lindsayt said:
I've enjoyed recorded performances more than live from the same performers. How would you explain this?
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When should you upgrade your hi-fi? How to control ‘upgradeitis’
I've enjoyed recorded performances more than live from the same performers. How would you explain this?
Live was too loud?
The musicians were not very good? Or were stoned?
Session musicians were used on the studio recording?
Poor PA system?
Poor hall acoustics?
Too much crowd noise?
You were inebriated?
You had a cold / food poisoning / back ache?
You prefered the instrumentation on the studio version?
The 3 piece or 4 piece band were not able to play all the instruments that were played on the studio version?
You've got so used to hearing the studio version that the live version sounded "wrong" because it was different to what you were used to?
The musicians were not very good? Or were stoned?
Session musicians were used on the studio recording?
Poor PA system?
Poor hall acoustics?
Too much crowd noise?
You were inebriated?
You had a cold / food poisoning / back ache?
You prefered the instrumentation on the studio version?
The 3 piece or 4 piece band were not able to play all the instruments that were played on the studio version?
You've got so used to hearing the studio version that the live version sounded "wrong" because it was different to what you were used to?
lindsayt said:
The beer was flat and warm.
The hall was too crowded.
....
Yes, to all of it. And sometimes everything will be wrong but I'll have a great time. Go figure.
Can you explain why many audiophiles enjoy more lower fidelity systems like valve amps and turntables when they can have it better (and cheaper) with SS and digital?
radiorog
Well-known member
I am of the opinion that a poorer quality system often makes the music ultimately sound better. A very recent example of this is that the other day I bought Robert Plants new cd lullaby and the ceaseless roar (which sainsburys are selling for 5 pounds). I was playing this album on the way home from work two days ago and got to four or five tracks in, and it sounded great, a brilliant album and i was really looking forward to getting it into my cd player at home. Once home i put on the cd to listen to whilst cooking and was immediately surprised at how un-amazing it sounded. Now im no expert but i suspected that this poor sound was surely due to poor production as it really did sound off the mark from good modern albums. So i checked it on the dr database and yep, it scored 6! this is listed as "poor". So in the 10 year old car with a vry average system it sounded good, but on my hifi, well, it still sounded good, but defintely not hifi like many other albums. I believe the better hifi system doesnt add much or tke anything away from the original listening experience in the car, but in th car, what details i couldnt hear due to the lower qualty systwm, my imagination takes over and fills in the gaps, thus creating a good overall experience. With the home hifi system, because the re is more retrieval of informtion, the gaps in the music are more noticeable and therefore imagination alone cannot fill these enough to fully seal the gaps, and so it sounds like more is missing, and therefore worse.
By the way, this album is brilliant, but why did Robert Plant (who also produced it) do such a bad job?
By the way, this album is brilliant, but why did Robert Plant (who also produced it) do such a bad job?
Vladimir said:
Speaking purely for myself and the demos I've done; it's because particular valve amps have had a more realistic sounding midrange. With my turntables, a more realistic overall sound (better low level detail and dynamics) than my CD players with the albums I have on both formats.
If it sounds more realistic it has higher fidelity, not lower.
Vladimir said:
WHAT*KNITTING
I find Naim wool is great with Rega needles. I know many will say the wool makes no difference, £1 per foot is good enough, but I think it depends on the quality of your needles to appreciate the difference it can make.
IMO. If your main priority when putting together a system is total neutrality, which forensically dissects the recording, then your poor recordings will remain in their packaging, unplayed and unloved.
As Dave, David and Lindsay have already said, it is quite possible to put together a great system that is highly detailed, but doesn't accentuate your poor recordings. I think it's a hifi myth which says that more expensive systems "always" make your poorly recorded albums unlistenable....though that doesn't mean it will make a silk purse out of a Sow's ear.
As Dave, David and Lindsay have already said, it is quite possible to put together a great system that is highly detailed, but doesn't accentuate your poor recordings. I think it's a hifi myth which says that more expensive systems "always" make your poorly recorded albums unlistenable....though that doesn't mean it will make a silk purse out of a Sow's ear.
SteveR750
Well-known member
CnoEvil said:
My experience also, and I have those allegedly ruthless and lean speakers. They're not. All of my music sounds better, the difference between the better and less good recordings is easier to identify because it's a more detailed / wider bandwidth system. I used to think acdc hell ain't a bad place to be live album was a grainy coarse sounding affair with no bass. Once I'd played the disc on a linn LP 12 I realised that was not the case.
matt49
Well-known member
SteveR750 said:
This ^.
