Quote:
Originally Posted by kartik
What ARE you talking about?
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It's really very simple... which one of those two options would provide the most stark difference in sound quality?
It's not a trick question... it seems obvious to me that the differences between cheap electronics and expensive electronics are MUCH smaller than the differences between cheap headphones (or speakers) and expensive headphones (or speakers). The fact that people are dancing all around the issue without being able to address it simply and directly just shows how far audio talk has strayed from reality.
Here is a rant to get you thinking...
The problem with audio today is that it has no sense of scale... People spend all their time worrying about frequencies only bats can hear and dynamic ranges that no one can ever hope to listen to without incurring major hearing damage. Basic physics is completely thrown out the window and it's replaced by glittering generalities like "transparancy" and "texture" that are attempts to translate visual analogies to sound that just don't apply.
Here's a scientific puzzle I've been pondering lately...
Everyone talks about how low their headphones go... It's a matter of pride to participate in the low frequency limbo. Headphones are rated down into the 20s... Wow! Isn't that great! Well, what exactly does that mean?
Here is the formula for calculating the length of sound waves...
SPEED OF SOUND (1,130 feet per second) divided by the FREQUENCY (in hz) = LENGTH OF THE WAVE (in feet)
Got that? ...At 25hz the length of a single sound wave is around 45 feet long. That means that a single wave 45 feet long has to come out of the speaker in one second to reproduce that sound into the air. That's the length of a semi-truck coming out of your speakers every second.
Assuming you have speakers that are even capable of reproducing sound that low, you would need a room with a length of 45 feet to be able to even be able to fit that entire frequency in the room. But half that wave bounced off a wall of the room would create an entire wave, so that cuts it in half. If you set a speaker in the middle of a 22 foot long room, you'll be able to hear 25 hz. If you put the speaker up against the wall, you can cut that in half to 11 feet... in a corner, 5.5 feet... lower the roof, 2.5 feet... set it on the floor, 1.25 feet. (At this point, you have essentially created a horn that pushes low frequencies into a smaller space.) In theory, you could move in the sixth wall and cut that down to about .75 feet.
OK... here's my question... What kind of fifth dimensional physics does it require to be able to hear 25 hz when it's not .75 feet away, but pushed up a couple of milimeters from your ears? The headphones may put out that frequency, but even with the most golden ears, you aren't going to be able to hear it because there is no room for the wave to exist in the tiny gap between your headphone drivers and your noggin!
Do the math, and you'll quickly find out that the lowest frequencies that you can hear up close against your head like that is somewhere around 100hz. Guess what? Most home stereo speakers, even good ones, don't really reproduce much below 100 hz at normal volume levels. In order to push the cones back and forth fast enough to reproduce 25hz, the speaker cones have to be flapping back and forth 25 times a second. If you want to raise that to a volume where you can hear it, you are going to need a pretty powerful amp and pretty flexible speakers, because that's going to be enough to create a strong breeze! Most speakers are MUCH too rigid to be able to do that. That rigidity rolls the low frequencies off... usually at around 100 hz.
Now physics and mathematics weren't my strong suit in college, but I can use a calculator and figure things out close enough to know that the golden ears that claim to hear super low frequencies out of their headphones are claiming to hear stuff that they just plain can't hear or can't be perceived the way they are listening.
Once you wrap your head around a concept like this, you start wondering what other claims about high end sound are full of horse pucky... Do we really need SACDs capable of reproducing 2Mhz when our hearing at best only extends to 20hz? Is there an advantage to having a dynamic range of 120 db over having just 95 db, when 120db is the equivalent of putting your ear up next to a jackhammer? Do measurable, but minute differences in the conductivity of a power cable make any difference when the walls of your house are wired with plain old zip cord? What about interconnects... Is it possible to REALLY hear the difference? I don't know of a single A/B blind comparison where they anyone has been able to tell the difference... yet there are several published in magazines that proved the opposite is true... Hmmm... Makes you think, doesn't it?
OK... I've just dismissed most of the sacred cows around here. What exactly DOES matter?
1) Speakers or headphones that reproduce as close to 20hz to 20khz as possible BUT IN A BALANCED WAY. It doesn't matter if speakers or headphones put out extreme frequencies if they are unbalanced. Wolf tones, or spikes in certain frequencies, can be to your ears like the difference between lying on a bed of nails all of the same length, and lying on one with nails of a variety of lengths... OUCH! The louder you turn up the volume, the more that wolf tone digs into your eardrums. Very few speakers are really flat, but better ones get close. A slight EQ tweak can pull them into line. More expensive speakers are usually able to reproduce a wider range of sound than cheaper speakers, but there is no point in putting top end speakers in a 10 by 10 room. The space has to be large enough to encompass the longer wave lengths. The dirty truth is, we humans are MUCH more sensitive to frequencies between 100 hz and 10 khz than we are the frequencies beyond that. Most people aren't going to hear a heck of a lot of difference if a system only extends 10 to 10. And a balanced 10 to 10 system will always sound better than an unbalanced 20 to 20.
2) Source components that conform to our ability to hear... We can hear 20hz to 20khz, a dynamic range of 70db is as much as we really need and the threshold of detectability of distortion is somewhere around .7%. Just about every single CD player made meets those specs! You can get equipment that has better specs, but only your dog will appreciate it, because humans flat out can't hear what they can't hear.
3) Amplifying power sufficient to push the speakers or headphones adequately. This can vary from speaker to speaker and headphone to headphone, but most systems are capable of driving speakers or headphones to the edge of their rating with power levels WAY below the peak nowadays. Most good amps are overpowered by as much as four or five times. You just don't need that much headroom.
4) Well recorded, mixed and mastered music. Garbage in... garbage out.
EDIT: I've been asked to elaborate on this... No matter how well your system reproduces sound, it doesn't matter if the sound isn't in the music. A recording with a low end roll off at 400hz is going to sound thin, no matter how good the bass response of your speakers is.
It may come as a surprise, but we have been able to record to fully exploit the range of human hearing since around 1955. Even as far back as the introduction of electrical recordings in 1925, there were records that nailed the core range of human hearing... 100 hz to just under 10 khz. Going back even further to the acoustic era (around 1910), there are vocal records (the best ones were made by Enrico Caruso) that had amazingly lifelike presence and a dynamic range that would blow your socks off. Recording quality has never really been the problem.
Well, why do so many recordings suck then? The answer is bad engineering. In the past, master recordings might be dubbed disk to disk, with a tremendous loss of quality in the process. In more modern times, the use of sub-masters... and sub-sub-masters... and sub-sub-sub... etc masters took the same sort of toll. Today, engineers make very little effort to create realistic soundstages... miking everything up microscopically close and then trying to synthesize a soundstage in the mix. This results in sounds that could only exist in outer space... No wonder the music sounds so distant and flat! We can't relate to it the same way we can a musician performing right in front of us.
The best sounding music... the stuff that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up... is natural sounding. When you put on a CD, and suddenly its as if the musician is right there in the room with you, it's as startling as the voice of Caruso coming out of a Victrola must have been to people in 1910. --END EDIT
See ya
Steve
