In Search Of Accurate Sound Reproduction: The Final Word!

[semente]

I've found this interesting opinion piece on the question of Live vs. Reproduced and one's ability to assess accuracy through listening.

 

In Search Of Accurate Sound Reproduction: The Final Word!

 

Do all audio enthusiasts have the same ability to judge high quality sound reproduction equally?

An even better question might be: “how important is the term “accurate” when describing and evaluating audio components today? 

What, if anything, does accurate sound reproduction mean for the average audio enthusiast, or better yet, should it?

 

The enjoyment and goal of accurate music reproduction is inextricably linked with the audiophile components that we use and evaluate to achieve great sound in our homes.

Of course, each individual has or acquires different needs and subjective abilities while trying to achieve this ultimate sound quality.

In the case of high definition audio reproduction, we should remember that the strive for “neutrality” in high end audio has a chain of command that THEORETICALLY ends with the individual listener; assuming of course that this is his ultimate target!

Without getting to deeply philosophical, one could argue that judging high definition sound reproduction is quite subjective in theory; while on the other hand, true “accuracy”could well be a different story altogether!

 

Looking back to the advent of high definition sound reproduction which had a huge surge in popularity in the late 1960’s, it really came to fruition in the 70’s with the help of a few particular audiophile magazines; namely Harry Pearson’s “The Absolute Sound” and particularly, J. Gordon Holt’s “Stereophile”.

These journals were revelatory in the fact that its founders, were music lovers who were trying to describe the sound of hi-fi components as closely relevant to what they perceived and heard in many live musical events both had attended throughout their lives.

While I personally did not agree with all of these authors opinions, they both had the intuitiveness of realizing that the “proclaimed” accuracy or neutrality of audio components and high quality sound reproduction should be recognized more for their intrinsic and individual tonal qualities as compared to live, unamplified sound per say, versus how the components measure up in a laboratory.

This, we all know by now is a far cry from throwing out all objective technical measurements by any means!

Technical measurements are quite useful in what they fundamentally tell us about the basic design principles of a component and the probability of them reproducing audio in a faithful and hopefully, accurate way in our home environment.

The best designers will let their ears be that final judge.

 

More importantly, both of these individuals were firm believers that high quality audio components, particularly loudspeakers, should try to bring us (if the source material permits) as close to what we remember hearing (live instruments) in a particular venue in a natural acoustic where the performance may have originated as well as trying and keep the loudspeaker neutral so it is agnostic to the type of music being reproduced.

Some reviewers today still understand this whereas others seem to have pushed it under the bus.

Still others are not even sure if it means anything to them personally at all.

However, a truthful soul will readily admit that much pop, rock and electronically manipulated program material has no relevance to live instruments in a real space and venue.

A good recording of live, acoustical instruments and voice made in a studio or setting with relatively few microphones (preferably a cross paired figure eight; (see Blumlein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumlein_Pair ) and high quality recording equipment will reveal more about a components sound stage, stereo imaging and indeed, its sound quality than music that is intentionally and commercially manipulated for a specific effect.

The sound of the “real thing” means different things to different people but is not the aforementioned music the only true standard for judging the ultimate performance of an audio syst are quite eager to proclaim which reviewer or journals opinions he or she considers the “gospel”.

However, generally speaking, a high definition audio system that can convey this type of source material convincingly will never fail to please the prospective listener. http://www.stereophile.com/content/acoustical-standard-follow-letters

 

I will be the first one to admit that all of us high-fi enthusiasts and music lovers, rightfully, have priorities and “tastes” in music which are critical when choosing hi-fi components.

Having said that, this is quite different than proclaiming that an individual’s “tastes” in recorded music reproduction are all that really matter when auditioning the sound quality of high end audio equipment.

Quite the contrary.

While engineers, some of whom may be musicians, try to perfectly recreate a particular musical event, in fact, an individual’s ideas as to how a recording may ultimately have been fabricated in a studio may well be far removed from what he actually heard at a particular “live” event.

