Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
I have been listenig to a lot of high end equipment lately and I have
come to the opinion that a lot of it is fundamentally flawed. When I hear things they sound very nice but they dont sound realistic. What I mean is often a real instrument or someone singing in a room sounds kinda boring and hi-fi manufacturers make things sound nicer than they really are. For example go and record a single voice with a good mic without compression,eq at a distance that avoids the proximty effect. then play it back on your beautiful hifi. It will probably sound good but it won't sound exacty like you. I think with instruments its even more obvious. things take on a lush full quality rather than the raw sound of some guy playing over there. I know the manufacturers give out all those specs about distortion etc but I think we all take them with a grain of salt deep down. Maybe its good that things sound better than real. I'd be interested to hear other peoples opinions on this. Has anyone heard some equipment that sounds "boringly real"? |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
Ben Hoadley wrote:
I have been listenig to a lot of high end equipment lately and I have come to the opinion that a lot of it is fundamentally flawed. When I hear things they sound very nice but they dont sound realistic. What I mean is often a real instrument or someone singing in a room sounds kinda boring and hi-fi manufacturers make things sound nicer than they really are. For example go and record a single voice with a good mic without compression,eq at a distance that avoids the proximty effect. then play it back on your beautiful hifi. It will probably sound good but it won't sound exacty like you. I think with instruments its even more obvious. things take on a lush full quality rather than the raw sound of some guy playing over there. I know the manufacturers give out all those specs about distortion etc but I think we all take them with a grain of salt deep down. Maybe its good that things sound better than real. I'd be interested to hear other peoples opinions on this. Has anyone heard some equipment that sounds "boringly real"? It's often been remarked for a long time that the best accurate systems don't sound exceptional in terms of making an initial strong impression. That being said, no system/recording I've ever heard reproduces acoustic music as it really sounds. |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
Ben Hoadley wrote:
|| I have been listenig to a lot of high end equipment lately and I have || come to the opinion that a lot of it is fundamentally flawed. When I || hear things they sound very nice but they dont sound realistic. What || I mean is often a real instrument or someone singing in a room sounds || kinda boring and hi-fi manufacturers make things sound nicer than || they really are. || For example go and record a single voice with a good mic without || compression,eq at a distance that avoids the proximty effect. then || play it back on your beautiful hifi. It will probably sound good but || it won't sound exacty like you. I think with instruments its even || more obvious. things take on a lush full quality rather than the raw || sound of some guy playing over there. || I know the manufacturers give out all those specs about distortion || etc but I think we all take them with a grain of salt deep down. || Maybe its good that things sound better than real. I'd be interested || to hear other peoples opinions on this. Has anyone heard some || equipment that sounds "boringly real"? My first experiments started 1966 when I was supposed to rehearse my Double Bass for the school orchestra. I borrowed daddy's Grundig Magnetophon tape machine and played once in the mike. Then every day I would play the tape and continue reading. At least through the closed door it sounded absolutly realistic and my mom was fooled a whole week, until she entered one day. m doing a lot of Video work and there is often voice and ambient sounds. I use the stereo mike Sony ECM959A. You would think the person is talking in the room, the sound is absolutly natural. In fact, even if you think your voice sounds different, you can fool the closest relatives playing your recorded voice. I have 360° radiating speakers, so even if you walk around the room you cannot distinguish between the real and recorded voice. What the OP descibes seems to be a tube amp setup, where things sound better than real(in his own words). I prefer the sound being undistinguishable from the original. -- ciao Ban Bordighera, Italy http://www.bansuri.my-page.ms/ |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
Oddly enough, I've had a reaction to live music which is at odds with yours.
The times that I've attended live concerts recently leaves me disappointed in terms of the sound. I believe I often find the "unrealistic" sound of my home stereo to provide a more satisfying overall experience. Music affects my emotions and it either grabs me or doesn't. I am "grabbed" more often at home. I speak here of classical music. |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
On 19 Dec 2003 18:01:43 GMT, "=?iso-8859-1?q?J=F3n?= Fairbairn"
wrote: (Ben Hoadley) writes: For example go and record a single voice with a good mic without compression,eq at a distance that avoids the proximty effect. then play it back on your beautiful hifi. It will probably sound good but it won't sound exacty like you. I think with instruments its even more obvious. things take on a lush full quality rather than the raw sound of some guy playing over there. I know the manufacturers give out all those specs about distortion etc but I think we all take them with a grain of salt deep down. Maybe its good that things sound better than real. I'd be interested to hear other peoples opinions on this. Has anyone heard some equipment that sounds "boringly real"? I think Quad ESL 63s do this for voice. I've tried something pretty much as above and the result was quite disconcertingly realistic. It's best to use somebody else's voice since no one knows what their own voice sounds like. I tend to agree, and I would extrapolate further to say that the vast majority of 'natural' sounding systems that I've heard, have included large planar speakers. My own Apogee Duetta Signatures do not impress at first (aside from their appearance!), but throw a remarkably natural soundstage that just gets better the longer you listen to it, with stunningly clean midrange and detailed but sweet treble. This is also a feature of the bigger Magnepans and the modern Martin-Logans. This seems to be *very* difficult for box spekers to achieve, and only a very select (and expensive!) few that I've so far heard can approach the 'natural' sound of big planars. All the above IMHO, natch! -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
It's often been remarked for a long time that the best accurate systems don't sound exceptional in terms of making an initial strong impression. That being said, no system/recording I've ever heard reproduces acoustic music as it really sounds. Our goal for recording my SACD "The Window" was to try to accurately capture and then reproduce the sound of an acoustic band performing in a studio. It was recorded directly to DSD and is a hybrid multichannel SACD. A full review is online at High Fidelity Review: http://www.highfidelityreview.com/re...umber=17575041 Best Regards - David Elias www.davidelias.com |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
What the OP descibes seems to be a tube amp setup, where things sound better
than real(in his own words). I prefer the sound being undistinguishable from the original. not only tubes. I think decent (not great) power amps are more common. Speakers are a more common source of the problem |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
