who can tell you exactly what it is in the recording?
The person who has the most accurate playback system in a room that colors the sound as little as possible. This is the only way to know what's really in the recording.
--Ethan
who can tell you exactly what it is in the recording?
What if I am willing to admit that it IS a coloration, and it DOES make the system sound more realistic and natural?
I disagree. If a recording really does sound poor then, again, the recording and mix engineers are to blame. You may want to add an EQ to balance the sound of individual tracks to your liking, and that's fine. But that same EQ will not apply to all recordings. Otherwise, you might just as well set a graphic EQ to a smiley face and then your system will sound "better" on everything. I hope that's not what you're implying.
--Ethan
We can agree that the sound system can have its own coloration either euphonic or sterile independent of the recording. Both are wrong and should be avoided. For me I know something is amiss if all recordings sound similar.
I can see a problem here -- how do we determine the most accurate playback? There appears to be fairly strong agreement that the usual set of distortion measurements do not tell the whole story, that there are aspects of the sound quality as picked up by the auditory system which are very hard to quantify. So, in that sense, how do we reach a decision on what system will become a reference system for determining the "truth"?The person who has the most accurate playback system in a room that colors the sound as little as possible. This is the only way to know what's really in the recording.
The person who has the most accurate playback system in a room that colors the sound as little as possible. This is the only way to know what's really in the recording.
--Ethan
May I take a quick poll?
System colouration can also be seen to occur by the means of room treatments. There is a whole science of dealing with the acoustics in performance venues of, say, symphony orchestras, which is an ongoing activity and widely discussed. This is a form of colouration used theoretically to enhance the listening experience of live music, so how does that aspect fit in to the whole?If you believe system coloration can bring you closer to a performance that does not exist outside of the recording while being less faithful to that recording,...
System colouration can also be seen to occur by the means of room treatments. There is a whole science of dealing with the acoustics in performance venues of, say, symphony orchestras, which is an ongoing activity and widely discussed. This is a form of colouration used theoretically to enhance the listening experience of live music, so how does that aspect fit in to the whole?
Frank
You can measure on-axis and off-axis speaker response. You can measure the response at the listening position in the room. You can control room colorations as much as possible. You can minimize reflections and maximize the amount of direct sound that reaches your ears first.
Or you can accept that sound reproduction is imperfect, find your preference, and embrace it honestly.
Tim
I think this is an oversimplification. Are you implying that all indirect sounds are colorations?
More or less. If they are reflected, they likely to be are colored. If you minimize reflected sound and maximize the direct sound coming from the speaker, you are listening to more of the speakers' frequency response and less of the room response. And yes, that is pretty simple..
Tim
Can we extrapolate that listening in an anheoic chamber or in the top of a mast would be the perfection?
When you eliminate reflections completely, it sounds pretty dead.
Tim
That would be the logical extreme, but it doesn't seem to work that way, as I'm sure you know. When you eliminate reflections completely, it sounds pretty dead. But controlling first reflections is a vital part of acoustic treatment. No need to get too far off on a tangent, though, there are enough threads about room acoustics around here.
Tim
Why would an accurate sound, sound "dead"? Now I'm confused.
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