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When low distortion is boring... then Saturn 2

Davide

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Hi everyone.
I wanted to share with you my recent experience with my HiFi system, consisting of the NHT C3 with two DIY Scan-Speak subwoofers, Hypex nCore amplifiers, and Motu Ultralite Mk5 DAC (with passive attenuators).
The SINAD of my system is sufficiently low, around -100dB, and as I assembled it I noticed the cleanliness of the sound compared to the more commercial and audiophile components I had before.
There will certainly be some of the aspects and parameters of my system that are not SOTA, but my budget is this so I aimed at the best price / performance ratio.
However, I can say that the sound of my system, even if corrected with Dirac Live with various target curve, has never got me excited.
Sometimes I found it so accurate to highlight the shortcomings of some tracks, making me almost crazy trying to figure out if it was a fault of my system or what...
To which I concluded that "Hi-Fi" in the truest sense of the word is just plain boring. You can turn down the distortion and noise and time domain problems as much as you want, but what's left isn't necessarily thrilling...
Then I decided to try with my ears the euphonic effect of the vintage style distortion and then I inquired about the appropriate plugins, ending up identifying the Saturn 2 of Fabfilter and the Trash 2 of iZotope.
They are basically the two best distortion engines on the market in terms of quality. There is no story about this.
However they are particularly complex, especially Trash2.
Saturn is far more user friendly and after some time tweaking I decided to just try out the existing presets.
I open the list ... I see a certain "The Tube", and I think, ok that's the right one.
I load it and I see that it has been programmed in a crazy way, 3 modulators that follow the envelope and a slider to set the entity of the character, each of them controlling like 10 different parameters.
I play at this point ..... WTF !!!!!!!!!!
It may be light years away from fidelity but how cool! Or rather, how warm! A very warm sound that is very reminiscent of vintage systems.
The guy who created the plugin is a genius, let me tell you. No other preset sounds like this.
My system has gotten hugely more enjoyable to listen to now. It's exciting finally. And all because of the distortion ...
So if you're not happy with your system, try a distortion plugin before spending any more money. Maybe that's all you want and you don't know it, like me.
 
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clearnfc

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Ah, i understand where you are coming from. Thats unfortunately a fairly common issue. Some folks who read hifi reviews may have come across reviewers commenting such a downside. The sound becomes so "analytical" that its highlights the flaws of the track. The listening becomes a session to discover faults in recording rather than simply enjoy the music.

Of course, some folks love it while some dont. Its a matter of personal preference. So, the most accurate, most neutral, most resolving, most detailed systems may not be the best (best is a subjective word, whats best differs between individuals). To me, such things sure sounds awesome in the beginning but after a while, it gets tiring and distracting.

An example, i listen to brooklyn duo's canon in D countless times... The cello can be distracting esp. when played slowly. Right before the bow changes direction, there will be a brief scratching noise. I believe its caused by the bow sliding very slowly against the cello strings. Another is the variation in the cello sound. Yes, the recording is so good that i am able to hear (or perceive) the tiny variations in the sound as the bow slide across the strings. Sounds good at first but distracting after a while.

Masking these subtle details out (consider a degrade) actually improve things for me. The cello sounded smooth and good right to the end.
 

clearnfc

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Talking about distortion and music..

My best experience ever was listening to a jolida tube amp (no idea the model) with KEF LS3/5A... no idea whats the cd player as well..lol

I was listening to jacinta's over the rainbow, omg.. it was really really sweet.. the vocals are just so awesome, its just magic. Side back and relax, enjoy the music... I was actually listening to the track over and over again for over an hour..lol..

That was like almost 20yrs ago but could never forget the experience... Lol...
 
