Objective methods for describing the quality of music reproduction
I have been thinking a lot about objective methods for describing the quality of a HiFi system sound. Or even the quality of a single component.
Why?
THE PROBLEM
Because I am very very curious about how a lot of things sound that I will not have the time or resources to hear myself. And reviews and show reports are just not doing it for me.
To me, just about 100% of these read like this: “blah blah blah sounds great blah blah blah high price blah blah you should buy it. Next.”
First, very few people are qualified to review top-tier gear. When the world is awash in $15K(!) and above DACs few of our stalwart reviewers can afford to play this game.
Second, few people can, or even try, to describe sound in a way that readers can understand what they are talking about. Its hard, and it is certainly NP complete, and in the best case the press inspires, not describes.
Third, we all know what is third, no reason to bring it up.
THE ANALYSIS
I am thinking comparative analysis might be a good place to start. How does something sound relative to its peers. Does A have more bass than X but less than Y and Z? Good to know, right?
Then I ran across this old post on Romy’s site Do not “compare” audio equipment. In particular (as Amir quoted, and disagreed with for his own reasons):
You have to very clearly recognize what distinct the performance of a given component form “how it should be” instead to recognize the performing delta of a component relative to it’s competitive.
I interpret this to mean that one has to be careful – just because A has more bass than X does not mean it has better bass. X may have the perfect amount of bass and A may then have too much.
[I know, this “how it should be” is more of a gestalt – but we are forced, IMO, to objectify this gestalt in order to understand and communicate the quality of something]
These days, this “more is better or is it” dichotomy is very common with respect to resolution. Many things have more resolution than what might be considered natural – not that we can’t still enjoy them and buy them, but from an objective point of view, it really is probably too much resolution.
THE SOLUTION
We can look at other high-end domains as a guide, like cameras and autos, though they also suffer from the same primary problem we do: the quantification of the subjective in order to try and pave the way for objective comparisons is fraught. [fraught I tell you :-)]
Fraught or not, here we go:
We’ve done this a dozen times in the past but haven’t done it for several years, and I know Steve Rochlin at Enjoy the Music did it for a few reviews as well, but we are going to start comparing things to other things using tables.
Tables with a ton of attributes like Bass, bass slam, bass tightness, bass resolution, bass naturalness, bass harmonic richness, etc.
At the same time the numbers will not only be relative to other components but relative to ‘how it should be’.
A score of 100 is ‘how it should be’. A score of 110 is a little more than how it should be. A score of 90 is a little less.
WAIT. Before you think “Hey. My preferences are a little from yours Mike. Who gets to say what is 100 aka perfect?”
Well, if we are going to be able to communicate what something sounds like using numbers and words, we really need to try and to take ‘preferences’ out of the equation when it comes to reviews.
The assumption here is that there is indeed an absolute perfect sound. It doesn’t necessarily exist in the studio, on tape, on the original digital recording or in our living rooms, but there is a “how it should be”; a “what it is supposed to sound like”.
So… the flaw in the ointment … we have to encourage and verify that reviewers review things with respect to ‘how it should be’ and not ‘how they are OK with it’ [after they get a long lecture about how cold and sterile is not ‘how it should be’, sorry JV].
There can also be another table, that each of us fills out, that represents our personal preferences.
In the absence of being able to ever achieve that absolute sound in our lifetimes at a less than prohibitive cost, what are we willing to sacrifice and what to we absolutely insist on. These are our personal preferences.
My table would have soundstage depth, for example, at around 90. This attribute is slightly less important to me than it is to other people, in general, and a score of 90 is fine by me.
[There has to be another number associated with each attribute, a penalty fine for going over (for me, too much midrange energy is not good at all, too much soundstage depth is fine)- and for going below (too little resolution is also anathema for me, personally).]
In this way, I think we can move a good distance toward an objective comparison and communication of the performance of hifi systems and of individual components.
Mike,
Thanks for this piece; however, the real work will undoubtedly be in assigning the numerical value to various components. I must say that I was taken with your earlier scheme which assigned values to different aspects of a components sound (musicality vs. resolution). One of the real difficulties in comparing pieces of equipment is choosing a reference and then understanding that any deviation from that reference is a flaw even if it subjectively is pleasant. Here I am thinking of the newest Wilson speakers and the way that they produce bass in contrast to the way that Acapella speakers produce bass. One is clearly much closer to what I hear in a concert hall than the other.
Fred
Hi Fred 🙂
Yep, some work to come up with a good stab at what the attributes are at the start of the project [so we don’t have to keep changing them, or at least not change them very often], and then the long term effort to fill in the table of attributes with numerical values.
I also wondered about adding the musicality vs. resolution [aka heart vs. mind] style attributes to the table as well.
