[Clarkmc2]

Quote:

By the way your understanding of what musicians do when they develop their perception is flawed on a fundamental level, and when I pointed this out you silently dropped the topic. Still waiting for an answer...

Forgive me, I don't recall that. Either my memory has failed me or I am being confused with another poster.

 

[Clarkmc2]

Quote:

Your sentence says it all, too. You have a strong paradigm. It's an assumption. You assume or belief -- you essentially choose first -- to use a paradigm which draws a line between perception and equipment behavior. Then what you believe about audio follows from that paradigm.
 
What you don't realize is that you have no way to show that your paradigm is ultimately more true than any other paradigm. You assume it. You like it. It fits your gut feeling.
 
I have a different paradigm. I think yours is a surefire way to lead to bad recordings and playback, and this is demonstrated in numerous recordings made by engineers who follow this paradigm and numerous books giving advice about assembling playback systems.
 
Mike

 


Mike, I never said or implied anything about how to record something. Equipment doesn't behave, we tell it what to do. If you are implying a link between some "nature" of equipment and listeners, good luck with that but no, I will not attribute any x-factor to inanimate objects. If that is part of your paradigm, prove it, talk about it, bond with it, do whatever you want. But I hope I have misunderstood you on that point because that is truly outside of science. Trying to redefine what science is won't help either. I really hope I have misunderstood that thesis.

 

[anetode]

I am all for a separate psychoacoustics forum. Not that I would spend any time there, but it would cut down the chaff here by 90% or so.

 
That would limit Sound Science to frequency response, noise, distortion and time based errors. All demonstrable and all actually about sound. The human element is really a very separate issue, despite the marathon attempts here to bond it to sound reproduction.

Not a chance, science is science. Without the human element all sound science would be pointless, why would the 20-20,000 threshold or low distortion even matter otherwise? Separating psychoacoustics from electrical engineering for the sake of sound science is like castrating to promote population growth.

It's the least clear way I could imagine of explaining what you "disagreed with" because now I have no idea what you disagreed with. You are going to have to explain it again, but just explain it. You did make one statement that is a common misconception, which is that musicians develop "acuity" of hearing. This is wrong for the same reason that claiming autistic people can't recognize emotions is because they need glasses. If this is not what you actually think, you are going to have to clarify.

No I did not, said misconception was part of the whole hyperbolic critique of what you said. I'm sorry you did not find that clear, but at first you went off on me for parodying what you said and now you're going off on me for you taking the parody too literally.

It would be really interesting if you had made any specific statements addressing any of my specific points. You have totally failed to address my analogy to facial recognition. You have said nothing about abstracted perceptions. You've made the error of thinking that musical training is about developing "acuity" of hearing. I'll be more impressed when someone can at least make a specific answer to these very simple points.

I did not address your analogy to facial recognition because I did not feel that it applies. You're talking about different perceptual mechanisms so there's every chance of tripping up from a technical point of view. Take the origins of facial recognition, it is a skill that develops very soon after birth and requires no conscious effort or training. The finer points of language processing kick in later and form the foundation for perceiving elements of music (pitch, rhythm, etc.). If you mean to talk about pattern recognition in listening to and performing music, then you're talking about more complex patterns of learning. (to be continued...)

 

[Clarkmc2]

Quote:

Not a chance, science is science. Without the human element all sound science would be pointless, why would the 20-20,000 threshold or low distortion even matter otherwise? Separating psychoacoustics from electrical engineering for the sake of sound science is like castrating to promote population growth.

Well, that is a point of view. Mine is that if a tree falls in the woods and no human is around to hear it, it DOES make a sound. The engineer who wishes to consider sound reproduction to be an unaltered as possible reproduction of what entered the recording device or microphone has a point too. When each reproduction device can sense the psychacoustic requirements of a listener at each precise moment and modify the clean output accordingly, there will be an application beyond conjecture for your point of view re: equipment. In the meantime, I'm seeing the engineers as being the practical ones given the human listener and the electromechanical devices we have to accomplish the task.
 