LnArth wrote:
Oddly enough, I've had a reaction to live music which is at odds with yours. The times that I've attended live concerts recently leaves me disappointed in terms of the sound. I believe I often find the "unrealistic" sound of my home stereo to provide a more satisfying overall experience. Music affects my emotions and it either grabs me or doesn't. I am "grabbed" more often at home. I speak here of classical music. Perhaps you've haven't been to a classical concert in a place that had exceptional acoustics. I would agree that a really bad acoustic can leave one to thinking that an audio system is prefereable. |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
For more complex sounds the question is harder. To paraphrase Flanders and Swann, we go to a lot of trouble to recreate the effect of a symphony orchestra in our living rooms. But having a symphony orchestra in one's living room would be quite unpleasant -- think of all the saliva from the brass section, for one thing -- and not at all like a concert hall. -- Jón Fairbairn I don't think the goal is to have the sound of the orchestra in your listening room. I think the goal is for the listening room to sonically disappear and to have the illusion of the concerthall with the orchestra take it's place. |
#11
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
|
#12
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
"S888Wheel" wrote in message
... For more complex sounds the question is harder. To paraphrase Flanders and Swann, we go to a lot of trouble to recreate the effect of a symphony orchestra in our living rooms. But having a symphony orchestra in one's living room would be quite unpleasant -- think of all the saliva from the brass section, for one thing -- and not at all like a concert hall. -- Jón Fairbairn I don't think the goal is to have the sound of the orchestra in your listening room. I think the goal is for the listening room to sonically disappear and to have the illusion of the concerthall with the orchestra take it's place. This, of course, gets back to the fundamental question of the purpose of Hi-Fi: Are we attempting to recreate what a listener would have heard in the concert hall, or what the recording engineer heard in the control room. While it seems these should be the same goals, the majority of recorded music was not, as a matter of fact, recorded in anything resembling a concert hall. It was recorded in a studio and frequently engineered to a specific sound that you would never hear in a concert hall. |
#13
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
I would only apply the concert hall standard to recordings made in concert
halls. |
#14
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
"Ben Hoadley" wrote in message
... (LnArth) wrote in message ... Oddly enough, I've had a reaction to live music which is at odds with yours. The times that I've attended live concerts recently leaves me disappointed in terms of the sound. I believe I often find the "unrealistic" sound of my home stereo to provide a more satisfying overall experience. Music affects my emotions and it either grabs me or doesn't. I am "grabbed" more often at home. I speak here of classical music. IMO this depends upon the concert hall and even more importantly where within it you happend to be sitting. This is not at odds at all, it reaffirms my point. There are many classical pieces I never took to (they didn't grab) in recordings at home. After hearing it "live" I became to understand what the fuss was all about. Then listening to that recording at home again I was able to hear the live event in my mind's ear and could take to it then and forever more. All recordings and any systems that I ever heard were many orders of magnitude lesser than a good seating location in a decent "auditorium". For me recordings are only attempted reproductions of the real thing available for the sole purpose of being enjoyed in the comfort and privacy of your home at any hour of the day or night. |
#15
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
(S888Wheel) writes:
I don't think the goal is to have the sound of the orchestra in your listening room. I have the distinct impression that Flanders and Swann were a humerous outfit, but I could be wrong. I think the goal is for the listening room to sonically disappear and to have the illusion of the concerthall with the orchestra take it's place. Of course. But you can see that that is a very different proposition to that of producing the illusion of someone speaking in the room, which was my point. -- JĂłn Fairbairn http://www.chaos.org.uk/~jf/Stuff-I-dont-want.html (updated 2003-08-02) |
#16
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
Norman Schwartz:
All recordings and any systems that I ever heard were many orders of magnitude lesser than a good seating location in a decent "auditorium". For me recordings are only attempted reproductions of the real thing available for the sole purpose of being enjoyed in the comfort and privacy of your home at any hour of the day or night. That's fine for you. I prefer listening to music at home to nearly any live performance. Practically every time I go to a concert, whether because of others' talking, rattling, perfume, etc., no more than a half-hour has passed before I wish the concert were over and I could be home. People are so ****ing annoying in public, even classical concertgoers. I had a subscription at the Kennedy Center for years, but I dropped it, oh, ten years ago because of all the talking -- this one couple in particular whom I was always seated a few rows away from. I can't imagine what it's like now with cellphones (and the sense of entitlement that seems to come with owning one). I seldom have to worry about the behavior of others when I'm listening to my stereo. I don't get why there's even a comparison. They're two such completely different experiences. Stereo: I can wear what I want, eat what I want, listen when I want. Concert: have to wear something at least semi-dressy, be there at a certain time, sit at attention, put up with other people. No obstacles to hearing music v. all the obstacles that can be thrown at one. The only concerts I didn't wish I were home during have been Bruce Springsteen's. And he's not my favorite singer. Many thanks to whoever invented the stereo. Many, many thanks. |
#17
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
|
#18
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
wrote:
On 12/21/03 4:34 PM, in article , "Farrell8882" wrote: I prefer listening to music at home to nearly any live performance. Practically every time I go to a concert, whether because of others' talking, rattling, perfume, etc., no more than a half-hour has passed before I wish the concert were over and I could be home. Ah, that is all part of the performance! And how organic it is! Unless you're talking about strawberries, melon, or peppers, just because something's organic doesn't make it better. While a recording doctored by a good engineer, tends towards perfection, I prefer the imperfections and annoyances in a real setting - somehow the club, feeling a bit inebriated with a couple of drinks and the jazz or blues washing over me is ... Bliss! More like **** (returning to your organic theme), as in how ****ed off I get when I go to concerts. Now, at home, the system is as good as I can afford, so I can experience perfection for what it is, but live -- well, a whole different system of judgment comes into play! I couldn't agree more. How I love to listen at home. How I hate not to be able to listen in concert. Sorry to heard you don't prefer the live performances WHY? |
#19
