Can You Trust Your Ears? By Tom Nousaine

[Analog Scott]

So if a piece of music comprises someone 'playing' a sine wave generator (perhaps it comes from the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop ) would you say that it's quite important that the system doesn't turn the sine wave into a square wave - if the intention of the piece is to come through intact?

I would say it doesn't apply to my assertion. I was talking about live acoustic music in a real acoustic space. Not synthesizers. However I will say that the acoustic waveform you get in the listening room of such music will not look anything like the electrical waveform initially created by someone playing a sine wave generator.

 

[March Audio]

I have ordered the book. I have watched about 5 minutes of the video. I found a lot of the first 5 minutes very problematic. This premise that he states has a huge problem.
“Sound production: the performance is the objective.” “Sound Reproduction: reconstructing a captured performance. The goal is to do so with minimal change thereby preserving the art”
There is no sound "reproduction" in stereo recording and playback. It is not reproduction. It is an attempt at an aural illusion of reproduction from a chosen perspective. There no attempt to literally recreate the original waveform in another space. And to make that kind of a snafu assumption as the premise of one's audio philosophy is IMO a huge red flag. I would also like to know how they feel it is possible to compare speakers in mono from the same exact position in one room given the diversity of speaker designs out there and the wide array of radiation patterns from various designs. Is it reasonable to assume that all radiation patterns work equally well in all envirements?

By the way, not sure why you are saying I am "so keen to have a speaker that is non flat." Never said that. I have simply expressed skepticism in regards to the idea that greater measured accuary in all forms is so universally prefered even regardless of source material which is almost always pretty colored to begin with. I have never said "a neutral speaker with a flat on axis and smooth off axis response response would sound bad." If you are going to try to represent my ideas I suggest you use quotes and context from which they are taken. For the sake of "accuracy"

There is nothing wrong with his premise; of course its reproduction of a performance. It makes no difference how that performance has been captured or manipulated. Whatever is consigned to disc (or media) is the performance and art. Please feel free to modify this to your personal preference, but please don't confuse that modification with fidelity.

I think you need to watch the entire video and read the book.

 

[Purité Audio]

No matter how you dress it up it is the same old subjectivist proposition that adding distortion makes it better, it doesnt it is just adding distortion , there are inexpensive pro devices that allow you to add as much distortion as you like in all the orders, much more economical than expensive valve amps.
Keith

 

[March Audio]

I would say it doesn't apply to my assertion. I was talking about live acoustic music in a real acoustic space. Not synthesizers. However I will say that the acoustic waveform you get in the listening room of such music will not look anything like the electrical waveform initially created by someone playing a sine wave generator.

Well maybe not on your system Why do you think this is the case ?

 

[Analog Scott]

There is nothing wrong with his premise; of course its reproduction of a performance. It makes no difference how that performance has been captured or manipulated. Whatever is consigned to disc (or media) is the performance and art. Please feel free to modify this to your personal preference, but please don't confuse that modification with fidelity.

I think you need to watch the entire video and read the book.

There is no way the book or the rest of that video is going to make that premise I quoted as stated any less wrong. If you want reproduction of a performance you get a modern player piano. To believe that two speakers in a completley different room is actually literally "reproducing" the original performance of over a hundred musicians in an actual concert hall, to believe that the playback is recreating the original 3 dimensional acoustic waveform of the original performance accurately is to not understand how stereo recording and playback actually works.

 

[Analog Scott]

Well maybe not on your system Why do you think this is the case ?

You do understand that the acoustical waveform one has in their listening room is a three dimensional waveform but the recording signal wave form is actually two seperate time aligned one dimensional wave forms? You do understand that there is no possible way a three dimensional waveform can literally look anything like two time aligned one dimensional waveforms? Not even Escher could pull that one off.

 

[Analog Scott]

No matter how you dress it up it is the same old subjectivist proposition that adding distortion makes it better, it doesnt it is just adding distortion , there are inexpensive pro devices that allow you to add as much distortion as you like in all the orders, much more economical than expensive valve amps.
Keith

That has never been the popular subjectivist proposition. And that there are all kinds of inexpensive pro devices that add distortion doesn't prove your subjective opinion to be universal. Whether or not there is a cheaper way to create the effect of a tube amplifier has no bearing on whether or not a tube amplifier in a given system sounds better to someone than a solid state amplifier.

 

[Purité Audio]

Read about how sound is propagated, Floyd Toole’s ‘Sound Reproduction’ is really good.
Ultimately you must choose the sound you enjoy, you may add so much distortion that you no longer recognise the song that is your prerogative , it is not however high fidelity.
I am just saying there are cheaper ways of adding distortion than valve amps, and you get to chose the order and value!
Keith

 

[Analog Scott]

Read about how sound is propagated, Floyd Toole’s ‘Sound Reproduction’ is really good.
Ultimately you must choose the sound you enjoy, you may add so much distortion that you no longer recognise the song that is your prerogative , it is not however high fidelity.

Who is suggesting adding so much distortion that one no longer recognizes a song? When you hear music played through less than flat speakers or through a tube amp or through vinyl are you actually unable to recognize the songs anymore?

I am just saying there are cheaper ways of adding distortion than valve amps, and you get to chose the order and value!
Keith

It's off topic. Might be a good subject for a different thread.

 

[Cosmik]

I would say it doesn't apply to my assertion. I was talking about live acoustic music in a real acoustic space. Not synthesizers. However I will say that the acoustic waveform you get in the listening room of such music will not look anything like the electrical waveform initially created by someone playing a sine wave generator.

Ooh, I think when we have to start stipulating that a system can only be used for certain types of music, the argument has been lost! Musical 'art' can come in any form.

 

[Frank Dernie]

We can't remember how we heard things a few hours ago much less how we did a few decades ago.

