The most important parameter of all: overall system integrity

[fas42]

Brown... It's all gone a terrible shade of brown.

Yeahh ... why?

Not, happy, Jan!!!

People from my part of the world understand that one ...

 

[fas42]

Thank you for the reply.

Big room - that makes a difference.

Opinion:
Small room at high SPL seems to, let's call it "overload". The reflected sound (delayed) intensity is at such a high level that it conflicts with what should be the quiet (if there is any) between the notes, so, dynamic contrast is compromised, and gets worse as the direct gets louder, past the 'too loud for the room" level.

I can have a taste of that problem here. I'm not certain of the source of the irritation. It could be my ears, as they can do odd things with "too loud" sounds (not specifically the stereo).

This is an interesting one. I do wonder how much various people differ in how their hearing systems deal with higher intensity sound - personally, I can "handle" such, provided it is very clean. So, live instrument sound is OK - a couple of years back I stood in a tiny cavity of a room, with a grandson who was hammering a starter drum kit; the transients were phenomenal, the sound levels were ferocious, bite and attack was the name of the game - it was overpowering, but highly enjoyable; being "bathed" with that type of sound gives me a big hit.

 

[RayDunzl]

Brown... It's all gone a terrible shade of brown.

Looks like not much choice...

...but choosing the Default Style instead of the Forum Style seems to bring back what we had.

 

[Don Hills]

Is that a polite way of saying it's all turned to merde?

 

[fas42]

Looks like not much choice...

...but choosing the Default Style instead of the Forum Style seems to bring back what we had.

Pheewww! ... relief!!

 

[Cosmik]

This is an interesting one. I do wonder how much various people differ in how their hearing systems deal with higher intensity sound - personally, I can "handle" such, provided it is very clean. So, live instrument sound is OK - a couple of years back I stood in a tiny cavity of a room, with a grandson who was hammering a starter drum kit; the transients were phenomenal, the sound levels were ferocious, bite and attack was the name of the game - it was overpowering, but highly enjoyable; being "bathed" with that type of sound gives me a big hit.

What do you think would happen if you were listening to a speaker 'loud' and you disconnected the tweeter and the woofer? Suddenly, even though the sound was, in absolute terms, 'quieter' it would seem painfully loud and you would rush to turn it down. You have to have the whole spectrum to tolerate loud music.

People who don't have much bass in their systems live with a variation of this condition all the time. People with ported speakers live with a special version of it, where the bass extends (in a woolly fashion) down to some frequency and then drops off very rapidly.

 

[fas42]

People who don't have much bass in their systems live with a variation of this condition all the time. People with ported speakers live with a special version of it, where the bass extends (in a woolly fashion) down to some frequency and then drops off very rapidly.

Depends on the quality, IME. This story I've repeated several times over the years: the previous system was a decent enough all-in-one home theatre rig, by Philips - with a genuine sub-woofer. That is, it had separate power supply and amp in that box ... and many times I was listening to stuff, blissfully unaware that the sub was not working! Not one iota ... I had a dodgy link in the mechanical sense, and quite often the solder called it a day - finally, the penny would drop.

Nominally the crossover was 180Hz or so, so huge chunks of the spectrum went missing - but it took a recording where there was real emphasis of the bass region, to make it clear that there was a "problem" ...

 

[Cosmik]

Depends on the quality, IME. This story I've repeated several times over the years: the previous system was a decent enough all-in-one home theatre rig, by Philips - with a genuine sub-woofer. That is, it had separate power supply and amp in that box ... and many times I was listening to stuff, blissfully unaware that the sub was not working! Not one iota ... I had a dodgy link in the mechanical sense, and quite often the solder called it a day - finally, the penny would drop.

Nominally the crossover was 180Hz or so, so huge chunks of the spectrum went missing - but it took a recording where there was real emphasis of the bass region, to make it clear that there was a "problem" ...

Real music is (or can be) rich, warm, enveloping. Listening to a brass band performing in a hall at Christmas as our family seems to now have a tradition of, the sound is rich and warm. Part of that is the bass. You may not be sensitive to it (as you are not sensitive to dynamic compression) but I certainly am.

 

[fas42]

Real music is (or can be) rich, warm, enveloping. Listening to a brass band performing in a hall at Christmas as our family seems to now have a tradition of, the sound is rich and warm. Part of that is the bass. You may not be sensitive to it (as you are not sensitive to dynamic compression) but I certainly am.

You believe that rich and warm is due to bass, in part - yes, if it is part of the score. However, the majority of that sensation is because the sound is not contaminated with subtle playback distortion, even at elevated SPLs ... how do I know this? Because, I've been there over and over again with systems - the sound is thin and scrawny until the last ugly artifacts are extricated; the result after is a full, rich, satisfying experience that envelopes one, with zero unpleasantness.

