Why do people care about gear measurements when most rooms suck?

[fas42]

Speaking for myself, if i am listening to 2 sets of reverb (one recorded and one in the room itself), that does not work as well for me, as in a [properly] damped room where i can focus on the recorded reverb a little better. close-miked is different. well set up, i dont care if its damped or lively cathedral-ceiling room.

There's a key difference: when a system is not performing at its best then you can have the 2 acoustics "fighting" each other. In my experience, at a higher quality level of replay the acoustic of the recording dominates, the acoustic of the listening space becomes subservient. There should be no need to focus on the acoustic of the recording in a directed way, it should just be: it stamps its authority on the room, and house, without any effort. Whether you have a square room or whatever, it will make no difference, because the ear/brain tunes into the stimulus with the greatest impact that makes auditory sense to your brain. And this will be the recording space, not your listening space ...

I'll have to say I have been in rooms that have been very heavily treated for audio replay, and they are very strange places to me: they feel "uncomfortable", like I'm in a strange, large and disquieting box; not my cup of tea at all ...

Frank

 

[LL21]

Depends on the room. That will not happen if you are playing a stereo in St. Peter's cathedral by way of an extreme example, even if it is not distorting at all.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Tim, you're right on the money. You know what's coming, the listening room is irrelevant IF the system is working properly: in the same way a live instrument will always sound the real deal no matter where it's played, so will good reproduction. The key point you made is "understand the reflections and enjoy them". That's exactly what should happen with an audio system, and the fact that you don't is, and here it comes, too much irritating distortion mixed in with the sound. As Mike and Roger and others have said, you don't appreciate how much muck "normal" systems eject into the listening space until you hear one that doesn't do it. So, if too much unwanted sound, then an option is to treat the room to minimise the audible impact of such ...

Frank

Nah, we're not agreeing at all, Frank. The difference isn't whether or not low level distortion is low enough, it is the complexity and volume of the music. I've gone and stood in the hall outside the bathroom and played guitar. The surfaces amplify the instrument and feed it back to me in a pleasant way. I've done the same thing in lively rooms, just a couple of players, a couple of instruments. It sounds reverberant, but kind of nice. Get a couple more instruments going on, get the volume up, add a drum kit, and it all starts stumbling all over itself -- even the real instruments. It's even worse with a reproduction system, maybe because instead of a dozen point sources you have all those instruments coming out of two points. I suppose if I had a really simple recording, with no reverb or echo of it's own, and I played that in an undamped room I might get the same positive effect I get from guitar/voice at the kitchen table, but the typical, full band recording? A choral piece? An orchestra? Nah. I don't care how "on song" your system is, take all the furniture and rugs out of a hard room and it'll sound like crap, even at very moderate volume.

Here's where you tell me you're really sorry I've never experienced a system operating at it's peak. Go ahead. It's OK. I know you're fakin' it.

Tim

 

[fas42]

Here's where you tell me you're really sorry I've never experienced a system operating at it's peak. Go ahead. It's OK. I know you're fakin' it.

Tim

Gee, Tim, you hurt me, man, you hurt me deep!! And I thought we had a good thing goin' on! Ah, well ...

Yes, if I created a pretty ridiculous listening space, like concrete floor, walls and ceilings the playback system would sound strange. But so would the real thing! As you just said. So the point is, not that the recording will sound better than the real thing, but to your ear/brain it will send the same message or very close to it as the real thing. Which is not what the vast majority of systems do, especially when you turn up the volume ...

So if I play an orchestral piece at high volume it doesn't feel as if the players are in the room with me, it feels as if the end wall has been knocked down and the concert hall has been attached to that end of the house, the physical sensation matches that precisely, and continues to be that when I move away through the rest of the house. That attached concert hall environment dominates, not what's inside my home ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Gee, Tim, you hurt me, man, you hurt me deep!! And I thought we had a good thing goin' on! Ah, well ...

