Are you Euphonophile?

[Don Hills]

... Do listeners of dark metal prefer added distortion or is there enough present?

Some metal listeners care just as much as any other audiophile:

Metal-Fi

 

[tomelex]

I think there is nothing but huge distortions already built into the audio recording and playback system. Just one simple one comes to mind, at your listening room, with your ears, you turn up the volume control until it "sounds" good to you. Look at all you are compensating for with just that one move:

--the mix/master engineers guess at what you will like or his desire to compress the hell out of the music to make it all loud (and therefore your source is so distorted already that we are slaved to lord knows what of a recording)
--your systems FR and room interaction FR and your hearing, all way huge variables, many DB of difference here from the "recording mess"
--no standards mean every recording you get has no balance or conformity to anything,
--and then even if you have a perfect system and ears and listening room then you turn up the volume until you "like" what you hear and since there are no standards anywhere you are already on your own completely, even with a perfect playback system you still don't know what the original intent was for you to hear just in regards to loudness

So, Is it any wonder folks want to "modify" their sound.

But I do agree that the main point of the system for many is a goal to replicate the original recording, but doing that is not the end all of poor old plain old stereo reproduction. And the example above is just one variable (volume) you have to play with even with a perfect playback system where we are already in the "weeds" given we don't know what the intended loudness and volume are supposed to be, and we are not in the mix/master room to start with.

So its just a big mess so trying to make some sort of guess by just the volume control we are already past the point of sanity of accuracy to the original recording.

We can enjoy our hobby but this audio hobby you cant take seriously because it has no bedrock, no standards to hold onto to start with, its the wild west as they like to say.

 

[svart-hvitt]

I think there is nothing but huge distortions already built into the audio recording and playback system. Just one simple one comes to mind, at your listening room, with your ears, you turn up the volume control until it "sounds" good to you. Look at all you are compensating for with just that one move:

--the mix/master engineers guess at what you will like or his desire to compress the hell out of the music to make it all loud (and therefore your source is so distorted already that we are slaved to lord knows what of a recording)
--your systems FR and room interaction FR and your hearing, all way huge variables, many DB of difference here from the "recording mess"
--no standards mean every recording you get has no balance or conformity to anything,
--and then even if you have a perfect system and ears and listening room then you turn up the volume until you "like" what you hear and since there are no standards anywhere you are already on your own completely, even with a perfect playback system you still don't know what the original intent was for you to hear just in regards to loudness

So, Is it any wonder folks want to "modify" their sound.

But I do agree that the main point of the system for many is a goal to replicate the original recording, but doing that is not the end all of poor old plain old stereo reproduction. And the example above is just one variable (volume) you have to play with even with a perfect playback system where we are already in the "weeds" given we don't know what the intended loudness and volume are supposed to be, and we are not in the mix/master room to start with.

So its just a big mess so trying to make some sort of guess by just the volume control we are already past the point of sanity of accuracy to the original recording.

We can enjoy our hobby but this audio hobby you cant take seriously because it has no bedrock, no standards to hold onto to start with, its the wild west as they like to say.

This reminds me of an old, wise man who once wrote:

«Unfortunately, tone controls are frowned upon by audio purists, who think that they somehow degrade the performance. As a result not all equipment has them, and the ability to compensate for quite common and simple variations like too much or too little bass is lost. The notion that recordings are inherently flawless is seriously misguided, as is the notion that a “perfect” loudspeaker will sound good with all recordings (...) . It is important for consumers to realize that it is not a crime to use tone controls. Instead, it is an intelligent and practical way to compensate for inevitable variations in recordings, that is, to “revoice” the reproduction if and when necessary. At the present time, no loudspeaker can sound perfectly balanced for all recordings.»
Source: Toole, 3rd ed.

At the end of the day, sound is subjective. In real-life, outside of a million dollar studio (where the room and its acoustics can be made to strict specifications in order to play back recordings that are made to the exact same strict specifications) we have no idea what the recording «should» sound like.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

This reminds me of an old, wise man who once wrote:

«Unfortunately, tone controls are frowned upon by audio purists, who think that they somehow degrade the performance. As a result not all equipment has them, and the ability to compensate for quite common and simple variations like too much or too little bass is lost. The notion that recordings are inherently flawless is seriously misguided, as is the notion that a “perfect” loudspeaker will sound good with all recordings (...) . It is important for consumers to realize that it is not a crime to use tone controls. Instead, it is an intelligent and practical way to compensate for inevitable variations in recordings, that is, to “revoice” the reproduction if and when necessary. At the present time, no loudspeaker can sound perfectly balanced for all recordings.»
Source: Toole, 3rd ed.