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
I don't get why there's even a comparison. They're two such completely different experiences. Stereo: I can wear what I want, eat what I want, listen when I want. Concert: have to wear something at least semi-dressy, be there at a certain time, sit at attention, put up with other people. No obstacles to hearing music v. all the obstacles that can be thrown at one. there's a comparison because we are willing to spend thousans on equipment and are very impressed with spec sheets, but I think if they actually achieved perfect reproduction it would be so bland we'd probably think it inferior. when we play our cds we like to think wow that sounds cool. when you pass a busker playing acousic guitar you never think wow that sounds cool, maybe nice or crap but not wow gee wizz |
#20
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
On 12/21/03 9:11 PM, in article , "Farrell8882"
wrote: wrote: On 12/21/03 4:34 PM, in article , "Farrell8882" wrote: I prefer listening to music at home to nearly any live performance. Practically every time I go to a concert, whether because of others' talking, rattling, perfume, etc., no more than a half-hour has passed before I wish the concert were over and I could be home. Ah, that is all part of the performance! And how organic it is! Unless you're talking about strawberries, melon, or peppers, just because something's organic doesn't make it better. In this case I am not referring to "organic" as some sort of no-pesticides - just that a performance that is truly alive will have some imperfections -- all the "warts" that make it a performance - some distractions, a little noise, doesn't bother me - obviously does for you. While a recording doctored by a good engineer, tends towards perfection, I prefer the imperfections and annoyances in a real setting - somehow the club, feeling a bit inebriated with a couple of drinks and the jazz or blues washing over me is ... Bliss! More like **** (returning to your organic theme), as in how ****ed off I get when I go to concerts. Sorry that you don't like it - just trying to present an alternate point of view. You obviously don't like music with other people around that may make any kind of noise or disturbance. Now, at home, the system is as good as I can afford, so I can experience perfection for what it is, but live -- well, a whole different system of judgment comes into play! I couldn't agree more. How I love to listen at home. How I hate not to be able to listen in concert. If there is little chance for you to enjoy a live performance without being distracted by other audience members' faults - I wish you the ability to get over that or find some sort of venue you *can* stand. Sorry to heard you don't prefer the live performances WHY? Because I like it so much - I would wish that you would enjoy it as much as I do. That's all - just good wishes for you and others. |
#22
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
I wonder if I'm the only one that finds this thread particular sad and
disturbing. Isn't this hobby of ours supposed to be "about the music". The dictionary.com definition of High Fidelity is "The electronic reproduction of sound, especially from broadcast or recorded sources, with minimal distortion." While we can, at times, come close to minimal distortion, we are far from this ideal. The only way to enjoy music "as it exists in nature", is to go hear it in nature, ie. in a concert hall. That Audiophilia has created a (sub)culture in which it is considered preferable to hear recorded music at home over going to a concert is, I believe, a distortion of the purpose of recorded music. Recorded music became popuar for several reasons, but primary among them was the cost factor of live concert attendance. It seems sad indeed, that many people spend anually, far more on their equipment than a 2 ticket full subscription to the NY Phil. at Avery Fisher Hall (in the best seats in the house) would cost. If the only time and reason we attend a concert is to recalibrate our listening mechanism for the sake of dialing in our home stereos, something is wrong. As a performer, the only time that real music making takes place is when there is an involvement between performer and audience, and the only way to truly appreciate and enjoy music, is to be present at such an event. Anything else is nothing more than "the electronic reproduction of sound...with minimal distortion." |
#23
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
"Bruce Abrams" wrote in message
news:TNGFb.177163$_M.808700@attbi_s54... I wonder if I'm the only one that finds this thread particular sad and disturbing. Isn't this hobby of ours supposed to be "about the music". The dictionary.com definition of High Fidelity is "The electronic reproduction of sound, especially from broadcast or recorded sources, with minimal distortion." While we can, at times, come close to minimal distortion, we are far from this ideal. The only way to enjoy music "as it exists in nature", is to go hear it in nature, ie. in a concert hall. That Audiophilia has created a (sub)culture in which it is considered preferable to hear recorded music at home over going to a concert is, I believe, a distortion of the purpose of recorded music. Recorded music became popuar for several reasons, but primary among them was the cost factor of live concert attendance. It seems sad indeed, that many people spend anually, far more on their equipment than a 2 ticket full subscription to the NY Phil. at Avery Fisher Hall (in the best seats in the house) would cost. If the only time and reason we attend a concert is to recalibrate our listening mechanism for the sake of dialing in our home stereos, something is wrong. As a performer, the only time that real music making takes place is when there is an involvement between performer and audience, and the only way to truly appreciate and enjoy music, is to be present at such an event. Anything else is nothing more than "the electronic reproduction of sound...with minimal distortion." I couldn't agree more. I love the whole concert experience, whether it's the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall or Paul McCartney at the Tacoma Dome, or Spyro Gyra at Jazz Alley. While I appreciate the convenience of "audio on demand" from my hi-fi, it can't compare with the "distortion free by definition" full-surround experience of a live concert. Actually seeing the French horn player flub the solo bit in Beethoven's 5th, or watching the trumpet player nearly bust a blood vessel playing that intricate muted trumpet passage in Pictures at an Exhibition is emotionally overwhelming. Actually hearing "Hey Jude" and "Blackbird" played live by the composer was one of the most uplifting moments of my entire life. |
#24
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
"Jón Fairbairn" wrote in message
news:vNmFb.12295$VB2.22063@attbi_s51... (S888Wheel) writes: I don't think the goal is to have the sound of the orchestra in your listening room. I have the distinct impression that Flanders and Swann were a humerous outfit, but I could be wrong. A little poem I wrote years ago: AT THE DROP OF SOME WHIMSY Mr. Flanders and Mr. Swann were put on the turntable and began to drop their hats all over the flat but lunchtime came to stop all that so Mr. Flanders and Mr. Swann are back in their cover where they began a pity, that If you've never heard any of their records, particularly "At the Drop of a Hat", you've missed some of the most sophisticated musical jokery ever put through a loudspeaker. Recommended. |
#25
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
Given the fact that a recording of one speaking outside could be fairly lacking