It's a definition of a highly resolving system that it makes differences between high and low quality recordings more apparent. If a system doesn't do that, it's failed in the task of high fidelity reproduction.
Native_bon
Well-known member
I think the point most are missing out on, most expensive systems are more likely to give most information & needs more attention to detail when putting one together. I would rather have a system that makes me enjoy music I like, as suppose to a system I have to play well recorded music on. Having said that its much easy to put together a cheap system as suppose to an expensive one.CnoEvil said:
Even cheap systems can also make bad recordings unbearable to listen to. All boils dwn to what each component is paired with & what the listener is looking for, or in this case listening for.
Frank Harvey
Well-known member
I have a number of albums that are around a 6, but sound great, and do so on almost anything they're played on. This website just gives a rating for dynamic range - the difference between the quietest and loudest points of the album - even though dynamic range is one of the aspects that affects sound quality, it doesn't solely govern it.radiorog said:
lindsayt said:
Your take is that fidelity is whatever fools you into thinking you are listening the real thing, despite not having a reference what the real thing is. I agree with that, but let's deconstruct this a further a bit. I feel chatty.
We cannot know how the studio recording boot or the producing/mixing monitors sounded. No concert can ever repeat it's previous performance. Only thing we have is what we get on the music format delivered to us as consumers. If it's loudness compressed CD, that's what the system should produce. If the vinyl had bad RIAA, from the stylus to the speakers that has to be transfered as accurately. Correcting any part of that will alter what was captured on the media and have less fidelity.
How do we know we are listening the real thing? No, we don't go to concerts or studios. Even a trained musician can't tell you if your system is playing Kind Of Blue as it should be from that CD, simply because there is no reference. Human hearing is flawed, auditory memory too short and subjective reasoning too compromized. However, science has a solution and it is simple. If we produce new tones and recordings, play them through a system and record them with a neutral microphone in anechoic environment, we can measure the deviation, the lack of fidelity. Measurements are the only way to access fidelity. Not magazine reviewers, audiophiles in their living rooms or dealers in showrooms. By using measurements and even using trained listeners in double blind tests, we know that when everything but the sound is removed, in direct unbiased comparison people prefer higher fidelity. But in real life without tests fidelity is, like you somewhat pointed out, just not enough immersive experience like when we add branding, aesthetics, marketing, distortion, FR effects, big picturesque sleves, big spinning discs, glowing valves, nostalgia etc. When you stack all that against a simple digital and SS system of objectively higher fidelity, the glowing and spinning babyboomer system wins hands down.
I'm sure you've read about the Pepsi vs Coke experiment but let's briefly recap. Researchers measured the subjects brain areas where pleasure and speech (related to memory) is stimulated. When they gave the subjects to drink both drinks without knowing which one is which, their taste pleasure center got stimulated with neuron activity and they prefered the Pepsi. But when they gave them in a sighted test to drink and decide which one they like best, despite the taste area for Coke getting less stimulation, the speech and memory went bezzerk with stimulation and subjects chose Coke by far.
Interestingly few years ago the Pepsi scandal broke out where all media in their reported that Pepsi is using dead fetuses to make their drinks. Of course that is a spin, but somewhat accurate. Pepsi uses cells from human fetuses to create tissue that reacts to taste with pleasure or disgust. Bassically a tongue they use to test flavors on, but without human subjective interference in the results. Pepsi as a company is focused on making their drink really taste good and Coke through marketing making you think theirs tastes better. Coke won. Simulacrums can be more immersive than reality, thus my point fidelity does not neccessarily factor in higher derived pleasure in listening to music.
Why else would we need special audiophile cables? *bomb* *biggrin*
Can - Tago Mago. I could never really get the fuss about this album, sure I could appreciate the music was good, but the recording was so poor I could never enjoy it much. Put it on recently by chance on my current system, arguably the most neutral and high quality system I've owned. Can still clearly hear it's a poor recording, even more so, but I have been absolutely glued to it ever since. Pure music!
