The most important parameter of all: overall system integrity

[fas42]

The "parameter" in the thread title refers to what counts for getting "special" sound, that delivers the "Aha!!" experience, over and over again. Otherwise, you're just listening to a hifi, and you're well aware of that fact, all the time.

To use a simple analogy, you have a punctured tyre. It may be a superb quality, high performance item, using the best quality rubber, and the finest design ideas have gone into it - but while it has a puncture it is useless as a means of having your vehicle do a decent job of going down the road. Doing everything to make the tyre better by cleaning it, applying paint to it, conditioning it in some way, is pointless unless you fix the puncture. That's what I mean by overall system integrity: fixing the punctures and air leaks, no matter how small - the result is, that the tyre always behaves itself and gives of what it is capable ... and most importantly, a cheap and nasty tyre with no punctures is good enough to get the job done, and stands head and shoulders over the airless "king" ...

 

[Cosmik]

The "parameter" in the thread title refers to what counts for getting "special" sound, that delivers the "Aha!!" experience, over and over again. Otherwise, you're just listening to a hifi, and you're well aware of that fact, all the time.

To use a simple analogy, you have a punctured tyre. It may be a superb quality, high performance item, using the best quality rubber, and the finest design ideas have gone into it - but while it has a puncture it is useless as a means of having your vehicle do a decent job of going down the road. Doing everything to make the tyre better by cleaning it, applying paint to it, conditioning it in some way, is pointless unless you fix the puncture. That's what I mean by overall system integrity: fixing the punctures and air leaks, no matter how small - the result is, that the tyre always behaves itself and gives of what it is capable ... and most importantly, a cheap and nasty tyre with no punctures is good enough to get the job done, and stands head and shoulders over the airless "king" ...

I still get the feeling you are suggesting that a 6" full range driver can sound "special"...

 

[fas42]

I still get the feeling you are suggesting that a 6" full range driver can sound "special"...

Indeed it can . It has the special advantage that it provides a relatively benign load to the amplifier, and the complications of crossover component parasitics are absent - of course, if you believe thundering, very low bass notes are essential they won't push your buttons. I have had the equivalent of such speakers deliver key elements of convincing sound, albeit limited in volume - this includes the intense "squeal" of a trumpet, say; getting the visceral impact of live music is part of the deal, and doesn't require arrays of specialised, premium drivers.

 

[Cosmik]

Indeed it can . It has the special advantage that it provides a relatively benign load to the amplifier, and the complications of crossover component parasitics are absent - of course, if you believe thundering, very low bass notes are essential they won't push your buttons. I have had the equivalent of such speakers deliver key elements of convincing sound, albeit limited in volume - this includes the intense "squeal" of a trumpet, say; getting the visceral impact of live music is part of the deal, and doesn't require arrays of specialised, premium drivers.

Perhaps we are homing in on something. You want the system to give a good rendition of a trumpet, and you see the bass as "notes". If a speaker driver resembles in some small way, the construction of a violin or a trumpet, you are impressed by its rendition of those instruments, just as you would be impressed by those sections of a fairground organ. If it can't do bass, but can do a passable kazoo, you will search out a selection of kazoo recordings to play on it. I think this is an illusion: the system with great kazoo is just a defective system and you are mistaking its mechanical distortion and resonances as 'real' - which, in a sense they are. But they are only attracting your attention because you have tailored a selection of music to trigger them in isolation.

This fits perfectly with your idea that all recordings have 'potential' - if you supplement them with some sympathetic mechanical rattling. Yes, this means the sound really is "holographic" and omnidirectional. You really can walk around the room without the sound changing.

I, too, want the squeal of the trumpet but I also want all the other instruments and the atmosphere of the overall acoustic. For me, the bass is not just "notes", but is just part and parcel of the interaction between the various acoustic sources and the acoustics. There may be no bass "notes" in the piece at all, but there will be bass in the recording nevertheless.

 

[fas42]

Perhaps we are homing in on something.

