The Mysterious Case of the Listening Window! By Jeff Day, Positive Feedback

[microstrip]

(...) Jeff Day's "Listening Window" is not something I ever thought of before, but it seems simple enough and I understand what he is talking about because I have experienced the same thing in my own listening room and that of Al M's over the last year or so. I read it in Tang's many posts. (...)

Peter,

We referred to it many times in WBF before. The subject has been regularly discussed in the forum, many threads involving audiophile recordings included discussing this old concept - I quote a post of mine of 2011 ... IMHO a good system must play most normal and most audiophile recordings - I appreciate both!

For someone who listens to classical orchestral and instrumental music, surely yes! Most of the recordings I listen to are multi-miked and if they sound bad the system is useless for me. I have many multi-miked CDs (e.g. Deutsche Grammophon and Decca) that can sound excellent in adequate systems and I always take a few of them to evaluation sessions. I am a little suspicious of systems that only sound good with audiophile recordings.

And sorry, IMHO the Magico Mini II could play large scale music or rock adequately. I enjoyed it with them.

 

[PeterA]

No disagreement Francisco. I am speaking specifically of the term “listening window”. Did you use that term in the past in all these WBF discussions? I don’t see it in the post you reference.

Listening to a wider range of recordings in one’s system has been discussed. I agree with that.

 

[microstrip]

No disagreement Francisco. I am speaking specifically of the term “listening window”. Did you use that term in the past in all these WBF discussions? I don’t see it in the post you reference.

Listening to a wider range of recordings in one’s system has been discussed. I agree with that.

IMHO no one wanting to avoid confusions would refer to this concept calling it "listening window" , as the word was been used frequently with another specifc meanings by magazines and sound books. Window and listening are general concepts, joining them in a new word results in a long debate where only a small minority knows exactly what is meant.

 

[Robh3606]

IMHO no one wanting to avoid confusions would refer to this concept calling it "listening window" , as the word was been used frequently with another specifc meanings by magazines and sound books. Window and listening are general concepts, joining them in a new word results in a long debate where only a small minority knows exactly what is meant.

There is some truth to that. Outside of this conversation to me "Listen Window" would mean the averaged Frequency Response inside a defined area in the speakers polar response like +/- 20 degrees Vertical and +/- 60 degrees horizontal as an example.

Rob

 

[PeterA]

IMHO no one wanting to avoid confusions would refer to this concept calling it "listening window" , as the word was been used frequently with another specific meanings by magazines and sound books. Window and listening are general concepts, joining them in a new word results in a long debate where only a small minority knows exactly what is meant.

I suppose you would have to ask Jeff Day about that. As I wrote, I never thought of that term or phrase before reading this article, nor have I used it to literally describe what I hear in systems. However, for some unexplained reason, I seem to not have a problem understanding the meaning of the term myself. Am I misinterpreting Mr. Day? Who knows, but I think not. I think in terms of being able to listen to more or less music on a system depending on many of the room/system/setup variables. It seems the more one can listen to the better, but perhaps there is broad disagreement about that too.

Perhaps it would help matters to simply think of an ability to listen to more music in one's system. If Mr. Day means something else, I guess we may learn more about that in subsequent articles or his comment section.

EDIT: Here is how Mr. Day defines the term, taken from this article. The idea seems fairly simple:

"I have been pondering for quite some time why enthusiast hifi after the 1960s evolved the way it did, with much - but not all of it - becoming increasingly amusical, at least from a music lover's perspective of wanting to be able to enjoy a wide spectrum of music of various recording periods and quality.

The ability of a hifi system - or the individual components it is composed of - to be able to play a wide variety of recorded music from different periods, of different styles, and of varied recording quality, I refer to as the listening window.

The listening window is a subjective measure of how wide a variety of recorded music one can listen to through a high-performance audio system and still have it sound and feel believably like a live music experience."