Vladimir, the commonly used and quoted objective measurements are totally inadequate for hi-fi. Because you never see measurements for:
dynamic compression
loss of focus
harmonic distortion for speakers over a range of frequencies and volumes
loss of low level detail
distortion of transients, inparticular bass ones (this is one facet that is relatively easy to measure, but never is)
The only way to properly measure a hi-fi system would be to compare the sound waves arriving at the listeners ears and compare them to the electrical signal encoded on the recording. No such technology exists. The technology exists to measure only certain highly restricted aspects of a hi-fi system.
And it's complete nonsense to say that there is no reference as to what the real thing is when it comes to studio recordings.
With the vast majority of studio recordings the main vocal part of the track is relatively unaltered. Meaning that it should sound as if the vocalist is there in your room singing to you. And yet many systems aren't able to pull this off.
And with the vast majority of recordings the bass guitar should sound like a bass guitar. Something with long steel strings and an electric pick-up. There are systems that I've heard that make many bass guitars sound like they have rubber strings. It's nonsense to say that I need some sort of measurement to know that the rubber string bass guitar sound is wrong.
And then there's gross frequency anomalies. Like the bass drum and bass guitar being filtered out when the rest of the band are playing. This is one occaision when the listening is often backed up by measurements - frequency response measurements.
And then you get systems that sound as if some clumsy giant is playing guitar, instead of human hands playing a normal sized guitar. I don't need any sort of measurements to tell me that the clumsy giant system is wrong and the human hands system is more correct.
And then there's the systems that sound like the signal has passed through a huge wodge of cotton wool. Again I don't need measurements to tell me that the more focused sounding system is more realistic.
Or there's the systems where I'm sitting there listening to them and find myself plotting volume vs time in my head. Where with one system the plot will be like a series of pyramids and with another the plot will be more like a series of Eiffel Towers. I don't need any measurements to tell me that the pyramid system is less realistic.
dynamic compression
loss of focus
harmonic distortion for speakers over a range of frequencies and volumes
loss of low level detail
distortion of transients, inparticular bass ones (this is one facet that is relatively easy to measure, but never is)
The only way to properly measure a hi-fi system would be to compare the sound waves arriving at the listeners ears and compare them to the electrical signal encoded on the recording. No such technology exists. The technology exists to measure only certain highly restricted aspects of a hi-fi system.
And it's complete nonsense to say that there is no reference as to what the real thing is when it comes to studio recordings.
With the vast majority of studio recordings the main vocal part of the track is relatively unaltered. Meaning that it should sound as if the vocalist is there in your room singing to you. And yet many systems aren't able to pull this off.
And with the vast majority of recordings the bass guitar should sound like a bass guitar. Something with long steel strings and an electric pick-up. There are systems that I've heard that make many bass guitars sound like they have rubber strings. It's nonsense to say that I need some sort of measurement to know that the rubber string bass guitar sound is wrong.
And then there's gross frequency anomalies. Like the bass drum and bass guitar being filtered out when the rest of the band are playing. This is one occaision when the listening is often backed up by measurements - frequency response measurements.
And then you get systems that sound as if some clumsy giant is playing guitar, instead of human hands playing a normal sized guitar. I don't need any sort of measurements to tell me that the clumsy giant system is wrong and the human hands system is more correct.
And then there's the systems that sound like the signal has passed through a huge wodge of cotton wool. Again I don't need measurements to tell me that the more focused sounding system is more realistic.
Or there's the systems where I'm sitting there listening to them and find myself plotting volume vs time in my head. Where with one system the plot will be like a series of pyramids and with another the plot will be more like a series of Eiffel Towers. I don't need any measurements to tell me that the pyramid system is less realistic.
abacus
Well-known member
The only way to test a system is to compare the sound of the system with the original, (This can be done by listening or measuring) if they sound the same, then it is a spot on system, if they sound different, then it is not.
Unfortunately it is seldom that anyone has access to the original, so the results achieved can only be a best guess.
Bill
Unfortunately it is seldom that anyone has access to the original, so the results achieved can only be a best guess.
Bill
....and using the original equipment, which makes it almost impossible; so I entirely agree.abacus said:
It's best to not worry and go with what sounds "real" to you.
radiorog
Well-known member
lindsayt said:
Good news! Manufacturers and acoustic engineering can and do all these measurements you think can't be done. Why they don't show us is a different matter altogether. Engineering doesn't sell, packaging and story telling does.
According to you engineering is trial and error activity, but believe it or not there is more to it. Those high end systems that blow your mind away are not made by shamans, psychics or druids. Math, physics, computers, scientific models, measurements... the boring stuff. The only flaw is we cannot measure metaphores.
