Card carrying objectivists

[tomelex]

You've lost me there, "objectively" what is stereo lacking? I'm not sure what you are referring too?

That's a subjective opinion made without a reference to "perfect"

So, no where in nature do you hear two pinpoint sources of sound for starters. I know, its just an illusion and all that, but stereo is pretty fake at it. It is of course a recording that we listen to over two speakers, no one except folks on WBF claim that stereo sounds like being there. Since it is a recording, and designed as best it can to help with our illusion of a venue being brought to our room, even if it were technically perfect, it would still be only conveying perhaps 5 or 10% of what your ears would hear at the event (the mics do not act like ears nor do they sample much of the wavefront passing by). All of this is just me saying that "embellishing the recording is not a bad thing in my book" and I can still be an objectivist about a pretty lossy replication system, and still enjoy an altered to taste rendition of the recording, much the same way different mixes or interpretations of the same song can be preferred over others by us when we get to compare them side by side, as after all, it is just an illusion, which do we prefer?

I guess I am just saying that card carrying objectivists can like non perfect playback of a lossy reproduction system.

Measurements verify fidelity to source (Hi-Fidelity), not preference. Musicality is meeting your own preference expectations. 2 channel stereo can't do reality, just an illusion.

 

[RayDunzl]

So, no where in nature do you hear two pinpoint sources of sound for starters.

At your eardrums?

Is this a test?

 

[Wombat]

Loudspeaker directivity isn't particularly pin-point over the audio frequency range.

 

[tomelex]

At your eardrums?

Is this a test?

You guys are keeping me up late tonight... Ray! If you are recording two speakers playing in a room, you have two pinpoint sources, but nowhere in any natural setting is that going on as far as a band or concert or whatever.

Yet, stereo tries to replicate a natural event with two speakers...that's one reason it does not work too well, its un natural.

Binaural, that is a mic in each of your ear canals, that is as close to natural as you are going to get.

The whole point is that given stereo is a lossy and un natural system, I can't get down on folks for not wanting perfect audio replication of a recording which is un natural. Since it is un natural, it is IMO natural that some want to color to taste.

I am only advocating that a perfect replication of an un natural recording medium is not, well, perfect unless, well, you like un natural illusions. Multi channel, binaural, ambisonics, all kinds of stuff because folks just don't totally dig it as it is or as it is delivered to us over two speakers.

 

[tomelex]

Loudspeaker directivity isn't particularly pin-point over the audio frequency range.

Don't argue with tomelex, he will drag you down to his level (your tag line) ahahahahah

 

[Wombat]

Loudspeaker directivity isn't particularly pin-point over the audio frequency range.

Don't argue with tomelex, he will drag you down to his level (your tag line) ahahahahah

I'll risk it.

 

[Blumlein 88]

You guys are keeping me up late tonight... Ray! If you are recording two speakers playing in a room, you have two pinpoint sources, but nowhere in any natural setting is that going on as far as a band or concert or whatever.

Yet, stereo tries to replicate a natural event with two speakers...that's one reason it does not work too well, its un natural.

Binaural, that is a mic in each of your ear canals, that is as close to natural as you are going to get.

The whole point is that given stereo is a lossy and un natural system, I can't get down on folks for not wanting perfect audio replication of a recording which is un natural. Since it is un natural, it is IMO natural that some want to color to taste.

I am only advocating that a perfect replication of an un natural recording medium is not, well, perfect unless, well, you like un natural illusions. Multi channel, binaural, ambisonics, all kinds of stuff because folks just don't totally dig it as it is or as it is delivered to us over two speakers.

That is why I like one musician per speaker. One musician gets one microphone and one speaker to play it back upon.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Loudspeaker directivity isn't particularly pin-point over the audio frequency range.

Musicians and musical instruments aren't particularly pinpoint either.

 

[Sal1950]

The whole point is that given stereo is a lossy and un natural system, I can't get down on folks for not wanting perfect audio replication of a recording which is un natural. .

I don't think there's many (if any) of us here that do. I only see opposition to the position that ones ears in sighted listening is a better arbitrator to what's a accurate reproduction of the "artists intent" be that a blumlein miked orchestra or a 64 channel rock recording. You know, the usually WBF type of subjective BS that they can hear things we can't measure yet and know better which components are more High Fidelity. Not to mention claims of hearing the bends of a speaker cable and other such lunacy. Almost everyone here I can think of is playing with some sort of source modifying device, be that DSP or like myself using phony multi channel codex's to synth a 5.2 soundfield from stereo.

