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In Reply to: RE: If What You Claim Is True, Machines Should Be Able to Discern Jascha Heifetz from Itzhak Perlman......... (LONG) posted by Todd Krieger on November 19, 2012 at 15:51:41
Its very simplistic to pick away at this point by point and take things out of context. I never said machines can interpret music. What I said is an electronic device can resolve electronic values better than human hearing or other senses. We are dealing with electronics and signals, not music emanating from an instrument in an acoustic environemnt, a live sound. And this electronics is not involved in the creative process of creating or interpreting music itself. Electronics is used to record and replay music, within the degree it can do such things. However to subjectivly interpret the workings of electronics in the same way we listen to a violin in a concert hall is not only misplaced, but ineffective. If one was to "tune up" and electronic device by ear and sell it there would be so much variation from piece to piece nobody would buy it. Its function must be precisely measured by others of it kind; electronic devices. Just like only humans can interpret and apprieciate the music created by other humans.Even piano tuners use electronic devices to get a more precise tuning initially, then and only then detune for timbral human preference. The note A is precisely defined as 440hz and only a very rare few can tune to within a cent or so of that without some basis of comparative pitch, that's why tuning forks exist. One can get close, one out of millions can get it right on without a standard comparitive pitch. Now we use electronics to have this standard. Otherwise, instruments would be out of pitch relatively. Now I have worked with symphonic orchestras as well as pop musiciains and all use some device as a standard, either a tuning fork, a piano to tune to or an electronic pitch standard. The human ear is not precise enough for the intial pitch. ALL calibrated electronic devices and tuning forks are exactly on pitch; exactly vibrating or oscillating at 440.000hz. Humans can only distinguish in mid-frequencies (specifically 440hz) about 1/12 semitone change, which is about .037hz This is known as the "Just-Noticeable Difference". (See work by Rossing, Moore, and Wheeler) All electronic measurement devices can detect or produce frequency at resolutions as low as .001hz (or lower depending on clock accuracy). I would be more inclined to beleive a spectrum analysers output results for flat frequency response then depend on mine nor anyone elses ears to tell whether a loudspeaker has a flat response (necessary for accurate reproduction) or whether phase anomalies exist. (Let me say this, if a loudspeaker isn't flat it is adding timbral influence to the music that isn't on the recording. I want to hear the music, not the speaker)
Instruments not tuned a standard pitch reference was Mozart's biggest pet peeve. It is reported he had perfect pitch, and was always frustrated when a tuning fork wasn't used for the orchestra to pitch A to. Or if they didn't tune to the piano in place, which he always complained wasn't tuned to pitch anyway. However the person with perfect pitch is extremely rare statisically. The human senses are not that resolute or precise. A device is always more precise in this respect.
However, a device cannot interpret music or determine if it is performed well, nor can it derive pleasure or emotional response from it. But what electronics can do is measure whether another electronic device is doing its function accurately or properly. It can precisely read what the human senses cannot determine. Can your skin and sense of touch give you an accurate voltage reading? No. Can your ears and minds-eye give you and accurate picture or measurement of amplitude response. No. Can you say with all certainly what the phase response is of a certain frequency within a passage of music played through a speaker. No way. The human ear and other senses cannot do that to that level of precision. They are not evolved for that purpose. They can only interpret, not measure with certainly.
The limited abilities of human senses is well studdied, well documented and well understood. It is not a theory. It is fact. Comparatively speaking in terms of specific criteria, the human ear can only resolve to a certain degree. For instance it is well understood what the Hi-Lo frequency range limits are regarding human perception of frequency. Human hearing amplitude response is different depending on sound pressure level (munson curves). And these both vary greatly from person to person. For instance the average amplitude differnetial a human can detect is well known to be between 1 to 2dB and for some people as much as 5dB. Any modern spectrum analyser can resolve to about .1 dB or even lower in some instruments. And this level of precision has existed for some 30 years now. Human hearing cannot, has not and never will be able to resolve at that level of precision. Can a spectrum analyser tell if Itzak is playing? Of course not. That's not its function; not can it, will it nor has it ever been able to.
Interpreting music and measuring things like voltage, phase and amplitude are two entirely different things. You're comparing apples to rocks. They are two completely different unrelated things.
Edits: 11/24/12Follow Ups:
Perfect pitch is present in one in ten thousand, more so in Asian populations.
While A=440 is standard, a piano is not tuned to standard pitch machines. As you go up the scale, the pitch rises, as you go lower the pitch goes flatter. The notes increase their deviation as you go depart from the A=440.
That's why Bach is famous, he created the equal tempered scale, or at least popularized it. The human ear is logarithmic not linear. This applies to octaves and the notes between.
