Striking a balance between musicality and resolution

@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.

@carlos269 

Thanks for the reply.

There's no better foundation in my view, but it needs some building, too.

Also, totally agree about the importance of the source. I was not aware that it was possible to improve a poorly mastered release. How do you achieve that? ​​​

@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.

Musicality is a meaningless word inasmuch as "The Way I Like To Hear Music". It could encompass anything depending upon the individual.

The rock solid standard for truth in sound is being physically present in the same space as the performer listening to unamplified performing. Then we might compare the sound of being in the same space listening to the same performance with the assistance of microphones and amplification/transducers to that of the unamplified performance in that same space. 

That is one comprison.

Everything changes once the recording has been captured. We now assess the recording as an entirely different entity. Even if the recording is recorded and played back in the same space. In one instance the sound reaches our ears direct from the mouth/instruments with no intervening process. In the other instance after recording we listen to a different thing. Related to the inperson experience by being a capture of that, but no longer the same thing. An animal unto itself.

So we listen to recordings, but not in a standardised way. We listen on whatever device(s) we have to hand. We listen to a facsimile on facsimile decoders. The 'excitement' is on the facsimile. No facsimile decoding system adds excitement. The best a facsimile decoder can do is accurately convey the facsimile.

The value judgement of the facsimile decoder, whatever that is, will be ultimately subjective because at this point in time we don't have the absolute ability to interpret through instruments whether the facsimile reproduction system is absolutely accurate. Plus there is no one single verified accurate facsimile decoding system and room to use as a benchmark.

So here we all are muddling about with diverse equipment and diverse rooms listening to diverse facsimiles. Where is the scientific benchmark to make absolute assessments there?

We shall not get anywhere abandoning science but don't have a scientific answer to what is absolute accuracy in regard to facsimile decoding. We have measures we can make. We have auditions we can make. We haven't arrived at an absolute. So at this stage, bereft of an absolutely accurate playback system and absolutely accurate playbakc space, everything remains a compromise.

I think our ears are good enough to rule out the truly nasty playback options and good enough to indicate exceptional outstanding playback options. The wrench in the paradigm which throws all comparisons of playback options into meaninglessness is that we listen in different rooms to one another. Even if we had a standardised asbolute playback system and absolute standardised playback facsimiles, once they are utilised in diverse listening spaces, all standard listening results bacome specific to the specific space.

We cannot yet think in terms of absolutes with regard to replay of recordings. There's a gamut of standards in the recordings. There's a gamut of standards in replay systems and there's a gamut of rooms in which we place those systems.

We muddle onward. No-one is in possession of the truth. All are somewhere on a spectrum of less accurate to more accurate.

@theophile There is no “Absolute Sound” that can be verified, validated, and certified. The best that one could do is to compare the output of the source component to the output of the speakers and assess the accuracy there.

As for the room and acoustical environment, this is one of the biggest fallacies of the audiophile world and a complete misunderstanding of acoustics and lack of comprehension of the fact that our human brains have a built in sound arbitrator. To greatly overcome the room effect all one has to do is listen in the near-field.

I see unknowledgeable and misguided audiophiles spends some times hundred of thousands of dollars in bespoke custom acoustically “engineered” and  treated dedicated listening rooms not realizing that they are doing more harm than good; with the end result in most cases being over-damped and dead sounding rooms. BUT beyond that is the lack of knowledge and understanding by the so called “acousticians” and “acoustics engineers” that don’t realize that the frequencies that they are attenuating/absorbing, diffracting, and reflecting with the acoustical treatments do not only effect the frequencies in their calculations that they are attempting to target, without realizing and understanding that these same discrete frequencies serve as partial components of the more complex waveforms in frequency ranges that they were not attempting to effect.

In most cases these “acoustically engineered” room look beautiful but sound worst and more compromised than typical domestic rooms and acoustical environments. It is all about vanity without any real understanding of the science of acoustics and sound reproduction in acoustical spaces.

Then there are the guys that attempt to add treatment at the first reflection point on the side walls as if the sound coming from the speakers is a ray of light flrom a flashlight, not realizing that every frequency has a different first reflection point and it is dependent on the polar radiation pattern associated with the individual loudspeaker’s design.

As I often see, there is the blind leading the blind, a lot of clueless people with deep pockets not realizing that they are doing more harm than good to the sound of their systems. I could go on and on but I will stop here for now.