Pro Gear vs Audiophile Gear

[RUR]

Ken, if you arrange it, I'll come down and I'll drag Steve with me.

Ron, if you're serious, I'll work on it.

 

[terryj]

How do I know? By listening my friend.

Oh dear.

We're not gonna get anywhere are we.

For decades to live music and hi fi equipment. As for what measurements effect imaging. I'm still waiting for Ethan, you ,or anybody to give my a specific example of how to look look at a specific measurement and predict how that speaker will image. I will not be embarrassed at all. I'll put it to immediate use.

So your rejection of measurements as any sort of indicator of imaging (which seems to be your primary focus) comes from your own personal experience in trying to equate the two.

Is that fair?

If so, then it becomes pertinent to ask, how proficient are you with measurements?? Have you carried out them yourself?

Which measurements have you been using to determine which is applicable (or not) to imaging? Published ones as in the stereophile article you linked to?

How well do you actually understand what you think you understand? (no, I'm not an expert, but we do need to know how well you understand the area seeing as how you reject it based on that knowledge)

Do you (honestly) think the very basic simplistic measurements supplied by the likes of stereophile are sufficient? As I already noted (and you have not responded to) there is a measurement of ONE speaker.

You did note in the article itself that they had a lot of problems getting the imaging right yes? that they had trouble balancing the differing signals to the listener yes?

In other words, for optimum imaging they needed to get the same FR from each speaker as best they could??

Ethan gives four measurements as being the foundation of all required to know about gear.

Stereophile kinda give one of them, and extremely basic ones at that. It would be little wonder if they turned out to be insufficient, but hardly grounds (yet) to say we don't have enough or the right ones, that there is some 'magic' breakthrough required.

BTW if you went to Harmon you would be listening in mono to a test tone or 15 second music clip.

yeah, have wondered about that myself (the mono bit, dunno if fifteen seconds is mandatory). Not only would the listening experience be an eye opener, to chat with sean and gain some insights would be great...as well as all that gossip that dare not be said on a forum or blog haha! (joke, I am sure sean is far more honorable than that...but what if we ask for no names?)

 

[terryj]

Ron, if you're serious, I'll work on it.

arrgghh, now I'm jealous! should kept my mouth shut haha.

wow, seriously folks, what a great thing to organise.

I am SO jealous.

full write ups mandatory. what expectations were had before going in, what did you learn that was new, what did you already 'know' that was confirmed, how useful or enlightening was it.

 

[Gregadd]

Let me try again. Ethan says anything can be measured. I have no problem with that. I simply say do it. If the Steroephile measurements are insufficient tell me what you need. I'm not talking about theory I say tell me how to do it. Otherwise it is of no use to me the end user. It's just theory. I await anyones instructions on how to take any measurement(s) and predict a speakers imaging. Again not theory. Actual steps to be taken by the general audiophile public based on measurements. I readily concede I don't know how. That is a far cry from it can't be done.

The clips are only 15-20 seconds long. I suppose you could listen more than once. Not likely though these are large groups and they are trying to keep cost down. I don't understand why people pooh-pooh listening. When we get home that's all we do.

 

[amirm]

Maybe. Probably.

You have pretty strong views based on words above. You make a living from audio reproduction and recording and you say that you "may" be able to deduce what you need from measurements. If so, where does that leave our forum members???

I'll put it back on you: What aspect of how a speaker sounds do you believe cannot be represented using measurement data?

The answer is in reverse. Measurements can show defects. Once they show defects, no listening test will tell you anything better. If I measure a woofer, and it tells me that it doesn't reproduce anything above 1 Khz, then that is it. I will not entertain anyone saying we should listen to see if that is indeed the case.

Where we fall in the ditch is that we try to use the above in reverse. When measurements don't jump out at you and tell you something clear you can't run with them just because you have the numbers. You can use the data directionally but not absolutely. Speakers in this sense are a nightmare. Their measurements are so varied that it is very difficult to compare just two graphs and decide a speaker sounds better than another.

And keep this in mind: the ear can analyze the fidelity of a speaker far far better than the eye and the brain staring at a dozen charts . In 1 second I can tell if a speaker is too bright. It takes you longer than that for your eyes to focus on the charts .

 

[JackD201]

Ethan,

Maybe we should begin where we do agree. First that signal integrity within the signal path should be treated with the utmost care and respect. Care for the signal itself and respect for the artistic intent. Second that once at the output transducer various other forms of distortion manifest themselves in oft unpredictable ways. Some of these ways have to do with the transducer systems themselves, the manner in which they are used and others because of the environment wherein they are used.