Let’s be blunt: an electronically manipulated and amplified source is NOT RECREATING A REPLICA OF LIVE SOUND REPRODUCTION! (Hate to say that folks…) Our hearing is interpreted by our brain.

If you’re a musician, your brain rewires itself differently.

I think that has quite a bit to do with how we perceive and process sound, independent of the audio components used to evaluate the finished product.

So then, if your tastes run awry from acoustical instruments, recordings and recording venues, it may certainly be even more challenging for you, the music lover, to evaluate a particular components true qualities and/or faults that you may come to acknowledge in your home listening environment; no?

 

(...)

 

read more at http://www.vintageandsound.com/in-search-of-sound-accuracy/

[Daudio]

1 hour ago, semente said:

More importantly, both of these individuals were firm believers that high quality audio components, particularly loudspeakers, should try to bring us (if the source material permits) as close to what we remember hearing (live instruments) in a particular venue in a natural acoustic where the performance may have originated...

Some reviewers today still understand this whereas others seem to have pushed it under the bus.

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/blogs/entry/444-the-absolute-sound-idea-is-still-relevant-to-audiophiles/

 

[Ralf11]

I just plug in my Audio Aggravator and listen to the The Absolute Cloud

[esldude]

A quote from the venerable JGH:

 

Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing.
 

[AJ Soundfield]

The whole thing is funnier:

https://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/

 

Quote

 

Do you still feel the high-end audio industry has lost its way in the manner you described 15 years ago?

 

Not in the same manner; there's no hope now. Audio actually used to have a goal: perfect reproduction of the sound of real music performed in a real space. That was found difficult to achieve, and it was abandoned when most music lovers, who almost never heard anything except amplified music anyway, forgot what "the real thing" had sounded like. Today, "good" sound is whatever one likes. As Art Dudley so succinctly said [in his January 2004 "Listening," see "Letters," p.9], fidelity is irrelevant to music.

Since the only measure of sound quality is that the listener likes it, that has pretty well put an end to audio advancement, because different people rarely agree about sound quality. Abandoning the acoustical-instrument standard, and the mindless acceptance of voodoo science, were not parts of my original vision.

 

 

Good stuff from the patriarch of audiophiles himself 

[Ralf11]

Good to see those JGH quotes... and yet technology has brought higher Fi to more people than ever before

 

not too long ago most people were listening to cassettes and 8-tracks or really crummy "phonographs"

[AJ Soundfield]

7 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

yet technology has brought higher Fi to more people than ever before

not too long ago most people were listening to cassettes and 8-tracks or really crummy "phonographs"

Yes, science (electro-acoustic engineering and perceptual) has advanced (Digital) audio considerably since then.

JGH is referring specifically to the "High End" and "mindless acceptance of voodoo science" resulting in stagnation within.

[esldude]

Oops double post somehow.

[esldude]

Just now, esldude said:

More good stuff from JGH:

 

"We seem to have come to a tacit agreement that it's no longer necessary, or even desirable, for a home music system to sound like the real thing. We speak in hushed and reverent tones about reproducing the ineffable beauty of music, when in fact much real music is harsh and vulgar and ugly. We design the all-important musical midrange out of our equipment in order to try—vainly, I might add—to recreate the illusion of three-dimensional space through what is essentially a two-dimensional reproducer. And whenever we hear a loudspeaker or a CD player that shows subversive signs of sounding more 'alive' or 'realistic' than most, we dismiss it out of hand as being too 'forward' or 'aggressive.' As if a lot of real music isn't forward and aggressive!
 

"The idea that all we are trying to do is make equipment that gives the listener some sort of magical emotional response to a mystical experience called 'music' is all well and good, but it isn't what High End is all about. In fact, high fidelity was originally a reaction to the gorgeously rich-sounding console 'boom boxes' that dominated the home-music market during the 1940s!

