Speakers are not a matter of personal taste!

[richinlr]

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On 11/27/2004 4:11:03 PM IndyKlipschFan wrote:

nicholtl

Trained ear vs not..

A really good conductor, for instance, when conducting an orchestra can tell you in an instant what section is off or slacking or not playing the right thing at the right time. He is "trained" to know and hear what to expect.

As for me.. I hate it when others who do not sing usually fit this profile, say, "Doesn't that person sound great?" next to me. When deep inside I am groaning because I feel all of the above things they are doing on stage are just terrible. The things I think are important in any genre are just aweful, especially off pitch slightly too. I have learned to smile say something positive and move on. If I was the engineer in a recording studio, bring out the ANTARES pitch correction device..LOL.

I hope some of this rambling helps.

Bottom line is say you hear an orchestra live. You now know how it SHOULD sound. When you go home on a pair of K horns, do you have that same experience that Paul Wilbur Klipsch was chasing for us to enjoy with that same piece of music assuming it was recorded right? If so, his "trained ear" did a very good job voicing our wonderful Klipsch speakers!

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Well put. As you are well aware, a musician's trained ear is trained in

a significantly different way than the 'trained' listeners in the article. When listening to an ensemble, a trained musician will listen for balance (how well do the various instruments blend to create the overall sound as it pertains to the way the composition is SUPPOSED to sound), intonation (how well the intruments are in tune with one another), rhythm (are they all playing together?) and finally, whether or not the music is sufficiently emotive (does it emotionally involve the listener as opposed to cold, flat & technically proficient).

These are nowhere close to pinpointing 6 different frequencies and learning to listen to each. And here is yet another expensive attempt to quantify what is going on that, AGAIN, does not take the music into account. We must never forget the first and foremost reason that human beings build speakers to begin with - to listen to music!

To all scientists out there who are diligently following the rule that emotions and personal preferences MUST be eliminated from the process - an admirable goal but, unfortunately, ignores the very reason we build speakers in the first place. Figure out how to measure the emotive qualities and I will seriously consider your results.

My rules for evaluating a loudspeaker are simple. Just listen to the music! Do you find yourself emotionally enthralled? If so, it is probably a fairly decent speaker.

And PWK was very, very good at building speakers that make you involved emotionally. I have two little RB-25's ($400/pr), that when connected to really good electronics, have a true edge over my main speakers ($1,500 per pair) and give me a glimpse of the sound I heard in Hope so many years ago and have never forgotten. They sound more like 'real' music than my much costlier mains. All live music has a 'edginess' (the only word that comes to mind). The little RB-25's can produce this 'edginess' whereas my mains miss it completely. Whether this results from the horn tweeter or a crossover tweak is really irrelevant to me.

Listen to the music and you can't go wrong...

[nicholtl]

Indy, Rich, very interesting and different ways of approaching the question!

So what I gather is the best way for a non-musician or professional reviewer to train oneself in the art of critical listening, is to listen to music at the souce as much as possible. What I am confused on, however, is that you guys say a good orchestra is able to "blend" the instruments together to create a synergy, a balance, or a harmony, if you will. However, isn't the whole delineation of a good or bad system it's ability to reproduce music in a way that creates a space, or air, around each and every instrument?

I'm quite perplexed.

[DrWho]

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On 11/29/2004 1:07:35 AM nicholtl wrote:

Indy, Rich, very interesting and different ways of approaching the question!

So what I gather is the best way for a non-musician or professional reviewer to train oneself in the art of critical listening, is to listen to music at the souce as much as possible. What I am confused on, however, is that you guys say a good orchestra is able to "blend" the instruments together to create a synergy, a balance, or a harmony, if you will. However, isn't the whole delineation of a good or bad system it's ability to reproduce music in a way that creates a space, or air, around each and every instrument?

I'm quite perplexed.

