If I read your question correctly, the only thing which would, as you say, satisfy your concern is to be able to find a way to listen to real unamplified music played by real unamplified musicians in a real unamplified space.
TONE
So, hear is my latest conundrum(well, perhaps that is a little bit of a hyperbole)...
I enjoy my current system immensely, but do not actively compare it to others or seek listening to live music...I remain pleased with my systems dynamics, soundstage, detail, BUT am always wondering about TONE...being we all, more or less, have limited audio memory, I imagine only musicians who are regularly acquainted with the TRUE TONE of live instruments can recognize the accuracy of the TONE of an audio system....I guess I kind of answered my own question, in saying I enjoy my system, BUT any advice/thoughts/suggestions about how one satisfies this concern?
I enjoy my current system immensely, but do not actively compare it to others or seek listening to live music...I remain pleased with my systems dynamics, soundstage, detail, BUT am always wondering about TONE...being we all, more or less, have limited audio memory, I imagine only musicians who are regularly acquainted with the TRUE TONE of live instruments can recognize the accuracy of the TONE of an audio system....I guess I kind of answered my own question, in saying I enjoy my system, BUT any advice/thoughts/suggestions about how one satisfies this concern?
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I think the difficult part of assessing the ability of your system to accurately reproduce musical tone, as is call it, is that relatively few recordings capture the true sound of the instrument. I spent many years in the recording business and I know that most recordings are eq'd and heavily processed to achieve the sound that the person paying the bills wants to hear. So you never really know. I've always considered starting a thread in which we list some recordings that we believe accurately convey the true sound of musical instruments, but like so many threads, they just turn into arguments and lectures, so I dropped the idea. All this said, if you're system reproduces the human voice accurately, you have a good shot at having a system with good tonality. That's how Alan Shaw from Harbeth designs speakers and he's doing pretty well. |
.I remain pleased with my systems dynamics, soundstage, detail, BUT am always wondering about TONE...Human ears/brain are programmed by the voice timbre perception... When i worked fine tuning for 2 years my acoustical treatment and other controls, and for the last month full time my mechanical equalizer, i listened instrument timbre playing a tone for sure.... But EVERYBODY know how must sound human voice.... A voice singing tone, for example using a choir recording with children, women and male, or opera singing.... This is the best test.... No need to be musician to recognize the natural human voice....Just use many voices type.... Try this one to begin with....Only four male voices very well recorded on youtube.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTdZ2cSkW0U This opera is exceptionally well recorded.... The youtube file give an idea... You can test ALL acoustic features with only this file : Timbre perception, soundstage, imaging, listener envelopment, source width.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR33bL5aNTk&list=PLnQJF3Qi_4_CvjtOvZypmfmC4ygxSxOgm&index=52... If you listen the singers singing behind your back or walking and turning head when singing your system is good if not you lack acoustical control.... |
Some representations are more pleasing than others even if they are not "realistic." I like impressionism more than hyperrealism in painting because it conveys something meaningful with the way it represents. My search for the sound I was looking for in audio was helped somewhat by looking for realism, and also helped by looking *past* realism. In other words, "true" has many meanings, and "simulation" is only one of them. |
@chayro , "I spent many years in the recording business and I know that most recordings are eq’d and heavily processed to achieve the sound that the person paying the bills wants to hear." That’s seems about right. Everyone else is just an employee with little say in the final product. It seems as if most artists don’t bother to question sonic decisions made by those higher up. I can’t think of very many who did. Maybe the Velvet Underground (probably drove their engineers mad with deliberate overload), Dylan, Neil Young, Kate Bush, Steely Dan, Dire Straits and a few others. |
"I've always considered starting a thread in which we list some recordings that we believe accurately convey the true sound of musical instruments, but like so many threads, they just turn into arguments and lectures, so I dropped the idea". @chayro you had a good topic idea . Some threads on this forum do manage to remain interesting, informative and respectful. In regard to your recording industry experience, did the processing affect all music genres equally or were some more egregious than others? Pop/Rock versus Jazz/classical for instance. Charles |
