"You Are There" Absolute Sound: Do We Even Want to Go There?

tmallin

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May 19, 2010
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Awhile back I posted a three-part series on "You Are There" Absolute Sound: Can We Get There From Here? here, here, and here. Since I wrote that series there has been further abandonment of the sound of live unamplified music from a good seat in the concert hall where the music was recorded as the standard by which home music systems should be judged.

I think it is safe to say that those who go to concerts of such live unamplified music are more likely than others to want their home music systems to sound like the concert hall experience, at least tonally. But still, I think that because we don't have the literal visual aspects of a concert at home in an audio-only system, even the systems preferred by such folks tend to sound at least a bit bigger than life, at least if they can afford such sound. And these folks are a small and waning portion of the music listening public, basically because only classical and some church music is regularly performed this way, and the number of venues for that is shrinking, as are the audiences for such music in most parts of the world.


Of the magazines in the US which espoused the absolute sound as the goal, one--Stereophile--explicitly gave that up years ago. TAS, is a mixed bag, as far as I can tell, both in terms of the goal of the reproduction the reviewers seek and the type of music used to judge the results. The absolute sound is not talked about much as a goal even in the magazine which bears that name. Even the founder, HP, a few years back talked about digital reproduction and surround sound as "alternate realities." HP left the magazine, of course. Of the current contributors, only Robert Greene, Paul Seydor, and perhaps one or two others still seem to be True Believers in "the absolute sound" as the goal of home audio reproduction.

While I hear as much live unamplified classical and sacred music in great spaces these days as I ever did, I find that I, too, have abandoned the pure goal of recreating the truly realistic concert-hall experience at home. I tend to like my music served up surrealistically good sounding these days. Why is this?

Perhaps this is the fate of all audiophiles. While I do love music, at home my pursuit and concern has usually been at least as much about the sound of the music as it is the musical art portrayed in recordings. "Music lovers" care less about the sound of music playback at home, and are more transfixed by the beauty of the art. "Audiophiles" have trouble getting into the art if the sound gets in the way. Audiophiles are also concerned more about being able to clearly hear musical lines and details and are less concerned about blend. Perhaps because of the emphasis on clear separation of musical lines (and most audiophiles, not being well-trained musicians, cannot hear musical lines as clearly as trained musicians do in live performance anyway), audiophiles have emphasized the spatial aspects of music reproduction so that musical lines can be more easily unraveled from the concert's blend.

Audiophiles--and videophiles for that matter, and probably moreso--are looking for something that sounds and looks bigger than life. By bigger sonically I mean louder, larger, closer, bassier, treblier, more intimate, more detailed than in life, while at the same time having plenty of hall ambiance. Absolutely accurate midrange timbre is fine to add in, but not crucial to the experience as long as timbral inaccuracy does not rise to the level of an actively annoying omnipresent coloration, and the amount of permitted deviation from real tonality will vary widely with listeners.


The Muddy Waters Folksinger recording is a good example. That recording at once captures a very close-in perspective on the singer, the voice is both bassier and breathier/more intimate than one would ever hear from the audience. While capturing a close-in perspective with a huge presence of a person, there is room ambiance galore, too much, in fact. It's a surrealistic amalgamation that allows you to hear all the details you could possibly hear from an inch away to a hundred feet away, and then some.


The composite creates a close-up "visible" image of the performer, stage, and huge hall from mere sound. Most audiophiles are visual visual in their orientation to reproduced sound. They want to "see" the performer in front of them in a VERY DRAMATIC way. This visual aspect of sound reproduction is why audiophilia has been so preoccupied for a couple of generations now with the spatial aspects of sound reproduction. Audiophiles want to "see" the performers synthesized by how the sonic presentation is interpreted by the ears/brain even in the absence of any real visual cues. Thus, each aspect of the sonic presentation needs to be overemphasized in order to make the visual picture more obvious to the ears/eyes/brain. The performers need to appear bigger than life--right in the listening room a few inches or feet away. At the same time audiophiles want to hear the surrounding room in a very dramatic way in the form of room or artificial ambiance.


Think of how a football game is televised these days. If the screen is big and detailed enough, and the surround sound is good enough, even without 3-D effects many sports fans PREFER the home theater sports experience to going to the live game. Put aside the parking, crowds, smells, noise, and weather considerations of attending a live football game--those are probably overall a negative of the live event. But, beyond those considerations, think about what you can literally hear and see from even good 50-yard-line seats. Now compare this to the parabolic-mikes, multiple angle zooms, slow motion, instant replays, and overall shots which make up a fine televised football game. At home, you literally can see and hear more of how the action takes place, and hear and see it louder and the players bigger than you ever would from your game seats. It can be more exciting and involving at home and you don't have to put up with smells, sounds, weather, and parking of the real event. Yes, you can hear and see the crowd's excitement, the cheerleaders, crazy fan antics, famous personalities attending, all in an idealized way. And that's even before the play-by-play and color commentary. Bigger than life. A technologically enhanced experience.