 

[tima]

My generational comment isn’t derogatory it’s a serious question. There’s current vocabulary that I never heard of in the past SRA is one them. I learnt about VTA it took me a while to figure out what’s SRA but I still set up VTA and it’s never in my mind. I know older guys who never heard the term VTA but set it knowing what it does to the sound. I brought window back to the event to understand if it’s the actual use of “window” that’s creating the problem. Some of my terminology gets thrown back at me too. Pistonic was the first one which was met head on and I was told that I can’t use the dictionary meaning to describe a slow woofer where you can actually hear it moving back and forth, as an audio term it meant something completely different to some here. Natural is the current term with an issue, tweak or de-tweak so I’ve been wondering about that. We learn from our environment growing and environments change. You wrote the more you read Day’s article the more confusing it is, the same thing seems to be happening in our exchanges, I’m trying to understand why I’m failing here.


You say my last paragraph was unnecessary I think it is and very much part of the conversation. You wrote “no offense intended, the last sentGoing through old favorites and discovering more from them is a pretty common experience for many of us”. I know that, it’s not what I wrote though. That information is different from this common type of discovery. Another unintended communication failure.

david

David, I mean this sincerely and have held off saying anything until now. You are not a careful reader. You're not. It's seriously getting in the way of our talking with one another. I am happy to communicate with you and I learn a lot from you and truly value your friendship and advice. Let's drop the exchange here and have different ones.

Best,
Tim

 

[PeterA]

I think what David is expressing in his post is that there is a distinction between A) listening to your own favorite recordings and hearing more information from those recordings than you did before, and B) discovering that you can in fact listen to a broader range of music on your system and enjoy it. As Mr. Dave describes it: music from different eras and of different genres.

B) is what I understand Mr. Dave to be describing with his expression “the listening window“, although he does mention the joy of retrieving more “information“ from the grooves.

I think one meets with success, or it is a sign of progress if both of these distinct conditions occur concurrently.

 

[PeterA]

I think another interesting subject brought up in the article is the idea of how much progress the audio industry has made over the years. Did amplifier design actually peak or store after a certain period years ago? I would have to assume no because he has contemporary Pass Labs amplifiers.

On the other hand, he may simply like the new designs because of their reliability convenience availability and sound.

This was one of the other aspects of the article which I found interesting and worthy of discussion but no one has chimed in on this particular topic.

 

[ddk]

David, I mean this sincerely and have held off saying anything until now. You are not a careful reader. You're not. It's seriously getting in the way of our talking with one another. I am happy to communicate with you and I learn a lot from you and truly value your friendship and advice. Let's drop the exchange here and have different ones.

Best,
Tim

Sure Tim.
david

 

[the sound of Tao]

IMHO no one wanting to avoid confusions would refer to this concept calling it "listening window" , as the word was been used frequently with another specifc meanings by magazines and sound books. Window and listening are general concepts, joining them in a new word results in a long debate where only a small minority knows exactly what is meant.

But surely micro people will adopt or adapt ideas and language as they will. There is no one language nor perfect translation. There is also no copyright in word usage in the abstract. Just because three or four people used some words like this doesn’t mean they own them nor the idea they see generated off them... nor will the fact that a handful of people deciding that they do or don’t agree with meaning make any difference either.
Language and culture are both alive and relevant to those that use it successfully with others but it’s simply not necessary nor perhaps desirable that everyone agrees. It would be illogical to expect language to remain static or fixed when everything is in a state of change.

There has been way more clarification now and if some people feel comfortable using the term all good and if some don’t equally all good. If it causes confusion for any not sure that really is an issue. We can’t own life nor can we limit how people then perceive it or the way they define their experiences and understandings.

There is no universal rule in this... we are a handful of people making this incredibly small niche stuff up as we go on a planet approaching 8 billion... all of whom who will exist here for less than a breath in time compared to the 200,000 years in time in the development of our Hominin species... or the 3 billion years it took earlier for single cell life to get to multi-cell life on this planet to allow all this stuff to happen in the first place. The people who used these words before are probably gone already. What you and I or any here decide is right in this means truly nothing at all really. These rules just simply aren’t.

