Psychoacoustics, Audibility of Great Sound

[highfigh]

You won't get rid of HDMI, it is just that the pre/pro will connect to the speakers via your home Ethernet via your router. It could be a wireless connection, but hard wire is always best for these applications. I would also like to see the back of HDMI, but dumping it would make a lot of equipment obsolete. I will never agree that the draconian complexity of that level of DRM was, and is not necessary. The rate of the handshakes in current repeater architecture is totally absurd and over the top.

Video over IP and other methods are used for distribution- the equipment manufacturers have had many HDMI hardware failures- I don't know if they were able to strong-arm the hardware/component manufacturers into reducing the hit they take when warranty claims come in by the tens of thousands, but they have to want something that doesn't cause so many problems.

S-video and Component video are all but obsolete, although component isn't totally dead in the cable TV industry if Spectrum is any indication- they still have a lot of boxes with that and I'm happy they do because I needed it awhile back. Not sure when I'll need it again but I know others will/do.

I never liked HDMI and once I saw the glut of problems in the beginning, I hoped it would fail and end. Then, they decided to add ethernet, higher def, ARC and other burdens on it that make it more prone to failure.

 

[3db]

Was the recording quality of those Blues recordings better than the music and/or musicianship?

What kind of question is that? The two are mutually exclusive.

 

[highfigh]

What kind of question is that? The two are mutually exclusive.

The hell they are- some people choose music because of the sound quality and nothing more, some choose it based on the performance and some care more about the song/music. Which is more important? That comment actually involves three aspects- SQ, music and musicianship. If the music can't stand on its own, what was the point? If the music is good, the recording is able to survive if the other two aren't great.

If you haven't listened to many more recent Blues recordings, you wouldn't have heard the crap that's coming out- it's like any other genre.

 

[3db]

The hell they are- some people choose music because of the sound quality and nothing more, some choose it based on the performance and some care more about the song/music. Which is more important? That comment actually involves three aspects- SQ, music and musicianship. If the music can't stand on its own, what was the point? If the music is good, the recording is able to survive if the other two aren't great.

If you haven't listened to many more recent Blues recordings, you wouldn't have heard the crap that's coming out- it's like any other genre.

I'm not some people. I never picked a genre because it was recorded better. Thats absurd and I feel sorry for people that do that. There are some absolutely horrid blues recordings out there but it never took the enjoyment away from me. That's why I'm having difficulty with the question. To me the two will always remain mutually exclusive.

Listen to the latest albums from KingFish, Sue Foley, Albert Cummings, Johann Shaw Taylor, etc. A lot of stellar recordings made there. If you were to reread my previous post again, you would have seen that not all recordings are stellar. I'm not going to argue with you anymore. Your'e too quick to react to a post rather than read and understand it.

 

[highfigh]

I'm not some people. I never picked a genre because it was recorded better. Thats absurd and I feel sorry for people that do that. There are some absolutely horrid blues recordings out there but it never took the enjoyment away from me. That's why I'm having difficulty with the question. To me the two will always remain mutually exclusive.

Listen to the latest albums from KingFish, Sue Foley, Albert Cummings, Johann Shaw Taylor, etc. A lot of stellar recordings made there. If you were to reread my previous post again, you would have seen that not all recordings are stellar. I'm not going to argue with you anymore. Your'e too quick to react to a post rather than read and understand it.

Who pissed in your Wheaties?

 

[jeffca]

I only agree with about half of your assertions.

