|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
76.24.163.170
In Reply to: RE: Measurement and Perception and the Value of Each (Long Post) posted by jrlaudio on November 03, 2012 at 01:46:42
Thanks for posting this. I agree 100% with just about everything you've posted.
Edits: 11/13/12Follow Ups:
The babble about "soundstage" and "imaging" is just a lame attempt at fostering "mystery", "mystique", or some unproven conjecture that the human brain/ear combination can sense things that machinery cannot.
I disagree. Having heard these kind of soundstaging champions I understand how some might be enamored with such performance. IMO these effects aren't real though at times playback creates an analogy with reality that is quite stunning.
Personally I'm not one of them but wtf it's their money and if that's what get's their rocks off leave em be.
You wrote,
"we have had the ability to measure aspects of low pressure sound waves and electrical signals with far greater precision and accuracy than the human ear/brain combination can detect. Those who dismiss this are clearly ignorant of basic facts and history."
Talk's cheap. Provide link to any analysis, study or paper by any credible person, institution or group that proves your claim. The ear/brain precision and accuracy of some guy standing under a bridge doesn't count. Remember, kiddies, you can't dismiss what doesn't exist.
Surely one can measure THD and volume level (as well as frequency response deviations) to well below the threshold of human perception.
Even trained listeners can't hear .000001 percent THD or differences of .1 db.
Are we actually as ignorant as he claims? Do I really need to search for the links?
The poster says "aspects of" and thus only two aspects need to be supplied to support his contention. I have supplied the two.
We already found out a long time ago that Amplifiers with really low THD actually sounded considerably worse than many amps with much higher THD, even orders of magnitude higher. In other words you CAN hear .00001 percent distortion, it's just that it sometimes sounds worse than .005 percent distortion. So, where does that leave measurements? Answer at 11.
Yes, but not all 2nd order harmonic distortion is created equal. I paid a LARGE wad of cash and have rolled many a rare NOS black-gate or pinch-waist tube to get that elusive refined 2nd order harmonic distortion.Run of the mill 2nd order harmonic distortion is rather pedestrian, encroaching on mid-fi territory, really.
Cheers,
Edits: 11/12/12
Now dat is funny! :)
That's right and certain kinds of distortion are actually preferable to many listeners. Long ago THD measurements below a certain threshold were considered moot - but last time I looked it wasn't unusual to see equipment with THD measurements above that threshold of audibility. But it's been awhile and I'm not so sure that it's true these days.I'm not one of those who thinks the "better" the spec the better it's going to sound. If there was an answer to what sounds best all equipment would sound the same.
Far as I know, for many manufacturers, equipment design isn't about achieving the best specs it's about achieving the best sound. And there's nearly infinite opinion on what sounds best.
Edits: 11/10/12
The traditional measurements used to qualify audio signals are extremely simple in their signal processing. They use but a tiny fraction of the computational horsepower that goes on inside one's ears. Consequently, it is not at all difficult to hear subtle effects that don't show up with traditional measurements. There are more sophisticated signals processing techniques that can be used, but they aren't being used for recreational audio. You can find them in the defense and spook industries, among other places.
Real stereo recordings (two microphones) can and do capture vertical information in the timing of impulses and their reflections. Whether the mind can decode this is debatable, but there is no doubt that the information necessary to decode this is present in many recordings. A good listener or recording engineer can hear microphone patterns and reflections off of the stage, ceiling and other walls of the recording venue and this provides a start.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Mr villastrangiato is correct in an analysis of the recording signal. The totality of the information is there but the recording does not have a height delineation ( unless you use two mikes set at different heights).However, he does not take into account some important considerations.
One is that the vast majority of speakers employ multiple drivers and generally the tweeters are located on the top of the column. This mimics the real life presentation in that the hall ambient sounds are usually high frequencies and come reflected off the walls and ceiling. The high frequencies in real life get absorbed by obstructions on the ground and this includes seats and the people in them.
Now even if you run coaxial or single driver full range systems, this phenomena still occurs. The highs arrive at the ear unobstructed giving the height details. That is why speaker height for single driver cone systems is quite critical. That is why on large, say electrostatic panels, the panels go quite high, six feet or more in order to center the image at a more realistic height presentation. Even the shorter panels like the Quads benefit from elevating the panels centered to about ear height.
Mr Villastrangiato sounds as if he has spent far too much time on an oscilloscope and measuring gear and has little experience with real life situations and set ups. Its a pity he harps on small electronic phase differences when a simple glance at Stereophile's impulse test results for speakers shows most having a horrendous response.
The sense of his priorities is severely skewed.
Stu
Edits: 11/12/12
I guess no one got my point about reflections off the stage floor. If you want to think of it, this creates the equivalent of a phantom pair of microphones at a different height. A pulse close to the floor will be doubled with one spacing and a pulse higher up will be doubled with a different spacing. (Looking at one channel. The numbers will be different with the opposite microphone unless the sound was centrally located.) This effect will work over a limited range of height, depending on the size of the venue, position of the microphones, etc. But then, looking at an actual instrumental layout there isn't that much height in the first place when it comes to location of the instruments.
