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Audio Myths and Human Perception - Explored


mikebse2a3

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1 hour ago, Chris A said:

Note that if no subsequent mixing or mastering operations are performed on the recorded data stream, then the last two items lose most of their importance.

This is somewhat true, but most recordings aren't straight to two track or surround. I certainly have no problem with that. Makes it tough on all the musicians though. ;)

 

1 hour ago, Chris A said:

Apparently not uniformly.  If you look at classical recording, mixing and mastering, I think the picture changes.  Of course, they're not trying to significantly change the "sound" of the resulting product through computer or mixing board manipulations, and typically aren't trying to mix over 70 tracks together simultaneously

 

Except perhaps for John Williams, who would put multiple mic's on each section. Phase issues must have been out the wazooooo!

 

1 hour ago, hsosdrummer said:

I record live music in my home studio at 24-bit/96kHz resolution. For comparison, I used my DAW software to rip a 24/96 file down to 16-bit/44kHz. It took repeated listening to zero-in on the extremely miniscule differences between the master 24/96 file and the 16/44 rip. However, since computer storage space is so cheap, it's worth it to me to have my master recordings in as high a resolution as possible, so I continue to record and mix in 24/96 and rip down to 16/44 when I burn 2-channel CDs.

 

One thing I've noticed over the years is that it's the increase in bit depth that correlates with a sound quality difference, not the increase in sampling rate.

 

Archive material is usually done at the highest rate you can afford. I know some folks who record at 88.2, so there is less math going down to 44.1. I also have some friends who record at 44.1, whose CDs come out rather reasonable. I need to ask them if they have them mastered by someone or leave them the way they finish the mix.

 

What DAW are you using?

 

Bruce

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2 minutes ago, Marvel said:

What DAW are you using?

 

PreSonus Studio One. I know there are upgrades available (my version is a couple of years old) but I'm not interested in starting a brand-new learning curve.

 

I previously used AcidPro 6 for many years, and I still have to use AcidPro 6 to create CDs with more than one track, since without the mastering suite upgrade there's no way to add CD track markers to a Studio One file (a major flaw, in my opinion).

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Quite a few acquaintances use Studio One. It is a really nice piece of software. I have Reaper and Harrison Mixbus (the regular Mixbus and 32C versions). Just ahd an update that came out yesterday. I'm using AVLinux, as the performance is way better than my Windows versions. I'm finally getting around to transfering my 4 track RTR tapes and ADAT tapes so I can get rid of the equipment. I was to remix a couple of my older tracks and see if I have improved my skills. :ph34r:

 

Bruce

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All of my older archives are on cassette — I worked for Nakamichi for 12 years so I owned a bunch of great decks. Unfortunately, the only one I still have (a ZX-9) needs an overhaul (all the rubber parts have disintegrated due to smog contamination). Once I get it repaired I'll be transferring dozens of hours of recordings dating back to 1972 into my DAW so I can put them on CDs and listen to them again.

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Talking about perception. A year ago I attended Gothenborg HiFi Show. There where two hotels filled with hifi of every kind. In almost all rooms there sat men and women(!) analyzing what I thought was harsh and loud. In one room there stood a pair of Cornwalls playing in moderate levels. The same people could here talk over cup of coffie. This is the way I listen to music, I thought. Now I have a pair of Cornwall III since a year back and use the with big joy every day. Before I was chasing hifi through THD numbers. The room with the Cornwalls change my way of looking at hifi. Instead of comparing numbers one could observe peoples responses. I changed from big expensive amp and speakers, that made me want to turn of or play very soft music, to other equipment that not could compete with numbers but brings the fun in the front seat. Now I play my Cornwalls with tubes and a homemade class-A amp with a smile.

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On 7/30/2017 at 1:03 PM, mikebse2a3 said:

Richard C Heyser (PWK thought very highly of Heyser) was the first to wake me up to the fact that way to often audio reproduction, equipment, and testing procedures have often been one-dimensional or treated as if it is a one-dimensional problem or experience, and the reality is audio reproduction is multi-dimensional, and the process to understand it requires looking into all the dimensions involved.