in room sound and given the fact that one is not likely to overload their listening room with the playback of such a recording, one could take the position that the recreation of that recorded voice in the listening room would be desirable even though we don't want to recreate the sound of an orchestra playing in our room |
#26
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
If the only time and reason we attend a concert is to recalibrate our listening mechanism for the sake of dialing in our home stereos, something is wrong. As a performer, the only time that real music making takes place is when there is an involvement between performer and audience, and the only way to truly appreciate and enjoy music, is to be present at such an event. Anything else is nothing more than "the electronic reproduction of sound...with minimal distortion." I quite disagree. While I share your love for live music I see no reason to disparage someone who goes to concerts to "recalibrate" their references. I think it is simply not true to claim playback isn't real music. I think it is unfair to denigrate anyone's enjoyment of playback. I think many an artist managed to communicate beautifully with their audience through recorded media. |
#27
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
"Harry Lavo" writes:
"Jón Fairbairn" wrote in message news:vNmFb.12295$VB2.22063@attbi_s51... (S888Wheel) writes: I don't think the goal is to have the sound of the orchestra in your listening room. I have the distinct impression that Flanders and Swann were a humerous outfit, but I could be wrong. (I /can/ spell humorous, honestly!) [...] If you've never heard any of their records, particularly "At the Drop of a Hat", you've missed some of the most sophisticated musical jokery ever put through a loudspeaker. Recommended. For a moment there I wondered whether you were taking my above comment literally, but then if you understand Flanders and Swann, you understand dry British humour so must have understood me. To refer to the rest of the thread, I'd go for a live concert every time, but for the expense. For the most part I'd expect the audience to remain quiet, apart from the occasional cough. I've noticed that audience quietness goes in phases over the years, though possibly with a downward trend. Certainly an unruly audience detracts from the listening experience for orchestral and chamber music. Less so for rock and for jazz some sort of murmuring seems to be pretty much de rigeur. What I find most difficult about live performances for the latter types is excessive volume, which often reaches a level where I think I would enjoy it better at home. Ear plugs improve things, but there's something absurd about that, especially as I'd have to spend a significant amount of money on improving the frequency response of my earplugs -- given that, you really can get greater fidelity at home. I don't think it's possible to reproduce a 100-piece orchestra in a modest living room and have it sound realistic from just two speakers. -- Jón Fairbairn |
#28
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
Norman Schwartz wrote:
There are many classical pieces I never took to (they didn't grab) in recordings at home. After hearing it "live" I became to understand what the fuss was all about. Then listening to that recording at home again I was able to hear the live event in my mind's ear and could take to it then and forever more. All recordings and any systems that I ever heard were many orders of magnitude lesser than a good seating location in a decent "auditorium". For me recordings are only attempted reproductions of the real thing available for the sole purpose of being enjoyed in the comfort and privacy of your home at any hour of the day or night. I have had this experience, too, and in general I agree with Norm. However, having attended too many concerts with ringing cell phones, crinkling candy wrappers, attendees communicating with their deaf spouses, etc., I also appreciate the ability of the hifi to allow listening to a piece with few or no distractions. Mike Prager North Carolina, USA |
#29
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
Listening to music live and at home are two very different experiences. Which I
chose i depends upon a number of factors . If I can hear music in a small club or small concert hall where I can sit close to the performers and see them clearly, it can be very exciting and satisfying. I sense the energy and am better able to feel more a part of the entire live music experience. Music in a large concert hall or festival amphitheatre is usually not very enjoyable for me. There is a formality and stiffness in that type of setting that reduces the musical pleasure for me. Also , when sitting far away from the musicians, the warmth and immediacy of hearing the music live is greatly reduced. Therefore, I have season tickets to a chamber music series held in a very small concert hall, and go to jazz events held in small clubs or concert halls. I avoid attending symphony concerts and large jazz festivals as they are held in settings that reduce the musical pleasure for me. I also agree with the comments about mode of dress and relaxed atmosphere in listening to music at home. You can repeat a tune or a segment of a larger composition if you so desire. You can control the volume to exactly what you prefer. (Many live performances are either too loud, or not loud enough.) There are far fewer disturbances to intrude on one's enjoyment of the music when listening at home. If a disturbance does occur, such as the telephone ringing, you can stop the music and begin again wherever you like. You don't have to put up with numerous coughing or talking people. You can have a drink or nibble on some food while listening. You can select a comfortable chair or sofa. You can listen at any hour of the day or night. Listening to music live and at home each have pros and cons. Thankfully both options are available to us. |
#30
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
Big problem. You're dead right.
Interestingly, the problem is most obvious with voices, because it's what you're trained to hear most. "Ben Hoadley" wrote in message ... I have been listenig to a lot of high end equipment lately and I have come to the opinion that a lot of it is fundamentally flawed. When I hear things they sound very nice but they dont sound realistic. What I mean is often a real instrument or someone singing in a room sounds kinda boring and hi-fi manufacturers make things sound nicer than they really are. For example go and record a single voice with a good mic without compression,eq at a distance that avoids the proximty effect. then play it back on your beautiful hifi. It will probably sound good but it won't sound exacty like you. I think with instruments its even more obvious. things take on a lush full quality rather than the raw sound of some guy playing over there. I know the manufacturers give out all those specs about distortion etc but I think we all take them with a grain of salt deep down. Maybe its good that things sound better than real. I'd be interested to hear other peoples opinions on this. Has anyone heard some equipment that sounds "boringly real"? |
#31
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
"Bruno Putzeys" wrote in message ...
Big problem. You're dead right. Interestingly, the problem is most obvious with voices, because it's what you're trained to hear most. I'm glad someone is interested in the real issue. perhaps a lot of people missed the point. according to a friend the problem is not linearity or dynamic limiting as mush as "dynamic linearity". Any thoughts? |
#32
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
Hmm. Difficult to say what is to be understood under "dynamic linearity".