That's what's going on in high-level home audio. Even those of us who love the real thing in the concert hall want a somewhat surreal experience at home to make up for the lack of real visual anchors. And we want the spatial aspects of the music reproduction exaggerated to make up for the fact that we don't have surround sound at all or, if we have surround sound, we don't usually find it satisfactory in recreating the visual illusion I'm talking about.




 

RogerD

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How would you view being closer to the music after every mechanical and electronic improvement seems to place you at the microphone. The perspective seems to change with every single recording because no two recordings are the same. If you analyse what physically has taken place,it is hard to take a view that the listener is placed on this row or that,because in reality the absolute sound should be where the microphone is placed. That reality then brings a understanding why recordinds might be presented in a larger than life perspective. We are at the mercy of the recording engineer,the equipment that was used,and the enviroment that the recording was made. These are my observations and if my system seems larger than life for one passage as a 30 person choir decides to exhibit their power and then suddenly becomes almost silent,if my system reproduces this with great realism,guess what I am ecstatic. I want my system to breathe just like the real performer(s) and to convey the greater and smaller part of the Illusion,after all that is what it is.
 

tmallin

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May 19, 2010
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How would you view being closer to the music after every mechanical and electronic improvement seems to place you at the microphone. The perspective seems to change with every single recording because no two recordings are the same. If you analyse what physically has taken place,it is hard to take a view that the listener is placed on this row or that,because in reality the absolute sound should be where the microphone is placed. That reality then brings a understanding why recordinds might be presented in a larger than life perspective. We are at the mercy of the recording engineer,the equipment that was used,and the enviroment that the recording was made. These are my observations and if my system seems larger than life for one passage as a 30 person choir decides to exhibit their power and then suddenly becomes almost silent,if my system reproduces this with great realism,guess what I am ecstatic. I want my system to breathe just like the real performer(s) and to convey the greater and smaller part of the Illusion,after all that is what it is.

When I talk about preferring a bit of a surreal reproduction, I'm not talking about wanting gross exaggerations. I'm intolerant of messed up midrange, and even more intolerant of any problems in the presence range or further up. The bass cannot be boomy or indistinct; bass lines should be clear and followable, as they are live. If frequency response is to err, I'd prefer erring toward a warmer and fuller sound, not a brighter one.

I am much more tolerant of exaggerated spaces and imaging. These help me "see" the musicians on stage in front of me. If I close my eyes at a live concert, I know that live unamplified sound really doesn't have the kind of sharp, focused three-dimensional images of distinct layering in depth, for example, which audiophiles value in home reproduction. These surreal enhancements to imaging and staging are helpful to me in replacing the visual element I have at a concert with eyes-open listening. Listeners who listen with their eyes closed at concerts tend to be much less "demanding" of the spatial reproduction they achieve at home. That's fine, but I'm an open-eyes concert listener so I want the enhanced spatiality at home if I can get it--and I can with the right equipment and room set up.

I think you are saying that you like it when different recordings sound a lot different because then you know or assume that your system is accurately capturing differences among recordings. Yes, home sound reproduction systems should reveal differences among recordings.

Unfortunately, too many "revealing" systems sound downright awful on most recordings to anyone familiar with the tonal balance of the real thing and that's not enjoyable at home. For instance, speakers which add even a decibel or two extra highs from 2 kHz on up or anywhere in the highs can sound "revealing" to some, but "ruthlessly revealing"/nasty to others. Many modern speakers, as shown from the measurements published in Stereophile and Soundstage, have emphasis of 2 to 5 dB over much of the treble range compared to the bass below 200 Hz. This is even though most recordings of classical music seem, if anything, already inherently bass shy and treble heavy. You do want to enjoy listening to music at home, don't you, rather than listening to variation after variation of truly obnoxious sound?

It should be obvious (I hope?) that no recording made with the primary microphones placed inches or less from musicians can possibly capture what one hears live in an unamplified concert. Such recordings are, by definition, not capable of capturing realistic concert hall sound.