I believe that Heyser was one of the strongest contributors to hi-fi measurement repertoire...but he wasn't the only one.  Klippel should be mentioned, as well as Richard Small (of T/S parameters fame), as well as a large number of other engineers, industry practitioners, computer application developers--of which I would single out John Mulcahy of Room EQ Wizard fame for providing everyone the opportunity to do real loudspeaker/room measurements freely.  The tools that we have today eclipse what would have cost many tens of thousands of dollars in the early 1990s. 

 

One of the myths perpetuated by the "anti-measurement/anti-engineering" proponents within the old-guard audiophile community is that you can't measure hi-fi, etc.  Any evidence that two components are measured in some test and measure the same but sound different are usually seized upon by this faction as incontrovertible evidence that their central meme (the immeasureability of hi-fi) is true. 

 

However in all cases that I've witnessed, when it's suggested that there are measurements that can be performed that negate this central meme (and usually proceed to post some of those measurements), those that hold to this myth typically shift their focus to something else that apparently validates the notion that "hi-fi can't be measured".  I also see a lot of "appeal to ignorance" informal fallacies to defend their position that what they hear (the "golden ear argument") can't be measured, and in every case that I've seen, each aspect of hi-fi performance can be measured.  The question is whether or not it's easy or inexpensive to measure.  There is a lot that's easily and cheaply measured nowadays, and that list of loudspeaker, room acoustics, and electronics measurements continues to grow.

 

What I have noticed is that all of those holding to the "anti-measurement" beliefs almost without exception don't know how to use the measurement tools and what to look for.  This is a key observation.  It's not like someone takes the time to learn, then later rejects measurements altogether.  Everyone that I've seen that learns to how to use the measurement tools uses them for evaluation, because it saves time, it gives them concrete evidence of the issues, as well as giving them other clues to further investigate.  These individuals all still use their ears, but this is aided by measurements.  I've found that the more that the tools are used by individuals, the more familiarity that comes with the measurements and what to look for, as well as provide a feedback mechanism to train their ears to hear loudspeaker/room issues, as well as issues in the electronics and source music tracks. 

 

One of the things that I look forward to is the proliferation of tools that compete with Klippel's R&D test platforms, only at a much lower price that's accessible to DIYers.

 

Chris

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16 hours ago, Marvel said:

Makes it tough on all the musicians though. ;)

Well that was always the standard by which I was judged: perform the music while it was being recorded (after rehearsals).  The recording was then produced from the performance-from beginning to end.  I believe that is the standard by which all major orchestras/ensembles are also judged. 

 

The idea that musicians go into separate cloisters with headphones, play into a microphone as many times as it takes to "get it right", and someone else (not necessarily a musician) determines what the entire ensemble sounds like...this is an idea borne out of the late 1960s-1970s popular music world using multi-track tape machines.  In general, I believe that this practice results in less good musicians and less good performances, as well as the complete loss of the performance acoustic space which is the critical part of "hi-fi" in my experience.

 

There are several millennia of music where the musicians listen to themselves as part of a whole while playing, making moment to moment adjustments, and getting it right--the first time.  That's what I would call "musicianship" in the clearest sense. Professional musicians do it like that--at sight--without rehearsal--and never cease to amaze me how well they do it.  It's always been part of the profession over the eons of the human experience.  Jazz musicians have made a genre of instantaneous improvisation continuous performance that's withstood the test of time.  If you take away the simultaneous performance part of the music being played by ensembles, you take away the essence of the music.

 

The notion that continuous performance while recording in a single take is no longer the standard by which music performance is judged is clearly not universal.

 

Chris

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I fully agree. Perhaps the 'wink' wasn't enough, but lighten up. My son played first trumpet at Valparaiso U., and the majority of my CD collection is orchestral. However, as soon as it was possible, many, many orchestras performances/recordings were spliced together, taking the best parts of the performance to make a great tape. Now they do the same thing making digital crossfades.

 

I agree that musicians play better and the performance is better when they can see and hear each other in the performing space. It's usually better emotionally and sonically. On a smaller scale, watch/listen to a good bluegrass/acoustic group do a show with one microphone and watch the musicians work the mic, performing a great balance that doesn't require an engineer/mixer to change levels, because it is only one mic. It's hard to beat, and that scales up to a full orchestra.