By looking at sound files of recordings of percussive instruments one can sort out these reflections. There will be height information that can be deduced by observing variations in time of first echo. This is one way that humans get positional location. Another way, head related transfer functions, won't work with two microphones in a plane and speakers in a plane. Another way is by brightness, but then one gets into the interaction of instrument radiation patterns and microphone patterns.
There are very strong evolutionary reasons for humans and other animals to have very robust positional location skills, and this undoubtedly means using many different ways to build a model of a sonic landscape. There are probably other ways that have yet to be discovered, but what I mention is well known to sonar engineers and operators, recording engineers, and non dogmatic audiophiles.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haas_effect
Edits: 11/13/12
Do you notice the forms at the bottom of each post called "Optional Link URL" and "Optional Link Title"?
Here's how they're used:
Hass points out that localization is depending on the arrival of the first wave. Because real music has transient attacks, the waveforms are NOT symmetrical. Reversed absolute polarity can lead to ear "hearing" what may be construed as a delayed waveform, particularly in considering the time delays inherent in many speaker designs. While this generally screws up the localization effects present in many recordings, it would explain why it is difficulat for some to hear spatial localization. I
Hass and Blauert use a lot of white noise for their testing (not all, however). White noise has NO leading edge, making localization cues very difficult (read Blauert's U. Mich. papera, for example).
Dangerous to generalize without taking into account all aspects of the experiments.
I have long been an advocate of proper time and phase alignment of playback transducers. The Measurements which the strange guy desires are already known, mesured and published, but he seems to ignore some fundamentally basic issues, and that is primarly with transducers designs.
Stu
from Dr. Roger West of Sound Lab. He explained that is why he focuses on single driver full range designs. Further, he explained that he suffered a kind of hearing injury long ago with an unusual result. It's not the usual sort of frequency or level specific sensitivity, but it short circuited the brain's ability to to *ignore* dissimilar sounds coming from multiple directions as in a party environment. He finds it difficult to switch off the other conversations and focus on any one.
That is one reason why he is fanatic about sound coherence. I can attest that his speakers certainly excel in that respect.
Hass was working in the horizontal plane. His research (as described in the reference you provided) did not concern itself with height localization, and therefore is irrelevant to this discussion.
You have tried to use research that showed how one things works to prove that another thing can't work. This is pseudo-science. You are stuck in your own dogma. I have nothing more to say to you, it would be a waste of time.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Now you're going to reinvent what Haas' experiments were about?
LOL!!
I was right b4, you truly are lost in a little bubble world of audio fantasy land. The Isolation Ward is ^ thataway.
In your earlier post, you provided a reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haas_effect
As my reply indicated, this was what I was working from. If you have a different reference that shows that Haas did more, then please provide it, as it would be interesting, and possibly relevant. In case the reference requires payment to read, then please provide brief quotations that would show the relevance of the reference to this discussion.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Edits: 11/13/12
the truly ignorant resort to insults and name calling when they can not answer questions? When asked for documentation they generally use that technique to avoid answering.....
Use headphones to check out what I have written. No sense of height and indeed the spatial presentation is located entirely between the ears, and within your head (there are a few exceptions, generally with phones with drivers located away from the ears). Play the same recording on a simple two way bookshelf, and then turn the speaker upside down: the sense of height is severely diminished (unless the speaker was deliberately designed to be played that way, generally indicating a very "hot" tweeter.
Of course YMMV
Stu
There are funny effects with speakers that involve room interaction, especially tweeters bouncing off room surfaces. However, once these have been cleaned up (through positioning and room treatment) then one can hear effects associated with the surfaces of the recording venue (on a real stereo recording only, of course). If the musical instrumentation is similar to what one is familiar with in live concerts then it becomes possible to understand certain sonic patterns in terms of reflections off of various surfaces. This appears in the time domain as reflections and in the frequency domain as comb filtering. Both of these can provide clues as the microphone patterns, the acoustic venue, etc., and any competent recording engineer would be familiar with these effects and the best ones would be able to place the microphones appropriately to make a nice recording. There is little "height" information directly on most musical instruments at a live concert since the musicians are all on a stage. Sometimes there are risers to elevate those in the back but this amounts to a "tilt" effect and in effect the musicians are still pretty much on a plane. The main acoustic effect in the vertical dimension is bounces off the floor and ceiling. Here the live concert gets a two fold benefit of height information, first from the HRTF in the vertical dimension (asymmetric ear lobes) and second from comb filter effects. There is certainly the possibility for a Pavlovian connection between these two methods of vertical information to be learned, and if so then the comb filtering reflections could get decoded as height rather than just confusing aberrations in frequency response.