At the end of the day, sound is subjective. In real-life, outside of a million dollar studio (where the room and its acoustics can be made to strict specifications in order to play back recordings that are made to the exact same strict specifications) we have no idea what the recording «should» sound like.

Agreed. The elimination of tone controls by shaming them out of hi end gear was a brilliant stroke, though. It might have been inadvertent, or it might have been deliberate. But, think of the commercial marketing possibilities it opened in tweaking the voicing of your system by component swaps, tubes/tube hybrids, mods, cables, tweako gadgets, etc. rather than just by cranking the tone controls a notch or two in pedestrian, lowbrow, hifi fashion.

Agreed sound is subjective, and we have no experience for comparison to the sound inside the studio, which is heavily mixed, massaged and processed anyway. Most of us have no clue what that final master sounded like in the mixing/ mastering room, where it really was assembled and created.

But, it's different, though not perfect, with classical music. My fallible aural memory has accumulated enough experience over the years live to have a fairly good idea, I think, of what an orchestra, chamber group, chorus, soloist, etc. should sound like in a decent hall. I have heard enough halls from enough different seats to have a summary impression for what to look for in recordings.

Yes, halls differ somewhat, and some are terrible, though the bad ones are typically avoided for recordings. But, mostly, in all the live concerts I take in, the halls are decent enough and the similarities far outweigh the acoustic differences from the legendary great halls, some of which I have been in live. I may get some details wrong using my imperfect memory, but there is an essential Gestalt that comes through with a lot of recordings done in Mch, as of course you know, that is very satisfying to me. And, fortunately, there are enough good engineers on small quality labels that seem to understand this.

 

[Cosmik]

So, Is it any wonder folks want to "modify" their sound.
...
...its just a big mess so trying to make some sort of guess by just the volume control we are already past the point of sanity of accuracy to the original recording.

And yet the people listening to the latest straightest speakers say things like

A holographic, dynamic and crystal clear window to the music. The Kii THREE is an invisible speaker that grants you access to a true representation of the music ...

The Kii THREE’s are the first loudspeakers to come into my room where I did not feel the need to apply external Digital Signal Processing (DSP) to smooth the frequency response....
The Kii THREE’s produce a “big” color free sound that belies their size... just about perfect sound reproducers.

...the traditional kind of subjective analysis we speaker reviewers default to — describing the tonal balance and making a judgement about the competence of a monitor’s basic frequency response — is somehow rendered a little pointless with the Kii Three. It sounds so transparent and creates such fundamentally believable audio that thoughts of ‘dull’ or ‘bright’ seem somehow superfluous...
...it is dominated by such a sense of realistic clarity, imaging, dynamics and detail that you begin almost to forget that there’s a speaker between you and the music.

Plenty more similar quotes are now available.

So people who hear the new breed of straight speakers are moved to tell us that they *don't* want to modify the sound.

The owners of the primitive speakers of the past - and 95% of those in the present day - need to modify the sound because their systems are riddled with hidden objective errors such as phase rotations, timing misalignments, smearing of bass in the time domain. Only the systems that have been designed by 'iconoclasts' avoid these errors, and the subjective results seem very consistent.

 

[tomelex]

And yet the people listening to the latest straightest speakers say things like



Plenty more similar quotes are now available.

So people who hear the new breed of straight speakers are moved to tell us that they *don't* want to modify the sound.

The owners of the primitive speakers of the past - and 95% of those in the present day - need to modify the sound because their systems are riddled with hidden objective errors such as phase rotations, timing misalignments, smearing of bass in the time domain. Only the systems that have been designed by 'iconoclasts' avoid these errors, and the subjective results seem very consistent.

I have not had the opportunity to hear these Kii speakers yet. However, there is more to audio than perfection of playback, when one makes it a hobby, other things come into play of course, looks of gear, emotional connection with gear, involvement with gear. For example, some tube amplifiers, with meters for bias and current etc, with knobs for adjustment, and with the special "sound" of tubes, these units suck you in, you become involved with them, you adjust them, you listen through them, you feel the heat of the tubes, the faint glow of the filaments, the warmth emanated into the room, the "aliveness" of the gear, these are things that all combine and add to the experience of playback in our homes and without the benefit of the total real experience of the original event.

