What Absolute Sound?
This subject comes up periodically on the forums and recently on this blog – the subject being how can modern music be used to test the sound of a sound system – and are we not really dependent on comparing what unamplified acoustical instruments sound like on our systems versus what they sound like in reality?
I.E. do we need a reference ‘perfect’ sound with which to determine just how much fidelity our high-fidelity reproduction systems have?
Definitely an aesthetically pleasing argument. But does it hold up? Is this the ONLY way to ascertain fidelity of a system?
Personally, I find it too limiting.
First, one can argue that there is no ‘perfect’ sound – that our recordings of, say, a piano are so very far from sounding like a real piano and that we cannot ask our systems to sound like a piano if the source material does not sound like a piano. A corollary to this is that 99% of people have no idea what a piano sounds like. And much fewer what the particular piano sounded like that is being recorded – in that particular hall – at the location of the particular microphone(s).
Second, that many people cannot tell the difference between a modest stereo system’s reproduction of a live band and the live band itself. I think Dunlavy used to hold these demos [using very modest albeit dynamic systems] in their factory. [I am very familiar what an acoustical guitar sounds like from 2 to, say, 10 feet away. I can be ‘fooled’ sometimes because my ear will focus on a limited number of cues: the note attack and note decay and note harmonics (of the guitar body and other strings, as well as buzzing against the pick and or frets, etc) ].
Third, music like Radiohead is recorded better and has a higher fidelity to the original music because so much of the original music is electronically generated – this is its natural medium. It doesn’t have to go from vibrations to sound to microphone to weak electrical signals. Radiohead is great for testing – and fairly unique – because it is both complex and recorded very very well. Classical music, when complex, often has issues because the instruments are so spread out they are hard to record with a single microphone – and multiple microphones introduce problems, etc. etc.
So a conclusion here, it seems , is that one has to pay freaking close attention to the sound of the reproduction even if it is purportedly of an acoustical instrument. Are the notes rendered well, how does the music make us feel, etc. And we also compare to other music we have heard on this system as well as this same music we have heard on other systems as well as other music by the same band as well as how other sources (LP, CD, Tape, SACD, etc.) of this same music has sounded in the past.
It is all about triangulating and interpolating and comparing and re-comparing sound to other sounds – and whether that sound is an acoustic instrument or a electronic keyboard or a voice or whatever – it hardly matters IMHO.
OK. My usual argument went like this: very, very few people give a darn whether their music is from an acoustical instrument or not – they just care about the MUSIC and THAT is what has to sound good and have high-fidelity. The question of whether a piano can be reproduced well, and whether reproducing a piano well means it can also reproduce Hendrix’s guitar well, is fine to debate but one could just as well shirt-circuit the whole mess and just listen to a recording of Hendrix’s guitar. I.E. one listens to music one likes and if that sounds correct, with respect to memories of live performances and memories of similar music on the system and similar systems, then one is happy happy.
Good breakdown-
As you know, this is why I like music like radiohead…….there is no perfect because that sound doesn’t exactly exist in real life, and its home medium is not live, its stereo!
I definitely wasn’t asking any of these questions listening to the album though, I was off in space or somewhere else. 🙂
Also, conspiracy theories are coming to the surface, maybe that album IS a 33 after all!
http://www.nme.com/news/radiohead/55086
Mike
I think that the key is developing a standard for cmoparison. The key is that it needs to be something with which you are intimately familiar. In my particular case this tends to be unamplified classical music, particularly string quartets or solo stringed instruments. For others it may be something else. To say that if you enjoy the music on a particular system, that is enough is perhaps another approach, but it has little to do with absolute sound in my opinion.
I can’t resist making several brief comments, but I am planning a more rigorous response in the future. First: I’m with Fred in that a standard for comparison (I’ll take it to be “absolute sound’ although this is a new term to me) is essential where it exists and it does exist in live performances of classical music…..except that I’m also with Mike in that a different but equally valid standard exists in the form of criteria to be achieved which is like but goes a bit beyond “if that sounds correct….then one is very happy.” I take “correct” in this context to be a synthesis of such things as memories of live performances, similar music, similar systems but I’ll stretch Mike’s comment to fit a dichotomy I like: A set of objective criteria at one end (Mike has repeatedly identified these criteria, eg. harmonics, micro/macro/midi dnamics PRATT, detail, in these blogs) that establish a standard of what is to be achieved by the system and, on the other hand, a reference sound to be replicated at the other end – clearly something Fred and I evidently must do because we both use live classical as a reference (which is not to imply that we cannot and do not also, and concurrently, factor in objective criteria but that is NOT the same thing. Both approaches have their place, and where an absolute sound doesn’t exist, a proxy is easily found in a reference system that one likes and which can be used as a “standard” for comparison.