 

"We've lost our direction....The High End in 1992 is a multi-million-dollar business. But it's an empty triumph, because we haven't accomplished what we set out to do. The playback still doesn't sound 'just like the real thing.' People, let's start getting back to basics. Let's put the 're' back into 'reproduction.' Let's promote products that dare to sound as 'alive' and 'aggressive' as the music they are trying to reproduce."

 

 

[Ralf11]

Thx for posting those quotes - some are not surprising given that Holt studied engineering

 

unlike many "reviewers" today - one of which is a Creation "scientist"

[fas42]

Good thread ... yes, the industry lost its way totally for awhile - there are encouraging signs currently, some people are discovering how good reproduction can actually be, in terms of delivering the "live experience". Mostly, through hideously expensive rigs - which is one way - but it doesn't have be the only way: very conventional, good value for money components can deliver if suitably optimised and refined.

 

My own efforts have shown what's possible - 100% aurally invisible speakers, which deliver all the visceral and emotional "grunt" of the "real thing" - not possible to achieve by attaching components A, B and C together, using cables D; but by careful sorting out of the system in hand.

[AJ Soundfield]

48 minutes ago, fas42 said:

My own efforts have shown what's possible - 100% aurally invisible speakers, which deliver all the visceral and emotional "grunt" of the "real thing" - not possible to achieve by attaching components A, B and C together, using cables D; but by careful sorting out of the system in hand.

For the folks who don't know you here Frank, it might be time to show them the HTIB you "modified", so that the full scope may be revealed 

[fas42]

Ahhh, my favourite buddy boy AJ is onto it ...

[STC]

There is no way you can get realistic sound reproduction with two speakers. Multi channel is the way forward. 

[esldude]

8 minutes ago, STC said:

There is no way you can get realistic sound reproduction with two speakers. Multi channel is the way forward. 

I am assuming Frank's HTIB has multiple speakers or multiple speaker simulations.  So that is the way forward??

[STC]

I was referring to the OP. I am beginning to think stereo sound is now considered as a standard of its own not necessarily reflective of real sound reproduction. 

[fas42]

17 minutes ago, esldude said:

I am assuming Frank's HTIB has multiple speakers or multiple speaker simulations.  So that is the way forward??

 

Nope. That is, that system was purely operating as a stereo - multi-channel is not necessary to conjure a realistic portrayal, a fullness in the experience is generated automatically when the quality is high enough; all the echos within the listening space are additive, not subtractive, to that sense of a musical event.

 

The description that most makes sense is an old one: chop off all the listening space past the plane that the speakers lie on, and have the remaining area you're listening in "transported to the venue" - what you experience is the equivalent to doing that.

[STC]

44 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The description that most makes sense is an old one: chop off all the listening space past the plane that the speakers lie on, and have the remaining area you're listening in "transported to the venue" - what you experience is the equivalent to doing tha

 

But research suggests that side and rear wall reflection is essential for realistic sound reproduction. 

[semente]

17 minutes ago, STC said:

 

But research suggests that side and rear wall reflection is essential for realistic sound reproduction. 

 

You probably mean "research suggests that side and rear wall reflection is essential for a more credible illusion of spatial reproduction"...

 

Of course I enjoy, to a point, the fact that sounds seem to be coming from different points in space but I don't rate the spatial illusion nowhere near as highly as many audiophiles do.

To be honest I think it's accessory to music and to it's enjoyment. I attend live recitals and concerts of classical music regularly and even when I sit upfront I don't listen to as much instrument detachment or operating noises as I do from many recordings and systems.

I think it's become quite an obsession and from where I'm standing it looks as though many manufacturers, critics and audiophiles find it more significant than accurate timbre reproduction.

[STC]

24 minutes ago, semente said:

the fact that sounds seem to be coming from different points in space

 

If you hear or able to point the sound coming from different points than you got a problem with the setup. I mean localization of the reflected sound coming from different points. 

[semente]

31 minutes ago, STC said:

 

If you hear or able to pint the sound coming from different points than you got a problem with the setup. I mean localization of the reflected sound coming different points. 

