FURIOUS!

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

6 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Frank, [...] Can you you recap for us? Thanks. 

 

Noooooooooooooooooo!

 

Frank, you know we luv ya, right ??

[fas42]

Too bloody right! ... and I luvs yers all, too ... ?

[pkane2001]

13 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Ahhh, you are a pessimist ... these days, gear is pretty damn good in many areas; it may not take that much to push it to a higher level. Again, the main obstacle would likely be the belief that it "can't happen" - it might take doing it a number of times, with different gear, to convince someone of the behaviour being always possible.

 

To repeat myself for the millionth time, the core thing is to be able to hear the rig misbehaving - if you can't pick the sound reproduction being faulty, then it will likely take those few thousand years.

 

Still waiting for something concrete, a recipe, an expert system rule, a test I can repeat, a thing I can try to improve. You are not offering any specifics. 

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Still waiting for something concrete, a recipe, an expert system rule, a test I can repeat, a thing I can try to improve. You are not offering any specifics. 

You can wait until hell freezes over, or the Hawaii "slump" crashes into the sea causing one of the largest tsunamis is all of history before Frank says anything of any substance 

[gmgraves]

23 hours ago, fas42 said:

George, you have been better than most I have to say ... at some stage I noted an almost complete list of what I did to get my first competent rig to perform - I have done this on a number of occasions now, on different  forums - "there was a recipe", which happened to work for that particular combo ... on the current gear I have, quite useless.

 

That post is buried somewhere, if you insist I'll attempt to track it down with the, ahem, search engine of this forum.

 

No need, Frank. What you call a "complete list of what you do" is no more than anybody else does, and it's all a common sense approach to hooking up a system (except for the hard-soldering of all interconnects together and thus eliminating connectors - which of course is ridiculous, because the RCA connector makes a connection, if done right, the resistance of which can't even be measured with a 5 digit DVM! So it is totally irrelevant and unnecessary).  

[fas42]

8 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Still waiting for something concrete, a recipe, an expert system rule, a test I can repeat, a thing I can try to improve. You are not offering any specifics. 

 

OK, I will repeat - apologies to AN - a test that I would do as one of the first things if I were to listen to your system ... pick a recording you had high hopes for when you purchased it, but that comes across badly on your rig; carefully listen to it, now - and list what it's getting 'wrong'.

 

I proceed by the process of troubleshooting - first step, nail a symptom that you can describe precisely; that if it's there, or not there, that you can clearly distinguish, and then ...

 

I do not abitrarily Add Goodness - that thing which everyone does - it's a waste of time, and resources.

[fas42]

48 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

No need, Frank. What you call a "complete list of what you do" is no more than anybody else does, and it's all a common sense approach to hooking up a system (except for the hard-soldering of all interconnects together and thus eliminating connectors - which of course is ridiculous, because the RCA connector makes a connection, if done right, the resistance of which can't even be measured with a 5 digit DVM! So it is totally irrelevant and unnecessary).  

 

And there you have nailed precisely why you are highly unlikely to ever grok the process ... you have a standard list of "things to do", and you've decided that certain procedures are completely unnecessary - if checking off everything in that list doesn't produce the required outcome, then that's the end of the story, as far as you're concerned ...

 

How many people have gone through the nightmare of taking a car with an awkward fault to mechanic after mechanic - each goes through his set of tests, etc; changes something, charges you for his efforts - and you're still no better off. Is the answer to get rid of that car? To state that all those cars have that fault and you just have to live with it?  ... Some people persist, and finally come across someone with the insight to work it out - it could be a tiny thing, ridiculously simple to fix - just no-one up to then had thought of looking in that area.

[Ralf11]

I've also decided that certain procedures are completely unnecessary 

[kumakuma]

3 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

I've also decided that certain procedures are completely unnecessary 

 

Gasp! You mean not everything matters?

[fas42]

13 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

I've also decided that certain procedures are completely unnecessary 

 

As have I. They include, gasp!!!, not worrying about getting the priciest speakers available, or doing complete makeovers of the room ...

 

What matters is how one determines what is necessary, or unnecessary - was it by personal experiment, or did a highly respected Authority Figure proclaim it ... ?

[Ralf11]

Just now, fas42 said:

 

What matters is how one determines what is necessary, or unnecessary -  ... 

 

I start with physics.