Or perhaps we're not. I'm aware that some people enjoy the sensation of recording room rumble in the presentation, but this doesn't interest me - if a system can't present the qualities of instruments that people associate with bass elements in the music, say pipe organ or double bass, or extreme left hand of the piano, realistically then all sorts of room gurglings are not going to be a substitute for that. At the last audio show there was the typical home theatre presentation, where every time a car door closed it came across like a 10 ton weight had been dropped on the floor - sorry, this type of exaggeration is a big fat zero for me ...

 

[Cosmik]

Or perhaps we're not. I'm aware that some people enjoy the sensation of recording room rumble in the presentation, but this doesn't interest me - if a system can't present the qualities of instruments that people associate with bass elements in the music, say pipe organ or double bass, or extreme left hand of the piano, realistically then all sorts of room gurglings are not going to be a substitute for that. At the last audio show there was the typical home theatre presentation, where every time a car door closed it came across like a 10 ton weight had been dropped on the floor - sorry, this type of exaggeration is a big fat zero for me ...

A straw man, surely. We are talking about the ability of a 6" full range driver (for example) to render an acceptable version of a recording. I do not want a car door to sound like a ten ton weight, either, but I do want the low frequency elements of any performance (even if they are not part of the 'score') to be rendered appropriately. My audio system is not just there to render a version of the instruments like a magic lantern show, but to reproduce a complex "scene".

This idea that bad recordings (some from 1910!) can be rendered acceptable by certain systems... - one you linked to earlier sounded OK on people's laptop speakers apparently. This, I suggest, is similar to viewing a ropey bit of video footage on a small screen. The footage will look better on a portable TV from the 1970s than on a 128" 4k TV. This isn't because the portable TV is better, just that dodgy footage looks less bad when it is reproduced 'smaller'. The 6" full range driver is to the world of audio as the phone screen or 1970s portable TV is to video.

 

[fas42]

My audio system is not just there to render a version of the instruments like a magic lantern show, but to reproduce a complex "scene".

Indeed it should. But it doesn't require something that is terribly sophisticated in terms of the driver.

This idea that bad recordings (some from 1910!) can be rendered acceptable by certain systems... - one you linked to earlier sounded OK on people's laptop speakers apparently. This, I suggest, is similar to viewing a ropey bit of video footage on a small screen. The footage will look better on a portable TV from the 1970s than on a 128" 4k TV. This isn't because the portable TV is better, just that dodgy footage looks less bad when it is reproduced 'smaller'. The 6" full range driver is to the world of audio as the phone screen or 1970s portable TV is to video.

No, it goes beyond ropiness ... at the bottom of the scale a simple kitchen radio type of system can make such a recording sound reasonable; as one moves up the conventional ladder of system "improvement" the subjective impression will dive into a deep hole, because every tiny defect of the recording will be very evident, and largely submerge the impact of the actual musical event - it can be unlistenable to; only when getting close to "special" sound does the presentation start to recover, and the defects start to take a back step to the sense of the performance; at "special" or convincing quality level the auditory cues of the recorded event itself finally override all the artifacts of the distortion and noise - the latter move into another space, mentally; they are pushed to one side without effort, and one can quite easily relate just to the music content, as a rich experience. This most likely has to be experienced directly to ever make sense - but demonstrates the power of the mind to make sense of sensory input which is "buried" under extraneous material, when given sufficient overall information to do so - quite remarkable, really.

 

[tomelex]

No, it goes beyond ropiness ... at the bottom of the scale a simple kitchen radio type of system can make such a recording sound reasonable; as one moves up the conventional ladder of system "improvement" the subjective impression will dive into a deep hole, because every tiny defect of the recording will be very evident, and largely submerge the impact of the actual musical event - it can be unlistenable to; only when getting close to "special" sound does the presentation start to recover, and the defects start to take a back step to the sense of the performance; at "special" or convincing quality level the auditory cues of the recorded event itself finally override all the artifacts of the distortion and noise - the latter move into another space, mentally; they are pushed to one side without effort, and one can quite easily relate just to the music content, as a rich experience. This most likely has to be experienced directly to ever make sense - but demonstrates the power of the mind to make sense of sensory input which is "buried" under extraneous material, when given sufficient overall information to do so - quite remarkable, really.