Here is where the professional community and the consumer community diverge. Whilst the professional community adheres to strict protocols for example the proper calibration of monitoring systems for consistent work flow with the objective of delivering the product desired by the client, the client's market is no longer bound by such strict protocols. In laymans terms, for the consumer it is all about enjoying the product. The consumer is free to purchase, configure and even outrightly manipulate the result according to their own preference.

I don't know if you've ever had to work in a production team or if you are a one man army. In our case, with 60 editing suites and 25 audio post production stations running Protools HD, every station must be as close to identical sonically for the simple reason that we have our engineers running around hotswapping drives in any station that becomes available unlike yourself with your bespoke project studio in your site meant for your use alone.

While our designers used a full set of metrics to achieve this consistency, we are under no illusion that any of them are distortion free much less "true" once they are in use by the end user. We recognize the fact that our shows will sound different from home to home when they are played back broadcasted through their TVs or played back when the shows are in DVD form. What we can assure is that dialogue will be easy to understand and that the score will support what is seen on screen. If you will, the set of criteria used by the designers of our workstation chose systems that while compromised have the FR balance for the engineers to first properly hear what they are doing and second have output that will translate well at the common lowest denominator end user's devices careful of the fact and knowing that when broadcast their output will be subject to high levels of compression as they are subjected to the frequency modulation process. (We have not yet been mandated to go broadcast digitally)

So when I see the words true or truth with regards to audio fidelity, the sheer absolutism is something I regard as either cock-eyed optimism at best or at worst the very self delusion you attribute to audiophiles and yes, homeopathic adherents. Regardless of the methods you employed in choosing your equipment or in preparing your listening environment, the bottom line is that in the end you chose a system that works best for you.

Lets take monitors as an example, like your joke about your JBLs. Using standard measuring techniques you very well could see the loudspeakers frequency characteristics as well as many others using various tests. Going to the most common test of all, how many people however listen to one channel at a time at a distance of one meter and a reverence voltage? Measurement from the listening location becomes useless because as we agree, that measurement is only useful for that particular environment. No amount of your products will make my room sound identical to yours. They could make my room better than what it was bare but never the same as yours.

So here you are at WBF and at Audiocircle, both audiophile forums with mindsets geared for enjoyment but insisting that there is a disproportionally large perception of the community that have strayed from your idea of audio fidelity and are hiding behind biases and preferences to justify the same. The irony is that as I have said above, your own system is one you built based on preferences as well. Your system can be no more true than anybody else'. You might be closer to the illusion of reality than most, but there is no such thing as a perfect system, only one that is perfect for you. Perfect that is until you experience something else that gets even fractionally more real

The estate of Alton Everest should thank you for endorsing Book/CDs as his guide to developing critical listening skills remains to this day the seminal work on the subject. Surely you can agree that while it would be nice to have mankind be able to assign a number to a frequency, it is really of little general practical value or interest. Daily sounds are not pink noise, white noise or perfect tones anyway. All loudspeaker measurement techniques I know of give nothing but a snapshot of what a loudspeaker does at playing reference signals but not music. All they shows are the general tendencies. This is why I say that to date the measuring equipment and their output can also give us nothing but those snapshots as well.

Even Sean has said that final testing on their products are done by a panel trained listeners. His works billion dollar company with perhaps the largest R&D for audio. I think this shows that the human ear and brain can do things a mic and a program can not.

Like it or not, prose may not adequately or accurately convey sound but unlike pure figures it can and does provide anecdotal information that can be just as important. To shut's one's mind and eyes to this is just as foolish as buying those pebbles and that alarm clock.

 

[RUR]

Fantastic post, Jack, especially the comments on the fallacy of absolutism, as you call it. I've posted this, before, and it bears repeating: there is no standard when it comes to music mastering. To quote Sean Olive, commenting on Toole's Circle of Confusion, "Since the playback chain and room through which recordings are monitored are not standardized, the quality of recordings remains highly variable."

Sean discusses this in his blog here and points out that, even in studios using the same model monitor, measurements at the listening position where the recordings are mixed vary widely due to room response. He then comments on the difficulties this creates for speaker manufacturers, observing that "The problem is that distortions in the recording cannot be easily separated from those produced by the loudspeaker."

