Uh, why wouldn't you use your best recordings to rank any improvements to your system vice the worst recordings you have? Bad recordings are bad recordings and all the kings horses and all the kings men can't make them sound good again. If you are shooting for more tolerable, that is not shooting very high. Bad recordings handicap a good system, they do not make them sound better. Have you picked out a burial plot yet for the HTIAB? Sounds like it's time to let it rest in peace.
A Search for Truth and Tonality
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I tend to agree about the HT, but the "bad" recording thing definitely works. A good example the friend was using was heavily produced and over produced pop recordings with layer upon layer of textures and instruments set in massive acoustic stages. When you finally get a handle on these the audiophile approved recordings sound very pasty and flat in comparison, the manipulation that's been done to make them palatable becomes too obvious, I'm afraid.
The aim is make recordings sound huge, not tolerable, if that is what has been encoded in the track.
Frank
From the latest you've been saying, Jack, I would have thought you were getting closer to that. Not so?
Frank
I have oodles of detail at low volume and low distortion when running hard. For me though feeling is an integral part of hearing. Sadly, percussive force will always be absent at low volumes.
When you say percussive force are you referring to things like the kick in the chest punch from a big bass drum hit, the effect so beloved by Telarc?
As I have said before, my aim is for the sound to be natural, realistic, that means at low volumes the sound should be exactly like you've moved further away from the performance. So instead of the performers being 5 feet behind the speakers they are now 50 feet away, etc. Again, just as if you've physically walked backwards away from the stage. In real life the structure of the sound will be different in various ways of course when you do that, but it will still signal strongly that it's real, and so should the audio system replicate that ...
Frank
As I have said before, my aim is for the sound to be natural, realistic, that means at low volumes the sound should be exactly like you've moved further away from the performance. So instead of the performers being 5 feet behind the speakers they are now 50 feet away, etc. Again, just as if you've physically walked backwards away from the stage. In real life the structure of the sound will be different in various ways of course when you do that, but it will still signal strongly that it's real, and so should the audio system replicate that ...
Frank
The good Lord granted us ears that do the fletcher munson thingy all by themselves: if something is quiet it sounds quiet, if it's loud it sounds loud. Sounds still sound like they're supposed to though, good audio should not sound all tinny and emaciated when soft, nor be raucous and aggressive when loud. Having heard endless systems that tend to go the way of the latter, I guess a lot of people expect hifi to always work like this ...
BTW, the HT has done another Rocky -- scary stuff, eh?
Frank
BTW, the HT has done another Rocky -- scary stuff, eh?
Frank
Somebody help me out here because I think I'm lost; is Fletcher-Munson only supposed to apply to audio reproduction systems, or does it say that the frequency response of our hearing changes with volume, regardless of the source of sound? Because if it's the latter, then what Frank is saying -- turn it down, it just sounds like you got farther away, is just another way of saying turn it down, it sounds like you turned it down. There's nothing out of the ordinary in his claim, other than the fact that he thinks he gets there by wearing Michael Jackson's glove whilst sprinkling his power outlets with essence of Tinkerbell.
Tim
Tim
Sorry to jump in before someone else, Tim, but looking at Wikipedia: Fletcher-Munson as an experimentally derived "equal-loudness contour is a measure of sound pressure (dB SPL), over the frequency spectrum, for which a listener perceives a constant loudness when presented with pure steady tones." So it is all to do with the point of view of the listener, and there has been significant controversy over some of the test results.
My point is more to do with the tonality or quality of realness of the sound, that that shouldn't change with volume: when louder it doesn't become shouty or unpleasant, when soft it doesn't diminish into sounding like a kitchen radio; sins which seem somewhat too common ...
Frank
My point is more to do with the tonality or quality of realness of the sound, that that shouldn't change with volume: when louder it doesn't become shouty or unpleasant, when soft it doesn't diminish into sounding like a kitchen radio; sins which seem somewhat too common ...
Frank
To perhaps clarify a touch more there was a good example this afternoon. The HT was firing and I was quite happy with how it was sounding. I then became occupied with something at the other end of the house, while I had on a CD of hits of the 30's, original recordings. I then tuned in more to the sound, and though it sounded reasonable I felt I needed to check it at closer quarters. And I was right, it had developed a harshness which got worse the closer I got: the tweeter test would have failed miserably. The problem turned out to be an electrical cable plugged in that normally wasn't in the mains circuit.
If system had been in good shape, then that change in sound quality in my journey to the speaker, being equivalent to increasing the volume at a constant listening distance, would not have occurred.
If system had been in good shape, then that change in sound quality in my journey to the speaker, being equivalent to increasing the volume at a constant listening distance, would not have occurred.
Of course everything everywhere has an effect, but your ears in concert with your mind has "learnt" what the sounds of various things are, it knows what the signature of the echo and reverberation in a space combining with the direct sound SHOULD sound like for music instruments like pianos, and voices, and picks it as being correct. When was the last time someone walked into a room with a grand piano being played, and said, "Gosh, I thought there was a hifi system on here!"
Frank
Frank
HI Frank,
I'm going to throw a wet blanket on your "experimental project". I think it is a total waste of time. Life is too short. We all know what good sound is. Just go to any live concert. Use that as a goal. Now, do what all the experienced audiophiles do, buy good equipment and spend your time learning how to set it up. If you can't afford the best (most of us can't) then buy the best you can afford. There are very good reasons why good equipment is expensive. It's because they sound good. Easy.
What you are doing ends in failure. If you don't care then fine. But I'm not going to waste my time reading about your project which I know will end in disappointment. It simply does not interest me.
There is no substitute for great equipment.
Oh, BTW, the Fletcher Munson effect is totally based upon our ears volume limitations. It is a fact that our ears frequency response falls off as the volume is reduced. This is well proven. It has nothing to do with equipment except for the frequency/volume compensation built into some inexpensive equipment.
Sparky
I'm going to throw a wet blanket on your "experimental project". I think it is a total waste of time. Life is too short. We all know what good sound is. Just go to any live concert. Use that as a goal. Now, do what all the experienced audiophiles do, buy good equipment and spend your time learning how to set it up. If you can't afford the best (most of us can't) then buy the best you can afford. There are very good reasons why good equipment is expensive. It's because they sound good. Easy.
What you are doing ends in failure. If you don't care then fine. But I'm not going to waste my time reading about your project which I know will end in disappointment. It simply does not interest me.
There is no substitute for great equipment.
Oh, BTW, the Fletcher Munson effect is totally based upon our ears volume limitations. It is a fact that our ears frequency response falls off as the volume is reduced. This is well proven. It has nothing to do with equipment except for the frequency/volume compensation built into some inexpensive equipment.
Sparky
True enough. But probably best for us to otherwise ignore Fletcher-Munsen curves as it bears no relevance to the perception of music, only to sine waves.
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The F-M curve was the result of efforts to improve speech intelligibility. Where I have a disagreement with Frank is when he says "it sounds the same except farther away" or something like that. Going farther away is like a reverse F-M. Air transmits LF better over distances than HF. When farther away the highs fall off. It does not sound the same. That's why we strain to hear someone talking to us from far away. We cock our heads and cup our hands to our ears because consonant sounds, which are primarily HF, have fallen off.
I think there's definitely some wisdom in your words.
Audiophiles shouldn't try and ask for everything at once. If you're willing to sacrifice certain things, then one can put together a really nice sounding system for a modest sum of money. For instance, concentrate on getting the mids right and forget about the frequency extremes.
There you go injecting rational thought into a perfectly good audio performance fantasy. Keep this up and you'll lose your audiophile card, Jack.
Tim
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