Try taking an electronic tuning machine and use it to tune a piano. I guarantee you that it will be the worse sounding piano ever. That's why piano tuning is still very much an art, rather than a science.
As for A=440: That in itself is an artificial contrivance. Over time A could have been much higher as much as 450+. Mozart did not use A=440 as a standard.
Stu
My wife's Steinway B was tuned to A=442. The technician we used to use was the tuner for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and he tuned to the orchestra's concert pitch.
As you pointed out, pianos aren't tuned with equal octaves, even if each octave is split equally. The linked article explains why. Our tuner explained to me one day what he was doing and why, and that he was making various sonic tradeoffs, including the brilliance of the instrument.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"Interpreting music and measuring things like voltage are two entirely different things. You're comparing apples to rocks. They are two completely different unrelated things."
Seems to me, if we could ignore your snake oil references for the moment, your OP is guilty of exactly that!
I am the OP. We are talking about using test equipment to get electronics to work properly. Some perople seem to think you do this by ear. You cannot know with any certainty if a loudspeaker is operating as designed unless you measure it with electronics.
People who judge stereo by using ears are missing an important thing. Accuracy. If a violin plays one note, it is recorded, then the playback system (as well as recording system) must pass the information as an electronic signal, not as music. Once this is done, the intergrity of that signal must be maintained through the subsequent stages of electronics. For this to happen the equipment must be tested by measuremnet of electronic signals for accuracy. You cannot do this by ear precisely enough. That is the basis of this discussion. If your manufacturers of this gear didn't have test equipment this stuff would sound like gak!
We are talking about electronics and electronic signals, NOT the interpretation, performance or creation of music. Stereo systems are not musical instruments. They do not create music. They are not used to generate music. They are not used by musicians. They are not the source of the music. They are not inherantly musical. They are electronics, that must perform accurately in the electronic realm and deal with signals, not music. And signal accuracy is quantifiable only through measurement and should not be determined by direct human senses & interpretation. This is what audiophiles, many of them, forget. It's a misinterpretation of realities.
Try this. :-) Wedge the speaker end of your speaker wire in your ear, turn the volume to maximum, and tell me what you hear? In addition to probably going deaf and feeling a strange electric shock, I know you will not hear music. But what you will perceive is the electrons charge flowing through a wire and now into your flesh. (Disclaimer: I'm being dramatic here, do not do this.) Now do this with an electric guitar that isn't plugged in. Just put the headstock on your temple. You will hear music. That's because it's an instruemnt. A stereo is not an instrument, its electronics.
Stereos do not make music. They store and recall electronically a close approximation of a performance of music.
On the contrary the output of a stereo is music and the stereos performance should be first and foremost judged on it's ability to recreate music.As far as your accuracy point goes someone like me must concede the issue however if the stereo is good enough to provide musical enjoyment over a wide diversity of music styles and recording qualities some degree of measurable accuracy will be required - no doubt excess colorations alienate recordings but the colorations accepted will be less than excessive and selected to expand ones musical horizon. This IMO is the purpose of owning a nice stereo - to expand our musical horizons via enjoying all kinds of music. A great stereo is required!
On the other hand, some who listen, can and do make objective listening observations based on experience and training. This methodology bypasses the need to attempt to quantify measureable parameters. So it's true that these kinds of systems may measure less good what's important is that they perform well enough to fool the experienced listener into believing what they are hearing is live. And that's a requirement that cannot be substantiated by any measurement or conglomeration of measurements.
Certainly for most of us who chose to judge a stereos performance by ear it seems outrageous that someone could conclude a stereos performance based on measurements.
Edits: 11/24/12 11/24/12
I think you and I are heading towards some mutual agreement in concept.Understand, my criteria is as the person responsible for creating the recordings being listened to. I was a staff engineer for Sheffield Labs (and many other recrdings over the past 30 years). I have a reference that exceeds that of the casual listener or even hardened expert audiophile. I was there. I placed mics. I built the mic preamps. I heard the actual performance. I know the rooms. In some cases, I even designed the rooms and created the acoustical environment for the recording. I know the actual imaging and placement of the instruments; I put them where they appear to be on the recording. All this on a very intimate and subtle level.
I have heard these recordings of these performances played on some very famous systems (some featured in magazines) and thought the recording sounded competely different than what I know they really sound like. (Of course being very careful not to expose what I was really thinking to the owners of these very costly and lovingly created macinations. It's like calling somebodys kid fugly!) And therein lies the problem of accuracy, for me in particular. The sound system is not making the music, the musicians made the music, I recorded it and turned it into electronic signals and these systems failed (miserably in some cases) to accurately recover the signals and covert them back into sound waves.
