They are nothing compared to the kinds of variations you see in room response. The ear/brain adjusts quite well. I, for one, do not challenge that part of your position.
Tim
why not the perfect reproduction?
- Thread starter Gregadd
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They are nothing compared to the kinds of variations you see in room response. The ear/brain adjusts quite well. I, for one, do not challenge that part of your position.
Tim
Tim this site wreaks with your claims of audiophile overkill. The use of premium parts is just one example.
I believe just today Ethan said imaging is a function of frequency response. He certainly has said it many times before. Everything about audio falls into four basic categories all of whuch can be easily measured. Digital is perfect and you can prove it with a null test. The effect of the room can be measured and corrected. All of these things have been argued on this site. the argument.
I am sure you are aware of this because frequently you make a post agreeing with it.
Now if yu want to trade insults you can go it alone.
I believe just today Ethan said imaging is a function of frequency response. He certainly has said it many times before. Everything about audio falls into four basic categories all of whuch can be easily measured. Digital is perfect and you can prove it with a null test. The effect of the room can be measured and corrected. All of these things have been argued on this site. the argument.
I am sure you are aware of this because frequently you make a post agreeing with it.
Now if yu want to trade insults you can go it alone.
I have no interest in insulting you, Greg, but you threw down a challenge, it would be helpful to know what it is you are asking for. You seem to want someone to record something, then measure it, then tell you what it would sound like from the measurements? If they recorded it wouldn't they already know what it sounded like? I gave you what I thought was a pretty good example of how measurements can indicate what something will sound like. You responded by saying people were running away from your "challenge." You want an example of a component that sounds and measures transparently without the use of audiophile components (did you ask for this?)? I've done that too; it was the Benchmark DAC. I can't defend "digital is perfect" or "everything is measurable" because I don't agree. I think we're a hell of a lot closer to "everything can be measured" than we are to "measurements don't matter," but your challenge didn't leave room for nuance. I'm not qualified to comment on room correction, but I'll guess: I suspect that the effect of a room can be measured and corrected (was this in your "challenge?"), but I don't think we really want to fully correct it.
So, you have my answers. I don't think I've told you "why it can't be done." Though I'm still not sure what it is that was supposed to be "done."
Tim
The question is have we reached perfection or not?
There will always be the problem of price points or adapting to special situations. There is also the law of diminishing returns.
As good as some setups may be we are hesitant to call them perfect. We argue for example that vinyl and tubes are best bet not perfect. We are still pushing the envelope.
There will always be the problem of price points or adapting to special situations. There is also the law of diminishing returns.
As good as some setups may be we are hesitant to call them perfect. We argue for example that vinyl and tubes are best bet not perfect. We are still pushing the envelope.
“We argue for example that vinyl and tubes are best bet not perfect.”
Mostly, it is people that sell various solutions who choose not to “see” the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
Want to know / hear ONE BIG “invisible reason” records and in some cases tubes can sound different?
Put on a record that isn’t your favorite and play it at a decent volume and notice where your gain or volume knob is.
Now, tune the volume down and between songs or in the lead-out groove, tune the turntable OFF.
With the needle on the record but no rotation, turn the gain back up to the same point you had been listening at.
Carefully / cautiously tap on things near / around the turn table and room.
While SS electronics is essentially free of any vibration sensitivity (making special feet Jewlery) the turn table is anywhere from highly to pretty sensitive.
In the old days, they called un-intended pickup like this as something being “microphonic” because it is a microphone.
What happens when you play a record, especially loudly?
If you have a stereo in another room, you can do something else too.
Take two long speaker cables and bring one speaker into the other room.
Take a speaker from stereo two and place it in the room with stereo one.
Now, with the record player in same the “microphone” position (playing a record), play music through the speaker from stereo 2. Now, the sound from stereo 2 is picked up by the turntable / cartridge and reproduced through stereo 1.
If you try this, you will probably NEVER transcribe your records to computer under anything but a quiet background (monitor with headphones).
Records and tubes can have a magical sound, but remember they are ALSO to varying degrees an open microphone in your room and what they pick up that way (room sound) is part of what goes back to the speakers. With a subwoofer and enough gain, one can easily produce acoustic feedback (usually down low) indicating full regeneration of the signal (but like a squealing mic, the sound character begins to change well below outright feedback).
Best,
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs
Mostly, it is people that sell various solutions who choose not to “see” the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
Want to know / hear ONE BIG “invisible reason” records and in some cases tubes can sound different?
Put on a record that isn’t your favorite and play it at a decent volume and notice where your gain or volume knob is.
Now, tune the volume down and between songs or in the lead-out groove, tune the turntable OFF.
With the needle on the record but no rotation, turn the gain back up to the same point you had been listening at.
Carefully / cautiously tap on things near / around the turn table and room.
While SS electronics is essentially free of any vibration sensitivity (making special feet Jewlery) the turn table is anywhere from highly to pretty sensitive.
