The "audio reference" idea and/or music reproduction, what is your opinion?

[Blumlein 88]

Tom, if I hadn't heard it 30 years ago I would be thinking the same as everyone else; but, one bases reality on how it's experienced - science then comes along after the fact and gives one, the Big Explanation! And normal hifi systems sound exactly the same to me as as they do for everyone else, and if my mine is not at the right quality level it will also sound very "normal" - just like audio science says ... .

Every system has a hidden "turbo" button - and I've worked out how to push it, on various setups. There's no magic in it - simply push the quality level, or signal to noise might be a better term for some, to a high enough point, and the mind switches into a "I believe in this illusion" mode - ASA gives an explanation for what goes on. As an example, if the recording is of a solo piano being played some feet beyond the speaker, and you switched to a real piano being played at that location, and moved everywhere in the room, you would hear a pattern of sound; switch back to the recording, and move around the room again - a comparable pattern is heard.

Just because you know that this is possible doesn't mean it's easy to do. I have a friend down the road who I've been prodding into improving his playback, for years. It gets very, very impressive at times - big sound, all through the house, with so much going for it. But, he still hasn't got the full monty!! Close, but no cigar! ... It's his system, I can only make suggestions, etc - I would do things differently, in major ways.

So there is no magic to it. Simply push the quality level. Yet you can't formulate or rigorously describe what quality we are pushing. To what level it must be pushed for this to happen. What steps or parameters will result in a large enough quality change. Is that right?

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

1) 99.9% of the time, the recording is "the original event." Everything else is wish fulfillment. 2) Anyone who believes their system, regardless of it's price, comes close to reproducing live music has never been in a room with a drum kit, and if they had, they'd realized that the much-maligned "PA system" comes a hell of a lot closer than most high end systems. You want to produce the visceral impact of live music? Power. Lots of it. Efficiency. Lots of it. The ability to whisper with great articulation and scream without distortion. It ain't easy. And it ain't happening with turntables and tubes. The "high end" is a fantasy.

Tim

 

[RayDunzl]

Anyone who believes their system, regardless of it's price, comes close to reproducing live music has never been in a room with a drum kit, and if they had, they'd realized that the much-maligned "PA system" comes a hell of a lot closer than most high end systems.

I ran a PA for a while for a 5 piece group... I can identify with what you are saying above.

Here's my three-dollar Goodwill Used Car Salesman Halloween Party outfit, 1982. I could sing the high notes more reliably than the on-stage talent, in particular during the 50's segment of the show, which is why I have an SM57 at the ready. We couldn't come up with a suitable name for the band so we chose Alias. This one night stand was in an Italian Restaurant. I was not singing when the picture was taken.

The sound/feeling/memory of all that is certainly one of my references now, at least for some suitably electrified material. I get close enough here to fully satisfy myself and could still turn it up to unbearable and dangerous feeling live-ish levels, but don't. My current amplification has a higher power rating than the "ABSystems 1200-B King of the Jungle" that was on the woofers. John and I owned the bass and mid amplifiers, which served us for Home Duty for years afterwards. It's in the garage in one of the the "what am I going to do with this pile" piles.

Rick Thompson on Bass, Bob Preston on Guitar and vocal, Joe Vegetable Nelson on drums and vocal (he did a mean Swedish Chef at break time), John Magic Fingers Vaccaro on the right on Guitar, Casiotone, Recorder and vocal (John is still my Audio Buddy and comes over on Saturday Nights), and Jerry "I'm just gonna mumble something here because I forgot the words" Thompson Center Stage as the Front Man and one-finger synthesizer melody player. Jerry owned the board and speaker cabs and lots miscellaneous stuff and was the instigator and found us a few gigs.

We had an early Lexicon Digital Delay/Reverb device that was fun to play with.

The cassette recordings I have from that endeavor are a bit dated, and 35 years older than that now, since all we had to play was was 50's 60's 70's stuff, unless you wanted to be right up to date and play "Eye of the Tiger" (we could have but fortunately didn't).

The Captain Kangaroo theme was another break time outro. Come to think of it, one of my tasks was to whistle the Andy Griffith Show theme as another break time exit tune.

Some Doo-Wop, Beatles, Steely Dan, Jethro Tull, Rush, Styxx, Skynard, 38 Special, and so on. I'd remember more names if I listened to the folks we covered, but I mostly don't. Tull/Beatles/Dan are in my collection. I think that's all I have from the three or four hours of tunes we had worked up, unless I have something by accident. The Classic Rock stations still play our tunes, so, once in a great while I tune one in to see how long it takes before they play one.

