[RRod]

   It might seem nit-picking to some of you, but when you are after high-fidelity, it is quite disheartening to see how far we actually really are of reproducing the sound of live music, let it be classical or Metal.

 
I'll go with you on the metal part, but what is wrong with classical? Occasionally I find a new release with flubbed-up sound, but mostly I can trip and fall into a great sounding classical album these days.

 

[groovyd]

 
as I said, delays between left and right, of course that's a big part of finding where sounds come from. but the same phase shift in left and right ear, it's a very different story. did you try testing how much you notice it? do you feel like speaker manufacturers are idiots for deciding to use crossovers?

of course i have tested it... where do you think my opinion comes from lol

 

[groovyd]

   
Just adding in the Blauert & Laws reference.

I'm glad some scientific journal agrees with what can be clearly heard... 

 

[castleofargh]

 

Different masters perhaps. Have a look at the loudness war which affects CDs though not vinyl, because of its nature
.

Different masters for sure! You can see on the back cover of the cd that it was digitally remastered. My point was that the vinyls tend to sound more natural and not EQ'd.

the difficulty here is that vinyl implies a lot more than EQ. so finding what feels better to you may be a hard task. it could of course be the signature, from mastering or from the turntable, or a mix of several other things like high crosstalk, all kinds of distortions, noises, FR or even dynamic range of the song. all those parameters will be different even if the master is the same because of vinyl's "fidelity".

 

[castleofargh]

 

   
Just adding in the Blauert & Laws reference.

I'm glad some scientific journal agrees with what can be clearly heard... 

well one of us has a strange way of interpreting this paper because I felt it to be in phase with my opinion.

 

[RRod]

 
I'm glad some scientific journal agrees with what can be clearly heard... 

 
With brief sound impulses under anechoic conditions...

 

[groovyd]

  well one of us has a strange way of interpreting this paper because I felt it to be in phase with my opinion.

page 1479 'our hearing is especially sensitive to phase distortion'
 
page 1483 'need not be corrected in most practical cases' referring to group delays which is not what eq gives you.  it gives linear phase shift depending on the gain of each band, certainly not a group delay and we aren't talking about 'most practical cases' we are talking about being absolutist in the pursuit of the best sound.
 
my point is it can be easily heard and that is all that matters.

 

[castleofargh]

 surely you understand that the motivation for using an EQ in the first place, is to correct something audible, right? so your argument about being absolutist is like saying to keep undesired frequency response variations that are audible, for the sake of avoiding more phase shifts that probably wouldn't be noticeable under reasonable EQ usage

. it doesn't make any sense(just like your interpretation of the Blauert & Laws paper).
 
if you were more than a basic anti EQ guy, you would have started with the different kinds of EQs and filters, as they all have different pros and cons and stuff like ringings really don't sound anything alike even in extreme settings done on purpose to be audible. maybe next time.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

 
well one of us has a strange way of interpreting this paper because I felt it to be in phase with my opinion.

page 1479 'our hearing is especially sensitive to phase distortion'

page 1483 'need not be corrected in most practical cases' referring to group delays which is not what eq gives you.  it gives linear phase shift depending on the gain of each band, certainly not a group delay and we aren't talking about 'most practical cases' we are talking about being absolutist in the pursuit of the best sound.

my point is it can be easily heard and that is all that matters.

Group delay is exactly what EQ gives you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_delay_and_phase_delay
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/fp/Group_Delay.html

And your flippant remark that "of course you've tested it" probably means you didn't test for it in any meaningful way. I don't suppose you have any means of introducing phase shifts independently of frequency amplitude response changes, so am I right to say your "tested" extended no more to sighted fiddling with an equalizer, going "hmm I don't like what I'm hearing" and attributing the result to phase shift?

 

[groovyd]

   surely you understand that the motivation for using an EQ in the first place, is to correct something audible, right? so your argument about being absolutist is like saying to keep undesired frequency response variations that are audible, for the sake of avoiding more phase shifts that probably wouldn't be noticeable under reasonable EQ usage

. it doesn't make any sense(just like your interpretation of the Blauert & Laws paper).
 
if you were more than a basic anti EQ guy, you would have started with the different kinds of EQs and filters, as they all have different pros and cons and stuff like ringings really don't sound anything alike even in extreme settings done on purpose to be audible. maybe next time.

actually i am just stating what eq does and have no interest in discussing the different approaches to it.  my point is regardless of the approach the best you can do is linear phase shift but that does not apply at varying gain across the spectrum.  it does not result in simple group delay and it can be heard.  the human ear is very sensitive to phase shift and i can hear it easily.  that is all i am saying.  the B&L paper states quite clearly what i am saying if you actually took the time to read it.  in their context their conclusion is it isn't 'so' important under their circumstances. those are not the circumstances most head-fi type people operate within almost by definition.

 

[groovyd]

Group delay is exactly what EQ gives you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_delay_and_phase_delay
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/fp/Group_Delay.html

And your flippant remark that "of course you've tested it" probably means you didn't test for it in any meaningful way. I don't suppose you have any means of introducing phase shifts independently of frequency amplitude response changes, so am I right to say your "tested" extended no more to sighted fiddling with an equalizer, going "hmm I don't like what I'm hearing" and attributing the result to phase shift?

whatever... i have a masters in signal processing and have worked extensively on speech and audio codecs but yeah i have no way to really know what i am saying in any meaningful way. just forget it, the argument is pointless.

