Romy the Cat wrote:

Andy Simpson wrote: Romy - as it turned out, the 'crapped off bass' that you refered to was in part due to the consumer pre-amp I was using. I attach an mp3 from a recent session where I recorded using a DAV BG1 into Mytek stereo96 converters. In making the recording with the upgraded mic-amp & converter I noticed immediately that the bass went much lower. The mic-amp/converter upgrade was a direct result of my customers telling me that their own recordings made with my microphones were far better than my samples (they had similar complaints to yours). This recording was monitored live in the hall with the orchestra at performance SPL via a pair of Mackie SRM450 speakers and was quite close to the actual sound. Andy, come on, was it a joke or you are serious? Are you trying to present this Sound as something that has any more or less proper bass? I do not know at witch level of your recording/mastering chain it came to you but this Sound has absolutely revolting bass – juts a pieces of syntactic rubber garbage, sorry to say it. Also, it was incredibly boring play of Tchaikovsky IV. You shell not record music like this. Rgs, Romy the Cat

Andy,

I think you are looking from a slightly wrong perspective. Those topics of investigation are fine but they have nothing to do with the subject of our conversation. You present yourself as a scientific person and I presume that all topics of investigation are incisive with your expertise and experience.   What we are talking about here is not about reasons but about results. The recording that you demonstrated is wrong result. I have no idea if it is your microphones, amps, A/D   possessors or whatever you use but the result is; in my view is way below, the level what it would make send to talk about the equal loudness contours and psychoacoustics. I am sorry to say it but somebody shell say you what it is instead kissing you ass and passing to you stupid compliments – you can get it enough from you other friends.

The recoding you demonstrated (besides of being extremely bad play) has extremely wrong bass – the bass is what you ask me to comment. The bass is too loud – obviously you EQed it as it does not exist as this. Also, the texture of the bass is horrible – it sponge and has a strong and very repulsive rubber signature. Listen the end of the Their movement – was it an orchestra or some kind of Casio $150 electronic keyboard?

Paul S wrote:

Andy, I will say right away that I am not at all set up to "exploit" online music, but this comes across to me as "clean" and  "noise free", with some nice spacial effects, basically devoid of harmonics, and not much in the way of expresion.  Is this me or you? Best regards, Paul

Paul S wrote:

Andy, when I said I am not set up to exploit internet "music", I meant just that; I cannot and therefore did not run your samples through my main payback system, although even that might or might not have done justice to your samples according to your own sense of end-to-end equalibrium/continuity, at least based on your response.  Actually, I just listened with what I had and gave you my immediate impressions, which were as I said.  By "harmonics", I mean that notes played by instruments have characteristic tonal/timbral signatures that include both a primary frequency and also various attendent "rider" frequencies that vary considerably in amplitude.  For whatever reason (perhaps my limited playback capabilities), I found the samples somewhat "stripped" or "bleached" of these harmonics as I recognized them live.  As far as "expression", this is hard to describe in binary code, but I'll try to slide one in by saying it is the varibles in sound worked by the performer him/herself, like timing and inflection, which we percieve both consciously and unconsciously in music, just as in speech.  Again, the computer system is lacking, but I can usually get expression in the truck, from my clock radio, etc.  Whether any of what I did/didn't perceive has anything to do with microphones, I have no idea, nor do I presume to so much as hazard a guess in that direction.  I saw your query and answered off the cuff, taking the sound at face value, so my remarks were "detached" from considerations other than just what I did/didn't hear from the samples, whatever the reasons. Hence the question you include in your header. I am perfectly willing to accept that my playback is poor enough to make the absence of the cited-as-absent traits mea culpa. I do find your observations about the "sacred" microphones very interesting, however.  I have had a few chances to hear playback from tracks gotten via different "classic" microphones, and it was "instructive", to say the least. Best regards, Paul S

Hi Paul,

Perhaps I can send you a CD of the tracks in question? - the files linked above are CD format .WAV files if you can download & 'burn' to CD? Does your main system play CDs?