 

Bruce

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1 minute ago, Marvel said:

However, as soon as it was possible, many, many orchestras performances/recordings were spliced together, taking the best parts of the performance to make a great tape.

Not in my experience has this been the standard--nor the goal.  I do understand that the directors or musicians themselves might select from a list of performances of the same piece of music, but that does not include "splicing together".  Additionally, the performance space of the recordings usually vary, and this is usually not conducive to the best sound of hi-fi recordings in my experience.

 

Lastly, the cost to pay musicians of this caliber is high enough to where the ensembles usually play the piece once, then move on.  That's been my experience with all major orchestras and wind ensembles.  The next performance is different music compositions.  It also works that way for the top solo artists (i.e., playing music from memory) like concertos, sonatas, preludes/fugues, etc.  These artists may play a matinee then an evening performance, then move on.  They cannot afford to play the same compositions over and over again.  These are the most engaging performances that I've heard because the artists aren't bored to death of playing the same thing over and over again. 

 

The same thing can be said of jazz musicians: while the basic constructs of the pieces that they play may repeat from performance to performance, the music itself never repeats.  The base themes and melodies are there only to launch the variations and improvisations and to serve as an ending point for the recapitulations..  Every performance is very different from the prior one.   It was the boredom of the dance bands of the 1930s playing the same numbers over and over again from performance to performance that launched the genre.

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Even a cursory check will find you more about classical/orchestral recordings spliced together. Take it however you wish

 

https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/44057/do-classical-musicians-edit-takes-together

 

There are links within this as well.

 

While I agree with the ideal, it is far from reality. I'll stay off for a while.

 

Bruce

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Marvel is indeed correct — the vast majority of orchestral recordings of classical music made over the past 50 years have been assembled using elements of many different takes, spliced together by technicians who are skilled enough and supervised by producers and conductors intimately familiar with the music so that even listeners who are familiar with the music simply cannot tell where the splices are. Unless you're 100% sure of the provenance of each recording you listen to, you can be sure that most of them are not single-take recordings of a single performance from beginning to end.

 

And hand-in-hand with the above is the fact that the vast majority of orchestral recordings of classical music made over the past 40 years have involved the use of dozens of microphones, the balance of which is accomplished after-the-fact by the record's producer, sometimes along with the orchestra's conductor and sometimes not. A true "stereo" recording (one that seeks to convey the auditory perspective experienced by a listener of the live event) requires only 3 or 4 microphones. In this type of recording, the conductor and orchestra are truly "performing" the music for the mics, balancing themselves along the way. This recording technique results in the truest facsimile of attending the original event. But as the number of microphones increases so does the involvement of people "after the fact" in making decisions about instrumental balance, taking the resulting recording further away from being a facsimile of the original event and moving the recording towards becoming a work of art in and of itself, as opposed to being a record of a performance. Whether or not this is good or bad probably should be the subject of a different thread.

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Check your link--I think it should be: https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/44057/do-classical-musicians-edit-takes-together

 

The economics of doing this for more than perhaps 6-8 musicians is prohibitive, alone, and I would guess that the ensembles that might do this aren't exactly those that could really withstand the bad press from anyone accusing them of "cooking their performances". 

 

I've heard of minor performing groups that might resort to that type of thing (and have heard that type of editing, believe it or not), but usually it shows up in some audio critic magazine that their performances aren't recommended, and those groups usually don't stick around for long--since this is precisely what many of those "classical music critics" are looking for.  There are just too many groups that have the talent nowadays that don't need that type of "help".  Talk to any musician that is trying out for a major orchestra or ensemble: the musicianship is so high that "other factors" are used to select from among alternatives than their playing.  This is typical of the major orchestras.  It's incredible.

 

Also, watch BD videos of orchestral music performances.  It's one thing to say that splicing is occurring, and another to do it with video recordings--it's just not possible to do this without it being obvious on the screen.  The musicians cannot freeze in their postures, and the audience listeners would move around visibly.