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I'm not sure if it's a generally accepted "rule" but I personally believe the true art in music is in the space...almost the absence of sound. For example, during a very dramatic and loud ending, is it the overall volume of the last note or the dead silence afterwards that tingles the hair on your spine? From a physics standpoint, the sound we hear is a series of air pressures rising and falling at certain rates (frequencies per second). When many instruments are in harmony, the majority of the peaks and troughs of the air pressures occur at the same time...higher frequencies occur more often, but divide themselves equally between the peaks of lower frequencies. When not in harmony, the peaks happen at different times and it becomes smeared so to speak and there is effectively less space even though the measured SPL would be nearly the same. I know I'm portraying these ideas in an insignificant way, but I'm trying to keep it short. My point is that the harmony is more prevalent between the notes.

I think understanding the need for space in music should then in itself explain the need for a speaker providing seperation. Any extra noise coming from the speaker is going to start filling space in the music. The acceptable magnitude of such noise is going to depend solely on the listener. If there is a nuance in music which you've never experienced, then you will never know it's there; and you will never think your speaker is at fault either.

It should also be noted that you should be able to pick out every instrument from a live symphony, while still enjoying the overall combined sound of everything. Being able to choose which instruments to listen to at home helps add to the "realism." I hesitate saying realism because the real goal of a good audio system is really to trick you into thinking it's real when it's not.

As a side note, I think it is possible to develope a trained ear without actually experiencing a live concert. Take for instance the field of photography. My brother is a professional photographer and quite often he shows me pictures taken with a multitude of different cameras. We have often discussed how it's wierd that people are able to choose the "best" picture/camera without ever seeing the places in the pictures. Even after cool photoshop tricks, the untrained viewer can still tell which is the best camera. The correlation breaks down though when you consider that audible memory is measured in ms whereas visual memory is measured in minutes. This makes comparisons much more difficult in the audio realm; which I might add is already more difficult when you consider the space and cost factors.

[richinlr]

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On 11/29/2004 3:56:19 AM DrWho wrote:

I'm not sure if it's a generally accepted "rule" but I personally believe the true art in music is in the space...almost the absence of sound. For example, during a very dramatic and loud ending, is it the overall volume of the last note or the dead silence afterwards that tingles the hair on your spine? From a physics standpoint, the sound we hear is a series of air pressures rising and falling at certain rates (frequencies per second). When many instruments are in harmony, the majority of the peaks and troughs of the air pressures occur at the same time...higher frequencies occur more often, but divide themselves equally between the peaks of lower frequencies. When not in harmony, the peaks happen at different times and it becomes smeared so to speak and there is effectively less space even though the measured SPL would be nearly the same. I know I'm portraying these ideas in an insignificant way, but I'm trying to keep it short. My point is that the harmony is more prevalent between the notes.

I think understanding the need for space in music should then in itself explain the need for a speaker providing seperation. Any extra noise coming from the speaker is going to start filling space in the music. The acceptable magnitude of such noise is going to depend solely on the listener. If there is a nuance in music which you've never experienced, then you will never know it's there; and you will never think your speaker is at fault either.

It should also be noted that you should be able to pick out every instrument from a live symphony, while still enjoying the overall combined sound of everything. Being able to choose which instruments to listen to at home helps add to the "realism." I hesitate saying realism because the real goal of a good audio system is really to trick you into thinking it's real when it's not.

As a side note, I think it is possible to develope a trained ear without actually experiencing a live concert. Take for instance the field of photography. My brother is a professional photographer and quite often he shows me pictures taken with a multitude of different cameras. We have often discussed how it's wierd that people are able to choose the "best" picture/camera without ever seeing the places in the pictures. Even after cool photoshop tricks, the untrained viewer can still tell which is the best camera. The correlation breaks down though when you consider that audible memory is measured in ms whereas visual memory is measured in minutes. This makes comparisons much more difficult in the audio realm; which I might add is already more difficult when you consider the space and cost factors.

