What do we judge audio reproduction against ?

I Give Up

D Louth

 

To have a meaningful standard for audio reproduction, you'd first need to establish a recording standard. Something that is never going to happen.

 

No, I think the gentleman was just asking for peoples opinions.

That was how I understood it anyway.

 

Don't.

 

Sorry if that is the case, I did not intend to upset any one, but but as we can not even seem to agree on a set of descriptive terms, finding something solid to hang system set up on seems a long shot. As the original poster is asking about :-

"Hi Guys

The range of posts on this thread so far express a wide range of experience and approaches to the thread subject and while none are wrong as such IMHO ,it does worry me that so far there does not seem to be a strong realization that many of our approaches in a broader context may be wrong and only of value in our own homes. If audio reproduction is so nebulous (being only what we want it to be) then how can we offer a broader opinion if the only truth we can offer is our own and not a reference standard against which all audio is judged. This reference must also apply to designers and us as listeners(civilian and professional)."

How else do you want to take that, we are wrong in our choices, and they are only suitable in our homes, well hell, where else are you buying your system for, what else is a reference standard. (unless of course its the one true path- and we have had a few of those over the years)

 

That's a shame

There are some very interesting and valid points being raised within this thread. Perhaps it is no more likely that a universal benchmark could be established, within the hi-fi world, than it would be for the culinary world - one man's meat......

But what we all look for, and aspire to, from audio reproduction, is certainly valid. The current thread on NOS dacs being a good example of this. There seems to be a consensus for some aspects such as 'musical', 'live' and 'not there'. These are certainly descriptions that can be easily applied and understood.

In my own system, I can apply 'musical', 'live' and 'not there too much' to my very best acoustic and choral stuff. (I can quite easily imagine I'm in the studio watching the engineer getting ratty with Pro Tools). So if I were looking to spend money, and didn't want to change the overall dynamic of my system, I would be looking to listen to things that improved upon the 'not there' attributes. So whether or not a piece of kit has a particular sonic signature would definitely be informing my choices.

I think perhaps the best we can hope for is that everyone understands what is meant by the most common adjectives and that they are used in a consistant way.

Pet hate? 'Like being there' used to describe the performance of a system playing a studio album - does my 'ead in.

 

I listen to a lot of electronic music. Synthesisers etc do not have a natural acoustic, because they need to be played via amps and speakers - so trying to compare a hifi system to a natural tone of an instrument or a live performance is meaningless if you listen to mainly this kind of music.

 

Too easily.
If you ask for opinions that's what you get.
As another poster has alluded to us all understanding say musicality, I've heard many systems that the owners called 'musical' that didn't work for me at all-in fact one in particular I likened to a visit to the dentist! but they were musical to their owners so who cares?-no one can be wrong.

 

Speaking for myself .....you can only judge against personal experience

which will include all your life experiences and obviously personal traits in regards to hearing and musical interpretation. Thats why audio is such a personal thing ....what one person hears is often not the same as someone else .....

that of course does not mean one person is wrong ..but it may mean that one person is hearing less. I can think of several occasions where people have been unable to hear musical minutia till it was pointed out .....

a classic example is to listen to track two on dsotm several of my friends and acquaintances had never heard the announcer or followed the taxiing turbo prop aircraft through the track till it was pointed out that you could.

Musical appreciation is a skill much like the rest of life the more you practice the better you get .....but you often need a little training to help set you on the right road ... ie hearing your first decent stereo system or going to a good concert

 

D Louth - absolutely don't give up! Although I seldom post your contributions to threads have made some of the most interesting reading on ZG.
My take on the question - there seem to me to be 3 schools of thought: First - that the system should accurately reproduce the sound of "live" instruments / voices (amplified or unamplified). Second - the system should accurately reproduce the artifact created by the recording studio / producer / engineer. Third - listening for, for the lack of a better expression, "hi-fi" stuff such as PRAT etc. A sort of subjective thing exemplified by a friend of mine who always eg listened to how a system reproduced the "Whoomph" at the end of "Walk on Gilded Splinters" amongst others!
I have in the past played in a rock band, listened to various things being recorded in studios and hear a fair amount of live music. My family play a lot of instruments so I am lucky(?) enough to hear a lot of piano / guitar / bassoon. When I listen I tend to look for a sound as close to "live" as possible. I also appreciate listening to specifics from favourite tracks. Sadly I can't hear master tapes via studio monitoring so can't really go with 2!

