Videos of Acoustically-Coupled Audio Recordings

[Leif S]

I was pretty skeptical of videos for high end at first being that sometimes the sound can be quite bad.
I shot this video on my cell phone at Axpona 2017. It's not great quality and I can't even hold the cell phone still lol. I have found for me as a manufacturer that the videos have increased sales quite a bit. When I talk to the people who have seen some of the videos, their comment is usually that the video and audio was enough to bring them to the next step for a demo and yes, they were comparing it to other videos of other systems. I myself would never compare one system vs another based off of video specifically for all the reasons previously mentioned. We have even sold a few pairs strictly from this video in particularly. I try not to read the comments anymore being some are great and others are harsh. But I think the videos have been beneficial as far as I can tell. Truth is we don't know if damage is done from a video and they do only give a little taste, and sometimes that taste can be pretty inaccurate. But even with that I have come to enjoy some of them.

 

[Al M.]

People do use the videos to judge absolute sound quality, and not with any of the caveats mentioned by some on this thread. My old dealer once told me that a potential customer reported to him that he already had compared all the speakers that had interested him. The dealer asked him how, and the guy replied "I was listening on YouTube the whole day yesterday". Seriously.

Draw your own conclusions. I know my dealer did...

 

[Folsom]

I'd rather get an extra dozen people interested and lose one sale to a silly person, if I end up selling to several. And that's as opposed to presumably maybe 1 or 2 that otherwise would show up and maybe no sale.

 

[Leif S]

People do use the videos to judge absolute sound quality, and not with any of the caveats mentioned by some on this thread. My old dealer once told me that a potential customer reported to him that he already had compared all the speakers that had interested him. The dealer asked him how, and the guy replied "I was listening on YouTube the whole day yesterday". Seriously.

Draw your own conclusions. I know my dealer did...

Lol

 

[cjfrbw]

I was pretty skeptical of videos for high end at first being that sometimes the sound can be quite bad.
I shot this video on my cell phone at Axpona 2017. It's not great quality and I can't even hold the cell phone still lol.

This one sounds really good on my headphones/tube head amp through mac mini.

 

[Leif S]

This one sounds really good on my headphones/tube head amp through mac mini.

You can't go wrong with tubes

 

[Tango]

The things that videos do well is tonal balance, amount of stress, clarity , and openness....

Agree to the above.

When you buy a grand it is difficult to find a place where carries Steinways, Bosendorfer and Yamaha at one place. Check out the differences in tone of each piano in this video. I am sure our golden high end ears can detect the difference. Keyboard warriors can keep going to argue the quality of device and recording technique to be in equation and on and on. Can a video be useful? That is up to the person who use it. Use your wisdom.

 

[Al M.]

Agree to the above.

When you buy a grand it is difficult to find a place where carries Steinways, Bosendorfer and Yamaha at one place. Check out the differences in tone of each piano in this video. I am sure our golden high end ears can detect the difference. Keyboard warriors can keep going to argue the quality of device and recording technique to be in equation and on and on. Can a video be useful? That is up to the person who use it. Use your wisdom.

Again, nobody has argued against the usefulness of direct A/B comparisons under *identical* recording conditions over video, which are about *relative* differences. Ron in his OP also has stressed the difference of these with assessment of *absolute* sound quality over video. It is the latter that is contentious.

 

[RogerD]

So this whole argument is that cell phone videos do not fit ethos of WBF? Think about it.

 

[NorthStar]

I would love to get Bruce's opinion on this close-up mic piano recordings.
Be advised on lowering the volume (distortion).

* I think it's good for a prime high-end audio dealer to master the art of music video recordings (You Tube). Tango would be prime.

 

[cjfrbw]

Agree to the above.

When you buy a grand it is difficult to find a place where carries Steinways, Bosendorfer and Yamaha at one place. Check out the differences in tone of each piano in this video. I am sure our golden high end ears can detect the difference. Keyboard warriors can keep going to argue the quality of device and recording technique to be in equation and on and on. Can a video be useful? That is up to the person who use it. Use your wisdom.

It seems that the overtones are richer from Bosendorfer greatest to Yamaha least. The Yamaha is the coolest, most defined, and most collected. The Bosendorfer has a subwoofer and seems to elicit a bass tone from everything. The Steinway seems tuned to romantic, variant overtones. He seemed to change his tempo a bit from piano to piano with the Bosendorfer a bit slower to accommodate the overtones and fastest on the Yamaha because of the more constrained definition.
They all sound great, and I suppose the choice, as in audiophilia, may depend on what your tastes run to and what kind of music you plan to play.

 

[Tango]

* I think it's good for a prime high-end audio dealer to master the art of music video recordings (You Tube). Tango would be prime.