I have always said that if you give an audiophile a "perfect" system (or something close to it such as these speakers perhaps?) then they will get a notion to "do something" to the sound, to involve in the hobby, because while we all enjoy our music, sitting at home, there is just the music. The ambience becomes our gear choices and the lights and the look of the gear as well. Its a total experience, and euphonia is a part of that.

If I listened to those speakers ,and felt, damn, these things rock like nothing else, I would still have another system somewhere in my home that allowed me to be in the "hobby" of audio, as opposed to the "end result" of audio. I will have to see someday (probably at a show) if these well liked speakers speak to me enough to give up everything else other than the music, which cause me to give up the "experience" of the hobby. However, the sound of SET amps is one sound I would be surprised to give up totally as they "enhance" the rather weak ability of plain old stereo to move me.

But, I remain open to what I will hear someday in these speakers. Audio is a wide and encompassing and rich hobby for me, its not just the perfect reproduction of the music which is perfectly flawed to a great deal in plain old stereo to start with.

Your intent or point is well taken though in your posts.

 

[Wombat]

Lucky me. I am happy with transparent stereo sound. It is not expensive to achieve it.
My interest is in listening to and enjoying the music on CDs, without deep analysis of it or the system getting in the way.. I did that prior to settling on my set-up.

Other end of the spectrum, I guess.

 

[Sal1950]

But, I remain open to what I will hear someday in these speakers. Audio is a wide and encompassing and rich hobby for me, its not just the perfect reproduction of the music which is perfectly flawed to a great deal in plain old stereo to start with.

Good post tomelex. I'm sure these new kids on the block sound glorious, but they also won't supply the upmixed surround immersive listening experience I seek to create with the many decades old music recordings I most enjoy. My personal path this decade.
But beyond that, if you've been involved in this hobby for more than a decade or so, how often have you heard the cry "all else is gaslight"? Without the benefit of actually hearing these systems, I know you can't change the laws of physics. Due to the limitations of size and or amount of drivers, there are areas where they will suffer if placed against larger systems, all things being equal. There are aspects of reproduction that large horn systems get right that aren't going to be equaled using only a bunch of dsp.
A hobby ceases to become a hobby if it ain't fun.

 

[tomelex]

Lucky me. I am happy with transparent stereo sound. It is not expensive to achieve it.
My interest is in listening to and enjoying the music on CDs, without deep analysis of it or the system getting in the way.. I did that prior to settling on my set-up.

Other end of the spectrum, I guess.

Being happy with your system is BIG. I figure if you find speakers that "speak to you" and a power amp that has lots of headroom (few have enough watts) and a clean transparent source chain then most folks would be pretty happy with things. Getting transparency in the amp/speaker/room interface is indeed where all the "work" is at IMO. I am not sure what transparency really is when you have speakers and a room to deal with, apparently those Kii are set up to help eliminate the room to some extent but I don't see how they would sound the same in different rooms and thus getting "transparency" is a bit of a moving target with speakers IMO. I think the first goal as a user of reproduction may be being happy with it, for some it comes easier than others for sure.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Lucky me. I am happy with transparent stereo sound. It is not expensive to achieve it.
My interest is in listening to and enjoying the music on CDs, without deep analysis of it or the system getting in the way.. I did that prior to settling on my set-up.

Other end of the spectrum, I guess.

You sir do not sound like a TRUE audiophile.

NOT EXPENSIVE....................heresy. And we aren't talking Klipsch speakers either.

No deep soul searching analysis of the system or whether it gets in the way. Without the requisite trials and tribulations to inform a philosophy of sound you are NOT qualified to express opinions. How could you possibly achieve such things prior to owning and gnashing your teeth over various approaches to just settle on a set up prior to such experience? Pure fantasy.

What do you take us for on this forum?

OH! You are thinking like a propeller headed objectivist.

 

[Wombat]

You sir do not sound like a TRUE audiophile.

NOT EXPENSIVE....................heresy. And we aren't talking Klipsch speakers either.

No deep soul searching analysis of the system or whether it gets in the way. Without the requisite trials and tribulations to inform a philosophy of sound you are NOT qualified to express opinions. How could you possibly achieve such things prior to owning and gnashing your teeth over various approaches to just settle on a set up prior to such experience? Pure fantasy.

What do you take us for on this forum?

OH! You are thinking like a propeller headed objectivist.

'What do you take us for ......?

Pernickety?

