[Exacoustatowner]

 
One of the things Dan Kahan at Yale has done is study liberal and conservative biases,religious based biases, racial biases,  and other factors that might lead people of one  persuasion or another lean one way or another on issues.  His findings are that no party or point of view has a monopoly on science denial when it goes against their tribal belief. On some issues there are no correlations with any party or value and on others like climate change there is clear identification of positions with groups.  We're a weird animal.   Anti-vaxers and pro-organic folks are largely liberal while people who don't believe in man-made climate change are mostly conservative.  What's that about?  All I can say is I have a degree in chemistry and a PhD in biochemistry and have spent  a lot of my life trying to design good experiments and think objectively. It's getting to be a very lonely feeling to be scientific.
 
The really key problem as I see it is the death of the expert and expert knowledge.  Everybody has an opinion.  We have some people right from the industry and academe on this forum who know what they are talking about because they are very well trained and can design the stuff we are talking about.  Some idiot who wouldn't know which end of transistor was up comes in and says the jitter is lower thru an unobtainium wire that costs $2000 which caused my bass to grunt and my treble to bloom and everybody runs out and buys the wire.  I have been taught that when someone knows more than you do about something you give their opinion a lot of weight.
 
This has made me think of a great study.  I wonder if the subjectivists and objectivists here fit into any political, social, psychological or demographic group.  Don't know where I would get the data though.

That would be very interesting!

 

[Steve Eddy]

We have some people right from the industry and academe on this forum who know what they are talking about because they are very well trained and can design the stuff we are talking about.

But those from the industry here have to watch what they, even on basic matters of physics lest they violate the rules for Members of the Trade. I've joked that even Ohms Law is off topic for MoTs lest it trouble some other MoT.

This has made me think of a great study.  I wonder if the subjectivists and objectivists here fit into any political, social, psychological or demographic group.  Don't know where I would get the data though.

I'm about the only real subjectivist here when it comes to enjoying reproduced music (as opposed to those I call "pseudo objectivists") but on knowledge and understanding, I'm an objectivist. So how would you define me?

se

 

[Steve Eddy]

All true. A real Symphony orchestra playing has at least a hundred different instruments producing sound through brass valves, strings, impact, and voice.

Don't know why you make it sound so complicated. At the end it all adds up to a singular continuous waveform.

We require our speakers and headphones to reproduce that- what at best we reproduce is the vibrations transduced by the microphone diaphragms into electrical signals.

Yes. As I said, the electronics are already taken care of. It's the transducers that still need work.

se

 

[Exacoustatowner]

 
Recording live performances from multiple mikes and laying down multiple tracks is an art and a science.  Very hard to do well enough so that when the mixing is done in the studio something that resembles a live performance with a sound stage and instrument placement can be heard correctly.  The only way it happens is with a lot of expertise at processing and tweaking.  Another alternative is to stereo mike and let the chips fall where they may. Sometimes it works, most times not.
 
The mechanisms, physics, anatomy, and brain-processing of hearing are often over-looked by audiophiles.  For example, I am amazed that people describe the vertical image they perceive when they hear a recording through one DAC that isn't there when they hear it through another.  Animals with ears located on the same vertical plane don't perceive vertical auditory information unless they tilt their head.  So are they hearing a tall soundstage with one DAC, or are they leaning their head differently? Not saying that there aren't imbedded clues about vertical images in music but if people are hearing them it's because they've moved their ears. There are so many examples like this we ought to write a review of how hearing works and make it sticky on every page.  We could for example turn our attention to a statement i just read which I think was "as jitter is lowered you get more bass and smoother trebles" (http://www.head-fi.org/t/766347/schiit-yggdrasil-impressions-thread/45#post_11609682).  Jeez, I didn't know that, somewhere I read that the jitter present in modern digital equipment was inaudible.

The recordings I've mentioned won Grammy's for best Classical Recording of the year. I think they did an amazing job of recreating the experience and I'm fortunate enough to have been present- approximately 6 rows back for the live performance! From the specs (stage depth about 34 feet) I'd estimate the rear of the orchestra was- about 60-70 feet back. At 1100 fee per second that is about 60 milliseconds. Within the limits of perception. So I imagine some delay was added to the rear microphones in the mix. I could be wrong-but I wonder if there is any way I could find out.
 The mics could also pick up reflected sound. I've no idea if there are mics other than those suspended over the stage.
 