Could you elaborate further? It is true that some power amplifiers show a linearity problem that shows up only in an IM test with a large LF (e.g. 50Hz or lower). I'm not sure if this can be considered responsible for the "better than the original" effect. The effect is very real though. I know of studio people who report that this or that tape machine produces an output that sounds "better" than what came in. On the other hand, loudspeakers are often completely mis-designed. It's not unusual to find reviews in magazines (not to name certain German ones) where the measurements show the speaker isn't flat to even within +-6dB and where the speaker is hailed as a "Superbox". On trade shows such as the CES (US) or the High-End Messe (DE) the most hilarious contraptions are shown that have the most obvious flaws in them (ever seen an "inverted d'Appolito"? It was a monster with the woofer in the middle, midranges below and above that and tweeters on the top and bottom. The woodwork was stunningly well done). Another thought is that when you play a mono signal through a stereo system (or if the sound is simply centre stage), and you're sitting in the sweet spot, both ears are off axis, as far as the summation of the two signals is concerned. The result is that the ears receive something quite different than if that same mono signal is replayed through the same loudspeaker placed in the centre. If I'm not mistaken, the difference between the two options (stereo triangle with mono feed or one speaker physically in the centre) has a significant dip around 4kHz as its most notable feature. In the case of a multimiked recording, the engineer will -knowingly or not- EQ the different channels such that the differences in frequency response with respect to pan position are compensated for. In two-mike recordings this effect is not compensated, though AB (noncoincident) fares somewhat better than XY (coincident) miking. This means that unless recording technique and reproduction is matched, even perfectly designed audio chains are liable to operate in a "flawed" mode. This could either be euphonic or dull sounding, depending on the conditions. A simple mechanism that can also create a better-than-real impression is simply that with classical music you can turn up the volume so high it's louder at your ears than in a real concert. Cheers, Bruno "Ben Hoadley" wrote in message news:%gxIb.14044$I07.37642@attbi_s53... "Bruno Putzeys" wrote in message ... Big problem. You're dead right. Interestingly, the problem is most obvious with voices, because it's what you're trained to hear most. I'm glad someone is interested in the real issue. perhaps a lot of people missed the point. according to a friend the problem is not linearity or dynamic limiting as mush as "dynamic linearity". Any thoughts? |
#33
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
Actually Ben I've had the "luck" of hearing a few things reproduced
so absolutely realisticly that they were able to totally fool people into the belief of reality. The sets of these experiences can only be counted on one hand and 2 fingers would still be left over, but they never sound "boringly real". I'm not sure that everyone would care to go through all the trouble and the incredible expense needed to reproduce these absolute reality experiences from recordings but they are possible. First I need to preface this by saying that the possibility of achieving true musical or vocal realism in a recorded situation has nothing to do with the parts of this thread dealing with live vs recorded music per se. If I liked listening to Uzbek folk music, symphonic music utilizing orchestras of never less than 100 players, acoustic rock by long deceased performers and secret forbidden religious ceremonial chants then likely I would most often need to listen to prerecorded music. There are hundreds of other reasons why live music isn't a reasonable possibility for many people not the least of which are the problems that people in some places would have even trying to get to a place that performed works like The Symphony of Thousand or Verdi's Requiem. So while there may be nothing that beats a live and un-sound-reinforced concert by the 3 Tenors from a front row seat in some grand opera house, hearing this live just isn't a reasonable possibility for millions of people. But it actually is possible to make sound equipment and recordings of almost anything (including your mother's voice) that can sound so realistic, it can fool anyone into believing that the sound they are hearing is in fact real and even the directional components are correct. This experience is not at all "boringly real" but it is a great shock to the system and gave me goosebumps the size of walnuts each time I was lucky enough to experience the event. As well, we aren't considering the fact that some artists want to add special effects to recordings for the sake of their art. This is their privledge and with these kinds of recordings there is no way to reproduce the recording so that it can ever sound like something real, live or natural. We have to get our definitions straight here. So let's use a clear example. This example would suppose that you attend a school event where a group of 5 or 6 students including a close relative (child, brother/sister, cousin etc.) is singing on one side of, but very near the front of a stage, say stage left from where you sit rather towards the center of the first row of seats and on stage right we have some incredible singing artist like Linda Ronstadt who has rehearsed the children and is singing with them, but importantly as well in the rear of this concert venue on the balcony Harry Connick Jr. is playing piano accompaniment with vocal back-up. The moment is beautiful, everyone is keeping perfect time, all the voices come together perfectly and lucky person that you are, you have a very good video and audio recording of the event. The video is actually unimportant except that without it you might need to close your eyes while listening to the audio recording, because we will assume you hired professional recording engineers familiar with the special recording techniques and comb-filter processing required to make these "All Reality Recordings" (ARR is the name I will use for the process I can briefly describe later). Since the first demonstrations of this type of recording makeable at will (in other words any time anywhere) (that I heard) utilized headphones for the demos, we will assume that later when you play this recording back you will wear headphones while watching the video on as large a projection system as possible (to promote visual realism). I assure you it is possible for you to be totally fooled into being certain that what you are listening to is the same live performance you heard the first time in person. In fact the acoustic envirnment you WERE in would seem to be exactly there again. Considering this example we can already see that this recreation of total reality sound recording is limited in many ways but not always the way you'd think. It is possible to produce these kinds of recordings of any source that will not have any further information added to its content in post production. Electronic instruments are not really more difficult to record and reproduce this way except that for the most part you end up listening to what came out of the loudspeaker in the artist's guitar cabinets or organ box. There is no editing allowed and no after-the-fact special effects. Some performers can do this kind of thing and most can't. And there are dozens of reasons why nobody bothers to make these kinds of recordings or playback systems, although expense isn't the biggest factor preventing them from being made, it is considerable. From 1973 until 1979 I worked for many audio companies and eventually specialized in the loudspeaker end of the business. When I worked for Disney as an Imagineer developing loudspeaker systems for EPCOT and especially for the French Theater at EPCOT, no expense was spared to try to figure out how to make recorded and played-back sound as absolutely realistic as possible. Almost by accident a few recordings were made that seemed to point in the right direction and a few loudspeaker systems were developed that seemed to have total reality playback potential. When anyone hears this kind of playback it staggers you. And it is often the little sounds in life that are the shockers giving you big goosebumps. The wind blowing through the trees is an example. There is so much high frequency energy and so many phase and time relationships that have to be kept controlled to reproduce such sound that just showing the "specifications" of the content of the recorded material would require a dozen books. And always when we few lucky Imagineers heard little snippets of