ABS: What Is The Trouble With Measurements.

There is standard  design engineering measures of the gear in the absolute or in the ideal,  out of any embeddings working specific dimensions...

The article refer to the way this set of electrical measures of a piece of gear design with measuring tools in a neutral environment to isolate each factors means something or not, in words, related to a specific acoustic context...The article give an interesting exemple about the way some contextual information  help to interpret some restricted  electrical measures ....

 

The general  necessary context is what i called the 3 (4 like the 3 musketerers) working embedding dimensions...

Electrical noise floor control, mechanical vibration control and the two most important last one : acoustic and the psycho-acoustic controls which are necessary in small room and very transformative...

The acoustic set of measures is not ONLY a fixed set of measures to begin with like the design piece of gear final measures, because your small room must be tuned by your ears for your ears, it is not a big hall, this set of ongoing acoustic measures will ve a tuning process in time...And in this tuning acoustic process you learn doing it how to tune your own ear/brain to the speaker/room and for a specific set of gear...

In acoustic for example the ratio listener envelopment/ apparent source width, or LEV/ASW, cannot be improved without installing acoustic devices to improve the timing delays between reflections coming from front and behind and lateral one... To do this without affecting negatively other acoustic parameters like localization and timbre ask for a measuring listening experiment ongoing process in many phases...

Contrary to the opinion of many, the sound of the recording trade-off set of choices by a recording engineer is not so much reproduced but translated from these recording acoustic choices from the engineer, in the acoustic specific language of your room via measuring tuning process and for each of your ear...

Then here measures and acoustic concepts(words) must be correlated..

A good speakers/room control will not make a bad dac or bad amplifier good one for sure, but will help to optimize their working by compensation of the room response to the speakers and to the system behind it...

There is also a set of psycho-acoustic possible controls in small room to improve the intimacy of the experience and make any small room better than most headphones...

Buy relatively good gear first, after that create your own set of listening experiments , correlating measures of room/speakers properties measured by listening experiment and with basic device ( spl device etc) you will be able to describe in words and simple acoustic concept this ongoing transformative process under your own control...

 

 

 

 

My way forward has been mainly by listening. Also considering good measurements when available.

 

Acoustic experience dont come "magically" from a high price piece of gear... By the mere virtue of his design alone...

Then correlating electrical measures of design with describing words is arbitrary to a great extent...

 

But controlling time and timing, intensity frequencies levels, and direction and distance of apparent sound source in their ratio to listener envelopment factor is possible and can be described by words in our own experience...

For example in some opera good recording of Kurt Weill, the sound come almost behind me and near each one of my ears from two different singers with the orchestra imaging behind the speakers at the same time...

By the way a 2 stereo system is always composed of 4 speakers, two virtual one and two actual one, by virtue of the differential distance between each ear and your head diameter...

Why is this Kurt Weill recording sound like that ?

Because my room acoustic and psycho acoustic control made me able to sit on the stage with the singers turning their head and walking and singing with their voices perceived from different angles accordingly to their movement...All that with an intimacy experience that crash my 8 headphones,,,

For sure the reason first is the acoustic well encoded trade-off choices of the recording engineer, a genius, and the way my room is able to translate it acoustically and psych-acoustically for my 2 ears/brain interpretation....

For example i use a foldable screen like an acoustic lens to better control the ratio direct and reflected waves, and a hundred tuned Helmholtz resonators and also duffusers at critical locations to control intensity frequencies response of the speakers/room for my specific ears...

 

Is it perfect?

No...( for example more resolving system exist a very high price, but i dont want them at all cost even if i could afford them... my system is enough resolving and non fatiguing at all )

Is it better than anything i ever heard live?

Yes...( Even if my live system experience is limited, i am not a pro audio reviewer, my system beat all those i ever heard for me)

 

The only important factor to control save the embeddings one, are the S.Q. /price ratio factor...

But to control this ratio means you must be able to OPTIMIZE what you already own and know how to embed it rightfully...You must learn how to know the potential of what you already have...

Anything else is ignorance and sound obsession....

Upgrading your brain/ear acoustic experience matter much than upgrading the gear most of the times...

 

For sure i own a dedicated room... It is impossible to do that in a living room...

For sure my room is not esthetical, it is impossible to do an esthetical job with junk material and home made device and my uncrafty hands... My talent is undertanding books and teaching reading analysis not creating work of art... 😁😊

For sure the same thing can be made in an acoustically designed room with all resonators hidden and some esthetically designed...

But my price cost is peanuts, and acoustician designing such a tuned room will cost a fortune, easily near 100,000 bucks because of the time needed andnot only the materials needed ....

One thing is sure it is way more fun to tune a system in a consuming time ongoing set of listening experiments then the brief pleasure to plug a new gear in the wall at high price...😁😊

 

 

Test your speakers / room.... in particular track 15 with the 2 singers in your  ear and the orchestra behind the speakers...