Striking a balance between musicality and resolution
As my years and experience in this hobby continue to grow I notice a divergence between those seeking extreme resolution and detail from their music reproduction systems and those in search of maximum musicality.
In theory, high-end audio systems should provide more than garden variety stereo systems. In my view that means more detail and information should be heard from a high-end music reproduction system than one hears from ordinary HiFi stereo systems set ups. BUT is there such thing as too much resolution and detail in a stereo system’s sound presentation?
Some people feel that a less detailed presentation that is easier for your brain to process has better flow and provides more enjoyable listening.
So there is the dichotomy. Should one pay more to hear less? Can a frequency response performance that is curtailed at both frequency extremes be desired and praised?
Those that seek a “more musical” presentation usually point to their belief that that is how they hear live un-amplified acoustic music in the real world. In nature, high frequencies attenuate and decay with distance from the source and sound waves get absorbed, diffracted, reflected, and diffused by the environmental factors and landscapes; so they are not wrong in stating that in the real world the sound of music is less detailed and extended. The issue is that when we listen to our music reproduction systems at home we are not listening to live un-amplified music in a concert venue, but rather professionally produced audio recordings typically recorded with close-microphones techniques.
So the question is, do we want our systems to reproduce the sound on the commercial audio recordings accurately or does one want hear the sound the way one thinks that it should sound?
Lucky for me, I have enough systems at home that I have been able to design, set up, and tune them for different targeted resultant sound, sound presentation, and sound qualities. For instance, my OKTAN6 ultimate horn system is a dissecting microscope, my Pinnacle horn system aims at extreme musicality, and my WAAR reference system is a chameleon, which can be adjusted to sound exactly how you want it to sound in real-time.
My “test-bed” system takes on the sound character and sound qualities of the components in use and it is excellent for evaluating what new components have to offer or bring to the table in terms of sound qualities. But with the Acapella TW-1S ION plasma super-tweeters extending the high frequencies, the TBI Emperor subwoofers extending the low frequencies, and the highly detailed & nuanced Digital Audio Denmark AX24 DSD dac streaming HQPLAYER as the source, the “Test Bed” system is a highly resolving system.
As with everything else in life, is there a happy medium or compromise that gives you the best of those worlds? I believe that there is and that great music reproduction systems can be tuned to strike a balance between musicality and resolution. If one listens to the evolution of my OKTAN6 ultimate horn system for instance you can hear that the fine tuning is driving the sound in that direction.
So during last night’s listening session I adjusted the sound of my “Test Bed” system to a more musical sound presentation. The “Test Bed” system is always in flux so it allows me to experiment, explore, tweak, tune, and have fun with it.
Here is an audio recording from last night’s listening session that captures the revised sound presentation and conveys the sound qualities that exemplify a more organic sound versus a more delineated & resolved sound presentation:
An advantage of using YouTube is that you can find the original cut that YouTube transferred using the same compression format. This is then what you should be comparing the subject system against. How closely the rendition sounds to the original cut is a direct measure of the fidelity (i.e., accuracy). If they are both played back over the same quality sound system, they should reveal the same strengths and flaws, or lack thereof. |
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@newton_john I was looking for a general audio discussion category to post this topic in, it is not about amps and preamps. The source material is the dominant factor when it comes to the resultant sound qualities. The beauty of things now a days is that you don’t have to accept the sound quality of the commercial recordings releases, if you are knowledgeable you can improve on the source and get more out of the commercial recordings. My education and background in Physics has served and forms the foundation of everything I have done and do. |
@newton_john The simplest, and extremely effective way, to improve on the source recordings is through the use of HQPLAYER. The other ways that I use require more in-depth understanding of the elements at play in electronics, sound reproduction, acoustics and the mastering process to achieve desired and predictable outcome. When you have access to the digital files, either locally stored or streamed, you are in the same position as the mastering engineer. I immersed myself in the high-end mastering studio world and come out with a good understanding that there are equipment and techniques to achieve pretty much any resultant sound you want; the key is having a strong understanding of what frequencies to adjust and with which dynamic parameters, to yield the results you want. You can control the spatial arrangement, the timbre and tone of the instruments and so on, and you can do all this real time, which I did for awhile. But while that is fun, it is tedious and requires recalls or good record keeping to remember setting for each track. So I developed a smarter approach, instead of remastering each track, I developed a way to adjust the overall sound system’s, including room effects, transfer-function in real-time to yield the desired resultant sound at the listening position. I designed and implemented the real-time transfer function adjustment system on my six tower Wisdom Audio Adrenalin Rush (WAAR) reference system. The real-time transfer function adjustment system that I developed features dynamic filtering and convolution signal decomposition techniques done all in the analog domain without any digital processing. After successfully implementing the real-time adjustment system on my WAAR reference system, I decided to challenge myself and execute a different approach to achieve the same results, which I did using Finemet transformer based discrete frequency crossovers and field-coil drivers on my big six way OKTAN6 ultimate horn system. I have also designed and implemented remastering systems all in the digital domain and hybrid digital/analog remastering systems on some of my other systems. I try to challenge myself to use a different approach each time to achieve the desired target resultant sound at the listening chair position. This is why having tools, like audio recordings of my systems allow for relative comparisons and adjustments, corrective action. |