 

[Ron Resnick]

The ability of a hifi system - or the individual components it is composed of - to be able to play a wide variety of recorded music from different periods, of different styles, and of varied recording quality, I refer to as the listening window.

The listening window is a subjective measure of how wide a variety of recorded music one can listen to through a high-performance audio system and still have it sound and feel believably like a live music experience.

I think I understand what Jeff Day is expressing here. But it is not clear to me that this is the unambiguously correct goal.

The system which allows a variety of recorded music to sound and feel believably like a live music experience may not be the system which allows a particular genre of recorded music to sound and feel more believably like a live music experience. In other words the system which achieves a high average of believability across various genres of music may not be the system which sounds the most believable with a particular genre of music.

 

[bazelio]

The ability of a hifi system - or the individual components it is composed of - to be able to play a wide variety of recorded music from different periods, of different styles, and of varied recording quality, I refer to as the listening window.

The listening window is a subjective measure of how wide a variety of recorded music one can listen to through a high-performance audio system and still have it sound and feel believably like a live music experience.

I think I understand what Jeff Day is expressing here. But it is not clear to me that this is the unambiguously correct goal.

The system which allows a variety of recorded music to sound and feel believably like a live music experience may not be the system which allows a particular genre of recorded music to sound and feel more believably like a live music experience. In other words the system which achieves a high average of believability across various genres of music may not be the system which sounds the most believable with a particular genre of music.

Jack of all trades. Master of none. To be honest, that's usually the direction in which I head with audio. I enjoy variety too much to specialize.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

The ability of a hifi system - or the individual components it is composed of - to be able to play a wide variety of recorded music from different periods, of different styles, and of varied recording quality, I refer to as the listening window.

The listening window is a subjective measure of how wide a variety of recorded music one can listen to through a high-performance audio system and still have it sound and feel believably like a live music experience.

I think I understand what Jeff Day is expressing here. But it is not clear to me that this is the unambiguously correct goal.

The system which allows a variety of recorded music to sound and feel believably like a live music experience may not be the system which allows a particular genre of recorded music to sound and feel more believably like a live music experience. In other words the system which achieves a high average of believability across various genres of music may not be the system which sounds the most believable with a particular genre of music.

not followed this thread up till now, just jumping in here reacting only to Ron's post. so sorry if i'm off theme......

i think reality goes something like this;

your room/speaker/amp combination might be optimized for your vision of something somewhat musically singular. maybe large scale music, without limits, but possibly not all in on the most intimate stuff. so a balance you choose. and maybe over time you get closer and closer to achieving success with intimate music. but still room to go further.

but then you might have multiple sources that do seem to fit into various degrees of particular musical strengths, that do bring you even closer in areas the whole system might be lacking.

so then ultimately you are able to listen to anything any time and get that full vision of the live music experience.......according to your views. it's all subjective of course.

so the question might be what path results in that widest window of achieving the live experience. where is the biggest got-cha? where you run into that limiting type system approach? or are there no limiting approaches.......just degrees of execution regardless of approach?

 

[tima]

I think I understand what Jeff Day is expressing here. But it is not clear to me that this is the unambiguously correct goal.

The system which allows a variety of recorded music to sound and feel believably like a live music experience may not be the system which allows a particular genre of recorded music to sound and feel more believably like a live music experience. In other words the system which achieves a high average of believability across various genres of music may not be the system which sounds the most believable with a particular genre of music.

Yes. Systems built to play more intimate music (think Jordi Savall) and not built to play a Shostakovich symphony or a Batman soundtrack can be superb at doing what they are intended to do.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Yes. Systems built to play more intimate music (think Jordi Savall) and not built to play a Shostakovich symphony or a Batman soundtrack can be superb at doing what they are intended to do.

Tim I keep coming back to the value of running two sound systems if possible.

