The most important parameter of all: overall system integrity

[Blumlein 88]

How I wish you would precisely describe what you do. No need for a new thread, but either way.

 

[fas42]

That's good enough! I will kick off a new thread, because the concept is somewhat different from what this is about.

 

[Thomas savage]

I'm yet to workout what 'all this ' is about...

If I put a brick on top of my clock radio and get soldering it might sound 'convincing' . All these value judgments mascarading as objective facts...

It's a land of confusion.

 

[fas42]

This thread is about the concept that "overall system integrity" is required for "special" sound, however you wish to characterise the latter - the much loved term in the game for this sort of thing is "synergy", which means ... what?? The other thread is about ways of getting that necessary integrity ...

 

[fas42]

Just noting a new thread kicked off by PeterA at WBF, "Sweating the Small Stuff for Big Returns", with already some interesting comment. This is another way of saying the same thing as I do here - could be interesting where it goes ...

 

[fas42]

Believe High Fidelity, the people doing these impressive demos of the Aries Cerat system, have a small number of their own videos on YouTube, recording show stuff. Volume for some reason is on the low side, which doesn't help, but this particular video probably does the best job of conveying a system getting things right. Suffice to say that all conventional audio setups I've come across are pretty hopeless on this sort of thing, completely fail to get the feeling of grandeur happening - but this shows a clean system doing it with ease ...

 

[Blumlein 88]

Believe High Fidelity, the people doing these impressive demos of the Aries Cerat system, have a small number of their own videos on YouTube, recording show stuff. Volume for some reason is on the low side, which doesn't help, but this particular video probably does the best job of conveying a system getting things right. Suffice to say that all conventional audio setups I've come across are pretty hopeless on this sort of thing, completely fail to get the feeling of grandeur happening - but this shows a clean system doing it with ease ...

Well the bass here consists of a couple of resonant peaks at 74 and 88 hz. There is literally nothing below that. Not the kind of grandeur I expect for $125k system. Maybe they need a good sub for some real low end. Or it could be the mic used in the videocam of course. Also explains why it reminds me so much of my Tivoli One tabletop radio (modern copy of a KLH model 21).

 

[fas42]

Fascinating that you want an audio system to add frequencies to the sound that are not part of the score - artistic licence, perhaps. Nothing like hearing a flute being played and having subsonic rumblings from the power of the instrument rattling the window frames ...

 

[fas42]

Another thread at WBF inviting people to offer their experiences at trying for the next level - http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?21712-Eeeeeking-that-last-5.

 

[fas42]

Our very own (past!) John Kenny has just offered up some interesting thoughts in that WBF Aries Cerat thread. In particular,

As regards the silences - is it the case that the "silence" now has very low level audible detail which gives it a sense of naturalness (there's no such thing as real silence in nature) & this natural detail gives it it's captivating quality & sense of tension?

This is something I agree with, 100%.

 

[fas42]

Noting more comments about pipe organ being the hardest to "get right" - I would agree, I certainly have never heard recordings of such on other people's systems come across well. Usually very anemic, and not able to fill the room with the rich, continuous harmonic intensity of the real thing - the subjective experience of feeling like one is swimming in a sea of sound is part and parcel of such an instrument, and that requires competent playback, most assuredly.

 

[Cosmik]

Noting more comments about pipe organ being the hardest to "get right" - I would agree, I certainly have never heard recordings of such on other people's systems come across well. Usually very anemic, and not able to fill the room with the rich, continuous harmonic intensity of the real thing - the subjective experience of feeling like one is swimming in a sea of sound is part and parcel of such an instrument, and that requires competent playback, most assuredly.

There is nothing difficult about reproducing a pipe organ more than other sounds, not least because it resembles steady state waveforms, therefore the usual time domain/phase problems of passive ported speakers are not as important. However, the reproduction needs bass and adequate volume - possibly not too good from a kitchen radio or 1910 phonograph. And of course, the nature of the sound of a pure pipe organ recording may mean there is no 'masking' i.e. fiddly detail to divert attention from an inadequate system's weediness.

I am confident that a Kii Three or similar will do it perfectly well.

