A Search for Truth and Tonality

[Orb]

True enough. But probably best to otherwise for us to ignore Fletcher-Munsen curves as it bears no relevance to the perception of music, only to sine waves.

This is a good point because from what I understand an instrument playing the same note but at different loudness are not identical, even if corrected for loudness.

I guess this is why it is possible to tune instruments by ear perfectly (if trained for pitch-loudness) even with different loudness/strength-amplitude of the note played.
Discussions on Fletcher-Munsen curves never seem to investigate the implications-behaviour when applied to real complex soundwaves such as that from instruments.

Roger, I only have limited articles on this (pitch-loudness perception specifically relating to complex soundwaves and Fletcher-Munsen curve/sinewaves) but if you have any worth sharing please do, is really an important and interesting subject.
Thanks
Orb

 

[fas42]

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.

Gee, Sparky, that's a bit harsh

But I'm afraid I've been exposed to too much very expensive equipment, that, to be blunt, sounds bloody awful unless they are playing exactly the "right" recordings! Unlike perhaps some of the people here my high frequency hearing is in pretty good shape and I'm really sick of having my ear drums ripped to shreds by badly distorted treble. Which in my experience is where a lot of ambitious setups get it wrong unless a lot of effort has been made to get that under control.

Yes, expensive gear CAN sound extremely, superbly good. But frequently it's like a Ferrari that's been assembled by a group of convicts dragged in at the last moment and working under the whip. The potential is there but there are so many things not quite right that the end result is pretty disasterous. If you gave me the choice of a half million dollar system set up by the hifi store which I couldn't touch, and my HT thingy worth maybe $5 there would be no contest I'm afraid, the status ain't worth it ...

And the bit about learning to set it up is a joke, on the audio industry in fact. If the Mercedes dealer said to you this car you've just bought is going to be an absolute dog unless you go through this great ritual of tuning the engine and adjusting the suspension, you'd give him a thump in the head ...

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.

Au contraire. I know a hell of a lot more now about what makes systems work properly versus not properly then I ever did before. The cheap stuff has its own set of problems but I certainly enjoy listening to what it's doing right, much more than being irritated hearing expensive gear doing lots of things wrong ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

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.

Jack, we are talking about the "realness" of the sound. If there is a band walking around a corner, and then down the street towards me sitting on a bench next to the road, it always sounds like a band. Yes, the FR at the ear will change but you will still recognise the band as being the same band, and real. Same for the person you're trying to hear: you may not pick up the words 100% but you don't think to yourself that that doesn't sound like a real person.

Many hifi systems, on the other hand, when you're some distance from them with the volume up sound like a bellowing mess ...

Frank

 

[Roger Dressler]

This is a good point because from what I understand an instrument playing the same note but at different loudness are not identical, even if corrected for loudness.

Yes, the harmonic structure of instruments and and voices change dramatically with artistic intensity, and will be recognizable regardless of playback volume. And loudness compensation will not alter that recognition capability in the slightest, just as variations in speaker and room responses cannot, either.

I'm simply saying that sine waves, being the spectrally narrowest sound it is possible to have, do not translate to human loudness perception the same as wideband sounds. In retrospect, Fletcher-Munsen curves should never have been the basis for loudness compensation in music playback systems. But we live and learn.

 

[JackD201]

Jack, we are talking about the "realness" of the sound. If there is a band walking around a corner, and then down the street towards me sitting on a bench next to the road, it always sounds like a band. Yes, the FR at the ear will change but you will still recognise the band as being the same band, and real. Same for the person you're trying to hear: you may not pick up the words 100% but you don't think to yourself that that doesn't sound like a real person.

Many hifi systems, on the other hand, when you're some distance from them with the volume up sound like a bellowing mess ...

Frank

Well, that's a different story altogether then. You're referring to the "from the other room" phenomena. Why didn't ya just say so?

 

[fas42]

Well, that's a different story altogether then. You're referring to the "from the other room" phenomena. Why didn't ya just say so?