 

I don't think you necessarily need a standard in recording, but at the very least it is needed in monitoring. So this way at least the original intent of the sound is known to fairly good tolerances, even if its not live music. Something that the likes of Westlake/Tom Hidley tried to accomplish in the late 1970s with his LEDE 'buy a Westlake studio' designs, where each one was very similar, at least in shape and materials of the internal shell, and matched with pink noise plots. Of course despite this, there are many other factors that can change the sound, and so the concept of standardising monitoring was tried again with the introduction of the non-environment control room.

You guys might find something called a Modulation Transfer Function interesting. It can be used to quickly assess the 'accuracy' of a monitoring system (inc. room) in the snapshot of a single graph. It responds to both frequency amplitude and phase, in a way, giving a rating of quality vs. frequency.

 

As you know Tenson, those types of studios are a dying breed.

Most of them have been turned into film soundtrack mixing studios as that's where the money is now. Even Peter Gabriel has just turned his main room into a bloody soundtrack mixing studio so it's easy to see that the record industry are not prepared to fund bands doing it properly anymore.

One of the reasons I don't run the latest high-end gear (apart from cost), is it's a bit pointless given the rubbish that is coming out of many "studios". Many sound engineers are being taught to just get it down onto tape and then "fix it in the mix" digitally which is complete BS. The whole apprenticeship system that existed until say 15 years ago has all but disappeared. You used to get engineers trained up in the same studio for many years under the wing of guys that had done the same 20 years before. Now it's mostly freelance with guys moving all over the place, carrying their Genelecs to monitor their tracking with.

Also, anyone chasing the "ideal" of getting their hifi to sound like a natural instruments is really chasing their tale IMO. The way an instrument excites the direct and reverberant sound fields in a room is incredibly complex and any method of reproducing that will be a pale imitation. A violin for example is shooting energy in all sorts of directions from each surface with weird frequency & phase characteristics, is a 2-way box speaker ever going to come close?

I think many audiophiles put too much faith in engineers recording things correctly. There is just as much bullshit/misinformation flying around that industry as there is anywhere else.

 

This is a very good point. However, do we really want to hear that violin in our own room? It would sound crap. What we need is artificial control over the reverberant field, and the direction that it comes from. I suppose this is where surround sound comes in. In a non-environment room, surround sound could give a much more convincing reproduction of a live performance, and also do some pretty clever tricks for studio created work. The whole concept falls apart if the room starts to add its own character on top though, as it makes trying to create an artificial acoustic environment pointless. The cost is also pretty astronomical when you need 3 times the number of speakers, and a special room built.

 

for myself .....I want to hear the violin as if I was there at the recording ...so also need to hear the room queues as well as the what the violins doing ...

alternatively I want to hear my music how the artist wanted me to hear it ....with nothing added or taken away. Or as someone once said " the closest approach to the orginal sound"

 

when you start treading the path of special room requirements, surround sound etc, then surely you defeating the point of why most of us have systems. At least in my case the system is bought so that it
sounds good to my (and my families) ears, in our home
mixes into the domestic environment relatively unobtrusively
makes music more enjoyable

going much beyond that as for as I am concerned is bordering on OCD. May be if we stopped referring to the systems as Hi-Fi and used the more mundane music system, (or even music centre ) may be some of the wittering would go away.

 

Unfortunately, your rooms own acoustic is going to be the biggest barrier to overcome. In the majority of domestic listening configurations, you are hearing more reverberant energy than direct. That fact seems to get lost in alot of these discussions and it's a big issue. In my room for example, the sound from system changes noticeably depending on what angle the partially open entry door is left at (it's a metre from the speakers.).

Anyway, from my perspective, as long as I'm happy with the bottom-end from my system, the rest can take care of itself.

 

Actually, NO. It would rip your head off.

It's not uncommon for violin players to suffer hearing loss in their left ear

 

Tenson, I would suggest you to contact a violin teacher, who gives lessons in different places, also in school and privat rooms, and go with her and listen to the sound of a violin in the different rooms. You'll find the sound much much better than you describe it.

 

Yes but there is a hell of a difference between having a ear at a distance of 10 cm for over x hours a day or at a distance of 3 meters away once in a while from a violin. Please put in more aspects in the discussion in order to give a certain objectivity in it.

 

I agree with you if you mean that we judge audio reproduction mainly against our listening experiences in our life.

If this is right to judge Hifi equipments is for me and my purpose of listening to music clear. I have though no problems if other people have other ways as base for judging. Every one should find his own way and concentrate on his goals.