Precisely the point I was attempting to make.

I think this is where audiophiles go into the forrest and only see the trees. I want my audio playback to sound good. The better it sounds the better it is. I am not worried about whether or not it sounds like I hear live or not. "Live" comes in many flavors and when it comes to live I want the same thing as I do from playback. I want them both to sound good. This whole idea of trying to get audio to sound like live with no discussion about the quality of live music should tell you something. I don't see any reason to judge playback any differently than the way I judge live music in terms of pure sound quality. And I don't need any reference to judge the sound quality of live music. I can judge it on it's own aesthetic qualities. And I can do the same for audio.

You want your audio system to sound nice to you, that is fine, of course, it is your money.


I have made recordings since the mid 60s. I was amused to note that a very popular plug-in discussed on the Metric Halo owners group emulates the tape saturation of a magnetic tape recorder, so it is quite likely that a lot of recordings being sold already have had euphonic distortion added already.
Adding more at home can be fun.
Despite having worked in the record player business and being fully aware of all the shortcomings of LP manufacture and playback I still enjoy my 4 record players, all of which sound different, no chance I will be selling them.

 

[Analog Scott]

Ooh, I think when we have to start stipulating that a system can only be used for certain types of music, the argument has been lost! Musical 'art' can come in any form.

not what I did. Definitely not something I would do either. I like far to many genres of music that have been recorded in so many different ways.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

There is no way the book or the rest of that video is going to make that premise I quoted as stated any less wrong. If you want reproduction of a performance you get a modern player piano. To believe that two speakers in a completley different room is actually literally "reproducing" the original performance of over a hundred musicians in an actual concert hall, to believe that the playback is recreating the original 3 dimensional acoustic waveform of the original performance accurately is to not understand how stereo recording and playback actually works.

Words and their meanings are tricky things. You can complicate most any argument and go off on a tangent about most anything by attempting to apply some more exact or more literal meaning to the imperfect words commonly used to express the original idea.

If you do not like the word "reproduction" as applied to the recording and playback of music, then what superior word or term would you choose? I think the rest of us have no difficulty understanding that audio "reproduction" does not deliver an exact replica of the original live performance in our listening rooms, merely an imperfect technical and artful suggestion of it to varying degrees depending on many factors. Your observations are not in any sense profound and they miss the bigger picture.

 

[Analog Scott]

Words and their meanings are tricky things. You can complicate most any argument and go off on a tangent about most anything by attempting to apply some more exact or more literal meaning to the imperfect words commonly used to express the original idea.

If you do not like the word "reproduction" as applied to the recording and playback of music, then what superior word or term would you choose? I think the rest of us have no difficulty understanding that audio "reproduction" does not deliver an exact replica of the original live performance in our listening rooms, merely an imperfect technical and artful suggestion of it to varying degrees depending on many factors. Your observations are not in any sense profound and they miss the bigger picture.

1. It's not a question of liking or disliking the word "reproduction." That word has a specific meaning and it does not represent what stereo recording and playback actually is doing or designed to do. That's a simple fact not a matter of what I like or dislike. This is not a matter of degree of exactness one gets in their home audio. This is a fundamental difference that can lead to very different approaches to recording and playback. Stereo recording is designed to create an aural illusion not designed to literally reproduce an original event. and it is inherently incaple of doing it with absolute accuracy. I don't think this is a trivial point. This doesn't even get into another issue which is the actual desirablity of absolute accuracy of an aural illusion of the original event from a designated listening position.

2. Whether or not my observations are profound is neither here nor there. I think it is pretty clear that many audiophiles don't fully grasp the fact that stereo recording and playback is not designed to be a literal reproduction of an original acoustic event and this fundamental misunderstanding is often used as the foundation for belief systems about audio and certain beliefs about "fidelity."

It seems that merely pointing these things out really bothers a lot of folks around here.

 

[watchnerd]

Screechy vocals are an 'easy' fix - if that's the way they come across, it means that you're hearing playback distortions. You see, that's why you don't need measuring instruments to provide numbers - your ears are giving you plenty of useful information, already.

I was asked how to know when I have high enough quality - easy, peasy ... no screechy vocals, ever ...

This makes no sense.

A sound that is harsh in the original recording should sound harsh when played back.

Systems that make everything sound nice may be pleasing (and popular with audiophiles), but that doesn't mean they're high fidelity or high quality.

 

[watchnerd]

No matter how you dress it up it is the same old subjectivist proposition that adding distortion makes it better, it doesnt it is just adding distortion , there are inexpensive pro devices that allow you to add as much distortion as you like in all the orders, much more economical than expensive valve amps.
Keith

Indeed.

On the hardware side, this is one of my faves, allows the user to dial in tube vs solid state:

And on the software side, the plugins are endless, but here are some I've used and like:

 

[Analog Scott]

This makes no sense.

A sound that is harsh in the original recording should sound harsh when played back.

Systems that make everything sound nice may be pleasing (and popular with audiophiles), but that doesn't mean they're high fidelity or high quality.

A philisophial question for you. If for a given recording that is harsh would you prefer for that recording in particular fidelity to that harsh sound or a version that sounds better but is less accurate?

 

[Analog Scott]

Indeed.

On the hardware side, this is one of my faves, allows the user to dial in tube vs solid state:

And on the software side, the plugins are endless, but here are some I've used and like:

Have you used the Twin finity units? Seems like an interesting component.

 

[Purité Audio]

With a linear system a wonderful recording sounds wonderful, a less wonderful less wonderful, adding distortion adds that distortion to everything good and bad, it really is akin to wearing rose coloured spectacles all the time.
But if you like it .
Keith

 

[watchnerd]

Have you used the Twin finity units? Seems like an interesting component.

I have one at home and have used it, yes.