Make your own music recordings! Borrow or rent a pair of good mics and a reel-to-reel recorder, and ask a musician friend (you do have them, right?) if you can record a live performance. Once the tape is rolling, listen intently to the music and the sound. Then listen to the recording at home, comparing the sound you heard with the sound your system is producing. Another great thing to record is the human voice. We are all very familiar with that sound, and any "vowel" coloration (as J. Gordon Holt put it) will be glaringly obvious. WARNING: Most loudspeakers fail this demanding test. The QUAD ESL (introduced in 1957!) excelled in reproducing singing voices, setting a standard few other speakers to this day can match. If you are new to live recording, you may need to take a few stabs at it before you seem to have captured the sound fairly accurately. The catch-22 is that the only way to evaluate the tape is to listen to it on a system, the very thing you are trying to determine the tonal accuracy of! If that sounds like more than you want to take on, use recordings known for having life-like tonal characteristics. Known superior recordings in that regard are those on the Water Lily Records. Try A Meeting On The River, featuring the guitar playing of Ry Cooder. |
For piano this one is one of the best to test piano tone playing... And anyway also one of the best interpretation of Chopin Nocturnes by Hans Moravec... (beware : the youtube file so good it is does not replace the original recording) Piano is the only instrument on par with voices to test the rendering of an audio system... Any amplified music is useless for that....Anyway with a great audio system able to communicate all " hues" of sound color, some amplified instruments or electronic music often seems more a seasoning than a real meal.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHXxWfSAxik |
Another great thing to record is the human voice. We are all very familiar with that sound, and any "vowel" coloration (as J. Gordon Holt put it) will be glaringly obvious. WARNING: Most loudspeakers fail this demanding test. The QUAD ESL (introduced in 1957!) excelled in reproducing singing voices, setting a standard few other speakers to this day can match.You are right for what you say about this Quad speakers... But i will add something: all other speakers need more help from tuning room acoustic controls and they could reach some new level.... For sure each type of speakers are different, but no speakers are perfect on ALL acoustic factors even Quad... We never listen to speakers, we listen to acoustically controlled or uncontrolled room/speakers.... But some speakers speak to us better than others in the same room....but adapt the acoustical settings of the room for each type speaker in particular and even our taste could change or be less affirmative... No speakers beat the room says a great acoustician.... But i will repeat what you just said: QUAD is one of the greatest speaker ever designed...Precisely for the reason you said already.... |
@mahgister, +1 , very good call on Moravec’s Chopin Nocturne . I’ve owned that CD for years and very close to what I hear during live piano recitals at a Steinway Piano Gallery near my home. For those who enjoy jazz, 1. Tardo Hammer" pianist CD , "Look,Stop and Listen".studio. 2. Kenny Barren "Live At Bradley’s". Very good CD capturing of live piano sound. Charles |
For luth sound recording this one is very good... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKuEBKPxvh0 or this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEaqP2SceWc |
For Brass orchestra check the recording of "Empire brass ensemble".... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wVXIOa_pG4 |
This iranian ensemble with percussion and some other interesting instruments will help also and you will enjoy it.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3z35HQBzvY&list=OLAK5uy_lsXokXU_pv596vy8nf85p2D_5oYsZYahg I will stop here but will near many thousand files i have many choices.... 😊 |
Does it matter ? Also with age, everyone’s relative response to different frequencies will degrade. (There will be some delusional parties commenting here claiming the opposite, just ignore them). Get an equalizer and experiment. It will not change the frequencies but will make their relative amplitudes different, which may improve the listening experience you have. I have an old Yamaha 12 band equalizer which works wonders. If you do not like it, you can always bypass it. I actually like the distorted/exaggerated frequencies. To my ears, it sounds much better than the original live music :-) |