The result, of course, is that we consumers, even using ideal gear, can have no guarantee that we're hearing exactly what the mastering engineer intended us to hear. Sean concludes "As Toole points out ...., the key in breaking the circle of confusion lies in the hands of the professional audio industry where the art is created. A meaningful standard that defined the quality and calibration of the loudspeaker and room would improve the quality and consistency of recordings. The same standard could then be applied to the playback of the recording in the consumer’s home or automobile".

Until that time, compromise, based upon user preference, is the order of the day, and not some mythical absolute.

 

[Ethan Winer]

I think I said everything probably coukd be measured, it just has not been done yet.

Okay, then what hasn't been measured yet? Again I remind you that I'm addressing only audio parameters that affect fidelity, not psychoacoustics or human perception.

Could you please take a look at these graphs of the Aerial 20vt If you could point out if there is anything there that would tell me about the speakers imaging characteristics.

As I've said before, off-axis response and possibly distortion are important specs for imaging, and I saw neither in that report. To my way of thinking, good imaging is more a matter of avoiding comb filter-causing early reflections than any property of the speakers themselves. I've read that poor off-axis response is one cause of poor imaging, but I've never had a way to test that directly myself. All of the speakers I've ever played with had good imaging when heard in a reflection-free environment.

how accurately the pair match.

Yes, that too.

--Ethan

 

[Ethan Winer]

You have pretty strong views based on words above. You make a living from audio reproduction and recording and you say that you "may" be able to deduce what you need from measurements. If so, where does that leave our forum members???

Hopefully it leaves them questioning the status quo.

If I measure a woofer, and it tells me that it doesn't reproduce anything above 1 Khz, then that is it. I will not entertain anyone saying we should listen to see if that is indeed the case.

Exactly.

Speakers in this sense are a nightmare. Their measurements are so varied that it is very difficult to compare just two graphs and decide a speaker sounds better than another ... In 1 second I can tell if a speaker is too bright. It takes you longer than that for your eyes to focus on the charts .

I agree there too. Speakers vary in so many ways that it's very difficult to measure everything needed. But that's not the same as saying that measurements cannot tell the whole story. They can indeed. I'll also gently challenge your assertion that you can tell if a speaker is too bright more quickly by listening. If it takes one second to focus on an on-axis response graph and one more to read the size of the vertical dB divisions, it takes five minutes to play a variety of music in different musical keys and containing different amounts of HF energy. For example, if you came to my house and I played a piece of music you had never heard before, there's no direct way for you to assess my speakers because you don't know how the recording itself sounds.

--Ethan

 

[Gregadd]

Ok. you can't do it. Please feel free to select any set of measurements for any room and speaker of your choosing and show me how to calculate imaging. Make up some hypothetical measurements if you have to. Otherwise this is fruitless.

 

[Ethan Winer]

Maybe we should begin where we do agree. First that signal integrity within the signal path should be treated with the utmost care and respect.

I agree with pretty much everything you said in that long post. I don't expect anyone to make their room sound like mine, and some probably wouldn't even want their room to sound like mine. But measuring can show the problems in their speaker/room combination, and can also show the improvement after buying better speakers or adding bass traps or whatever.

The only other thing I'll point out is that much of my effort in dispelling myths is getting people to understand that swapping AC outlet cover plates and demagnetizing LP records, ad nauseum, does not change the sound even a little. They only think it does. This is different from my parallel efforts to define how audio fidelity is assessed as we're discussing here.

--Ethan

 

[Ethan Winer]

Ok. you can't do it. Please feel free to select any set of measurements for any room and speaker of your choosing and show me how to calculate imaging. Make up some hypothetical measurements if you have to. Otherwise this is fruitless.

It's only fruitless because you refuse to comprehend what I'm saying. Here it is again as clearly as I can possibly explain it:

Imaging is more about room reflections than the speakers. Any competent speaker can have good imaging if the room is treated to avoid early reflections.

--Ethan

 

[RUR]

I agree there too. Speakers vary in so many ways that it's very difficult to measure everything needed. But that's not the same as saying that measurements cannot tell the whole story. They can indeed.

But Ethan, are we speaking in purely theoretical terms? As a practical matter, there are several obstacles:

1) The scope of measurements necessary to adequately determine how a speaker will sound
2) The availabiltiy (and reliability) of those measurements
3) The ability of consumers to interpret those measurements in any useful, conclusive way

Even skilled speaker designers have stated that correlating the many measurements necessary to assess speaker performance is not only challenging, but requires listening sessions to confirm (or not) that the speakers are performing as the measurements, and meaurement interpretation, would indicate.