I’m a bit more comfortable with the comparative standard because it seems totally objective in that it avoids disagreement on either the selection or exclusion of explicit criteria, some of which might be universal, and some of which might be personal preference of the reviewers. Of course once the criteria are established, defined adequately, and agreed to by all testors, either method can work for a shoot out or system/component evaluation.
Coming back to Radiohead…that was, and is problematic for me at the moment as a test track because I’m not familiar with the musical score, the instruments and how they should sound, separate and together, so I cannot really appy at this time a comparative standard. But I could easily play them a few times on my home reference system which would then be for me the “absolute sound” and I could go from there to other systems noting the differences. (And, by the way, I have enjoyed the two times I heard the track.)
Could it sound great on many systems….sure but that’s something different…as different as beauty being in the eye of the beholder, whether on Medical MaryJane, a druglike high, etc. I do get the sense that high-end audio owners generally have a higher standard that is more difficult to attain when stone cold sobre although when that standard is attained in can alter that stone cold sobre state.
Hi Fred, Hi Jim.
OK. I am somewhat playing the devil’s advocate here… but really just pointing out that the emperor has no clothes… [in reality, we have to use all methods available to evaluate a system’s sound – including this one].
The chart is hopefully self-explanatory. I am sure all the manly men here will think that, for them, A & B are equivalent 🙂 But it is truly not – we do not sit where the microphone is and each performance and hall is very different from all others.
C is what the CD should actually sound like on a system that plays pack whatever is on the CD with 100% fidelity.
Note that for the Radiohead-ish approach [I need to add a chart for this too] we actually have heard the things we are comparing our system sound to, whereas in the chart here, with the Absolute Sound approach, we have not EVER heard B,C, or D – we are just making it all up in our heads.
Another technique to determine the quality of a system is to look at its relative quality with respect to other systems, other configurations of a system, and various kinds of music. Using this method we do not pretend that we know what the original music sounded like before it was massacred by the microphone, cabling, digital and/or analog manipulations, sound engineers, and CD pressing processes – and that our systems can actually unravel that destructive chain, somehow, miraculously [though a great system DOES do a decent job of it in spite of all this! :-)], and get us back to hearing the original music.
The primary problem with this method here is that people get worse and worse configurations because they are not triangulating correctly [i.e. using insufficient attributes when comparing sounds – focusing only one a few attributes, like soundstage depth – and/or incorrectly remembering attributes of the sound of previous configurations]. The remedy for this is to go to shows and actually listen to high-quality systems [or go to a high quality dealer], which are perhaps not the ones that your buddies tell you about – and ‘recalibrate your ears’.
And then there’s a distinctly different take from Audio Note UK in which “comparison by reference” is replaced with “comparison by contrast” . . .
http://www.audionote.co.uk/articles/art_audio_hell.shtml
Hi Mike,
Thanks for making and leaving us the disc!
We listened to it again, critically, last night. Yes, I agree, the music is very hypnotic, very purposefully-created soundscapes… at heart just very entertaining. They mix it up a lot so it doesn’t get boring [when a person isn’t just spacing out big time :-)] unlike, say, many other kinds of often repetitive music. The consensus is still that track 6 is the best.
Yeah, at only 37 minutes long and having been two years – one can’t help but think that this is either 1/2 a larger album or the overflow of a normal-sized album…
Take care,
-Mike
Great topic and discussion.
After much thought and experimentation, I have come to take a rather extreme (to many) view of system evaluation.
For the purpose of the evaluation of playback systems, there is now absolute sound. That is, there’s no real traceability between what’s heard in my living room and the original sonic event. And even if there was, how would I know?
All I know is what’s on the disk, and how that disk translates to sound on competing systems.
The original event – the only absolute sound there is – was ephemeral and I wasn’t there. The correspondence between the ‘real’ absolute sound and playback is far more a characteristic embodied in the media than it is a characteristic of may DAC or speakers. (Notice how some disks sound great on just about *any* system?)
Operationally, my approach to this conundrum is quite similar to Mike’s “triangulating different flavors.” But the rhetoric that I use is stronger.
Lastly, the reference that I use ultimately tends toward the center of the cloud of experiences of reference system playback that I’ve encountered. It’s almost a statistical approach.
Of course, like all worthy (subjectivist) audiophiles, I selectively ignore this reference at times. Sometimes fantasy (distortion) is more pleasing than realism – just like in real life.
