It is good to realize that this is actually the whole rationale behind the measurement based approach. The better the device measures the more it is able to reproduce the music both as written and performed. Worse measuring devices may occasionally please you more but that is not about the music neither as written nor as performed.
Has anyone bought a product because of a recommendation on ASR?
- Thread starter Sloop John B
- Start date
The outcome certainly is not "sounds better" since that is entirely subjective. Instead the outcome could be seen as "does dac A reproduce the signal more faithfully to the original signal than dac B".
Del monaco
Del Monaco
As I am a classical lover, my first focus is on the performance rather than the recording or sound. For Beethoven’s 7th I’d choose Kleiber. Not a great recording despite several clean ups over the years. But what an enthralling, immersive performance. For Butterfly, I might choose the 70s Karajan which is a great performance and good recording. For Tchaikovsky’s shattering Pathetique, Mravinsky is my go to. The point is is it firstly the performance that pulls me. There are many very well recorded versions of these pieces but performances are often pedestrian. I don’t choose the best recorded. So the system balance is important as it has to ameliorate the edges of some of these historic or indifferently recorded performances, not enhance them.I know people who buy music based on the magnificence of the production. Kondrashin’s Dvorak 9 was a great showpiece recording at one time but performance wise I preferred Macal or Kubelik. I’m emesched in performance. The conductor, the orchestra, the venue all play a part but it’s the music and performance first. So measurements are much further down the list. I don’t want to spend whatever time I have left on this earth under the hood of a Dac trying to squeeze a 0.0002 reduction in some form of noise that is unlikely to register given my listening priorities. It seems such a waste of valuable listening time. Is the equipment doing its job?Does it allow me a gateway into the performance? Those are my main questions. It does and it has done for a while now.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
A couple of pages ago, I asked another poster whether he had actually compared hifi with live music as, in my experience, hifi doesn't even get close. Which means that an improvement of <1% in a measured parameter is, frankly, neither here nor there. It's whistling in the wind to think that this stuff actually serves as a guide to how enjoyable a musical performance will be.
It's an essential component of any design and build process. And it makes sense as a sort of 'sanity-check' on the quality of kit on the market, but as a way to assess whether you or I, or anybody, will derive more satisfaction and pleasure from our music, it's about as useful as the day's rainfall figures.
Del monaco
Del Monaco
Live performances also include a visual aspect and other additions that make it so very different to sitting in your lounge facing your gear.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
True enough. But even leaving that aside, there's a physicality to live music that rarely escapes the loudspeaker. Until you reproduce that, the rest is window-dressing.
Tony L
Administrator
I’ve never considered live music the reference point. I guess I know far too much about the recording process! My reference point is the studio control room. It is the closest we can realistically achieve.
With live classical or acoustic music the best one can aim at are whatever of the mic feeds the producer wanted you to hear. A well recorded string quartet or jazz band can sound remarkably convincing.
With rock music it is all sleight of hand created in the studio. The whole thing is a very carefully crafted illusion. DSOTM, Aja or whatever never happened. They were the result of a very lengthy jig-saw puzzle of different tracks recorded at different times in different rooms with different mics, FX etc, and on occasion even in different studios. These days reality is even further away as so much is created with plug-ins within a DAW. Even the most raw and ‘live in the studio’ album imaginable, e.g. Minutemen‘s Double Nickel On The Dime has some dubs, is clearly the result of specific mic positioning etc (but it is likely as close to sitting in a rehearsal room as any non muso will ever hear).
Bottom line is there is no ‘real’ here.
PS 98.8% of the time live rock music sounds unbearably bad IMHO! I’d hate to have that occurring in my living room!
With live classical or acoustic music the best one can aim at are whatever of the mic feeds the producer wanted you to hear. A well recorded string quartet or jazz band can sound remarkably convincing.
With rock music it is all sleight of hand created in the studio. The whole thing is a very carefully crafted illusion. DSOTM, Aja or whatever never happened. They were the result of a very lengthy jig-saw puzzle of different tracks recorded at different times in different rooms with different mics, FX etc, and on occasion even in different studios. These days reality is even further away as so much is created with plug-ins within a DAW. Even the most raw and ‘live in the studio’ album imaginable, e.g. Minutemen‘s Double Nickel On The Dime has some dubs, is clearly the result of specific mic positioning etc (but it is likely as close to sitting in a rehearsal room as any non muso will ever hear).
Bottom line is there is no ‘real’ here.
PS 98.8% of the time live rock music sounds unbearably bad IMHO! I’d hate to have that occurring in my living room!
gez
pfm Member
I'd say that does depend on what aspects of the reproduction you're comparing. Obviously it's impossible to actually do that comparison (at least for the vast majority of people) as they have no access to the specific live instrument in question (by which I do not mean just any old Violin for example but the exact same one as is being replayed by the system).