Many audiophiles cannot realize that they are not archaic hunter-gatherers scouting the hi-fi jungle showrooms and harnesing CD players, cables and turntables as if they are nature born herbs, fruits, fish or wild boar. These are all man made objects. No mystery to man to the extent you would believe, and many are quite matured and developed technologies by now. Manufacturers keep reselling us the same 50 year old amplifier circuit design in a different case and redesigned brochures.
One thing I should point out. If one speaker makes the guitar player sounds different from other speaker (the giant hands you mentioned) that will be captured by the microphone as a different waveform and compared to the original. You think you can hear things that microphones don't? Metaphores don't count. Every minute change in sound, including THD, IMD, speaker cabinets resonating,differences in time arival etc. all are captured by the microphone. Let's not get into interferometry or piezoelectric measuring of rezonances, the final result is measured by the microphone.
The engineer is lead by the ideal, trying to replicate it. The audiophile has no direct reference what the ideal is, just aproximations. I'm romanticizing things a bit since most manufacturers just don't do R&D and don't care about what they sell or lie as long as they turn a profit, especially the snake oil cottage hi-fi industry. But there are true pioneering companies that do the proper engineering and open new pathways for audio.
But as many would surely point out, you can't enjoy music with an osciloscope. We need the story telling to relate to our kit, make it into idol objects. Otherwise they would be electrical appliances that serve a purpose and nothing more. Obviously we can enhance the experience with marketing and groupthink, so why not. Let us be hunter-gatherers scouting the Amazon, WHF, Stereophile and Ebay jungles, build electronics shrines in our man caves. The thrill of the hunt in post-modern version.
Kef take a huge variety of measurements in the development of their speakers, but still emphasise the importance of that final tuning by listening.
Frank Harvey
Well-known member
I'll get a listen to it at some point, but might be on Tidal or Spotify in store.radiorog said:
CnoEvil said:
As they should. Psychacoustics are very important part of the process. KEF bought a million pounds punter in the 70's for computer aided speaker design, then B&W going bonkers on interferometry. However, Harman has spent a ton of money for that speaker shuffling robot for sighted/unsighted studies with trained listeners. And let's not forget the million pounds state-of-the-art listening room WHF uses. *wink*
Rethep
Well-known member
It depends on what you think, is a good 'hifi'(sound).
To me it means a lot of: ambiance, lively sound, depth, and outstanding middle range esp. voices. As i have mentioned somewhere else on this forum, for me this means (with tube-amp) a little less dynamics. So an album with already low dynamics (in low freq) will sound just like that and even a bit lesser in dynamics of course.
If you want tight bass and strong dynamics, mostly that is combined with less good ambiance/voices/less depth (read ss-amp). If you meet with an album that sounds dull in ambiance it will sound even duller then.
And if you settle for an "in between" of those 2 different sounds you have the 'good' and the 'bad' of both sides. It could be perfect for you, or far from perfect.
To me it means a lot of: ambiance, lively sound, depth, and outstanding middle range esp. voices. As i have mentioned somewhere else on this forum, for me this means (with tube-amp) a little less dynamics. So an album with already low dynamics (in low freq) will sound just like that and even a bit lesser in dynamics of course.
If you want tight bass and strong dynamics, mostly that is combined with less good ambiance/voices/less depth (read ss-amp). If you meet with an album that sounds dull in ambiance it will sound even duller then.
And if you settle for an "in between" of those 2 different sounds you have the 'good' and the 'bad' of both sides. It could be perfect for you, or far from perfect.
My SET amplifiers sound undynamic when cold.
10, 15, 20 minutes later when warmed up they sound equally or slightly more dynamic than my 300 watt solid state monster amps - with my main speakers.
More power only gives you greater dynamics if you're clipping with the lower powered amp. If you're not clipping, dynamics are totally independent of the output power of your amps.
And I don't see why you can't have your sonic cake and eat it. Dynamics, with ambience / low level detail, depth, tight bass.
10, 15, 20 minutes later when warmed up they sound equally or slightly more dynamic than my 300 watt solid state monster amps - with my main speakers.
More power only gives you greater dynamics if you're clipping with the lower powered amp. If you're not clipping, dynamics are totally independent of the output power of your amps.
And I don't see why you can't have your sonic cake and eat it. Dynamics, with ambience / low level detail, depth, tight bass.
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