Whomever knows a guy with a real good analogue recorder---even the reasonably priced Revox A77, plus some condenser microphones, arrange for him to make you a recording of live acoustic music, the event at which you will be present. Listen attentively to the sound and music the musicians and singer(s) are making, taking notes if you wish. From those tapes burn a CD/SACD (and an LP if you have the disposable income!), and use it to evaluate equipment. From being at the recording session, you have a good idea of what the music and sound should be, much more so than any professional CD/SACD/LP you have. The recording will most likely be far more alive and transparent sounding than almost all of them, having gone through none of the processing commercial product does---equalization, compression, added electronic reverb and echo, gating, etc. I made such a recording, and have used it for years as source material with which to judge the sound quality of equipment. It was made by myself in a small bar on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale California, the band being a Jump/Blues septet comprised of drumset, bass, upright piano, guitar, tenor and baritone saxes, and singer. The bass and guitar were plugged into small amps, but contrary to the mistaken notion (notably by Stereophile founder and chief-tester J. Gordon Holt) that instruments employing amplification are not acoustic sources of sound, the sound produced by amplified instruments is indeed acoustic---you hear the sound produced by an amplified instrument directly through the air with your ears, it is not an electronic sound source. The sound of an electric guitar and bass, while different than that of acoustic ones, have their own signature characteristics. If you were at the recording, you have heard that sound for yourself. |
I would add two more Randy---violin and cymbal, to test a systems ability at high frequency timbre. Piano and snare drum also tell you about that, but not to the same degree. Getting the ping/click of a drumstick tip on a cymbal right, and the sheen of violin string overtones, is very telling of the behavior of tweeters, pickups, and amplifier circuits. To get the combination of detail and sweetness, without etching and/or hardness, is a tricky balancing act. |
Piano is an instrument about as difficult to reproduce as there is. As jafant just said, both percussive and melodic, it's frequency range also being very, very wide---very low to relatively high. That makes it very revealing of the octave-to-octave frequency response balance of loudspeakers and phono pickups. And extremely dynamic, a good recording of one being an excellent test of a pickups tracking ability. Many produce a "shattered", breaking glass sound when pushed hard. |
I remembered the term! Back EMF, or electro-magnetic force. That’s what the woofer sends back to the power amp, different amps responding to it in different ways. I believe amps employing a lot of negative feedback have a more difficult time dealing with it. |
Power amps DO interact with the speakers they are hooked up to, (particularly at high and low frequencies), different drivers in different ways. Dynamic woofers are well-known to send a signal back to the power amp, though I forget what that phenomenon is called. Electro-magnetic feedback, perhaps. And some tweeters (especially ESL and ribbon) can cause slightly unstable circuits to oscillate. That interaction definitely can affect the timing of music. |
Here’s a thought regarding the "timing" ability of a component: Being a drumset player, I value the "rhythm & pace" abilities of a component and/or system as much as anyone. Both Art Dudley and Herb Reichert make this ability a large focus of their component evaluations in Stereophile, even of electronics. Let me pose a question to ya’ll: How much do you think an electronic component can affect the timing of music? My opinion is that the effect on timing by electronics is far, far exceeded by that of speaker and listening room behavior, the effect of electronics being miniscule in comparison. In low frequencies especially, there is NO room which does not produce bass resonance modes, causing bass notes to linger after the signal has stopped. The result is the common bass-overhang (characterized as "slow", "fat", etc.) often blamed on the speaker or sub, when the real culprit is the room itself. Before you worry about the ability of an electronic component to effect timing, you had better have dealt with your rooms acoustical behavior. Now speakers and turntables, being mechanic devices, ARE a genuine cause for concern and attention in regards to timing---cartridges, being an electro-mechanical transducer, as well. But electronics? Swamped by other factors imo. |
All good comments---everything matters! Reproduced music still, after all this time and effort, sounds very different from live, and undoubtedly will for the remainder of even the youngest of Audiogoners lives. But it can already sound close enough to allow the suspension of disbelief, and for the music to have an emotional impact on the listener. I can be brought to tears by Iris Dements singing even on my computer monitors speakers. The thing about elements of music and it’s reproduction such as timing, is that we don’t necessarily know how a recording should sound in that regard---what the timing of the original music, as opposed to it’s reproduction, was like. We DO know what a voice free of vowel colorations sounds like, generally speaking. And we know what natural instrumental timbre sounds like. No, we don’t know how well any given recording has captured vocal and instrumental timbres, but ya gotta start somewhere, if that makes any sense. Reproduced music can sound no better than the quality of it’s recording---source material is still the weakest link in the reproduction of music, in many cases by a wide margin. |
Just an opinion here, on the subject of the ability of any given component to provide an emotional connection to the music it is reproducing. That concept implies that that ability is separate from sound itself, that the sound of music alone does not necessarily communicate it's emotional content. Art Dudley is a proponent of that concept, and I find it a bit hard to accept. Music IS nothing more than sound, in one way or another. Sure, the emotion in music, and even the "intent of the performer(s)", as Art and others like to say, is affected more by some aspects of sound than others, but it is still the sound itself which contains and conveys that emotion. To characterize the ability of a component in such personal terms as to how it conveys emotion is just too subjective to me, too personal. The emotional connection to reproduced music as provided by any given component can be affected by many things other than the component itself, very personal things that one listener may not share with another. Sorry, J. Gordon Holts version of subjective reviewing is about as subjective as I am willing to embrace! |
Though Art Dudley disagrees with me, my number one priority is lifelike vocal and instrumental timbre---lack of what J. Gordon Holt called "vowel colorations". Next up is immediacy and presence---the illusion of living, breathing humans singing and/or playing right there in front of me, fully formed and fleshed-out. Too many systems I've heard create "whispy" (ghostly apparitions), miniaturized voices and instruments that sound thin and small, lacking body and substance. Live music sounds big and bold, I like it's reproduction to as well. Live music is experienced not through just the ears, but the entire body. Reproduced music often sounds eviscerated, robbed of it's physicality, appealing to the intellect only! That for me is the main failing of music reproduction systems, apparently even harder to achieve than the ability to provide lifelike vocal and instrumental timbre. |
