Compressed Audio Question

[Ghoostknight]

That isn't ideal because mixes are designed to use room reflections to fill out the body of the sound and give it life.

after testing alot it just sounds more "muddy" to me and you lose the real character of a specific song

Without that, sound may be more detailed, but dead sounding.

more detailed for sure, well "dead sounding" might depend on the linstener and how used you are to it, imo a good treated systems sounds way better and from listening i also imagine its closer to what the sound engineer intended

for me it will be always "treat as much as possible" with it being still a somewhat enjoyable room (thats why i like to use furniture), there is not "really" too much (casual, so no room in room and that extreme stuff..) treating, just too little

If you want that kind of sound, closed headphones are better because they put the sound in an acoustic vacuum.

closed headphones give me anxienty, i much prefer open back ones because i dont like that isolating feeling
tho i imagine in terms of reflection it doesnt matter much if open or closed... closed back just isolate more background noise which isnt really the same

Even though it can be a lot of work to optimize a room for a speaker installation, the rewards are huge. You have physical sound inhabiting a real space. You feel the bass in your chest, the air vibrates around you, and the music inhabits the same room you're sitting in and interacts with it.

well, i would like to try someday a good tuned large room but so far i just heared crappy setups without treating
discos are not comparable with a flat system in a treated room tho, they always sound like they boost bass by 10-20db

Sound engineers usually worry about three levels of harmonics.

these are also the most improtant, tho it doesnt mean directly harmonics above that "dont matter at all" the difference is just too little to not worry that much about it

 

[Ghoostknight]

Since we are on the topic of frequency range with instruments....there's also esoteric needs for having fundamental notes in the lower bass region. So I have a few great organ performances that do get into the lowest regions of pipe organ music. It's the registers where you don't technically hear, but I feel with my subwoofer. It should also be evident with folks that there are modern music genres that are all about the bass (should I try to resist including the link for Meghan Trainor?).

if you have "infrasonic" music give some examples to test

where the infrasonic stuff got really obvious for me was with this album https://www.deezer.com/de/album/6289144
kinda fun tracks to test your setup with
"The Science Of Sound"
"Look Aggresivly Towards The Future"
are two good ones

this should also make lossy vs lossless quite obvious in my expierence
tho i advice listening with speakers... even if your headphones say they go down to 10hz it isnt the same (by far!)

and if you get kinda used to infrasonics, and what to "look for" you will notice it is in a vast majority of popular songs... some use it to extend the "kick" of basses above 40hz, other use it for other stuff

 

[bigshot]

Audio compression codecs don't audibly alter bass. I've lost track of what you're talking about. Are you talking about MP3s, or speaker systems with that "infrasonic" stuff?

I don't think you understand the purpose of room treatment, but that's fine. You really have much less of a need for it with a near field setup.

 

[Davesrose]

if you have "infrasonic" music give some examples to test

where the infrasonic stuff got really obvious for me was with this album https://www.deezer.com/de/album/6289144
kinda fun tracks to test your setup with
"The Science Of Sound"
"Look Aggresivly Towards The Future"
are two good ones

this should also make lossy vs lossless quite obvious in my expierence
tho i advice listening with speakers... even if your headphones say they go down to 10hz it isnt the same (by far!)

and if you get kinda used to infrasonics, and what to "look for" you will notice it is in a vast majority of popular songs... some use it to extend the "kick" of basses above 40hz, other use it for other stuff

A CD can actually extend below 20Hz. So the best pipe organ album I have is a SACD quad surround of Bach using 4 full pipe organs in 4 corners of a large cathedral (the main advantage of SACD being surround). Pipe organs would be the best "acoustic" music for feeling sub-bass. Other than that, you get into modern synthesized music that produces those fundamentals "that you can feel" electronically. I'll also have to say that when it comes to modern speaker systems, a lot can have to do with your calibrated receiver. I've also been really moved by how much dynamics there can be with some recent musical scores in movies. Tár for example sounds so lively and dynamic with its Atmos track.

 

[bigshot]

It's possible to hear (or more accurately 'feel') frequencies below 20Hz, but not many systems other than better speaker setups with subwoofers get down that low. It takes a lot of power in the amp to push those frequencies into a room. A CD can theoretically produce sound down as low as you could ever need, you don't need an SACD for that, and an MP3 wouldn't affect that at all unless it's frequencies you can't hear anyway.

 

[Davesrose]

I think I also remember in a previous thread I was talking about sound levels with streaming DD+ Atmos vs TrueHD Atmos on a disc. GhoostKnight was claiming they were different due to some kind of difference in frequency range in bass. That is false: they are potentially capable of any reproduction that's relevant. I have found there can be differences with a movie title streaming vs its audio disc when it comes to audio level (usually, streaming DD+ Atmos has a lower normalization vs an optical UHD disc with TrueHD Atmos).

 

[Steve999]

Since we are on the topic of frequency range with instruments....there's also esoteric needs for having fundamental notes in the lower bass region. So I have a few great organ performances that do get into the lowest regions of pipe organ music. It's the registers where you don't technically hear, but I feel with my subwoofer. It should also be evident with folks that there are modern music genres that are all about the bass (should I try to resist including the link for Meghan Trainor?).