Bob
Bob, Mike;
I arrived at this same “realistic” and logical conclusion several years ago; that is the fact that the “absolute sound” is “innate” in each one of us and non existent in the audiophile-quest sense of the term. Over the last seven years, I have drifted away from the audiophile world and into the mastering studio world and have been able to design and put together a system that allows me to adjust and dial-in ALL audiophile parameters to my “innate” aural version of the “absolute sound”. I now have at my hands a system that is flexible, able and capable of tailoring the sonic presentation to my “ideals”. It has not been inexpensive, actually far from that, but it has reached a level that allows me to achieve greater realism than any other system which I have ever heard, and I have heard some of the most expensive and most highly regarded systems around the world, including a hand full of professional reviewer’s systems.
I have done the same with my system, Carlos.
Except for speakers, my system is ‘pro’ and I use DSP to reduce distortion (or sometimes deterministically create it).
Incidentally, I just reported on a fun new tool to help folks find their ‘absolute sound.’ Link below.
Bob
http://baasnotes.com/blog/2011/02/27/equalization-for-audiophiles-the-easy-way/
OK. Thanks for your comments everybody – lots for us to discuss.
Let’s start with equalization.
The software talked about on BaasNotes, for computer audio, is more or less free and it might be real fun to play with – and your signal is already digital – so you do not have to A to D to A, – but…
It seems to me that this will by necessity add/remove things to the signal – and at frequencies that it should not. But if you do not care that you are’ trashing’ several freq ranges, the ranges that you have apparently decided are not quite what you are looking for – then I can see that it might be useful.
We struggle here and spend the big bucks to PRESERVE the signal, not to mutilate it. And it is the very low level, subtle, extremely delicate information, which communicates a lot of the stuff I really want to hear, that seems most at risk when mucking with the signal in any way shape or form.
If what comes out at the end is not quite perfect, we can alter the speaker setup some.
Another solution, if your speaker placement is overly constrained, is high-end room treatment. Like PAL Performance Acoustic Labs. Kind of expensive but many other room treatments are a scam IMHO.
The best I’ve heard this computer audio equalization approach work was at RMAF in the Magico room. The flatter freq. response was nice, but the soul-less sterile nature of the sound may have been one of the equalization’s side-effects as much as anything else [it may depend on if just the bass was mucked with or if the entire range was ‘adjusted’].
Take care,
-Mike
OK.
Next subject here.
Purposefully, knowingly, tailoring the sound to our individual tastes.
I wonder if we can draw an analogy with the art of painting. Around the turn of the last century.
For a long time, 1000s of years, painters tried to paint things, landscapes and portraits for example, as accurately as possible [within the social norms of the day. There is always an orthodoxy that says your painting has to look a certain way].
Then came the camera. Photos are extremely accurate very high-fidelity paintings.
Painters still painted portraits and landscapes, but most became more interpretive. They painted in a way that emphasized the essence of the reality – as they saw it.
So, here we are in high-end audio. I would say that we do not have a ‘camera’ technology for audio that renders perfect sound from any musical signal. Not yet.
But what if you decide that we ARE close enough. That the average ‘good system’ does render a “close enough” facsimile of the real thing. And that you want your system to be interpretive, to emphasize, say, dynamics – because you feel that is the core of what music is all about [analogous to lighting – I would propose -which painters were also fascinated with both before and after the camera].
So in this sense, system design is BOTH an art and a science – and we each have to weigh and decide how much of one or the other we are going to use to design each system that we design. How much we are going for all out fidelity and how much we are going for our personal interpretation of what is the true heart and soul of music.
And – a word to the wise – not everybody is a Picasso and some ugly and bizarre paintings and stereo systems are just, well, ugly and bizarre. 🙂
Take care,
-Mike
Mike,
Thanks for your thoughtful response to the posts that Carlos and I wrote.
I respect your opinion greatly. That why I visit here periodically. But, with respect, I disagree with the opinions you expressed in the last two posts.
I wrote a seven-paragraph rebuttal to your positions, but I’ve decided that this blog isn’t that right place for me to post those thoughts.
Keep up the great work.
Rembrandt
Hi Rembrandt,
🙂
Hmmm…
I do not see how anyone could disagree with my last two posts… ?
First post says that adding *anything* in the signal chain will almost certainly degrade the signal to some degree – especially things, like equalizers, whose whole purpose is to degrade the signal (notch filters etc)l – and even things like solder joints, loose connections, faux balanced to single-ended (or single-ended to balanced) wiring inside components… everything. And that one of the first things that get degraded are the most subtle cues – cues to do with emotional content for example.
