Re: The lack of attention to scale when it comes to technological advances in audio.
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Originally Posted by lan
Are you talking about the manufacturers?
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Yes. Most specifically, the whole concept behind digital audio with high sampling rates.
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Originally Posted by lan
How does physics describe sound?
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Frequency, amplitude, dynamic range, level of distortion, psycho acoustic principles like masking, etc.
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Originally Posted by lan
The sounds we hear in nature may not always sounds "balanced". You walk into different spaces and the sound interacts with all the objects in there in such a way that my voice sounds different in the bathroom compared to the living room.
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That's actually a very interesting aspect of psycho acoustics... One of the reasons I've noticed why antique acoustic phonographs sound so startlingly present is because early recordings had very little reverberation to them. They were recorded dry because the recording horns couldn't pick up much sound beyond 15 or 20 feet. The manufacturers of acoustic gramophones recommended putting them in the corner of a large room, facing towards the center. This used the walls, floor and ceiling of the room to act as a horn to extend frequency response, but it also made the sound very directional, and any sound produced by the phonograph took on the natural reverberation of the room. Since many rooms back then had hardwood floors and high ceilings, the sound had room to bounce around, creating a very sophisticated set of echoes all around the listener. Combined with the 1:1 dynamics of the acoustic recording process (there's no volume control... soft is always soft and loud is always loud), and the projection effect focusing the sound a few feet in front of the player, it creates a very lifelike sound picture.
Our ability to discern presence in recordings uses an almost unconscious process of comparing the sound of the recording to the sound of our own voice in that particular ambience. When a dry recording is played back in a live room, using the natural acoustics of the room to create a natural reverberation, the recording sounds more "real" and present to us. A recording of a singer singing in a huge cathedral played back in a small, acoustically dead environment can sound good, but it doesn't have the same lifelike presence as the dead recording in the acoustically live room.
This is why synthesized digital delays always sound best with settings that mimic ambiences that are close in scale to the expected natural reverberation of the actual listening room. More exaggerated ones that synthesize large halls or arenas always sound "phoney" to us.
The reasons that bathrooms sound different than living rooms also has a lot to do with the sorts of surfaces the sound bounces off of. Hard surfaces will tend to reflect certain frequencies, just like a mirror reflects light. It's possible through equalization to balance for this, and produce a balanced frequency response, even if there is a lot of natural reverberation.
My friend showed me an interesting installation of his system a few months ago... It was a party with a live band in a totally empty warehouse space with very low ceilings. Standing in the room, you were instantly aware of the echoey sound of the place, but by the time he had placed the speakers and balanced the frequency response in the room, the sound was amazingly good. The sound sounded different in different parts of the room, but the differences matched the way everything sounded in those parts, so the ear read the differences and being "natural".
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Originally Posted by lan
In your "balanced" reproduction system, it will match and be correct to the recording. But on a cheaper digital source, it won't have the depth and it will not be smooth but more grainy.
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What you are reading as grainy is actually unbalanced high mids. If you boost the sound around 3khz, even just a little bit, the ear will hear that as harshness. Components that aren't designed as well might be more unbalanced, but the digital medium offers a broad latitude for adjustment to correct for this sort of thing. When the balance of frequencies is correct, there is an amazing way that the sound "pops" into a lifelike depth and presence. It's something that people with equalizers find out quickly... a balance can be just a couple of decibels off in the wrong place, and it can sound totally flat or harsh.
I'm betting you don't use an equalizer in your system, because without the ability to correct individual frequency bands, it is all up to the balance designed into the system. High end equipment is liable to be adjusted by the manufacturer to have a flatter response than medium range equipment. That's what makes you think that the better sound is exclusive to high end equipment... But that doesn't mean that medium grade equipment can't be tweaked with an equalizer to sound just as good.
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Originally Posted by lan
I agree. My reference is reality.
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Reality is the *ONLY* useful reference. "Realistic sound" is hardwired into our brains. When we hear it, we know it. We don't have to think about it.
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Originally Posted by lan
Components without high enough precision, something that smears sound, etc. can create things which weren't in the music. To me it's worst offenders are bloated bass and harsh treble.
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I agree with that 100%... but bloated bass and harsh treble are exactly the sorts of problems that a simple EQ tweak can correct. The problem isn't precision or distortion. Most reasonably good stereo components are capable of high resolution and clean sound way beyond our ability to hear. The problem is frequency inbalances, and every single system has an imbalance to one degree or another.
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Originally Posted by lan
You seem to be basing quality largely on frequency response which I think is too simplistic. I think it's nice to have an accurate sound but ultimately more precision is important to me.
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I think it's just a matter of semantics... I could just as well describe harsh treble as "grain" and bloated bass as "sloppiness". But those words are misleading... they don't point to the real problem.
Last week I had the opportunity to spend the day listening to a pro rig that has been tweaked to provide perfectly flat response from 26 hz to 20 khz. Not only that, it uses drivers that are capable of remaining balanced and flat at any volume level. Not many people get a chance to hear what that sounds like... It was a real "ear opener"!
I had a pretty good idea of what flat response sounded like in the core frequencies... but the bass and treble were very surprising to me. The treble was very restrained, it was clear to hear over the rest of the sound, but it didn't have that aggressive, up front sort of sound most systems have in the upper mids and low highs. It could hold back when there was no high frequencies to reproduce, and then come back with each cymbal hit. This gave the high frequencies a great deal of smoothness and depth.
The bass wasn't subtle at all... it was huge and powerful, slamming the floorboards like a hammer on big kick drum hits. Again, it didn't overpower or mask other frequencies, but it felt tight and had a completely smooth continuum all the way from the lowest lows up to the lower mid range. The midrange pluck of the acoustic bass sounded connected all the way down to the lowest rumble of the bass note. Most other systems I've heard have gaps between the lowest lows and the low mids. They sound like "firebreaks" in the sound. This can be even more exaggerated in satillite systems with subwoofers.
I plan to borrow my engineer friend's expertise to see what can be done with a tone generator on my system. I doubt it will get anywhere close in the low bass extension, but I think I can get it to sound much better by flattening it out a bit.
See ya
Steve