Can Loudspeakers Accurately Reproduce The Sound Of Real Instruments...and Do You Care?

[Kal Rubinson]

I imagine the part in the opening scenes on the beach where explosions cause temporary hearing loss to be pretty real.

Good point: No one who has had the actual experience will be capable of judging its reproduction!

 

[andymok]

It can always be done. Be it recorded into mono and reproduced as a point source in a given space; or setting up speakers with the 60° equilateral triangle relation to resemble the 180° front field

If you want something more than that you can see before your eyes, just go multi-channel, that's what it is meant for.

 

[Shadrach]

It can always be done. Be it recorded into mono and reproduced as a point source in a given space; or setting up speakers with the 60° equilateral triangle relation to resemble the 180° front field

If you want something more than that you can see before your eyes, just go multi-channel, that's what it is meant for.

No it can't. You can reproduce to a particular level of authenticity and that is it; currently.

 

[MattHooper]

Harry Pearson of TAS comes in for a lot of derision especially among the objectivist crowd.


I get it. To me he often came off as a supercilious blow-hard, was often enough likely "hearing things" that weren't there, and was likely responsible for encouraging any number of subjectivist sins.


On the other hand, I don't dismiss out of hand his guiding principle of The Absolute Sound: "the sound of actual acoustic instruments playing in a real space."


This is often dismissed, as it has been often in this thread, as a fool's errand given all the technical reasons why it's currently not possible.
And aside from being "impossible" it brings subjectivism in to the picture. Though it was Pearson's goal to actually rebuff subjectivism to some degree - that is, he felt that by using reality as a standard, we at least had a light at the end of the tunnel guiding out of the morass of pure "What I Like" subjectivism.

The problem is of course this ended up bringing subjectivism to the forefront anyway to a large degree. Lacking easy, rigorous scientific method to compare live vs reproduced, Harry and the rest of his crew were bringing their own subjective interpretations of live sound to their subjective interpretations of a speaker's sound. There were no real metrics to pin down, as there can be if one sticks to objective measured accuracy.


But I think it's something of an unnecessary strawman to think that people using this principle are deluded that it can be fully achieved.
I'm not aware of any audio nut, or audio writer, who doesn't know that colorations are introduced the moment you set up a microphone to record the sound (both in terms of the specific pick up patterns of different mics, different colorations, the coloration of where you place the mic, and on and on).


Rather the concept can be thought of a North Star which provides some guidance - you don't ever expect to reach it, but as an ideal, it seems to me a reasonable criteria GIVEN the desire to hear life-like sound from a sound system. Going by the TAS approach, if your demands for realism are too high, you'll always be disappointed. But scaled to reasonable expectations, I don't see it as a nonsense guide to what one may want out of their sound system.


I'm not fully in the TAS school of thought myself, but I have certainly heard some of my speaker systems sound spookily real on some material.
(I mentioned for instance a recording of me playing my acoustic guitar).


Last night I was listening to an old, smaller set of speakers I've always enjoyed (Thiel 02 monitors). I dared put on an LP of Vaughan Williams' Symphony No5. Even on these modest speakers I experienced here and there a sense of "realism" in the sense of strings and horns sounding something like they do live, the sense of people playing the instruments, and a general spatial layout mimicking live. I had to think I'd moved to the back of the hall given the diminished size, but eyes closed and relaxed, it really wasn't that hard to sink in to sometimes feeling I'm at the symphony.

For me, that would be impossible if *some* aspects of the sound weren't consonant with live sound (e.g. timbrally), which is why for me, live sound sources continue to provide some reference for the qualities I like to hear through my system.

 

[cjfrbw]

Pearson had to concoct all manner of language and mythology in order to sanctify his 'anointing' or 'dissing' of audio components for an audience who needed to be told how to hear. He had to add enough poetics to make the process entertaining.

The 'absolute sound' at best is auditory memory with a recognition reflex. Both are vague and unreliable. Pearson wrote from on high as if he had an eidetic auditory cortex that he could re-play in his head and form judgments. I guess you could call that the 'absolute assertion' rather than the 'absolute sound'. The position is absurd, but people love their authorities and autocratic didacts, so he thrived on his fiction.

I do love it when my stereo fools me and makes me think it sounds very real, but it is usually a 'fly by' temporary situation, and it means it has engaged my cortical reflexes in a positive way. However, I would never make the pretense that it bears any resemblance to the original instrument in real space except by coincidence. It's possible that some renditions on the stereo might sound more 'real' due to recording and playback techniques than the original performance.

