How do you want your treble roll-off served?

[semente]

20 hours ago, Archimago said:

For audio playback, we obviously need to also consider how the recording was created, especially placement of the mics. What's captured on the recording might already have applied much of that high frequency roll-off as opposed to a close mic'ed instrument where to sound more "real", we would need to implement more roll-off to simulate the larger space in a concert hall.

This in my view is where the problem lies.

Mic placement and frequency response are responsible for the amount of treble present in the recording. And because there are large variations from recording engineer and record label this means having a handful of filters. Not very practical, but feasible.

 

Harmonia Mundi's recording of Isabelle Faust playing Beethoven's VC is an ear-bleeding affair...

I've found myself avoiding certain labels for this reason.

[semente]

4 hours ago, mulberry bush said:

When I go to a live concert - a good seat in a good hall with a world class orchestra -  I’m often struck by the gorgeous sound of the orchestral strings.    A wonderfully smooth silky bloom, but with such inner complexity and life.   

 

Often all we get from (even quite high-end) hifi systems is a harsh, shrill travesty.  Especially fortissimo, above the stave, violin passages.   It’s possible that simple excess brightness is the main culprit here.

I don't think so. In my opinion electronics with a very smooth and grain-free treble are not as common as is generally believed. A lots of hard-dome tweeters produce nasty resonances.

[AnotherSpin]

11 minutes ago, semente said:

Harmonia Mundi's recording of Isabelle Faust playing Beethoven's VC is an ear-bleeding affair...

I've found myself avoiding certain labels for this reason.

 

I am not sure I heard this version. Still, I do not remember any Faust performance which was painful.

[semente]

6 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

I am not sure I heard this version. Still, I do not remember any Faust performance which was painful.

 

This one is an amazing performance, murdered by the engineering.

[Bob Stern]

12 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

I find the idea of adjusting the hi-fi to compensate for shortcomings in a given recording to be pretty much a hopeless cause, since I don’t know how the original sounded

 

I regularly use parametric EQ to tame bright recordings.  I don’t worry about what the original venue might have sounded like and what microphone models were used in the recording (many of which have treble resonances).  I simply set the EQ on the fly to what sounds good to me at the time.  Typically I use a dip having a center frequency of 3 or 4 KHz, or else a treble rolloff.

 

In Audirvana or other music players that support audio plugins, this is easily accomplished using the AU plugin built into OS X or numerous 3rd party EQ plugins.  In HQ Player, you have to create a library of convolution filters, each representing a different EQ.

[AnotherSpin]

1 hour ago, semente said:

 

This one is an amazing performance, murdered by the engineering.

 

I guess your sound system is more revealing than forgiving...)

 

[fas42]

9 hours ago, mulberry bush said:

When I go to a live concert - a good seat in a good hall with a world class orchestra -  I’m often struck by the gorgeous sound of the orchestral strings.    A wonderfully smooth silky bloom, but with such inner complexity and life.   

 

Often all we get from (even quite high-end) hifi systems is a harsh, shrill travesty.  Especially fortissimo, above the stave, violin passages.   It’s possible that simple excess brightness is the main culprit here.

 

Exactly. The "shrill, harsh travesty" is caused by excess distortion in the playback chain, it's NOT the recording - how it comes across may be "excess brightness", but it's not a treble issue. If one is involved  with eliminating issues in those areas of a rig which cause that type of audible problem, as I have done for years ... well, the problems go away ...

 

Intense, silky smooth bloom is what's on the recording, but it may require quite a bit of troubleshooting of a particular system to realise that, in the flesh.

[STC]

15 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

 I might have to fiddle between 2 convolutions filters?

 

That’s what Sean suggested. 

 

“We acknowledge this in the paper and say that the ideal target response is a moving one that will depend on the recordings you listen to.
Read more at https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/acoustic-basis-harman-listener-target-curve#pXTHEts6S5Ebqe56.99”

[fas42]

15 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

I have had ecstatic listening sessions in the past while my system was far less optimized ; but I have lesser and lesser bad days now (btw, our ears might fluctuate too and I don’t hesitate to force air with pinched nose and to move my jaws in order to optimize my Eustachian duct).