this sound it was a revelation. As well the recording environment always seemed to be completely recreated as well so the sound of the room you were in seemed to disappear. Another very interesting effect in either mono or stereo was that if you walked towards the sound source the voice or instrument just seemed to sound like it was nearer, not really louder, until at a certain point you felt sure that there was just some invisible barrier right in front of you and if you only put your arm through it you might actually touch the person or instrument making the words or music. The problem was that while we could make these kinds of recordings once in a while on very special digital recorders sampling up in the 80-100khz range, using special microphones made by Bruel & Kjaer, and then played back through special test loudspeaker systems that might take hours to tweak correctly, the results were inconsistant. In an area of perhaps 30 square feet, on one recording, in one room, this sense of total reality could be achievable. It wasn't just imaging, we joked that it was "acoustical miraging". And since EPCOT had to be built, we workers got back to building all the sound systems needed for all the shows in EPCOT. While the French Theater at EPCOT has one of the most realistic large scale sound systems ever made for movie playback, it wasn't a tenth as realistic as some of the playback the Imagineers heard back in the lab. The French theater movie audio track is a recording of the live sounds of the French countryside recorded from a very soundless balloon. This was why as much reality as possible was a goal for this venue's sound system. I had the good fortune to be the Imigineer who designed the sound system for the French theater and the Imagineer who developed the various loudpseaker systems that all the Imagineers used in their own venues. Thus the French theater sound system design could be tailored by me as much as any major sound system could be, for exactly the job it had to do. At nearly the same time as I was an Imagineer working on EPCOT and Tokyo Disneyland a man named Gary Georgi was making recordings that would recreate this special reality every time they were played back through headphones or a very few loudspeakers. He was very interested in my loudspeaker work for Disney and he attended the AES presentations I made on the topic. He did a demonstration for me which has become legend amongsyt audio engineers who heard it is the early 80s. He had a recording made of a person talking while wandering around a room mostly in front of the "test subject listener" but once in a while walking all the way around the "listener" (actually the recording position of the "listener' was recreated by processing). There was an interesting acoustic source used as part of the recording. It was the striking and flaring of a match. This sound is so unique and soft that any acoustic smearing will make it sound totally unrealistic. This sound was used near the end of recording to capture the listener's attention and then came the shocker as the recorded performer had moved to a position, which when played back sounded exactly like he was whispering to the listener from an inch or two away from, and behind, the demonstration listener's right ear. As all the listeners had done before me I jumped because of the natural reaction to having someone move so obviously and unexpectedly inside "my space" where I was unprotected. Gary wanted to have loudspeakers made that would reproduce the same effect as headphones could produce (or nearly so) so that the recording technique and processing he had figured out could be used in demos without headphones. You see there is a peculiar phenomena whereby most of the sound impinging on the eardrum has been reflected....by the ear itself. Our ears are asymmetrical. The comb filter effect of our ear cavity surfaces and lobes has been well documented now and so even with single speaker headphones not only is left/right information easy to determine but front/back and above/below information can be clearly represented on a single recording so that it is possible to produce an acoustic image that is so realistic that it begins to cross the line between reality and obvious recording. The best binaural recordings using dummy heads with dummy ears shaped like real ears showed what the different comb filter effects looked like from all directions. I had been able to quantify further many of the "other" critieria for the entire throughput system to be able to recreate a realistic signal including the dynamic range of the amplifier and speaker, response curve of the speaker in all directions, bandpass of each component, noise floor, amp current delivery capability and slew rate, square wave response (phase), nearfield listening with long delay farfield reverb components and a dozen other criteria in order of importance. Eventually Gary got the speakers he needed and he made some demonstrations with those speakers. I heard many demos on these loudspeakers using non-processed program materials and I can definitely say that they had as fine of image recreation (imaging) as any loudspeakers I have ever heard. There were some very interesting features about the speakers. The cabinets were almost totally inert because the secondary sound emissions from loudspeaker cabinets can easily ruin the "mirage". The speakers also had a very high ratio of driven (speaker) surface to non-driven (cabinet, frame, connector etc.) surface (seems the driven surfaces need to be about 12%+ of the total surface area of the loudspeaker enclosure/system, assuming the total of all cabinet acoustic energy emissions in all directions, is down at least 17 db from the output of the moving drivers) . The front and back of the drivers was firmly mounted and if possible the low frequency speakers were used in matched pairs in each cabinet (back to back) so that the movement of the cabinet from what is known as reactive-opposite force is minimal if not totally eliminated. As much as it wouldn't seem possible, a bass loudspeaker cone moving back and forth can easily move a speaker cabinet "forth and back", thus moving the sound source and muddling the sound (notwithstanding tip-toes or other partial restraints). Al Bodine of Bodine Soundrive a vibrational expert of mythical proportions has commented that these loudspeaker enclosures had the highest modulus frequency of any he had ever tested (up into the 80-120khz range) thus any of the sound energy the cabinet transferred into the air was so far outside the audible range that it didn't affect the acoustic image at all. There were so many atypical and unusual design factors incorporated into these loudspeakers that most manufacturers turned down the chance to make them under license. Gary Georgi was also well known at the time as one of the founders of Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs recordings, and as the distributor for Satin Moving coil phono cartridges and step up silver wire transformers along with many other products. He was reputable and respected. The recent Stereophile discussion about MFSL recordings of acoustic and electronic music (like Pink Floyd) point out that Gary's passion was absolute realism in sound recording and reproduction. Imperfect soul that he was, he was losing his high frequency acuity by the time I met him and unfortunately he eventually suffered a heart attack about 2 years after I first met him in the 80s. He never really had the chance to popularize the method of processing recordings so that the original sound of the instrument and the recording room could be brought to listeners in it's purest form. Even if he had (because Bruel & Kjaer did eventually produce papers on the comb filtering and low distortions levels needed) 99% of all loudspeakers ever made would just trash the recordings anyway. Yes, loudspeakers can be highly distorted devices (up to 10% combined distortions at 90db average level is considered quite transparent by our ear/brain combo) but it is often the phase, moving image source, rise time, dynamic range and the interference of other spurious but closely related cabinet noises that ruin the reality of an acoustic image. Those who are interested can ask further questions in this thread but some of the smallest details about what I've written here, require volumes to properly cover. But to again answer Ben's question, yes I've heard some program materials through a very few loudspeakers and headphones that sound like absolute reality, although it could never be described as boring. WK We don't get enough sound in our glass (Ben Hoadley) wrote in message ... I have been listenig to a lot of high end equipment lately and I have come to the opinion that a lot of it is fundamentally flawed. When I hear things they sound very nice but they dont sound realistic. What I mean is often a real instrument or someone singing in a room sounds kinda boring and hi-fi manufacturers make things sound nicer than they really are. For example go and record a single voice with a good mic without compression,eq at a distance that avoids the proximty effect. then play it back on your beautiful hifi. It will probably sound good but it won't sound exacty like you. I think with instruments its even more obvious. things take on a lush full quality rather than the raw sound of some guy playing over there. I know the manufacturers give out all those specs about distortion etc but I think we all take them with a grain of salt deep down. Maybe its good that things sound better than real. I'd be interested to hear other peoples opinions on this. Has anyone heard some equipment that sounds "boringly real"? |
