Reality Is Overrated When It Comes to Recordings (Article from music Engineer/Producer)

[tuga]

How do we measure it? Can Amir's Audio Precision tell me if something has a "good soundstage"?

What does "good" soundstage mean? In other words, "good" in whom's opinion?

Soundstage has many qualities, some of them incompatible (e.g. phantom image focus vs. width or room-generated envelopment vs. recreation of the recorded ambience). The trade-offs are innevitable and some people will prefer one type of presentation over another (e.g. upmixing vs. 2-channel or wide directivity vs. narrow directivity).

It is a question of perception and a matter of taste.

 

[tuga]

Perhaps you could avail yourself of Toole's work? "Apparent source width" is not limited to as wide as your speakers.

It is with real stereo over an adequately setup system (one which does not used side-wall reflections).

Different mic techniques will spread the phantom images differently between the speakers:

Visualization of ORTF Stereo Microphone System mic angle 110° spacing 17 cm equivalence system - Array with two microphones Time of arrical difference mic - Stereo recording angle SRA time difference level difference mic orchestra angle degrees visua

www.sengpielaudio.com

 

[elvisizer]

You want an extra +15 db @ 50hz "just because"?

lolol +15 tho? hehe

There is also a claim that the Uncanny Valley cannot be traversed (coming out on the other side of the Valley), and this is under debate wrt robots, but not AFAICT being researched wrt audio. I think it is hard enough to make audio playback good enough to get into it (although Matt's "seen a ghost" story is a reminder, his listeners were not entering strongly negative preference territory), and so it might never happen that we can traverse it for audio, especially since we always know it is not the real thing.

first you need to establish that the uncanny valley effect even OCCURS with audio.
spoiler: it doesn't

 

[watchnerd]

Or if I could invite James Hetfield to my house and plug into my amp and play some riffs, this would surpass any recording.

When my bandmates come over, the difference between us playing live and a recording thereof is like the difference between sex and pornography.

Playing the recording back on the same PA speakers we use just turns it into high def porn.

 

[watchnerd]

Many audiophiles prefer the hyper-realistic sound of close-mic'ed instruments for their exaggerated presence, the mechanical noises, the enhanced detail.
But such recordings do not portray what one hears in real life, except perhaps if you're the musician or a maestro.

Right.

I swear people who think that symphonies really sound like that in real life (all those mechanical noises) haven't been to very many symphonies.

 

[TimF]

Works of art on display in a museum have qualitative difference from looking out the window in a museum although there is a genre of art that mimics the 'plainness' of looking out a window. The same with the live performance of the artsy/pop/folksy band. I imagine that when they perform in a venue in front of an audience they add 'gusto' and in many ways engage with the audience. The women performers may be dressed in sexy attire (I've seen that once or twice), and if the crowd gets enthused the band responds and the whole place gets hot. So, live a little!

 

[Gorgonzola]

Many audiophiles prefer the hyper-realistic sound of close-mic'ed instruments for their exaggerated presence, the mechanical noises, the enhanced detail.
But such recordings do not portray what one hears in real life, except perhaps if you're the musician or a maestro.

Totally true, even for many Classical recordings.

OK, I'm not a performer but personally I hate it: I would rather have it sound like I'm 3-4 rows back for chamber music or maybe 10-12 rows back for orchestral.

 

[Robin L]

Right.

I swear people who think that symphonies really sound like that in real life (all those mechanical noises) haven't been to very many symphonies.

The best aural perspective I ever had of the sound of a symphony orchestra was when I was standing in the woodwind section, setting up a microphone stand as the orchestra was practicing. That's probably closer to a typical multi-miked sound than an ORTF pair [what I nearly always used, along with omnis for room sound], three feet above and three feet back of a conductor, a seat that you can't have in an orchestral hall unless you're a pair of microphones. And three feet above and behind is real close to the conductor's perspective. An ORTF pair offers up a better perspective of an orchestra than most of the seats in such venues, but by itself doesn't have enough bass.

 

[Ricardus]

What does "good" soundstage mean? In other words, "good" in whom's opinion?

YES. Thank you. It's a nonsense subjective term.

 

[MattHooper]

tuga said: What does "good" soundstage mean? In other words, "good" in whom's opinion?

YES. Thank you. It's a nonsense subjective term.

No that doesn't follow.

The fact a statement can be made in a vague way doesn't mean the terms in the statement are "nonsense."

Imagine if someone said:

The stage set for that play was "good."

And the reply came "good...what do you mean by 'good stage set,' in whose opinion?"

Conclusion: the term "stage set" is just a nonsense subjective term.

See the mix up there?

The fact someone may make a personal value judgement about X doesn't mean X doesn't refer to something real, that others can experience.

Like "imaging." If someone said "this music track has good imaging" does that mean that "imaging" is so subjective as to be a nonsense word? No, of course not: it's a real phenomenon in stereo, and if a guitar is mixed to the right of a central singer image, a sax to the left, in a proper stereo set up that is what both of us will hear. Whether we rate it "good" is another argument entirely.

I do find it strange to see this confusion.