 

[Wombat]

Don't mention soundstage.

 

[Cosmik]

All of this is just me saying that "embellishing the recording is not a bad thing in my book"

You only have the composite recording to play with, not the individual microphone feeds or the instruments as separate objects to manipulate. Unless the producers "signed off" the recording using the same 'embellishment' (in reality a mild guitar fuzzbox?) on their playback system then you are just trying to play amateur 'producer' without even having access to the raw material.

What you will certainly do is destroy stereo imaging. Maybe that is the goal indirectly, but if so there are easier, cheaper, better ways to do it.

 

[FrantzM]

Seems the thread is moving toward the inadequacies of a given method of reproduction ... stereo (which,by the way, doesn't mean 2-channel) versus MCh...
The OP was about the real differences between gear or so I thought and at this juncture I am still not clear what are the positions on the concepts.

Lets's conduct a thought experiment here: I will take an extrme example:

1. On one side an old school original Krell KSA-80 .. Brutal, can drive a short circuit to glorious fire and sparks without breaking a sweat.
2. On the other an old school Spectral DMA-80

Both measure extremely well. Flat to the MHz region and with distortion level that would confuse any audio analysis instruments.
We use a pair of linear and full range speaker, say a pair of Revel Salon2. We know these are accurate and one of the better speakers out there.
We make sure that everything is level-matched to 0.5 dB at 500 Hz. We listen at an average of 80 dB to both ..
Would they sound the same?

I doubt they would.

 

[Cosmik]

Seems the thread is moving toward the inadequacies of a given method of reproduction ... stereo (which,by the way, doesn't mean 2-channel) versus MCh...
The OP was about the real differences between gear or so I thought and at this juncture I am still not clear what are the positions on the concepts.

Lets's conduct a thought experiment here: I will take an extrme example:

1. On one side an old school original Krell KSA-80 .. Brutal, can drive a short circuit to glorious fire and sparks without breaking a sweat.
2. On the other an old school Spectral DMA-80

Both measure extremely well. Flat to the MHz region and with distortion level that would confuse any audio analysis instruments.
We use a pair of linear and full range speaker, say a pair of Revel Salon2. We know these are accurate and one of the better speakers out there.
We make sure that everything is level-matched to 0.5 dB at 500 Hz. We listen at an average of 80 dB to both ..
Would they sound the same?

I doubt they would.

I think you are saying that incomplete measurements don't tell the whole story. In this case, by concentrating only on the frequency domain, perhaps it is missed that the amplifiers differ in their output impedance, damping factor or some such. But in specifying the make and model (both of which I know nothing about BTW) you are giving details of the design. Effectively, by knowing something about the design, you are given clues about where to look for differences in the measurements.

 

[FrantzM]

My thinking is based on some articles by the eminent Dr Geddes who retired from Audio, sadly I must add: If we were to take a codec such as mp3 applied to a given piece of music , I doubt you could call this a linear process, IOW it introduces a lot of distortion, yet, what it comes out, is very much recognizable and often indistinguishable from the original. It is one of those things that tells me that just measuring how much THD and perhaps IMD on equipment leaves us with incomplete knowledge of its real-world performance.
I will come back to this thread later much more to say about this.

 

[March Audio]

My thinking is based on some articles by the eminent Dr Geddes who retired from Audio, sadly I must add: If we were to take a codec such as mp3 applied to a given piece of music , I doubt you could call this a linear process, IOW it introduces a lot of distortion, yet, what it comes out, is very much recognizable and often indistinguishable from the original. It is one of those things that tells me that just measuring how much THD and perhaps IMD on equipment leaves us with incomplete knowledge of its real-world performance.
I will come back to this thread later much more to say about this.

Thats actually a perfect example of just how much we do understand about auditory perception and measurements.

MP3 is successful because of this understanding and what things we are sensitive / insensitive to and how to measure theem. Isolating a couple of measurements is simplistic to say the least and I dont think anyone believes thd or IM tell the whole story.

Or another way you could look at this is that we cant hear things some would like to think we can

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

You've lost me there, "objectively" what is stereo lacking? I'm not sure what you are referring too?

In a simplified word or two, stereo is lacking something approaching a plausible image of the space and dimensionality of a live venue and the performers within it. But, imaging is not something you can measure by hooking up a test device and looking at the numbers or scope traces that come out. The image is formed toward the brain end of our complex ear-brain hearing system, and we have not yet found a good way to place probes in that region of our heads so as to be able to measure auditory imaging quality objectively.