Very few musicians hear the way we think. I was around a lot of them back in the 70’s, classical acoustic instruments mostly. Whole lot of them. They all need a 440 tuning fork to tune properly. Or if not a tuning fork then some other reference like a piano. Point being, they listen just like we do: by comparison. Only one out of all the probably hundreds I saw had "perfect pitch" the ability to know when she was hearing 440 or whatever. I know she did, because someone pulled out a tuning fork one time and from across the room she called out the frequency and named the note. Changing the speed on a record does more than change the frequency. Each note from each instrument is accompanied by its own individual harmonic signature or timbral structure. Whatever you want to call it, it is unique to that particular instrument. This structure is harmonic in nature. So when you play something at a different speed it shifts everything up equally. Something that never happens in nature. In the real world when you play a different note, or shift the same note up (sharp) or down (flat) it shifts not only the fundamental frequency but the whole harmonic structure along with it. See, this idea of "tone" is a lot more complex than we give it credit for. You can’t just turn a tone control up or down, the result will be as artificial as playing the record too fast. This is why it is possible to have a speaker with obvious tonal colorations that might sound better than one without them- if it nevertheless gets the harmonic structure right our ears forgive it. Unless we are the kind of listener for whom one thing overrides the other. Which is why it is kind of goofy to be asking these questions the way people do. Nobody but you knows how important these things are to you. Are you building your system for some imaginary musician who might by chance drop by some day, in the hope of impressing them? Or are you building it for your own enjoyment, you and your family and friends? Anyway, you are right to be asking about the system and not doing like most and asking about the speakers. Usually when people think of tone they think of speakers. But put any component (including your speakers) on something like Townshend Pods that eliminates a lot of this tone-distorting harmonic ringing so many components are prone to, and then you will hear how much tone is messed up even by things like a DAC or amp. It is really quite staggering how many things are messed up this way. And yet we still somehow manage to enjoy listening. |
bdp -- I gotta tell you that it isn't easy to record a human voice. Whenever I've played back a human voice I've recorded, it's always come up short when compared to the live voice that was in front of me. The recording might suffer from midrange honk, bass bloat, too little air, too much air, general deadness, or sibilants that are either too strong or too weak. To be sure, my microphones were never world class (they were always of the good if not outstanding Shure sm58 level), but I have to say that the quality was far worse than what I regularly hear on decent professional recordings, no matter how much manipulation the producers might be guilty of. Oddly, the only recordings of musical instruments I make that sound good to me come from the instrument folks say is the hardest one to reproduce, the acoustic piano. |
the more I think of my original question, I have realized that asking about "tonally accurate" source material wont help my conundrum one bit, as I would still be reproducing it through my system...the ONLY way for me to understand the "tone" of my system is to learn and accurately remember the sound of live instruments, as I am not inclined to do the home-recording thing(though unless one's recording setup itself was "SOTA", that reference recording would have its own flaws)....so this mental exercise has gotten me back to my usual perspective on audio systems and this hobby, and that is to please the owner/listener with its sound..... |
What about tone's brother's attack and decay and his cousins texture and color? Even when it's all correct there's some magic essence that's either there or not there. I was thinking about this in terms of saturation the other day. I have a pair of polarized sunglasses with the purple mirror front face. I love driving with them because they bring beautiful depth in the sky, especially in the early evening. They don't make me drive better- if anything worse because I'm taken aback by "less important" things. They also enhance all the pixels of my iphone in the most curious warm and glowing way. I wouldn't trade my eyes for these, or make a wish to a genie for a permanent change, because there are some drawbacks too. This is why my amp collection in completely warranted and natural.😂 I'd suggest you experiment with sound but only if you enjoy the experiment- it can be frustrating and expensive and tiring at times. It can be a similar pattern that we apply to other areas in life too. From personal experience you will likely be only one to tell the difference or to care, so if you "wonder" it's best to be in a position to a/b gear for a few months so you don't "wander" from your base enjoyment. Nice setup you have. I've never heard the Von Schweikert. |
