A quest for perfection.

[JackD201]

The Quest is in some ways the same one for the 'tone' camp (SETs, vinyl, horns, field coils, etc.) and the multi-channel, DSP correction, digital crew. How we get there is where the differences are. And if you say that the sounds the two camps seek are extremely different, then you are going to prove my next point: the ability to tonally adjust the sound at the source. Equalizers and tone controls are just rearranging deck chairs after the boat has been built in the sense they are 'gross' adjustments. But with enough bandwidth to deliver a piece of program material into its constiuent parts, why couldn't the user 'adjust' the sound to the room and to his/her taste in much finer increments by making relative gain/tone/phase and other corrections to multiple tracks of the recording that are delivered to the end user as multitrack? (I'm not just talking about multiple channels, ala surround sound, but separating the horns from the drums from the vocals and giving the user the ability to adjust each of them). Yes, I know, in some ways unnatural, but as one thread here noted, very few recordings are set up for a 'natural acoustic' in the first place. And, without having everyone play recording engineer at home, with a complex board, you could have presets, both from the factory and from knowledgeable tweakers, tied to particular recordings. (Crowd-sourcing of presets?). Keep in mind that I'm not talking about DSP at the room end, although that may be important, but altering the fundamental balance of a recording at the source material playing in your room. Just a crazy thought.

Mixing is my true musical love.

 

[NorthStar]

What you said is less synergistic than what I was thinking. I forsee the integration of more embedded intelligence into audio kit - so that, for example the digital processor knows the volume control level setting and can introduce a volume-dependent loudness contour using DSP. It 'knows' (for another example) what amplifier power is available so ensures the downstream amp can't be driven into clipping. The amp 'knows' what speaker its driving and can determine the voice-coil temperature (say using dead reckoning, or perhaps instrumenting the voltage at known current) and send this back to the DSP to compensate for thermal compression. That kind of thing.

-----Here's the thing: no machine, no DSP chip will ever know your personal moods every day, just no way, unless you become a robot yourself. :b

Alright, I extrapolated it to the extreme; but still though, for some people it is the world they do contemplate!

If humans can and can't adapt to other humans and their surroundings how can electronics harmoniously interface?

 

[opus111]

I can't understand your question because electronics does harmoniously interface - my laptop computer is interfacing with my wireless router as I type this for example. Not always harmonious mind as sometimes I need to reboot the blessed router, but in the main its harmonious.

 

[Bill Hart]

Mixing is my true musical love.

So, for you, we have a range of consoles, from the basic thow-away model with wall wart to the super-duper tube/aged transistor thing, with card slots, groovy noiseless faders, VU meters, and an ancillary board where all the stuff you do on the analog side gets memorized into a monster database. It's gonna cost you though....

 

[NorthStar]

I can't understand your question because electronics does harmoniously interface - my laptop computer is interfacing with my wireless router as I type this for example. Not always harmonious mind as sometimes I need to reboot the blessed router, but in the main its harmonious.

-----...Interface with our 'moods', so that they are always perfect. :b

* Sorry, my question was not perfectly exposed (expressed).
But reread my 'full' post, and you can see it.

But much more than our moods; our rooms, our furnitures, our acoustic treatments (well measured by accurate tools), our total cubic space (in all the small corners and adjacent open spaces), our speakers appropriate for that space and room's construction, the right amplification and preamplification for them speakers, wirings, and most importantly our sources.

 

[opus111]

Of course a computer can't understand, it just follows instructions. But no understanding is necessary for the extra synergies I gave as examples. I have no wish for a computer to understand my moods - I have a gf for that

 

[NorthStar]

---Gf is good! :b ...Not perfect but good.

* Maybe that's what true perfection is all about; imperfection but emotional/musical freedom?

 

[Raffles]

I'm sceptical about computerised gizmos attempting to match our moods etc. but I could certainly imagine systems that are adaptive and make sure the available hardware is behaving optimally. Using a Microsoft game controller thingy, you could imagine a system that figures out where the listener(s) is (are) in the room, and optimises the audio for them, for example - not that I'd want such a system, personally; I'm too much of a purist I think.

Where people are going wrong, it seems to me, is that they expect their super-expensive boutique system to add something to the original recording using almost arbitrary 'passive' electrical and acoustic by-products of the design e.g. valve designs from the 1920s, strange configurations of horns, exotic cable materials, or whatever. It may sound good for one recording of chamber music, and even give some sort of illusion of real performers in their living room, but try a more complex recording, and the system falls down. 'Perfection' is where you hear nothing but the recording: a bad recording sounds bad, and an astounding recording sounds astounding. We may already have got there, pretty much, some years ago, but it just wasn't interesting enough.

(Also, how much do people think there's a Steampunk type thing going on here?)

Steampunk is a genre that originated during the 1980s and early 1990s and incorporates elements of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, horror, and speculative fiction. It involves a setting where steam power is widely used—whether in an alternative history such as Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United States, or in a post-apocalyptic time —that incorporates elements of either science fiction or fantasy. Works of steampunk often feature anachronistic technology, or futuristic innovations as Victorians might have envisioned them, based on a Victorian perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art. This technology includes such fictional machines as those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or the contemporary authors Philip Pullman, Scott Westerfeld, and China Mieville.

Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of such technology as lighter-than-air airships, analog computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace's Analytical Engine.

Steampunk also refers to art, fashion, and design that are informed by the aesthetics of steampunk literature.[1] Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual artisans into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style, and a number of visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

 

[Bill Hart]

I'm sceptical about computerised gizmos attempting to match our moods etc. but I could certainly imagine systems that are adaptive and make sure the available hardware is behaving optimally. Using a Microsoft game controller thingy, you could imagine a system that figures out where the listener(s) is (are) in the room, and optimises the audio for them, for example - not that I'd want such a system, personally; I'm too much of a purist I think.

Where people are going wrong, it seems to me, is that they expect their super-expensive boutique system to add something to the original recording using almost arbitrary 'passive' electrical and acoustic by-products of the design e.g. valve designs from the 1920s, strange configurations of horns, exotic cable materials, or whatever. It may sound good for one recording of chamber music, and even give some sort of illusion of real performers in their living room, but try a more complex recording, and the system falls down. 'Perfection' is where you hear nothing but the recording: a bad recording sounds bad, and an astounding recording sounds astounding. We may already have got there, pretty much, some years ago, but it just wasn't interesting enough.

(Also, how much do people think there's a Steampunk type thing going on here?)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

Yes, the retro coal powered stuff is an aesthetic choice, both in terms of the look of the gear as well as its sound. I guess I'm nouvelle retro in the sense that I'm mostly using newly built stuff, based on these older designs, but it is more than an aesthetic choice concerning the look of the equipment: the Lamm SET is downright ugly, but it serves the music well for my purposes. Of course these systems have limitations~ I adopted this approach knowing that. (However, you'd be pretty surprised how well vinyl/tubes/horns can do big band or a full orchestra, which fits into the category of a 'complex' recording).
I admit that i gave up on 'perfection' a while ago, both in life and in things.
My suggestion about the ability to manipulate the source material on an instrument by instrument level was a 'fantastic' (read: imaginative, rather than practical) idea, not necessarily a good one.
I do dig the hardcore retro stuff though, e.g. pre-war WE, and would love to have some monster bass horns at some point.