Timbre definition from Wikipedia, “In music, timbre, also known as tone color, is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the perception of timbre include spectrum and envelope. ...
Updated 02-20-2013 at 06:41 PM by mitchco
I believe every piece of audio equipment has its own sonic signature. E.g. CD transports, cartridges, tone arms, turntables, preamps, amps, cross overs, speakers, interconnects, basically every component, part, and wire in (and around, e.g. power supplies) the audio signal path will have its own sonic signature, whether designed or not. Technically, a sonic signature is called a transfer function, but we will get to that shortly. I also believe there is a direct correlation between what we hear ...
Updated 06-03-2012 at 07:11 PM by mitchco
As an ex recording/mixing engineer/producer, http://www.thepikes.com/bio here are a few thoughts with respect to evaluating high resolution masters for sound quality. Unfortunately, for most recordings, especially multi-track, there are many, many steps/paths from the mic to the final master we listen to. Most folks I think would be surprised to see the workflow. But that is another post. The criteria I use to eval music sound quality is: 1) Musical ...
Updated 05-09-2012 at 02:56 AM by mitchco
While visiting a friend in The Big Smoke recently, I had an opportunity to assist in tuning a set of DIY speakers to his critical listening environment. This is a walkthrough of what we did, how it sounded, and lessons learned. I tried to present this in a step by step format so if desired, by following the same steps, you could obtain similar results. Here is pic of my friend’s rig: Let’s ...
Updated 05-09-2012 at 09:49 AM by mitchco
Updated with more info on Audio DiffMaker, plus ABX listening tests. Lots of discussion around this article: 24/192 Music Downloads...and why they make no sense http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html I decided to run a science experiment using Audio DiffMaker to compare 16/44 to 24/192 format of the same master from Soundkeeper Recordings: http://soundkeeperrecordings.com/format.htm I have used Audio DiffMaker before to compare FLAC vs WAV ...
Updated 05-09-2012 at 02:34 AM by mitchco
Recommended reading first The reason is that I am not going to reiterate the baseline components and measurements of my test gear already covered in that post. Here is a high level block diagram of my test setup: On the left side is my HTPC with both JRiver MC 17 and JPLAY mini installed. The test FLAC file is the same Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Refugee at 24/96 ...
Updated 04-09-2013 at 04:17 PM by mitchco
In part 1, I used a null test technique to show that both FLAC and WAV (lossless) file formats are identical. In this post, I have expanded the null test to cover off playing the same FLAC and WAV files dynamically from JRiver and capturing the audio waveform after the Digital to Analog conversion and analog line output stage. Here is a high level block diagram of my test setup: For playback, ...
Updated 11-12-2012 at 11:32 PM by mitchco
Lots of discussion on the SQ of software music players on CA. I am a fan of correlating what I hear with what I measure and vice versa. In this post, I am proposing a way of measuring the difference between music players by expanding the “null test” I performed here http://www.computeraudiophile.com/bl...M4A-Experiment Rather than performing a null test on audio file formats, the single unit under test will be the music player, so when one music player is ...
Updated 05-09-2012 at 01:33 AM by mitchco
Using the chart below, what subjective terms would you use to describe the tone quality (a.k.a. tone color or tone balance or timbre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbre) of your sound system at the listening position? This chart, used by permission from Bob Katz, Mastering Engineer extraordinaire, http://www.digido.com/ shows the subjective terms we use to describe excess ...
Updated 05-09-2012 at 02:50 AM by mitchco
I wanted to try an experiment of measuring any differences between various media file formats as described in the title. Consider this, if you are hearing a difference when you change media file formats (e.g. from FLAC to WAV), then the audio waveform must have changed, and if it is has changed, then that change can be measured. While the waveform pictures in this article are technical, it really is a case of which picture does not belong with the others. If you are comparing media ...
Updated 05-09-2012 at 10:20 AM by mitchco
Years ago, I was lucky enough to spend a decade as a live sound mixer and recording studio engineer in Western Canada. While most of my sound engineering experience was with rock bands, I had the opportunity to work with many talented musicians, recording/mixing many different types of music, from folk, country, jazz, choirs, and classical. I spent a quite a bit of time working with compressors and limiters, so I thought I would share some of my experiences with them, along with mixing and mastering. ...
Updated 05-09-2012 at 01:56 PM by mitchco
Remember that feeling when you were at a concert or club and saw a band perform an awesome live show? The lights, sound, music, and crowd all moving as one. You could feel the music as much as you could hear it. It was loud, but not too loud, sounded clean, with good dynamics and punch. Good times. I wanted to design a high resolution (i.e. audiophile) sound system that reproduced that live sound experience in my listening room. I want club and concert sound in my listening room ...
Updated 05-23-2012 at 09:08 AM by mitchco
If you have followed this series on a quest for proper timbre, I have reached a conclusion. From wikipedia, in psychoacoustics, timbre is also called tone quality and tone color. No question, music source, electronics, interconnects, power, etc., all have impact on timbre. However, the biggest factor on reproducing proper timbre, by orders of magnitude, is the speaker to room interface which is limited by small room acoustics: http://www.gcmstudio.com/acoustics/acoustics.html ...
Updated 05-09-2012 at 12:57 AM by mitchco
Now that we have a calibrated frequency response at the listening position, let’s look at the other part of the timbre (i.e. tone quality) equation which is the time domain. Sound in your listening room has 3 measurable dimensions: time, energy, and frequency. We have looked at frequency response, targeting the B&K house curve, and how it affects timbre. So how does the time domain in your listening room affect timbre? As mentioned earlier, I had the privilege to work in many ...
Updated 05-09-2012 at 12:54 AM by mitchco
This is Part 4 of a series on a quest to hear music the way it was intended to be reproduced. In the last 3 posts, we have “voiced” and calibrated our speakers to an equilateral triangle, took some frequency response measurements, analyzed the results, and introduced digital room correction (DRC). Let’s look at the frequency response measurement results and DRC in more detail. Is DRC ready for prime time? I think this post will show conclusively, yes, DRC is ready for audiophiles to take full ...
Updated 05-09-2012 at 12:52 AM by mitchco
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