 

[MattHooper]

Pearson had to concoct all manner of language and mythology in order to sanctify his 'anointing' or 'dissing' of audio components for an audience who needed to be told how to hear. He had to add enough poetics to make the process entertaining.

The 'absolute sound' at best is auditory memory with a recognition reflex. Both are vague and unreliable. Pearson wrote from on high as if he had an eidetic auditory cortex that he could re-play in his head and form judgments. I guess you could call that the 'absolute assertion' rather than the 'absolute sound'. The position is absurd, but people love their authorities and autocratic didacts, so he thrived on his fiction.

Again, various sins can be pinned to Pearson (his confidence in his auditory recall could be galling). But I see the above as part of the straw-manning I was mentioning. It paints any readers of TAS, or adherents to the principle, as gullible unthinking sheep.

I read TAS on and off when it was in prominence. I never took Pearson's word as holy writ. But here and there he could be insightful about the difference between real and reproduced sound. And on one need be perfect, or the equivalent of a human tape-recorder, to have some insight.

I do love it when my stereo fools me and makes me think it sounds very real, but it is usually a 'fly by' temporary situation, and it means it has engaged my cortical reflexes in a positive way. However, I would never make the pretense that it bears any resemblance to the original instrument in real space except by coincidence. It's possible that some renditions on the stereo might sound more 'real' due to recording and playback techniques than the original performance.

Yes I think pretty much every audiophile, whether pure subjectivist going for TAS or not, would say the sensation of fool-ya-realism is fleeting in reproduced sound. But that's why most people realize they won't be getting perfect replicable realism any time soon, but those moments of realism can be at least enlightening in terms of thinking about how reproduced sound tends to deviate from live sound, which also provides some insight in to the problems one might try to solve to move them closer.

When you say a realistic sounding reproduction would only bear resemblance to that instrument in real space "by coincidence" that strikes me...and I don't mean it to be insulting...as a bit facile. Surely if something sounds real, there is a reason for it. A reason that could be enlightening. If you heard an instrument sound real through your system and I turned the treble way down on your EQ, it wouldn't be "coincidence" that it no longer sounded real. It would tell you about one of the factors you want your speaker/system to be able to reproduce *in order to have a chance of sounding real*.

Similarly, I don't think it's merely by "coincidence" that my omnidirectional MBL monitors seem to produce some aspects of "real instruments being played in real space" far more effortlessly than many other speakers I'm acquainted with. Their mids/tweeters operating in free space virtually eliminate the sense of instruments coming from a box or from a "speaker." Just like a real voice or acoustic guitar doesn't sound like it's coming from a box or speaker. There is a spacious dimensionality to the sound that few regular speakers can match. I have some vocal recordings (I think I mentioned) recorded in a natural space and if I close my eyes it's almost effortless to picture being near the front of a stage hearing live singers - in a way that any number of box speakers I can mention seem to struggle with. There are going to be real-world, physical/engineering reasons why they produce this different presentation. For someone who wants that sensation of hearing voices and instruments produced without box colorations reminding them it's artificial, and with a sense of those sounds happening in more "realistic unconstrained space" - putting it down to coincidence isn't going to help. There's a reason they may want to seek out some omni-speakers.
(Not saying the MBL omnis are perfect by any means...only using them as an example for my point).

 

[Cosmik]

People seem not to be remembering that the audio system isn't providing the accompanying visuals, etc. to go with the audio it is producing. This is bound to affect your perception as to whether it is 'fooling you'.

Even if the audio was a perfect facsimile of an event, or perfectly plausible, the lack of the rest of the experience would be enough for many people to be incapable of judging it so. Part of the 'skill' of listening to audio may be to learn to hear past *all* the missing information.

 

[MattHooper]

People seem not to be remembering that the audio system isn't providing the accompanying visuals, etc. to go with the audio it is producing. This is bound to affect your perception as to whether it is 'fooling you'.

Even if the audio was a perfect facsimile of an event, or perfectly plausible, the lack of the rest of the experience would be enough for many people to be incapable of judging it so. Part of the 'skill' of listening to audio may be to learn to hear past *all* the missing information.

Reminds me of some experiences I've had watching videos on youtube.