The second post says that one can consider system design to be both a science – getting the best fidelity possible, and an art – tuning the system to one’s taste [or from a different perspective, to emphasize some of the key attributes of the musicality of the music].
Perhaps you are just responding to the ‘ugly and bizarre’ comment. 🙂 Go to a couple of shows and you will know what this is referring to :-). Gauguin painted yellow skies and orange grass [or visa-versa :-)] to communicate Tahiti’s vibrant nature. Not everybody can get away with this 😉 esp. w/o some nude island women in the background.
Take care,
-Mike
“I do not see how anyone could disagree with my last two posts… ?”
You’ve made my point, Mike. I do disagree.
I have been to many shows. Heard the good and the horrible. The existence of so many horrible, expensive systems at these shows makes my point too.
Something has to change. I’m suggesting an avenue that I’ve found quite fruitful. The notion is getting rejected at its core here. (Why I deleted those paragraphs.)
Have you been to Tahiti?
LOL.
Gaugin
Mike,
A couple thoughts: First I fail to see how digital mastering equipment such as the Weiss, Junger, Quantec and Sintefex “muck up” the sound in and of themselves unless you want them to. The A to D and D to A is done by Ed Meitner’s EMM-Lab (which you carry), dCS and Digital Audio Denmark professional converters at up to 2X DSD (5.6MHz) rates and the analog mastering equipment is of the highest caliber, used to master classical recordings through out the world.
Second, I agree that audio is part art and part science and just like the arts, “aural truth”, realism and beauty are in the ear of the beholder.
I myself prefer Salvador Dali’s Spatial works to those of Picasso.
May I suggest that you go back and re-read your original “What Absolute Sound?” blog entry and your subsequent posts as they provide some of the answers of why Bob Walters and I respectfully disagree with your last two posts regarding our posts.
This is a topic that is dear and relevant to me and I’m glad that you have given it an entry way for exploration and discussion on your blog.
Thanks!
I want to be careful to take care with what I say. I have heard an earlier iteration of Carlos’ system during which he demonstrated the flexibility of his approach and it is amazing how many different aspects of the sound he can modify- depth, height, width, tonal balance etc. If I remember correctly, he was using 27 or 28 different devices daisy chained to achieve the various types of correction that he sought. More importantly, each device involved at least two points of mechanical connection. Likewise, each of these devices had to be connected with cabling with all the inherent signal losses and grounding issues which that can involve. If I remember correctly, connections were for the most part balanced. None the less, there was audible hum when no music was playing which was inaudible while music was playing. I believe that there may have also been several conversions from A/D and D/A as some of the processing was done in the analogue domain. The point of my comment is not to belittle his achievement, but to introduce the question of at what cost. Like Mike, I believe that to the extent that subtle information is lost or subyly changed, it can not be restored. Having said this, there are tradeoffs to my approach also, some of which I have been able to mitigate. I think that if all processing could be done in the digital main in the same device, the result might be interesting, but that is not currently possible.
To follow up on Fred’s comments: When Fred came for a listen, some 3 or 4 years ago, I was doing many of the processes in the analog domain as he stated. This early iteration was based on high overall loop gain which amplifies the residual gain and noise floor from each preceding analog box and what Fred actually heard before music played through the speakers was actually the amplified noise-floor and not hum to be exact. That early iteration had a certain magic, but it was only a glimpse of what was to come over the next several years. Part of the changes have involved the transition of multiple analog process from the analog to the digital domain. The incorporation of a Weiss modular mastering console, Junger dynamic processors, Quantec room simulators and the Sintefex replicator to name just a few has allowed me to reduce the gain required to achieve my objective in the analog domain, which has thus reduced the pre-music “breathing” that Fred described as hum. The other major aspect that has changed over the last 3 or 4 years is that more capable and sophisticated analog tools have become available which have granted me with a level of control and system flexibility which I never thought possible or achievable in the here and now.
It is interesting that both Mike and Fred make references to low-level detail and subtle-cues; as I once told Fred, there is much spatial and psychoacoustic information embedded in the noise-floor of recordings and that was what mandated the extremely high overall gain in the earlier iteration of my system that Fred heard 3 or 4 years ago; since then I have been able to extract and amplify these subtle and extremely important spatial and psychoacoustic information from the noise-floor in the digital domain and the results are far more spectacular. Just talk to Bob Katz about his K-Stereo system and his Digital Domain processor in my system.