If you bring reality based knowledge into the discussion you will cause an explosion of righteous anger. 
This! " There are so many examples like this we ought to write a review of how hearing works and make it sticky on every page." 
http://sfwmpac.org/system/attachment/attachment/5/dsh_final14.pdf

 

[AudioBear]

But those from the industry here have to watch what they, even on basic matters of physics lest they violate the rules for Members of the Trade. I've joked that even Ohms Law is off topic for MoTs lest it trouble some other MoT.
I'm about the only real subjectivist here when it comes to enjoying reproduced music (as opposed to those I call "pseudo objectivists") but on knowledge and understanding, I'm an objectivist. So how would you define me?

se

Tragic, they probably know more than most of the rest of the people around here.  So how would i define you? Not much different than me or most of the rest of us here. Enjoyment of music is emotional--at least it is for me.  I don't try to over-analyze it.  I get technical and analytical when buying gear, but once I've bought it, I don't test it or analyze it or worry about it. I don't think you are so alone.  Being gagged as you are would bother me more than pseudo-objectivism.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Strange that the majority of discussion of these forums is about how various electronic gear and cables can be selected to play nice with certain transducers.  There is an implicit understanding by some but the irony of this escapes most.  It's all about the transducers.  Starting with mikes, and pickups on instruments.  A lot has been done to optimize pickups to instruments but they don't capture room acoustics.  This should really be the center stage of how to get better sound--make better transducers and use them to make better recordings and playback transducers.  Duh.

Thing that gets me is that the audiophiles tend to all say that the goal is to accurately capture and reproduce the experience of a live musical event. Personally I just don't see what the big deal is about "live." Personally I'm more interested in the music rather than an event. I say leave that experience for an actual event. I think the studio is the better canvas upon which to "paint" the music than some event venue which comes with a lot of compromises.

It's funny how music changed depending on how many people that had to be "fed." It was the desire to present music to a large public audience that led to the large symphony orchestra. You needed multiple instruments playing in order to fill such large venues with sufficient volume levels. But I digress.

If you want to realistically capture and reproduce a live event, I think you're just going to have to forget about loudspeakers, except for the most expensive, custom multichannel systems in the wealthiest of homes. The ideal would be to capture the sound in the ear canal just before the eardrum, and then play it back through some in ear monitors.

While binaural, dummy head recordings have been made, they're using dummy heads with generic pinnae, even though different pinnae can have rather profound effects on the sound they're funneling into our ear canals. Short of making individual recordings of the event with each listener's pinnae used in the dummy head, the only solution I can see would be similar to custom IEMs where they take custom molds of your ear and produce a custom in ear monitor that's an exact fit.

You would have custom molds made of your ears including the pinnae. These would be used to make duplicates of your pinnae that could be used to analyze their filter function and then you would be provided with a custom DSP algorithm that you would feed into the playback device to be applied to the music you and only you listen to.

On the recording side, they would be made without any pinnae.

And loudness is vitally critical as well if you truly want to accurately record and reproduce a live event. There would need to be some sort of reference level established to insure that the level at your eardrums would be precisely the same as it would have been at the live event.

And then there's the problem of the IEM itself.

Let's say you are able to entirely accurately capture and reproduce the sound at the output of the IEM. Well, once those sound waves leave the IEM, they're simply not going to behave exactly the same as they would in an ear canal that was open to the air and didn't have an IEM shoved into it. Now what? More DSP? Perhaps, but DSP can't deal with everything, like resonances and whatnot.

That's why I think the audiophile's goal of accurately capturing and reproducing the sound of a live event is just a huge Sisyphusian folly and is really just a huge distraction. Audiophile's tend to be much more obsessed about SOUNDS, than what it should be about, and that's MUSIC.

Just my opinion of course.

se

 

[Steve Eddy]

Tragic, they probably know more than most of the rest of the people around here.

Don't be so sure. But I can't comment any further.

So how would i define you? Not much different than me or most of the rest of us here. Enjoyment of music is emotional--at least it is for me.

Well, I think that when it comes to enjoying reproduced music, most here tend to be utilitarians who are informed by their objectivist side, rather than what I would call a true subjectivist. My subjectivism is purely hedonistic, and I place something of a premium on aesthetics.

se

 

[AudioBear]

@Steve Eddy
 
Point well taken about other members of the trade.  I made an unjustified assumption.  Will say many that I have met are pretty sharp--but on reflection certainly not all. 
 
This thread of thought is interesting.  I think there's a paradox.  It seems to me a lot of subjectivists really aren't that passionate or emotional about the music, they are too busy evaluating equipment with which to perfect the listening experience and too busy listening to the equipment instead of the music.  That's my impression anyway.
 
For many objectivists the point of proving that there are no audible differences between types of gear or file types or whatever allows them to listen to music rather than obsess about collecting the perfect system.  I would grant your point, I suppose I am utilitarian.  I'm informed by things like price and other practicalities.  And I've already confessed I just like music, so I will stream 128 if that's what's available.  Can I tell it from a real well recorded 44.1 uncompressed file?  Almost always but that doesn't make me not listen and it gives me no pain, in fact the same songs that give me goosebumps on a great system can do the same thing when it 's played while I'm waiting in a dentist waiting room listening to background music.  I do prefer the better recording and I like nice gear.  Heresy, but I guess am not a music or gear gourmet.  Does that make me a utilitarian objectivist?  It sure makes me easier to satisfy than a lot of people around here.
 
Which leads me to your post on the next step in binaural recording.  I'll grant you describe might be an excellent way to capture the sound that falls on our ears but as you also point out there are lots of technical challenges to actually doing it and if we could, the recording would only be perfect for the anatomy on which it was modeled.
 
The myth of a live event is interesting.  I play (poorly) a couple of acoustic instruments and like to jam every week with friends.  I also go to house concerts, or listen to performers in restuarants and bars,  or just sit around listening others play all without electronic assistance.  It's not a matter of better or worse than recordings but the sounds I hear in these kinds of settings are different from what I  hear on electronically recorded and reproduced music.  I like both and don't get all hot bothered trying to figure out which is better because they are just different.  I do have a bias though.  Best explained with a story.  My guitar teacher is one of those people who can pick up just about anything with strings including a $30 plastic ukulele and make it sound incredibly good if not magic. When he plays acoustic guitar the sound is captivating.  I have never had that same experience listening to a recording including some of his recordings.  When he performs around town he plays an electric guitar through an amplified system. It's not the same sound.  My brain tells me it's just as valid as the live acoustic sound but my prejudice and biases tell me the live acoustic performance is better.  Can't explain it.
 
In the forums reproduction of live performances have become more like the search for the Holy Grail than simply a pursuit of a pleasant sound.  I like the the phrase you came up with.  Sisyphusian folly is a great way to put it. 

 

[dprimary]

Note: I noticed the small number of microphones suspended above.
Really curious about the mastering process used. Slight delay added for the rear mics?

It is hard to say why there would be more then a pair of microphones used. Possibly a surround recording. If for some reason they are being mixed together the microphones closest to the instruments would be delayed to blend with the farthest microphones. If that answers your question. 

 

[Exacoustatowner]

Thing that gets me is that the audiophiles tend to all say that the goal is to accurately capture and reproduce the experience of a live musical event. Personally I just don't see what the big deal is about "live." Personally I'm more interested in the music rather than an event. I say leave that experience for an actual event. I think the studio is the better canvas upon which to "paint" the music than some event venue which comes with a lot of compromises.

It's funny how music changed depending on how many people that had to be "fed." It was the desire to present music to a large public audience that led to the large symphony orchestra. You needed multiple instruments playing in order to fill such large venues with sufficient volume levels. But I digress.

If you want to realistically capture and reproduce a live event, I think you're just going to have to forget about loudspeakers, except for the most expensive, custom multichannel systems in the wealthiest of homes. The ideal would be to capture the sound in the ear canal just before the eardrum, and then play it back through some in ear monitors.

While binaural, dummy head recordings have been made, they're using dummy heads with generic pinnae, even though different pinnae can have rather profound effects on the sound they're funneling into our ear canals. Short of making individual recordings of the event with each listener's pinnae used in the dummy head, the only solution I can see would be similar to custom IEMs where they take custom molds of your ear and produce a custom in ear monitor that's an exact fit.

You would have custom molds made of your ears including the pinnae. These would be used to make duplicates of your pinnae that could be used to analyze their filter function and then you would be provided with a custom DSP algorithm that you would feed into the playback device to be applied to the music you and only you listen to.

On the recording side, they would be made without any pinnae.

And loudness is vitally critical as well if you truly want to accurately record and reproduce a live event. There would need to be some sort of reference level established to insure that the level at your eardrums would be precisely the same as it would have been at the live event.

And then there's the problem of the IEM itself.

Let's say you are able to entirely accurately capture and reproduce the sound at the output of the IEM. Well, once those sound waves leave the IEM, they're simply not going to behave exactly the same as they would in an ear canal that was open to the air and didn't have an IEM shoved into it. Now what? More DSP? Perhaps, but DSP can't deal with everything, like resonances and whatnot.

That's why I think the audiophile's goal of accurately capturing and reproducing the sound of a live event is just a huge Sisyphusian folly and is really just a huge distraction. Audiophile's tend to be much more obsessed about SOUNDS, than what it should be about, and that's MUSIC.

Just my opinion of course.

se

I'm convinced! I'm giving up my silly partially successful attempts at recreating what I hear at the symphony. Sure it's closer than what I get from a portable radio-but heck-I enjoyed MUSIC from an old mono cassette deck-taped from FM radio- and  THIS system held me in it's thrall. Ah, the sound of the 8 track changing tracks! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG0ndcu0sFs
Actually, I'm joking-but that really WAS it. Just don't go spouting such nonsense as V=I/R or trouble will ensue! Finding 8 Tracks in working order will be the hard part.

 

[Steve Eddy]

I'm convinced! I'm giving up my silly partially successful attempts at recreating what I hear at the symphony. Sure it's closer than what I get from a portable radio-but heck-I enjoyed MUSIC from an old mono cassette deck-taped from FM radio- and  THIS system held me in it's thrall. Ah, the sound of the 8 track changing tracks! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG0ndcu0sFs
Actually, I'm joking-but that really WAS it. Just don't go spouting such nonsense as V=I/R or trouble will ensue! Finding 8 Tracks in working order will be the hard part.

Shut up you Sisyphusian folly you. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries. Now go away or I'll taunt you a second time.

(Knows at least one participant whose head that won't fly over)

se

 

[analogsurviver]

Just a reminder, this is Sound Science. Please point me to the controlled listening tests that have demonstrated this.

se

I know this is Sound Science.
 
No, I can not lead you to the controlled listening test - yet. I will try - eventually - to come up with something specified to the last electrical element - real hardware, simple enough for anyone with the rudimentary knowledge of soldering and basic electrotechnics  to build, yet inexpensive enough to try even for the most frugal of audiophiles. The very same circuit (equal nominal electrical gain) build with "industry standard" parts - and one built with very high, but not premium grade parts - powered by two power supplies, one "good enough" and other "lavishly over-engineered" - for everyone to even better see/hear/understand how actual execution of the same electrical circuit affects its SQ in practice.
 
Then you will, using whatever existing source and whatever existing amplifier driving your existing headphones and/or loudspeakar, using a simple switch ( either taking the output of both circuits to your existing (pre)amplifier line level inputs and taking the output from the tape out sockets - or better yet, 
This box is inexpensive at $/EUR 10 level, is available off ebay if not locally, and although it is nothing but a switch among three inputs and two parallel outputs WITHOUT any proper shielding ( it is plastic ), it allows for ABX among line level (CD level) devices that are level matched to below 0.1 dB.
 
By using, in addition, two power supplies, there are 4 combinations possible - and you should find, by listening alone, that specifying say Xiaomi Pistons 2 or 3 IEMS (25 or 30 $, delivered) I was specifiying waaaaaay tooooo high quality IEMs - because there are $5 Chinese IEMS that would have absolutely no problems whatsoever with clearly allowing you to hear an audible difference in each of the 4 combinations possible.

 

[dprimary]

Shut up you Sisyphusian folly you. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries. Now go away or I'll taunt you a second time.

(Knows at least one participant whose head that won't fly over)

se

Ni!

 

[Steve Eddy]

@Steve Eddy


Point well taken about other members of the trade.  I made an unjustified assumption.  Will say many that I have met are pretty sharp--but on reflection certainly not all.

Oh there are some sharp ones out there alright. Just depends on who you meet. And in so-called "high end" audio, the sharp ones are a bit thin on thr ground.