I was watching a guy demonstrate some electric guitars, playing without amplification and with amplification. The sound struck me as particularly "accurate" and seemed to capture elements of the guitar so well. It puzzled me because - why did the guitar seem to sound so authentic through my imac's speakers which are far from great? Then I closed my eyes. As soon as the visual cue was gone, and I just concentrated on the sound, there was nothing special about it at all. Sounded like...well...a youtube guitar recording playing through my imac speakers and no more.

When I opened my eyes again, my brain immediately mapped the sound back on to the visual - it was "coming from" that guitar and so my brain accepted the authenticity and it sounded "better."

The connection between sight and sound is always fascinating. (One reason why I've habitually closed my eyes when concentrating on either live or reproduced sound).

 

[Xulonn]

People seem not to be remembering that the audio system isn't providing the accompanying visuals, etc. to go with the audio it is producing. This is bound to affect your perception as to whether it is 'fooling you'.

Even if the audio was a perfect facsimile of an event, or perfectly plausible, the lack of the rest of the experience would be enough for many people to be incapable of judging it so. Part of the 'skill' of listening to audio may be to learn to hear past *all* the missing information.

Alas, I was born to late to expect to ever experience a real "holodeck" experience like as portrayed in the Star Trek series of TV shows and films. I hope if such "multimedia" experiences they do come along in the future - immersion style and not via goggles - some of you younger people here will still be around to experience tham. (And debate the realism factors of such technologies.

I was an usher for the Chicago Symphony during my high school days in the 1950's when Fritz Reiner was conductor, and subscribed to the San Fransisco Symphony for a few years much later. With a fair amount of classical concert attendances under my belt, I can still appreciate classical music - even orchestral pieces - on a decent stereo. In the same manner, I can still enjoy photos or a video of Yosemite Valley, even though no electronic reproduction will ever bring back the thrill of standing on the top of Half Dome and looking over the edge into the valley, or enjoying views at overlooks at many other scenic areas.

Unrealistic expectations can prevent enjoyment of many good things in life.

 

[Cosmik]

Alas, I was born to late to expect to ever experience a real "holodeck" experience like as portrayed in the Star Trek series of TV shows and films. I hope if such "multimedia" experiences they do come along in the future - immersion style and not via goggles - some of you younger people here will still be around to experience tham. (And debate the realism factors of such technologies.

I was an usher for the Chicago Symphony during my high school days in the 1950's when Fritz Reiner was conductor, and subscribed to the San Fransisco Symphony for a few years much later. With a fair amount of classical concert attendances under my belt, I can still appreciate classical music - even orchestral pieces - on a decent stereo. In the same manner, I can still enjoy photos or a video of Yosemite Valley, even though no electronic reproduction will ever bring back the thrill of standing on the top of Half Dome and looking over the edge into the valley, or enjoying views at overlooks at many other scenic areas.

Unrealistic expectations can prevent enjoyment of many good things in life.

When you summon invisible musicians to your living room, how should it work? A girl-and-guitar; a pianist playing a grand piano that would actually not fit into your room; an orchestra in an auditorium that is 100 times the volume of your room?

Should it be a holodeck-style experience where the VR goggles stop you from drinking a cup of tea, or an incredibly sophisticated melding of a virtual space with your own favourite room allowing you to pursue your domestic life while experiencing the finest performers and venues on the planet?

To me, what we have is pretty much the ideal. We have the latter, but we don't realise it because the equipment required to do it is so simple.

All those scenarios seem to work amazingly well and we can quite happily jump from one to the other while suspending our disbelief. It isn't just our imaginations filling in the details; music over an audio system can often take us unawares, shock us, even provoke fear (just how loud is this crescendo going to get?!).

Thanks to hi-fi I have no trouble in believing that at the end of my days I will be able to say that whatever regrets I may have, at least I experienced the finest, richest music in the world.

 

[hvbias]

Obviously there's the challenge with the recording and optimal recording techniques and the speakers need to be superb, but oivavoi touched on something that doesn't seem to be very popular to debate here and that is the acoustics. You cannot take this part out as it has a huge effect one areas lik the timbre, localization, resolution, spaciousness, etc.. You have to emulate the concert hall acoustics to some degree and that's actually possible with a dedicated room of decent size. It was studied over decades.

And in a decent size room would you say absorption or diffusion is more important to pay attention to?

 

[Soniclife]

In addition, raw, uncompressed, un-normalized, live mic feeds are not actually what most people want for home reproduction.

And they really would not want them played back at the real volume.