Talk about YMMV! I used to laugh at the statement, "Everyone seems to like their own taste in distortion." Now I think it applies to almost everyone, myself included. When I switch from tubes to JFETs or the other way around, I need time to make the adjustment. But I end up finding each in turn to have its charms.

 

[bigshot]

Relating measurements to the thresholds of human perception is exactly what's lacking from both sides around here.

Some folks might be interested in the minutiae of electrical engineering, and others may like making up artistic poetry to describe sound, but neither of those things do a thing to help me make my stereo sound better. I want to know exactly what the difference is and how much a difference it makes to my ears. Then if it is actually important, I want to know exactly what I need to do to address the problem.

99% of the posts around here are as useless as teats on a bull hog.

 

[Clarkmc2]

I find it easier and more productive of my time to start with flat reproduction, as much as possible, and experiment from there. It has worked for most sound seekers I have encountered. Now,if you would be so kind, any advice to help me in my similar quest?
 
I'm not into anything but audibility. I don't care how many sound waves can dance on the head of a pin.
 

 

[bigshot]

Flat response is the one thing that I've found to be useful. Frequencies are what I listen to. Jitter, distortion, phase, speed and bitrates above redbook mean very little to me. They've never been an audible issue.

 

[Clarkmc2]

I have some pretty accurate equipment but old man hearing. Maybe it's the combination, but I have never heard anything sound better than Redbook, given equal care in recording and mastering.
 
I came to the Sound Science forum because I was so weary of reading endless discussions of jitter, transports, high bitrates, expensive DACs, etc. on the High End forum. I admit I'm in no mood to put up with it here. Or endless discussions of flaky theory about the audibility of the inaudible.
 

 

[mike1127]

Forgive me, I didn't get much sleep last night and have confused posters and been a little too cranky. Let me start over.
 
First, I don't consider myself to an expert on anything, but since I have been told I am ignorant, let me at least explain what I know. I have a B.S. with an electrical engineering major. I designed speakers and measured speakers and amplifiers. I was given assignments such as proving parts of Fourier theory. Am I an expert? No, I haven't used this much since. I had a job for about 15 years working for NASA in the spacecraft navigation section, at which I learned a lot about inferential statistics. In particular this kind of work drives home the difference between a model of reality and reality itself. Now I am in music school studying to become a professional composer. I have recorded players -- I experimented with different microphones and microphone positions. I edited multiple takes down to a finished recording. I only did it twice so I wouldn't call myself a "recording engineer". However, what I am trying to say is that I'm not engaging in idle armchair speculation. I got out there and did it.
 
Let's assume electronics are perfectly transparent. That leaves microphones and speakers as the devices in the record/playback chain which have audible distortion. I am interested in microphones and speakers which are most accurate. So I would do the following. Let's say we are recording an ensemble. I would sit in the hall and listen to musical aspects of the their performance. These could include qualities of rhythm, such as noting how the articulation, tempo, and hall reverberation combine to create a certain feeling in the rhythm. These could include dynamics, in particular the subtle shaping of phrases, but also the large scale pattern of dynamics. We would choose a miking, then record the performance. We would choose speakers for playback. I would sit in front of the speakers, listen, and judge how closely the rhythmic quality and dynamics match what the players intentionally did.
 
 
Okay, I know I've got all sorts of objections coming here, but let's try to address them one at a time. If you are only interested in telling me I'm ignorant, then I'm not interested. What's the point? I'm trying to have a real discussion here.

 

[Clarkmc2]

No, I am probably not understanding exactly what you are saying. There is the recording environment. The pickup transducer(s). The electronics of capture, storage, retrieval and playback. And the output transducer(s) and playback space acoustics.
 
It seems to me you are looking for something from the output of this process that can be described in non audio terms. As an example of what I consider a non audio term, PRaT. Or musical. As I see it, there is nothing so mysterious to pick up with a microphone or play back that it cannot be displayed or demonstrated by the sound profile of the signal. Just sound. The performance is sound and only sound, be it a brilliant or a not so brilliant performance. The playback is likewise just sound, be it faithful or unfaithful or perfect re: the performance.
 