 

[Cosmik]

The video world doesn't have these discussions even though the basic problem is pretty similar to that of audio.

A difference is perhaps that video cannot be reproduced using hobbyist-level, garage-built contraptions, so at any one time, video has only ever been reproduced with that day's Kii-level cutting edge technology and enough unambiguous commercial demand to reduce its cost.

When LCD flat screens came in, I resisted buying one rather than CRT for quite a few years. It was the right decision then, because LCD was the equivalent of a low bit rate MP3 in terms of its appearance! I can remember that I liked the CRT's visible dots because they gave the then smudgy low resolution image some fake 'definition' - a 'euphonic'-style distortion. But the CRT would look very poor against a modern LCD: kind of 'squishy' with geometric distortion, low brightness and contrast that modulates a little with the picture.

Most audiophile systems are willfully primitive versions of what could be possible, so these discussions start from the position that most people are listening to badly distorted reproduction, but thinking that it is 'state of the art' because it is expensive. In reality, the most expensive conventional systems have built-in objective problems including odd dispersion with frequency, phase shifts, timing misalignments, driver break-up, time domain smear and so on - that don't show up particularly in the conventional 'flat frequency response' measurement.

If the conventional wisdom is "Minimise the number of crossovers because they introduce audible problems..." resulting in two-way speakers being regarded as hi-fi, then you know you are still in the realms of the Baird mechanical televisor, not the perfect flat screen video reproducer. All discussions flowing from that are biased towards the 'euphonic' measures that are needed to make these speakers sound half-way acceptable.

But it is still possible to set up a modern TV so that it looks horrible. 'Dynamic contrast' is a terrible thing that reintroduces some of the squishiness of the primitive CRT. And if you only ever view material designed to look good to people who are looking for ultra-high brightness, ultra-high contrast, saturated colours then all TVs look equally bad - or good. In a TV shop, I find that watching the local news programme rather than the 'demo' material shows up a TV's neutrality far better (although UK news may be a much less 'processed' affair than the US equivalent).

So if you hear a bad demo of a supposed cutting edge DSP-based speaker, it may just mean that the potential for a philistine to ruin its sound is greater than a conventional system.

I think that the room is a red herring; a straw to grasp in the quest to make primitive audio systems sound OK. When reviewers of the Kii and similar systems get to hear them properly, the room ceases to be mentioned as a factor. A neutral speaker sounds amazing in most rooms without any need for fiddling about with it.

 

[Wombat]

The video world doesn't have these discussions even though the basic problem is pretty similar to that of audio.

A difference is perhaps that video cannot be reproduced using hobbyist-level, garage-built contraptions, so at any one time, video has only ever been reproduced with that day's Kii-level cutting edge technology and enough unambiguous commercial demand to reduce its cost.

When LCD flat screens came in, I resisted buying one rather than CRT for quite a few years. It was the right decision then, because LCD was the equivalent of a low bit rate MP3 in terms of its appearance! I can remember that I liked the CRT's visible dots because they gave the then smudgy low resolution image some fake 'definition' - a 'euphonic'-style distortion. But the CRT would look very poor against a modern LCD: kind of 'squishy' with geometric distortion, low brightness and contrast that modulates a little with the picture.

Most audiophile systems are willfully primitive versions of what could be possible, so these discussions start from the position that most people are listening to badly distorted reproduction, but thinking that it is 'state of the art' because it is expensive. In reality, the most expensive conventional systems have built-in objective problems including odd dispersion with frequency, phase shifts, timing misalignments, driver break-up, time domain smear and so on - that don't show up particularly in the conventional 'flat frequency response' measurement.

If the conventional wisdom is "Minimise the number of crossovers because they introduce audible problems..." resulting in two-way speakers being regarded as hi-fi, then you know you are still in the realms of the Baird mechanical televisor, not the perfect flat screen video reproducer. All discussions flowing from that are biased towards the 'euphonic' measures that are needed to make these speakers sound half-way acceptable.

But it is still possible to set up a modern TV so that it looks horrible. 'Dynamic contrast' is a terrible thing that reintroduces some of the squishiness of the primitive CRT. And if you only ever view material designed to look good to people who are looking for ultra-high brightness, ultra-high contrast, saturated colours then all TVs look equally bad - or good. In a TV shop, I find that watching the local news programme rather than the 'demo' material shows up a TV's neutrality far better (although UK news may be a much less 'processed' affair than the US equivalent).

