real sound vs speaker reproduced sound

[donileo]

Guys, ive been pondering a bit about speakers in attempt to better understand speaker quality and the effect a good recording studio has on sound quality.


Here are some of my questions..


If the purpose of a speaker is to reproduce sound exactly as it was supplied via its input, how good does speaker produced audio compare to the real thing. In other words, lets assume we take a piano in professional recording studio, press a key, record the sound and replay it via a very accurate speaker. Will the sound we hear from the speaker be super close to the sound we hear from actually being in the room when the piano key was pressed? Obviously the speaker wont match the sound perfectly, but how close will it be? indiscernible that it cant be abx'd?, significantly worse? about equal but still slightly different?


If the speaker produced audio is pretty far off from the real thing where does the deficiency lie? the recording microphone?, the acoustically treated room?, the speaker itself? anywhere else I didnt mention?..


finally, assuming the speaker reproduced sound is significantly worse, after the mixing engineer does his work in the studio will his produced sound be just as good or better than the original piano key press?


These are important questions to ask because ive just been wondering how good does an accurate speaker truly produce sound. Can a live recording compare to being at the live show?

 

[markw]

Fierst off, what is "real" sound. We could be at the same concert in he same venue and have different perspectives on the "real" sound. If I'm in the front rows I'll hear one thing. If you're in the middle or, even moreso, in the balcony, your take on the "real" sound will be dfferent.

As for the "professional recording studio" scenario, unless your room has the exact same acoustic properties and the exact same speakers in the exact sale position relative to your listening position, you're trying to hold quicksilver.

Also, recording engineers do have things called equalizers, reverbs, phase shifters and other such sound altering which they can use as much or as little as they wish to record their take on the sounds they think the consumer wants to hear.

But, if you're interested, my take is that I want a speaker (and system) that makes most well recorded (acoustic) music sound what I would expect a real, live concert would sound like. Or, for totally studio generated music, it should sound what I like it to sound like.

In the late 70's. Tandberg ran a demo with some local hi fi stores (Stuart's Audio, Westfield, NJ) where they would have a four piece chamber orchestra playing live in front of you. Then, at some point, they would stop playing butthe music would continue on. They had earlier recorded the same pieces on a TCD-310 cassette deck and eanted to show how similar to a live recording that cassette deck could come. They did a really, really good job because none of us could tell whenthe live music stopped and the recorded music began. I do wish I remember the speakers they used though.

Now, if you want some examples of well recorded music. Mapleshade Recordings is one of the best places to get the least processed musiv you'll find out there.

 

[Irvrobinson]

I make recordings of my wife playing various instruments in our house, using a digital recorder and various microphones, in 24/96 format. (The 96KHz sampling rate is irrelevant, but I like the 24bit word length for overload protection.) Different drums kits, a vibraphone, and a piano. I have recorded a couple of her bands practicing in the house, and I also have a studio-made recording of my step-daughter playing the flute.

On my tuned Revel/Velodyne system I can tell you that there's no doubt in my mind that a modern high-end audio system can get very close to the sound of live individual instruments or small ensembles. Very close. One primary difference is that you are hearing the acoustics of the room twice in a recording. Once when you record it, and again when you reproduce it at realistic volumes. I think this always makes the recordings sound a little less live.

While a great system can reproduce audible cues of a large group plating in a large space, like an orchestra in a concert hall, here the illusion falls apart, IMO. I've never heard any system, including mine, sound live with an orchestra recording. It can sound very, very good, even truly exciting, but it would never be mistaken for live.

In the case of the before-mentioned flute recording, my step-daughter once stood between my speakers and played along with herself. If you sat in the sweet spot and closed your eyes there were times I wondered which was which. In the end I could always tell, but sometimes I had to listen for twenty seconds or more. That's pretty good, IMO.

My wife's rock drum kit is a big challenge, especially for dynamics, but the audio system get close. Not quite live, but close.

With the piano and the vibraphone I think I can fool people.