Objective audio measurements tend to focus only on what goes into our ears, not on what happens in the overall hearing process as the auditory signal travels up our nervous system to our brain. So, much as we objectivists hate to admit it, objective measurements cannot tell us the whole story about what we perceive based on auditory stimuli entering or even inside the ear canal. But, yes, I firmly believe that the higher the quality of the sound waves entering our ears, the better the quality of the perceived result our brain tells us it "hears".

Objectively controlled listener studies can ask us what we perceive or what we prefer. But, Amir has already weighed in on this, and he finds such studies subjective, since they involve our subjective impressions. Such studies can still be objectively scientific and quite valuable in revealing of broad tendencies or preferences among most people.

One caveat to my first sentence is in order. In commercial, studio produced popular music genres, there is very little sense of live space that is miked or which survives the mixing and other production processes. Nor, can we buy a ticket to sit in the studio during the recording to know what it actually did sound like live. A terrific, enjoyable music listening experience may still result, but we have nothing as a reference by which we can say objectively that this recording was truer or less true to live.

I still think approaching truer to live is the ultimate goal. But, even going to live concerts still only leaves us with a basis for comparison that is subjective and potentially faulty because our imperfect acoustic memory is involved. But, that is just the way it is.

 

[Cosmik]

...imaging is not something you can measure by hooking up a test device and looking at the numbers or scope traces that come out.

I'll bet you that for every 'impulse' that emanates from a place in the 'soundstage', high correlation between the two channels for that particular impulse (delayed, phase shifted as appropriate for the position in the soundstage) as they emerge from the speakers will give you good imaging - because that is how it is supposed to work. Only a linear, neutral system is capable of this. As soon as you start messing around with compression, doppler distortion, vinyl/valve-style fuzz distortion, etc. you are losing this fine correlation and therefore losing the imaging.

If what I describe doesn't work, then we don't even know how stereo works, nor how to build a stereo system! Neither of which I believe to be true.

Edit: I'll add this, too: Saying that we don't know how to measure 'imaging' implies that some people are better at building systems that 'image' than others and they even have special techniques for it that we mortals don't understand. It's like saying we don't know how to measure 'musicality' or 'vividness' or other audiophile descriptions, and attributing those things to skilled, sensitive engineers, artists and craftsmen who know the correct PCB layout for maximum vividness, etc. Those people don't exist! All of this stuff is in the recording or, if you want to look at it the other way round, in the mind of the listener. The only requirement to maximise all of it is to keep the reproduction neutral.

 

[Thomas savage]

Visual association seems to have a profound effect on ‘ soundstage ‘ or where you ‘think’ the sound is emanating from.

You spend some time associating a visual reference with a sound the two can match up in your mind.

 

[Jakob1863]

<snip>You know, the usually WBF type of subjective BS that they can hear things we can't measure yet and know better which components are more High Fidelity.<snip>

IMO at the beginning of such a discussion it´s usually the other way round. Somebody describes something he has heard (or more precise that he thinks he has heard) and other people are telling him that it couldn´t be real because somebody did somewhere, somehow measure something and therefore......

We are dealing with models; a model about the way our measurements describe the true behaviour of any DUT and a model about the way our hearing sense works and about the way it all works together.

To claim being an objectivist is much easier than to act like a true one.

The advice to use something like "Foobar ABX" for testing purposes is imo a good example. We knew that ABX is a protocol that is more demanding than others, we know that probably due to different internal judgement processes triggered by different test protocols, the proportion of correct responses differs and is often more worse in ABX tests compared with other protocols. Furthermore we know that a single human trying controlled listening tests will at the beginning most likely not be able to function at his best.

But although we know all this you nearly never get an according warning about those confounders. If you think that all shouldn´t matter, ask yourself it that itsn´t just a purely subjectiv point of view.

 

[Sal1950]

In a simplified word or two, stereo is lacking something approaching a plausible image of the space and dimensionality of a live venue and the performers within it. But, imaging is not something you can measure by hooking up a test device and looking at the numbers or scope traces that come out.

Saying that we don't know how to measure 'imaging'

Is that what he's saying, we can't measure imaging?
I'll say this, if modern amps measures transparent, they will image the same. We've heard all the claims a million times but still never any solid evidence that these qualities can be reliably identified in a controlled blind test. Once the speakers enter the mix, all bets are off.