A few days ago a guy from Western Europe visited me. It was a typical audio visit:  a couple hours of listening session, a dinner and a long talk. The guy was interested buy the fact that he was not a product of Hi-Fi Americana (he was more closed to North European semi-Pro audio world) and we did not have a lot of commonalties in our stupid hi-fi slang, I for instance hardly ever heard about a number or large and reportedly evolved acoustic systems he owned. He knew speakers however very well, and was able to talk about them very competently from the idiosyncratic standpoint of my understanding of loudspeakers. He was very positively commented about certain aspects of Macondo performance and actually was able to explain what he was listening and how he understood what he heard (very rare quality among my visitors). This appreciation elevated me in his eyes to the state where he begins to ask me my views about general tendency of industry acoustic system sound. My native feline feeling of  “hate of others” multiplied by my sick ego made me to make many very critical and very negative comments to which his reaction was something like this: “ that is all might be true  but I would never write about it”. It turned out that he was an occasional contributor to European audio publications… Anyhow, to make the long story short let me give you an idea why I am writing about this thing.

One of the questions he asked did stumble me. I was surprised with the question’s restrictiveness from one side and with inclusiveness of the answer that I gave to him. He asked: what was in my view (the view of listener not a designer) was the SINGLE and THE MOST APPALLING quality of today’s high-end audio loudspeakers?  The answers lead to a long and stimulating discussion. I have my well-formed position about SINGLE and THE MOST APPALLING quality, the position that I partially have expressed across my site, but I never formed it into the “single worst” format, the format that I find to be stupid but interesting, or at least entertaining. I will submit later on my take about the single worst quality of today’s acoustic systems but meanwhile I would propose you to express your take.

montepilot wrote:

The single most appalling quality for me is lack of clarity in high-end speakers.  It is the first thing I notice when listening to speakers. I have heard many expensive high-end speakers that lack this quality.  The music seems to struggle to get out of the speakers to a greater or lesser extent.  There is something that exist between the listener and music that prohibits a connection with the music. I have seen the quality remain after amplifiers had been swithched clearly indicating it was the speakers themselves.  When clarity is there you do not need to have "audiophile" demo disc to connect with the music.  I have only heard two systems in my life that held this quality to the extreme. In both cases the speakers were custom built.

tuga wrote:

Our milage varies and in my case it's still quite short. In any case, I would place glare on top of my list of appalling qualities of modern high-end loudspeakers. This glare (unlike clarity) results from an exaggerated high frequency response that produces an apparent sense of audiophile "air" and resolution when in fact it's actually destroying tonal balance and smoothness or "naturalness", a bit like an over-exposed photograph. It also disturbs me that the majority of these speakers are unable to play smoothly at high SPL levels but I am unqualified to comment on the technical cause of such inability.

Stitch wrote:

Even when you go for a 30K Speaker and you have knowledge about chassis and their pricing, you will discover, they are rarely more than 160 $/piece. And they sound like that. But they eye is cheated with an excellent high gloss paint or expensive wood etc.

Marketing have done there job well if said consumer product or service become's a house hold name, or in this case brand names with a golden stamp of approval within this hobby. Every crowd has a silver lining....

I think there are more brands of speakers available then anything else , a seam-ally endless parade of them.

Word got out long ago, no matter what they sound like there is money to be made from the typical consumer in this hobby.

Mark

Romy the Cat wrote:

tuga wrote: Our milage varies and in my case it's still quite short. In any case, I would place glare on top of my list of appalling qualities of modern high-end loudspeakers. This glare (unlike clarity) results from an exaggerated high frequency response that produces an apparent sense of audiophile "air" and resolution when in fact it's actually destroying tonal balance and smoothness or "naturalness", a bit like an over-exposed photograph. It also disturbs me that the majority of these speakers are unable to play smoothly at high SPL levels but I am unqualified to comment on the technical cause of such inability.   Yep, Ric, you described pretty much what I was explaining to my German guy. Later on, when I have time I will elaborate on this subject in more details.

It started with me year back when I was play with many imaginable tweeters for my AG Trio. Regardless what kind topology, type or quality of tweeter I use I never was able to get sound that like if I had a more or less flat response at 20Hz.  Listening, measuring, listening, measuring, again and again I concluded that the whole notion to have flat HF response at listening position is absolutely ridicules.  So, when I see a loudspeaker with flat (or -3dB) frequency response up to 20 HF from a reasonable, let say 9 feet distance, then I discard that loudspeaker as I have a very clear vision what kind sonic defecation a given acoustic system is capable of.