I’m heading towards reconfiguring and keeping my two way horn system for its fantastic coherence for intimate scale music (which it’s doing just beautifully) and going to a new diy three way horn with OB sub to scale up for larger music and to work in a much larger room.

The current system does fabulously with most everything but then an additional dedicated larger 3 or 4 way horn SET setup just purely for blissing out on large scale symphonic works (including plenty of Shosty and Sibelius) might be the more ideal remedy to cover the notion of listening to a whole brilliant range of scales of music.

 

[bonzo75]

Tim I keep coming back to the value of running two sound systems if possible.

I’m heading towards reconfiguring and keeping my two way horn system for its fantastic coherence for intimate scale music (which it’s doing just beautifully) and going to a new diy three way horn with OB sub to scale up for larger music and to work in a much larger room.

The current system does fabulously with most everything but then an additional dedicated larger 3 or 4 way horn SET setup just purely for blissing out on large scale symphonic works (including plenty of Shosty and Sibelius) might be the more ideal remedy to cover the notion of listening to a whole brilliant range of scales of music.

You can get a two way full symphony with the Altec 817. The midbass loads in from 100 to 130 in a horn, below that the bass is vented but there is no additional crossover. So it is designed to go up all the way from low bass to highs with only one crossover at 500 Hz. How high you want to go depends on the driver you use. With Altec midrange there is slight roll off, but with Radian beryllium 950 or TAD 4001 you will be fine. The CD and the multicell Altec horns also allow dispersion without beaming unlike JMLC so you don't need a tweeter to avoid beaming provided you use a driver that goes up far enough. So you can get coherence plus symphonies.

Not that I think Leif's is any less coherent than a two way. I have also listened to pnoe a lot recently, one way. It all depends on how competitive you want to be on the forum and how broad you want the window to jump out of it someone else gets rated at one and you are only second place.

I am down to a shortlist of two: Altec 817 with a beryllium driver, and Leif's. Altec 817 looks better and is easier (two way), Leif's sounds even better

 

[bonzo75]

817 is a dual woofer, this is a three way single woofer. But his secret seems to be multi amping with a tubed cross over

 

[bonzo75]

 

[Lagonda]

Tim I keep coming back to the value of running two sound systems if possible.

I’m heading towards reconfiguring and keeping my two way horn system for its fantastic coherence for intimate scale music (which it’s doing just beautifully) and going to a new diy three way horn with OB sub to scale up for larger music and to work in a much larger room.

The current system does fabulously with most everything but then an additional dedicated larger 3 or 4 way horn SET setup just purely for blissing out on large scale symphonic works (including plenty of Shosty and Sibelius) might be the more ideal remedy to cover the notion of listening to a whole brilliant range of scales of music.

Don’t forget the Harbeth‘s for the bathroom system and Your Maggie for the bedroom Mr. Minimalist !

 

[tima]

But surely micro people will adopt or adapt ideas and language as they will. There is no one language nor perfect translation. There is also no copyright in word usage in the abstract. Just because three or four people used some words like this doesn’t mean they own them nor the idea they see generated off them... nor will the fact that a handful of people deciding that they do or don’t agree with meaning make any difference either.
Language and culture are both alive and relevant to those that use it successfully with others but it’s simply not necessary nor perhaps desirable that everyone agrees. It would be illogical to expect language to remain static or fixed when everything is in a state of change.

Sure.

But there is a here and now. That language has some fixity can be an advantage when everything is in a state of change. In the carnival world of audiophilery we find sound can be really difficult to describe. Sure some say keep it simple, just listen, no talk, no need for fancy words. Then someone asks "What's Best", or "what do you like about the Altc 817?" or "what's this natural sound people are talking about? - I thought all sound was natural." Having words in common can really help when shared understanding is a goal. Some suggest we've been spoonfed an audiophile vocabulary that leads us in the wrong direction. Sorting that out might be painful and confusing, but perhaps worth a try.