Now bare in mind that this system and approach is not for everyone, to begin with its costs is extreme, in my case over 3/4 of million $ invested over the last 27 years, with over $250K since Fred last visited; and second the system looks like a thermal nuclear reactor’s control room with all the knobs and buttons at your hands. It is certainly not for amateurs or novices as it requires every bit of my advance degrees in Physics and Electrical engineering as well as my in-depth knowledge of acoustics and psychoacoustics to operate and get the most out of it. But certainly, scaled down versions can be constructed at a fraction of the cost and complexity. Ever heard of the Weiss Maya processor/converter? Daniel Weiss and Maya have the same idea in mind. Also in this era of computer audio, one can build a similar digital system through the use of plug-ins at greatly reduced cost. As Bob Walters mentioned in his last post, is the approach that matters the most and not necessarily mine or Bob’s implementation.
Mike, talk about “Big Boy” systems, I simply challenge a conventional stereo to be as resolute!
Wow, that’s a tough post to follow!
My hardware is certainly much simpler – 2010 Mac Pro, Prism Orpheus, 6 Goldmund Monoblocks, and several types of loudspeaker. I swap the speakers in and out based on mood or current interest.
My key software tools are Pure Music, Plogue Bidule, Jackrouter, and about $1K in plugins. I implement all loudspeaker crossovers and driver time alignment in the digital domain, then bi/tri-amp.
Maybe $25-30K in all, my cost.
I have tried ‘canned’ approaches to the signal processing (e.g., Lyngdorf), and found them unlistenable.
I measure everything with both my ears and my microphones, objective-then-subjective, over and over. This helps me train my listening skills, among other things.
I have a large music library. Many of the recordings are poor. Having the control to band-aid the sonics of these disks allows me to enjoy them more.
Many of my recordings are excellent. Having the ability to listen to them free of the normal crossover and room distortions is a particular joy in my life.
As a little research project, I am trying to figure out how I subjectively react to differing ‘target curves.’ To do the project, I need fine-grained control of system frequency response at the listening position. I have it.
(I also have a turntable feeding vintage SET electronics (1 wpc) and high-efficiency two-ways. I enjoy that too.)
Bob
Side Note: My main system uses Marten-like loudspeakers, and my analog system uses AN-like speakers.
Bob
Bob,
We share many, many similarities. I also have 24 sets of different amplifiers, mostly monoblock, class A bias, tube and solid-state of various output stage topologies to go along with 19 different speakers sets. My reference system is also actively tri-amplified with six (6) monoblocks through two active crossovers.
In my listening lab at this time: Amplifiers and preamplifiers from Krell, FM Acoustics, NRG Control, Nestorovic, Dynavector – tube, Techniks Avant Garde, Burmester, Klyne, Accuphase, Viva, KR Enterprises, Hot House, Spatial Coherence……………….Speakers from Magnepan, Wilson, Essence Electro Acoutiques, Leedh, Martin Logan, Paragon Acoustics, Mach One Acoustics, Tannoy concentrics………… Turntables from Transrotor and Micro-Seiki, digital gear from Forsell, Weiss, dCS, Meitner-EMM Labs, Digital Audio Denmark, Junger, Z-Systems, Quantec, Sintefex, Spatializer/DB Technologies, Sound Performance Lab (Red Series),………… all digital gear is clocked from a Rubidium Atomic clock. My processors include Circuit Research Labs, Perfect Pitch Music, NTI/Nightpro “Air” EQ, Stage Accompany, Sound Performance Lab, HSE Audio Labs, Hofex, Mindprint, CL Dynamics, Anamod………………… I really do not want or have the time to list all of my equipment on here but I can send you some pictures of my current set up.
If I may digress: Mike mentioned that this process of tailoring the musical presentation to one’s taste involved mutilating the signal; well I completely disagree with this view as this is just the mastering process that almost all recordings go through. Among the great mutilators of our times are: Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering, David Glasser at Airshow Mastering, Bernie Grundman, Ted Jensen and Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound, Bob Ohlsson, Bob Katz, Paul Stubblebine, Doug Sax, Steve Hoffman and Alan Yoshita to name just a few.
Carlos,
Pics would be great, but I’d really love to hear that setup!
bob at logictrust dot com
Bob,
I will take and send some picture this evening after my listening session.
Interesting turn this thread has taken … 🙂
First, and unless somebody has found a way to get around the 2nd law of thermodynamics or information theory (you cannot add information to the signal, you can only isomorphically transform it, or, as we have called it above, ‘mutilate’ it), each device in the circuit removes some of the original information present in the source. We can go into this in much more detail with examples if that is of interest.
Second, I consider the mastering process to be part of the performance, it arrives as part of the source media. Maybe someday they will sell source media with all 16 tracks intact so that we can do our own mastering [that would be GREAT! Someone will do this and get famous]. But until then, the mastering engineers are just another musician – like Miles Davis or Hendrix – and we get to hear their joint performance on each and every CD, LP or whatever we play.