 

There's optimising, and then there's optimising ... quite often, when a rig is more 'revealing', what disturbs one even more then are much more obvious anomalies, that just don't belong. This is classic "no pain, no gain" territory - it means that even more effort is required is needed to track down and sort what's causing the remaining SQ issues.

 

15 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

 

The question that puzzles me at the moment is : are there SQ anomalies that disappear beyond treble content?

I don’t have harshness/brightness to tame issues ; actually, hours after the short listening session I had with the new filters, it came to my mind I did not notice the rear of the stick scratching Elvin Jones performed on a cymbal and that I marveled to the day before… but stereo anomalies did not bother me any longer and Coltrane’s tenor was so real…

So, what kind of SQ anomaly could disappear that does not relate to brightness discomfort?

 

Those relating to interference effects are some of the worst - if one runs a rig in a clinically clean electrical environment, and then step by step brings back the usual electrical muck that commonly is part of the situation then it's quite easy to hear how the SQ steadily degrades - to the point that it becomes "unlistenable" to.

 

15 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

 

The first quoted paper shows the evolution of the FR over time. In a house direct sound from the speakers reach us @ about 10 ms while I designed my curve looking at what happens after 80 ms in Sibelius Hall. Is mimicking such FR at listening position + reproducing live SPL at Listening Position moot for we can't reproduce @ home the evolution of FR over time in a large studio let alone a large venue?

 

If my new filters prove satisfying while looking so extreme it might be just because of the extreme unnaturalness it confers to the room we chat and make noise walking moving etc in.

 

I have never filtered any of my recordings - they live or die by how well the playback can bring them to life. The end result of never compromising is a setup which always is convincing, and satisfying to listen to, irrespective of recording type or "quality".

[pkane2001]

14 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The end result of never compromising is a setup which always is convincing, and satisfying to listen to, irrespective of recording type or "quality".

 

Let me see... I think I'll just have the usual today, Frank. And the same tomorrow. And the day after... and the day after.. and the.....

 

[fas42]

I take it that all the cars you've owned have had various problems from day one of acquiring - and you've been happy to have it that way, without doing anything about it; gives you a sense of comfort that the world still works as it should ...

[pkane2001]

17 minutes ago, fas42 said:

I take it that all the cars you've owned have had various problems from day one of acquiring - and you've been happy to have it that way, without doing anything about it; gives you a sense of comfort that the world still works as it should ...

 

And my day wouldn’t be complete without a car analogy!

[fas42]

The good thing about referring to cars, is that nearly all people know when they are being fed BS by manufacturers,  dealers, and "experts" - about how their vehicle must be OK, because measurements, etc, couldn't find anything wrong. As a mighty sharp contrast to the audio industry, where almost any line is given credence by a significant number of people.

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

Exactly. The "shrill, harsh travesty" is caused by excess distortion in the playback chain, it's NOT the recording - how it comes across may be "excess brightness", but it's not a treble issue. If one is involved  with eliminating issues in those areas of a rig which cause that type of audible problem, as I have done for years ... well, the problems go away ...

It is, more often than most off us would like to believe, indeed the recording. Overproduced garbage that sounds terrible. Cases in point: Back in the 1960's when The Philadelphia Orchestra was under contract to Columbia and they recorded in the auditorium at Wannamaker's Department Store with Eugene Ormandy at the helm, They recorded some definitive performances of things like Resphigi's "Church Windows" and Sibelius' "Finlandia" (with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir)and these performances are unlistenable. Why? Because of the way they were recorded. The idea in those days was to set a microphone in front of EVERY instrument, and record those instruments to as many channels as were available by SMPTE sync'ing a number of multi-channel recorders together. That way, they could just get the "talent" in and out as quickly as possible, and then the engineers and producers could vacillate over the mix 'till their little hearts' content! Unfortunately, a violin (or any other instrument for that matter) captured at a few inches in front of it, sounds nothing like that same instrument sounds from the audience. A string section can't be mixed together electronically (with Pan-pots) to sound like one does when it mixes in the air between the orchestra and the listener. Many instruments, when miked close like that overload the high-frequency headroom of the microphones, and create terrible distortion. When you play this mess back, you mix together the distortion from mike overload with the distortion from each mike mixer channel, and each tape track (up to 94 tracks - two 48-track recorders linked together - less the 2 SMPTE sync tracks). The result is distorted, sound-stage-less, thick, congested sound that sounds like the orchestra is mired in molasses! These types of recordings were still being made into the 1990s, and are still available from about all labels. So don't tell me that it's not the recording!