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A good conductor will strive for a blend that is faithful to the generally accepted interpretation of the composition. He/she will also want to tailor the sound of the ensemble to match the acoustics of the venue in which the ensemble will be playing. The acoustics of the venue will have a great effect on the ability of the ensemble to provide the 'space and air' needed for the dramatic effects of the music. My original comment about blending does NOT mean homogenation of the sound. Space and air are a very important aspect of the music and the conductors of ensembles that I have been always spent a great deal of rehearsal time on this aspect. In this sense, the 'blend' I am referring to means the blend of the various instruments pertaining to their perceived loudness and rhythm relative to one another.

Your last paragraph illustrates my point exactly. Music is emotional and, if that emotion is effectively reproduced by the speaker, will come across in the sound of the speaker with no need for the listener to be musically trained.

I also believe that the lack of musical training may well be a blessing. Without training many listeners are not clouded by their own musical beliefs and can truly enjoy the performance for what it is. Many times a musically trained listener will pick the performance apart in his mind and effectively disable him/her from simply enjoying the music. The musically trained listener has been trained to do this as this is what he/she must do to be an effective member of an ensemble.

[hwatkins]

A very enjoyable article - it goes to the heart of the matter.

Nick - As I read it, a trained listener is trained on listening for reasonably 'flat' response and doesn't get trained to like/dislike a certain sound. It becomes very hard to not color a trained listener with the preferences of the trainer. That means that what you train the listener to grade can (can is the operative term) be manipulated to get a desired response. As an example - I could train someone to grade Bose speakers and they would grade JBL stuf as pretty darn out of spec.

BTW - nothing wrong with the approach. You should train folks for the sound you are working to perfect.

[hwatkins]

Great read on the emotion or lack thereof in sound.

What I see is that several of you may agree with me when I focus on the math of music. The mathematics portion of how music is composed, conducted and presented is the finer point of what makes it tickle my fancy. It is neat when some one (usually the savant or the natural) can inately play to the mathematics and create such an effortless rendition. Striving to capture that sound for eternity and to reproduce it in our own settings is a significant challenge that doesn't seem to deter those of us that carry this insidious addiction....

[formica]

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On 11/29/2004 1:07:35 AM nicholtl wrote:

Indy, Rich, very interesting and different ways of approaching the question!

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I think the difference lies in the "type" of trained listener they are discussing. Toole's tests were actually refering to a trained "audio-technical listener" rather than a trained "musical-artistic listener". Reproduction vs Production

Both are interesting subjects... but different.

Rob

[nicholtl]

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On 11/29/2004 3:56:19 AM DrWho wrote:

As a side note, I think it is possible to develope a trained ear without actually experiencing a live concert. Take for instance the field of photography. My brother is a professional photographer and quite often he shows me pictures taken with a multitude of different cameras. We have often discussed how it's wierd that people are able to choose the "best" picture/camera without ever seeing the places in the pictures. Even after cool photoshop tricks, the untrained viewer can still tell which is the best camera. The correlation breaks down though when you consider that audible memory is measured in ms whereas visual memory is measured in minutes. This makes comparisons much more difficult in the audio realm; which I might add is already more difficult when you consider the space and cost factors.

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DrWho, very interesting contention. It certainly gave me some food for thought. But I don't think the two quite correlate, however. Photography and music, that is. And this is because our visual memory is far superior and infinitely more concrete than that of our auditory, which is abstract, at best. We know what the world looks like, we see it everyday. Thus, we can pick out, from a photograph, which corresponds to real life as we know it. However, we do not listen to live music every waking minute of our lives. And listening to the sounds of the world is not the same as listening to a string of music. For that reason, we do not have that solid and immediate basis for comparison seared into our eardrums or minds. At least, not nearly the way images are seared into our retinas. I think that's chiefly the reason why live performances are the backbone of developing a "trained ear." It provides that reference point from which to use as a platform to compare electronic signals' attempts at recreating it.

Henry, Rob, also some great points. I never really broke it down in terms of a "trained ear" being trained in either the technical production of music, or the assessment of it with regards to tonal realism and instrument accuracy.

[IB Slammin]

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On 11/25/2004 4:54:05 PM DrWho wrote:

............"

Of all the recording studios ive staggered into. Ive never seen a pair of klipschorns used as reference moniters.