 

[fas42]

Something like a Kii Three in an optimum environment should do it well ... bass is not so much an an issue, adequate clean volume is. The problem for many systems is that not only are sustained notes played, but the reverberation in the recorded space has to come through, undiminished - the latter is usually what stands out as failing in a lesser system.

 

[Cosmik]

Something like a Kii Three in an optimum environment should do it well ... bass is not so much an an issue, adequate clean volume is. The problem for many systems is that not only are sustained notes played, but the reverberation in the recorded space has to come through, undiminished - the latter is usually what stands out as failing in a lesser system.

Your version of "integrity" may be different from mine! My ideal system is the one that literally maintains the signal's integrity: the recording being reproduced accurately - including the phase and timing that most audiophiles say they don't care about.

I don't see how you can arbitrarily decide that bass isn't important when the makers of the pipe organ spent half the cost on the bass notes.

I am not even sure you are interested in hi fi (literally high fidelity) like I am, but perhaps in some sort of altered state of consciousness where the audio system is just the trigger for imagining the sounds. A Youtube video of someone else's 1910 phonograph played over a phone will do. Maybe semi-religious rituals like periodically "resetting" the audio system are the way of entering and maintaining this special state of mind. As I said earlier, I need a more literal rendition of the audio!

 

[fas42]

Of course bass is important, but the subjective impression of intense impact from the bass content is what I tune into; an absolutely pure 40Hz tone is probably the most boring thing in the world, for me. And I have heard plenty of systems which generate great wads of rumbling mess, constantly, while the music is going - something which is totally absent from the real thing. I know what a pipe organ sounds like, and having lots of very low rumbling, while everything above in frequency is pretty weak-kneed doesn't do a thing for me. I'm after intensity in playback, and most systems substitute bellowing, and lots of bass walloping to make up for the fact that they can't get intensity right - it's just, Yet Another Sound Reinforcement system ...

Listen to real sound - not through a bloody PA system! - and then switch on your audio system - it's the contrast between the two that tells the story.

 

[fas42]

In fact generating interesting tone colour in large organ pipes is quite a messy business, that builders have been grappling with for ages - http://www.stephenbicknell.org/3.6.01.php.

A sense of the content ...

Some of the above may give you the clue to why the Anglo-American tonal style of the period round 1900, with very, very little harmonic development in the chorus can sound so ... well, frankly, dull. Aural interest is not provided by the organ tone itself - which is terribly lacking in content - but in rapid changes of registration (it doesn't matter two hoots whether the other colours are harmonic flutes, violes d'orchestre, french horns or chrysolglots - they just have to be very different from each other). The old masters did not change stops often, not because they were either primitive or stupid, but because their tonal recipe satisfied the ear for long periods at a time.

 

[Cosmik]

In fact generating interesting tone colour in large organ pipes is quite a messy business, that builders have been grappling with for ages - http://www.stephenbicknell.org/3.6.01.php.

A sense of the content ...

Sounds like a more authoritative version of what I said earlier. Reproducing organ is easy because it is close to steady state waveforms, but a weedy system may sound particularly weedy because there's less transient "detail" to mask its weediness.

 

[fas42]

It should be easy - electronic organs of various forms have been around for ages, a musical instrument in themselves; why should it be harder to reproduce the tonal qualities of one that happens to be mechanical? IME it's the richness of the harmonic structure when a huge number of pipes all go off at once that makes or breaks the impact - the density of that texture is what conveys the grandness and power of the pipe organ.

 

[fas42]

Noting that the thread at WBF on the notorious MasterBuild cables has come to life again - as I've mentioned earlier, this appears to be a classic "last piece in the puzzle" solution for many ambitious systems, transitioning the subjective experience into the "special" zone. The people with this 'fix' are well aware that the "magic" will be lost when the cables are removed - I had similar headaches with my first competent setup, and was struggling to keep the integrity intact.

As remarked by some, a key aspect is that one is aware of "so much more information" in the sound space - tremendous riches, effortlessly easy to peruse. This is not because there is some special magic in a particular component or part of the system - merely that one is actually hearing much more of what's in the raw recording, without it being a conscious effort to do so.

 

[Blumlein 88]

If cables are an essential part of your solution, you have little credibility with me. I lean toward the illusion of more information being just that.... An illusion.