 

No I don't have a problem with the system, perhaps I just didn't express myself clearly (enough).

Stereo (2 channel), as I understand it and hear it, creates an illusion of a soundscape located between the speakers where "images" of instruments will be positioned in a more or less similar point/place to that of the original music event (depending on the mic technique used).

If I'm not mistaken, side-wall and ceiling reflections will create ghost images (reflections) of the reproduced sound, such as those you used to get in the TV days of antenna in the roof, and also help the speakers disappear, which is why some people defend their beneficial contribution; such ghosts may give an impression of 3D-ness (a bit like stereoscopic images)

 

 

but will also mask the recorded cues of the original acoustic space, making them less appealing to those who enjoy a more natural/realistic reproduction of the original event, and will also affect both frequency response and focus in a negative way.

 

Siegfried Linkwitz has an interesting presentation on the subject:

 

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/Recording/phantom images.pdf

[semente]

A loudspeaker is not an instrument, it's goal is not to create sound (music) but to reproduce recorded sound (music).

 

And because loudspeakers produce sound in rooms, the acoustics of the listening room will interact with the spatial cues of the natural acoustic venue where the original musical event took place (excluding studio recordings, which don't have those natural cues).

The less your listening room interferes with the reproduction, the more of the original event you'll be able to listen to.

 

Furthermore, if you want your system to reproduce an instrument as if it were playing in there with you this instrument would have to be recorded in free-space (anechoic).

 

In most studio recordings the various instrument are recorded in semi-anechoic conditions, sometimes in different studios, often in mono; EQ, panning, reverb and adjustements in level are made during mixing and this will create an artificial ambience which may benefit from some room contribution and even the extra low even order harmonic boost...

[fas42]

2 hours ago, STC said:

 

But research suggests that side and rear wall reflection is essential for realistic sound reproduction. 

 

We are saying the same thing - the area "chopped off" is that behind the speakers; it's the front wall that "disappears".

[fas42]

1 hour ago, semente said:

And because loudspeakers produce sound in rooms, the acoustics of the listening room will interact with the spatial cues of the natural acoustic venue where the original musical event took place (excluding studio recordings, which don't have those natural cues).

The less your listening room interferes with the reproduction, the more of the original event you'll be able to listen to.

 

Furthermore, if you want your system to reproduce an instrument as if it were playing in there with you this instrument would have to be recorded in free-space (anechoic).

 

In most studio recordings the various instrument are recorded in semi-anechoic conditions, sometimes in different studios, often in mono; EQ, panning, reverb and adjustements in level are made during mixing and this will create an artificial ambience which may benefit from some room contribution and even the extra low even order harmonic boost...

 

What happens with playback is that you have the ambience of the room you're in, "in conflict" with the ambience encoded in the recording, whether natural or studio engineered. In lesser quality reproduction the combination of room and recording determines the overall sense conveyed in the listening; if the playback is lifted to a very high standard then the ambience expressed by the recording will completely dominate; your listening room "disappears", to be replaced by those spaces encoded in the recording.

 

Highly manipulated studio recordings become quite fascinating to "observe"; each sound element has its own space, independent of the others, and can be seen as an isolated participant: subjectively, it's as if one had control of the 24 or whatever track master, and can mentally slide the faders down on everything except the track of interest.

[semente]

33 minutes ago, fas42 said:

if the playback is lifted to a very high standard then the ambience expressed by the recording will completely dominate; your listening room "disappears", to be replaced by those spaces encoded in the recording.

 

I don't agree with this sentence, unless you are including the room in the "playback lifted to a very high standard".

The room cannot disappear unless you treat it, it's got nothing to do with the quality of the playback, even if controlled narrow dispersion in the upper mids and highs deals better with the room "conflict".

But a lot of people enjoy that "interference" to the point of positioning their speakers close to the side wall with little or no toe-in.

It also looks from what I read in forums and webzines like many audiophiles and "pro" critics perceive flat response as "dull" or "lifeless", although most of them do not listen to unamplified acoustic music.

 

R