Seems to me that the best we mere mortals can do is to use a few basic measurements to filter potential speaker selections and then to listen (and perhaps measure in-room) in order to make an ideal selection.

Ken

 

[Gregadd]

As an an acoustician iI would think you would have countless sets of room and speaker measurements you could point to and say this causes good imaging. That's measuremnt. Not a general statement. We subjectivist can do that. You have not done that so I assume you can't. You have the last word if you desire.

 

[Ethan Winer]

But Ethan, are we speaking in purely theoretical terms? As a practical matter, there are several obstacles:

No, I'm speaking about practical measuring and interpretation as well as theoretical. If the average consumer doesn't know how to read a polar plot of frequency response versus angle, or distortion versus SPL and frequency, that's not a fault of measuring proponents. Again, I agree that the amount of data needed to fully assess a loudspeaker's performance is more complicated than that for a preamp or power amp. But it can all be measured, known, and understood.

Even skilled speaker designers have stated that correlating the many measurements necessary to assess speaker performance is not only challenging, but requires listening sessions to confirm (or not) that the speakers are performing as the measurements, and meaurement interpretation, would indicate.

I'm not opposed to listening, and Amir's point about hearing more quickly than reading is valid. But hearing is unreliable, versus test gear that is 100 percent repeatable. Perception is fleeting, and what sounds good today may sound lousy tomorrow, even when nothing about the sound has changed. And a speaker that sounds good on one recording may sound lousy on another. So I'm not opposed to measuring and listening. My point has been only that measuring can tell us everything, and there's nothing that can be assessed only by listening. I don't have access to the type of lab that Sean Olive gets to play in, with microphone arrays surrounding a loudspeaker in an anechoic chamber. I wish I did though!

--Ethan

 

[Ethan Winer]

As an an acoustician iI would think you would have countless sets of room and speaker measurements you could point to and say this causes good imaging.

Oh, you want data. Glad to oblige! Note that the terrible response shown in red changes with small head movements. So it's not only that the response with reflections is lousy, the peak and null frequencies also change if you move your head even half an inch. The response is also different for each speaker for any given head location when early reflections are present.

Hopefully this now makes it clear why untamed early reflections are the main cause of poor imaging, and why taming those reflections gives good imaging.

--Ethan

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Ethan,

thanks for the data.

Note that the terrible response shown in red changes with small head movements. So it's not only that the response with reflections is lousy, the peak and null frequencies also change if you move your head even half an inch. The response is also different for each speaker for any given head location when early reflections are present.

i don't think anyone on this forum would be surprised by how harmful first reflections can be depending on the room size and speaker distance from walls and ceiling. the smaller the room the more significant the first reflections effects are.

my question is how, with so many varibles, can actual measurement data be useful when determining what treatment to perscribe?

do you actually measure first and then perscribe?

or do you observe (either pictures, floorplan, or in person), and perscribe thru experience?

 

[Ron Party]

Great discussion. My compliments to Ethan, Jack and Ken. At this point I'd add the following:

So when I see the words true or truth with regards to audio fidelity, the sheer absolutism is something I regard as either cock-eyed optimism at best or at worst the very self delusion you attribute to audiophiles and yes, homeopathic adherents. Regardless of the methods you employed in choosing your equipment or in preparing your listening environment, the bottom line is that in the end you chose a system that works best for you.

This paragraph addresses both aspects of the issues under discussion. In reverse order, preference is, well, preference and no one is suggesting one should prefer one system over another, at least in the abstract. I know Ethan has repeated this in many of his posts. So, is this then the end of the discussion? If it is, it has many, many consequences, both intended and unintended, for the entire industry, both pro and consumer. Arguably, we might as well shut down this site because all we are discussing here are personal preferences:

“I like blondes.”

“Well I like redheads.”

Great. Is there anything left to discuss?

What IF one is inclined to take this a step further or, sort of peel the layers of this everything is a flavor choice point of view, one to which BTW I do subscribe?

If we go further, then IMO we have to ask if there are personal or professional goals in mind which, the attainment (or the attempt to attain) thereof, help to understand those personal preferences and, sometimes, help people to make more informed and intelligent decisions about their own systems.

It is here that I’m compelled to insert part of Tom Mallin’s excellent post in another thread he started here at WBF regarding the use of EQ:

The problem with this "sounds better to you" approach is that it is not transportable. Not transportable from system to system, listener to listener, track to track, mood to mood, or sometimes not even from moment to moment. Change something--anything--about the system, the set up, the room, or the listener and all your careful choices may go out the window. For some careful listeners who are actually more interested in at least sometimes being able to just listen to music rather than fiddle with adjusting the equalization, this is enough to cause them to give up on trying to apply electronic EQ to their home listening.