Third, I do not care what people do with their systems. I am only pointing out different perspectives for people so we can all try and determine what we want for ourselves. To me, what Bob and Carlos are doing is like running a Picasso or Rembrandt through a number of filters that are able to change and deepen the colors and enhance this or that type of brush stroke, and bring out the edges a little more, or perhaps to blur them more… whatever. It sounds kind of cool and fun, but if I owned a Picasso, I would probably – well I would probably be very happy with myself. 🙂
Personally, as a scientist and mathematician, I do lend weight to the idea that simpler is better. Audio Note works and works on making their designs ever simpler with ever better parts. Seems like a no-brainer. Our favorite systems are often just a CD player into an integrated amp into the speakers. Very simple, very clean, very intense. And less things to go wrong 🙂
But for my office system where I do not care about getting everything possible from the mp3 files I might play [or f*kn Comcast], and if I had a lot of extra time [yeah, that’ll be the day], this playing with the signal sounds like it might be fun.
[Not trying to convince you guys – even if I could! – but just clarifying my own thoughts and practicing expressing them concisely]
It is fun.
Let me provide a better feel of what I do with it, as “re-mastering” is only a tiny part of my game.
My library contains a lot of great performances. Sadly, many are not great recordings. Think Van Cliburn Tchaikovsky 1st. Or ‘LA Woman.’ On rare occasion, I’ll bring DSP to bear on these. For example, I may select a gentle, minimum-phase digital filter. Maybe some EQ, maybe not. But this use case takes a LOT of work, and cannot do miracles – what has been lost already cannot be regained. Ever. So I seldom bother.
Rather, I use DSP to alter the character of the system without introducing distortion – certainly without situational EQ, edge enhancement, reverb, or other harmonic treatment. Yes, I can simulate tubes, vintage amps, tape, and other parlor tricks – but I don’t.
For example, if I’m in the mood for a fuller, more fleshed-out sound, I’ll switch to 1st-order crossovers everywhere. Mellow, natural, harmonically-rich sound ensues. Big images, slight degradation in precision of leading edges and soundstaging. Same EQ. Magic.
The next session, I may want an audiophile sound. Linkwitz 4th-order slopes. Precision everywhere. Transients sharpen. Music acquires a more ascetic feel. Same EQ. Same retrieval of detail. Same pitch-black backgrounds. But sounds like a ‘new’ system.
It takes me 30 seconds to switch. It costs nothing. And the same hardware is used to effect widely differing sounds.
I also use my system to design analog crossovers. One interesting tidbit is that I can do crossover designs digitally that are physically unrealizable conventionally. For example, the configuration that I’m listening to as I write features a 1st-order low-pass on the woofer at 15hz. Wanna know what the inductor looks like to achieve that at speaker-level power? LOL.
I have found that this approach gets me closer to the music, increases my system satisfaction, and saves me money. But it’s not for everyone. It’s quite geeky and requires as much participation as a high-end turntable. And that’s a lot!
However, I’ll be the first to acknowledge the grace and soul of a well-constructed minimalist system. I own a couple of those too.
Bob
Mike,
Somehow in using mastering as an analogy, which illustrates that processing the signal does not signify butchery or mutilation, you lost site of my approach; or perhaps I have done a very poor job on these postings of calling out what exactly it is that my approach calls for and achieves; like Bob Walters just did in the post above regarding his system.
Let me begin by saying that in no way do I sit and make adjustments for every song or album or recording during my listening sessions. As Fred Crowder will confirm, once my system’s presentation is dialed-in, it does not need to be readjusted real-time. In other words there is no touching the buttons or knobs once the presentation of my reference system has been adjusted to my meet my “ideals”.
To make this more explicitly clear:
EVERYTHING that all serious audiophiles try to achieve through component swapping, room-acoustics tweaking, power conditioning, interconnect and speaker cable swapping, power cord swapping, cable lifters, mechanical isolation devices and stands, and the myriad of other swapping, tweaking, tweaks…………………….. Are ALL a trial and error exercise with static and unpredictable results, which usually involve some sort of compromise.
My approach is based on the fact that there are ways to manipulate the signal electronically, in both the digital and analog domains, to achieve the same effect or end results that audiophiles try to achieve via cable/component swapping and other trial and error rituals. The BIG difference being that with the method that I utilize the results are predictable, controllable, scalable and defeatable (can be bypassed).
The process itself involves room-correction in the digital domain as a foundation but it is much more convoluted than that; involving Psychoacoustic theory and dynamic processing.