So if you hear a bad demo of a supposed cutting edge DSP-based speaker, it may just mean that the potential for a philistine to ruin its sound is greater than a conventional system.

I think that the room is a red herring; a straw to grasp in the quest to make primitive audio systems sound OK. When reviewers of the Kii and similar systems get to hear them properly, the room ceases to be mentioned as a factor. A neutral speaker sounds amazing in most rooms without any need for fiddling about with it.

Visual and audio resolution are two discrete things. Let us not confuse/conflate them.

 

[Cosmik]

Visual and audio resolution are two discrete things.

Maybe in your mind, but not in my previous comment. You might as well say "Music and speech are two discrete things". Or "Low and high frequencies are two discrete things". Or "Digital and analogue sources are two discrete things". All true at the level of, say, public address system installation, but not at the level of this philosophical discussion.

 

[FrantzM]

It is supposed to "sound good" to the listener ..if it doesn't then no amount of discourse about accuracy and fidelity to the source wil sway the listener. The truth is that there is room for accuracy and good sound. Actually ..accuracy sounds good. We may need to define hence what realy is accuracy... and this is not a flat FR at the listener ears in a room. A flat FR sounds strident for most recording.. A tilted FR has been shown by serious researches to be preferable. How to achieve it has been the issue and there are various roads to this result.

The fact that there are many ways to skin the proverbial cat has been used by manufacturers to build their share of the market. we are at a point where audiophile are glad to pay for anything that suggest then they are on their way. Tweaks and accessories that purport to get the rich ( he cannot be poor ... he is never poor) audiophile to that state of nirvana abound and are obscenely priced to the delight of the connoisseurs. So he ( always a "he") constantly tweak his system , making it more "resolving" and adding things that can charitably be described as pathetic... Magic dots... $20,000 power cords and/or USB cables ...etc... $20,000 Magic wood equipment racks ... the list is long.

 

[Wombat]

Maybe in your mind, but not in my previous comment. You might as well say "Music and speech are two discrete things". Or "Low and high frequencies are two discrete things". Or "Digital and analogue sources are two discrete things". All true at the level of, say, public address system installation, but not at the level of this philosophical discussion.

I wasn't being philosophical. Don't see it as particularly relevant on a science-based audio forum.

 

[Cosmik]

I wasn't being philosophical.

I know, but I was addressing my comment to people who might be

 

[andreasmaaan]

If the conventional wisdom is "Minimise the number of crossovers because they introduce audible problems..." resulting in two-way speakers being regarded as hi-fi, then you know you are still in the realms of the Baird mechanical televisor, not the perfect flat screen video reproducer. All discussions flowing from that are biased towards the 'euphonic' measures that are needed to make these speakers sound half-way acceptable.

Off-topic a bit here, but I would argue that 2-way mains + subs is the road to most transparent reproduction in many cases.

I think the fallacy is that a (non-horn loaded) dome 2-way is a good compromise, unless the listener is willing to accept less-than-adequate SPLs or higher-than necessary distortion on many recordings.

A horn-loaded dome or compression driver 2-way is often the best compromise in that it allows for significant lower distortion in the ear's most sensitive 1.5KHz - 5KHz range, smoother polar response (and if a compression driver is used, for the crossover point to be low enough in frequency that lobing is less pronounced).

Companies like Revel, Genelec, Kii and Dutch & Dutch, now utilise a horn-loaded tweeter on all their models, for this reason I believe.

I'm not sure if you were referring to this case in which subs are also added though @Cosmik? I agree that in most cases a mere 2-way without subs is not a great idea, although if you don't mind big speakers in a small room, I've certainly made good examples of 12" or 15" two-ways that play low and clean at moderate levels too.

 

[Cosmik]

I think the euphonicists are trying to do something like this:

Back when color television sets were luxury items, there was a cheap and easy alternative to get our favorite programs in color. ...

The screens were thin, transparent pieces of plastic that stuck to the TV screen. The top portion of the screen was blue for the sky, the middle had a reddish tint, and the bottom was green for grass.

...they did add a little bit of excitement to the gray scale that was dominant during the early years of television.

 

[andreasmaaan]

I also want to add that tone controls may not only be compensating for deficiencies in the reproduction system (including the room). Many recordings are mixed and mastered on imperfect systems or by engineers with different tastes or hearing than the listener's (particularly older and recordings by non-professionals). Altering the frequency response at the point of reproduction is a blunt instrument, but still sometimes better than the alternative.