Home Digital Drive

Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Digital Drive ]
[ Alert Moderator ]

RE: Subjective opinions of DACs

[I am often amused when I hear subjective opinions where words like "air", "ambience", "emotion" and "rhythm and pace" are thrown around when listening to a commercial recording. Yet, unless said reviewers were present in the mixing room that produced the recording, I fail to see how any of these judgements can be made!]

In my opinion and experience, such descriptions often refer to certain psycho-acoustic and subjective sound effects produced by a given recording, reproduced by a given audio system within the context of a given listening room. In fact, I've heard systems which greatly tend to manifest certain psycho-acoustic effects, such as those you list, almost irrespective of the recording. I agree, that one can rarely know whether certain perceived sound effects are accurate to the original recording session. However, one can observe whether such effects are simply occurring to one's own listening perception, accurate or not. Let's not forget that stereo sound reproduction in the home is an illusion. A falsehood, likely never to be totally accurate to the original acoustic event anyhow. I'm quite happy to simply achieve verisimilitude, a believable illusion.

Subjective terms such as "air" can't really be defined without using other subjective terms, therefore, universally understood definitions for such terms may not be possible. For example, to me, the subjective term "air" means that the stereo sound exhibits a characteristic of openness, one where instruments and voices seem spatially quite separate from each other in all three-dimensions. This is opposed to sound which seems closed-in, or congealed, or collapsed to mostly two-dimensions. Now, while my description of the term may, understandably, leave you feeling quite unenlightened about what I perceive, that doesn't necessarily mean that this subjective effect is not a real psycho-acoustic phenomena. The big challenge for audio test and measurement, it seems to me, is not in further resolving decimal places of harmonic distortion percentage, but to find objective parameter quantifications which correlate well enough with the subjective listening perception to accurately predict it.
_
Ken Newton


Edits: 04/16/14 04/16/14 04/16/14 04/16/14 04/16/14 04/16/14 04/16/14 04/16/14 04/16/14 04/16/14
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Herbie's Audio Lab  

Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
FAQ

Post a Message!

 Forgot Password?
Moniker (Username):
Password (Optional):
  Remember my Moniker & Password  (What's this?)    Eat Me
E-Mail (Optional):
Subject:
Message:   (Posts are subject to Content Rules)
Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:
Optional Image URL:
Upload Image:
E-mail Replies:  Automagically notify you when someone responds.

[ Top Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]