Really Frank, reading all you have above, you say that the same recording when played on a table top radio or cheap stereo system, when played on a more revealing system, which exposes all the flaws of the recording, that now your brain pushes aside all these newly revealed flaws and distortions due to more accurate playback and now it sounds better?

A more revealing rendition of a recording sounds better than a less revealing recording because your (our?)minds then ignore the noise and so called distortions? Are you telling us that the most accurate playback system is the best?

A good or great recording will sound better on a more accurate system, tell us something we did not already know Frank! If the recording is junk to start with we will not notice it as much on the tabletop radio but you say if we play it through a more accurate system our minds will push aside the distortions and flaws and it will then sound great to us.....Frank, I will never understand you dude.

 

[fas42]

A good or great recording will sound better on a more accurate system, tell us something we did not already know Frank! If the recording is junk to start with we will not notice it as much on the tabletop radio but you say if we play it through a more accurate system our minds will push aside the distortions and flaws and it will then sound great to us.....Frank, I will never understand you dude.

Well, I didn't understand what was going on for a long time too - but I had the evidence of my ears to back up that assertion, and they validated the premise over and over again. Even halfway along the journey when I knew what was possible, I had CDs which I thought, No way!! Far too primitive a recording, far too complex a musical carrying on, far too much dirt on top - this was "a play every 10 years just to check how bad it was!" recording. But, at a later date when I was particularly impressed by what I was getting from the system at the time, I tried it, and had the "Knock me over with a feather!!" moment - this has happened so many times I take no notice now when playback sounds terrible the first time on an unknown recording, other than to add it to the "Test instrument" pile.

Tom, it's precisely those recordings that I use to "measure" a system - if it sounds like crap I have an instant reading on overall competence: the system is doing too much damage to low level information and my brain can't sort out the messages. Only at the highest capability levels, yes, the most accurate and revealing rigs, is the information precise enough for the mind to do the necessary sorting.

Part of what's going on is this: all recordings, no matter how primitive or dirty carry quite a deal of acoustic information with them - and it can be natural or artificial, doesn't matter either way. Distortion and noise don't, there is zero "space" associated with this content - so when such is played it exists at the surface of the drivers, its "depth" is at the plane of the speakers. The recorded musical event lies beyond this plane, in terms of what the acoustical detail is telling the brain - so an analogy is the eye looking through insect netting to a scene beyond; you no longer see the netting, and the finer the netting the less aware you are of it having an impact on what you can see in the distance.

 

[Blumlein 88]

snip

Part of what's going on is this: all recordings, no matter how primitive or dirty carry quite a deal of acoustic information with them - and it can be natural or artificial, doesn't matter either way. Distortion and noise don't, there is zero "space" associated with this content - so when such is played it exists at the surface of the drivers, its "depth" is at the plane of the speakers. The recorded musical event lies beyond this plane, in terms of what the acoustical detail is telling the brain - so an analogy is the eye looking through insect netting to a scene beyond; you no longer see the netting, and the finer the netting the less aware you are of it having an impact on what you can see in the distance.

 

[fas42]

Ahhh ... don't you love good science!! When you don't agree with someone, a throwaway response serves very nicely ...

 

[Cosmik]

Ahhh ... don't you love good science!!

As far as I can tell, you think you sometimes achieve "special" but you're not quite sure how. It can't be measured, and it vanishes with the morning mist.
(Rather like human 'moods'. Coincidence?)

It doesn't sound like a good basis for scientific publication!

 

[fas42]

Scientific publication? Heaven forbid! There's nothing going on here except that that a certain quality of sound reproduction "tricks" the mind into accepting an auditory illusion, for some people at least - this is material for a psychology paper, perhaps. The argument I've been having with people on and off is that such happens for some listeners - if one has never experienced it then it is obviously harder to accept it as a possibility when listening to recordings. However, if one does accept it, then the interesting questions are what triggers it, and what is the minimum that needs to be done to guarantee it happening all the time.

