Has DSP turned us into audio neurotics? [rant]

[Old_School_Brad]

The klippel is automating the process and taking some of the variables out of the equation. The Klippel knows the distance between the speaker and the mic, and it know what angles the mic is at relative to the reference axis.

Assuming your using a decent sampling rate, and not doing anything ridiculous with regards to placement of the mic relative to the speaker, you can make some assumptions.
The first sound recorded by the mic will be the sound directly from the speaker and not a reflection. The shortest distance between to points is a strait line (note the speed of sound is constant). A reflection will arrive at the mic later, because it travels a greater distance, and it will arrive at a lower amplitude because it will have transferred energy into the surface it reflected off of. Having the speaker up on a platform, and the mic closer to the speaker than any potential reflective surfaces, just assures the above happens more consistently. It's all pretty strait forward science, and how they can tell the difference between the the speaker and the room.

Amirm normally has the klippel collects between like 500 and 1000 points of data (if memory serves). The data is then post processed, fitted, smoothed, etc before being used to generate various informative plots.

Note the above is a simplified explanation, I'm sure they are using additional techniques to help differentiate between the speaker and the room.


consumer grade DSP with 2 speakers is trying to do something like the above, but most likely they have to try and estimate distance and angles, because you have a human holding a relatively cheap mic, moving the mic around in a none precise manner, and only gathering a few dozen data points at most. If memory serves they generally only take measurements in 2 dimensions not 3 like the klippel. To and extent the simplification is ok, because they are only trying to generate corrections for a specific listening position, not model the speaker.

The main differences are the quality of the equipment, the types of data collected, amount of data collected, and the quality of the data collected.

Dirac Live takes measurements from multiple positions, including varying heights.

Maybe when all AVR and Processors incorporate generative AI they will be able to make the sound exactly as we want ask, without having to do anything!

It might take some time before that's achievable.
I asked ChatGPT to visualize a house curve for in-room use that mimics the sound characteristics of the Apple AirPods Pro 2.

 

[mhardy6647]

That'll do it!


I shouldn't be so cynical.
Give AI time, and it'll (re) invent the smiley.

 

[Old_School_Brad]

That'll do it!

It made me proper laugh out loud. After staring at it for a few seconds, I realized I had no idea where to begin with suggestions for improvement and decided to give up.

 

[ElJaimito]

Hmmmm ..... I'm not so sure about that. https://rode.com/en/about/news-info/the-beginners-guide-to-ambisonics

Jim

Perhaps I should qualify, microphone capsules. Of course we can make them smaller, pre-polarised, and chuck out the VF14s, but after the initial rapid development of the variable capacitance microphones, called "condenser" for reasons beyond my ken, there have been no "transforming" (cough) improvements in quality in my lifetime. I have been keen on Ambisonics since the original Michael Gerzon work in the '70s, and it is all now at last getting some application in spatial cinema/game audio - not sure of its value in music - but all that is involved in the simplest case is a tetrahedral multi-mic with four perfectly normal capsules.

 

[Sal1950]

I really like the wild West aspect of high-end audio.

Yes I know you do. The exact opposite of what the High Fidelity industry's engineers have been working to eliminate for 100 years.
It's the crap-show that everyone from Gordon Holt to Peter Aczel denounced from it's very beginning.
If ever there is to be glimmer of hope for reproducing musical recordings in the home that actually fools even the average man,
it won't be born out of the three ring circus called the "High End". This little corner of snake-oil salesmen, liars and cheats have made
high end audio the laughing stock of intelligent people everywhere.

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information? It wasn’t always so. Between the birth of “high fidelity,” circa 1947, and the early 1970s, what the engineers said was accepted by that generation of hi-fi enthusiasts as the truth. Then, as the ’70s decade grew older, the self-appointed experts without any scientific credentials started to crawl out of the woodwork. For a while they did not overpower the educated technologists but by the early ’80s they did, with the subjective “golden-ear” audio magazines as their chief line of communication. I remember pleading with some of the most brilliant academic and industrial brains in audio to fight against all the nonsense, to speak up loudly and brutally before the untutored drivel gets out of control, but they just laughed, dismissing the “flat-earthers” and “cultists” with a wave of the hand. Now look at them! Talk to the know-it-all young salesman in the high-end audio salon, read the catalogs of Audio Advisor, Music Direct, or any other high-end merchant, read any of the golden-ear audio magazines, check out the subjective audio websites—and weep. The witch doctors have taken over. Even so, all is not lost. You can still read Floyd Toole and Siegfried Linkwitz on loudspeakers, Douglas Self and Bob Cordell on amplifiers, David Rich (hometheaterhifi.com) on miscellaneous audio subjects, and a few others in that very sparsely populated club. (I am not including The Audio Critic, now that it has become almost silent.) Once you have breathed that atmosphere, you will have a pretty good idea what advice to ignore."
Peter Aczel

 

[tomtoo]

View attachment 396716That'll do it!


I shouldn't be so cynical.
Give AI time, and it'll (re) invent the smiley.

The smilie showed what people like, invert it and you get what people dont like.