#34
|
|||
|
|||
the emperor's clothes
"watch king" wrote in message
... Actually Ben I've had the "luck" of hearing a few things reproduced so absolutely realisticly that they were able to totally fool people into the belief of reality. The sets of these experiences can only be counted on one hand and 2 fingers would still be left over, but they never sound "boringly real". I'm not sure that everyone would care to go through all the trouble and the incredible expense needed to reproduce these absolute reality experiences from recordings but they are possible. First I need to preface this by saying that the possibility of achieving true musical or vocal realism in a recorded situation has nothing to do with the parts of this thread dealing with live vs recorded music per se. If I liked listening to Uzbek folk music, symphonic music utilizing orchestras of never less than 100 players, acoustic rock by long deceased performers and secret forbidden religious ceremonial chants then likely I would most often need to listen to prerecorded music. There are hundreds of other reasons why live music isn't a reasonable possibility for many people not the least of which are the problems that people in some places would have even trying to get to a place that performed works like The Symphony of Thousand or Verdi's Requiem. So while there may be nothing that beats a live and un-sound-reinforced concert by the 3 Tenors from a front row seat in some grand opera house, hearing this live just isn't a reasonable possibility for millions of people. But it actually is possible to make sound equipment and recordings of almost anything (including your mother's voice) that can sound so realistic, it can fool anyone into believing that the sound they are hearing is in fact real and even the directional components are correct. This experience is not at all "boringly real" but it is a great shock to the system and gave me goosebumps the size of walnuts each time I was lucky enough to experience the event. As well, we aren't considering the fact that some artists want to add special effects to recordings for the sake of their art. This is their privledge and with these kinds of recordings there is no way to reproduce the recording so that it can ever sound like something real, live or natural. We have to get our definitions straight here. So let's use a clear example. This example would suppose that you attend a school event where a group of 5 or 6 students including a close relative (child, brother/sister, cousin etc.) is singing on one side of, but very near the front of a stage, say stage left from where you sit rather towards the center of the first row of seats and on stage right we have some incredible singing artist like Linda Ronstadt who has rehearsed the children and is singing with them, but importantly as well in the rear of this concert venue on the balcony Harry Connick Jr. is playing piano accompaniment with vocal back-up. The moment is beautiful, everyone is keeping perfect time, all the voices come together perfectly and lucky person that you are, you have a very good video and audio recording of the event. The video is actually unimportant except that without it you might need to close your eyes while listening to the audio recording, because we will assume you hired professional recording engineers familiar with the special recording techniques and comb-filter processing required to make these "All Reality Recordings" (ARR is the name I will use for the process I can briefly describe later). Since the first demonstrations of this type of recording makeable at will (in other words any time anywhere) (that I heard) utilized headphones for the demos, we will assume that later when you play this recording back you will wear headphones while watching the video on as large a projection system as possible (to promote visual realism). I assure you it is possible for you to be totally fooled into being certain that what you are listening to is the same live performance you heard the first time in person. In fact the acoustic envirnment you WERE in would seem to be exactly there again. Considering this example we can already see that this recreation of total reality sound recording is limited in many ways but not always the way you'd think. It is possible to produce these kinds of recordings of any source that will not have any further information added to its content in post production. Electronic instruments are not really more difficult to record and reproduce this way except that for the most part you end up listening to what came out of the loudspeaker in the artist's guitar cabinets or organ box. There is no editing allowed and no after-the-fact special effects. Some performers can do this kind of thing and most can't. And there are dozens of reasons why nobody bothers to make these kinds of recordings or playback systems, although expense isn't the biggest factor preventing them from being made, it is considerable. From 1973 until 1979 I worked for many audio companies and eventually specialized in the loudspeaker end of the business. When I worked for Disney as an Imagineer developing loudspeaker systems for EPCOT and especially for the French Theater at EPCOT, no expense was spared to try to figure out how to make recorded and played-back sound as absolutely realistic as possible. Almost by accident a few recordings were made that seemed to point in the right direction and a few loudspeaker systems were developed that seemed to have total reality playback potential. When anyone hears this kind of playback it staggers you. And it is often the little sounds in life that are the shockers giving you big goosebumps. The wind blowing through the trees is an example. There is so much high frequency energy and so many phase and time relationships that have to be kept controlled to reproduce such sound that just showing the "specifications" of the content of the recorded material would require a dozen books. And always when we few lucky Imagineers heard little snippets of this sound it was a revelation. As well the recording environment always seemed to be completely recreated as well so the sound of the room you were in seemed to disappear. Another very interesting effect in either mono or stereo was that if you walked towards the sound source the voice or instrument just seemed to sound like it was nearer, not really louder, until at a certain point you felt sure that there was just some invisible barrier right in front of you and if you only put your arm through it you might actually touch the person or instrument making the words or music. The problem was that while we could make these kinds of recordings once in a while on very special digital recorders sampling up in the 80-100khz range, using special microphones made by Bruel & Kjaer, and then played back through special test loudspeaker systems that might take hours to tweak correctly, the results were inconsistant. In an area of perhaps 30 square feet, on one recording, in one room, this sense of total reality could be achievable. It wasn't just imaging, we joked that it was "acoustical miraging". And since EPCOT had to be built, we workers got back to building all the sound systems needed for all the shows in EPCOT. While the French Theater at EPCOT has one of the most realistic large scale sound systems ever made for movie playback, it wasn't a tenth as realistic as some of the playback the Imagineers heard back in the lab. The French theater movie audio track is a recording of the live sounds of the French countryside recorded from a very soundless balloon. This was why as much reality as possible was a goal for this venue's sound system. I had the good fortune to be the Imigineer who designed the sound system for the French theater and the Imagineer who developed the various loudpseaker systems that all the Imagineers used in their own venues. Thus the French theater sound system design could be tailored by me as