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In Reply to: RE: Class D designer speaks posted by bwaslo on February 12, 2008 at 20:22:38
"Is this ok? Well, obviously not, because the output that the system made is sometimes not being relevant to the purpose of playing a record: to best represent the sound that is on that record. I don't want it to just play beautifulness, I want it to play what was recorded, or at least some semblance of the two.
"
Obviously dry studio recordings should sound like dry studio recordings and electronic reverb added can be distinguished (especially in older recordings) easily from a real acoustic space...if your system has true resolution.
I don't think anyone here is advocating that all your recordings should suddenly sound like live in Carnegie Hall as this would be an obvious indication of the stereo system "adding" something that wasn't there originally.
Most of the better systems I have heard that fell short of realistic reproduction (realistic as in real with live music and real in the studio sound...ie. damped, a bit dry and forward or with obvious effects added) did so more by ommitting information (subjectively) rather than obvious additions. For example they sounded harmonically incomplete (ie. dry or clinical), which is one of the worst and most common sins a system can make. Or with a recording that does have a natural and deep soundstage that soundstage is severly truncated (in some cases totally flat soundstage with flat performers). This happens with most systems I have heard to some degree or another.
Again, not adding too much soundstage somehow (dip in the presence region on speaker design can give this effect) but reducing it by messing up spatial cues. Class D amps make this mistake a lot due to the problems in the high frequencies.
"There can't be a replication of "the sound of live, unamplified music", because what works will depend on the person listening and some trickery is involved in fooling the listener.
"
And what about recordings made this way? Shouldn't they give you the strong impression of being there live? I have some very good ones (a few I made myself that aren't bad) and when the system is right it sounds very realistic.
"It does matter to some extent if it is faithful to the original, at least to me,"
Why shouldn't most music sound beautiful? Granted Motorhead at 100db will not but at least for jazz and classical music nearly everything I ever heard live or excellently recorded sounded beautiful and, well alive.
"Same reason I don't have tube amps anymore, they got to always sounding like tube amps. Don't work for me anymore"
While true for inferior type tube amps it is also true for inferior type SS amps, which always end up sounding electronic and artificial. The best of both types (and hybrids) don't sound particularly like tube or transistor...a good thing; however there is still a significant difference in how the two portray space (ie. low level information) high frequencies, dynamics and harmonic content.
"Yeah, I'm a measurements guy, even if I know that merely having a perfect reproduction of a bad approximation isn't going to always do the trick. The guy looking at the oscilloscope was doing exactly the right thing"
I believe in measurements as well... in so far as they have a meaning beyond being a number. Looking at the oscilloscope to see the relative absence of switching noise is of course important but beyond that there is not much more to see there except perhaps bandwidth and the onset of gross distortion. Most of the measurements paraded by manufacturers are just that, only numbers without value attached. When someone can take a number and say it has a correlation coefficient of 0.9 or greater with listener preference then I will sit up and take notice, otherwise if any correlation at all, I have seen an INVERSE correlation between sound quality and measurements like THD.
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