For large classical pieces what playback volume is used in the mastering room? I doubt there is a standard, but I doubt the peaks are the same as the original event.

Q Can Loudspeakers Accurately Reproduce The Sound Of Real Instruments...and Do You Care?
A I think they could get pretty close if the recordings were trying to achieve this, but I don't believe they are. So no to the first question, and I don't want them to do this for the second. I don't think people actually want reality in their listening room, they only think they do.

 

[Soniclife]

I've found doing close miking either in a dead room or a large space, playing back that one microphone feed over one speaker makes for a big jump in realism. I've done simple experiments where I had 3 to 5 musicians with each having their own mike. Then playback over 3 to 5 speakers so each musician gets a speaker.

I've always wondered if this would work well, good to know it does. If recordings were delivered like this it would allow all sorts of optimisations in the reproduction system, a speaker for drums could be different than the vocal speaker etc, and they could be placed at optimum points in the playback room for the job they do.

 

[Soniclife]

Why do audiophiles often eschew orchestral music in favour of solo violin or girl-and-guitar when demonstrating their systems? Because the problems don't stand out as much.

Yep, just look at the first chart in the following.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...sic-tracks-for-speaker-and-room-eq-testing.6/

I'm now trying to imagine what a Hi-Fi show would be like if every room just played pink noise at the same volume all day instead of jazz.

 

[DDF]

Harry Pearson of TAS comes in for a lot of derision especially among the objectivist crowd.... Again, various sins can be pinned to Pearson (his confidence in his auditory recall could be galling). But I see the above as part of the straw-manning I was mentioning. It paints any readers of TAS, or adherents to the principle, as gullible unthinking sheep.

Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I see this constant demonizing of subjectivists as an offshoot of the identity politics in modern culture, conveniently pigeon holing this amorphous "other" into vague group generalizations. Of course real life is never so simple. I'm sure I'm annoying people by harping on this but I hope to raise this awareness and advocate for positive change in this regards.

The damage done by TAS and HP is indisputable though, best illustrated by a look at the evolution of our hobby. Having a front row seat during the Audio magazine era, they balanced helping enthusiasts understand how their stereos worked so they could make informed choices while also making recommendations for the good sounding stuff.

Over time, TAS gained prominence moving from a church bulletin sized publication (to which I initially subscribed in my early teens) to a juggernaut. With this two hugely corrosive trends were brought into our hobby.

Probably foremost was an undue priority set on trying to hear tiny differences, what Corey Greenberg at Stereophile humorously called the "great detail safari hunt". This heavily diverted precious mental energy and press pages towards nebulous concepts such as interconnects, power cables, cryogenics, CD markers and the like. They created a market driven by neurosis at the expense of missing the big stuff. IMO, steering the market this way resulted in a significant quelling in real innovation and diversion away from valuable priorities in home audio because they actively avoided advocating for it. For example, DSPs were used in telephones in the early 90s. Its a shock to me that it's still not overwhelmingly common for audio gear aspiring to high performance to be based on a system architecture featuring a dsp thats easy to use loaded with opportunities to fix acoustics, easily increase the quality of sketchy sources or upmix to surround of high quality. We've had 30 years to get this right. Similarly, how many systems are still considered high end but band limited to 60 or 70 Hz? Even discussing cable sound in system that can't at least reach 40Hz is like Car and Driver assigning heavy press copy to the leather bucket seats in a Pinto vs describing the Pinto for what it is.

Secondly, they failed miserably in their responsibilities to understand how their stereos work (and how human's hear and listen) if not to teach like Audio did, to at least know so they could drive innovation and advocate for true value. The resulting market they created became oblivious to these and made it much harder for vendors to be rewarded for it, and much harder for vendors to be punished for ignoring it.

So we have well heeled customers obsessing over cables but afraid of dsp. Its no surprise that audio sales blossomed independent to and outside of this culture, in headphones, wireless devices and home theater systems that were "good enough" and easy and convenient, adding real value. The incumbent audio press was mostly relegated to the sidelines watching without either the expert authority or trust from the public to advocate for better sound.

That unfortunately is TAS's true legacy.

 

[Xulonn]

Although classical music constitutes only a small portion of my audio system listening these days, I have attended a fair number of live orchestral performances over the years since my first one in 1957 - 62 years ago. I've actually heard more classical concerts than rock concerts and jazz club performances. I was an usher for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra while a high school student in the late 1950's, and those were the days when Fritz Reiner was the conductor, and the pioneering RCA Victor "Living Stereo" LP's were recorded. (That entire collection has been released on a 63 CD set by Sony that you can buy on Amazon for $800.)