Regarding expression, harmonics (& or harmonic distortion) I do not doubt your observation for a second - nor question the validity.

However, if you can usually get 'expression' from recordings via the playback systems you mentioned, I would look to the recordings themselves.

For example, almost all recordings available today have severe distortion, which in most cases is to some extent intentional. Compression, for example, is routinely applied (for example, DG have hardly had a recording without compression EVER - I have this first hand from their chief engineer of 18 years).

The mastering industry is also routinely applying 'transparent limiting' to 'raise the level' by 'a few dB', for classical music.

Also, regarding expression & harmonics, would you expect to be able to have 'real performance' expression at anything less than real performance SPL?

At least according to equal loudness effects, I would expect not, but this is your term so perhaps I am wrong.

Regarding the 'classic' microphones, you need only look to the monitoring of those who describe the microphones as 'classic', and to their monitoring habits (low volume, often near-field) to begin to understand how the very distortions of the microphones are welcome 'compensation' for these monitoring habits.

Andy

tuga wrote:

The Realistic Painter "Completely true to nature!" - what a lie: How could Nature ever be constrained into a picture? The smallest bit of Nature is infinite! And so he paints what he likes about it. And what does he like: he likes what he can paint! Nietzsche -- Hello Andy, I think your approach to audio leaves out the very important fact that recording (and reproduction) are very limited and that sound monitoring and reproduction goals are not one and the same. For this reason, the pursuit absolute neutrality (focusing more on the 'physical' aspects of the sound) will do little in the way of recreating a performance, since a recording is nothing more than a synthesized version of the original event. I would describe this neutral sound as a skeleton with little or no flesh, therefore lifeless. Cheers, Tuga

Andy Simpson wrote:

Not recreate the performance but only the mechanical stimulus at the ear….

Romy the Cat wrote:

Andy Simpson wrote: Not recreate the performance but only the mechanical stimulus at the ear…. Well, if my project with the Macondo 7th Channel will go successfully then I would very battle this notion of “stimulus for the ears”. The Cat

Andy Simpson wrote:

Hi Tuga,<BR><BR>I have no argument here.<BR><BR>My main test procedure is to set up the monitors either side of the source and match playback SPL for direct blind comparison.<BR><BR>If the blind listening subjects cannot tell which is real and which is not, then I can ask no more.<BR><BR>The rest is up to the suspension of disbelief mechanism and is outside of my field.<BR><BR>Andy

Paul S wrote:

Well, you can count me among those who are perennially frustrated by all the unnessary stupidy that goes into most recordings, that's for sure, although I have several hundred records that I would like to keep for the perfromances that somehow survived the processing. I do have redbook CD playback in my main system, as soon as I fix the short in my DAC, but I have always in the end preferred LPs, despite their very obvious flaws, not to mention the tedious playback rituals. Of course I would like "better recordings", including better monitoring, in the rote, physical sense.  The weird thing is that some of the best performances I have on on VERY obviously "compromised" recordings, and some of the "best sounding"  recordings are MT of musical content. Please do not think I am a "musical versus accurate" guy, because I absolutely have no problem with "accuracy" that includes the music.  In fact, I think I prefer it.  But what I just keep coming back to is that the Music has to be there as a first consideration, meaning I am not so sure that close attention to raw data end to end will necessarilly result in music. I have been involved in some "live versus recorded" trials that I found more interesting for social reasons than for any ultimate conclusions one might draw from them about music. The most "realistic" sound "reproduction" I have ever heard was many years ago at a Stereophile show in Los Angeles.  They had hired a classical guitarist to wander around the show.  I heard the guy at one point playing some Bach around the corner, but when I rounded the corner he wasn't there.  What was there was Mark Levinson's stacked Quads playing high-speed tape via one of his modified Studers.  I seem to recall he had used one of Bob Fulton's mics; but Time has a way of changing everything. Best regards, Paul S

tuga wrote:

