Thread: A Search for Truth and Tonality, Part 2 ...

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...-wrong-with-me&p=108053&viewfull=1#post108053 ...

As much as I love the pursuit of the high-end, and buy and sell to try and accomplish my audio goals, I sometimes get reminded why I am in this game. What brought this on? I have been actively involved in several threads regarding some SOTA gear, resolution theories, and some serious audio engineering minds (not me). Then, I get in my 1995 BMW 540i with custom stereo, and I have have blast driving and listening to tunes. It brings me back to my roots. It is all about enjoying your audio system, not if it is the best on the planet (even though mine is close

Yes, it's all about enjoying, which means that a system does more things right than wrong. Highly ambitious audio can end up emphasising everything that is "defective", and your ears are the key measurement tools for level of "rightness". All the constant back and forth about perfect frequency responses, the ideal off-axis response, and getting "correct" bass means nothing if it doesn't sound "right". A simple kitchen radio can sound right, and therefore is doing its job properly. I, and I'm sure nearly all audio people know when the sound is right, that's why we enjoy live music. But so often the most expensive systems sound "wrong", and therefore are not doing their job properly ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...l-a-Preference&p=108201&viewfull=1#post108201 ...

That can't be. When you go and shop for a speaker, there is no live band you can AB with. There is nothing you are hearing that has anything to do with the live performance. You are hundreds of edit decisions away. Yes, you can be a good judge of what is good sound potentially but let's not confuse that with knowing what the original performance sounded like to the talent or the audience. We are very far from that.

Depends where you do it. I just auditioned a whole of studio monitors in music stores, that is, a place that sells musical instruments rather than recordings, and all you had to do was stick your head around a door to hear someone mucking around with the real thing. And, of course what the active speakers lacked most obviously was the sparkle, the presence of live acoustic sound ...

Soundminded in another post commented on the bell like ringing of some brands of pianos being greater than others -- these are the intense harmonics that distinguish live sound, and which are frequently quashed or deadened in reproduced sound, the normal giveaway when playing a piano recording, say, that a system is not working correctly.

Frank

 

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...-the-bandwagon&p=108732&viewfull=1#post108732 ...

When is enough, enough, or how to get off the bandwagon??
Today, one of my a'phile friends commented to me that this is his 40th year in the hobby and he still wasn't really that happy with the sound he was getting. OTOH, he gave me a very nice compliment and said that he felt I was pretty close to being there. By there, he apparently meant at a place where the music happened and I shouldn't be expecting too much more. I don't think that is necessarily the case with my system and like all of us, I still want to strive for a more "Absolute Sound". However, this did get me thinking, where do we draw the line on a home system and "get off the bandwagon" or do we/can we?

Pretty simple for me: when I can put on my "worst" recording and it surprises and delights me, when I feel I am not listening to a reasonable simulation of an event, but rather that there is an open door between me and the music making. This has nothing to do with loudness, or bass quality, or technical excellence in some area, but a sense of unforced naturalness about the sound, I am at my ease -- the sound is just "right". A simple test for me, is that if I have to ask myself, is it right, then it's not!! This latter one never fails: if I am not totally, inwardly sure that the sound is in good order then there always is a problem -- easily confirmed by that dastardly ear to the tweeter test!

This is a pretty good line, but one can go further as a personal challenge: to be able to go higher volumes without losing any quality; and to increase the integrity and compelling qualities of the soundstage. At times all the planets are in alignment, the system for a period goes through a turbo boost phase, and you realise that even greater heights of quality are possible. Of course, the old diminishing returns rule can easily trip you up here, but it's good to know that there are almost no limits ...

Frank

 

[terryj]

Did I miss an announcement??

Are you quarantined frank? Forbidden to post in any other thread?

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Did I miss an announcement??

Are you quarantined frank? Forbidden to post in any other thread?

My God this explains so much! I wondered why threads about music were not running off into esoteric noise reduction schemes to make my son's 14-year-old cellist friend sound like Yo Yo Ma. And of course I found it a bit curious that Frank was over here talking to himself, but only a bit....

Tim

 

[NorthStar]

I feel for Frank; that must be terrible! ...Communication breakdown. :sad:

Frank, are you OK? Can you survive?
Anything that I can do to make life better for you and your loved ones?

Your friend,
Bob

 

[fas42]

You've got it, folks! My scary face may have been frightening off too many good people, so I get to play in my own sandpit, far enough away from the madding crowd ... :b:b

Bob, thanks very much for your kind words, and it's fine, in one sense even good because I can put more emotional energy into the projects. Today I'll be getting my hands on a new pair of the studio monitors that put up the best show when I did the rounds -- check the other thread under DIY for more details on that. First up will be to hook it up in an ordinary way, run it in for a week or so to shake out all the loose screws, etc, and generally see how it behaves. And compare it to the HT setup, of course.

Once I'm reasonably certain it's not a dud, then I'll put them apart and start mangling. I've seen some circuit diagrams of these monitors, and they use just about the lowest order of electronics to get the job done, so shouldn't be too hard to lift up the performance by quite a few notches ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...-the-bandwagon&p=108852&viewfull=1#post108852 ...

