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In Reply to: RE: Wouldn't stop anything. Matter of fact people can do what you suggest but don't. posted by Goober58 on July 22, 2014 at 11:26:08
Hi if your point is that tastes are different i agree
But if accurate reproduction is the goal i am sure it can be checked with instruments and other tools like specifically designed signal tracks
I like accuracy in sound.
It is very difficult for me to accept the idea that something accurate is not good sounding.
Kind regards,
bg
Follow Ups:
What's accurate? I'm kind of beating a dead horse here.
Look you define what measurements need to be taken in order to determine a systems accuracy then you take them. Pure and simple - there is no conspiracy/rip theory in play here.
Manufacturers supplied specification are usually taken under ideal or test conditions. This may or may not reflect the performance in real world conditions.
Most of us just listen and chose based on what we like to hear. Those who want accurate need to buy/rent some test equipment or an active eq. Without doing that you're just blowing hot air.
If that's what you want to do do it.
Give me rhythm or give me death!
Well accurate is a system that gives out amplified a signal similar to the input (sorry for the bad English)
If you take a picture of an old person an accurate picture could be not nice, but it is accurate
If you photoshop it it could be nicer but less accurate, less true to the original
The same applies to sounds for me
I prefer accuracy even if the original is not that nice
Kind regards,
bg
Accurate to me is the stereo that best portrays it's inputs as the music intended to be heard by those who created the album.If the most accurate system best remains true to the music then it is the best.
Unfortunately given the ill-defined nature of the inputs it's somewhat unreasonable to assume the most technically accurate system will remain true to the music.
Your picture/camera analogy doesn't really hold as whatever format the images are preserved as is well defined. Something not true with audio recordings.
Don't get me wrong audio accuracy is important but what measurements and how they are quantified is dependent on the playback environment and the source material.
Give me rhythm or give me death!
Edits: 07/25/14
Hi and of course i do not have the truth
And i tend to repeat myself. But i think that math calculations, instruments and measurements have a fundamental role in equipment design.
So i would expect that should have the same role in equipment evaluations.
And i see that even not completely scientific designers feel the urge to show the quality of their equipment with some sort of "instrumental" evidence.
But i could be wrong.
One thing is sure ... there is still a lot of confusion.
If not all amps should sound at least very good for instance.
In the end i think that speakers are the crucial element of an audio chain.
I would start from the bottom and then after buying a reasonably good source (digital is tricky) i would move upwards and try some amps.
But i feel speakers are really what fixes the limits obtainable by a set up.
Personally instead i cannot get preamps out of my mind.
I am a line stages addicted.
Good power amps are easier to spot. And also speakers.
Kind regards,
bg
Accuracy requires a reference and a metric that measures differences. The problem is doubly difficult, because unless one was present at the original recording one must guess at the reference and because no reproduction can generate identical acoustic waveforms in the recording venue and the listening room. Accordingly, what matters is subjective perception of sonic accuracy and this works differently with different listeners because of artifacts in their hearing and training in their mind.
At least with classical music, jazz and most other acoustic music, my experience has been that most recordings are enjoyable once a system has been properly selected and voiced to fit a listening room. The music sounds similar to what one hears "live" which is also "good sounding". This might not be the case with other musical genres. I do have a few recordings that sound quite horrible, but it seems likely that this was intentional on the part of the producer and performers.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"once a system has been properly selected and voiced to fit a listening room."
That's an excellent viewpoint Tony. The speakers that I have were bought knowing three things...
-That I liked the "house sound" of the brand.
-Exactly where they were going to live in the house.
-Experience with essentially an earlier instance of the units in that location.
Naturally speakers and the listening room form a system but unfortunately I'm not knowledgeable enough to analyze it. How I came to discover where they worked well here is a testimony to good luck trumping knowledge. When we moved in I just stuck them more or less out of the way and hooked them up the next day for music to unpack by. Still using those exact locations a quarter century later, but with newer speakers.
Rick
What you say is not in contrast with what i think
Of course listening room is a decisive element, at least for speakers of course
For this i think that measurements should be taken on the whole system in the actual listening environment
But my accent still is on measurements not evaluations by ear
As i said the evidence is in the labs ... they are full of expensive instruments
I suppose they are useful for design and i believe they can be equally useful for testing
Sound in the end is physics
Kind regards,
bg
Actually, I quite agree with you with respect to setting up speakers in a real room (at least a small one that isn't so great.) As I've previously posted, I found it just about impossible to set up my Focal near field monitors and sub woofer by ear. There were just too many adjustments that interacted with speaker position, etc... What I ended up doing was to purchase a calibrated microphone and RTA software and measure the bass response at my listening position. After some fine tuning of speaker position and sub woofer adjustments and after dialing in some parametric equalization I was able to get flat response from 30 Hz up to 20 kHz. However, at this point the system still sounded too bright and many recordings were unpleasant or worse. I finally voiced the high frequencies by ear, so that some previous reference recordings sounded natural and the vast majority of my collection sounded neither too bright or too dull. This ended up with a measured response that began to taper off at 2 KHz and was down -3.5 dB at 10 kHz, where it was shelved. (This was about half-way down in the tweeter control for the Focal Twin-6's.).
I am suspicious of both measurements and listening tests, even those that I make myself. I consider it insurance to have a system that measures good and also sounds great. I would be suspicious of a system that sounded great that didn't measure well, because it would only be a matter of time before coming up against recordings where the fault showed up in listening.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Well accurate is a system that gives out amplified a signal similar to the input (sorry for the bad English)
If you take a picture of an old person an accurate picture could be not nice, but it is accurate
If you photoshop it it could be nicer but less accurate, less true to the original
The same applies to sounds for me
I prefer accuracy even if the original is not that nice
Kind regards,
bg
RE: Wouldn't stop anything. Matter of fact people can do what you suggest but don't., posted on July 24, 2014 at 11:05:19
beppe61
Audiophile
Posts: 3054
Joined: January 29, 2004
What you say is not in contrast with what i think
Of course listening room is a decisive element, at least for speakers of course
For this i think that measurements should be taken on the whole system in the actual listening environment
But my accent still is on measurements not evaluations by ear
As i said the evidence is in the labs ... they are full of expensive instruments
I suppose they are useful for design and i believe they can be equally useful for testing
Sound in the end is physics
Kind regards,
bg
**************
Beppster,
You are a perfect candidate for "Music, Physics and Engineering", and "Master Handbook of Acoustics".
Buy both, and read them.
:)
Hi and i would like to have the time
I am distracted by my job ...
But i tell you one story
I was asking if square wave test could be useful to evaluate a driver/speaker behaviour
The answers went from absolutely not to i do not know
Then i mentioned a famous speakers designer who promotes his projects also on the basis of a nice response to square waves and i aked if this designer was wrong.
No more answers. No one. In a technical forum.
This tells me that there is a lot to be learned still.
But also there are people they give opinions without a real understanding of the phenomena
I much prefer a sincere answer like i do not know.
When i read of a speakers designer who evaluate drivers by listening i am not against his procedure, but still i cannot get out of my head the idea that another scientific, objective, reproducible and instrumental method must exist.
As an aside i think that square wave is a very useful tool, even if square waves do not exist in nature.
Kind regards,
bg
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