Isnt that completly mind blowing ??

At this time cheap system had no deep bass and no high highs and a lot of mids. So what people did to be happy? Linearise! It makes you happy. What a phantastic coinsidence. Make jokes about people that dont like smielies!!!

They like this .

 

[Sal1950]

I shouldn't be so cynical.
Give AI time, and it'll (re) invent the smiley.

LOL, it was that kind of wacky crap back in the 70s that gave EQ a really bad name with audiophiles.
The speaker company's and retail salemen loved it for all the blown woofers and tweeters.
I would hope when some good AI comes to DSP it will be able to make some intelligent decisions from within automated software.
But I'm sure the hucksters will prevail there too.

 

[mhardy6647]

LOL, it was that kind of wacky crap back in the 70s that gave EQ a really bad name with audiophiles.
The speaker company's and retail salemen loved it for all the blown woofers and tweeters.
I would hope when some good AI comes to DSP it will be able to make some intelligent decisions from within automated software.
But I'm sure the hucksters will prevail there too.

in re: hucksters* Consider, e.g., Autotune.

_____________
* well, technically, artists or creators, I suppose...

 

[MattHooper]

Sounds cumbersome. Personally I enjoy listen to recordings, but whatever floats your boat.

Really?

Hanging out with different audiophile friends, enjoying their different systems, going to audio shows to hear all sorts of gear that’s interesting and that you’ll never own is cumbersome? I think it’s fun.

There’s all sorts of ways in which we audiophiles indulge ourselves. Some people enjoy building, DIY speakers and amplifiers, this place is full of people who like to dive into the measurements of all sorts of gear, whatever floats your boat.

Quite a few of us own more than one system or more than one pair of speakers, because it’s fun. Audiophiles are attracted to audio gear.

And none of that is at odds with enjoying the music.

 

[tomtoo]

LOL, it was that kind of wacky crap back in the 70s that gave EQ a really bad name with audiophiles.
The speaker company's and retail salemen loved it for all the blown woofers and tweeters.
I would hope when some good AI comes to DSP it will be able to make some intelligent decisions from within automated software.
But I'm sure the hucksters will prevail there too.

Hehe ok you cant compare a cheap graphik eq that time to a modern dsp eq. They where noise factorys. And using them is much more complicated than it looks. That time you could easy destroy more than making good.

 

[mhardy6647]

Sort of in response to @MattHooper's post above -- I definitely prefer to hear different sometimes.

 

[Snarfie]

Exactly.... you point it out yourself The biggest difference between when a DSP can do wonders or not - deeply depends on the understanding of what it can - and what it can't. A complex 3D dispersion spreaded soundfield from a speaker, can never be corrected with a DSP - that's just the laws of nature - not something I cooked in my head

What i understand is that phase coherent time alignt behaviour from speakers can be corrected by DSP. But from the limited test i did (i'm not been able to measure an correct all latest comparable colume speakers) only the Vandersteen that is build phase coherent time alignt was clearly the best speaker regarding imaging staging the speakers disappears completely in my room. Other speakers sounded after correction realy good much better. But imo regarding phase coherent behaviour not coming close to the Vandersteen. So i don't know if you can question (after my limited test probably subjective opinion) how important phase coherent time alignt behaviour realy is an could it been resoveld only with DSP.
Most telling is that after 30 years i changed my favourite speaker for the Vandersteen not looking back one second.

I did ask Mathaudio how they try to resolve phase coherent time alignt issues they where reluctant to tell but that will be probably for all DSP solutions the same an is understandable. So it could be that other DSP solution like Dirac Lyngdorf etc have a better way correcting for phase coherent time alignt behaviour who knows. Would be a reason to become neurotic

 

[CapMan]

Hanging out with different audiophile friends, enjoying their different systems, going to audio shows to hear all sorts of gear that’s interesting and that you’ll never own is cumbersome? I think it’s fun.

Sounds like hanging out at car dealerships without buying a car and then missing out on the scenery of a beautiful drive to be honest.

Just a bit pointless. Sorry

 

[Sokel]

I’m curious, how would Barefoot take a narrow dispersion horn loudspeaker in, say, an average 15 x 13’ room like mine, and make it sound indistinguishable from an MBL on the directional speaker in the same room?

How does it count for and re-create the dispersion characteristics and interplay with room acoustics?

Are we talking to people that know some stuff here or not?
The said Barefoots are studio monitors,why in the world would they try to mimic stuff that are not used at this task?

In general.DSP or not,anything that deliberately alters the original musical and (after agreement) engineering artistic end result is not pro-music in my book.
Can be fun but listening to Amir's bass reference Fading Sun for example and getting a mess instead of this abysmal beautiful C1 because of a nasty room and refusing to use DSP to address it (if not heavily treated down there) is plain sad.