[fas42]

And physics will tell you whether the implementation of a system is sufficient?

[Ralf11]

claims that are obviously impossible tell me not to worry about that product or "tuning"

[fas42]

13 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

claims that are obviously impossible tell me not to worry about that product or "tuning"

 

"Obviously impossible" - how many times in physics have those immortal words been uttered by the Head Guy, only to have some young upstart begin to demolish the structure of ideas current to that point?

 

Weird claims just point to some areas of systems being very sensitive to the environment - "everything" will affect what is heard. The smartest response is to analyse why that area is so sensitive, and 'radiation harden' it.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

I proceed by the process of troubleshooting - first step, nail a symptom that you can describe precisely; that if it's there, or not there, that you can clearly distinguish, and then ...

 

A little warning - if you do this 'properly' then you may do yourself quite a disservice - because, you will start hearing this same symptom on other recordings - it may not be so obvious, but there it will be, like an annoying splinter in your finger, it keeps resurfacing, to remind you that it hasn't gone away. The classic two edged sword - you are now aware of a system weakness, which means that you can hear it tainting everything that comes through; the positive side is, that you will also know when you have properly eliminated the issue.

[pkane2001]

14 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

OK, I will repeat - apologies to AN - a test that I would do as one of the first things if I were to listen to your system ... pick a recording you had high hopes for when you purchased it, but that comes across badly on your rig; carefully listen to it, now - and list what it's getting 'wrong'.

 

I proceed by the process of troubleshooting - first step, nail a symptom that you can describe precisely; that if it's there, or not there, that you can clearly distinguish, and then ...

 

I do not abitrarily Add Goodness - that thing which everyone does - it's a waste of time, and resources.

 

Ok,  making progress! So, on a bad recording, how do you distinguish between a truly bad recording and a fault in the playback system?

 

Please give some examples of symptoms that you listen to, things that I might recognize in my system.

 

[fas42]

I think we're both making progress ...

 

Ummm, you must have missed when I mentioned that I have a motto, "There's no such thing as a bad recording!" - this idea evolved for me over the early years, as I got deeper and deeper into optimising - all the "duds" I had steadily revealed their inner delights, and some became my favourite showpieces.

 

"Bad recording" are those that 'stress' the particular rig, and reveal the latter's shortcomings most glaringly - so, I will say nothing you have is truly bad, at all . A recording may be mixed in a very annoying way, be compressed to a ridiculous degree - but they're not bad in the sense that I'm interested in.

 

Pop recordings of the 70's are excellent fodder for this exercise - they can sound excrutiatingly bad, or staggeringly impressive, depending upon where the rig is at ... pick your own selection ...

 

Symptoms? Irritating, unconvincing treble when certain instruments or sound elements are in action is a good starter - unrealistic sibilance with female vocalists, cymbals that have none of the shimmer of the real thing are some obvious examples.

[pkane2001]

13 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Ummm, you must have missed when I mentioned that I have a motto, "There's no such thing as a bad recording!" - this idea evolved for me over the early years, as I got deeper and deeper into optimising - all the "duds" I had steadily revealed their inner delights, and some became my favourite showpieces.

 

I can certainly produce a very distorted recording that will sound nothing like original event. I would call it a "bad recording". Especially if it destroys information needed to reproduce the original sound.

 

And once information is destroyed, how do you know what part of the poor quality playback is due to this bad recording, and what part due to the system? 

 

15 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Symptoms? Irritating, unconvincing treble when certain instruments or sound elements are in action is a good starter - unrealistic sibilance with female vocalists, cymbals that have none of the shimmer of the real thing are some obvious examples.

 

These are symptoms that nearly everyone in this hobby knows well and has fought (and many have defeated).  So, what would you try next with a system that exhibits this bad treble response?

[fas42]

There are recordings which have been done with the lowest fidelity possible - but unless they have been deliberately 'hacked' to be irritating the underlying music should come through. I'm thinking here of a compilation of acts that participated in in a local "battle of the bands" in the 70's; many were only captured by a member of the audience casually using a cheap cassette recorder, way back in the hall. This is truly bottom of the barrel stuff - and sounds completely turgid, most of the time. What is remarkable is that a setup in excellent tune allows one to hear past all the crap - and the performance of the group starts to sit up, it no longer is a boring curiosity.