I also subscribed to the San Francisco Symphony for two seasons n the 1980's when Herbert Blomstedt was the musical director.

The sound of a full orchestra is not a single, definable thing - but is a big, complex sound that is difficult to get right in a musical auditorium, much less on a stereo system. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco was completed in 1980 at a cost of $28 million, and was considered to be a sonic disaster. Director Blomstedt was a driving force behind a major remodeling of the new hall, and even contributed a lot of his own money to the project.

Although I cannot report on personal experience, rehearsals in an empty hall surely sound quite different from live performances with 2,500 people acting as sound absorbers.

I have listened to symphonic music on big, expensive stereo systems in big rooms with good acoustic treatments, and was very impressed. But it was still a reproduction and if I closed my eyes, the music could transport me to audio nirvana. But it was not an identical experience to sitting in the third row center in the balcony of Davies Hall.

In my experience, a good stereo can reproduce some musical instruments very well - especially acoustic guitar, one of my favorite instruments. However, I view listening to recordings like I do listening to live music of different genres in different venues, Every experience is unique and different, and I relax and enjoy them as best I can. I absolutely do not expect a recording to precisely replicate a particular live performance, but tweak my system within my budget to produce the best possible experience.

IMHO, obsessive pursuit of the impossible - perfect audio reproduction of a live event - is a malady that can lead to a form of insanity. Rather than fruitless pursuit and obsession with the impossible, I can enjoy music, as well as art, photography and video experiences that bring back memories with their essence intact. Indeed, many classical music fans have - and enjoy listening to - multiple interpretations and performances of their favorite symphonies and operas. Listening to music on a good audio system can be an extension of that philosophy.

 

[Xulonn]

if not to teach like Audio [Magazine]

In retrospect, I think that Audio Magazine was truly my favorite over the decades, and now, ASR is filling a similar role, but with the great modern addition participant internet forums to replace the extremely limited concept of "letters to the editor."

 

[Sal1950]

That unfortunately is TAS's true legacy.

You rightfully demonize TAS but leave out their partners in crime, most especially the leaders of the pack over at Stereophile.

In retrospect, I think that Audio Magazine was truly my favorite over the decades, and now, ASR is filling a similar role, but with the great modern addition participant internet forums to replace the extremely limited concept of "letters to the editor."

Audio was also my favorite, I knew HiFi was on it's way out as a mainstream interest when they closed their doors. Marking the end of the days when a good HiFi was the centerpiece of most living room entertainment medium next to the TV.
We did have Peter Azcel's Audio Critic for some time in the middle. Sadly he was quite a bit older than most and age pushed him into semi-retirement by the very early 2000. Former Audio's Tech editor Ivan Berger took the reins from Peter sometime around 2003. The good news is that recently the entire libaray of past printed issues was upload to the web. (in the past we only had a few).
http://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/audio_critic_down.htm
To quote from that page,
"Back issues of the former print version of The Audio Critic aren’t like back issues of ordinary audio magazines. They aren’t yesterday’s news. Each issue addresses fundamental questions, concerns, and disputes of audio, which are as relevant today as they were at the time of publication. Some of the equipment reviews are out of date; others are still applicable to current products; but the reviews are only half of The Audio Critic. The other half is timeless, or at least highly enduring—articles, critiques, music reviews, humor, all with a long-range audio perspective."
I've downloaded them all for late night reading enjoyment. LOL

 

[Kal Rubinson]

In retrospect, I think that Audio Magazine was truly my favorite over the decades, and now, ASR is filling a similar role, but with the great modern addition participant internet forums to replace the extremely limited concept of "letters to the editor."

Prior to bonding with the original Audio Magazine, my favorite audio publication was the short-lived Audiocraft, the hand's-on mag from the publishers of High Fidelity: https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Audiocraft_Magazine.htm It was my entry drug.

 

[MattHooper]

I've seen more replies at this point stating people don't expect a perfect replication of the live event (orchestra or otherwise). My original question was meant to focus specifically on timbrel reproduction - can we expect speaker drivers to accurately reproduce the huge variety of real-world timbres in instruments and voices, and if so to what degree? I was trying to leave out dynamics, scale, soundstaging and all that.

But I guess we sort of got through that and moved on to TAS-like discussions. Fair enough.