This thread of thought is interesting.  I think there's a paradox.  It seems to me a lot of subjectivists really aren't that passionate or emotional about the music, they are too busy evaluating equipment with which to perfect the listening experience and too busy listening to the equipment instead of the music.  That's my impression anyway.

As I've said many times over the years, I think there tends to be two kinds of people. Those for whom their equipment serves as a means to connect with their music, and those for whom their music serves as a means to connect with their equipment.

For many objectivists the point of proving that there are no audible differences between types of gear or file types or whatever allows them to listen to music rather than obsess about collecting the perfect system.  I would grant your point, I suppose I am utilitarian.  I'm informed by things like price and other practicalities.  And I've already confessed I just like music, so I will stream 128 if that's what's available.  Can I tell it from a real well recorded 44.1 uncompressed file?  Almost always but that doesn't make me not listen and it gives me no pain, in fact the same songs that give me goosebumps on a great system can do the same thing when it 's played while I'm waiting in a dentist waiting room listening to background music.  I do prefer the better recording and I like nice gear.  Heresy, but I guess am not a music or gear gourmet.  Does that make me a utilitarian objectivist?  It sure makes me easier to satisfy than a lot of people around here.

I'd still put you in the utilitarian camp. Perhaps borderline subjectivist. But not even close to hedonist.

But you make the very good that it takes quite a lot to REALLY get in the way of the MUSIC. I have a cheap Sony table radio I listen to in the shower. But the right song comes on and I'm bouncing just as much as if I were listening on my main system.

Which leads me to your post on the next step in binaural recording.  I'll grant you describe might be an excellent way to capture the sound that falls on our ears but as you also point out there are lots of technical challenges to actually doing it and if we could, the recording would only be perfect for the anatomy on which it was modeled.

The myth of a live event is interesting.  I play (poorly) a couple of acoustic instruments and like to jam every week with friends.  I also go to house concerts, or listen to performers in restuarants and bars,  or just sit around listening others play all without electronic assistance.  It's not a matter of better or worse than recordings but the sounds I hear in these kinds of settings are different from what I  hear on electronically recorded and reproduced music.  I like both and don't get all hot bothered trying to figure out which is better because they are just different.  I do have a bias though.  Best explained with a story.  My guitar teacher is one of those people who can pick up just about anything with strings including a $30 plastic ukulele and make it sound incredibly good if not magic. When he plays acoustic guitar the sound is captivating.  I have never had that same experience listening to a recording including some of his recordings.  When he performs around town he plays an electric guitar through an amplified system. It's not the same sound.  My brain tells me it's just as valid as the live acoustic sound but my prejudice and biases tell me the live acoustic performance is better.  Can't explain it.

Oh sure. But typically in a studio recording, the last thing they want is for it to sound like it does in a restaurant or bar. Or even what it would sound like with the musician just playing in a nice quiet room. Close micing plays a big role in that. And of course the engineers have a hard time not using every knob on their mixer and justify all those expensive boxes that fill their racks. A lot of times the engineer is looked at as the second artist on the recording. And I'm not saying that's not justifiable or desirable. Just that typically, the goal is not to capture the sound of a live performance.

And you mention electric guitar. I'd say electric guitarists are a lot like "audiophile's." They are all about "tone." And a lot of times they can be just as neurotic and fall into all kinds of mythical beliefs just like audiophiles. It's an interesting parallel. And I say that as someone who noodles on guitar himself and has known many other guitarists over the years.

In the forums reproduction of live performances have become more like the search for the Holy Grail than simply a pursuit of a pleasant sound.  I like the the phrase you came up with.  Sisyphusian folly is a great way to put it. 

Glad you like it. After some 30 years being involved in all this one way or another, it's the most succinct way of putting it I think.

se

 

[Exacoustatowner]

Shut up you Sisyphusian folly you. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries. Now go away or I'll taunt you a second time.

(Knows at least one participant whose head that won't fly over)

se

HAHAHA! You made my day-or night as it is. "Run away Run away." When danger reared its ugly head the Sisyphusian Fart bravely turned his tail and fled…"
I'm going back to my oxygen free micro encapsulated  extruded gold alloy headphone cables wrapped in spiral wrapped camel hair! It's beyond your understanding and has a frequency response from NEGATIVE 100,000 HZ to Infinity! Bass Slam! No Crunchy Treble! Chocolate sound with a hint of Strawberry!