I can say that for the midrange at least, my system makes voices and things like drumkit snare drums and toms sound very realistic indeed, tonally. As in those things (on a good recording) sound incredibly tonally accurate for a random voice or drum. Can I say with any level of confidence that they sound tonally accurate to the actual singer or drum that was hit in the recording, no of course not. But they definitely very accurately represent the tonality of sung human voice and drum kit snares and toms, as referenced my own personal live experience of those things. E.g. I can tell if the snare in use is a deep shell, piccolo, metal or wood and how tight the snares are how the heads have been pitched. Because I know how these things sound in a live instrument. Though that's not the same as saying what I'm hearing is exactly the same as the actual snare being played because if you were to go in to a drum shop and play 30 different snares they'd all share those characteristics and so I can only say with confidence that what I'm hearing is a snare of a particular type and tuning being played. *
Above I've stressed tonality becuase in all other areas of reproduction, eg accurate dynamics, absolute volume etc reproduced sound falls significantly short (especially for drums being played close up).
*What should be stated here, is that there is a strong chance that my brain is "filling in the gaps" and making the snares sound more accurate than the system is reproducing, because that's what the human brain does with it's senses. It percieves the actual sound, and then tries to match it with known information.. as in.. oh those sound wave patterns are very close what I know to be a violin, so I'll believe it's a violin. Hence listener hears a violin. The old hearing satanic lyrics if you play black sabbath songs in reverse is an example of this effect. Auditory illusion is a real thing, and we're prone to hearing "what we want to hear". Though our hearing isn't nearly as bad as our sight in this regard.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
It's more about how the music makes me feel. I want the excitement and presence I get from a live performance in my hifi. I'm less fussed about the niceties of measurements if it delivers on the promises in the music. I'm with @Del monaco that the performance is the thing, not the sound it makes.
gez
pfm Member
This for me too.
Columbo
pfm Member
I've always been curious why live music the yardstick for some.
Smaller venues often crappy PA speakers played beyond their capacity with a clueless sound engineer.
Arenas atrocious acoustics, seems like an impossible task to pump good sound to 10,000 folk sat all over the shop.
Medium sized venues seem have provided the least compromised experiences. But even here acoustics aren't great. That slap back echo of as the drummer does sound check. It's not pretty.
Symphonic halls can be pretty good, for orchestral (the one in Birmingham is excellent).
What I've always paid for is the experience, the performance, the collective energy of the crowd, all your senses firing. No sound system is ever replicating that.
Agree with Del Monaco's sentiments, good gear connects me more to the music emotionally. In fact, I just sold off some speakers which are technically significantly superior and 3x the cost of my current speakers because for some genres they pulled me out of the music. Worse, I found I was only selecting recordings with good production which was a big red flag, imagine not wanting to listen to your favourite music?! No wonder Diana Krall and Norah Jones are so popular. Something some of ASR really don't seem to appreciate.
Smaller venues often crappy PA speakers played beyond their capacity with a clueless sound engineer.
Arenas atrocious acoustics, seems like an impossible task to pump good sound to 10,000 folk sat all over the shop.
Medium sized venues seem have provided the least compromised experiences. But even here acoustics aren't great. That slap back echo of as the drummer does sound check. It's not pretty.
Symphonic halls can be pretty good, for orchestral (the one in Birmingham is excellent).
What I've always paid for is the experience, the performance, the collective energy of the crowd, all your senses firing. No sound system is ever replicating that.
Agree with Del Monaco's sentiments, good gear connects me more to the music emotionally. In fact, I just sold off some speakers which are technically significantly superior and 3x the cost of my current speakers because for some genres they pulled me out of the music. Worse, I found I was only selecting recordings with good production which was a big red flag, imagine not wanting to listen to your favourite music?! No wonder Diana Krall and Norah Jones are so popular. Something some of ASR really don't seem to appreciate.
gez
pfm Member
IMO, no measurements can ever tell you how you'll react emotionally to a system. Just impossible, especially when we know that mood, level of being awake etc etc all impact how we react emotionally to our surroundings, music included.
John Phillips
pfm Member
It wasn't me you asked, but I have compared, on more occasions than one, sitting in the Wigmore Hall with the BBC broadcast of the event. In fact I will be at the Alexandre Tharaud lunchtime recital later this month and the BBC is also broadcasting that. Ignoring the "event" experience I do know broadly what the sonic similarities and differences are here chez moi.
I also know that sitting in different parts of the hall the hall's Steinway sounds different.