Yes, if I created a pretty ridiculous listening space, like concrete floor, walls and ceilings the playback system would sound strange. But so would the real thing! As you just said. So the point is, not that the recording will sound better than the real thing, but to your ear/brain it will send the same message or very close to it as the real thing. Which is not what the vast majority of systems do, especially when you turn up the volume ...

So if I play an orchestral piece at high volume it doesn't feel as if the players are in the room with me, it feels as if the end wall has been knocked down and the concert hall has been attached to that end of the house, the physical sensation matches that precisely, and continues to be that when I move away through the rest of the house. That attached concert hall environment dominates, not what's inside my home ...

Frank

Uh huh....

Tim

 

[fas42]

Out of curiosity, Tim, what does your system sound like when you put on something with a very deep acoustic? And what happens when you turn the volume up on that? As a starting point, I tried a Joan Sutherland Greatest Hits CD from the library yesterday, first time I've heard it, and that has a cavernous acoustic, you can hear the reverb from the strings going way in the distance, there is a huge space created behind the speakers.

Does this make sense to you?

Frank

 

[DaveyF]

Quote:"There's a key difference: when a system is not performing at its best then you can have the 2 acoustics "fighting" each other. In my experience, at a higher quality level of replay the acoustic of the recording dominates, the acoustic of the listening space becomes subservient. There should be no need to focus on the acoustic of the recording in a directed way, it should just be: it stamps its authority on the room, and house, without any effort. Whether you have a square room or whatever, it will make no difference, because the ear/brain tunes into the stimulus with the greatest impact that makes auditory sense to your brain. And this will be the recording space, not your listening space ...

I'll have to say I have been in rooms that have been very heavily treated for audio replay, and they are very strange places to me: they feel "uncomfortable", like I'm in a strange, large and disquieting box; not my cup of tea at all ...

Frank"

Frank, the more i read your numerous posts, the more I have to wonder where are you coming from

IF you think that the room is NOT the most important aspect of how sound is reproduced in our homes, then all i can say to you is you have obviously not heard too many audio systems, be they high-end or run of the mill
Not only that, but I question whether you have ever really heard a true high-end system at all
Just out of curiosity, are you listening to headphones as your only home speaker source, because if you are then this would explain a lot, at least to me

 

[fas42]

Frank, the more i read your numerous posts, the more I have to wonder where are you coming from

IF you think that the room is NOT the most important aspect of how sound is reproduced in our homes, then all i can say to you is you have obviously not heard too many audio systems, be they high-end or run of the mill
Not only that, but I question whether you have ever really heard a true high-end system at all
Just out of curiosity, are you listening to headphones as your only home speaker source, because if you are then this would explain a lot, at least to me

I've listened to dozens of systems in people's homes, and at least half a dozen setups costing quite a few hundred thousand. The first impressive setup was Goldmund Reference TT, ARC D250, Infinity RSIIbs over 20 years ago; the last, VPI TT, ARC Reference 600, Wilson 9s. Most CD playback was pretty tepid, some TT at times was very convincing.

I never listen to headphones, too claustophobic, a friend lent me Sennheiser HD650s for a week or so, only had them on for a few minutes, the speakers at the time were much more to my taste, and nothing was lost compared to the headphones.

What I've personally experienced is that if you tweak a system in the correct ways, the auditory experience is at least as good as headphones in terms of the soundscape of the playback dominating what you hear. Most domestic systems can't go loud enough in a clean fashion to do this, which is often my point on the forum. I don't like to be pinned to a chair while listening, I prefer to move about and do my normal things while enjoying the music. In other words, using it as "background" music in the same way as someone who has musical members of the family playing, say, Mozart Divertimenti in the lounge ...

Frank

 

[Orb]

Apples and oranges. Live instruments sound good in very lively spaces. We seem to understand all the reflections and enjoy them. Playback systems, not so much.

Tim

It depends upon the energy involved/instruments radiation pattern/positioning/etc as well Tim, as I said a room will affect sound traits and it is applicable to both.
If you feel live instruments sound good in very lively spaces in comparable situation to audiophile homes, does this mean you feel reverb time/etc has no affect on live instruments sound quality?

