Role of the "Mind" in subjective audio evaluation???

[March Audio]

I don't need to Frank, and it would be pointless. Individuals experience vary. Rest assured though that you are not special. You have no ability to diagnose system problems accurately beyond a gross level. You have demonstrated this many times with quite bizarre theories and statements.

Ok Frank try this.

With my example a couple of pages back, tell me how you would have identified by listening alone, what frequencies the boomy room modes were at and which was the appropriate acoustic treatment to apply to mitigate them

 

[fas42]

Ok Frank try this.

With my example a couple of pages back, tell me how you would have identified by listening alone, what frequencies the boomy room modes were at and which was the appropriate acoustic treatment to apply to mitigate them

First of all, I don't particularly worry about FR response anomalies - I've stated this many times. I'm not sensitive to such, and am happy to say so. However, if there was bass boominess I would be disturbed by this, and would remedy it by locking the speaker cabinet as firmly as possible to the room structure - effectively making the speaker have the properties of very high mass. Using this approach has always worked for me, I don't worry about acoustic treatments.

On the other side, let's say female vocals have significant levels of disturbing sibilance on many recordings - how would you deal with this?

 

[March Audio]

Im afraid FAS that your reply here is a perfect demonstration as to how, without measurement and understanding, you have drawn entirely the wrong conclusion. FAS, you clearly just work in the dark and guess.

The boominess has nothing whatsoever to do with the speaker cabinets or their mounting; it is entirely due to the acoustics of the room and its physical dimensions. Your solution has NOT worked for you, it simply cannot address room acoustics.

How would I deal with a perceived sibilance? -Absolute first thing I would do is measure the speaker to understand what is going on. probably followed by binning it.

BTW, the issue wasnt just an FR anomaly, it is time domain as well

 

[fas42]

Im afraid FAS that your reply here is a perfect demonstration as to without measurement and understanding you have drawn entirely the wrong conclusion. FAS, you clearly just work in the dark and guess.

The boominess has nothing whatsoever to do with the speaker cabinets or their mounting; it is entirely due to the acoustics of the room and its physical dimensions. Your solution has NOT worked for you, it simply cannot address room acoustics.

IOW, if that person happened to have a quality grand piano in that room, the sound of it would be unacceptable until the room acoustics were dealt with? And that would go for anyone wanting such an instrument in a room - the acoustics "would have to be right" for other people to enjoy the sound of the piano?

 

[fas42]

How would I deal with a perceived sibilance? -Absolute first thing I would do is measure the speaker to understand what is going on. probably followed by binning it.

From your experience, what would you positively be able to measure that would give the reason for the sibilance?

 

[Cosmik]

The "Turing Test" is very simple - are the speakers 100% invisible in every conceivable way and position, on every single recording, when listening to them? If they are "almost there" that's still not good enough - the 100% figure is most certainly achievable.

The fatal flaw in this aspiration is that the criteria can be met if, for example, the speakers remain silent at all times. Or they play a constant low rumble. Or they destroy the stereo imaging. Etc.

And you are not in a position to say what the recording should sound like, based on just your own imagination and what is written in marker pen on the cassette lid.

 

[March Audio]

IOW, if that person happened to have a quality grand piano in that room, the sound of it would be unacceptable until the room acoustics were dealt with? And that would go for anyone wanting such an instrument in a room - the acoustics "would have to be right" for other people to enjoy the sound of the piano?

Frank, are really denying the importance of room acoustics? Do you think acoustics are ignored in a concert hall?

In direct answer to your question, yes some rooms do have unacceptable acoustics for music playing or replay.

 

[March Audio]

From your experience, what would you positively be able to measure that would give the reason for the sibilance?

Upper mid / lower HF response problem

 

[Dynamix]

Frank, are really denying the importance of room acoustics? Do you think acoustics are ignored in a concert hall?

He's also conveniently ignoring the fact that the way a piano radiates sound is completely different to any kind of speaker. A rather common audiophool oversight.

 

[Thomas savage]

He's also conveniently ignoring the fact that the way a piano radiates sound is completely different to any kind of speaker. A rather common audiophool oversight.

Plus to can only reproduce what the mic picks up.. no amount of money or obsession on the replay side can over come the short comings of the recording and mastering process etc.

Just as humans we like to convince ourselves we are in control of everything , but we are not.