 

Note that my library of 5.1 classical videos continues to expand--and these performances are breath-taking.

 

Chris

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By the way, these video performances typically use "Decca trees" with outboard flanking microphones to the left and right, and perhaps audience microphones--that's it.  This gets folded down into 5 channels, usually without use of the ".1" channel.

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Fixed the link...

 

The video wouldn't have to be edited, only the audio. I guess you aren't believing how widespread this is. I read about this being done over twenty years ago by big labels.

 

 

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I don't believe that the practice was ever widespread, in fact, never--due to the cost of trying to do things that way.  There is a reason why classical musicians can do what they do without "trying to do it over and over again".  The big name classical labels themselves have something to lose if they allowed those practices to occur on widespread basis--as is seemingly implied by those whose names on that forum.  Those CDs where the musicians are having trouble playing the music usually wind up in the clearance bins...just like anything else pretending to be espousing quality.  There is just too much talent out there to put up with that sort of thing...and the costs associated with it. The record companies only need to pick up the phone to get real talent--in any genre--that can do it in one take.

 

Chris

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On ‎7‎/‎31‎/‎2017 at 11:28 PM, Zen Traveler said:

Well, admittedly I am not one of the more scientifically ones posting here but I thought most solid state amps within the same specs would sound the same and didn't think that was a 'myth.'

 

Depends on what you mean by same specs. The basic specs that are commonly given for amplifiers aren't sufficient to indicate how an amplifier might sound under actual complex musical signals with complex loads (ie: loudspeakers) IMHO. That doesn't mean they are useless specs it's just that they don't fully describe the operation of the amplifier under the conditions we actually operate them in the majority of the time. Heyser (see his article "Hearing Vs Measurement" ) pointed this out over 3 decades ago and yet the general public is still being feed the same inadequate specs.

 

I would like to share an experience I had back in the mid-1980s while modifying a Hafler DH 200 amplifier. This amplifier was an excellent test bed for experimentation which I wanted to research and experience myself and not just read others opinions.

 

Note: The pictures I'm posting aren't of my Hafler but are just examples from the web that are similar to the Mods I performed with the exception that one of the pictures shows an additional pair of output mosfets which I never did.

 

Note: The stock Hafler had specs as good or better back in it's day and here is a great site that gives the manufacture specs and actual test performance performed by the site's author.   http://www.kenrockwell.com/audio/hafler/dh-200.htm .  DISCLAIMER: Now the modifications I performed in stages I'm reasonably sure should have only improved upon them but I can't verify this since I didn't own the test equipment necessary to perform distortion test back then and if the modifications had increased distortion I should have noted a performance loss which was never the case at any point in listening test so I understand if this raises doubts for some here but it is what it is..;)

 

See: Original Owners Manual with schematic

DH-200_amp_man.pdf

 

Here are the Modification Steps and Listening Perceptions I Experienced as a Result.

Note: KHorns were used during these test and majority of listening was done with less than 10 watts and max power I ever pushed it to was 60 watts peak mostly because it was so loud I couldn't stand it longer than a few minutes at those SPL..!:D

 

Hafler Stock: At the Time I remember it left me with the Listening impression of good clarity with a slight tendency to exaggerated "S" sounds on some vocals slightly.

 

Mod-Step 1: I replaced the Stock Input Capacitor (Electrolytic) with a Polypropylene and Listening impression was not much if any improvement in sound.

 

Mod-Step 2: Installed Musical Concepts changes to the Input/Driver circuits which included what they considered higher quality resistors/capacitors and local power supply decoupling capacitors on the board as well as the power mosfets. Output Stage Bias was raised slightly to keep amp in Class A slightly longer before going into Class AB. Power supply Capacitors were bypassed with small value film capacitors and bleeder resistors. Listening impressions of these mods was a small increase in clarity.