I'm not saying the audiophile hobby and the music hobby are mutually exclusive. Clearly they're not. But they are separate hobbies. We're in the audiophile hobby because we love the gear. We're in the music hobby because we love the music. Sometimes the audiophile hobby aids and enables the music hobby. Sadly, sometimes it just gets in the way. Whenever anyone says they find a great piece of music unlistenable, my heart aches for them a bit. I don't care if it is <128kbps. They've lost the plot.

They may be separate hobbies for some, but they don't need to be. Rather than use the tired automotive analogy, I'll use something a bit closer to Tim's heart. Or other parts of his anatomy. If you've picked up a hot chick, or at least she is in your mind, because of her scent or the smokey tone of her voice, the last thing you probably need at that point is for someone to shine a bright searchlight into her face. Because every tiny, tiny defect in her skin or the way she's applied her makeup will be magnified, grossly so, completely spoiling the "illusion", and your "interest" ...

But that's what a lot of hifi does: it illuminates what you have in a very unbalanced way, and, yes, it becomes unlistenable. Balance is everything, and there is a "good" way of achieving balance in audio replay, which emphasises all the positive attributes, without highlighting the negative ones.

Frank

 

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...-Music-Quality&p=108779&viewfull=1#post108779 ...

Thanks Bruce, that makes sense. I guess when I hear a 24/48 DVD-Audio disc, I immediately feel cheated a bit as the sound quality is not on par with my 24/96 or 24/88 discs. I guess the comparison is difficult in that it is tough to find 16/88 or 16/96 source material to compare to 16/44 to sort of isolate the sampling rate impact. Perhaps we both agree that 24/96, all else being equal, is a lot better than 16/44.

I would lay good money down that the differences are due to how well the replay DAC reproduces the particular sample and bit rate: take any music file, 16/44.1 to 24/384 say, and run decent resampling algorithms to convert to any other format. Each converted version will have a different sound through a particular DAC, not because of what the algorithm did, but because of how well the DAC does its job. Why not the resampling software? Because, if you went hi res -> lo res -> hi res, the audible differences would be minute ...

Frank

 

[terryj]

You've got it, folks! My scary face may have been frightening off too many good people, so I get to play in my own sandpit, far enough away from the madding crowd ... :b:b

Frank

Ahh, ok.

I bit 'sad' in a way, not that surprising in others. I guess we can argue that when self control fails then imposed control has to take over.

Hmm, and to think many moons ago I suggested you have your own subforum, well as you know the prophets are always ahead of their time and laughed at by their inferiors...

 

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?6491-It%E2%80%99s-All-a-Preference&p=109033&viewfull=1#post109033 ...

I'm afraid science is not the ultimate determining factor of good sound quality. It fails miserably in describing subjective listening nuances that are the fundemental elements of enjoyable listening experiences. YMMV !

My mileage does vary, which is saying there is nothing mystical or magic about audio. Science can determine precisely why audio works well or not, but the researchers gave up long ago taking serious interest in the subject, so now it's largely left up to the enthusiasts, and commercial interests to make headway, which, obviously, is excrutiatingly slow in manifesting. Those "subjective listening nuances" are nothing more than various spectra of audible distortion, but the latter has been banned from decent conversations because it requires one to get off one's bum just a bit to understand what's happening. Far easier, and more satisfying, to pontificate from the pulpit about the tremendous importance of a 100% level frequency response, one of the ultimate audio fantasies ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Confined to the yard for his bad behavior, and unable to play with the other boys, the fisherman's son began casting his father's nets over the fence, snagging the other boy's toys and hauling them back into his prison. But few of them followed. Most just left him to play with himself.

 

[fas42]

The son could see that the games that the others were playing had them quite enthralled, a key part of the game was the tossing of objects that were very shiny and seemingly important from one person to the next, without ever stopping to look more closely at what they had in their hand at any one time. The ones the boy snagged perplexed him: under the glittering jewels and brilliant smoothness of the surface was nothing really special at all, he had seen toys like this before, that sometimes were even better made, and he wondered why the compulsion to join in the ritual of momentarily fondling the item and then to quickly pass it on was so paramount ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...s)-Preferences&p=109163&viewfull=1#post109163 ...

Usually things that jump out at you at first and make you think the device you are listening to is special come to grate on your nerves over the long haul. I think it is more of a good sign when you first listen to a component/speaker and nothing jumps out and says "hey, listen to me." Somthing that almost sounds boring at first blush may in fact be a truth-teller and something you can live with over the long haul.

Right on the money. I'm sure my HT at a low volume setting would strike many people as "boring", because the sound is just there, it blends in to the natural sounds in the environment at lower levels. One hifi nutter who visited many years ago, to a completely different setup, took a couple of hours to "get it" -- because the sound in one sense is very "ordinary", natural is the word I'd use.