Andy Simpson wrote: Hi Tuga,<BR><BR>I have no argument here.<BR><BR>My main test procedure is to set up the monitors either side of the source and match playback SPL for direct blind comparison.<BR><BR>If the blind listening subjects cannot tell which is real and which is not, then I can ask no more.<BR><BR>The rest is up to the suspension of disbelief mechanism and is outside of my field.<BR><BR>Andy Andy, I was thinking if it wouldn't be more efficient if you were to monitor the recording in a "controlled" environment. Isn't it possible that you are duplicating/superimposing room acoustics during your monitoring (affecting bass assessment and overall balance)? Best, Tuga

CO wrote:

Hello Andy, I like your recordings although i am listening on headphones which i normally do not use. My Main setup is not operational right now. They do sound clean, clear and dynamic.

Can you let us hear a recording of the live vs playback? This would be very interesting i think. How educated are these people sound wise that they cannot tell the real from playback? I'm also curios as to what kind of horns you are using to fool them.

Also what distances are you using for mics to source ? are they right in front of the people that undergo the test ? Are the musicians completely quiet before the jury is seated and blindfolded not to give away the reverberation of the venue?

It seems like my VLC player is reversing the polarity incorrectly. It sounds more spacious and less in your face, less harsh when i reverse the polarity on this player. On two other players it sounds better in the regular position (these can not be flipped though) Never tested it on headphones and did not know it was so apparent.. Perhaps because of the flat phase resp of the ribbon mics that it is so obvious ?

Do you always respect absolute polarity?

Romy,

In response to your response to what I did not say but implied....I decided to put the question here instead, where the light of enquirey might shine upon several different facets of investigation.

Firstly, I'm still interested to know if you are able to run your system 'flat'?

I would guess that the more discerning ear would have great difficulty with flat presentation of the abominations that pass for recorded music - both from now & the past.

For example, the majority of professional microphones have huge problems in the range (>5k) you describe.

In the workshop & on location I use quite brutal PA type speakers, which are 106dB/w/m horns on the top.

These are designed for 'flat' response and while though they do not come particularly close (to flat) they are not designed to compensate for upper-register distortions in microphones.

When I listen to direct-radiator recordings I find the results extremely harsh, dirty, fatiguing & compressed if I listen above a very low level.

If I had equalised or damped these 'aggressive' speakers to best suit the average conventional recording, I would certainly find my own recordings to be 'excessively dull' via the same treatment.

When I first prototyped a horn-loaded microphone, I was amazed to find that these 'aggressive' speakers were actually capable of sounding both soft & hard according to source - in other words, it was not the speakers that sounded aggressive but that they were reproducing the aggression of the source distortion in all previous cases.

By this, I mean to imply that I would expect you to have better results with my recordings if your system was run flat.

Andy

Romy the Cat wrote:

Andy, I do not think that my system runs “flat” in the way how you understand it. It is with 2db precession flat up to ~10K approximately and then it rolls off quite aggressively. In fact, I very much intentionally try to not even know about the objective flatness of my playback over 10K. There are many reasons why.

Andy,

I do not know how aggressive roll-off on obsolete values as I never cared to calibrate my analyzer/microphone above 10K. Well, it was calibrated a few years back but I never trusted to it as I do not see needs for above 20K lineriarity from listening position. Be advised that I am talking about reproduction not about recordings.

Yes, I did try to run the playback flat in 2001-2002, it was minus 1dB at 20kHz. I think I have now minis 6-8dB at 20kHz, but those number are not firm. You, when we talk about running flat at 20kHz then the first question become not “how flat?” but by “virtue of what?”. In many case the problems that we subjectively hear at 20kHz are not overly excessive amount HF but the pure quality of HF. The question is: can you produce at necessary quality let say above 12kHz? If you do (and very few truly can) then you can drive HF much harder with no negative consequences. With my playback my tweeters do very well, my HF amp is optimized for HF as radical I ever seen (air-cap filter, single stage RF amp direct-coupled via very fact core to HF optimized ribbon), however my electricity is not good for HF. At the good electricity day I might drive tweeter much herder, but this is whole another subject…