Of course this then leads to the other threads and would conclude with the above statement that it seems your suggesting playback system will never replicate live sound due to its different behaviour.
Edit:
I would need to find the paper I have on sound quality relating to orchestra and individual musicians and their instrument, but I am sure many instruments do behave similar to speakers (how much might need another thread but could be interesting to discuss) in terms of sound radiating, with bass expanding around the musician and the higher frequency becoming more directional to the front.

Cheers
Orb

 

[MylesBAstor]

Depends on the room. That will not happen if you are playing a stereo in St. Peter's cathedral by way of an extreme example, even if it is not distorting at all.

Not. Apples and oranges. Cyril Harris proved that you can't take acoustic engineering equations from a small space and apply it to a large space.

And actually can't remember the last time I heard any hall distorting. Overly reverberant, no low frequency foundation, tipped up, doesn't project, sound really depends on where one is sitting, etc. Those are attributes I assign to halls.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Out of curiosity, Tim, what does your system sound like when you put on something with a very deep acoustic? And what happens when you turn the volume up on that? As a starting point, I tried a Joan Sutherland Greatest Hits CD from the library yesterday, first time I've heard it, and that has a cavernous acoustic, you can hear the reverb from the strings going way in the distance, there is a huge space created behind the speakers.

Does this make sense to you?

Frank

A very deep acoustic? A cavernous acoustic? Little of what you say made sense, Frank, until I finally accepted the fact that you're just making it up as you go along. By this one, I suppose "very deep acoustic" means a recording with a lot of reverb on it. Maybe. Or maybe you mean echo. Or delay. And there are various kinds, but in the broad generalized to the point of meaningless way that seems to be your stock in trade, recordings with a lot of reverb on them sound like recordings with a lot of reverb on my system. And when I turn up the volume, they get louder.

Tim

 

[fas42]

Sorry to sound like I'm being difficult, Tim, but I'm just trying to get a handle on what your system sounds like. In the world of natural sound, real noises happening in spaces, echoes occur all the time off nearby or even far off surfaces, and we humans learn instinctively as we grow up to interpret those echoes as signatures or indicators of sizes of spaces, like the simple clap or yell test. An obvious example, the classic, in a big cathedral, sound if you walk with hard soles in such a place.

So when a recording is made in any more "natural" place, not a recording studio, these echoes will be captured by the mics and in turn will be reproduced on playback. The ear/brain, working instinctively, ties the obvious, direct sound with the much quieter echoes, and your head says, these musicians are playing in a space of roughly such and such a size. Hence my use of the terms such as a "deep acoustic".

This is all very basic stuff in the field of sound and hearing, but it's important that an audio setup gets this right for music recorded in a familiar environment, say a concert hall, to sound truly realistic, and impressive. Then, on the other hand, in a studio recording various types of echo and reverb can be added; artificial, yes, but it can create a very impressive illusion of depth if reproduced properly. New wave is particularly notorious for adding this on in large dollops, which I grant causes a bit of an acoustic mess if not handled properly. Which is not to say it can't be done, just that the system has to be working at a high level for the mind to comfortably work it all out.

Again, sorry to be aggravating, but just trying to work out what you're listening to; just a bit harder when you're not in the vicinity ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I didn't think you were being difficult, Frank, I thought you were being vague, as usual, followed by obvious:

This is all very basic stuff in the field of sound and hearing, but it's important that an audio setup gets this right for music recorded in a familiar environment, say a concert hall, to sound truly realistic, and impressive. Then, on the other hand, in a studio recording various types of echo and reverb can be added; artificial, yes, but it can create a very impressive illusion of depth if reproduced properly.