 

[JohnnieB]

Let's skew the paradigm somewhat. If you had a speaker that wasn't very good at reproducing the source, you would definitely be able to tell. Over time however, without a true AB comparison between live and listening to recorded sources, you may get familiar with the sound and not notice what you are missing. To look at this another way, I just had a bunch of people over for a BBQ on the 4th. A few people, who like music, came out and asked about my stereo. They then wanted to hear it. So we would come in for a private showing, as I called it. I left Pink Floyd, The Wall, in my player and this was my demo disc. The most repeated comment I got was "I have heard this song a million times, but never like this. I didn't even know it had some of those sounds." This did not mean the speakers or any piece of gear were "real" or live sounding. It simply meant they were capable of reproducing the source more accurately than what they had previously heard. Granted, this was a studio recorded album, not a live rock concert.

Back to the original question. As markw stated, "real" is somewhat conjectural. But to get as close as possible, you need a speaker with a flat frequency response, IMO, and the ability to cleanly reproduce the recorded material. The gear you pass the signal through, plays a part in this as well. If anything in the signal path colors or influences the source in any way, you will get farther from the original or "real".

After that, it's all a matter of how the source material is generated, recorded or produced. Could a speaker reproduce an indistinguishable sound? I say yes. Sound, after all, is no more than a vibration. The "real" question is, can an indistinguishable recording be made? This, I believe, is the lure of the hobby. The holy grail. The white wail. How close can I get?

 

[astr0b0y]

Let's skew the paradigm somewhat. If you had a speaker that wasn't very good at reproducing the source, you would definitely be able to tell. Over time however, without a true AB comparison between live and listening to recorded sources, you may get familiar with the sound...

That's called burn in, right?

 

[JohnnieB]

Never heard that term. Possibly. Or burn out.

 

[donileo]

Guys, the location of where you are to a sound source definitely matters as to what you hear but thats the same with speakers. So when I made the comparison we are assuming that you are standing where the recording mic would be. It would be unfair/pointless to try to get speakers to "reproduce" sound that a person at a different standing position would be hearing. Hope that makes sense.

On a another note we are getting to one of the main points behind why I wanted to ask this question. Why do we have super expensive speakers that are not flat frequency response speakers. Who would ever want a speaker that plays sounds differently than what they're told play? Even if you wanted the sound to be different you'd still want the flat speaker and would modify the sound with an eq at the source level. You would never want the coloration being added by the speaker because its hardwired and getting rid of it means getting rid of the speaker. Yet reviewers constantly recommend non-flat speakers as excellent subjectively based on what they hear in their setup. In all regards thats fine, but what are the chances of me duplicating their setup, their room and finally their ears. I say Zero. It all comes back to my thought that every speaker should ship or be available with a independently verified Freq response plot (standardized, fairly non-smoothed). If they did all the so called marketing would be removed and picking a great speaker would be extremely simple for the consumer. We'd get rid of a lot of time wasting comparing one speaker to another as well. We'd have great top 10 charts comparing the best flat speakers for the money and I'm sure a lot of speaker manufacturers would have to change how they operate or go broke lol.

Now the other point my thread was trying to resolve. Assuming you got some good flat speakers is modern recording hardware today pretty accurate? Are we losing a lot of the sound inherently in the studios even if we got great speakers?

Thanks and great responses so far guys.

 

[Alex2507]

To sort of paraphrase something I heard from Alvin Foster of the BAS, there is nfw a 3/4" dome tweet is going to reproduce the sound of a dozen or so violins. A line array will get you closer though. A 16 Hz organ note at 93 db in a huge church ain't gonna come out of a regular floor standing speaker. It's going to take multiple huge @ss subs to replicate that sound even in a small to normal room. Anything short of that arrangement should not be referred to as a high fidelity sound reproduction system. He asked me if my speakers sounded like the organ being played. I told him my speakers were like the memory of vanilla.

 

[markw]

It's hard to hang a picture correctly on a tilted wall.