@bjesien , yes, we agree, completely...the Von Schweikerts were highly regarded when I bought them in the late 1990s, and I have enjoyed them for many years; however, as I have not pursued listening to more modern designs, they remain the source of my "tonal" questions....the thought of replacing them with something "better" remains challenging to me, as I no longer have boxes. So selling them, at any price, would be difficult, and I cant imagine throwing them away.......for that reason, alone, I have avoided auditioning current loudspeakers...the VR4.5 have a nice, smooth, full frequency sound, nice soundstage and biwired, all important to me....something better, these days, will be "5-figures", I imagine...... |
I doubt there is any way to 'reproduce', say, the sound of a violin in a concert hall on a stereo system in your living room. Even listening to your system against a violinist in the room doesn't do much, because that's not the sound you want. If you had an opera singer in your living room, you'd probably blow your ear-drums out. Even if you could 'exactly reproduce' the sound of a violinist in a concert hall in your system, you would only be working with the way it sounds from one particular seat in one particular concert hall. (Maybe in the future we can fine-tune our stream: Heifetz, Beethoven VC, Carnegie Hall [1940s version], mezzanine row G seat 112. But until then, we're stuck with great sounding smoke and mirrors.) |
@jdane Agree 100%. Whether it's a violinist 3 feet in front of me or The Ramones or the Chicago Symphony, everything in our sound space must -- at the very least -- be reduced in size, most of the time. If one has an enormous listening room, well, maybe they can fit a string quartet, but still -- the Mormon Tabernacle Choir? Who'd want them? This is why I made the comment below about "impressionism" vs. "hyperrealism." It's about what kind of representation you prefer, which is consonant with what MC was saying, too. All that said, we still want oboes to sound like oboes, and so the idea of the system all conspiring to keep us in the same arena as the world of live music is an important reference point -- but it's not a ideal we are trying to simulate, point-for-point, detail-for-detail. Otherwise, well, we get the Ramones trashing our house. |
we still want oboes to sound like oboes, and so the idea of the system all conspiring to keep us in the same arena as the world of live music is an important reference point. @hilde45, Completely agree with your comment. I don’t believe that most listeners expect a 100% duplication of what’s heard live. I do believe that familiarity with the sounds of various instruments is very helpful in recognizing their individual and unique tones and timbre. Some reference point is useful. There are no perfect audio components but some do a better job than others in reproducing tone relative to the live instrument template. Charles . |
The MAIN factor important to reproduce is timbre, especially voices timbre...We are programmed to recognize voices...If we had voices right all the rest come like balls on a thread... And there is no resemblance at all between live event and recording....This is not bad, nor good.... This is an explanable evident audible fact.... After timbre, all other acoustical factors are important but they depend of many factors, yes, electronical design of amp and speakers, are the first, but without acoustic control nobody will go very far... For sure i suppose a recording where the original acoustical cues has been reproduced adequately to begin with....Many commercial music is acoustically horrible... |
@mahgister, "The MAIN factor important to reproduce is timbre, especially voices timbre...We are programmed to recognize voices...If we had voices right all the rest come like balls on a thread... And there is no resemblance at all between live event and recording....This is not bad, nor good.... This is an explanable evident audible fact...." For me too. And it's been that way since childhood. [Maybe audiophiles are born and not made, but that's digressing]. I would always prefer a $100 system with decent tone and timbre to any $10,000 one without, and I've heard plenty of those. I remember when I used to help out at a radio station (1996-99) how all the presenters sounded different on air than they did in 'real life.' Their voices would have more authority and weight through the monitors than they would ever in person. You would never call the output accurate. One day we got a ribbon microphone which was suspended on rubber bands. It's fair to say that it made voices simply sound great, and everyone preferred to use that when possible. It was not life-like though, but maybe better than life-like. Calming and relaxing. Now an accurate broadcast might sound quite different... |
