But can an NFS tell you what a good one is? Ild like to extent that to electric guitar which means there amps. Can an NFS tell me if I should buy a Fender instead of a Marshall?
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PS Audio got a Klippel NFS
- Thread starter Randolf
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You could totally klippel (it's a verb now lol) several guitar amps, get the frequency and time and distortion response, then compare it to your taste, and then determine what exact characteristics make or break a guitar amp according to your liking.
That's the beauty of actually understanding measurements. Learn to interpret them and how they relate to your subjective perception, and it will become much easier to get the exact sound you want. Science describes "feeling" rather accurately!
RexrothPigeon
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instruments produce music; hi-fi gear reproduces it
analogizing the two is a non-starter
analogizing the two is a non-starter
explains why I was disappointed in their products (sorry). they never ever made anything better.
If you know what you're going to do with the amp, i.e., what you are going to play, with whom, and where, an NFS might answer the question, or at least provide you part of what you need to know to decide whether you want a Marshall or a Fender.
Regarding the first half of your question, NFS might provide a little info, but not much, I'm afraid. I suspect it might do a better job of identifying a bad fiddle (or bad players), i.e., those appropriate only for accompanying lunar leaping cows. (Hey Klippel, Klippel, the cat and the fiddle...)
thewas
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Million-dollar Strads fall to modern violins in blind ‘sound check'
Living violinmakers score a win over Stradivari in double-blind test
www.science.org
Living violinmakers score a win over Stradivari in double-blind test
Science | AAAS
Jaxx1138
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Someday this will be somethig every person will accept as a fact.
Thats true. I usually measure outside with 7-8ms gating. I follow kimmostos instructions to merge farfield and nearfield bass response.Well, there are some significant limitations in midrange resolution, depending on your ability to get a long enough window length for our gated response. That has been a significant issue for me.
Scott Hinson that used to run the DIYBasslist back in the day (if any of your are old enough to remember usenet and listserves), has a pretty good white paper on this issue:
Speaker Freakers | I measured a tiny little speaker...and wrote about it a lot | Facebook
I measured a tiny little speaker...and wrote about it a lot. The same concepts apply to bigger speakers...which makes things a whole lot more complicated.www.facebook.com
A lot of musicians already do. Virtual amp modelling these days takes impulse responses (=measurements) of guitar amps and cabs and then uses convolution to impose it on any signal. Exactly how convolution reverb works. You sample the response of a thing - piece of electronics, speakers, a room - with a standardised noise burst.
It works really well. Not 100% obviously but so convincing, it's highly useful. You get a collection of impulse response and use in a convoluted, and can choose between all the classics and obscure ones. Instead of doing an algorithmic approximation like classic amp modelling does, the software uses the real thing. Nifty!
Theoretically, you could do the same with any speaker. If you had an ideal, technically perfect speaker (whatever that is), if you took a good enough impulse response of another speaker and impose it on the signal, you could emulate any speaker and room. Technology isn't quite there yet, but still. The possibility exists.
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DatSpeakerTho
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Well, there are some significant limitations in midrange resolution, depending on your ability to get a long enough window length for our gated response. That has been a significant issue for me.
Scott Hinson that used to run the DIYBasslist back in the day (if any of your are old enough to remember usenet and listserves), has a pretty good white paper on this issue:
Speaker Freakers | I measured a tiny little speaker...and wrote about it a lot | Facebook
I measured a tiny little speaker...and wrote about it a lot. The same concepts apply to bigger speakers...which makes things a whole lot more complicated.
I sure hope this guy knows about vcad now, because that's a lot to type up when one could just say "merge NF with Far Field". Pretty accurate results that way.
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It’s just important to understand where the data is valid and where you have low resolution etc
Roland68
Master Contributor
Musical instruments can only produce sounds; some people can create music from them.
At the latest when you look into electric pianos/grand pianos and their functionality, you'll realize that your statement is flawed.
They are musical instruments, recording devices (some of them), and playback devices all in one.
It depends alot of your data what you feed to vcad.
DatSpeakerTho
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Shouldn't depend on much, measure from 1m, measure close mic of driver. Merge em.
The lower you can merge the better so you need good measurements for farfield to get better midrange resolution.
Not going to work if you want to measure the radiation pattern of cardioid bass.
The part that many still refuse to accept today, is that if they do measure well, they will sound good!
Also, unfortunately some people purpose build electronics that don't measure well and then insist the resulting sound is better, warmer, blacker, whatever. BLAH
They're not even consistent with it, who woulda thunk it. "Warm" usually means slightly muffled with a hint of even distortion, while "black" is almost the opposite: zero noise and clean signal. German hifi magazines like to talk about "raven black bass", what they mean by that is a speaker going very low with very low distortion. Clean subbass.
Methinks it's only a matter of time before somebody manipulates the data gained, and publishes it - as proof of their products performance. If I were Klippel, I would seriously consider countermeasures.
Roland68
Master Contributor
This is just as ineffective in the long run as falsifying or manipulating the measurement data from an APx Audio Analyzer.
If someone is actually selling speakers or equipment, someone will eventually take measurements. Every manufacturer should be aware of what this means for their company, their reputation, and their sales.
In the worst-case scenario, any buyer can even return the device/speaker after five years due to fraud.
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