 

And of course, the rest of your post is the same as yesterday's, and the day before, and the day before that all the way back 3,130 posts. All the same, day-in, day-out, ad infinitum, ad nauseam!  

[Le Concombre Masqué]

7 hours ago, semente said:

 

This one is an amazing performance, murdered by the engineering.

About the moment you mentioned Faust I had a great time listening to her + harpsichord in Bach and was really happy with the sound ; will look for the Beethoven 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

5 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

 

I regularly use parametric EQ to tame bright recordings.  I don’t worry about what the original venue might have sounded like and what microphone models were used in the recording (many of which have treble resonances).  I simply set the EQ on the fly to what sounds good to me at the time.  Typically I use a dip having a center frequency of 3 or 4 KHz, or else a treble rolloff.

 

In Audirvana or other music players that support audio plugins, this is easily accomplished using the AU plugin built into OS X or numerous 3rd party EQ plugins.  In HQ Player, you have to create a library of convolution filters, each representing a different EQ.

In some rare instances I wish I had an Audio Palette and went the A+ + plugin way for a while (btw to my ears shrillness is rather centered around 750 Hz).

But I think it's missing the point : Would it be Harman Kardon presenting RR1 in a listening room or the Finnish acousticians in concert halls, assessors prefer a downward slope, roughly 1dB/octave, albeit it's extremely rolled off in large concert halls. 

Let's put aside the rolloff above 5K and see how much the FR of the Sibelius hall matches house curves (or, rather, the other way round) that should and might have been used to produce the records we listen too

[Le Concombre Masqué]

3 hours ago, STC said:

 

That’s what Sean suggested. 

 

“We acknowledge this in the paper and say that the ideal target response is a moving one that will depend on the recordings you listen to.
Read more at https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/acoustic-basis-harman-listener-target-curve#pXTHEts6S5Ebqe56.99”

yes and no. 

yes for there's no standard ; no for the statistical average is on + we want to listen to music, not go nuts, don't we?

As I published above I succeeded at reproducing "JBL Synthesis professional room correction, including subwoofers" thus  matching "the preferred in-room loudspeaker response (that) is a smooth curve from 20 to 20 kHz with about a 9-10 dB downward tilted slope." 

And I'm back being happy that way

 

excellent paper I missed, thank you

[fas42]

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

Cases in point: Back in the 1960's when The Philadelphia Orchestra was under contract to Columbia and they recorded in the auditorium at Wannamaker's Department Store with Eugene Ormandy at the helm, They recorded some definitive performances of things like Resphigi's "Church Windows" and Sibelius' "Finlandia" (with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir)and these performances are unlistenable.

 

This one?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbZDQ3IEUao

 

If so, even in the YouTube clip, from an LP, I would find it very hard to use the term "unlistenable".

[STC]

1 hour ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

yes and no. 

yes for there's no standard ; no for the statistical average is on + we want to listen to music, not go nuts, don't we?

As I published above I succeeded at reproducing "JBL Synthesis professional room correction, including subwoofers" thus  matching "the preferred in-room loudspeaker response (that) is a smooth curve from 20 to 20 kHz with about a 9-10 dB downward tilted slope." 

And I'm back being happy that way

 

excellent paper I missed, thank you

 

Agreeed. Sometimes, it doesn’t worth the time getting it too perfect and often you can’t tell the difference in the case of sloping and inclining graph. 

 

My measurements with Harbeth were sloping but with the ESL it was going upwards despite Harbeth’s aluminum dome tweeter sounded brighter to my ears. Measurements did lie. It took me a while to understand the results. 

 

Congrats for getting it right. 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

13 hours ago, semente said:

This in my view is where the problem lies.

Mic placement and frequency response are responsible for the amount of treble present in the recording. And because there are large variations from recording engineer and record label this means having a handful of filters. Not very practical, but feasible.