 

[Cosmik]

For all I know, attaching some actuator thingies to the plasterboard in the walls, ceilings and floor would give you an "invisible speakers" experience and produce some sort of audio "scene". But it wouldn't mean it sounded any good.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

If people said things like "Stereo is defective: we need multichannel" or "Two speakers are not enough: a centre speaker is essential" or "The only way is head tracking and headphones" or "An intelligent loudness control is the only way music can sound realistic at neighbour-friendly volumes" I would be impressed - it would be something to discuss and maybe do experiments on. But they don't. They implicitly accept that stereo reproduced with a 'linear' chain is the ultimate, and then they effectively moan that there's something wrong with it. But because they can't argue with the substantive part of the chain, they attribute the perceived lack of constant orgasmic amazingness to unmeasurable aspects involving the power supply or cables and other peripheral stuff that has only trace effects.

I, myself, also accept the simple linear chain as my system of choice. But I don't hanker after anything better because I know that such a system intelligently engineered (*not expensive*) provides 'goosebumps' quite often (but the mind has also got quite a lot to do with this), and rationally I know that my version of it is as close to optimum as I'm likely to get - and would be, even if money was no object. The only real limitation to such a system is in the listener's mind.

I like the insightful observations in your opening paragraph. I do believe that the stereo model is a defective 1930's construct and that we do need multichannel if we wish to reproduce a better replica of live sound. But, whenever I bring that up, it is as you predicted. Eyes glaze over incredulously in the belief that stereo is/must be the ultimate that God intended. We just have to get the stereo equipment right.

But, yes, I also sense that many listeners feel subliminally that their stereo sound is missing something in the quest for greater realism. They cannot quite put their finger on exactly what it is, so they grasp at straws - or power cords or wall sockets or signal cables or boxes of dirt or ever more costly speakers and electronics, etc.

 

[Thomas savage]

How would it work if one had a setup where every instrument had its own route to a speaker placed where you would want the musician to be in your listening space?

so no stereo mix..

 

[Blumlein 88]

How would it work if one had a setup where every instrument had its own route to a speaker placed where you would want the musician to be in your listening space?

so no stereo mix..

It would work extremely well. While it is true no speaker has the same directionality as a given instrument, it is also true every instrument, musician and posture has a different directionality to the emitted sound. Plus your position relative to direction is rarely the same listening live. It seems just getting a real sound source (from a speaker and not a phantom image) about the same spot in a room about the same size hits tons more 'reality cues' than not doing that.

I recorded 5 musicians in a basement 'studio'. They were in just about the location you get in a 5.1 surround setup. A u-shape around 3 walls of the room. I was near the other wall recording. One close mike on each musician. All playing together in real time and space. There is some bleedover of course though not too terribly much. I took those tracks and placed them in a 5 channel mix for the closest speaker and playing back over my video rig it sounds quite nicely closer to real than is the norm. Much closer. Imaging is coming from real sound sources so you can walk around or move about in it. I was there is about the same location I listen in my video rig. So I have the memory of the sound.

Someone told me that this was cheating. I get their point. Might be a good discussion as to how this could be taken advantage of for more realistic recordings.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

How would it work if one had a setup where every instrument had its own route to a speaker placed where you would want the musician to be in your listening space?

so no stereo mix..

Great. I would love to hear the Mahler Symphony of a Thousand recorded and reproduced that way. Yeah, right.

Unfortunately, you still need a lot more speakers than instruments and singers in the frontal soundstage (which is much less than one thousand for the Mahler, by the way) to also capture the enveloping reflections from the hall as they surround you in 360 degrees. There is science to verify this. And, your listening room is hopelessly inadequate for the purpose of recreating or resynthesizing that from just two frontal channels.

What we hear in most seats at a live musical event usually is really much more diffuse reflected energy, and much less the direct sound of the instruments and voices. So, as is often the case, you are misfocused, trying to reproduce the wrong thing on the assumption that we just need to reproduce the direct sound of performers as our eyes see them, ignoring the invisible and complex reflected sound field they also create, which is just as important to our perception.

Concerns about exactly reproducing the direct sound dispersion patterns of individual instruments are also relatively unimportant and misplaced compared to reproducing the resulting direct plus reflected sound field in the hall that we hear in our seats.

Bottom line, it is not just about direct sound. So, one speaker = one performer does not cut it. You have to adequately reproduce the reflected sound field, as well. Reflections are nature's own imperfect amplifiers. We have grown used to them since cave man days. And, we prefer music in the reverberant, reflective sound field of the hall. Stereo, unfortunately, restricts that in significant ways, especially directionally, though it sometimes does that for the frontal direct sound component plus some frontal reflections adequately via phantom imaging. The rest is largely just omitted in stereo. And, yes, some halls are better than others, subjectively preferred by more people who have heard and compared. Measurements in-hall have identified what acoustic factors lead to putting the Concertgebow, Bayreuth, Symphony Hall Boston, etc. on the pantheon of "best" halls for large scale symphonic music. Attempts to reproduce those acoustic parameters have been iffy in modern halls.