Yes, sound echoing off of hard surfaces is pretty basic stuff. What's not at all basic is how it is recorded, mixed and mastered. If you play an organ in a cathederal, and I record it with a stereo mic from a pew in the center of the room, I'll probably get a recording that is one big ambient smear. If I place multiple mics near the pipes of the organ, I'll get a much clearer, much better recording with almost no ambience. If I place those mics near the pipes and also place a few around the room, and then mix a bit of the "ambience" with the close-mic'd drier recording of the organ, I can actually better emulate what human ears and brains would hear and perceive from that seat in the pew than I can by recording from that seat in the pew. And when you play back that recording, the likely recording, the best recording, you will get the best results through something like the situation the recording was mastered in.

And that is going to be neither a very lively space nor a stone-dead one. Fortunately, most listening rooms get in the ballpark, mine included. To answer your question, I'm listening to a room that doesn't slap back at you when you walk in and clap your hands, but doesn't have the deadness of an anechoic or over treated room either. The type and placement of my speakers makes it a bit more like a mixing suite than a mastering one, but it's a pretty balanced room overall. It hasn't been measured an formally treated, but I've been in quite a few that have, and I know it's pretty good in the mids and highs. Bass? I benefit from the fact that my system doesn't generate much of it. When I add a sub, I'll have to re-group.


Tim

 

[rockitman]

Most people listen in awful rooms. Yet many seem to deeply care about gear measurements. Is there a contradiction here?

It's pretty easy to fix a sucky sounding room. Dole out the $$$ and trap all that excess bass and kill those first reflections. I went from sucky to glorious thanks to Realtraps. I agree with your premise.... I'm not sure how anyone can give a reliable review of component's sound listening to it in an untreated room. For me, one of the biggest improvements for my system was the room treatments by far.

 

[Steve Williams]

For me, one of the biggest improvements for my system was the room treatments by far.

If not the biggest

 

[MylesBAstor]

It's pretty easy to fix a sucky sounding room. Dole out the $$$ and trap all that excess bass and kill those first reflections. I went from sucky to glorious thanks to Realtraps. I agree with your premise.... I'm not sure how anyone can give a reliable review of component's sound listening to it in an untreated room. For me, one of the biggest improvements for my system was the room treatments by far.

One product that I found works very nicely and doesn't cost an arm and a leg are the Cathedral Sound panels. Andy Bartha is a pretty smart guy (he had also designed Roomtunes and some other products way back when). Positioning is critical but some listeners who came over a while back couldn't believe the difference three or four inches of placement made in the effectiveness of these panels. And all one does is hang each one close the the room boundaries in each corner. Great bang for the buck.

 

[fas42]

Yes, sound echoing off of hard surfaces is pretty basic stuff. What's not at all basic is how it is recorded, mixed and mastered. If you play an organ in a cathederal, and I record it with a stereo mic from a pew in the center of the room, I'll probably get a recording that is one big ambient smear.

Right there, that doesn't make sense. If you were sitting in that position, where the mics were placed you would be experiencing glorious, rich, truly exhilirating live sound. Yet you're saying the mics turn that glorious sound into "one big ambient smear". So do we have highly defective mic's, or highly defective recording techniques, or what?

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Defective is a relative term, I suppose, but mics to not hear the way human ears do. I don't have your answer, I only know that if you take a fine recording machine and a really good microphone out into the audience and put it where your head would go, the recording does not come out right. It doesn't sound like live, from good seats. Perhaps it's the mics. Perhaps our brains process the concert and somehow compensate for the acoustics. I know a couple of people who make live recordings for a living. I'll ask.

Oh and one other thing -- are you sure you'd hear glorious, rich sound under those circumstances? I think a pipe organ playing full tilt into an empty cathedral might make quite an ambient smear. Better than the recording? Yes. clear and distinct? I seriously doubt it.

Tim

 

[fas42]

Even if you were to put on your best pair of headphones, and listen to the just done take in the cathedral, seconds later on the spot, it would still have that smeared quality compared to the "real" thing?

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Even if you were to put on your best pair of headphones, and listen to the just done take in the cathedral, seconds later on the spot, it would still have that smeared quality compared to the "real" thing?

Frank

What we define as ambient smear is going to be pretty subjective. It would not sound the same.

Tim