It follows that if the qualities like pace, rhythm and timing are part of the music, they are purely made of sound. It is logical to find them presented properly or not in the playback, but there is no mystery or x-factor outside of regular, everyday sound waves. If they do not reproduce properly it lies in the same elements that do or do not reproduce the sound of a clay ball hitting a brick wall.  Sound is sound.
 
So do you find this exposition of the audio reproduction process incomplete or faulty?
 

 

[bigshot]

Dynamics are part of the recording process, but rhythm is part of the performance itself. I think the problem is the language. You're describing things in musical terms rather than sound terms.

If you carefully mike a performance using a good mikes like the Neumann U87 or similar, distortion and dynamics aren't going to be the problem. The problem is always balance. Balance creates clarity. That requires careful mixing and equalization of your various channels.

This is probably a different subject though.

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clarkmc2 /img/forum/go_quote.gif

No, I am probably not understanding exactly what you are saying. There is the recording environment. The pickup transducer(s). The electronics of capture, storage, retrieval and playback. And the output transducer(s) and playback space acoustics.
 

Yeah, I consider everything in the chain, from the acoustics of the hall, to the acoustics of the playback room, to be part of one big system. The goal is to evaluate the behavior of that system. I leave out electronics, however, just to avoid controversy. Whether electronics are perfectly transparent has nothing to do with my point, so I just leave them out.
 
 
Quote:

It follows that if the qualities like pace, rhythm and timing are part of the music, they are purely made of sound. It is logical to find them presented properly or not in the playback, but there is no mystery or x-factor outside of regular, everyday sound waves. If they do not reproduce properly it lies in the same elements that do or do not reproduce the sound of a clay ball hitting a brick wall.  Sound is sound.

 
I'm not saying they aren't made of sound, but I'm saying that there are certain patterns. Let me give an analogy in the visual realm. Let's say we are taking photographs of faces, but the camera distorts the image visibly. Let's say we are interested in ideas like identifying the face (is it Bin Laden's?) or identifying the emotional expression on the face. I think we all agree these are objective concepts. I know there has been research in recognizing faces, and probably there has been research in recognizing emotions. Emotional expression and abstracted facial characteristics are things that can be described with precisely formulated models.
 
Let's say you use the camera to photograph a black-and-white grid. Does that tell you what it does to distort the expression or identity of a face? Not very well. It makes a lot more sense to photograph a face and evaluate that.
 
Likewise putting the sound of a "thud" into the system might not be a very good way to evaluate what it does to music.

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

Dynamics are part of the recording process, but rhythm is part of the performance itself. I think the problem is the language. You're describing things in musical terms rather than sound terms.
 

In my paradigm, it is absolutely necessary to use musical concepts to evaluate the behavior the "big system" (the system is everything from recording acoustics to playback room acoustics and everything in-between). Because wanting to experience music is the whole point for me. There is no other sensible way to evaluate the behavior. However, other people have other paradigms. I understand that. I can't see that they would make good recordings that way. But it works for them.

 

[Clarkmc2]

OK. But how does your method of evaluation alter the process for better or worse? That is what I am not getting. Being a a position to better perceive the result of a system has what to do with how the system works? Evaluating the result in a personal or unique manner could be terrific for spotting what needs changing. How does it inform a new way to EMPLOY the system to your ends?
 

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

OK. But how does your method of evaluation alter the process for better or worse? That is what I am not getting. Being a a position to better perceive the result of a system has what to do with how the system works? Evaluating the result in a personal or unique manner could be terrific for spotting what needs changing. How does it inform a new way to EMPLOY the system to your ends?
 

If you want a good system you have to evaluate the behavior of it. If you want to fly from Los Angeles to New York you need a compass or GPS. I don't understand the distinction you are making. Have you designed audio equipment and made recordings?