You can create a system that depends purely on the source material. With the right source material you can create the dynamics and sound pressure levels of a live performance with a much more detailed image than you would normally get at most venues. Tone is different than timbre. Tone is a matter of frequency response. 75% of a speaker's character is due to it's frequency response in a specific room. The other 25% is due to it's radiation pattern. Some people prefer bright speakers, others want "warm",etc. This is all a matter of frequency shifts cause by the speaker's inherent frequency response in a specific room. Someone who has a lot of experience measuring systems can tell what a speaker/room is going to sound like just by looking at it's response curve and the design (radiation pattern) of the drivers. The real art is in matching as precisely as possible the frequency response of both speakers and producing the kind of tone desired. One can tell by the imaging of voice how closely the channels match. We are very experienced listening to voices in a variety of conditions while live instruments we only get to hear on occasion. Adjusting tone is not hard at all. If you want a brighter sound put a rising response from 5 kHz to 10 kHz up just 2 dB. Want warm? Lift 100 to 300 Hz just a dB. Getting the two sides to match is the hard part. Just moving a speaker a few feet will change it's frequency response at the listening position. The same speaker in two different locations will have a different "tone." This is the reason why some of us think symmetry is so important. Unfortunately, even if you have a perfectly symmetrical situation no two loudspeakers of the same model have exactly the same frequency response. This is where digital EQ excels. With a little tinkering and a calibrated measuring microphone you can get both channels to match within 2 dB from 20 Hz to 20kHz. Above 10 kHz and below 100 Hz are not critical. Many audiophiles belittle digital equalization and turn their noses up at it. Drive an old Triumph Spitfire if you want. They are very endearing. But, I'm going for the 992 GT3...in a manual. |
Suggest you check a dictionary. Because you must mean that there is no perfect resemblance. Because obviously there is resemblance.You are right for sure, my word in english are not always well chosen....I only wanted to insist on the inevitable difference....I read myself a second time and i laugh at my "expression"....I apologize then and thanks for the correction... 😊 |
I am outspoken about the issue of “what sounds real”. Our sense of hearing is, perhaps, our most sensitive. I believe that anyone, if not deaf, can instantly hear if a HiFi system sounds real or not. That is, a tone deaf, 90 year old, etc. can easily choose the more real sounding between two, or more, systems. I believe that we all are blessed with an inherent ability to know when something just sounds “right”. |
Recordings are like paintings. The artists...musician, producer, recording engineers are using the tools at their disposal to create their "work of art". There is no guarantee that the artwork is going to be an accurate representation of "live music"...especially acoustic music. Mic placement, mic type, tonal shaping at the mixing console, what kind of instrument...electric or acoustic, mic'd or direct..., the type of preamps, the type of mixing monitors, etc, all have influence on what is put down on the recording, be it analog or digital capture. BTW...millercarbon...good musicians have excellent ears that can hear changes in pitch, speed, key change, etc. Only a good musician can relate to this from their experience. Do you have this experience? Recordings of live performances...especially professional, commercial recordings for sale of orchestral or acoustic jazz strive to capture the most accurate representation of what's coming from the stage. Add vocals to the mix and a feed is coming from the mixing board, if not split off at the mic directly to the recording machine. That all said...the ONLY way to get an accurate representation of the RECORDING is to use the identical playback gear that was used in the recording mixdown studio. Bob Ludwig uses Eggelston Works loudspeakers. Google Bob Ludwig and Bob Clearmountain to find out how they operate. Most consumers don't like the accurate, "clinical" sound of studio monitors, because the accuracy of the midrange can be fatiguing to the listener. Are true "audiophiles" the same as this? The definitive answer is definitely "maybe". That's what makes audio such an enigmatic industry. People buy what they like...or simply justify what they think is a reasonable amount to spend based on perceived performance...which isn't always determined by the ears. |