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Davide

Davide

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Ah, i understand where you are coming from. Thats unfortunately a fairly common issue. Some folks who read hifi reviews may have come across reviewers commenting such a downside. The sound becomes so "analytical" that its highlights the flaws of the track. The listening becomes a session to discover faults in recording rather than simply enjoy the music.
To tell the truth I don't give a damn about mainstream reviews.
I don't consider an accurate system as something negative, I'm just saying that, in my experience, the best performances are not necessarily translating into better listening pleasure or a more realistic sound rendering (regardless of mastering quality).
Maybe it's obvious, but having found a plugin that allows (me) to enjoy music more than the relative high accurate reproduction, while keeping tons of watts, costs, power consumption and heat at decent levels, it's something worth sharing in my opinion.
I'm most likely not the only one who listens for pleasure rather than analysis.
 
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threni

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It's only when you get decent a hifi you can hear how terrible a lot of (most?) recordings are. I never knew how bad Tom Waits' Big Time sounded. It's hard to believe some of those engineers/producers actually got paid.
 
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Davide

Davide

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I believe that a lot of music, especially modern music, is qualitatively not optimal for two reasons. Approximate digital processing (so to speak, as long as a filter modifies the amplitude, no matter in what way and with what side effects) and optimization for typical audio systems, such as budget headphones, bluetooth speakers and car audio systems (or not optimization for accurate systems, it depends on the point of view).
There are even plugins that emulate the typical response of these devices (IK Multimedia), or other plugin which emulate the effect of lossy compression of the various codecs in circulation (iZotope).
Even the music of the big names, mastered by important production studios, sometimes sounds artificial or distorted or tonally unbalanced or contains recording inaccuracies.
But it doesn't matter in my opinion, beautiful music is beautiful regardless. Euphonic reproduction is just something that makes listening more engaging and exciting. And I believe it is more important than accuracy in an absolute sense, for the above reasons. It is useless to seek an accuracy that in fact does not give added value to listening, if not to the analytical one.
Therefore, I find a plugin that accurately emulates the euphonic effect of vintage equipment to be of great help. And the Saturn 2 is unique in this.

By the way, nice thing, I had a lot of fun playing 1 kHz tones and viewing the spectrum in real time by varying the distortion parameters of the plugin. You can see how the amount of harmonics change according to the type of "tape" or "tube" or "transformer", and see by adjusting the drive level to how many dBFS of attenuation you start to hear the presence (for the record ... let's talk about -30dBFS !!!).
 
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clearnfc

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To tell the truth I don't give a damn about mainstream reviews.
I don't consider an accurate system as something negative, I'm just saying that, in my experience, the best performances are not necessarily translating into better listening pleasure or a more realistic sound rendering (regardless of mastering quality).
Maybe it's obvious, but having found a plugin that allows (me) to enjoy music more than the relative high accurate reproduction, while keeping tons of watts, costs, power consumption and heat at decent levels, it's something worth sharing in my opinion.
I'm most likely not the only one who listens for pleasure rather than analysis.

I am just trying to point out what you have experienced is not something rare or unique, neither did it happen recently. This is just the characteristic/traits of a highly neutral and accurate system. Reviews and user experiences have pointed this out since a very long time ago.

Everything has its own pros and cons. Highly neutral and accurate would be its strength, analytical, sterile etc... Would be its weakness. Of course, its more of just down to individual preferences. Some likes it, some dont. For folks who likes it, analytical would not be a weakness...
 
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Davide

Davide

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I am just trying to point out what you have experienced is not something rare or unique, neither did it happen recently. This is just the characteristic/traits of a highly neutral and accurate system. Reviews and user experiences have pointed this out since a very long time ago.

Everything has its own pros and cons. Highly neutral and accurate would be its strength, analytical, sterile etc... Would be its weakness. Of course, its more of just down to individual preferences. Some likes it, some dont. For folks who likes it, analytical would not be a weakness...
Yes, that should be the concept. But I find one thing strange ...
Headphones are generally particularly accurate reproduction systems, likely more than a speaker system.
But in spite of this, listening is always more pleasant and engaging with them.
I can't define it exactly...
 