“We can go into this in much more detail with examples if that is of interest.”
Oh! and by the way, I also own quiet a few of those well constructed minimalist systems also.
Bob,
You got mail.
Mike,
A couple further thoughts on the mastering process: On multi-track recordings, it is the “mixing-engineers” that handles the balance of the raw tracks, while the mastering engineer is typically just in charge of the final mix (2-channel or surround). They place their on stamp on the 2-buss as you pointed out but then each stereo or home system imposes their own signature or character on the reproduction; SO this approach that Bob and I are using does not go any further than a conventional stereo or a well constructed minimalist system.
If you however feel that “a well constructed minimalist system” such as the Audio Note impose less character or signature than other type of system topologies/arrangements………then I suggest that you go back and re-read your original “What Absolute Sound?” blog entry and your subsequent posts……….and this whole things just becomes a circular argument in the logic sense of the meaning, to put it in a way that a mathematician can relate to.
Thanks, Carlos. Very impressive indeed.
Bob
Hi Bob,
“It’s quite geeky and requires as much participation as a high-end turntable. And that’s a lot!”
Just want to mention in my experience that high-end turntables require less attention than low end turntables, which comes to not much attention at all – it is the LPs that need a little lovin once in awhile.
Hi Carlos,
The approach you talk about makes a good deal of sense in the idealized world if audiophiles really just swapped out their components only in order to more tune a system to their tastes [and not to maximize fidelity at all] and if your approach somehow did not also require the same problematic components [i.e. amps, speakers, etc]. I.E. if an audiophile is OK with the limitations in fidelity [information] in their current system, and are OK with losing a little/lot more of the information [depending on the quality of tool being used] then using a tool to make the sound more suit our individual taste makes a lot of sense. And yes, this is an artistic expression and it will be interesting to see if sometime in the future these particular sounds can be identified and get recognized as works of art.
>> If you however feel that “a well constructed minimalist system” such as the Audio Note impose less character or signature than other type of system topologies/arrangements…
Of course I do. It can be proven [see below]. The posts above were about how to judge a system by listening to it and whether we can/should compare it to an absolute imagined acoustic event or compare it to other systems and sounds we have heard. The posts didn’t really talk about the KINDS of attributes to listen for – but amount of information, esp. low level information, seems to be one of the biggies [as it is necessary for emotion and imaging etc.]. One’s personal taste is also a valid, a very important, attribute – but like picking a mate, some amount of hard facts and perspective [aka making sure that the mate/system in question has a reasonable profile with respect to what is expected by the population at large – does the system sound like music does/is the mate sane?] is usually a good thing as well, otherwise we end up picking mates, like, oh I do not know, charlie sheen? 🙂
A system is a group of components operating on a signal to convert it from a source to sound waves. The room and cables and speakers are all considered components in this model. Each component acts as a Filter F, which removes some information from the music and each component adds character M, which mutates some of the information.
So a system is a sequence of n components M*F which result in a total sound M*F(1) * M*F(2) … M*F(n)
The fewer components, and the less they filter and mutate the sound information(i.e. the better they are) the less the final sound is mutated and filtered. Fewer better components RULES! 🙂
The average conscientious audiophile has several, lesser components and the goal is to balance the mutations as best as possible so that, for example, one mutation that is a little bright on top with one that is a little rolled off on top. I guess I will point out here, in the context of this discussion on typical audiophile component thrashing, that most audiophiles buy things because their friends have bought it [on the forums], and many others because they do not have a context with which to measure how good/bad their system is – so never know when they have hit a global maxima at their price range, and so always fall back to the expensive audio system simulated annealing algorithm of system design.
Please realize that I write these posts not to lecture you, and about things you probably already know, but to present various higher level perspectives on these topics to the readers at large here who visit this blog. It is cool that you and Bob are having fun doing this [and I would love to hear both of your setups!], but there is a reason that equalizers fell out of favor, and it had nothing to do with their THD – it had to do, I think, with the way most people’s systems sounded when they were using them.
All the best,
-Mike
Mike, again you are arguing against yourself here. As you have stated in print, on the original “What Absolute Sound?” post and the subsequent two post, state that there is no way to have traceability back to the original musical event so the best one can wish for is to faithfully reproduce what’s on the actual media and that my friend is purely subjective at the listening level, but can be objective at the measuring level. What Bob and I have done is to embrace and implement a more intelligent approach, where the changes are predictable, controllable and understood rather than the traditional trial and error rituals characteristic of the traditional audiophile process. You painted yourself into a corner with your original postings and are now looking for a way out but your own printed words will not let you. A circular argument, as in circular logic, has no way out.