Strewth, do I have to have repeating myself! I've already mentioned LIAR a few times!!

It's aaaaall very simple: a grand piano, a band, an orchestra should all sound like themselves. If you turn the volume up and down it should sound like you're getting closer or further away in an open space. If you go down some corridors, round corners, even shut some doors the sound should still seep through and sound the real deal. Not precisely the same as turning down the volume, moving away in a clear space, but should still be convincing: the grand piano won't turn into an electric Rhodes, or barroom honky tonk or some such animal ...

By the way, how's that soundstage going; and what about sticking your head against a tweeter, hmmm?

Frank

 

[JackD201]

The "other room" effect isn't all that uncommon Frankie, scientifically it's explained by having accurate off axis response in the midrange, particularly being able to accurately reproduce timbres. Solo sax seems to be the easiest to dupe folks with. You don't need ultra low distortion to pull it off either.

The sound stage and the disappearing half ton speakers are doing fine. Your ear to the tweets thing doesn't really apply. The tweets are crossed over too high. All you,ll hear is some shimmering. The mids are running pretty wide. With my ear to them I do hear distortion still, distortion I don't hear in my brother's identical driver. He's got full on power isolation, I don't........yet.

 

[fas42]

The "other room" effect isn't all that uncommon Frankie, scientifically it's explained by having accurate off axis response in the midrange, particularly being able to accurately reproduce timbres. Solo sax seems to be the easiest to dupe folks with. You don't need ultra low distortion to pull it off either.

The sound stage and the disappearing half ton speakers are doing fine. Your ear to the tweets thing doesn't really apply. The tweets are crossed over too high. All you,ll hear is some shimmering. The mids are running pretty wide. With my ear to them I do hear distortion still, distortion I don't hear in my brother's identical driver. He's got full on power isolation, I don't........yet.

That's interesting, the midrange off axis finding : my suspicion is that that is exciting more early reflections which is what your ear/brain is expecting as a signature of a more distant sound event.

I'm impressed with the disappearing speakers, it does sound very, very close: shimmering from the tweeter is good. But as you say there is apparent distortion in the midrange. The key is that your brother's is doing better there, gives you an excellent reference point: there is something different in your systems in a crucial area that is key, highly likely nothing to do with the speakers. The headache is that it can be something very, very subtle the closer you get to eliminating the last artifact.

I take your point on the isolation: what about the treatment of speaker cables, are you using the same philosophies in terms of aspects of speaker cables, including the dressing of them?

Frank

 

[JackD201]

I've been playing the elimination game since we moved in. I'm 99% sure it's AC noise especially now that I have an idea of what it actually sounds like. My system displays a lot of it when we have parties and all the hvacs are running at the same time all over the house. Having a separate breaker really didn't help. At first I thought the amps were just being starved but even at low draw levels the noise is still there. This "raw" sound is very similar to an unbroken in tweet or mid suspension. The main difference is that ear to mid, it's pretty much constant whereas the other pops out in predictable passages. This makes it similar to saturated core distortion in that regard. The difference I hear though is that with core sat distortion compression covers the entire mid bandwidth.

Do look into the off axis thing more closely Frank and note your relative positions while you're at it. It's , in my opinion and experience, a good part of the puzzle. Clue: study how the loudspeakers actually load/pressurize the room. It's got a huge impact on what escapes it as well as how they play in it.

 

[fas42]

I've been playing the elimination game since we moved in. I'm 99% sure it's AC noise especially now that I have an idea of what it actually sounds like. My system displays a lot of it when we have parties and all the hvacs are running at the same time all over the house. Having a separate breaker really didn't help. At first I thought the amps were just being starved but even at low draw levels the noise is still there. This "raw" sound is very similar to an unbroken in tweet or mid suspension. The main difference is that ear to mid, it's pretty much constant whereas the other pops out in predictable passages. This makes it similar to saturated core distortion in that regard. The difference I hear though is that with core sat distortion compression covers the entire mid bandwidth.

