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In Reply to: RE: Subjective opinions of DACs posted by flood2 on April 16, 2014 at 16:39:36
[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.
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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 04/16/14Follow Ups:
Yep, I agree - the goal is to create a convincing illusion of the live performance.Is it impossible? Oh yes, but we tilt at windmills, because the more convincing and natural it sounds, enjoyment increases considerably! And enjoyment is the most subjective of all!
I find describing things like "air" "punch" "bloom" "warmth" "coolness" etc. are just a common vocabulary used to describe how things might sound. It isn't subjective per se (generally if I find the sound "warm" you will too if you know the long form description of that use of word), but whether you find "warm" enjoyable or not is where subjectiveness creeps in.
And the aspects of the sound that mean more to someone in creating "reality" may vary. Some may love the tonality and textures of the tones, some may be attracted to dynamics more than tone, and so on. And if you can't do it ALL in a system, I think this is where taste comes into play.
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Edits: 04/16/14
I was of course being deliberately provocative in my opening post which I'm glad has been taken in the right spirit.
I understand your definition of "air" etc.
I agree with you - what we are saying is that when listening to a recording, (technical) Fidelity and Musical Enjoyment are actually two different things.
When we listen to a recording, we are after an emotionally satisfying "illusion" of sound. Technical accuracy is actually quite secondary to this.
My problem comes when people attribute an emotionally satisfying result to be (by definition) to be more accurate/faithful to the original recording and THAT is the bit I struggle with.
I know as a clarinettist that if you are not in the correct frame of mind EVERYTHING about what you are doing seems "awful" all the way from the reed to the tone quality etc. I have spent countless hours shaving my reeds, reprofiling the mouthpiece etc. I think the same applies to hifi.
It wasn't until I started doing my own recordings that I realised that technical fidelity is actually reasonably easy to achieve (with a bit of technical knowhow and money). At that point I realised that I was wasting my time Tilting at Windmills for a perceived flaw in the TECHNICAL reproduction when in fact much of the time the flaws are either in the recording, or in the case of vinyl, actually due to flaws in the cutting process and so I realised that the journey (for sonic perfection) had largely ended since we have largely arrived there with hi-res recordings. Any other discussions around digital filters, DACs (as in the conversion principle) seems rather petty in comparison to what we used to have to put up with in the past!
I love Modern Jazz and classical music - my father left me a legacy of original pressings from the 50s and 60s. My mother is a retired music teacher with a huge collection of classical records all the way from the 50s to the 80s. Many older recordings are rather distorted, lack the bandwidth of a modern recording, but it doesn't detract from my enjoyment of the music and I know my equipment is faithfully reproducing every single distortion, tape flutter or fake "enhanced stereo" from those records that used that awful technique to enhance mono recordings from the 60s!
Regards
Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
This re-enforces, what I suggested in my Metrum review. That the most enjoyable DACs for music may not be the same as a recording engineer would want to use. It could be that a typical recording engineer does not have time to listen emotionally or must record or process many times the bits and loses less bits w/ certain types of DACs.
Edits: 04/22/14
So called, NOS, for A/D conversion (meaning, I presume, without an anti-alias filter) is a huge no-no on relatively low sample rate recordings - such as CD standard. Any ultrasonic frequency input above half the sample rate will be aliased down to unpleasantly appear within the audio band. A recording having a native sample rate far enough above the input signal frequencies (such as with DSD) is essentially self band-limited, and so can do without the usual sharp anti-alias filter.This has not so much to do with whether the ADC is sigma-delta based or not (although, they all are today).
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Ken Newton
Edits: 04/22/14 04/22/14
"It could be that a typical recording engineer does not have time to listen emotionally or must record or process many times the bits many times and looses less bits w/ certain types of DACs."
The typical recording engineer is only interested in how fast his cash register spins. He produces garbage if the producer tells him to and justifies this as "I have to pay for my studio and support my family". He is more interested in a "fast workflow" than quality sound. This is the rule, but there are exceptions. Good engineers love music and love sound and they do not suffer compromise or blindly follow orders. They take the time to get it as good as they can and they walk away from business and customers who are trying to turn them into prostitutes.
Knowledgeable audiophiles know the good engineers by name and go out of their way to purchase their recordings. This has been true since I started in Hi-Fi in 1960. Back then the names were Robert Fine and Lewis Leyton. :-)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"the journey (for sonic perfection) had largely ended since we have largely arrived there with hi-res recordings"
I have a Mytek dac for "HiRez", An Audio Note transport and dac for redbook and a Basis/Rega/Ortofon turntable for vinyl. After a year of buying "Hi Rez" downloads I now listen to vinyl 70% of the time and redbook CD's 30% of the time. I no longer purchase downloads or listen to them. I get no musical enjoyment from them and feel they are a waste of money. Will probably sell the Mytek. Just my opinion of course. I was a professional recording engineer from 1963 to 1983 so I know what I enjoy. Tubes and vinyl
Alan
That's my dream job - I always wanted to be a recording engineer!
I would be really interested in your view regarding recording techniques over the yearse - it is my view that for all the advancements in technology, the recording techniques have either been lost or changed in such a way that the modern recordings have lost the character of some of my old favourites.
My mother has an original 1961 CBS (stereo) pressing of Stravinsky Conducts and you would never think of it as being an "old" recording. The realism still astounds me. Many modern recordings do have a very sterile quality to my ear. ECM recordings of solo piano works can have a very stark sound.
BTW When I say "we've arrived" in terms of Hi-Res, I mean in terms of technical accuracy. I am trying to archive my vinyl digitally (at 24/96) and I find that gives me a good facsimile of the vinyl (which is what I enjoy most too). Although I admit, that part of it is the ritual of playing a record...and the memories associated with them.
So in conclusion, is it really the recording techniques that are to blame rather than "hi-res" itself?
Regards
Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
When I started all the equipment was tubes. Neumann mikes with built in tube pres, ampex tube recorders, custom built consoles with tube pres and tube line stages, monitor amps were altec tube amps. When in 1970 we went all solid state a lot was lost. Early digital sounded good in the studio but the cds of our masters sounded nothing like what the masters sounded like. As far as engineering goes we only had three track early on so most recordings were done with everybody at once. Very little overdubbing. This was great training to record full bands and orchestras. No, will fix it later. that is why many of todays best recordings are done by the old timers Also overdubbing everything loses all spontaneity of performance. Oh well got to go, have some vinyl to listen to
Alan
and B&K instrument microphone to compare real voice with recording. It was life-like but voices have limited bandwidth and it is the high frequencies that suffer phase and other distortions when recording at effectively 141/2 bit that tells the pictures. All the descriptors about air and so on apply to CDs and earlier PCM recordings.
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing that. Gosh I have so many questions I would love to ask..
Just out of interest when you referred to the digital masters being better than the CD versions, what was the sample rate and bit depth of the master, or are you referring to the multi-track version?
I'm just trying to understand where the flaws crept in. I'm wondering if the dithering or sample rate conversion algorithms in the early days were to blame for the inferior sound - it's only when I started experimenting with different dithering and noise shaping options that I realised that there were many different ways to get to the final result, but with some variation in the sound. Some more successful than others. The more successful combinations make for a surprisingly good result where I couldn't honestly say whether I was listening to the original 24/96 master or the down converted version when coming into the room blind.
Regards
Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
This was the early days of digital. On am talking about the 2 track master which was at 16/44. There was something in the manufacturing process that degraded the sound. Also when we compared we were playing the master back on the studio digital recorder while the cd was played back I believe on a Phillips cd player.
Alan
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