Others, seeing this peril, settle on single or very few target equalization curves which they or some trusted expert in their lives have developed and more or less just "set it and forget it." When I use electronic EQ at all, I tend to fall into this category.

Still, the question remains as to how do you know when you are making progress? Some folks think they just know when a music system is more life-like. They claim to have the sound of an orchestra playing in their head. Audio designers Bob Carver (Carver, Sunfire) and Arnie Nudell (Infinity, Genesis) have claimed this about themselves. For such folks, accurate musical reproduction is like some judges talk about pornography: they know it when they see/hear it. My interjection here: what a great line!

Then there are those who just know the way they like their music to sound and they apply equalization of a fairly heavy-handed nature to make sure that most everything they play will have that sonic flavor--say, for example, lots of bass and lots of high frequency "air." There are potentially as many flavors of "sounds good to me" as there are people setting up electronically equalized home audio systems.

Then there are those who want "flat response" from their systems and are willing to live with the unvarnished, naked truth about any program material, even if they have to grit their teeth to bear it. They seek "the truth" about the recording and are willing to listen through any unpleasantness to hear that truth. They also seek maximum differentiation in the sound of various recordings, believing that the more the sound of recordings vary, the more truthful their system must be in reproducing exactly what is on the recording.

Another type of EQ user is the one who wants the sound of music, tonally speaking, to mimic to the greatest possible extent, what one would hear at a live unamplified concert in a good hall. I tend to fall more into this category than any of the others, I think. One way to be able to move your system sound toward such a goal is to attend a lot of such concerts so that you have a decent aural memory of what various instruments really sound like. That's me.

So Ethan’s idea of audio fidelity is, as Jack correctly described, Ethan’s personal preference. But again, if we come to the end of the discussion by concluding that is just might be cock-eyed optimism, then we’re just back to discussing blondes versus brunettes.

I mean, look, we may not be there yet. We may never be there. But for at least some of us, that does not mean we throw the baby out with the bath water.

Some of us are indeed optimists and are hopeful that at all levels, from recording to playback, we can move closer to the ideal. As such, for some of us, our understanding of things audio, our personal preferences, and our purchasing decisions are guided by that ideal and, yes, the scientific method.

One final point I’d interject is the references by both Jack and Ken to Dr. Olive’s research. First, I strongly disagree with Jack’s conclusion about the human ear and brain:

Even Sean has said that final testing on their products are done by a panel trained listeners. His works billion dollar company with perhaps the largest R&D for audio. I think this shows that the human ear and brain can do things a mic and a program can not.

The conclusion does not in any way follow from the premise.

Second, Ken quotes Dr. Olive as follows:

I've posted this, before, and it bears repeating: there is no standard when it comes to music mastering. To quote Sean Olive, commenting on Toole's Circle of Confusion, "Since the playback chain and room through which recordings are monitored are not standardized, the quality of recordings remains highly variable."

Sean concludes "As Toole points out ...., the key in breaking the circle of confusion lies in the hands of the professional audio industry where the art is created. A meaningful standard that defined the quality and calibration of the loudspeaker and room would improve the quality and consistency of recordings. The same standard could then be applied to the playback of the recording in the consumer’s home or automobile".

Until that time, compromise, based upon user preference, is the order of the day, and not some mythical absolute.

If Dr. Olive was participating in this thread, IMO he would agree that everyone is indeed making decisions based on personal preference BUT is there any doubt about which way his personal preferences lie? Is there any doubt about why he and his employer continue to engage in scientific research? Is there any doubt about whether he is ready to succumb to those compromises? These are, of course, rhetorical questions but, if there is any doubt, then for example ask him what he thinks about listening to music with only 2 channels.

 

[Bruce B]

Imaging is more about room reflections than the speakers. Any competent speaker can have good imaging if the room is treated to avoid early reflections.

--Ethan

I've heard good imaging and bad imaging outdoors.... there are no reflections in an outdoor open space.... it was solely up to the speakers.

 

[amirm]

No, I'm speaking about practical measuring and interpretation as well as theoretical. If the average consumer doesn't know how to read a polar plot of frequency response versus angle, or distortion versus SPL and frequency, that's not a fault of measuring proponents.

So how about you write a tutorial on all of the above in your section? That is why we created the department . I am a firm believer that arguments don't resolve things but data and information do.