Frgirard

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Yes, that should be the concept. But I find one thing strange ...
Headphones are generally particularly accurate reproduction systems, likely more than a speaker system.
But in spite of this, listening is always more pleasant and engaging with them.
I can't define it exactly...
The secret of the headphone is the low decay and the great part of the frequency reproduced in pressure not in velocity.
The secret of the headphone is the isolation from the outside.
 
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clearnfc

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Yes, that should be the concept. But I find one thing strange ...
Headphones are generally particularly accurate reproduction systems, likely more than a speaker system.
But in spite of this, listening is always more pleasant and engaging with them.
I can't define it exactly...

Could you describe more of what you meant by pleasant and engaging??
 

Frgirard

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Everything has its own pros and cons. Highly neutral and accurate would be its strength, analytical, sterile etc... Would be its weakness. Of course, its more of just down to individual preferences. Some likes it, some dont. For folks who likes it, analytical would not be a weakness...
i have k+H O300 and KH420 in a treated acoustic. I don't know what is analytical and accurate. When i heard a system unbalanced i hear an acurate and analytical sound (reverb, string....) thrown "by ear" with a bass light reproduction. Speakers called Avantone, yam NS10...proac
 
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Davide

Davide

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For me, listening with headphones is particularly accurate compared to speakers. There is much more detail and the feeling is that there is more coherence in the sound image, more spatial definition. Regardless of the tonal balance.
This somehow makes the listening more engaging for me.
In speakers, however, I find this effect boring ...
 

DavidMcRoy

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As a retired broadcast TV audio production guy of 40 years, I hear euphonic tube sound come and go all day long in commercials and movies. Though not completely universal, tube mic preamps and audio processors, both hardware and virtual, are popular and in fairly common use on voice tracks for TV and film (and especially TV commercials) as well as in the music industry.

The dichotomy of inserting tube sonics into your home system is that while it can make many sources sound more “entertaining” to the ear (and it does,) it can quickly become too much on material that’s already polluted by that wonderful tube ringing and fuzz, too much of a “fun thing,” if you will, to the point that it can be distracting and even nasty.

As a sidebar, look up the Aphex® Aural Exciter. Besides being used in production, it’s long been used in radio and TV audio signal chains. (Nowadays, the effect is done more commonly virtually in digital domain within a global audio processor that incorporates compression and limiting functions.)

But, here’s the thing: when it comes to audio fidelity, consider that real, unamplfied voices and music don’t have a tube sound. Added “pleasant-sounding” distortion can mimic “retrieval of inner detail” in the minds of many, just not to mine. It isn’t the same thing. It can be addictive in its own way, but it doesn’t give me goosebumps. (Actually, reproduced sound very rarely achieves that level of realism, and when it does it’s often by accident, and I usually associate such occurrences when hearing a source where little to NO dynamic compression or limiting has been used, and that’s rare.)

However, sound reproduction in the home is a part of the entertainment industry, so I say do whatever you want. As for me, I’ll trust the engineers who made the recording or live broadcast. Having said that, when it comes to home system line-level stages I choose my “poison” in the form of JFETs and my power amplifier output devices of choice are MOSFETS. The very subtle distortions in relatively transparent solid state audio equipment come in flavors, and since you MUST have those stages in a system, those are my preferences because bipolar devices turn me off a little. For lack of a better descriptor, there’s a sort of concrete hardness to them that’s seldom present in natural acoustic sounds that I find distracting. Tubes, FETs and MOSFETs don‘t seem to be plagued by that so much, to my ear. Their sins tend to be a subtle hint of fairly innocuous “tube sound.”
 
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Davide

Davide

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As a retired broadcast TV audio production guy of 40 years, I hear euphonic tube sound come and go all day long in commercials and movies. Though not completely universal, tube mic preamps and audio processors, both hardware and virtual, are popular and in fairly common use on voice tracks for TV and film (and especially TV commercials) as well as in the music industry.

