your personal baseline is amazing. I hope you loved every minute of it. I love live! Just, not acoustic live. I'm also curious, I've seen mention of supplemented live acoustic performances (I believe in Toole). Was that something you experienced? Could you pick out supplemented live from not?

 

[Hatto]

I'll give you IMD, but not DR or Timbre, or HD. Timbre is just a fancy way of saying intentional and culturally acceptable distortion. DR as it is usually measured now isn't psychoacoustically accurate, nor an inherent advantage to acoustic music. IMD doesn't seem to be an issue for me at least.

But really, it is just that the idea of having to go to a bunch of live acoustic shows to somehow become better at hearing music, well, I'd rather be deaf.

Timbre is the natural harmonics of the instruments that are usually masked over or lost altogether in the electronic domain.

Acoustic DR is untouched I don't know how high fidelity you cene ever go from there.

But most importantly all of these are not required to be "better at hearing" but a must to be better at interpreting the fidelity of what you're hearing (that is played with real instruments) better.

 

[robwpdx]

Could you pick out supplemented live from not?

If you mean boosting an acoustic string quartet to a symphony in a concert hall with amplification? Yes there is a difference, it is really impossible to get perfectly right.

As you say, with amplified instruments - guitar, bass, keyboards, little DPAs attached to a brass instrument bell and wireless so the perfomer can walk around, contact mics on the bridge of a violin, all the FX pedals, and add all the electronic instruments - those all go through the PA and hopefully the sound engineer has miced and processed them in an artistic way. Today people are running DAW-like systems with plugins in PA boards and still staying within acceptable "real time" processing delay times. You also have to add in the wireless delays, including in ear monitor delays. I am not an expert on that - the Dave Rat videos are a good place to start.

There is a funny story by Ed Greene, W=who I met and assisted. He did a lot of live TV broadcasts with famous musicians. Toward the end of his career, he was doing a live broadcast on an early digital console. It locked up. He had to have the producer-director go to a commercial break while ha rebooted the console. Fortunately it rebooted and returned to normal and the live show continued from there. Very calm, humble, and professional engineer. The video of the interview where he described it is probably in one of my posts. He received a lifetime AES achievement award.

I would add drums have really evolved and continue to evolve. So in addition to the large drum mic kits, people catch triggers from each individual drum, run the triggers through a drum synth, and use any combination of mic and synth across each drum in the kit, then run those through compression and other processing. I have never mixed a drum kit. A good drum tracker - capturing them in a recording studio - is Sylvia Massy who has a YouTube channel which is fascinating. She is also a brilliant vocal tracking engineer.

I think the baseline might be "in an artistic way."

That would include things like the 4AD label sound - jangly distorted wall of guitars - like the Breeders, Throwing Muses, Lush, Dry Cleaning.

Good discussion!

 

[StaresyJ]

Except that my "separates" systems are the only ones I have.

I have a couple of decent standalone speakers where I can eq the hell out of the poor recordings and get some pleasure from the listening! I think my badly conveyed point was the better the system the more revealing it is of a poor recording.

 

[thecheapseats]

...Good discussion!...

Dying is easy... Living and mixing live sound is hard...

 

[Bernd]

What I'm waiting for is a better spatial immersion, and I do agree with one of the previous commentators that ATMOS/Dolby True HD type of lossless format for music would be step forward. The real challenge here is to bring this into the world of audio headphones.

 

[FrantzM]

The baseline for what? What does distortion have to do with dynamic range? Have you used a modern compressor? Given the tools in a modern DAW and now semi-standard LUFS targets, you can use compressors to increase DR.

As was pointed out up thread. DR as it is commonly used is not a very good measure of dynamic range. Its is in essence biased towards classical as you are comparing the overall volume (RMS) to the loudest peak. With many pieces composers are using long stretches of pianissimo against short bursts of forte. So yeah. The measure well under that system.

I can watch the second by second the DR of any piece of music. If we measure it that way, the difference between modern recordings of acoustic and electronic disappear, in my own casual observation.

I share this opinion.

Peace.

 

[DavidEdwinAston]

Dying is easy... Living and mixing live sound is hard...

A fellow "Hamilton" fan?

 

[abdo123]

Don't take Dolby Atmos music seriously on these streaming services. Those DA tracks are based on Dolby Digital Plus, which is just Dolby Digital (DD is lossy). There is Dolby Atmos music that is actually lossless, which is based off of Dolby TrueHD. A good example would be the "INXS: Kick 30th Anniversary" Blu-ray which features lossless Dolby Atmos.

Yeah i rather have a lossy high dynamic range multichannel mix than a brickwalled lossless stereo mix if the industry is not going to offer me anything in the middle.

 

[IPunchCholla]

Timbre is the natural harmonics of the instruments that are usually masked over or lost altogether in the electronic domain.

Acoustic DR is untouched I don't know how high fidelity you cene ever go from there.

But most importantly all of these are not required to be "better at hearing" but a must to be better at interpreting the fidelity of what you're hearing (that is played with real instruments) better.

I think we are perhaps talking past one another? You’re talking about reproduction vs. production. I would agree with everything you say in the reproduction vain. I am talking about production and listening to electronically produced music live vs acoustic music live. Timbre becomes problematic if we are talking about a synthesizer. And then we have physically modeled software instruments, and even with something as “normal” as an electric guitar, we need to at a minimum include the amp/cabinet as part of the instrument (and really all the stomp boxes) all of which are essential user configurable timbre. With modern PA systems the limits are human hearing damage more than anything, so I don’t see acoustic having a DR edge there. Masking may or may not be an issue depending on the source, but that is dependent on space and not the production. Often enough, in contemporary music, one can think of the PA as the instrument and the “instruments” as ways of playing the PA. Amazing music can be produced both acoustically and electronically. Acoustic just isn’t always the source and electronic isn’t just reproduction.