1+ Edgewound, absolutely true in regard to studio recordings, they are audio artwork. Many recordings were not meant to duplicate reality. Hendrix was one of the first to use audio engineering to portray a surreal experience. Those were the days of LSD. But it would not be just the identical equipment. It would also have to be the identical room. However, if your system/room frequency response is reasonably flat and the channels match within 1 or 2 dB across the frequency band, you will hear what they heard plus the distortion of the recording and source manufacturing process. This may not be what you like to hear so modification of the frequency response curve might be necessary. This is an individual preference. I know what I like to hear and given a microphone and digital EQ I can get any system to have the tone I like and maximize its image projection. I can not change the image size which is a matter of the way the speakers radiate. |
«You can create a system that depends purely on the source material. »This is completely silly and totally wrong...Even headphones own an enclosure shell which is like a room that must be tuned... Any source or recording process has his basis in trade off choices made in the acoustical settings of the original event... And in the same way you will listen not to some "ideal source" material but to your own room acoustical settings/speakers TIMBRE rendering of this source material... Then it is not about the alleged ideal source material first and last , it is about ACOUSTIC and PSYCHOACOUSTIC first and last.... You speak like this because you have defined your audio system through an electronical equalizer FIRST not with your ears and mechanical devices in control of the room FIRST... BUT NO Electronic tool could replace acoustic... Then totally ignorant of what you speak about and the consequences of this choice you say: «With the right source material you can create the dynamics and sound pressure levels of a live performance with a much more detailed image than you would normally get at most venues.»The cost paid for that inflation of details MAY be a lost in the natural timbre perception experience, and a lost of musical coherency... One could effectively control the TIMING thresholds of early and late reflections that create "imaging" experience by controlling the material treatment of the room and also with the use of helmholtz resonators... This is called mechanical equalization.... It takes a good recording for sure, it is a common place fact, but the main factor is the acoustical control of the relation room/speakers.... No good recording will work fine in a bad acoustical room/speakers settings... And the imaging is NOT the only main factor to get right but NATURAL TIMBRE PERCEPTION first...This is what will guide your ears experience and will give a better feed back controls to improve imaging...You could create a relatively good imaging with an unnatural timbre perception but if you learn how to improve the natural timbre perception first and last, imaging cannot become wrong in the process...It is acoustic and psychoacoustic facts... We must bot confuse head with ass... Then you go on inversing and confusing head with ass another times because of your electronical equalizer fad obsession and answer to all problem: «Tone is different than timbre.Tone is a matter of frequency response. 75% of a speaker's character is due to it's frequency response in a specific room. The other 25% is due to it's radiation pattern. Some people prefer bright speakers, others want "warm",etc. This is all a matter of frequency shifts cause by the speaker's inherent frequency response in a specific room. »Tone is only a PART of the instrument playing timbre which is the CONCRETE, perceived sound quality of the musical event NOT TONE...Tone is part of timbre but is not timbre.... If you read it on wiki the definition of "timbre" is these 5 modelling descriptors where pure tone is only the first: " -1 Range between tonal and noiselike character -2 Spectral envelope -3 Time envelope in terms of rise, duration, and decay (ADSR, which stands for "attack, decay, sustain, release") -4 Changes both of spectral envelope (formant-glide) and fundamental frequency (micro-intonation) -5 Prefix, or onset of a sound, quite dissimilar to the ensuing lasting vibration Then when you say that « 75% of a speaker character is due to it's frequency response in a specific room. The other 25% is due to it's radiation pattern.» this is a very bad way to describe reality, because you have decided to describe reality by the tool you decide to use : an ELECTRONIC EQUALIZER AND A MICROPHONE to define the speakers response with some limited set of frequencies or tone... .... It is not even wrong.....It is like the bed of Procustes fallacy, the greek bandit "who attacked people by stretching them or cutting off their legs, so as to force them to fit the size of an iron bed." WIKI Like Procustes who modified the man for the bed instead of modifying the bed for the man, you modify the frequencies response of the speakers with a microphone connected to a computer program, instead of modifying first the room response to TIMBRE perception for the ears with material treatment and room mechanical feed back control.... 