Getting to hear that fundamental in the low bass is definitely a thing, when it’s actually in a recording, IMHO. I find it’s just plain fun, it feels good. Even when, like, I’m watching a basketball game right now and some of the audio production effects are low, low, low, it just feels fun. Use of maybe two subwoofers and a little smoothing out of room modes by EQ highly recommended by me to enjoy these effects.

 

[Ghoostknight]

GhoostKnight was claiming they were different due to some kind of difference in frequency range in bass. That is false: they are potentially capable of any reproduction that's relevant. I have found there can be differences with a movie title streaming vs its audio disc when it comes to audio level (usually, streaming DD+ Atmos has a lower equalization vs an optical UHD disc with TrueHD Atmos).

yes because streaming services use lossy codecs which probably filter out some bass/infrasonics, same reason why i prefer lossless, tho they might ALSO use different volume normalization

 

[Steve999]

yes because streaming services use lossy codecs which probably filter out some bass/infrasonics, same reason why i prefer lossless, tho they might ALSO use different volume normalization

Why would you think that w/r/t bass and infrasonics? I can’t understand why a high quality lossy codec at a decent bitrate would allow the loss of fidelity for such pleasurable and noticeable aspects of sound quality.

 

[Davesrose]

Getting to hear that fundamental in the low bass is definitely a thing, when it’s actually in a recording, IMHO. I find it’s just plain fun, it feels good. Even when, like, I’m watching a basketball game right now and some of the audio production effects are low, low, low, it just feels fun. Use of maybe two subwoofers and a little smoothing out of room modes by EQ highly recommended by me to enjoy these effects.

Yes, but also how much of that feel good bass is actually below 20Hz....or say also powerful 80 or 40Hz? Not disagreeing, because I designed a subwoofer that is a really good performer when it comes to good tight controlled bass you can feel below 20Hz. I'll get back to "It's all about the bass". In good classical symphonies, bass is important because there's an attenuation with treble and the symphony can have percussions getting into those lower ranges. My issue with some new music and folks playing it is that they like the flabby bass

 

[Davesrose]

yes because streaming services use lossy codecs which probably filter out some bass/infrasonics, same reason why i prefer lossless, tho they might ALSO use different volume normalization

They don't though. So lets just assume 320Kbps stereo for simplicity sake: it's a codec that when decoded is practically the same as lossless/uncompressed.

 

[Steve999]

Yes, but also how much of that feel good bass is actually below 20Hz....or say also powerful 80 or 40Hz? Not disagreeing, because I designed a subwoofer that is a really good performer when it comes to good tight controlled bass you can feel below 20Hz. I'll get back to "It's all about the bass". In good classical symphonies, bass is important because there's an attenuation with treble and the symphony can have percussions getting into those lower ranges. My issue with some new music and folks playing it is that they like the flabby bass

Actually I think most of the feel good bass is in the 40 to 80 hz range, even though you can hear it too. I also know from measurement and much to my surprise that I’ve got room modes that strongly emphasize bass in parts of the 20-40 hz range, so I’ve used EQ to knock down those room modes. As I like to describe it, unchecked, it can make a pin drop sound like a nuclear explosion (exaggerating for rhetorical effect of course).

 

[Davesrose]

Actually I think most of the feel good bass is in the 40 to 80 hz range, even though you can hear it too. I also know from measurement and much to my surprise that I’ve got room modes that massively emphasizes bass in parts of the 20-40 hz range, so I’ve used EQ to knock down those room modes. As I like to describe it, unchecked, it can make a pin drop sound like a nuclear explosion (exaggerating for rhetorical effect of course).

Yep, I'd agree that a lot of our feel good bass does not get into the lowest registers we can imagine. However, there can be certain scenes that do, It's kind of funny that when I first moved into my townhouse, my neighbor would be constantly be knocking on my door that my movies were too loud (I had a downward firing subwoofer...and it must have been creating more resonance in our shared firewall). Since upgrading to a more powerful forward firing subwoofer that really fills the room, she's never complained. This even includes movies like U-571 (which has a big scene with surface depth charges: it's a whole lot of energy going on with the subwoofer).

 

[bigshot]

In music the bass that carries most of the load is 80-160Hz. Everyone thinks it's the sub bass below 80, but sub bass is just a rumble. It doesn't have a lot of definition. For instance with a standup bass in a jazz combo the trick is to get the pluck right because that's the dynamics of the attack, then the fundamental notes because that's the melody, then lastly the rumble underneath.

There's a Beatles song, I think it's on the White Album, where McCartney plays a descending bass pattern where every note is hit with the exact same volume. It descends through a couple of octaves and gives you a perfect way to judge whether your bass is balanced or not.

 

[Ghoostknight]

In music the bass that carries most of the load is 80-160Hz.

im using EasyEffects on Linux and looked now for a few weeks on the spectrum anaylzer... 80-90% of (my) songs go down to 40hz with nearly flat volume,
then it kinda depends if the 20-40hz range is "used" (tho there always happens also "some" stuff.. but not "flat")
kinda the same happens with 10-20khz

unfortunaly i cant check 1-20hz .. would be kinda interesting to see but i guess the EasyEffects dev also doesnt believe in Infrasonics making potentially a difference...