It is less obvious that the same is true even when the microphones are placed quite a bit further away. Most recordings of unamplified music in a concert hall are made with the microphones close up and high up compared to any concert hall seat. "Distant" miking in this context usually refers to microphones at most 10 feet behind the conductor and 10 feet higher than the conductor's head. The high-up/close-in factors exaggerate the amount of treble and detail the microphones capture, exaggerate the sense of space they capture, and reduce the bass. That's just the way things sound if you put your ears up there, such as when you climb a ladder to place a microphone up in such a position. If not fully compensated for in the recording process by the engineers, then, yes, the recordings will have some of those characteristics and if accurately reproduced at home will tend to sound that way, too.

No seat in the concert hall gives you the kind of frequency balance and spatial perspective captured by even a single pair of quasi-coincident stereo mikes placed up close and up high, much less the perspective captured by an array of tens of microphones widely separated from each other scattered across the stage and space beyond the stage and then mixed together in some unknown way. There is no way to even theoretically know what sound should sound like when captured by more than two ears/microphones, much less ones separated from each other by more than a head width.

Now, you can forget about microphone placement and say that "the absolute sound" of a recording is the sound the engineer heard in the recording studio. This could be reproduced at home if your home listening room used the same speakers and other equipment all arranged the same as in the control room with your listening space being the same size as the control room and set up exactly the same way as the recording studio. A tall order, but doable. Of course, studio set ups vary widely, just as home audio set ups vary; you can only mimic one or at most a few of such set ups at home.

In addition, to use what the engineer heard as "the absolute sound" of a recording, you also have to assume that the engineer intends the recording to sound at home the way it does in the control room. That is most definitely not the case in many instances. Many recordings are made with assumptions about the type of equipment which is "typically" used for home reproduction, as well as assumptions about room and speaker set up. For example, many recordings assume that the home listening room will be acoustically fairly live compared to the studio. Thus, the engineer will often "compensate" for what he believes the relative sound of his studio system is compared to what the average listener listens through at home. The engineer also may believe that from a pure marketing perspective, the majority of buyers prefer a bit "hotter" or "brighter" sound than is literally heard from a good concert seat and thus intentionally allows the final mix he hears in the studio to have a bit of that brighter quality compared to the literal sound heard in the concert hall from the audience.

Further, sound engineers, like audiophiles, may well have distinct personal preferences about how recordings should sound. They may well inject a bit or more of artistic interpretation into the mixes they create, rather than aiming for literal faithfulness to the sound as heard in the concert hall. They, like many audiophiles, may prefer to use the available modern technology to create something at least a bit surreal. Unfortunately, since the home listener was not there when the recording was mixed, the home listener usually has not the foggiest notion of what the microphone feed (raw or as processed by studio equipment) actually sounded like, and is thus really clueless about the what the sound engineer heard.

This is why audiophiles talk about the recording process as being so important to the overall result heard at home. The recording end of things is more important to the end result than anything you can manipulate at home. No home tinkering can undo the sound captured by widely spaced microphones, for example. There is no way to achieve a concert hall absolute sound perspective on space and tonality if the microphones are not capturing what is typically heard from the concert goer sitting in the audience. Some recordings--what audiophiles refer to as the "best" recordings--capture more of that perspective than most others, though, and if reproduced accurately at home can sound much more realistic than the run-of-the-mill commercial recording.
 

R Johnson

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Jul 24, 2010
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Chicago, Illinois, USA
Thanks for a most interesting essay!

At the Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts, I'm often a "closed-eye" listener. Perhaps that's why I've never paid much attention to the spatial placement in recordings.

I've noticed that many recordings have more bass energy than I'm used to hearing in Orchestra Hall. Perhaps a function of the hall's acoustics -- or of the engineer's balance choices.

Just as sports on HDTV is often preferred to being there in person, opera from Blu-ray discs or in the movie theaters can be preferred to being in the opera house. With a front projection video system at home, I often find watching a recording superior to the live event. But I'm still attending all the Lyric Opera of Chicago performances, and at other opera houses when traveling.
 

tmallin

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May 19, 2010
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Thanks for a most interesting essay!

At the Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts, I'm often a "closed-eye" listener. Perhaps that's why I've never paid much attention to the spatial placement in recordings.

I've noticed that many recordings have more bass energy than I'm used to hearing in Orchestra Hall. Perhaps a function of the hall's acoustics -- or of the engineer's balance choices.

Just as sports on HDTV is often preferred to being there in person, opera from Blu-ray discs or in the movie theaters can be preferred to being in the opera house. With a front projection video system at home, I often find watching a recording superior to the live event. But I'm still attending all the Lyric Opera of Chicago performances, and at other opera houses when traveling.

Another possibility as to why recordings sound heavier than live sound in Orchestra Hall is that something about your speaker/room combination is making the bass overly heavy. It IS possible, especially if you put your speakers near a wall or corner and don't apply appropriate equalization. In addition, many rooms, for example, have a midbass peak around 70 Hz caused by the typical eight-foot ceiling to floor distance. A midbass peak like that, if uncorrected, can lead to a perception that recordings are bassier than they should be. What speakers are you using and where are they placed in the room? Have you measured the frequency response of your system at the listening position?
 

R Johnson

Well-Known Member
Jul 24, 2010
188
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933
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Another possibility as to why recordings sound heavier than live sound in Orchestra Hall is that something about your speaker/room combination is making the bass overly heavy. It IS possible, especially if you put your speakers near a wall or corner and don't apply appropriate equalization. In addition, many rooms, for example, have a midbass peak around 70 Hz caused by the typical eight-foot ceiling to floor distance. A midbass peak like that, if uncorrected, can lead to a perception that recordings are bassier than they should be. What speakers are you using and where are they placed in the room? Have you measured the frequency response of your system at the listening position?

Thanks for your thoughts. My observation was based on hearing various systems at shows and dealers in addition to my modest system.

I'm using PSB bookshelf speakers placed on top of cabinets, adjacent to the long wall, well away from corners in a 13'x18'x8' room. I've never measured the system.
 

RogerD

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May 23, 2010
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BiggestLittleCity
I think you are saying that you like it when different recordings sound a lot different because then you know or assume that your system is accurately capturing differences among recordings. Yes, home sound reproduction systems should reveal differences among recordings.

Unfortunately, too many "revealing" systems sound downright awful on most recordings to anyone familiar with the tonal balance of the real thing and that's not enjoyable at home. For instance, speakers which add even a decibel or two extra highs from 2 kHz on up or anywhere in the highs can sound "revealing" to some, but "ruthlessly revealing"/nasty to others. Many modern speakers, as shown from the measurements published in Stereophile and Soundstage, have emphasis of 2 to 5 dB over much of the treble range compared to the bass below 200 Hz. This is even though most recordings of classical music seem, if anything, already inherently bass shy and treble heavy. You do want to enjoy listening to music at home, don't you, rather than listening to variation after variation of truly obnoxious sound?

In addition, to use what the engineer heard as "the absolute sound" of a recording, you also have to assume that the engineer intends the recording to sound at home the way it does in the control room. That is most definitely not the case in many instances. Many recordings are made with assumptions about the type of equipment which is "typically" used for home reproduction, as well as assumptions about room and speaker set up. For example, many recordings assume that the home listening room will be acoustically fairly live compared to the studio. Thus, the engineer will often "compensate" for what he believes the relative sound of his studio system is compared to what the average listener listens through at home. The engineer also may believe that from a pure marketing perspective, the majority of buyers prefer a bit "hotter" or "brighter" sound than is literally heard from a good concert seat and thus intentionally allows the final mix he hears in the studio to have a bit of that brighter quality compared to the literal sound heard in the concert hall from the audience.

Further, sound engineers, like audiophiles, may well have distinct personal preferences about how recordings should sound. They may well inject a bit or more of artistic interpretation into the mixes they create, rather than aiming for literal faithfulness to the sound as heard in the concert hall. They, like many audiophiles, may prefer to use the available modern technology to create something at least a bit surreal. Unfortunately, since the home listener was not there when the recording was mixed, the home listener usually has not the foggiest notion of what the microphone feed (raw or as processed by studio equipment) actually sounded like, and is thus really clueless about the what the sound engineer heard.

This is why audiophiles talk about the recording process as being so important to the overall result heard at home. The recording end of things is more important to the end result than anything you can manipulate at home. No home tinkering can undo the sound captured by widely spaced microphones, for example. There is no way to achieve a concert hall absolute sound perspective on space and tonality if the microphones are not capturing what is typically heard from the concert goer sitting in the audience. Some recordings--what audiophiles refer to as the "best" recordings--capture more of that perspective than most others, though, and if reproduced accurately at home can sound much more realistic than the run-of-the-mill commercial recording.

You assume too many things IMHO. This rubhbish about revealing systems ie high resolution....is that based on well engineered speakers and and a pure audio signal? Can't be because I haven't heard a system that bad for years. As far as the records and what engineers do,I think by and large most classial recordings tend to be on the better side. There are truly some great engineers out there and they do produce a good facsimile of the event.

I think the problem is not that people like exaggeration or bad reproduction. It's probably that some don't now the how,what and why. I don't want to sound like my system is perfect it is not. But there's very few records that become frisbee's at my house. Plus I always find it interesting to ask my self what could have done to improve this or that recording. A technically well done recording is a absolute joy to listen to whether it was recorded in 2014 or 1958.
 

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