Whenever I've listened to headphones, I've been bothered by the "sound in the head" situation, so I don't have much experience using them. In any event, the sound is substantially different from what one would hear in a live environment, so I would have no basis for learned effects (particular sound matched to particular physical location). Perhaps if I were to spend more time listening with phones I might learn to hear more. Of course there are also binaural recordings and these can definitely have height effects, due to HRTF effects.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Oy!
Edits: 11/12/12 11/12/12 11/13/12
You know more than everybody, right?
AS I posted , just examine a few of Stereophile's impulse test results. Then you would realize, what you have written is pure BS.
But I won't bother trying to illustrate what I mean with measurable, accurate, "scientific" measurements, measurements which are replicable and consistent. I guess the only measurements you are interested in are the few you think you understand.
and with that I won't bother trying to engage in a dialogue with you. You've already made up your mind and are not open to questions and alternate explanations. Since you know all why not write a book and publish it?
Stu
Stu
"Real stereo recordings (two microphones) can and do capture vertical information in the timing of impulses and their reflections. Whether the mind can decode this is debatable, but there is no doubt that the information necessary to decode this is present in many recordings. A good listener or recording engineer can hear microphone patterns and reflections off of the stage, ceiling and other walls of the recording venue and this provides a start.
Wow I'm getting all giddy just thinking about it. NOT!
Neither the microphones that started the original recording chain nor the speakers that ended the playback chain have the ability to present sound wave fronts to the human skull that would correspond with vertical displacement of the ghost sound image. You are talking out your backside. Do a little reading and less blathering and you might not serve as a source of misinformation and stupidity on a public forum such as this. The delayed echoes you and other misinformed individuals speak about have no way of being distinguished as being vertically displaced OR horizontally displaced. They are only ambient background echoes that are not correlated in any way to deliver original sound source localization information to the ears and subsequently, the brain. They can only hint at the size of the recorded venue - not the position of the original sounds coming from the original source. You have a great deal to learn for someone attempting to teach others in a public forum on the subject of acoustics.
LOL! Me delayed echos and vertical soundstage claims - surely you jest!
Edits: 11/10/12
A good listener or recording engineer can hear microphone patterns and reflections off of the stage, ceiling and other walls of the recording venue and this provides a start.
That is evidenced most every time I visit Sea Cliff. It's really spooky when the walls disappear and you hear the space of the venue.
Howard Hanson's The Composer and His Music is one example I've heard.
Do you have the record number on the Howard Hanson?
I feel sorry for the dogmatic fools who deny what they can hear. They are stuck in their dogma, which usually assumes that they perceive reality directly through their senses, forgetting that they are dependent on a mental model to interpret their senses. Thus, if they believe something can not be perceived they will be unaware that there may be conflicting sense-impressions that might pass a different mental model. (In this case the ability to hear reflections from the stage, etc...) But their problem is more general. It goes far beyond audio.
"What is dogma? Dogma is a preconceived idea which forbids human beings to outstep the limits of that idea or object. In this situation the human intellect cannot freely function." - P.R. Sarkar
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Do you have the record number on the Howard Hanson?
Here's info on the CD. The vinyl copy is far harder to find.
Thus, if they believe something can not be perceived they will be unaware that there may be conflicting sense-impressions that might pass a different mental model.
Expectation bias works both ways. :)
The Composer and his orchestra was a series, IIRC. At least two volumes. All my LP's are packed up so I can't access them to double check
For an interesting view of the recording venue, check out the Mercury Civil War sets. They have photos of the Eastman Wind Ensemble (not orchestra) in the hall and you can see the mike set up, IIRC. T.he Civil War sets are the only documentaion of the student players in the Wind Ensemble, BTW, at least from what I could find.
Stu
That doesn't sound correct.
Edits: 11/13/12
"2 channel stereo can only convey left to right and depth - PERIOD."
You can make ex-cathedral statements all you wish, but it won't change the situation. Perhaps you should look into the situation in more detail. There is lots of information in the reverberant field to show early reflections to a microphone array. The microphones may be in a horizontal line, but they receive sound from the instruments that is both direct and reflected. Typically, instruments will be fairly close to the stage floor and more distant than the ceiling, and this situation provides an asymmetry that produces different patterns to the microphones. Therefore, there is information that will disambiguate many spacial situations given suitable processing. It may not be possible to tell if the instruments are close to the stage or closer to the ceiling due to symmetry, but this won't be a problem if one adds a certain amount of common knowledge, something that the mind is capable of doing.
Of course stereo is a flawed process. That is not a justification for throwing it away. However, if you have some way to bring back to life dead musicians so they can be properly recorded with some new technology that will be less "flawed" then I will gladly applaud you.
"As to "computational horsepower going on in one's ears" - also WRONG!"
If you had decent reading skills and treated me with the respect that one should accord other inmates, you would have understood that I meant "between one's ears" when I wrote "inside one's ears." I should have thought that any air-breather would have understood what I meant.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: