Vinyl trend causes discord
- Thread starter Teddy Ray
- Start date
Mescalito
pfm Member
hammeredklavier
owner of two very cheap hi-fis
Typically, at 30ips, head resonance as a function of tape speed brings LF anomalies well up into the important bass range - at 15 they are still there but less pronounced and too low to worry about. Look at the measured frequency response plots and you'll see it very clearly on some machines.
It's interesting to note that any linear magnetic recording scheme is limited in its bandwidth to, ISTR, about 10 octaves. Extend further in the HF, you loose in the LF.
Werner
pfm Member
You were talking about the recording system, so please don't move to playback now. (Not that it matters much.)
I have my share of ideas about scenario b), which differ with the possible situations that are being compared. But key considerations are:
-presence/absence of dynamic range compression (a given in canned music, not so in live music)
-absolute listening levels (likely to be lower in the canned case), and human auditory perception dependence on absolute level
-source radiation pattern (if the live event is purely acoustic)
True. But I point out that very often live-versus-recorded difference are readily, i.e. obviously, audible entirely without resort to ultrasonics, indicating that ultrasonics play at the very best a minor role. Conversely, attempts to narrow the gap between live and recorded that concentrate on ultrasonics are, at best, not very efficient.
Werner
pfm Member
It is even more interesting to note that this matches the human ear rather well ;-)
If you got a machine flat to 20kHz within a dB or two you were considered a genius machine tweaker. Incidentally, the phase stability that high was so poor that if you combined the two channels of a stereo machine (i.e. mono) chances are you would get significant wibbly-wobbly cancellation.
Nobody cared what went on above that, as long as there was no evidence of electronic instability (which is, legend has it, how AC bias was originally discovered).
Yank
Bulbous Also Tapered
But even with amplified music, you can still hear the direct sound from the stage, in addition to the amplified sound going through the PA, unless you're in a very large room.
Nic Robinson
Moderator
...but it would be nice to see graphs of what they can actually do.
What I find interesting is that if you're walking down the street and hear someone playing the piano, you instantly know it's a real instrument rather than a recording even through a partially open window. Same goes for hearing a band when passing a pub for example. These are situations where clearly the fidelity of the sound you're actually hearing is poor but it's still immediately obvious that it's live rather than recorded.
Werner
pfm Member
Yes. Most recorded music has had some compression (or at least gain riding), and nearly all recorded music is never replayed at exactly the original level.
The operation of the auditory system is very level-dependent, so this establishes a difference between live signals and recorded signals that can be expected to give significant differences in perception.
An interesting experiment would be to fly to Dublin, put a decent band in a pub, with a two-channel PA. Open the pub window and listen from across the street.
Then insert a unity-gain ADC/DAC chain the in the PA and listen again.
The operation of the auditory system is very level-dependent, so this establishes a difference between live signals and recorded signals that can be expected to give significant differences in perception.
An interesting experiment would be to fly to Dublin, put a decent band in a pub, with a two-channel PA. Open the pub window and listen from across the street.
Then insert a unity-gain ADC/DAC chain the in the PA and listen again.
My experience too. My own recordings are no-so-sophisticated since, until recently, manipulation such as compression of limiting was impossible with the kit i had. In order to get anywhere near the dynamic range of real life you need either horns, and tolerate the distortions thereof, or a -lot- of power and speakers which don't dynamically limit too much.
I have speakers which are around 90dB/watt efficiency. My amps were 600wpc and I thought that was more than I needed, though I had chosen them by listening. When I tried the DeVialet D-Premiers there was a noticeable gain in dynamic range between 240 wpc and 400 wpc.
I have no interest whatsoever any more in lower powered amps, though I often toy with the idea of changing to horn speakers.
Since I put a sound meter app on my phone I have taken to measuring the sound level at concerts I attend, which are overwhelmingly classical and un-amplified. It confirms how loud the real-life sound are...
Nowadays quite a few live bands are doing this anyway in their mixers. I am a very amateur user of my Metric Halo ADC/DAC for recording but joined their discussion forum.
I have been surprised how many of these devices are used for mixing and adding "character", such as transformer, valve, etc sounds for live concerts rather than just for recording.
It is extremely unlikely that anybody has been to a non-amateur amplified concert in the last decade or more where there hasn't been digital mixing and character involved.
I helped out on the lighting of a few classical concerts, (Stravinsky's Firebird by some youth philharmonic that I can't remember the name of), when I was younger. Would have been late 80's IIRC and they were using an analogue desk for all the channels but that fed in to a "master" 8 track digital mixing desk for the auditorium. A Yamaha DMP7 in fact.
So I'd be amazed if even amateur concerts haven't been digitally mixed for the last decade or so.