So, what's the point? Well, then you wind up the volume to the correct setting for those recorded sounds, and it makes sense: it now sounds like how those instruments would come across if live, and you were at the appropriate distance from them. If you drop the volume back to the lower levels you started with, you then realise the sound quality, tonality does not change; it's just now like being at a very significant distance from the music making: even live sound is "boring" when you're far enough away from it ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

Bob, I'm very, very impressed by your photographer's eye: I had a fad period many years ago, and enjoyed exploring the type of compositions you obviously delight in ...

Cheers,
Frank

 

[NorthStar]

Bob, I'm very, very impressed by your photographer's eye: I had a fad period many years ago, and enjoyed exploring the type of compositions you obviously delight in ...

Cheers,
Frank

Frank, it must be universal vibes as I was thinking about you for the last hour or so. Honest.
And I did not know what to say, but simply be with you wherever and from whatever force drives you. I meditate a lot, and I think about people who live on Earth, now, and from the past.

My humanitarian side is very strong, and I share with you what God gave us.

* I'm not sure exactly to which picture(s) you are referring, but for the most majority of them,
here and there, my eye wasn't behind the viewfinder, or the LCD screen.

I took a lot of pictures in my lifetime, but 99% of them are gone!
...Because I couldn't pay any longer the storage where I kept them for many years.
...Pictures, musical instruments, audio electronics (vintage stuff & all), my own paintings,
own drawings, own poetry books, philosophical writings, souvenirs from my travels,
music (tapes, LPs, etc.), Movies, and all that Soul Jazz .... Pretty much my Life.

I had to restart living afresh few times in my life, and now I'm doing it on a daily basis. Honest.
I don't wanna go deep here, but let's just say that what you read from me is only a fraction of a fraction of my complete essence.

Me too I am in search of the Truth & Justice, and I know where they are; inside each one of us.
If Audio and Cinematography weren't part of my life, you and I, and all the other people here in this forum and from other forums, we wouldn't have these conversations, exchanges of audio technologies and musical delicacies of life. ...Plus all the other creative celebrations from the artist's viewpoints and their listening/viewing audiences.

We do what we are, and try do do the best at it.
"By reaching our own soul and taking conscience is to lend a hand to other's land." - Me (Bob)

Frank, most important is to live in harmony with ourselves and the world surrounding us.
They can take whatever from us, but they cannot take our Blues.
And no matter what Frank, I'm with you. Always.

Bob

 

[fas42]

I'm not sure exactly to which picture(s) you are referring, but for the most majority of them,
here and there, my eye wasn't behind the viewfinder, or the LCD screen.

I took a lot of pictures in my lifetime, but 99% of them are gone!

Thanks very much for your thoughts, Bob; I was referring to the post you started,
Post a picture (no words, no text):. I'm very sorry you lost all all those memories, but as you would say, the universe is infinitely accommodating of all our woes, and gives us other treasures to cherish ...

I used to mediate regularly, years ago, but my brain space is relatively fragile these days, and it is a very occasional these days.

Aahh, the force that drives me ... well, that's to make a difference, and I feel to a certain degree I've succeeded. I've managed to make a few people just a little uncomfortable, just a tiny bit less assured in their set of beliefs about how it all goes together. And hopefully inspire a few others to be a little bit more daring in their efforts to push their own take on how things work, out a little bit further still.

I have some new toys to play with, looks good so far, these studio monitors are like tenpin bowling balls, nuggety little wonders with an impossibly small space for all the electronics, if you threw one against a wall you would punch a hole through the wallboard ...

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts, Bob, and best,
Frank

 

[fas42]

From http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?199-Your-Wine-Preference&p=109058&viewfull=1#post109058 ...

I couldn’t agree more. i also dislike most french Bordeauxs priced under $50/btl (tannin heavy, no fruit or polish). methinks there are many French producers laughing their asses off about the stupide Americans that buy it. Im convinced the French keep the best Bordeaux for themselves unless you can splurge at $150/btl. Even then there are many California wines id drink first.

Yes, same thing in Australia: French wine you can buy here is total rubbish, stinking with wine making faults. Even over there in France itself only the $80 a bottle is worthwhile, the $40 bottle is very ordinary plonk -- this was our experience in Chablis, at the cellar doors ...

Shiraz is the one for me, we used to make enormous wines with this grape, and relatively cheaply too. A lot of stuff now is made to drink practically as soon as it's bottled; but we still can do a hearty shiraz, put lots of hairs on your chest ...

Frank

 

[NorthStar]

I like it!

Cool, a "variety" (diversified) thread!

 

[fas42]

Cool, a "variety" (diversified) thread!

Yep, I'm too lazy/much of an old coot to kick off a separate thread just for some light relief, so it can hang out here!!

On a more serious note, I get a newsletter from an electronics update site, and it pointed me to a blog entry which was totally appropriate in the intro as to the attitude and process to have when sorting out audio sound quality issues, though it was actually going on to talk about a peculiar circuit "symptom" -- to wit:

I've always felt that system-level debugging is among the most difficult of all engineering challenges. It requires experience and mentoring (neither of which you'll get in school); the ability to think both outside and inside the box; the stamina to examine and re-examine all your assumptions, data, and tests; and use of multiple disciplines as you work through a problem that may involve one or more of circuitry, software, and mechanical functions.

Frank