Do not anticipate that I would give you some kind of recipe of a quantifiable advised “how HF shall be”. The proper amount of HF has many dependencies:  type of HF transducers, type of crossovers, type or amplification, type of room, personal hearing or listener, integration model with MF and many others.  However, generally the proper amount of HF is “one sock away“. Under the “one sock away“ I imply that an average contemporary high-end loudspeaker need to have a sock taped over a tweeter to have the HF to be “enough”.  I can see the Morons with Kharmas, Magicos, Dynaudio, small Wilsons, Avalons, Veritys, Schwerkerts, JMLabs, Hales, Vandersteens, Aerials, Burmestesr, Thiels, Revels, Krells and many others, reading this post. Are pulling a sock from own leg, attaching it to their beloved tweeters and listening what happen. The reaction will be: “it sounds like crap – what that idiot was taking about”?  Well, there is something to talk about but from beginning put your sock back to you leg, get a large condom and stretch it over your head – in your head is the source of your HF problem.

The very HF reproduction is tricky in audio, BTW, no less tricky then the very LF. In past at my site I advocated that very few people in audio heard  any more or less properly reproduced LF. People are so not accustom to it that when they hear it they truly are loosing understanding what they hear and in many instances if they have a chance to get it then it takes for them months to get any sense of bass understanding. The very same with HF. The distortion of crossovers, distortion in drivers, distortion in electronics, phase anomalies, electricity problems, devastations by feedback time-misalignment at HF and zillion other problems makes HF very vulnerable to corruption. In the end what we hear is a residual surrogate that has acoustic press but no cultural musical potency. Here is where the Industry comes to “help”, dictating to the ignorant audio folks how good hi-fi shall sound.

Sit with a real-time spectral analyzer and good calibrated microphone in the front rows of your favorite concert hall and measure how response of HF instruments decays at your distance.  In the front rows you will have somewhere -3B at 8kHz and 15 rows behind it will be 5kHz. Interesting that listening sound from row 15 at -3dB at 5kHz you will hardly feel any problem with HF. Try to do the same with playback. At -3dB at 5kHz you playback will sound like bad AM radio or like a good telephone.  Here is where the “Industry Help” come to the picture the industry teaches: add HF and you will add “quality”. It is like in morgue: add more makes up to a dead body and it will look lore alive…  So, as the result we have two consequences:

1)   High-End audio providers furnish market with midrange-dead acoustic systems where impotency of MF compensated by inundating sound field with HF surrogate.
2)   High-End audio consumers more and more loosing acquaintance with might of the proper MF and recognize “quality” ONLY as the present of the excessive HF pressure.

The stupid industry, saturated with partially-uninformed and partially terminally-idiotic market-makers, go over itself propelling more and more they extreme HF pressure, inventing the BS meanings like “audio resolution”. Thankfully the “audio resolution” is demonstrable and generations of audio sales pimps buy boats juts by treading the “audio resolution”. Still, the original question remind open – why in live sound 7kHz is enough but during a reproduction 40kHz is not enough.

Well the MF in audio mostly is garbage, particularly within the cotemporary speakers. Let cross our playback at 8kHz with first order and listen what we have left. With most of the today 100K loudspeakers you will lose 75% of sound. Ironically making the same experiment with SOME (not all, we are talking about the very best, highly selected models) of the acoustic systems that were made let say 50 years old you will discover that sound was practically not changed. Pay attention that the band-pas is the same with differently made TTH characteristic in MF made all differences and makes very different amount of MF to indicate that “quality” is in presence.

Anyhow, as a very broad observation and with many dependencies I feel a playback need to have somewhere around 10-12 kHz at -3dB and then a different rate of decaying – contingent upon many circumstances.  If you feel that you need more HF then… trash your MF Chennai as it underperforms.

I think that this inflated high frequency response is the worst and unfortunately is the most characteristic quality for most contemporary acoustic systems but the biggest problem not even with the pump up HF response itself but the very false and very firmed expectations that most of audio hoodlums are managed to obtain: the feeling that the absence of the excessive high frequency is an indication of “poor” audio sound. At this point I do not know what leads: supply or demand. I think that this “high-endish” HF have passed the level when it was identifiable and nowadays it is not about teaching a cow to be carnivore but about milking the cow. Well, unfortunately very many audio Morons insist that to drink milk they need to wear a condom on own head…

Romy the Cat wrote:

Still, the original question remind open – why in live sound 7kHz is enough but during a reproduction 40kHz is not enough. Romy The Cat

Stitch wrote:

Even when you go for a 30K Speaker and you have knowledge about chassis and their pricing, you will discover, they are rarely more than 160 $/piece. And they sound like that. But they eye is cheated with an excellent high gloss paint or expensive wood etc.