Speakers may measure ruler flat across the entire audio spectrum but our ears don't hear ruler flat across the entire audio spectrum.

Unles you want audio nervosa yourself to death and bankruptcy, don't depend so much on speca and graphs that you see and simply go for the speaker that makes your music sound most like you expect your music to sound.

Remember, the recording engineer has the most control over what you hear.

 

[Irvrobinson]

To sort of paraphrase something I heard from Alvin Foster of the BAS, there is nfw a 3/4" dome tweet is going to reproduce the sound of a dozen or so violins. A line array will get you closer though. A 16 Hz organ note at 93 db in a huge church ain't gonna come out of a regular floor standing speaker. It's going to take multiple huge @ss subs to replicate that sound even in a small to normal room. Anything short of that arrangement should not be referred to as a high fidelity sound reproduction system. He asked me if my speakers sounded like the organ being played. I told him my speakers were like the memory of vanilla.

Yeah, I know the comparison of relative masses and areas looks bad. When you see my wife's drum kit sitting there in all its cymbal'ed-up glory my first thought is also that there's no way two little tweeters are reproducing the noise from all that brass accurately, but the tweeters come surprisingly close. In the case of a dozen violins, common at a classical concert, the sound level at even a near front row listening seat is surprisingly modest. Nonetheless, as I said before, I've never heard any system, even enormous Sound Lab A1s in a huge room, sound convincingly live reproducing an orchestra.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Guys, ive been pondering a bit about speakers in attempt to better understand speaker quality and the effect a good recording studio has on sound quality.

If the purpose of a speaker is to reproduce sound exactly as it was supplied via its input, how good does speaker produced audio compare to the real thing. In other words, lets assume we take a piano in professional recording studio, press a key, record the sound and replay it via a very accurate speaker. Will the sound we hear from the speaker be super close to the sound we hear from actually being in the room when the piano key was pressed?

If the speakers are great, the sound will be like the original. Most people won't be able to tell the difference.

 

[donileo]

If the speakers are great, the sound will be like the original. Most people won't be able to tell the difference.

So then that leads to another question. Have you guys actually analyzed the audio we send to our speakers. The source matters so much. Can we say that most hollywood movies and modern albums are recorded well?

Just the other day I was playing the Samurai Champloo bluray which is dual audio. Theres a scene where Mugen and Jin first meet and theres heavy bass that follows etc. The English track sounds way different than the Japanese one. At first I had thought it was my speakers but after analyzing the wave forms, for some dumb reason the english track didn't just take the japanese one and dub english voices over it. Nope, they muddled all the sounds. This was kind of a revelation for me, I was expecting them to be the same sans the dubbing. So essentially my speakers were doing a great job, a great job at playing the bad audio they were being told to play. It led me to question just who else is f'n up audio tracks. The next time you think something can sound better look at the waveform your speakers are being sent. You might be surprised that the mp3 or flac you're playing was recorded in a bad studio or badly mastered or changed somehow before it got to you. Source matters sooo much.

 

[crossedover]

When we do field recordings of concerts with competent microphones correctly placed with quality recording gear, we tend to hear the performing artist the way we heard it, granted this is an unamplified situation. When referring to movie soundtracks, cds, and mixed material, playback is limited to source quality, speakers, and room.

 

[markw]

When ther movie credits scroll by, did you ever notice someone called the foley operator? Do you know what the foley operator does?

For some reason, I'm starting to think you're just asking questions simply to ask questions.

 

[donileo]

When we do field recordings of concerts with competent microphones correctly placed with quality recording gear, we tend to hear the performing artist the way we heard it, granted this is an unamplified situation. When referring to movie soundtracks, cds, and mixed material, playback is limited to source quality, speakers, and room.

In this regard it seems to me like the art of getting excellent sound is much more difficult than the art of getting excellent video. We've become great at capturing and displaying pixels, the same cant be said for sound.

