[Scott[_6_]]

On Tuesday, July 30, 2013 3:52:45 PM UTC-7, Audio_Empire wrote:
Modern audio Journalism is really infuriating to me because the folks

who make up the bulk of all magazine writers reviewing in the field of

audio today try to assess the performance of audio components using

program material that is totally unsuited to the task at hand. I don't

know about the rest of you, but I'm getting damned tired of picking up

a magazine like 'Stereophile', 'The Absolute Sound', or even Britain's

great 'Hi-Fi News and Record Review' to read about some new piece of

equipment only to encounter something like this: "...the soundstage

and image specificity of these speakers was phenomenal. The kick drum

playing of the band "Terd's" drummer Peter Pothead, was solidly

located just behind the bass guitar and to the left of lead singer

Johnny Juice."

While I am not reading many reviews of audio equipment these days I think pretty much everything you are asserting above and in the rest of this thread is quite wrong. When we are talking about stereo playback, imaging is imaging regardless of the source material and recording techniques. If the aural illusion is that a kick drum images "solidly" just behind the aural image of the bass guitar and to the left of the singer that is a legitimate observation. And one can use that source material to compare the imaging characteristics of other systems and other components inserted into any given system.





I'm sorry, folks, that's all stuff and nonsense. It doesn't matter

where Peter Pohthead's kick drum was located (hopefully it shows-up

where the rest of the drum set shows up, but it doesn't have to..)

physically.

Actually that is nonsense. It doesn't matter that it doesn't matter where the kick drum was located during the recording. What matters is how it images during playback.


It was likely captured by a drum kit mike setup, with one

mike for the kick drum, another for the snare, still another for the

tom-tom, and yet a fourth mike for the cymbals. And each one of those

drum components appears in the speakers where they were electronically

PLACED using pan-pots, not where they physically appeared on the

recording "stage". And Johnny Juice's lead guitar? Well, he is likely

holding it, but if his Marshall guitar amp is setting kinda off to the

side, then that's where his guitar will SOUND like it is - assuming

you were there with the band in the studio when the session was

recorded. Otherwise, again, it will appear on playback wherever the

recording engineers put it. Johnny's booze and dope strained gravel

voice? Well that appears dead center, because again, it's where the

engineer put him (it's traditional). Any attempt by a reviewer to make

decisions about sound quality, imaging, even frequency response using

this kind of studio music is simply an exercise in abject futility.



So what? Same can be said of any multimiked classical recording. Recording techniques vary from recording to recording. Doesn't matter. If the consumer wants the music and is interested in sound quality then how any given recording sounds in any given system IS meaningful. There is nothing "futile" about it if listeners like the music.


First of all. If you don't ever listen to real, live, amplified music,

and listen often, you have no idea what real instruments are SUPPOSED

to sound like.

1. Electric guitars and synthesizers ARE real instruments. 2.Any instrument is SUPPOSED to sound how the maker intended them to sound. Electric instruments are no different.


People who listen to pop music almost exclusively have

likely NEVER attended a classical (or even a non-amplified jazz)

concert.

Really? How do you know that? Got any hard data to support a claim of how all those unnamed unknown human beings actually behave in the real world?


If you don't know what real music is supposed to sound like,

how can you judge what a playback system is doing to the music? You

can't.

1. You are inventing a false objective standard "what real music is supposed to sound like" 2. You are inventing universal criteria for judging sound quality that simply isn't universal. Not everyone wants what you want.





I know there are people who will tell you that they can tell the

difference between a Fender Stratocaster Guitar and a Gibson or a

Martin electric guitar. Perhaps they can, but what about the sound

imparted by the different brands and styles of amplifiers used with

these guitars?

One can ask the very smae question about the sound imparted by microphones and mic techniques imparted on the sound of live acoustic instruments. That's audio. The same issues exist for classical and pop music.


Can one tell the difference after the sound had gone

through a fuzz box? I don't claim to know. Here's another question

that comes to mind. In studio settings many instruments such as a

saxophone or a trumpet are captured using a contact microphone. These

mikes pick-up the actual vibrations of the body of the instrument

itself rather than the sound (I.E. differences in air pressure) heard

by a regular mike sitting in front of the instrument. I can tell you

from experience that an instrument captured by a contact mike sounds

almost nothing like the same instrument captured by a traditional

mike. And all of this manipulation is occurring before the mike

signals reach the control room and go through frequency shifters,

voice multipliers, sound-on-sound and sound-with-sound processors,

reverb generators, compressors, limiters, and a myriad of other

special effects boxes that I'm not familiar with! When recording

personnel record the instruments rather than the space these

instruments occupy, all bets for accuracy are off.


Same is true with classical music. If you think you are seeking accuracy (accuracy being an accurate recreation of the original sound field) you are really slaying windmills.





Now I make no apologies for, nor do I try to hide, my personal disdain

for what has passed for popular music over the last 50 years or so.

OK we do agree on that point.

I

also realize that mass taste has changed mightily in that time and I

will defend with my very being the right of each individual to listen

to the music he or she LIKES. But, this has nothing, whatsoever, to do

with a genre's suitability to the task at hand. In 1970, for instance,

an audio publication was about how classical music was reproduced on

the equipment of the day and they actually had something REAL to

compare the equipment against.

Really? Who, besides James Boyk was comparing their recordings to the original acoustic event? Certainly cant be done with any commercial recordings.

Pop music was almost never mentioned

and jazz only rarely. Now it's completely reversed. Every review I

read tells me how The Who, or Cat Stevens, or Rod Stewart' latest

album (along with a myriad of more recent groups and soloists that I

have never heard of at all) sounds on this piece of equipment or that

(jazz is still, rarely mentioned).


Sounds like you are angry becuase you just can't relate to the reviewer's perspective. Oh well....


These kinds of comparisons are

totally meaningless!

To you. Not to people who listen to Cat Stevens, The Who and Rod Stewart. I listen to all of those artists by the way.


If the music doesn't exist in real space, then

the accuracy of the playback totally becomes a matter personal tastes

and as a means of communicating opinions from one group of people to

another, it's arbitrary, and clearly NOT useful.


Once music hits the mics it no longer exists in a real space. Stereo recording and playback has never been about recreating an original acoustic event.. It has always been about creating an aural illusion. Ultimately judgement is a matter of personal taste. Yours is no exception. So if you want useful reviews, find reviewers that share your taste.






I realize that the magazines like 'Stereophile' et al have to try to

cater to todays equipment buyers in order to remain "relevant" with

their readers, but what is going on in audio reviewing today is akin

to somebody testing an asphalt paving machine using using salt-water

taffy instead of asphalt.

Horrible analogy. What you describe is reviewers using well known source material, that can be accessed by consumers to evaluate equipment. It works just fine with classical and pop music.

The results obtained from such a test have

absolutely no bearing on how the paving machine will perform when

paving roads with hot asphalt!

Wrong. An audio signal, be it from a classical recording or pop share the same basic elements of amplitude and time. Your analogy fails on it's face since that is not the case with it.


Likewise a speaker review (for

instance) using studio recorded pop music bears little or no relation

to how that speaker system might perform with REAL, live acoustical

music and anybody who thinks that it does, is deluded.

As someone who actually readily listens to both classical and pop music on his stereo and is a very frequent attendee of live classical concerts I would assert from my experience that you are plainly wrong on this point.