 

[castleofargh]

maybe you should get equilibrium for a trial. try something like linear phase filter, rise the impulse length and padding and come back to me about how easy it is to hear phase shifts. 

maybe you're exaggerating things, maybe you use an EQ with settings that really make it obvious to hear some ringing, maybe what you call easy is to apply a +15db super steep EQ that nobody would have a reason to use? maybe your experience has nothing to do with music and you just assume that the result would be the same?  IDK. but easy to hear, even though it's a subjective thing, I just can't agree with it if you keep talking about EQ as a general thing and it concerns music.
 
 
the phase shift is indeed a thing, it's audibility in casual normal use is really a different matter though. at the mastering level it's yet another matter, just mixing 2 tracks of the same instrument from 2 mics has the potential to become a problem(thus different filters to deal with such problems). and as I said before, variation of phase from one ear to the other is a special case, that's where we're really very sensitive to it. while mixing this can have a significant impact. but most sources are in mono anyway. so what we'll get in the end as time delays between each ears will be the manufactured panning. nothing "real" to hear.
you don't have to use EQ if you don't want to, but it's a great tool used everywhere for a reason. if phase shifts were so obvious, then what music are you listening to? how many albums weren't EQed? what will a little more EQ change to that sacred phase that is just the byproduct of mic positioning and mixing anyway?
again there are actual cases even with my own IEMs where the EQ improves the general phase curve. not that I can claim to notice it, but I do measure it.

 

[groovyd]

  maybe you should get equilibrium for a trial. try something like linear phase filter, rise the impulse length and padding and come back to me about how easy it is to hear phase shifts. 

maybe you're exaggerating things, maybe you use an EQ with settings that really make it obvious to hear some ringing, maybe what you call easy is to apply a +15db super steep EQ that nobody would have a reason to use? maybe your experience has nothing to do with music and you just assume that the result would be the same?  IDK. but easy to hear, even though it's a subjective thing, I just can't agree with it if you keep talking about EQ as a general thing and it concerns music.
 
 
the phase shift is indeed a thing, it's audibility in casual normal use is really a different matter though. at the mastering level it's yet another matter, just mixing 2 tracks of the same instrument from 2 mics has the potential to become a problem(thus different filters to deal with such problems). and as I said before, variation of phase from one ear to the other is a special case, that's where we're really very sensitive to it. while mixing this can have a significant impact. but most sources are in mono anyway. so what we'll get in the end as time delays between each ears will be the manufactured panning. nothing "real" to hear.
you don't have to use EQ if you don't want to, but it's a great tool used everywhere for a reason. if phase shifts were so obvious, then what music are you listening to? how many albums weren't EQed? what will a little more EQ change to that sacred phase that is just the byproduct of mic positioning and mixing anyway?
again there are actual cases even with my own IEMs where the EQ improves the general phase curve. not that I can claim to notice it, but I do measure it.

 
sorry, i'm over it... no need to continue this argument as we clearly simply disagree.

 

[cel4145]

actually i am just stating what eq does and have no interest in discussing the different approaches to it.  

sorry, i'm over it... no need to continue this argument as we clearly simply disagree.

Based on what I have read here in this thread, seems to me you are cherry picking using generalizations from what you can find to support preconceived notions rather than really offering any useful argument. That ain't the sound science way.

 

[DougD]

 

"High fidelity” -> being faithful, accuracy in details; “the degree to which an electronic device accurately reproduces sound”​

 
As you can see this definition in my signature, it is safe to say that this is my lodestar based on how I approach this hobby; it is the backbone of my concept of building a headphone rig for myself. I want to hear how the musicians sounded in the recording room/auditorium during recording. If it's not possible, I want to get as close to that sensation as I possibly can, considering my financial limits. This is, in short, why I am strongly against ANY kind of EQ-ing.

 
I agree with the original premise here ... in regards to the purely electronic devices in the system. But the largest distortions from pure fidelity are introduced by the electro-mechanical transducers that convert electric signals to acoustic signals, and then the acoustical properties of the environment affecting the transmission of the acoustic signal from the transducers to your ears. 
 
Since we know that those are distortions from pure fidelity, then as fans of "highest fidelity" we MUST be in favor of any mechanisms or processes that, in the absence of untoward side effects, would minimize any post-electronics distortions from original fidelity. 
 
And it is necessarily an EMPIRICAL (/perceptual) question, not a theoretical one, as to whether EQ-ing or any other forms of post-electronics corrections provides a net benefit to "fidelity to original recording, delivered at the ear." 
 
Your (or anyone else's) personal experience and/or listening sensitivities (and gear) may be such that your verdict is today's EQ-gear introduces more audible problems than they cure. But you/we cannot generalize that's going to be true for all equipment, all tunings, all environments, and all listeners ... now and in the future. 
 
Bottom-line: categorically rejecting EQ is illogical, and works against your stated interest in highest-possible fidelity.