I also know that listening to another Steinway of the same type in another hall sounds different.
That's why in my version of the hobby I simply do not bother about the little things. It's the big things that matter - the ones that really do reduce the big sonic differences between what I hear in the concert hall and what I hear at home. That's how I have assembled what I currently have.
But on this forum and other forums there are people to whom cables make a massive difference in their way of pursuing the hobby. And different DACs too.
And there are people who seem to be uncomfortable with hearing a different experience from theirs and even some who challenge that different experience. However I don't like to argue that other people's experience is wrong just because it is different from mine. Just that mine is right - for me. It's a matter of understanding that people are different and practicing tolerance.
gez
pfm Member
Some (many) people would argue none of the examples you've given are live music. They're all reproduced because what you're actually hearing is the result of the reinforcement system which performs exactly the same job as your high fi system does. i.e. take the signal amplifies it and plays it out some speakers in a given listening acoustic environment.
Certainly when I say live music, I mean unamplified instruments. Of directly from the speaker stack of those instruments that require amplification just to make a sound (eg. electric guitars, basses, keyboards etc).
Columbo
pfm Member
Agree and disagree on this
Agree as in some of my gear is technically worse than other gear I've had but I prefer.
Disagree, because measurements can be useful. There was one set of speakers I just couldn't listen to rock music on. If I pumped the volume I'd get ear fatigue, if I reduce the volume there wasn't enough bass slam. I looked up the measurements of the speakers... a big fat 4-5db peak around 4khz. Now I always check speaker measurements for this. Ditto, "head in a vice" speakers, where if you move your head the soundstage falls apart, looking up the measurements could've save me mucking around with badly designed speakers.
"all models are wrong, some are useful". The ASR model is wrong but it can certainly be useful.
Tony L
Administrator
I took a substantial diversion in the ‘80s and ‘90s chasing the whole ‘flat earth’ thing, but eventually realised that was just adding a particular emphasis to highlight certain aspects at the expense of others, and even ended up choosing my music for me. I’ve shifted across to vintage studio kit in most respects (Lockwoods, BBC monitors etc). If I was ever buying new I’d almost certainly end up with a good pair of active monitors (MEG being my preference).
Sloop John B
And any old music will do…
From a position of absolute ignorance so forgive me if I’m talking rubbish but would active monitors (in general) give quite a different presentation than the vintage gear you own?
.sjb
Del monaco
Del Monaco
I accept the flaws in my system as it does so many things right for me. I often sit in front of my A&R in the morning, sometimes floored by how real and immersive it sounds. I can get totally lost in fm. And I really love building a library and it’s recording comparisons. For me, this is what my system is for. This is its main duty. I listened to a Darko recommended recording the other day. It was very real. Almost too real. Interesting recording, less interesting music to me. I love watching films but I dislike the high definition pictures that are too bright and look like a series of cardboard cut outs. Sometimes too real diminishes the experience and the pleasure. Getting that balance between ‘resolved enough’ coupled to ‘flow’ is key for me. I’m not sure what point I’m trying to make really.
camverton
pfm Member
I think it depends on what sort of music one listens to. My main musical interest has been classical chamber and instrumental music and for those genres the live performance can be the yardstick in that it is physically feasible for the performers to fit in one’s home and some speakers create a very convincing illusion of that happening.
It is an illusion though and without a visual element to direct our hearing to where the sound is coming from. As such, to be a convincing illusion of reality the sound isn’t necessarily the same as reality; which for those of a logical, measurement is all belief system might seem - erm, illogical! All I can say is that I was lucky enough to have a system whereby if I closed my eyes during a Bach Cello suite it was if the cellist was in front of me giving me a personal recital and as such it was possible to connect with the music, the performance and the sound in a way that would have required the best seat at the Wigmore Hall.
Symphonic music? Obviously one can’t get a symphony orchestra into most of our living rooms but it is surprising how a good pair of omnis can give the illusion of the wall in front of us disappearing and opening out to a concert hall beyond. Rock music? As mentioned by Tony above, when constructed in the studio, there is no real yardstick with which to compare.
It is all sleight of hand stuff and different cues will probably be of different importance to each of us which is where imho the measurement tells us all we need to know system falls down. For me, the most helpful features of a hifi system are the way the speakers fill the room with sound and create a 3D illusion of a performer playing an instrument and good detail which helps recreate that sense of aliveness and visceral thrill that sitting near the front of a concert hall gives. For those reasons I gave up on box speakers in favour of electrostatics for clarity and later went to omnis to give a realistic aural image. It worked for me, others mileage, hearing and preferred music genres will almost certainly vary and that is why there can never be an ideal, one measurement fits all people hifi system.