much as any major sound system could be, for exactly the job it had to do. At nearly the same time as I was an Imagineer working on EPCOT and Tokyo Disneyland a man named Gary Georgi was making recordings that would recreate this special reality every time they were played back through headphones or a very few loudspeakers. He was very interested in my loudspeaker work for Disney and he attended the AES presentations I made on the topic. He did a demonstration for me which has become legend amongsyt audio engineers who heard it is the early 80s. He had a recording made of a person talking while wandering around a room mostly in front of the "test subject listener" but once in a while walking all the way around the "listener" (actually the recording position of the "listener' was recreated by processing). There was an interesting acoustic source used as part of the recording. It was the striking and flaring of a match. This sound is so unique and soft that any acoustic smearing will make it sound totally unrealistic. This sound was used near the end of recording to capture the listener's attention and then came the shocker as the recorded performer had moved to a position, which when played back sounded exactly like he was whispering to the listener from an inch or two away from, and behind, the demonstration listener's right ear. As all the listeners had done before me I jumped because of the natural reaction to having someone move so obviously and unexpectedly inside "my space" where I was unprotected. Gary wanted to have loudspeakers made that would reproduce the same effect as headphones could produce (or nearly so) so that the recording technique and processing he had figured out could be used in demos without headphones. You see there is a peculiar phenomena whereby most of the sound impinging on the eardrum has been reflected....by the ear itself. Our ears are asymmetrical. The comb filter effect of our ear cavity surfaces and lobes has been well documented now and so even with single speaker headphones not only is left/right information easy to determine but front/back and above/below information can be clearly represented on a single recording so that it is possible to produce an acoustic image that is so realistic that it begins to cross the line between reality and obvious recording. The best binaural recordings using dummy heads with dummy ears shaped like real ears showed what the different comb filter effects looked like from all directions. I had been able to quantify further many of the "other" critieria for the entire throughput system to be able to recreate a realistic signal including the dynamic range of the amplifier and speaker, response curve of the speaker in all directions, bandpass of each component, noise floor, amp current delivery capability and slew rate, square wave response (phase), nearfield listening with long delay farfield reverb components and a dozen other criteria in order of importance. Eventually Gary got the speakers he needed and he made some demonstrations with those speakers. I heard many demos on these loudspeakers using non-processed program materials and I can definitely say that they had as fine of image recreation (imaging) as any loudspeakers I have ever heard. There were some very interesting features about the speakers. The cabinets were almost totally inert because the secondary sound emissions from loudspeaker cabinets can easily ruin the "mirage". The speakers also had a very high ratio of driven (speaker) surface to non-driven (cabinet, frame, connector etc.) surface (seems the driven surfaces need to be about 12%+ of the total surface area of the loudspeaker enclosure/system, assuming the total of all cabinet acoustic energy emissions in all directions, is down at least 17 db from the output of the moving drivers) . The front and back of the drivers was firmly mounted and if possible the low frequency speakers were used in matched pairs in each cabinet (back to back) so that the movement of the cabinet from what is known as reactive-opposite force is minimal if not totally eliminated. As much as it wouldn't seem possible, a bass loudspeaker cone moving back and forth can easily move a speaker cabinet "forth and back", thus moving the sound source and muddling the sound (notwithstanding tip-toes or other partial restraints). Al Bodine of Bodine Soundrive a vibrational expert of mythical proportions has commented that these loudspeaker enclosures had the highest modulus frequency of any he had ever tested (up into the 80-120khz range) thus any of the sound energy the cabinet transferred into the air was so far outside the audible range that it didn't affect the acoustic image at all. There were so many atypical and unusual design factors incorporated into these loudspeakers that most manufacturers turned down the chance to make them under license. Gary Georgi was also well known at the time as one of the founders of Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs recordings, and as the distributor for Satin Moving coil phono cartridges and step up silver wire transformers along with many other products. He was reputable and respected. The recent Stereophile discussion about MFSL recordings of acoustic and electronic music (like Pink Floyd) point out that Gary's passion was absolute realism in sound recording and reproduction. Imperfect soul that he was, he was losing his high frequency acuity by the time I met him and unfortunately he eventually suffered a heart attack about 2 years after I first met him in the 80s. He never really had the chance to popularize the method of processing recordings so that the original sound of the instrument and the recording room could be brought to listeners in it's purest form. Even if he had (because Bruel & Kjaer did eventually produce papers on the comb filtering and low distortions levels needed) 99% of all loudspeakers ever made would just trash the recordings anyway. Yes, loudspeakers can be highly distorted devices (up to 10% combined distortions at 90db average level is considered quite transparent by our ear/brain combo) but it is often the phase, moving image source, rise time, dynamic range and the interference of other spurious but closely related cabinet noises that ruin the reality of an acoustic image. Those who are interested can ask further questions in this thread but some of the smallest details about what I've written here, require volumes to properly cover. But to again answer Ben's question, yes I've heard some program materials through a very few loudspeakers and headphones that sound like absolute reality, although it could never be described as boring. WK We don't get enough sound in our glass (Ben Hoadley) wrote in message ... I have been listenig to a lot of high end equipment lately and I have come to the opinion that a lot of it is fundamentally flawed. When I hear things they sound very nice but they dont sound realistic. What I mean is often a real instrument or someone singing in a room sounds kinda boring and hi-fi manufacturers make things sound nicer than they really are. For example go and record a single voice with a good mic without compression,eq at a distance that avoids the proximty effect. then play it back on your beautiful hifi. It will probably sound good but it won't sound exacty like you. I think with instruments its even more obvious. things take on a lush full quality rather than the raw sound of some guy playing over there. I know the manufacturers give out all those specs about distortion etc but I think we all take them with a grain of salt deep down. Maybe its good that things sound better than real. I'd be interested to hear other peoples opinions on this. Has anyone heard some equipment that sounds "boringly real"? Very interesting account. Thank you. You're comments about the wind in particular caught my attention. While I use mostly music for evaluating potential new or different audio gear, I also use as a test disk a sampler disk put out by Crown for their SASS microphone. In addition to musical excerpts, the disk contains excerpts including wind a pine forest, a babbling brook, surf crashing on a rocky shore, a butane torch being lit, a bicycle pump being used, a bowling ball hit pins (mic above), a fireworks display, a community swimming pool, a dirt bike pass-by, and an Indy 500 pit-row recording. Most of these clips readily show up high frequency anonamalies...I found them particularly revealing in showing differences in transparency and high frequency correctness. And among them, the wind in the trees, the babbling brook, and the surf crashing on shore, all of which seem to have a non-coherent high-frequency energy level, proved the most difficult. It takes accurate reproduction and extreme transparency for them to sound "real". Thanks again for the story. |