As far as simple being better, well how many integrated amplifiers and receivers do you offer for sale?
One can slant one’s arguments in a way that are self serving but there is no denying true facts and logic. Please don’t pray on audiophiles’ fear of equalizers as these tools are indispensable and greatly effective in the mastering/studio world and in the home systems of astute listeners!
Hi Carlos,
My argument is with your assertion that ‘your’ approach is “a more intelligent” approach. It is an approach that ignores increased loss of information: things like low-level detail, micro-dynamics, emotion, etc. if you will – in exchange for customizability. We all know legions of manufacturers who insist that their overly complex designs are The Most Intelligent Approach and that the same arguments I used here: basic information theory, law of thermodynamics, simple models – do not convince them anymore than they convince all those inventors of perpetual motion machines… any more than they convince you.
I think the problem is that you are self-defining “objective at the measuring level”, and I can’t see how this is not in fact more subjective than just using a pair of ears [which actually becomes less and less subjective as one hears more an more systems – that is what the triangulation is all about]. If you think you have finally come up with all the ways that will be required to measure what we hear [many of which attributes we have no words for yet] then please let J.A. know so that we can all share in the discovery.
This lack of respect for the delicacy of the information on the source material – how easy it is to muck it up, how difficult the ‘straight wire with gain’ approach [or just straight wire for that matter] is to implement is one reason why there is so much garbage out there in the audiophile marketplace.
Yeah, the triangulation approach is difficult and somewhat hit and miss [it helps to go to shows and good dealers and friends to hear lots of samples]. But learning to listen better is part of the joy of listening. And it is always good to have a good, robust, suspicious hype detector-like attitude [re: this whole blamed thread].
“More intelligent approach”? I would disagree [esp. after the inability to address real concerns about the degradation of the fidelity – and BTW studios are fraught with POS equipment and lossy technologies – which is why a few musicians who care are trying to go back and rip a lot of that junk out when they record their music] and say “another kind of interesting approach”.
If you really can’t abide us treating your system as “another kind of interesting approach”, and admit and discuss the tradeoffs for the benefit of the people here, then I think this thread on the blog should come to a close. It is definitely showing a lack of progress towards refining our techniques on how we determine the overall relative quality of our high-end audio systems.
Take care,
-Mike
Mike,
For the record, both Bob and I were in agreement with your original post “What Absolute Sound?” and your two subsequent posts. It was all a love fest at that point; then both Bob and I made comments on how we agreed with you and how we both had taken unorthodox approaches based on those premises. THEN all of the sudden, you start condemning our approach and start arguing against what you had stated. Interesting turn, huh????????
Also for the record, I’m not advocating rigorous measurements to explain all phenomena; actually once the room correction is taken care of all other adjustments in my approach are made by ear!
If you can not see how the approach that Bob and I have embraced and implemented is a more intelligent approach to accomplishing the same end results as what one hopes to achieve with the traditional audiophile trial and error methods, THEN perhaps we have said all that needs to be said on this thread and further exchanges on this matter will not yield any greater understanding from your side.
And by the way, for the record, I did address how spatial and psychoacoustics low level-detail and subtle cues are handled in my approach on one of my earlier postings.
No harm, no foul…….One simply has to be open to thoughts and ideas that depart from the norm!
I look forward to reading your other blog entries that may be of particular interesting to me.
Happy listening and enjoy the rest of the weekend!
Hi Mike,
I just re-read the OP, and see that we’ve taken things a bit OT. Oh well…
Thanks for correcting me on the ‘high-end turntable’ over-generalization. I agree.
Subtracting out all the ‘Picasso remastering’ stuff, maybe the key point that Carlos and I are addressing is: “How does one deal with distortion?”
Somehow, our industry has found a way to combine low-distortion components in a room and end up with – distortion. Blame the room. Blame the interfaces. Whatever. Audiophiles (think they) hear it and seek solutions. How many millions of times have we heard: “I’m looking for a warm, mellow IC to tame my new ribbon tweeters….” Or the like.
Carlos and I became tired of playing the ‘system synergy’ game. Sure, we still seek the best components that we can afford. To your point, this strategy increases S/N. But we handle the ‘synergy thing’ digitally – including speaker crossovers and the room.
While I’m a digital guy, a lot of what we’re talking about can be done in analog. Tubes if one prefers.
Lastly, while this seems like blasphemy now, I lament the loss of tone controls in highend gear. I think that consumers would save a ton of money on cables and loudspeakers if simple EQ became an option in the high end.
But cables are where the profits are, so this’ll never happen.
Better to put the money into thick faceplates and golden fuses….
Bob