What do we judge audio reproduction against ?

I'm fully aware of the issues relating to hearing loss (it's my job) and was not trying to indicate that a violin will deafen someone listening to it in a room.

It was just a comment that a violin can generate a decent SPL in a room...

 

Hi Titian,

Good to see you joining in. As it happens, I have heard a live violin in my own listening room, and also recorded it. I don't have the raw recording at the moment, but I can get it back from my friend.

Perhaps 'sound crap' is an overstatement, as a good player will make music in any environment. However, the sound in my listening room of a live violin was nothing close to ideal, and I much prefer the sound that the same violin and player created in a larger hall (that was also far from an ideal concert hall).

My point was, we do not want our hi-fi to bring the musicians to us in our room. Andy commented about a violin having differnt dispersion patterns to a speaker. But we do not want to recreate that, we want to recreate the direct and reverberant sound, and direction of reverberant sound reflecting in the recording room/hall.

We want to be transported to the place of the performance (or the studio control room where 'artificial' music is concerned). This is never going to be possible, ever, unless we can completely remove the acoustic of our rooms and create and control a convincing fake acoustic environment. This goes far beyond adding a bit of reverb to the signal; it involves controlling the direction of sounds, and their decay rates too.

 

How do you record it in the first place...

That's part of what I was getting at.

 

You just need to posses one of those eggs like Mork (Mork & Mindy) came to earth in.



Or a Soundfield mic.

Or alternatively, you could record all parts in anechoic conditions and run it through something like the acoustic simulation of Odeon, CAT Acoustic or CARA.

 

Gets a bit "clinical" listening back to it though...

 

Isn't this negative?

YOu ve got to work with what you've got!

I don't dispute the current trends recording quality sound disturbing.....just means you ahve to buy better equipemnt....not worse!

 

No, I just run semi-vintage gear and listen to 70's rock!!

 

I think this thread has gone totally off topic...

 

I don't see why it is off topic. If you want to discuss how we judge sound quality, we need to discuss the source of the sound and how its produced. Its certainly more interesting!

 

How about this simon (not sure how to get this past the wife though).

http://www.syntheticwave.de/3D Wave-Field-Synthesis.htm

 

It might be more interesting to know about it but it has not much to do with the thread's initial question.
Only "technical" people would put such points in the question "how do you judge sound quality?".
Ask this question to a thousand of people on the road and count how many of them will relate that to the way sound is been produced. And nevertheless each person somehow judge the sound quality.

Do you really think that when someone judges the sound quality he starts to think about the recording techniques, which was the source of the recording, who did it and how he did it, how it was sounding in the recording studio?
Personally I believe only a very small percentual of persons do that.

 

A small percentage yes. It's going to entirely depend on the person and their background I think. Tenson has an interest in such matters and so will think about such things. Most people wouldn't, but most people's thoughts on the matter are more along the lines of "Do I like this?/Do I not?" end of story and haven't analysed the "why" of it much if at all. Any thoughts of absolute fidelity to some notionally perfect reference would be equally unlikely I suspect.

 

HI Guys

I was having a bad day and frustration had set in over the reaction to the question/suggestion . Not that people had an opinion but i felt that my thread and posts had not been read correctly(or understood.My fault perhaps ?).

Thank you to those who feel i have had something worth while to contribute to this site,much appreciated .

This topic is very complicated . Recording quality,Venue acoustics ,your rooms acoustics(your room is the thing which will make or break the sound you can potentially get) and there are many other issues that can hinder . I supposed that there is ,perhaps an average or perhaps a core sound print ,that gives an instrument/voice its character (before being mauled by all the things that can go wrong) ,my main point is that components/systems should be able to reproduce this without mauling it even more .

I try to go to as many live concerts as i can ,and take note of how certain instruments sound in order to help me with this but and i concede this point(memory is a fickle thing) so unless we record ourselves, in our own room and then play it back (what ever instruments or vocals ) and use this as a reference point will anything else have as much value ?

It is uncle ants point that i want people to think about ," the why of it ...and thoughts of absolute fidelity to some notionally perfect reference."

The final road any of us is traveling along and its destination is up to us but i for one would hope for more in that it would be both an ideal and final goal ,that what i end up with can reproduce accurately the sound of any instrument and not maul it more than it may already be.

A quality assured recording system would be a lovely thing and in away THX does this for movie sound recording and playback it gives a notional reference point (you may disagree with Thomas Holman and Geroge Lucas as to what theirs is) but it did improve sound quality in movies compared to what it had been in the sixties and seventies,it brought consistency. Now it may have leveled the playing field so more cinemas sounded good (rather than a small number being good) but at least you know what you get with movies now. Sound tracks for films are now recorded for the most part to a much higher standard than the Pop/rock or even classical world,should we not demand a reference recording spec,rather than settle for compressed crap . The download i-pod generation may overwhelm any ones desire to do anything about this (no money in it for them). Maybe we could start and complain when cds we buy sound crap and slowly raise awareness in the record companies that recording quality matters to us ? and we will stop buying crap(might work but it would take all of us)

Even the BBC quality standard hardly exists to day,once a reference standard of quality.

Regards D Louth

 

A lack of compression on CD's we would all favour I'm sure. The same with the quality (or lack) with downloads, Would complaining on purchase do any thing.(Moan all you like guy's, we have the money). Maybe not purchasing may open a few eye's, but what portion of the market do those of us that care make, enough to matter? Maybe if we made a conscious decision to buy the well mastered, well recorded stuff a sales increase may open more eye's than yet another decrease. The forums certainly give us the chance to spread the word on the good stuff.
________
Katyl

 

Hi dudywoxer

No just complaining to HMV,ZAVI etc alone would not result in much . The quest for better sound quality has to start with the musicians(Neil Young cares,the rest need to) who can drive this forward . Obviously if artist and record company feel their dwindling revenue is under even more threat they may be persuaded to do something . Not for the morality of it but the pure commercialiality of it . We should contact artists via whatever means possible and tell them that sound quality is important to us as well as the music media,radio etc. Surely there must be enough of us who care to affect some sort of change . Record companies only care (to the most part) in cash,lets give them a reason to sell recordings that start of as well as you can get them . These recordings can then be offered for sale with the purchaser choosing the quality they want to match the application,download,i-pod etc or old fashioned vinyl or cd ( lets face it SACD and DVD A didn't work because they required a change in play back kit ). So lets make cd as good as it can be.

I think we have to get militant and well organized to have any hope of changing the current situation,if we sit back and do nothing then it will only get worse.

Regards D Louth

 

Wow!

http://www.turnmeup.org/

 

I judge the sound against what I like to hear in my head.

 

Thanks Tenson just joined ,at least some care ,about time. If your a zg poster or quest and care about sound then click on Tensons link and join turn me up .

Regards D Louth