 

[MattHooper]

OK, really tall speakers will change imaging. Which is what I said in an earlier post. Not about height specifically, but about stereo width (moving your speakers). Sure.

But I'm wondering why people say an amp or a preamp has good or bad soundstage. Not speakers.

Fair enough, I certainly understand that! I find such claims often seem to range between confusing and bogus.

I get it, even though I seem to have been experiencing just such a phenomenon.

I've been "rolling" different sets of tubes in my conrad johnson tube amp and have been surprised by my impressions. Using my regular tube set
the imaging seems really tight and focused, all the sound sort of "squeezed in to place" often between the speakers and with a certain amount of depth. When I use an entirely different set of tubes (e.g. KT120s in place of 6550 power tubes, and also swapping in different driver tubes), the sound seems to simply expand in all dimensions: The sonic "images" of singers, drums, guitar etc seem to expand in size becoming even more life-like in scale, and with many recordings the speakers seem to sort of "vanish" and the whole back wall melts away, giving an almost cavernous
sense of scale and depth, relative to what I'm used to. It's been blowing me away.

Now, on the other hand, audiophiles fool themselves about this stuff all the time. I think plenty are fooling themselves describing soundstage changes with cables, or between many solid state amps etc. And I could be among them. So, hey, I am very empathetic with any skepticism and therefore don't offer the above as proof of anything. Only that, in my listening/subjective experience I can "get" what some are trying to report about how some electronics can alter these impressions. (My *hunch* is that one set of tubes causes the amps to depart from linearity/neutrality, whether it's in damping factor, frequency response, or some other combination, which is sort of "de-focusing" the sound a bit, giving it this sense of expansion. I can't do a good blind test with this, though my tube preamp seems to do similar, smaller scale changes, and hopefully I can test that).

Anyway, to use perhaps a more plausible example: I have a low output moving coil cartridge on my turntable. My phono stage allows easy changing of the impedance for my cartridge impedance loading, a button for each setting. (for MC: 10, 33, 100, 250, 500 Ohm).
As far as I know, it's nobody denies that changing impedance settings for a cartridge can result in audible changes. (Which is why you want to
get the right impedance setting in the first place).

When I raise the impedance setting what I hear is an increasing brightness, and increasing "tightness/focus" of the sonic images. Bass gets tighter, more focused, less 'flabby.' Going down in impedance brings the opposite - more rolled off, "darker" sound, less tight thicker bass, more diffuse imaging. Along with this, I can find the lower impedance setting can make the sound slightly "bigger" sort of like the differences I describe above for the tube amps. Slightly more depth too. Now, if impedance settings can really alter the sound - tighter/brighter vs more rolled off and looser/diffuse - and I perceive this also as slightly altering the imaging and soundstage sizes - I'm not sure how one can know that: "No, these sonic changes really aren't causing those sonic impressions on you."

Cheers.

 

[watchnerd]

Jeezus this thread is devolving into a reeking pile of self-indulgent semantic debate like college Philosophy 101 discussions after you've had some good weed.

Literary criticism meets audiophile vocabulary.

 

[watchnerd]

When I raise the impedance setting what I hear is an increasing brightness, and increasing "tightness/focus" of the sonic images. Bass gets tighter, more focused, less 'flabby.' Going down in impedance brings the opposite - more rolled off, "darker" sound, less tight thicker bass, more diffuse imaging. Along with this, I can find the lower impedance setting can make the sound slightly "bigger" sort of like the differences I describe above for the tube amps. Slightly more depth too. Now, if impedance settings can really alter the sound - tighter/brighter vs more rolled off and looser/diffuse - and I perceive this also as slightly altering the imaging and soundstage sizes - I'm not sure how one can know that: "No, these sonic changes really aren't causing those sonic impressions on you."

Everything you described is expected behavior and can be measured due to changes in FR, resonances, and damping effects.

Underdamping/overdamping a cartridge changes the transducer behavior, and, of course, much of that is subjectively perceivable and objectively measurable.

There is a whole thread here at ASR for test track FR graphs after cartridge loading changes.

But what does that have to do with this thread about recordings?

 

[Newman]

Getting heavy deja vu with this thread.

I feel like I'm reading the same sorts of stuff I used to read in TAS and Stereophile when they came in that paperback book-like format in the late 80s / early 90s.

Jeezus this thread is devolving into a reeking pile of self-indulgent semantic debate like college Philosophy 101 discussions after you've had some good weed.

Literary criticism meets audiophile vocabulary.

Yep. ’Proof by anecdote’ so often starts like this:- “I listened to recording/mastering A (or playback system A), and I heard (descriptive terms) X, Y, Z.” Then the other guy(s) in the room turned to me and said, “That’s exactly what I heard too!”

Slowly he turned. “So it must be real then, it must be really in the sound waves!”

They really are deluded.

If that was all it took to confirm it’s in the sound waves and not other factors, then blind testing would be completely unnecessary. All it would take is to listen sighted one at a time, and if they all report the same thing, it must be in the sound waves. LOL. So simple. Millions of dollars could be saved in audio research (and billions in medical research too BTW).