The dichotomy of inserting tube sonics into your home system is that while it can make many sources sound more “entertaining” to the ear (and it does,) it can quickly become too much on material that’s already polluted by that wonderful tube ringing and fuzz, too much of a “fun thing,” if you will, to the point that it can be distracting and even nasty.

As a sidebar, look up the Aphex® Aural Exciter. Besides being used in production, it’s long been used in radio and TV audio signal chains. (Nowadays, the effect is done more commonly virtually in digital domain within a global audio processor that incorporates compression and limiting functions.)

But, here’s the thing: when it comes to audio fidelity, consider that real, unamplfied voices and music don’t have a tube sound. Added “pleasant-sounding” distortion can mimic “retrieval of inner detail” in the minds of many, just not to mine. It isn’t the same thing. It can be addictive in its own way, but it doesn’t give me goosebumps. (Actually, reproduced sound very rarely achieves that level of realism, and when it does it’s often by accident, and I usually associate such occurrences when hearing a source where little to NO dynamic compression or limiting has been used, and that’s rare.)

However, sound reproduction in the home is a part of the entertainment industry, so I say do whatever you want. As for me, I’ll trust the engineers who made the recording or live broadcast. Having said that, when it comes to home system line-level stages I choose my “poison” in the form of JFETs and my power amplifier output devices of choice are MOSFETS. The very subtle distortions in relatively transparent solid state audio equipment come in flavors, and since you MUST have those stages in a system, those are my preferences because bipolar devices turn me off a little. For lack of a better descriptor, there’s a sort of concrete hardness to them that’s seldom present in natural acoustic sounds that I find distracting. Tubes, FETs and MOSFETs don‘t seem to be plagued by that so much, to my ear. Their sins tend to be a subtle hint of fairly innocuous “tube sound.”
Thanks for your comment.
In fact the issue of compression making the sound unrealistic is another thing I've noticed.
With the Saturn 2 plugin I also applied a bit of expansion to try to improve in this sense but I didn't get great results ...
Most likely not being an audio engineer you are not able to use it.
 

LTig

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I think the OPs approach is exactly what common sense (and ASR) recommends: get the most transparent system and then use EQ and other means to tune it to ones preference. The point here is that preference depends on the recording and changes with time, so one can easily change EQ et.al. or just disable it completely if required.
 

Cote Dazur

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To which I concluded that "Hi-Fi" in the truest sense of the word is just plain boring
From reading your post, I am curious to see how your “Hi-Fi” is set up, you seem to believe that “good” equipment is the key to good sound.
My experience is that good gear in the wrong location will apparently sound lean and detailed but not engaging, no dsp can overcome overbearing room reflection sound.
Real “Hi Fi” is engaging and detailed at the same time, but funny enough does not require any extraordinary gear, just set up right, which is not always possible in a living room.
 
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Davide

Davide

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From reading your post, I am curious to see how your “Hi-Fi” is set up, you seem to believe that “good” equipment is the key to good sound.
My experience is that good gear in the wrong location will apparently sound lean and detailed but not engaging, no dsp can overcome overbearing room reflection sound.
Real “Hi Fi” is engaging and detailed at the same time, but funny enough does not require any extraordinary gear, just set up right, which is not always possible in a living room.
There is little to explain, they are 2 speakers hanging on the wall on the long wall of the room, not tilted, with two subwoofers positioned below. These are the manufacturer's recommendations, as well as general ones.
In a living room there is typically no margin for setup or sound treatment.
However, what would be the key parameters in this regard? Are they measurable? And if so, what values should they have to make the sound engaging?
 

Rja4000

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The SINAD of my system is sufficiently low, around -100dB
A detail:
SINAD is SIgnal on Noise And Distortion.
That means it a positive figure, just like SNR (Signal on Noise Ratio).
As such, it's the same figure than THD+N, but with sign inverted.

So I guess you meant "SINAD is sufficently high, around 110dB"
 
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