In the old days, they called un-intended pickup like this as something being “microphonic” because it is a microphone.
What happens when you play a record, especially loudly?
If you have a stereo in another room, you can do something else too.
Take two long speaker cables and bring one speaker into the other room.
Take a speaker from stereo two and place it in the room with stereo one.
Now, with the record player in same the “microphone” position (playing a record), play music through the speaker from stereo 2. Now, the sound from stereo 2 is picked up by the turntable / cartridge and reproduced through stereo 1.
If you try this, you will probably NEVER transcribe your records to computer under anything but a quiet background (monitor with headphones).
Records and tubes can have a magical sound, but remember they are ALSO to varying degrees an open microphone in your room and what they pick up that way (room sound) is part of what goes back to the speakers. With a subwoofer and enough gain, one can easily produce acoustic feedback (usually down low) indicating full regeneration of the signal (but like a squealing mic, the sound character begins to change well below outright feedback).
Best,
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs
Tom,
That may be true, but with many artists laying down so many tracks, overdubs, voice overs, multitracks, etc. many recordings have no "live" performance. In fact many such artists including some like Enya hardly ever tour or perform live because they can not re-create their albums. This was much the reason that bands such as the Moody Blues relatively early on changed their methods so that they could in fact perform live.
Rich
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This is so true. I'd love to see Enigma play live.. but it's all from a computer. Even Keiko Matsui plays along with a computer!
May be the provocative question is : are we nearer perfection than we were five years ago?
What is being currently done to make our systems able to recreate better the perceptual variables that contribute to the live experiment or to fulfill better the creative intentions of the artist / sound engineers?
i saw this thread. should i post? would it be too presumptous? i know how i feel.....so here goes.
short of a real life 'Holo-deck' there will likely never be a 'perfect reproduction' of a live musical event....particularly from a scientificly provable perspective. however; i believe that i've been experiencing something approaching that.
if you get a system that is truely full range that can also do large scale with ease, is pretty linear, and has a low noise floor....then you add a high quality master tape where a great live performance and great recording quality have been combined....you can achieve a listening experience which will equal a live performance.
equal or better in terms of listening pleasure, not equal as in identical.
perfect? perfectly imperfect. meaning that it traverses that divide between reproduction and something more. startles the senses.
out of the 'many dozens' of master dubs i've collected there are a few that are able to do this in my system. they leave me speechless. gasping. a cynic might say that for every listener those feelings can be stimulated by hearing something better than one's previous reference. and i'd agree. it's maybe all in my head.
'perfect reproduction'? maybe. would others agree? maybe.
i'm just responding to the thread title with what came to mind.
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I heard the Pioneer TAD floorstanders connected to Technical Brain electronics in Denver at the Rocky Mountain show in October. They were so "fool you" real that I'm not sure it matters if we can get "perfect" reproduction.
Who cares? We now have playback so close to perfection you reach out and touch it.
Who cares? We now have playback so close to perfection you reach out and touch it.
the approach to 'perfect reproduction' to me is primarily a software issue. how can we feed a state of the art system with enough information to approach the live experience?
in the last 5 years something great happened. 'The Tape Project' made listening to master tapes a choice for high end listeners, a few got involved, got others involved, and assets have been brought into the fray to advance the performance level of even RTR players, the quality of tape and so on.
as good as digital (2x dsd) and 45 rpm vinyl can sound, 15ips 1/4" master dubs go to a whole new level of performance potential.
so yes; as more effort is put into improving the software delivery side, systems have higher potential than they had 5 years ago.
are amps, speakers, rooms better than 5 years ago? maybe, but not as much better as what tape has brought us.
it's all about the software.
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The old story ...
Most audio people at some time or other have this experience, and want to it to be repeated on cue. But, then they say something like this:
... which is where it all goes pear shaped! There IS enough information on essentially all recordings, the trouble is that it is being mangled in all the wrong ways by the time it hits the air.
Sorry, I totally disagree. It's all about the hardware. When the latter is wrong, then the only way you can get the good experience is via the "perfect" recording.
A car with lousy suspension will only feel comfortable on a road that's been levelled to billiard table smoothness ...
Frank
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Frank, please be sure to leave the marker in the quoted section so that we know who you are responding to.
i have no illusions that anyone would share my perspective.
however i invite anyone to come and listen and give me feedback about what they think on these subjects. that is; both 'perfect recordings' and 'it's all about the software'.
to be very clear; i'm not suggesting that my system or software can reproduce any event perfectly.
While we may differ in some preferences Mike, from what you wrote it appears our perspectives are more alike than they differ.
You have put your finger directly on the point. If our measurements are perfect but our result is not, where did we go wrong? In many cases imperfection results from failure to follow the known science. Often imperfection is used as an excuse not to follow the process. What angers me is those that argue our work is done because the measurements are perfect but clearly the result is not.
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