 

[Thomas savage]

Setting up a theory, claiming scientific merit but all the while maintaining a stance that relies on said theory not being able to be disproved but also providing no proof of theory either..

Father Christmas lives on the edge of the ever expanding universe, I can't prove this but you can't disprove it..

It's been said by me and others a thousand times Frank, while your many theories might have merit to you they are not communicable into the wider world. They all lack the recognised knowns and subsequent tests of theory that would be required for any of us to value your assertions even just enough to facilitate worthwhile argument.

The various back and forth then that pops up now and then is totally without value.

It's the very essence of the inane.

 

[Cosmik]

Scientific publication? Heaven forbid! There's nothing going on here except that that a certain quality of sound reproduction "tricks" the mind into accepting an auditory illusion, for some people at least - this is material for a psychology paper, perhaps. The argument I've been having with people on and off is that such happens for some listeners - if one has never experienced it then it is obviously harder to accept it as a possibility when listening to recordings. However, if one does accept it, then the interesting questions are what triggers it, and what is the minimum that needs to be done to guarantee it happening all the time.

So how do you know that "some people" are not prone to variants of synesthesia or hallucinations? i.e. fabricating what they perceive from within their own heads rather than it having anything to do with the equipment? Hearing perfect holographic reproduction of a symphony orchestra from a kitchen radio? Sounds like it to me! For the rest of us, we need a rather more literal rendition.

 

[fas42]

So how do you know that "some people" are not prone to variants of synesthesia or hallucinations? i.e. fabricating what they perceive from within their own heads rather than it having anything to do with the equipment? Hearing perfect holographic reproduction of a symphony orchestra from a kitchen radio? Sounds like it to me! For the rest of us, we need a rather more literal rendition.

Some people hallucinate with their equipment, by consuming copious amounts of red or other liquid beforehand!

All of this is is "fabricating what they perceive from within their own heads" - it's the very nature of how we hear, and understand the world in an auditory sense - again, ASA is the extension of the prior understanding of how that human sense works, in particular how the "cocktail party" effect works in the brain: lots of extraneous, irrelevant noise, 'distortion' in the situation; yet we humans can block out what we don't want to hear and just be aware of the content that's important at that moment.

A kitchen radio will always sound like a kitchen radio if that's the quality of the construction; but take one of the super duper mini monitors that are around, costing $10,000 or so; dress up the outside to look like a kitchen radio, stick in place with an unsuspecting listener - does it still sound like a kitchen radio?

I know there are parts of the world where people have a fetish that things have to be BIG, to have a chance of being good, - but with a bit of effort one can get past that thinking, . I have had plenty of exposure to "impressively big" systems, which manage to sound either remarkably small, or uncouth, the drunk lout at the local pub type of thing ...

 

[fas42]

It's been said by me and others a thousand times Frank, while your many theories might have merit to you they are not communicable into the wider world. They all lack the recognised knowns and subsequent tests of theory that would be required for any of us to value your assertions even just enough to facilitate worthwhile argument.

I believe there is a general acceptance that a brilliant quality playback system should produce impressive sound - my only theories are that the "impressive sound" can be pushed a bit further than generally accepted; and that "brilliant quality" is achievable with fairly ordinary gear, suitably modified by a knowledgeable person.


Not really Father Christmas stuff ... .

 

[fas42]

Interesting to keep an eye on some WBF threads - now and again there is a subtle realisation that the overall is important to get the SQ, comments like "these fabulous speakers must be driven by the right amplifiers otherwise they don't sound good!" ... but these hints of insight disappear in a blink of an eye, as the herd flocks with excitement to next shiny jewel ...

 

[RayDunzl]

Well, I guess that about wraps it up, huh?

 

[fas42]

Not really, I was inspired just a short while ago to describe precisely what I did, just on the speakers, in the original system, 30 years ago, that gave me "special" sound for the very first time - I've done this on a forum before, BTW - if anyone is interested I'll kick off a thread, otherwise "that about wraps it up" ...