You mean the new $700K Wamm Master Chronosonic Wilsons?
https://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audios-ultimate-loudspeaker-wamm-master-chronosonic
Feel free to disagree, but I think a lot of the difference in bass between the Triolon and the Alexandria has to do with the amp that that is driving them, as well as upstream components and vibration isolation, of course. The difference between the sound of your Audio Note Kegon Balanced amps, the Lamm ML3 Signature amps [at CES] and the VTL amps on the Alexandria speakers is enormous. Hearing, for example the MTRX, on both would help clear up for me this suspicion I have that they are much closer in bass performance than their visual appearance and the Wilson marketing theme would otherwise lead people to believe [and, curiously, the ‘scary’ Acapella Posydon speaker’s bass response, at 99 dB efficiency and with 12 10 inch bass drivers, is one of its more distinct features for many people (including me 🙂 )].
But back to your ‘choosing a reference sound’ [indeed the ‘hard part’ because it requires a human to make a unbiased value judgement – kind of an oxymoron, I know :-)], can we not just deconstruct bass so we can have ‘powerful bass’ set to 90, say, for the ‘large tube amp on big Wilson’ system sound, and ‘bass resolution’ and ‘bass decay accuracy’ set at say, 80 [and, for sake of argument, Audio Note on the Triolon speakers be set to vis-a-versa values]? What the raw values for just the speakers are we can then triangulate after hearing various amps on them.
Whether this is perfect or not [it’s not] it will, I think, be a lot better than what we have now for a thoughtful reviewer who wants to communicate the sound of something to readers. It will also be useful to help those listeners who may not immediately know what they are listening to/for, which, unfortunately, is a lot higher percentage of audiophiles than what we would like it to be.
Take care,
-Mike
Michael,
First, I have not heard the Wilson Master Chronosonic so whatever opinions I may have with respect to the Wilson speakers is based on the newest iteration of the Sasha and the Alexia. While in agreement with much of what you have said, I tend to characterize the Wilson speakers as ones that often focus more on quantity of bass than on resolution. I think that my point in the earlier post was that while I enjoy the somewhat excessive quantity of the Wilson bass, it does not represent the bass balance that I hear in concert halls. I guess that in the grand scheme, I value resolution higher than quantity. In a perfect world, I could have realistic quantity and high resolution which for me pretty much describes the larger Acapella speakers if they are properly driven. Finally, it would be interesting to hear the Wilsons driven by the EMM Labs MTRX amps. Perhaps my problem in the past is the electronics and not the Wilsons.
In the interim while you are developing the new spreadsheet, you might consider a quick update and re-printing of the heart/mind scores.
Fred
Fred
Hi Fred, 🙂
We are on the same page here. I was just trying to calculate the difference in total area between 6 x 10 inch woofers on the Acapella Triolon speakers [and Appolon] and a 15 plus 13 inch woofers on the Wilson Alexandria II.
So, the Triolon has more bass, they just handle it more adroitly: Triolon 471 sq. inches vs 308 sq. inches.
The smaller, more numerous woofers will also be easier to generate detail with [imo]. The Triolon is in a sealed cabinet but the Alexandria is front ported. The point to this being that one can kind of predict the difference in sound between the two from looking at these different approaches in design.
We too like bass. Sometimes even excessive bass 🙂 In practice though one tries to throw a good quality signal which preserves as much quantity of the bass as possible for well-balanced bass speakers like Acapella [which your system design does quite well – top-flight Audio Note preserve every iota of bass energy] and as much quality of the bass as possible to quantity>quality bass speakers like Wilson [which is why we like the Lamm ML3 on these].
Though, that being said, in my experience both these two speakers have more quantity and quality bass than most of the [significantly higher priced] competition.
Your wish is my command … 🙂 Links to favorite posts are in the blog sidebar.
Take care,
-Mike
Hello Mike
I think the best way to guide audiophiles to a common language in audio is speaking about how the sound affect on our mind.
If the whole sound satisfy us then it is OK.
I know my approach may not work all the time but it is not bad.
Amir
Hi Amir,
That is an interesting idea if I understand you correctly. I mean, we already have the heart and mind rankings – both concerning how our mind is affected. And PRaT [toe-tapping-ness] and ‘engaging’ likewise are referencing how the sound affects us.
But what if we did have a paragraph or two in reviews that explicitly limited themselves how the reviewer was affected emotionally by the sound of the gear under review. Similarly in show reports how the reporter was affected emotionally by the sound in the room. We all know it is implicit in the nature of a review or a report anyway [i.e. if it is a positive review or report, then they must have been affected positively].
This probably doesn’t help us decide which component to buy, compared to details about the sound of the component, unless we have some expectation that we are all affected emotionally by the same sonic attributes in the same way. Scary bass scares us all, yes, but does poignant note decay make us all fill with longing? Don’t know.
Certainly is food for thought.
Take care,
-Mike
Mike,
Many thanks for the link to “favorite posts”. I have re-read many of them and still find them valuable. I sometimes forget the wealth of information that the blog has posted over the years. I hope that at some point you will focus on power cords and their contribution to the sound of a system. I think for instance that the new Audio Note Isis is extremely good and sounds better than many much more expensive power cords.
Fred