 

Mod-Step 3: Stock PWR Transformer replaced with Toroid Power Transformer(same voltage output with higher current capability) and both 10,000mfd pwr capacitors replaced with 20,000mfd capacitors (of supposedly better audible performance claimed). Listening impression was wow..!!! Clarity, Dynamics and Bass impact/tightness definitely improved and the exaggerated "S" sounds noted in the stock unit was dramatically reduced. Of Special Note was best described as a change in PRaT (Pace, Rhythm and Timing) of the music with noticeable silence between notes versus before the modification. Imaging and Soundstage improved also. Definitely best bang for the $$$.

 

Mod-Step 4: Converted Power supply to DUAL MONO (Toroid PWR TRANSF HAS Dual Output Windings) adding additional Bridge Rectifier and (2) additional 20,000mfd pwr capacitors. Listening impression was mostly noticed as a wider soundstage with a small improvement again in imaging focus noted.

 

Note: I consider the ability to Image as a very important indicator of performance because all aspects of performance of a system are required to create it and the better the ability of a system to create and maintain it seems to correlate with high quality reproduction from electronics, loudspeakers and listening rooms.

 

 

 

miketn

 

 

Hafler Stock Interior5982b0473b600_HafflerDH200stockinterior.thumb.jpg.3fedc9f9b660bd5a6671e1fa737637e2.jpg:

 

 

 

Hafler Modified (Very Similar to the one I modified except he installed an extra set of pwr mosfets per channel)

 

 

5982b13db0900_HafflerDH200moded2.jpg.634ed184a9f09cc39a740fc047364c74.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On 8/2/2017 at 7:37 AM, SOV said:

...The same people could here talk over cup of coffee.  This is the way I listen to music, I thought.  Now I have a pair of Cornwall IIIs since a year back and use them with big joy every day.  Before I was chasing hi-fi through THD numbers.  The room with the Cornwalls changed my way of looking at hi-fi. Instead of comparing numbers, one could observe people's responses.  I changed from big expensive amp and speakers that made me want to turn off or play very soft music, to other equipment that could not compete with numbers but brings the fun in the front seat.

 

This is actually one of the most important points to the ongoing discussion of audio mythology vs. personal experience: what one measures and how the measurements are used to decide what is better.  PWK was the most vocal and steadfast in his views that most audiophiles were paying attention to the wrong measures--completely blind to the ones that do matter.  PWK said a few things that you won't find in any audiophile magazine:

 

1) Most audiophiles are aware of harmonic distortion (i.e., THD, etc.) but are completely unaware of modulation distortion (AM and FM distortion), which are the objectionable forms of distortion since they're in-harmonic, i.e., not integer multiples of the base frequencies from which they originate.  The amount of harmonic and modulation distortion that loudspeakers produce is a function of their SPL output: the louder they play, the more harmonic and modulation distortion, in relative quantities (percent).

 

2) Direct radiating loudspeakers produce large amounts of modulation distortion, proportional to the amount of harmonic distortion they produce, while horn-loaded loudspeakers produce essentially no modulation distortion.  Most people typically don't know this.  This is the majority of the reason why horn-loaded loudspeakers sound so different.  They sound "clear" and "transparent" even at concert level loudness, while direct radiating loudspeakers cannot faithfully reproduce the musical transients without producing objectionable modulation distortion sidebands at higher frequencies that play simultaneously (music doesn't consist of playing only single-frequency sine waves). 

 

3) Compression distortion is also produced by loudspeakers and direct radiating loudspeakers (of any type) are susceptible to  this type of distortion, while horn-loaded loudspeakers basically aren't.  From horn loading, we get the "dynamic reproduction" because of the absence of compression distortion. 

 

There are a few other reasons why your Cornwalls sound so exciting and fun, but the three items above account for the lion's share of the differences.

 

Chris

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@mikebse2a3 Thank you for sharing. You guys who can build your own amps or improve on them really add a lot to this forum. Some of what you wrote is above my head, but after the post you quoted I mentioned Benchmark Tests instead of relying on specs along. One of the things I did get out of your remarks is something I learned on here long ago and that is that amps need to supply current to drive any particular speaker efficiently and that is what some people miss...As an example, I run RF-7s in a multispeaker configuration and found finding a power source that is certified (and on the bench) able to drive speakers that dip below 4 Ohms is more important than just looking at the WPC numbers. 

 

 

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