 

Harmonia Mundi's recording of Isabelle Faust playing Beethoven's VC is an ear-bleeding affair...

I've found myself avoiding certain labels for this reason.

here is another interesting read if you  can find it : Acoustics and the Performance of Music by Jürgen Meyer ; ie you find the attached calculations for forte taking into account the effectif and the hall (the #90 dB column is what concerns us)

going for that kind of SPL with the Berg first thing in the morning requires an adaptation but...

 

with that much SPL, but only for the very end of the Beethoven, and what is described in my signature, it's far from ear scorching.

The violin is quite magnificent actually. Now... I went as far as wondering if the violin, at least for some parts, was not (re)recorded separately and there's a very debatable parti-pris of presenting violin + orchestra, violin being one, orchestra being one with not much individuation and definition

 

I'm glad you mentioned that recording ; I just discovered Isabelle Faust and would recommend her Bach's solo sonatas as well
 

[semente]

1 hour ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

here is another interesting read if you  can find it : Acoustics and the Performance of Music by Jürgen Meyer ; ie you find the attached calculations for forte taking into account the effectif and the hall (the #90 dB column is what concerns us)

going for that kind of SPL with the Berg first thing in the morning requires an adaptation but...

 

with that much SPL, but only for the very end of the Beethoven, and what is described in my signature, it's far from ear scorching.

The violin is quite magnificent actually. Now... I went as far as wondering if the violin, at least for some parts, was not (re)recorded separately and there's a very debatable parti-pris of presenting violin + orchestra, violin being one, orchestra being one with not much individuation and definition

 

I'm glad you mentioned that recording ; I just discovered Isabelle Faust and would recommend her Bach's solo sonatas as well
 

 

Close-mic'ed instruments sound like your ear is distanced from the instrument as much as the mic was.

This affects/changes the timbre of the instrument, exaggerates mechanical noises and ignores room cues. Awful stuff...

[mulberry bush]

Two or three years ago I installed a system in our kitchen area.   Nothing special, just a Marantz all-in-one.    I was wondering where to place the speakers and on a whim I tried them up fairly high on a shelf towards the back, but facing away from the main kitchen area.    They are about a metre from the back wall which reflects the sound back into the kitchen area.    So what you get is effectively 100% reflected sound.

The results were really quite unexpected.  While I wouldn’t recommend this approach for all types of music, the SQ of the aforementioned orchestral strings can be surprisingly close to what you hear in the concert hall - in terms of space, bloom, smoothness, etc.   Large scale choral music also seems to benefit.   It does vary from recording to recording and sometimes it is too washy and defuse.   Still an interesting experiment and I’ve kept that configuration ever since.

 

[STC]

53 minutes ago, mulberry bush said:

While I wouldn’t recommend this approach for all types of music, the SQ of the aforementioned orchestral strings can be surprisingly close to what you hear in the concert hall - in terms of space, bloom, smoothness, etc.   Large scale choral music also seems to benefit

 

Let me guess... the kitchen is tiled with a lot of reflective surface?

[gmgraves]

10 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

This one?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbZDQ3IEUao

 

If so, even in the YouTube clip, from an LP, I would find it very hard to use the term "unlistenable".

You can't hear the distortion on the strings? The thickness when the sound field gets complex?, The flat sound-stage? I think we're starting to get a handle on our old friend Frank.

OTOH, the "Finlandia" on that recording is by far the finest performance of that lovely work on record.  Too bad the same can't be said about the recording. I've been trying to understand what they're singing for more than 50 years. I have never been able to get much past "On great Lone Hills..."

[firedog]

18 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

 

I regularly use parametric EQ to tame bright recordings.  I don’t worry about what the original venue might have sounded like and what microphone models were used in the recording (many of which have treble resonances).  I simply set the EQ on the fly to what sounds good to me at the time.  Typically I use a dip having a center frequency of 3 or 4 KHz, or else a treble rolloff.

 

In Audirvana or other music players that support audio plugins, this is easily accomplished using the AU plugin built into OS X or numerous 3rd party EQ plugins.  In HQ Player, you have to create a library of convolution filters, each representing a different EQ.

I do sort of the same thing with Roon. I have several different curves setup and employ each of them occasionally depending on the recording and my mood.