Thank you for your kind words Bob. But please do not praise me for what I am not. My video clips are just done by a simple stupid no nothing of recording technique homemade me. A simple unworthy Samsung S9 that somehow can capture an overall sound of my system with room in play at some approximation. We write a lot about sound and use even more imagination forming sound in our head using those words. Sound is hearing not reading yet high end relies so heavily on words of reviewers who have their own preferences in sound, music types, gears, etc and never sit with us to learn eachother about how we hear things. Are our hearing consistent to one another. Do we share the same vocabs in sound? Video is a good tool to compliment to writings. You hear by your own ears.

Most important thing for me Bob. I have made quite a few good friends in this forum. We share a very passionate hobby. But we live world apart. I would like to share my happiness I got from what I am doing in this hobby to my friends. What is happiness when there is no sharing. So I expose my system through videos. Only at good will. No intention to showoff or anything. If I want to show off I will show my fleet of exotic cars instead. I also want to share my adventures in different music through vinyls and do some good to people in this forum showing the ones that sounds good no money wasting. Videos or sound clips can compliment what we write to get more understanding of our writing. And it is fun to both hear and see. A simple homemade video also has honesty attached to it.

Kind regards,
Tang

 

[NorthStar]

Ok, no more praise. I understand perfectly what you've just said.

 

[Folsom]

Tang, what video setting do you record on? If not 60fps, maybe try it and see if it’s different like mine was?

 

[Tango]

Tang, what video setting do you record on? If not 60fps, maybe try it and see if it’s different like mine was?

I am sorry. How do you do that?

Let me find the way. And tell you.

 

[bonzo75]

People do use the videos to judge absolute sound quality, and not with any of the caveats mentioned by some on this thread. My old dealer once told me that a potential customer reported to him that he already had compared all the speakers that had interested him. The dealer asked him how, and the guy replied "I was listening on YouTube the whole day yesterday". Seriously.

Draw your own conclusions. I know my dealer did...

That customer is the type who might even report saying he googled and decided what to buy or whom to vote for. So let's be against all information

 

[Folsom]

I am sorry. How do you do that?

Let me find the way. And tell you.

There should be a gear symbol when you first open the camera, and then it's under "Video size". I would select the lowest 60FPS resolution, so it's easy to upload to YouTube.

 

[RogerD]

The Bosendorfer for jazz because of the bass line. The Steinway for classical.

 

[microstrip]

Agree to the above.

When you buy a grand it is difficult to find a place where carries Steinways, Bosendorfer and Yamaha at one place. Check out the differences in tone of each piano in this video. I am sure our golden high end ears can detect the difference. Keyboard warriors can keep going to argue the quality of device and recording technique to be in equation and on and on. Can a video be useful? That is up to the person who use it. Use your wisdom.
(...)

Dear Tang,

If we use our wisdom we find that there is no connection between what this video pretends to achieve and our main subject of discussion - specific aspects of sound reproduction. And that detecting differences in piano tone has nothing to do with high-end ears.

The process of stereo sound reproduction is very different from real music. It is known and discussed since the days of the live versus Edison phonograph comparisons .

And yes, the argument that "it is up to the person who use it" applies to any subjective evaluation. I often refer to it concerning reviews. But we love to debate the boundaries of such evaluations in WBF.

 

[Al M.]

I think you guys are underestimating the ADC in the phone. They’re probably much better than you think. The microphone is however small and limited. From the factory they probably have a rough calibration. And obviously the Samsungs are superior (especially at 60fps).

It’s not hard to hear if something sounds very smooth and easy to hear, that is rich in second harmonic distortion (all of the videos on Ked’s site for budget stuff). The distortion itself is masking, and limits resolution, so it’s not as hard to record the jist. On Ked’s list, you can tell that the stereos don’t fall flat or accentuate in distracting ways. Therefor it isn’t hard to tell they have a somewhat natural sound because they are not ear grating, they have some tone, and they aren’t noticeably inconsistent in delivery - and that they are budget because otherwise would have more resolution and still be pleasant. The purpose was served. But yes, they lack extension, which can be picked up on, too.

But there’s plenty you can’t get. Volume scaling is very limited, weight, impact, extension of bass, naturalness of bass, zero soundstage, zero 3D, etc etc. You can get the impression of a lot of stereos’ jist - but far from all.

Sorry, but I also disagree on the limited list in your second paragraph of things that you describe can be judged somewhat properly.

I have heard videos of well-respected systems that had an atrocious tonality, and on the other hand, I think the limited capacities of the microphones internal to phone devices can mask tonal problems that would be obvious if you were to hear problematic systems directly. Also, the MP3/AAC digital compression in YouTube videos smoothes out and dilutes transient performance. Thus, if something sounds smooth and non-grating over video this does not necessarily mean that there will be no edges when heard directly.

So yes, from any perspective YouTube or other low sound quality videos are entirely and utterly useless when it comes to judging a system's *absolute* performance. We should stop pretending otherwise, and get beyond this silly nonsense.

Again, this is different from the (very limited) usefulness of direct A/B comparisons over video of the *relative* performance of one component vs another under *identical* recording conditions.