As I have said so many times, this is probably something most people will never "get" until they finally hear a system that does this sort of thing effortlessly - if you put a switch on it, to allow it to drop back to conventional reproduction - and switch between the two modes, back, forth, back, forth ... then it will start making sense ...

 

[Thomas savage]

Real music is (or can be) rich, warm, enveloping. Listening to a brass band performing in a hall at Christmas as our family seems to now have a tradition of, the sound is rich and warm. Part of that is the bass. You may not be sensitive to it (as you are not sensitive to dynamic compression) but I certainly am.

Great, I will think of you at Christmas while your tearing it up listening to brass...,

 

[fas42]

A new thread on WBF addresses the same 'issue' for the millionth time - "... What technology best to make speakers disappear?", with the belief that the speakers are the appropriate pixie dust to worry about - "These tyres will make every car feel like a Ferrari to drive, sir!!" Good to see Jim Smith come in and mention a more intelligent concept: "best technology is not a component, but a technique - proper setup". Of course he's coming from the getting the sound waves in the room to behave themselves angle - but he's got the right end of the stick in at least one sense, .

 

[Cosmik]

What technology best to make speakers disappear?

Remind me again. Is this the version where you can walk around the room with your eyes shut and not be able to point to the speakers, or just the one where you sit in one place?

 

[fas42]

Different levels of the same thing - the audiophiles' "sweet spot" is the starting point of that experience - which is what the OP is worried about - and that can be extended, by optimising the system overall, to get the whole room sensation. The current NAD setup hovers between those points of reference, depending upon how much effort I've put into getting a particular tweaking and listening session happening.

 

[RayDunzl]

Where's the "overall system integrity" if it depends "upon how much effort I've put into getting a particular tweaking and listening session happening."

 

[amirm]

A new thread on WBF addresses the same 'issue' for the millionth time - "... What technology best to make speakers disappear?"

Pretty simple:

 

[fas42]

Where's the "overall system integrity" if it depends "upon how much effort I've put into getting a particular tweaking and listening session happening."

Because that project is still on the boil - I've slowed down a lot lately, and haven't done a whole heap of things which should be done to get some progress happening. The technique is to pull out all the stops in optimising the environment - spoon-feeding the the setup in a very temporary way to hear what the end potential could be - once a reference marker of quality is got then the goal is robustness: have a system always produce that quality, irrespective of environmental factors.

 

[watchnerd]

Transformation from kitchen radio to immersive hologram does not happen without very large, measurable changes to the signal.

Or good drugs.

Which is usually much cheaper.

 

[fas42]

Very large changes don't happen, it's the low level stuff that alters - it's measurable, but hard to capture ... but, very important to the human hearing system.

Consider a real life example: you're talking to a friend on a busy street, a loud truck goes past, but you still register what he's saying while this happens. Put a mic on the scene, the roar of the truck will "overwhelm" the sonic picture - was the friend talking, or not talking, while this happened? In fact, repeat the recording, once with the friend talking, once without - as a "pretend" exercise - identical except for that extra voice in it. Okay, now "measure" that difference ... the human ear can ...

It's focusing on getting good reproduction of that aspect that's the critical part of system integrity.

 

[watchnerd]

Indeed it should. But it doesn't require something that is terribly sophisticated in terms of the driver.


No, it goes beyond ropiness ... at the bottom of the scale a simple kitchen radio type of system can make such a recording sound reasonable; as one moves up the conventional ladder of system "improvement" the subjective impression will dive into a deep hole, because every tiny defect of the recording will be very evident, and largely submerge the impact of the actual musical event - it can be unlistenable to; only when getting close to "special" sound does the presentation start to recover, and the defects start to take a back step to the sense of the performance;

This defies the logic of what a good sound system should do:

A good sound system is about *reproduction*.

Crappy recordings should sound crappy.

If crappy recordings don't sound crappy, the system is not doing a good job of reproduction.

QED.

 

[fas42]

This defies the logic of what a good sound system should do:

A good sound system is about *reproduction*.

Crappy recordings should sound crappy.

If crappy recordings don't sound crappy, the system is not doing a good job of reproduction.

QED.

Doesn't work like that - high quality level reproduction takes one beyond the point of what being aware, continuously, of the "faults" in the recording - they don't go away, they are still all there, but your mind discards them as being "irrelevant" to the message of the recording. Of course, one can choose to force your mind to notice the faults, but it's not easy ...

Which also brings up one's definition of "crappy" - recordings can have myriads of faults, technical ones, storage ones, production ones - what "high definition" systems often do is draw one's attention extremely strongly to those qualities - like standing right next to the stage, with a strong light shining on the actor; every flaw in his makeup, every wrinkle in his costume stands out. That's the "truth" - but is that the point of watching the performance?