 

[watchnerd]

Thomas, it's the combination of science/engineering and being able to hear, really hear what a system is getting wrong, versus right, that gets one over the line. A good example of the hearing side is Al M saying "While my system is limited in many ways, I was astonished that, when I play that recording at a similar loudness as heard at that recital, it actually provides a rather quite good resemblance of the impact, macro- and micro-dynamics, and overall timbre of the live piano experience. Even though of course there are many finer timbral differences that easily differentiate reproduction from the real thing." So, get the guts working right at the proper SPLs and most of the essence of the "real thing" is there - the "finer timbral differences" are the giveaways where the system has flaws still - if listened to, with knowledge, they guide one to where the system still has to be "fixed". Knock off every one of those issues, and convincing sound emerges, automatically ...

Yes, good impulse response and low distortion are important.

That's why electrostatics, for all their flaws, still nail a few things better than other transducer types.

But none of this is new news....

 

[tomelex]

I have cleaned up this thread, lots of deleted posts which were IMO not relevant or factual, and also cleaned up responses to not relevant posts, sorry guys if you were depending on something I deleted. I deleted some of my posts that also were just follow ons to irrelevant posts

 

[tomelex]

1) 99.9% of the time, the recording is "the original event." Everything else is wish fulfillment. 2) Anyone who believes their system, regardless of it's price, comes close to reproducing live music has never been in a room with a drum kit, and if they had, they'd realized that the much-maligned "PA system" comes a hell of a lot closer than most high end systems. You want to produce the visceral impact of live music? Power. Lots of it. Efficiency. Lots of it. The ability to whisper with great articulation and scream without distortion. It ain't easy. And it ain't happening with turntables and tubes. The "high end" is a fantasy.

Tim

Just wanted to comment on tubes for specific reasons of accuracy to this thread. A tube, for example, a DHT, produces less harmonics without feedback than any other device commonly used in audio. So, if you do apply negative feedback around it, it produces less other higher harmonics as well. Now, typically will be a bit noisier than solid state though. Just for accuracy here on ASR, I do acknowledge that a tube can be a very fine amplifier, especially in a voltage amplification circuit as opposed to a power amplifier which, if using a transformer, is now its own sort of tone control.

 

[fas42]

mix engineers have to do a lot of processing to get drums to "sound" more realistic from a stereo speaker pair, one listen to a live kit and you realize this instantly.

Just noticed this post - the dynamics are turned down for many recordings, but a competent system has no trouble delivering the impact of the real thing, when captured on a reasonable recording. The best I've heard was Bryston amps driving big Dynaudio speakers, with the wick turned up - the subjective "kick in the guts" was all there, would have easily fooled most people ...

 

[watchnerd]

Just noticed this post - the dynamics are turned down for many recordings

Dynamics are turned down for pretty much all recordings compared to the raw feed. One of the live small venue jazz recordings I made had 40 dB swings on the drum kit (ranging from light brush work during ballads to solos with double bass drums, cymbal crashes, and gongs). Most consumers don't want 40+ dB swings on music they listen to at home, even audiophiles.

 

[RayDunzl]

. Most consumers don't want 40+ dB swings on music they listen to at home, even audiophiles.

I do!

Charlie Hunter Trio - Guitar, Sax Drums - Fred's Life

First track - and whole album

 

[Blumlein 88]

I do!

Charlie Hunter Trio - Guitar, Sax Drums - Fred's Life

View attachment 4092

First track - and whole album

I do too!

I do agree that most don't.

 

[amirm]

I do!

The mo' the better!

 

[fas42]

I do!

Charlie Hunter Trio - Guitar, Sax Drums - Fred's Life


First track - and whole album

I could be very wrong, but this sounds very much like the demo track on those Dynaudios - the rifle-shot quality, attack of the drum hits was fully rendered, and never compressed as the volume rose ...

 

[watchnerd]

I do!

Charlie Hunter Trio - Guitar, Sax Drums - Fred's Life

View attachment 4092

First track - and whole album

But it looks like there is some clipping near the 2.0 and 4.0 marks....

 

[RayDunzl]

But it looks like there is some clipping near the 2.0 mark....

There are 21 full scale samples in track 1, out of 11,889,360 samples for a "clip" rate of 0.00000176628%

The rest of the high values samples have been tweezed so as not to "clip". Compression/Soft limiting.

However, a full scale sample may or may not indicate a clip, when "intersample overs" are taken into account.

It's pushed, probably has studio tricks all over it to make it hot... 1993 recording.

Here's the waveform at the first "clip" around 4.2 seconds:



Right up against the wall in places.

Full track with "clip" markers: