Can you perfectly mimic a real piano on playback?

fas42 · Nov 1, 2011

As Lee pointed out, the recording thread went OT, so if anyone wishes to continue here, I'll repeat my response to Tom:

"Now, you're going to hate me, Tom, but I'm doing to drag back a variation on a thought experiment I posed to you some time ago: a soundproof wall, big Steinway on the other side. Cut a hole in the wall to perfectly match the shape of a highly ranked panel speaker, with a soundproof door that can be shut. You, on the other side from the piano, say 10 feet away from the door are blindfolded and now we'll run some AB's.

A: Top notch pianist pounds away, you listen through open doorway
B: Same pianist in action, soundproof door closed, mic set up on other side of doorway, feeding through to optimised amp driving the panel speaker which has been shifted to the postion of the door, in ideal spacing, etc.

Would you say that under all circumstances it would always be obvious whether you were listening to the original, A, sound or the relayed, B, sound, and that it would be theoretically impossible to get an extremely close match?"

Frank

JackD201 · Nov 2, 2011

"Perfectly Mimic" is a bit much especially if one piano of the same make and model can't even do that

Now if we're talking making a piano sound realistic, sure. In my opinion and experience solo piano really isn't that difficult when compared to that piano within an orchestra. Choral works and Pipe Organ are, to me, still the most difficult and by a wide margin at that.

The tricky part about Pianos is how to mic them. Listening from another room where imaging is not an issue, yeah, not too hard at all. Just get the tone and harmonics in good measure and move LOTS of air.

fas42 · Nov 2, 2011

Though note, Jack, in the thought experiment above, that we are talking about replicating the very same piano that can heard in the flesh, on the A side of the comparison. And we are talking about an unsighted AB comparison, as in the listener has to guess which he's getting. So in that sense realism is not the point here.

Mic'ing is also not a problem in the above, just has to be on the other side of the doorway, pointing at the piano.

I love people going on about moving lots of air: in my experience this is the least of your problems, it's all about not having the amp's power supply falling to bits when the pressure's on, which the majority do unfortunately ...

An interesting "test" is very, very poor opera recordings. My glorious library just delivered up a disc of highly marginal Maria Callas live takes at the start of her career, '49 to '51. These must have been recorded from the wings or something, you can hear mutterings of the stage crew or other backstage people at times. Even though the harmonics of the big notes are fairly mangled the intrinsic note, or fundamental, is still there at full strength, and the result is pretty close to having an audio frequency oscillator driving your system at full bore. At times I've had the amps shut down from overheating handling those notes, and you could probably damage your drivers if sufficiently sustained. I've noted in a few reviews about systems' sounds cracking doing this sort of thing, so definitely a good one to put on a test disc ...

Frank

MylesBAstor · Nov 2, 2011

So how is it that you can tell the difference between a real person singing and audio system (or substitute piano) through a closed window three stories down?

JackD201 · Nov 2, 2011

MylesBAstor said:
So how is it that you can tell the difference between a real person singing and audio system (or substitute piano) through a closed window three stories down?

Easy. My neighbors can't sing or play squat. If it sounds good it's GOTTA be a recording. LOL.

fas42 · Nov 2, 2011

MylesBAstor said:
So how is it that you can tell the difference between a real person singing and audio system (or substitute piano) through a closed window three stories down?

Yes, excellent question: from where I stand it's all about dynamics. Real music making is LOUD, very loud, without distortion. Most audio never gets to be that loud before it starts to distort badly enough so you don't push it further, or if you do the distortion is pretty obvious, even at a distance. Which is why well done pro audio can be very, very impressive ...

Frank

MylesBAstor · Nov 2, 2011

fas42 said:
Yes, excellent question: from where I stand it's all about dynamics. Real music making is LOUD, very loud, without distortion. Most audio never gets to be that loud before it starts to distort badly enough so you don't push it further, or if you do the distortion is pretty obvious, even at a distance. Which is why well done pro audio can be very, very impressive ...

Frank

Well for me dynamics have little to do with the voice recognition. A real instrument just sounds less mechanical and possesses more information density.

JackD201 · Nov 2, 2011

fas42 said:
Though note, Jack, in the thought experiment above, that we are talking about replicating the very same piano that can heard in the flesh, on the A side of the comparison. And we are talking about an unsighted AB comparison, as in the listener has to guess which he's getting. So in that sense realism is not the point here.

Mic'ing is also not a problem in the above, just has to be on the other side of the doorway, pointing at the piano.

I love people going on about moving lots of air: in my experience this is the least of your problems, it's all about not having the amp's power supply falling to bits when the pressure's on, which the majority do unfortunately ...

An interesting "test" is very, very poor opera recordings. My glorious library just delivered up a disc of highly marginal Maria Callas live takes at the start of her career, '49 to '51. These must have been recorded from the wings or something, you can hear mutterings of the stage crew or other backstage people at times. Even though the harmonics of the big notes are fairly mangled the intrinsic note, or fundamental, is still there at full strength, and the result is pretty close to having an audio frequency oscillator driving your system at full bore. At times I've had the amps shut down from overheating handling those notes, and you could probably damage your drivers if sufficiently sustained. I've noted in a few reviews about systems' sounds cracking doing this sort of thing, so definitely a good one to put on a test disc ...

Frank

In turn, I love people going on about moving a lot of air not being important.

Granted that it isn't all that important if identification or even simple enjoyment is concerned, it is surely important if what one is after is "mimicry". Here comes that pesky scale thing again. If you are outside the door and want to mimic the real thing, which would make the better part of an average house resonate, you have to provide a fair approximation of the acoustic energy the real thing would provide. Now if the loudspeaker and power components can't then as kids these days say....Fail. That's not to say it can't do it IN the room. Nerve receptors on the skin and hair follicles even with modest output systems can be excited in the way they are when listening live. This is part of why I'm not too keen on headphones even if the recordings are binaural ones like Liebert & Luna Negra's Up Close. I feel like my head's been chopped off and put in one of those isolation tanks in the movie Altered States. Feeling the vibrations to me is an integral part of hearing.

Now maybe pitch and all other "ears only" stimuli is all you and others need to process something as close to the real thing. I'm not saying that is wrong. I'm saying it isn't universal. Thunder claps on headphones will just never seem real to me. Evolution, I believe, has seen to that. A Piano is no different. You grow up with a pianist for a mother, you feel the notes on your fingertips through the glass of water you're holding.

JackD201 · Nov 2, 2011

MylesBAstor said:
Well for me dynamics have little to do with the voice recognition. A real instrument just sounds less mechanical and possesses more information density.

True. We're very sensitive to things such as formants. Again, genetically hardwired. The cliche about the mother being able to recognize her baby's cry in a lousy environment comes to mind. Kal is the expert in this field I hope he chimes in. As for the density, I also agree. The phantom nature of stereo makes that density quite elusive. In one audio show, our neighbors disconnected one channel and played a mono LP on a mono cart. They sat me down squarely in front of one of the horn arrays. Densest information I've ever experienced in my life. It was like 2" tape on steroids.

fas42 · Nov 2, 2011

Well, I just have to say it is dynamics, in that there is NO compression of the peak of the sound envelope. I've become very senstive to this aspect of sound reproduction, and I will repeatedly state that most sound playback fails this test: once a certain real volume is reached then the sound envelope starts to compress and it sounds like a hifi system, not the real thing. Live sound never compresses, only your ears do, automatically, to protect themselves, and that very process helps to trigger in you the recognition that you are listening to live sound.

That "density" I'm very familar with, Jack, that's the sound of a system working properly, the thing the industry has a real hard time getting a grip on ...

Frank

MylesBAstor · Nov 2, 2011

JackD201 said:
In turn, I love people going on about moving a lot of air not being important. Granted that it isn't all that important if identification or even simple enjoyment is concerned, it is surely important if what one is after is "mimicry". Here comes that pesky scale thing again. If you are outside the door and want to mimic the real thing, which would make the better part of an average house resonate, you have to provide a fair approximation of the acoustic energy the real thing would provide. Now if the loudspeaker and power components can't then as kids these days say....Fail. That's not to say it can't do it IN the room. Nerve receptors on the skin and hair follicles even with modest output systems can be excited in the way they are when listening live. This is part of why I'm not too keen on headphones even if the recordings are binaural ones like Liebert & Luna Negra's Up Close. I feel like my head's been chopped off and put in one of those isolation tanks in the movie Altered States. Feeling the vibrations to me is an integral part of hearing.

Now maybe pitch and all other "ears only" stimuli is all you and others need to process something as close to the real thing. I'm not saying that is wrong. I'm saying it isn't universal. Thunder claps on headphones will just never seem real to me. Evolution, I believe, has seen to that. A Piano is no different. You grow up with a pianist for a mother, you feel the notes on your fingertips through the glass of water you're holding.

All one needs to hear is a pair of Infinity IRS series 5s

Now we're talking about moving some air

Was listening many years ago over at HPs to Emerald Forrest (yes, that was one of a few LPs introduced HP too--after all had to return the favor

) and my pant legs literally flapped in the wind when the drums were played (and HP's jaw dropped

That was with the Mark Levinson amps/ARC SP11 (?) preamp and Goldmund Reference table (? cartridge).

fas42 · Nov 2, 2011

MylesBAstor said:
Was listening many years ago over at HPs to Emerald Forrest (yes, that was one of a few LPs introduced HP too--after all had to return the favor ) and my pant legs literally flapped in the wind when the drums were played (and HP's jaw dropped That was with the Mark Levinson amps/ARC SP11 (?) preamp and Goldmund Reference table (? cartridge).

Though the drums never sound right unless the treble component is handled correctly: the intensity of a drum solo will completely evaporate if you disconnect the tweeter ...

Frank

JackD201 · Nov 2, 2011

Hey, I have the Emerald Forest Sound Track LP! Hmmmmm. Where'd I put that?

If the table was the Goldmund Reference, the cart was probably the Goldmund cartridge made for them by Clearaudio. I believe they came with the table.

OT on soundtracks (sorry Frank). I was looking for Barber's Adagio for Strings when I happened upon the Platoon Sound Track. When I got home I discovered the piece was played with the gunfire, explosions and screams of agony included! It's funny NOW, but boy was I miffed then! LOL

audioguy · Nov 3, 2011

MylesBAstor said:
So how is it that you can tell the difference between a real person singing and audio system (or substitute piano) through a closed window three stories down?

Great question. I've been fooled only once. I was in some foreign county walking through an indoor mall and heard what i thought was a real piano playing. Followed the sound to a high end audio store playing some ginormous Audio Research tube amps into a pair of Maggies (think 20.1?). Blew me away.

I've never heard anything like it since on any audio system. Not even close (I kept looking for the REAL piano in the audio store!!)

But the usually, you can always tell!

Maybe once we really understand what we hear as the difference, we can build much better audio components.

(As an aside, it was "digital")

MylesBAstor · Nov 3, 2011

JackD201 said:
Hey, I have the Emerald Forest Sound Track LP! Hmmmmm. Where'd I put that?

If the table was the Goldmund Reference, the cart was probably the Goldmund cartridge made for them by Clearaudio. I believe they came with the table.

OT on soundtracks (sorry Frank). I was looking for Barber's Adagio for Strings when I happened upon the Platoon Sound Track. When I got home I discovered the piece was played with the gunfire, explosions and screams of agony included! It's funny NOW, but boy was I miffed then! LOL

Possibly but it may also have been the Carnegie 1.

fas42 · Nov 3, 2011

audioguy said:
Great question. I've been fooled only once. I was in some foreign county walking through an indoor mall and heard what i thought was a real piano playing. Followed the sound to a high end audio store playing some ginormous Audio Research tube amps into a pair of Maggies (think 20.1?). Blew me away.

I've never heard anything like it since on any audio system. Not even close (I kept looking for the REAL piano in the audio store!!)

But the usually, you can always tell!

Maybe once we really understand what we hear as the difference, we can build much better audio components.

(As an aside, it was "digital")

Which is why, whenever someone says that you can't recreate a realistic sound from an audio system, you know it's hooey. YOU may not be to do it, the person in that audio shop may never get it to sound so good again, but the fact that it has been done once "proves" that it can be done, and the dribble about ABX's done a thousand times to demonstrate that something is the "truth" or can't be done, is just that, dribble.

Frank

MylesBAstor · Nov 3, 2011

You don't think you're going to get phasiness with this setup?

fas42 · Nov 3, 2011

tomelex said:
You might be able to nearly perfectly mimic a mouth harp or other very small instrument as they are nearly point sources with a speaker. But a piano, never with POS (plain old stereo)!

Tom

So you think audioguy must have had one too many to be that fooled by the system, in the store as mentioned above, to the point where even near the speakers he was still trying to find where the "real" piano was?

BTW, at the risk of infuriating mep, that's exactly what I'm able to conjure up with my humble setup ...

Frank

fas42 · Nov 3, 2011

tomelex said:
But what audioguy heard was not your thought experiment. In fact, I said in my post in the other thread we were notified to stay on topic that yes, if you are down the hall and in another room, it can be damn hard to distinguish if its real or memorex. Like I said, the wavefronts have lost their individuality after bouncing around all those walls and through two doors and so your brain just goes, hey thats a piano (the same way it knows what the color red is, from experience and learning and repetition). That is not what your thought experiment was, play fair Frank!

Audioguy apparently had already fooled his mind into thinking he heard a real piano, and even in the audio store was still looking for it, but that I think was expectation bias lashed with some damn fine sounding audio equipment apparently. I think it could happen to any of us.

Tom

No, it wasn't the thought experiment, but for him at that moment it was able to "perfectly mimic a real piano on playback", which is the real point. My experience is that you can be fooled, irrespective of wavefronts and all the rest of what you mention, because the ear/brain is a lot cleverer than a measuring instrument. And it also takes short cuts. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but it means that your mind assimilates everything that's coming in, sorts it out at high speed and makes a snap decision. Everything in my music playback experience has made me aware that there is an, almost sharp, cutoff point of quality reproduction where if a system does less well, then it's obviously a hifi. On the other side of that cutoff is the "oh my god" moment where the brain accepts the illusion as being the real thing, and audio "nirvana" and all the rest of the nouns and adjectives are flung around. If you have never experienced the latter, then it's very easy to accept the validity of your point of view. But, if you have encountered it, even if only once, then your attitude towards real high end, or "correct", sound can never be the same again ...

Frank

fas42 · Nov 3, 2011

Just to expand a little bit on one point, the "Audioguy apparently had already fooled his mind into thinking he heard a real piano", that can often be the 95% there level. Yes, it sounds very impressive from around the corner, but once you actually directly face the speakers the illusion fails. And that's for everybody. My HT setup is/was in that mode a lot, in fact most of the time, so I knew I still had to work on it. That last 5% is very, very hard to knock over, but when you get it right there are no if's or but's ...

Frank

Can you perfectly mimic a real piano on playback?

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