Herein lies the problem of perception. I say a sound system doesn't make music, it mearly is a another medium by which it travels. And that music should pass through this medium undisturbed. A sound system should be transparent. What goes in, is what should come out between all stages. Otherwise you are listening to the system itself, not the music. A person with no true reference as to what is going in, has no way to tell what is coming out is the same. But, with measurment one can test the electronics for its ability to pass signals undisturbed. This is not magic, its simple common sense. Recorded music is just signals. If a piece of gear can do its respective job (coverting digital to analog signals, routing the signals, amplifiying the signals, or transducing these electrical signals back to sound waves) without modifying the signals (whether test tones or music; a signal is a signal in electronics), what comes out will be the same as what went in, in every detail as recorded. There is no magic, no human context within this process. However, once the music is liberated from being a signal, and is no longer constrained within electronics, the music is preserved if only in reproduction of sound waves. The enjoyment is maximized and the artists endeavors can be properly interpreted and appreciated fully.
On these systems it was no longer the same music, nor the same performance. Why? Because the system doesn't make music, it coverts electronic signals into sound waves. And in these cases did so in poor fashion technically. Ironically, these systems are considered milestones in audiophile circles. To me, they are poorly over-tuned impressions of people listening to GEAR without a reference, not music. When asked about how they tuned the system I was told, "By ear ... How else does one do it? And what's better than your human hearing for decerning nuance in music". Problem is they are not tuning instruments. They are tuning electronics. They are not listening to musicians play, they are listening to an electronic recording of musicians playing. Different animal. Different reality.
In fact they are listening to the gear and its anomalies, contoured to their opinion of how music should sound, almost in contempt of the musicians and engineers who recorded the performances. The music is secondary. Inaccuracy run amok, to cater to the whims of the gearheads, so-to-speak.
Look ... what people, especially many audiophiles, do not want to beleive is their is no magic, no religion, nothing ethereal about sound systems. All that is needed to be known to reach the goals is well understood. The problem lies in the physics of building this electronics in way where it does its job perfectly. We know where to go, we have full understanding of the physics of sound, human hearing, sound waves and how they work, how to covert signals into sound waves. We know the endgame, the coaches know the plays, we just don't have talented enough players. We just don't have the materials to build "The Stuff". Components like capcaitors are not perfect, resistors and semi-conductors have compromises. Loudspeaker drivers have that nasty reality of the physical world known as mass. The stuff doesn't work perfectly. We have full knowledge, there is just no magic cure for inaccuracies in the stuff! However, when we start messing around with the ethereal, beleiving in magic bullets, and ignoring physics in some cases becuase of the lie of "we can't know all that there is to know" in some arrogant attempt to make things "more musical" we run the risk of changing the recording into something it is not. Something else. Not music, electronic noises and distortions mimicing one persons perception of music. Not what was recorded by the makers of the recording of music for sure. That includes the ludicrous attempts at making bad recordings sound better. If it was engineered badly, you can't replace what isn't there with gear ... or Mrytlewood (hehe).
Having a true musical reference can really suck sometimes! :-)
Edits: 11/24/12 11/24/12 11/24/12 11/24/12 11/24/12
Nice response.I'm not going to continue to defend the objective listeners position because I don't agree with it and ultimately my pov is going to be very similar to yours. All I want to say on that is people can define the job of the stereo to be whatever it is they want it to be. I don't think that more than a few audiophiles are capable of building a true and accurate musical reference using that methodology inspite of what they believe. In fact I think the dissatisfaction with their results leads to continued purchasing but that's just what I've observed.
Where you lose me is with a comment like "That includes the ludicrous attempts at making bad recordings sound better. If it was engineered badly, you can't replace what isn't there with gear ... or Mrytlewood (hehe)."
You sound so much like a recording engineer! What's a bad recording? Heck a bad recording sounds like a bad recording but in my book that doesn't mean it sounds bad. And a good recording sounds like a good recording but it doesn't mean it sounds good. Of course our stereos should be good enough to differentiate recording quality but it's the quality of the inaccuracy within the system that threatens to limit our ability to enjoy a diversity of recordings or may enable us to enjoy a wider diversity.
I'm not saying compression, clipping and eq sounds good but given reasonable volume levels lots and lots of popular music can deliver great listening experiences for those who are interested.
Like I said in my response to your Original Post, the most measureably accurate stereo may be the best but given the fuzzy specifications for the universe of recorded works it seems highly unlikely it would be chosen by listening. Of course one could select recordings that tend to substantiate any desired conclusion.
I agree there is no magic - there's only selecting equipment that works well together whose shared strengths and compromises best meet the owners expectations.
Edits: 11/25/12 11/25/12
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