Stereo recordings in acoustically dead studios from multitrack masters can be quite enjoyable as music. But, what is the faithfulness to a live event they are artfully, though artificially, trying to reproduce?

 

[DonH56]

I wonder if it would work as intended... Speaker dispersion and the dispersion of sound from a musician playing an instrument are usually quite different, so you might get artifacts related to how the sound is projected from and interacts among all those speakers.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

I wonder if it would work as intended... Speaker dispersion and the dispersion of sound from a musician playing an instrument are usually quite different, so you might get artifacts related to how the sound is projected from and interacts among all those speakers.

Well, I think there has been great success among many classical Mch engineers in the music niche that has captivated me for the past 10 years. They understand the importance of reflected energy, but not to the exclusion of the role of direct energy. Their emphasis seems to embrace capturing a sound field encompassing both as heard in the hall, rather than trying to just capture the dispersion pattern of individual instruments. The latter is both hopeless and useless, a wild goose chase.

I have said it before, but I will say again, we are not capable of hearing the direct dispersion patterns of instruments. Our ears are not sufficiently numerous, big enough or as widely dispersed as they would need to be to do so. Instead, we hear the frontal direct sound plus the reflections from the hall stimulated by those individual instrument dispersion patterns. That is what we actually hear in our seats. That is what the best engineers seek to recreate.

The very best recordings I have ever heard among the thousands of otherwise excellent hi res Mch recordings in my library are non-commercial, limited distribution ones done by a Grammy-winning engineer friend, Tom Caulfield. Kal agrees, as does Andy Quint, recording reviewer for TAS, as does John Atkinson, among others. Tom works for Channel Classics, and he did his recordings in simple frontally focused ITU 5.0 alongside Jared Sacks' mikes in Budapest and in Spain. He did not attempt to capture direct sound emanating to the sides or rear of those instruments per their direct dispersion pattern. Why should he? We do not hear that sound from those vantage points directly. He merely captured the sound field as we would hear it in the hall to be played back via a corresponding ITU 5.0 system in our homes. When you hear his Mahler Third or Das Lied Von der Erde, etc., it is quite amazing.

 

[Thomas savage]

I enjoyed that kind of setup at a gig once in Brighton, basically each musician had a speaker by them with no other visible speakers to me.

Sounded great.

I just thought it intresting.

Ultimately most just want one speaker or source of sound not 2 for stereo and definitely not 5 plus for multichannel.

I don't actually know anyone who sits in the sweet spot to listen to music other than me, hifi is dead. The few I know with stereo don't take advantage of the stereo as they are out of position when listening and a few I know with surround sound definitely don't keep equidistant from all the speakers so they are pretty much wasting their time too..

So most folks 'minds' seems to dismiss stereo and multichannel altogether, they don't see it as a necessary bridge to cross to get enjoyment out of music.

So what does the 'mind' really need for nourishment in terms of reproduced music at home? It's not stereo or multichannel.

 

[DonH56]

I have very limited experience with such a setup, mainly a few smaller groups on stage with monitors, and it was a nightmare. Comb filter effects and such made the frequency response uneven, and the sound out front just did not sound real -- image all wrong, etc. That was from sound out front combining in a different way than among just the instruments. You could argue that the balance wasn't right and all that jazz, but after hours of mucking with it the next day we ripped it all out in favor of a couple of X-Y or M-S (forget, think it was actually M-S that time) mics in front, couple of solo mics, and a few on the drums for "flavor". Obviously your experience differs, or I just suck at micing, whatever. The Mch recording setups I have seen generally used a few mics around the group (one big band, few orchestras) plus some ambient mics. I lay no claim to any sort of recording expertise on par with the masters. I have a few mch recordings and they sound pretty decent, but the liner notes indicate mic setups as I described and not a speaker per instrument (not sure how you would even do that for an orchestra).

Anyway, I have limited competence to participate in anything in this thread, have at it. - Don

 

[fas42]

The fatal flaw in this aspiration is that the criteria can be met if, for example, the speakers remain silent at all times. Or they play a constant low rumble. Or they destroy the stereo imaging. Etc.

And you are not in a position to say what the recording should sound like, based on just your own imagination and what is written in marker pen on the cassette lid.

We are not talking about a limit situation - rather, a completely unknown recording can be handed to you by someone to play, and the criterion will be met. What "it sounds like" will be the situation that the microphones observed, and the studio manipulation made of it - which will vary enormously, recording to recording.