50 % of Speaker character is define by their design first....Then after that.... 50% of speaker character perception is caused by the relatively large bandwith response and TIMING of waves (a vocal timbre for example)in some precise acoustical room settings, when a recording is playing FOR EACH EAR listening to the direct and early and late waves coming from EACH SPEAKER and "computed" by the brain, then this is not due to ONLY his specific " radiation pattern" like you said but ALSO to the manner direct , early and late waves are TIMED and synchronized coming from EACH speaker for EACH ear, in the geometry/topology/acoustical content of the room... The way the first wavefronts for EACH ear is marked out by timing tresholds and different pressure zones resulting from the waves crossings of the room many times in around 80 milliseconds is "computed" by the brain ... And by the way real audiophile and knowledgeable one prefer NATURAL TIMBRE voicing speakers for their ears, nor warm neither bright...This is ACOUSTIC not a TASTE reunion of the electronical equalizer boyclub describing their speakers through their toys and using, instead of natural timbre perception descriptors, 2 abstract characterisation of the frequency scale: high or low..... And you are wrong another time saying false facts... "warm" or "bright" DOES NOT results from what you just wrote: « This is all a matter of frequency shifts cause by the speaker's inherent frequency response in a specific room. » you description is tailor-made coming from the manual user of your equalizer... it is not a handbook of acoustic.... It is not even wrong.... The "warm" or "bright" character of speakers, save by concious choices and design, does not come from a "frequency shifts" MAINLY BUT from a relatively large bandwith shifts response caused by the ROOM acoustical settings for a more or less natural TIMBRE perception....We may called too warm or too bright a listened concrete instrument or voice event in a room for our ears but it is not an abstract frequency response for a microphone like you said .... Inversion of head and ass as usual and you are not even wrong.... And using electronical equalizer instead of mechanical equalization of the room, you ALWAYS fail to mention the LIMITATION of your toy: a frequency response lecture, a result which is valid ONLY for a listening location in MILLIMETER in the room.... Go out of this precise spot by 5 centimeter and the audible effect may change dramatically....A mechanical equalization with a large bandwith response control by modification of the different pressure zones of the room did not had these limitations.... Electronical equalization is a useful tool but is SECONDARY and ONLY an help to the creation of room treatment and room control...It cannot replace them at all.... By the way pitch perception cannot be explained nor reduced to frequencies modelling...It is a basic fact of psychoacoustic science.... The map so good it is cannot be confused with the territory....Then electronical equalization program are PARTIAL solution or secondary help tool.... In a word: we must change the room response for our ears first and last, not the speaker response for a microphone..... We can use the two mode of equalization for sure, but the electronical one must be secondary and subordinated to the mechanical one....Anyway electronical equalization is wisely used for bass optimization but even there we can use Helmholtz resonators instead... But dont listen only to me read what say this acoustician student of Floyd Toole: «Measurements are a great way to assess a room’s acoustics, but the main problem we have is that most of the standards that exist for room acoustics have no relation to our perception of good sound in a small room. What value is there in assessing RT60 if the very concept was derived from much larger acoustic spaces. In fact, in small rooms, what most people will find is that the decay time of the room is relatively short, short enough that it’s not a great concern. Most small spaces naturally have too much mid and high-frequency absorption and not enough low-frequency absorption. You don’t need measurements to know that, because it is nearly universally true. Yes, measurements can be helpful in assessing a room’s acoustics, but the reality is most people aren’t able to make much sense of these measurements, and the changes their acoustic treatments make are often unmeasurable using commonly practiced methods. In general, our ears do a better job assessing a room’s “sound” than does a microphone. The reason for this is clear. Our ears are a very sophisticated tool for perceiving sound and is capable of detecting very small changes in phase, tone, or direction. When we reduce a reflection in a room, our ears can detect this. Our measurements would struggle to notice. Small changes in reflections, especially at high frequencies, would not have a material effect on the steady-state response. That means that the adding of a small amount of absorption to a wall doesn’t really change our measurements much. In small rooms, the decay of sound at mid and high frequencies is so rapid that we would further struggle to see it in time domain plots such as waterfall graphs. » Matthew Poes in "what's more accurate a microphone or our ears?" https://www.audioholics.com/room-acoustics/accurate-microphone-or-ears «When we dont know how to use a tool, it is only a toy or a fad»-Groucho Marx |