• Frequency Response is the most important determinant of sound quality
  True
• A sub-sat speaker system is never as good as a well-designed full-range tower
  This is absolutely crap. A properly made sub will surpass any tower speaker's low end unless that tower is huge. Then there is the fact that not having very low bass vibrating the mid driver in the speaker will give you cleaner sound. Also, if you have a less than optimal room, you can place the sub(s) where they sound best and put the sats where they offer the best imaging. If you are talking about the crappy systems you've mentioned, sure, then you have a partial point, but if you have the knowledge to roll your own, a well designed sub/sat system will always offer better performance.
• The subwoofer crossover has to be lower than 50Hz to be truly seamless
  This is perhaps the dumbest statement that you've proffered in your article. It makes no sense from several angles. First, most full-range speakers have woofers crossed over from 200 to 400Hz. A sub is just a more capable low end driver in it's own cabinet. Secondly, you need to set the crossover dependent on the main speakers and their range of optimal performance. I have KEF LS50's and Rythmik L12 servo subs. The LS50's only go down to about 80Hz and, if you look at the way they measure, the THD rises dramatically below 200Hz. I cross the subs at 170Hz. The system sounds fantastic. Your assertion is nonsense.
• Wide-range frequency response is far more important than spatial effects
  While this is a very sweeping statement, I can't disagree with it.
• Bass THD in loudspeakers is inaudible for the most part
  Perhaps for you. I'm a bass player and am acutely sensitive to THD from bass drivers. While the distortion induced by bass drivers tends to be benign, it's pollution does extend into the range above 200Hz where you can easily hear the distortion overtones if the bass driver is being driven hard. I have 4 Rythmik L12 servo subs in my system. Since none of them are ever working hard to create the lowest bass in music, the low bass in my rig is always squeaky clean.
• Mechanical noise is the most audible bass distortion artifact
  Can't argue with this. It is the primary reason that vented/ported speakers and subs are inferior to sealed systems even if the ported sub is crossed over at 50Hz or less.
• How high in frequency is really needed for true high-fidelity sound?
  This is a very thorny subject, but I basically agree. What most people think is "treble" winds up being around 8-10kHz. In my own tests, though, I have found that most music that is considered well recorded and multi-mixed, there is a precipitous fall off in frequency response some somewhere above 12kHz (dependent upon the music recorded and the number of tracks). This is actually due to the natural effect of higher frequencies from all of the tracks cancelling, to a certain extent, when mix down the tracks to stereo. I have found that adding copious amounts of high frequency EQ above 10kHz to bring the highest octave up to the level of the rest of the music not only made the cymbals sound like they do in real life, but improved the imaging in general. You do need to run a real-time frequency display to know how much EQ is necessary, but it does work and shows how poorly most recordings are mastered. If you EQ your music to have a cumulative frequency response that has a 3dB tilt like pink noise (equal energy per octave), it will sound incredible.
• Higher-order THD is really audible, lower-order THD is surprisingly benign
  Again, a very sweeping statement. The most audible distortions are the odd order harmonics since they can't be masked easily by other harmonics in music. Regardless, it highly depends where those harmonics are grouped as to their audibility. Honestly, though, this argument is asserting (like a few earlier) that people can't hear distortion. Again, perhaps you can't. As an audiophile, musician and engineer, I can. I have, when mixing music, found that adding band-limited distortion to a bass track not only made it easier to place in a mix, but also made it sound "cleaner" when EQ could not do the job. While what I did works on a single track, it would sound terrible on a stereo mix. Soloing the bass track, it was easy to here the distortion when it was on or off.
• Far-field power response is much more important to speaker listening quality than currently thought
  Well, yeah! Basically, you are talking about the sound of the room (how the speaker interacts with the room in its total radiation spectrum). If you've designed the room properly, you will hear the speaker and not much of the room, thus the far-field power response will then be the dominant arbiter as to whether you have a good speaker or not. Ideally, you want a speaker that will sound great in an anechoic chamber and a room that supports that.
• Asymmetrical single-sub placement works best
  This statement is absurd. First off, multiple subs are better than one sub because you are distributing all of the low bass to multiple drivers, but, if you are talking about having just one sub (which sucks), you are possibly correct. Again, it depends upon the room, its geometry and the materials used for the walls. Given that frequencies below 200Hz are hard to locate due to the size of our heads and ears, having a single sub off-center is not a problem. The problem is having a single sub. While not mentioned, having stereo subs is optimal. You can hear stereo down to a low B, It's just that we, as humans, have less acuity to it than higher frequencies. If you turn off the mains and pan a bass guitar between stereo subs, you can easily hear the signal move from one side to the other.
• Forget Absoute Phase
  Wow, I haven't heard the term, "absolute phase" almost forever. That being said, I think that, in frequencies from 50 to 400Hz, you might possibly notice a very slight difference in testing, but it's such a small factor as to not be an issue. And, hey, you have no idea whether the recording has absolute phase so...