It's a bugger when electrical activity elsewhere in the vicinity interferes. Obviously 2 solutions: stop the device generating the interference, or protect the system from being affected. At an earlier stage in the evolution of the HT setup and the previous system, a DIY gainclone, I typically resorted to turning off absolutely everything electircal in the place for optimum sound. Severe remedy but it worked.

Now things are under much better control; effective filtering of the mains in and pretty severe doctoring of power supplies.

In your situation you probably can't do much with the AC, which is causing pretty nasty waveforms right back in the feed from the street. The headache with many filtering mechanisms that the better they are at getting rid of the rubbish the higher the impedance they present to high powered amps. An OTT solution is to get a pretty massive power regenerator; in any case keep the high current draw components separate from the low current ones. But you know and do all this anyway!!

You know you're really winning when the difficult recordings start to fully come to life ...

Do look into the off axis thing more closely Frank and note your relative positions while you're at it. It's , in my opinion and experience, a good part of the puzzle. Clue: study how the loudspeakers actually load/pressurize the room. It's got a huge impact on what escapes it as well as how they play in it.

Any good references out there? I'm very aware of the room "pressurising" thing, but in my experience it is always about how clean the electronics are ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

A nice compliment from my better half: the HT had been down very low, warming up while she was watching TV. Finally she decided to listen to the music, and turned up the volume to maximum without realising, on Brendel playing Schubert piano sonatas. Definitely a good sign!

Frank

 

[fas42]

Whoaa!!! Man, you people are lucky who have a good CD collection, and I think that's most of you. Even I who know how good replay sound can get at times just got a shock this afternoon, with how good the HT was sounding. Normally I cut it a bit of slack because the supertweeters need a fair old workout to really sound decent, but today just had the right combination of warmup and tweaking in alignment, put on a freebie of classical workhorses by the Sydney Symphony, and the dynamics were the best I've ever heard from it. The kettle drums were stunning, our cat jumped out of its skin from the impact and the sheer majesty and richness of the sound was something to behold, surprising even I who have heard good sound so many times.

So don't dump your CDs for tapes or vinyl any time soon, one of these days you too will get superb, overwhelming sound ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

Of course the down side of having a system work better is that every deviation from that good state is obvious. I thought I had cell phones reasonably under control, but not quite there yet. My wife's smartphone throws the system if too close, so a bit more to look at. One problem is that everything is open and exposed, the lid's been off the main unit for about a year now. And every single bit of wire that is not 100% shielded or in a wrong physical configuration can act as an antenna, and, bang, there goes your sound quality.

For those who haven't experienced or noted this RF effect, what happens is that the sound which should be sparkling and alive, develops instantly a slightly flat or dead quality when the interference does its dirty deed. It's relatively subtle, you have to tune into the effect by playing with some device that causes the degradation, switching it on and off, but once you recognise it it's pretty obvious. It makes the sound go from, "gee, I could listen to this all day" to "hmm, I think I've had enough of that type of music for now". When people talk of digital being uninteresting and uninvolving, that screams to me, lots of RF interference killing the quality stone dead ...

Just an extra thought I had: this would be at least one reason why digital playback at hifi shows can be pretty nothing. You have dozens if not hundreds of cell phones in effective interference range to a digital source device, the poor circuitry around the DAC typically hasn't got a hope of doing a reasonable job.

Frank

 

[fas42]

Some will laugh, but I might just join the dark side, black vinyl that is, for a little bit! The friend that I visit regularly picked up a Rotel RP 5300 direct drive TT for $15, because "it was too good to pass up", but has no room for it, so now I have something extra to play with. It appears to work well, cartridge in good nick, another challege to see if I can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Even an extremely cursory look at it shows there is tremendous scope for improving it mechanically, so this could be yet another interesting diversion ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

Another quick update: I thought I had cordless phones almost totally under control, with some tidying up of much earlier mod's, but it wasn't the case. As so often happens, the sound did improve, but, the end result is that it becomes even easier to pinpoint that a particular influence is still manifested. This was clear on some old Bing Crosby, with orchestral backings: the soundstage has nicely expanded, so all the instruments are all very clearly delineated, to way, way back in the distance; but, the tonality just was not right. This is easily "fixed" by unplugging the phones, but that's not the point -- it has to work correctly without worrying whether such devices are in the vicinity or not.