I know what I like to hear and given a microphone and digital EQ I can get any system to have the tone I like and maximize its image projection. I can not change the image size which is a matter of the way the speakers radiate.I dont know at all what i like to hear....It is not a "taste".... I want to listen piano or voices the more natural possible.... I dont have sound "taste"...Save i never choose "details" over more natural timbre..... By the way the image size is not only a function of the way the speakers radiate but ALSO of the way the room controls help it or impede it to do so....I can modify the image size of my speakers at will.... Before my acoustic control implementation the image size of my speakers was small and now fill the room.... Why? Because of the way my 2-way box speakers radiate? it is a part of the answer but sorry not the complete answer.... Study acoustic and quit selling electronical equalization.... |
@edcyn: For voice recording, the Shure SM58 (or 57) is not a good choice of microphone. Those mics have a presence peak deliberately engineered in, to make vocals cut through the sound of instruments coming out of a PA system. The SM57 is very popular in recording studios for use on snare drums, but never, ever vocals. For vocals, get yourself a Telefunken U47 (tube powered). One will set you back more than the price of your car. ;-) I made recordings of my young son’s voice with a nice small-capsule omni condenser mic plugged directly into a Revox A77 Mk.3, as well as a pair to record a band featuring acoustic piano, drumset, saxes, Jazz-tone guitar (a fat-bodied Gibson plugged into a small combo amp), electric bass, and vocalist. I’ve used those tapes for years, as demo source material |
My impression is that I can only judge the "rightness" of tone when I hear it. As others have said, some recordings will never sound real on any system. Every so often everything aligns and I hear something reproduced that sounds incredibly real to my ears. I've found voices, piano and the sound of people clapping to be difficult to reproduce with a realistic sounding tone. Vinyl typically is more likely to sound realistic to me in tone than digital. FWIW, I've been listening to some different DACs recently and the Denafrips Pontus II sounds incredibly real in tone to my ears. The Chord Qutest did not inspire that same feeling of realism for me. |
Not sure about this but I think when you refer to tone, what is meant is the in-phase accurate rendition of frquency modulations, so called overtones. In my experience this is a function of the system‘s speed. This is why single drive high efficiency speakers with flee amps on small power supplies have a reason to exist. It‘s simply faster to rev up those than 500w amps driving 4-way speaker cross-overs at 80 db efficiency. So tone is really another word for the system‘s speed if you assume that linearity rather than fine-tuned frequency is a goal. In my mind it also explains why DSP systems have a hard time in being engaging on voice or piano recordings. |
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bdp24 -- While digging through my now dusty stash of recording/live performance equipment, I realize the microphones I used for the majority of my live recordings are an MXL V67 Q stereo mike and the microphones that are attached to my Zoom H4n Handy Recorder. Both pieces of equipment bought at Guitar Center in Sherman Oaks. What a zoo...if night quite as wild a zoo as the Guitar Center Hwd. The SM58 was my vocal mike used in my rock-and-roll days. |
@edcyn: Small world; the Guitar Center in Sherman Oaks was only a 1/4 mile from the apartment I lived in during the 90's, and I was in there pretty regularly. The SM58 is the industry standard mic for live vocals, but not for recording them. The Telefunken U47 (tube) is still the gold standard, but rare and expensive. A lot of studios have the solid state Telefunken, the U67. |
Tone is a tough thing to judge until you have a lot of hours of listening experience and finding the right gear to play the correct tonal quality is very tough especially in speakers for sure as well a amps and preamps so all i can say is trust your ears when you hear the right pieces you will know. |