But I’m beating my head against a brick wall of denial here. I’ve made this perfectly clear in the past, and so have others, but because people don’t want it to be true, they simply come back and keep repeating ‘proof by anecdote’.

You are right to be frustrated. We might as well be posting on Audiophyle Style.

cheers

 

[Newman]

Close-mic'ing can't sound realistic.

You need to clarify your very limited, unnecessarily limited, conception of ‘realistic to what’. eg realistic to being seated centre of row 6 in the venue where the acoustic performance is being recorded. If that is your fixation, don’t press it on all of us or on the discussion as a whole. It’s an unnecessary prescription.

…such recordings do not portray what one hears in real life, except perhaps if you're the musician or a maestro.

You are putting ’centre of row 6’ on an enormous pedestal that it simply doesn’t deserve. It is compromised in countless ways and is basically the least-worst option when a work has to be performed to hundreds of people. If the composers, conductors and players had the option of making the listener’s ear teleport to their preferred location at each moment of the work, they sure wouldn’t leave that ear stuck in row 6, while players are smashing out the notes and trying to project music to back-of-hall.

And, again, I emphasise that much of the excitement and engagement of being there is in being there itself, and the idea of reproducing at home the sound waves of the live experience will be relatively unexciting and unengaging. It’s a false goal. To be realistic is not to have the same sound waves, it is to have the same excitement and engagement. Some compensation is appropriate, if we want the home experience to approach the live experience. Perceptual realism, not sound-wave realism.

(A)Close mic'ing will not capture the ambient sound as listened live in a concert hall or church, and it will not capture the soundscape accurately either.
(B)Multi-channel will generate more envelopment but realism requires 1-mic-to-1-channel. 5 channels will increase the level of envelopment but are still insuficient to reproduce the original soundfield.
(C)Early reflections are detrimental to the recreation of the soundscape (they interfere with the recorded ambience cues) and should not be used for the reproduction of classical music.

(A) Where do you see recordings produced from close mics without ambience mics? The discussion is about close and far mics used together. In which case, everything you are saying about close mic usage is wrong.
(B) Requires 1 mic to 1 channel? Show me the evidence. Or are you just saying something that seems logical to you, therefore must be true?
(C) Bizarre. Simply bizarre. I don’t even know why you felt moved to say it. Did I say early reflections are critical to realistic playback?

 

[MattHooper]

Jeezus this thread is devolving into a reeking pile of self-indulgent semantic debate like college Philosophy 101 discussions after you've had some good weed.

Literary criticism meets audiophile vocabulary.

I don't see how that helps raise the tenor of the thread.

I've sought to be as civil as possible with those I don't agree with. For instance you made sweeping claims like "The professional recording is not even trying to be realistic to begin with" and I think I have challenged that fairly and with civility. I'm sorry you don't feel the same.

Everything you described is expected behavior and can be measured due to changes in FR, resonances, and damping effects.

Underdamping/overdamping a cartridge changes the transducer behavior, and, of course, much of that is subjectively perceivable and objectively measurable.

There is a whole thread here at ASR for test track FR graphs after cartridge loading changes.

As I explained: that's precisely why I used it as a reference.

But what does that have to do with this thread about recordings?

Er...because changing impedance can audibly change the character of recordings through a system?

And this was in the context of "what kind of changes in electronics might impact the impression of soundstaging?"
As I said: I find the tightening up and loosening of the sound via impedance changes can include a slight altering of the
apparent soundstaging.

 

[MattHooper]

But I’m beating my head against a brick wall of denial here.

Don't worry, you won't hurt your head: you are beating it against straw.

But even though we don't agree here I do appreciate your contributions in the thread. The Uncanny Valley is an analogy that sticks with me. Thanks.

 

[watchnerd]

I don't see how that helps raise the tenor of the thread.

I find the direction the thread is taking rather disappointing.

The original article was about how much manipulation there is in the recording chain for the goal of creating a more exciting experience.

But the rest of the thread has turned into more of the same old same old audiophile culture tropes that I've heard for 30 years.

It makes me rather sad that so much of the hobby is still, to this day, simply repetition of echo chamber circular musings and imaginings.

 

[watchnerd]

it is to have the same excitement and engagement

If I'm being honest, often the at home excitement is better.

On a per performance basis, I've drifted to sleep more *at* symphony than I have listening to symphonies at home.

 

[MattHooper]

I find the direction the thread is taking rather disappointing.

It's the same old same old audiophile culture tropes that I've heard for 30 years.

It makes me rather sad that so much of the hobby is still, to this day, simply repetition of echo chamber circular musings and imaginings.

There has been lots of general agreement with the article, with all sorts of angles being covered, and some divergence around the edges.

I can't imagine what else you might have expected. The subject is "realism" in recordings, what various audiophiles are looking for as a goal, and how various audiophile expectations would match up or not with the reality of recordings, how they are made, and why. Everyone here isn't going to be in pure dogmatic lock-step with your own views, so we can just turn off the lights on the subject, so what were you realistically hoping for?

You seem to despair of people who hold views that diverge from yours on the subject. Sorry to see that. I welcome and appreciate all different viewpoints. People have different goals in hi-fi, different experiences. Bummer.