I think my complaining against HF might be understood as my position in opposition to HF in generals. There is nothing could be further from truth. I am a strong supporter of excessive bandwidth of electronics and acoustic systems. I do not min if a playback has 100kHz or higher bandwidth, in fact I do appreciate is very much. I feel that we need 10x times bandwidth over out listening threshold, that would make 200kHz, to render auditable HF transients properly. The higher bandwidth the lower phase anomalies - no one against it. Still, there is a difference about the capacity of playback to do the things and the playback that plays 35kHz at 0dB. It is about moderation, balance and how the capacities are used and here is what most of the today loudspeakers/people are senseless.

unicon wrote:

I dont know why i dont hear the phrase high resolution or linear MF band >?(100-500hz for sure).Our ears cant easily distinguish diff between 15khz to 16khz( and we hardly can hear more than 16k ) And yes we can distinguish 1hz FQ shift when it comes to 300hz so why no high resolution MF ?

Yes, our perception has kind of reversed logarithmic scale for tone resolution, so what. Do not forget that a Hertz is an abstract mathematical measurement that has to do with length of wave and a number of complete cycles per a time measurements, a second. We define artificially what second is and what a full number is. Those definitions not bind to our perception. I can give you a dozen examples when Hertz very much loops own identity. I would not even need to go into the Special Relativity examples…

unicon wrote:

And yes we can distinguish 1hz FQ shift when it comes to 300hz ….

It is a bit off the topic but if to look deeper then it is not. Pay attention that we can distinguish 1Hz of frequency shift at 300hz… but ONLY in context of relevancy of those 300Hz to a something else. We cannot differentiate 1Hz as an absolute value. Can we differentiate “A” between 440Hz and 441Hz? Yes we can but can we identify a tone as 441Hz without hearing it referenced to 440Hz? Absolutely not!  A Hertz as an abstract mathematical measurement has no fundamental presence in our perception. When we operate by Hertz-scale we operate by just a conventional description of Reality, not by the Reality itself.

I find the Wikipedia suggestion about "resolution", music-wise to be quite inspiring -i.e. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_(music)

Sentences like this: "A dissonance has its resolution when it moves to a consonance. When a resolution is delayed or is accomplished in surprising ways--when the composer play with our sense of expectation--a feeling of drama or suspense is created." or "... lacks a tonal center to which to resolve. The concept of "resolution", and the degree to which resolution is "expected", is contextual as to culture and historical period."

Audio-wise, the above seems to hint about the enhanced level of attention through the sense of surprise after timing/chordal/melodic changes in music.

To a broader extent LF MF or HF better resolution - not exageration, boosting, tilting up or the like - or transparency augment the sense of understanding, of proximity to the music and its meaning.

Interesting would be better learning about the difference, audio-wise, among "transparency", "definition" "clarity" and "resolution"...  all from a sane, contructive point-of-view, leave alone the industry hypes.

Being "resolution" a multi-faceted, multi-meaning term, I found this sort-of "dark side of resolution" intriguing and worth reporting, to be added to the SUPERB conversation of the above posts, for which I'm grateful. 

Romy the Cat wrote:

our perception has kind of reversed logarithmic scale for tone resolution, so what. those definitions not bind to our perception

Romy the Cat wrote:

but if to look deeper then it is not. Pay attention that we can distinguish 1Hz of frequency shift at 300hz… but ONLY in context of relevancy of those 300Hz to a something else. We cannot differentiate 1Hz as an absolute value. Can we differentiate “A” between 440Hz and 441Hz? Yes we can but can we identify a tone as 441Hz without hearing it referenced to 440Hz? Absolutely not!  A Hertz as an abstract mathematical measurement has no fundamental presence in our perception. What we operate by Hertz scale we operate by just a conventional description of reality.

twogoodears wrote:

Interesting would be better learning about the difference, audio-wise, of "transparency" and "resolution". Being "resolution" a multi-faceted, multi-meaning term, I found this sort-of "dark side of resolution" intriguing and worth reporting, to be added to the SUPERB conversation of the above posts, for which I'm grateful.

rgs .

Paul S wrote:

The discussion of the abstract nature of the elusive "Hertz" reminds me that individuals and orchestras have long tuned to different "Abstract A", in the "first place".  Besides, once you broaden a "tone" into an instrumental "note", all bets are off, anyway. Not to mention the havoc wrecked by the recording process... Hell, "playback" itself starts to seem pretty Abstract... Paul S

twogoodears wrote:

Also: a tuning fork, the basic, humble tool which makes a full orchestra to play "in tune" is - as applied math and acoustic, a sort-of interpretation of Nature and its Laws - giving 440 cycles (hertz) flat to the trained musician ear, who filters the pure tone as "the officially accepted" tuning pitch, by convention... The diapason (tuning fork) is not something abstract, but a vibrating steel bent bar, producing an A=a note... now at 440 hz, centuries ago at 415 hz, tomorrow... who know?