Edit:actual playback of the said song:

 

[Todd68]

I think accuracy is important, but too much emphasis on ultimate accuracy is not as important as some try to make out, for enjoying music anyway. It’s possible that one could do in room measurements and see flaws and become obsessive about trying to fix it. This obsession could just lead to disappointment and frustration and away from the main reason we have these systems, to enjoy their music. It’s interesting that when I was young I could enjoy music from almost anything, crappy boombox or cheesy Sound Design rack “system”. Now I’m too picky, Maybe ignorance is bliss.

 

[MattHooper]

Are we talking to people that know some stuff here or not?
The said Barefoots are studio monitors,why in the world would they try to mimic stuff that are not used at this task?

Were you not following the conversation?

I had stated that I liked the different character of different sounds systems. That would be, of course, all the type of different sound systems and speaker designs one might encounter in high-end audio. DLS79 replied to this;

I hate to say it, but you could DSP any character you want.

You replied:

That's already done,Barefoot does it.
Is kind of fun but certainly not easy to do it home,this character has been done using anechoic data,etc.

so if DLS79 told me that I could DSP any character I like for a given Soundsystem to mimic other sound systems, and you follow up saying that “ it’s already been done barefoot does it” then that obviously implies that barefoot can somehow replicate the sound character of all sorts of different sound systems.

That’s obvious where my question came from. So your reply above seems to be a non sequitur, and I infer you we weren’t understanding what we were talking about.

In general.DSP or not,anything that deliberately alters the original musical and (after agreement) engineering artistic end result is not pro-music in my book.

I’m not sure exactly what you mean there, but in any case we weren’t talking strictly about pro monitors. We were talking about the capabilities of DSP and how far that can go to mimic the sound of different speakers.

 

[MattHooper]

Sounds like hanging out at car dealerships without buying a car and then missing out on the scenery of a beautiful drive to be honest.

Just a bit pointless. Sorry

I admit I find that very odd. For one thing it would be like a car enthusiast not seeing the point of going to car shows. Or having no interest in other cars other than the one he owns.

But it’s even stranger than that; it would be like a car enthusiast saying he wouldn’t see the point of being able to drive different types of cars that he’s interested in. Like a car enthusiast who is only enthusiastic about one car in the world.

In the case of sound systems it’s like being a car enthusiast who gets to drive all sorts of different cool cars! Whether thats listening to system at friends places, or listening to Different interesting systems at my dealer, or going to an audio show and hearing all sorts of wild and exotic loudspeaker systems, to see what people are accomplishing. I mean, I suppose some audiophile Might buy a pair of KEF LS50s and never think about anything different again.

But if you were going to offer me a chance to listen to fascinating speaker designs, such as the MBL extreme omnidirectional speakers, to see what they have achieved, I’d say “ hell yes!”

Why would being interested in audio and sound reproduction, snd taking an interest in the various different engineering approaches be “ pointless?”
Do you find Amir’s interest in audio gear, which established the very site you are posting on, to be pointless?

I presume you’ve never attended an audio show with that be correct?

 

[CapMan]

I admit I find that very odd. For one thing it would be like a car enthusiast not seeing the point of going to car shows. Or having no interest in other cars other than the one he owns.

But it’s even stranger than that; it would be like a car enthusiast saying he wouldn’t see the point of being able to drive different types of cars that he’s interested in. Like a car enthusiast who is only enthusiastic about one car in the world.

In the case of sound systems it’s like being a car enthusiast who gets to drive all sorts of different cool cars! Whether thats listening to system at friends places, or listening to Different interesting systems at my dealer, or going to an audio show and hearing all sorts of wild and exotic loudspeaker systems, to see what people are accomplishing. I mean, I suppose some audiophile Might buy a pair of KEF LS50s and never think about anything different again.

But if you were going to offer me a chance to listen to fascinating speaker designs, such as the MBL extreme omnidirectional speakers, to see what they have achieved, I’d say “ hell yes!”

Why would being interested in audio and sound reproduction, snd taking an interest in the various different engineering approaches be “ pointless?”
Do you find Amir’s interest in audio gear, which established the very site you are posting on, to be pointless?

I presume you’ve never attended an audio show with that be correct?

I can't imagine anything worse than a HiFi show. I much prefer to spend my time, energy and money on going to gigs.

Listening to a bunch of gear, I am unlikely to buy, with music that I have no interest in, played out of context in hotel rooms has absolutely no appeal.

Your reply seems to muddle up a lot of points I didn't make - but each to their own..

 

[MattHooper]

I can't imagine anything worse than a HiFi show. I much prefer to spend my time, energy and money on going to gigs.

Listening to a bunch of gear I am unlikely to buy, with music that I have no interest in, played out of context in hotel rooms has absolutely no appeal.

But each to their own..

Interesting thanks. I certainly agree to each his own, and we all spend our time as we wish. I couldn’t imagine spending the amount of time some here spend measuring stuff. But they enjoy it so that’s great. There are people who buy a nice audio systems and couldn’t imagine spending all the time you and I do on ASR talking about audio gear. “ you already have an audio system, why are you spending so much spare time talking about other gear?”

We are all going to find a way of “audiophiling” in our own way.

 

[CapMan]

We are all going to find a way of “audiophiling” in our own way.

Totally agree - peace ! Have a great weekend