This is the ongoing game: lifting the overall level just brings you up to the next hurdle, makes that one just a bit more obvious. Part of my problem is that the HT is running with lid off, for a number of reasons: this is probably not helping things, some level of screening is missing. Yet it is extremely difficult to get RF shielding to be 100% on a casing with openings all over the place, so really I need to go the extra distance and locate the area that's the weak link.

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Another quick update: I thought I had cordless phones almost totally under control, with some tidying up of much earlier mod's, but it wasn't the case. As so often happens, the sound did improve, but, the end result is that it becomes even easier to pinpoint that a particular influence is still manifested. This was clear on some old Bing Crosby, with orchestral backings: the soundstage has nicely expanded, so all the instruments are all very clearly delineated, to way, way back in the distance; but, the tonality just was not right. This is easily "fixed" by unplugging the phones, but that's not the point -- it has to work correctly without worrying whether such devices are in the vicinity or not.

This is the ongoing game: lifting the overall level just brings you up to the next hurdle, makes that one just a bit more obvious. Part of my problem is that the HT is running with lid off, for a number of reasons: this is probably not helping things, some level of screening is missing. Yet it is extremely difficult to get RF shielding to be 100% on a casing with openings all over the place, so really I need to go the extra distance and locate the area that's the weak link.

Frank

Shirley you have one of those invisibility cloaks, like Gandalf gave Frodo? You throw it over the ht unit and the cordless phones won't even know it's there! Problem solved. No point in making these things needlessly complex.

Tim

 

[Orb]

Shirley you have one of those invisibility cloaks, like Gandalf gave Frodo? You throw it over the ht unit and the cordless phones won't even know it's there! Problem solved. No point in making these things needlessly complex.

Tim

"I'm doing everything I can... and stop calling me Shirley!"

Ok in the film it is surely, but hey.
Cheers
Orb

 

[fas42]

Shirley you have one of those invisibility cloaks, like Gandalf gave Frodo? You throw it over the ht unit and the cordless phones won't even know it's there! Problem solved. No point in making these things needlessly complex.

Tim

I could say something along the lines of "Humour is the last refuge of someone who believes that audio issues are not complex". But I won't ...

Something perhaps relevant to mention -- one can only smile: the friend who has now wholeheartedly taken on the challenge of resolving finer issues in system tuning, and who has greatly benefited from this approach has a friend in turn, whom I've never met, who has a classic high end system. Translation, very expensive components, racks of gear, all the best cables hooking it all together, you get the picture. Trouble is, it can sound very impressive one moment, and bloody awful the next, according to my compatriot.

So, my friend, for some strange reason, has been inspired to to suggest to this other that trying some little "tricks" to improve things may be worthwhile. Well, what do you think happened? Big backlash, vigorous arguments, strong denial of the value of such, seemingly stubborn indifference to any such concept. But, on a subsequent visit my friend noted a few little alterations, and a slightly different attitude to trying something out. But when he suggested again that some tweaking in an area may be beneficial, then again there was a verbal flareup -- as he recalled the content of the exchanges he could only laugh at the memory ...

So fascinating the games people play ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

"I'm doing everything I can... and stop calling me Shirley!"

Ok in the film it is surely, but hey.
Cheers
Orb

I was wondering if anyone would catch that!

Tim

 

[NorthStar]

"I'm doing everything I can... and stop calling me Shirley!"

Ok in the film it is surely, but hey.
Cheers
Orb

Which movie? :b