 

[crossedover]

In this regard it seems to me like the art of getting excellent sound is much more difficult than the art of getting excellent video. We've become great at capturing and displaying pixels, the same cant be said for sound.

Faithful reproduction of anything that is mixed and amplified IMHO becomes highly subjective. However having speakers that measure flat can be EQed to one's taste. Most people are familiar with the way acoustic instruments should sound so that's the easiest to work with. Tailoring the Misfits to memory on a system would be chaotic.

 

[JohnnieB]

Ok, a little of the devil's advocate. Let's suppose you had a speaker and or sub, that played remarkably well, for each instrument in an orchestra. You arranged these just as the orchestra was arranged, in the same room the orchestra played in, and played each instrument individually on it's own speaker. Maybe. Point being, yes it is possible, with enough time and effort I believe to reproduce very real or lifelike sound with speakers. Not one speaker, of course, as with the single tweeter playing numerous violins at a time. But with multiple speakers of proper size, frequency response and amplification I believe it would be possible. This does not, in any way, imply that it would be cheap or easy.
As markw stated, it depends on who produced the source material and how they produced it. It then depends on your equipments ability to faithfully reproduce that material. I too wonder if this isn't all for the sake of argument or is the o.p. trying to narrow down choices on good speakers.
Either way, try BOSE. They have "better" sound through research don't you know.

 

[crossedover]

Ok, a little of the devil's advocate. Let's suppose you had a speaker and or sub, that played remarkably well, for each instrument in an orchestra. You arranged these just as the orchestra was arranged, in the same room the orchestra played in, and played each instrument individually on it's own speaker. Maybe. Point being, yes it is possible, with enough time and effort I believe to reproduce very real or lifelike sound with speakers. Not one speaker, of course, as with the single tweeter playing numerous violins at a time. But with multiple speakers of proper size, frequency response and amplification I believe it would be possible. This does not, in any way, imply that it would be cheap or easy.
As markw stated, it depends on who produced the source material and how they produced it. It then depends on your equipments ability to faithfully reproduce that material. I too wonder if this isn't all for the sake of argument or is the o.p. trying to narrow down choices on good speakers.
Either way, try BOSE. They have "better" sound through research don't you know.

With respect to room size and stereo playback, having multiple speakers introduce a plethora of sonic issues. Minimal amount to cover the recording spectrum is typically all that is needed

 

[donileo]

Ok, a little of the devil's advocate. Let's suppose you had a speaker and or sub, that played remarkably well, for each instrument in an orchestra. You arranged these just as the orchestra was arranged, in the same room the orchestra played in, and played each instrument individually on it's own speaker. Maybe. Point being, yes it is possible, with enough time and effort I believe to reproduce very real or lifelike sound with speakers. Not one speaker, of course, as with the single tweeter playing numerous violins at a time. But with multiple speakers of proper size, frequency response and amplification I believe it would be possible. This does not, in any way, imply that it would be cheap or easy.
As markw stated, it depends on who produced the source material and how they produced it. It then depends on your equipments ability to faithfully reproduce that material. I too wonder if this isn't all for the sake of argument or is the o.p. trying to narrow down choices on good speakers.
Either way, try BOSE. They have "better" sound through research don't you know.

The questions didn't specifically come to me for the sake of argument. More because I love how my speaker setup sounds right now and started wondering how good speakers in general are. Having experienced the bad source which I thought were my speakers fault led me to question who else is mixing and mastering bad and the general quality of recording hardware. It also doesn't help Im an engineer by profession and nature so its only logical I question everything.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

In this regard it seems to me like the art of getting excellent sound is much more difficult than the art of getting excellent video. We've become great at capturing and displaying pixels, the same cant be said for sound.

I don’t think so. I hear awesome sound every time I turn on my system. It sounds better than a real live concert. No one talking. No one sneezing or coughing. Better than live sound. Everything sounds perfect. Picture is perfect. So you just need to get the perfect sound system, which includes speakers, processor, sub, etc.

If you don't have the awesome system than the sound will never sound awesome.