 

Information can be reassembled by the brain, if it "knows what's coming" - this is apparently what is going on. If the clues are enough, are not too damaged, then our minds "fill the gaps" - at times I marvel at how adept my brain is at riding over the rough stuff, and presenting to me a far more pleasant version of what is actually on the recording - I'm getting the good stuff, and the badness is being discarded, unconsciously.

 

Bad treble is not a frequency response issue, it's distortion. Unfortunately, nearly everything in a rig conspires to make this area falter - just look at the measured behaviour of even the best amps; it's always the treble that leads the charge to starting to lose "perfect" behaviour.

 

One of the first things I would do is refresh every connection and control in the rig, in one go - to see what audible impact that had. That is, after carefully listening to a testing piece, with the system fully warmed up and stable, I would methodically disconnect and replug everything, and exercise every switch and pot that was in the path - and immediately listen again to that piece. If decently transparent, there is normally an obvious change, for the better, in the refreshed state.

[pkane2001]

11 hours ago, fas42 said:

Information can be reassembled by the brain, if it "knows what's coming" - this is apparently what is going on. If the clues are enough, are not too damaged, then our minds "fill the gaps" - at times I marvel at how adept my brain is at riding over the rough stuff, and presenting to me a far more pleasant version of what is actually on the recording - I'm getting the good stuff, and the badness is being discarded, unconsciously.

 

That's where we differ, Frank. First and foremost, I'm interested in a faithful reproduction of audio. My mind conjuring things up from that damaged audio signal, filling in gaps, or otherwise making s**t up is secondary. While the brain is an amazing device, I still believe that audio can be properly reproduced without resorting to imagination.

 

[opus101]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

While the brain is an amazing device, I still believe that audio can be properly reproduced without resorting to imagination.

 

Turns out that without imagination there would be no audio (sound being a percept) at all, merely vibration.

[pkane2001]

6 minutes ago, opus101 said:

 

Turns out that without imagination there would be no audio (sound being a percept) at all, merely vibration.

 

And as it turns out, these vibrations can be measured without using imagination.

 

[fas42]

11 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

That's where we differ, Frank. First and foremost, I'm interested in a faithful reproduction of audio. My mind conjuring things up from that damaged audio signal, filling in gaps, or otherwise making s**t up is secondary. While the brain is an amazing device, I still believe that audio can be properly reproduced without resorting to imagination.

 

 

Well, it turns out that it is faithful reproduction that makes it happen - the imagination 'adjusting' what is heard happens every second while we listen to the normal sounds of the world, all the time. But we are completely unaware of it, because it's so part of our being - if a real piano is being played in a room of out home, and we walk out of that room, to the other end of the house, and then outside to the sound coming through a window pane - throughout that, we always hear "that piano". If we were to look at a microphone capture of what our ears were picking up at each point of that walk, you would say, how on earth did I hear the piano so clearly at the times corresponding to the later parts of the recording?!

 

This is what happens when the rig works well, for recordings. We're deliberately exploiting our mind's ability to see past what is irrelevant to the message - and what is especially irrelevant is distortion added by the playback chain. Sort the latter, and the magic of our minds switches on, unraveling the musical content .

 

You see, I didn't understand this back when I first got competent sound - all I knew was if I made the setup work as cleanly as possible that the SQ dramatically transited to a far higher level - became "convincing".

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, fas42 said:

if a real piano is being played in a room of out home, and we walk out of that room, to the other end of the house, and then outside to the sound coming through a window pane - throughout that, we always hear "that piano". If we were to look at a microphone capture of what our ears were picking up at each point of that walk, you would say, how on earth did I hear the piano so clearly at the times corresponding to the later parts of the recording?!

When one of the pubs/bars near my flat have a live band on, I can easily hear them through the window. If I go to wherever they are, it sounds much better.

[fas42]

6 minutes ago, mansr said:

When one of the pubs/bars near my flat have a live band on, I can easily hear them through the window. If I go to wherever they are, it sounds much better.

 

Of course the detail will be much clearer if in the direct presence of the sound making elements - but the sense of what you're hearing doesn't change when no longer exposed at those intimate levels. If an audio rig were to play a solo piano recording at the same levels as the real thing, and you went on the same journey I mentioned just before - and it was competent; then your experience should be the same. This in fact is another marker for getting the SQ to the right place - the sense of what you're hearing matches experiencing live acoustic sounds, no matter where you are.