Purité Audio
Trade: Purite Audio
There are fundamental differences between a live instrumentalist and two loudspeakers, the sound emanating from a loudspeaker will be changed by every room that is just physics.
Keith
Keith
indulgence show 2017 29th sept 1st oct
- Thread starter hifinutt
- Start date
Coda II
getting there slowly
Our local music venue is also a Dolby approved cinema which, as I understand it, means the auditorium has very little reverb and the top end is particularly rolled off. A string quartet that were playing there last year asked for all of the full length curtains to be pulled back to leave the block work walls open and the cinema screen to be left down to try and get the sound a bit more lively.
Other musicians seem to just get on and (presumably) adjust their playing to suit. I think we all have in built adjustment mechanisms so that eg we can make ourselves understood in varying environments.
The simplest thing to do in most show-rooms would just be to turn it down a bit wouldnt it?
Purité Audio
Trade: Purite Audio
Have a think John, the way sound is propagated from a live instrument compared to a loudspeaker.
Keith
Still
he said his naim was ralph
Both through air? Admittedly there are some underwater audio reproduction products.
Anyway, please don't be coy.
Purité Audio
Trade: Purite Audio
It will do you good exercise the grey cells, Floyd Toole’s ‘Sound reproduction’ it is all there I thoroughly reccomend it now the evenings are drawing in.
Keith
Keith
Still
he said his naim was ralph
What are you so scared of? Most uncharacteristic!
orangeart
KJF Audio Ltd.
Basically when we record something (live) we want to record it with all the atmosphere of the venue intact. When we replay it we don't want to add the signature of our own room, we want to listen to the recording as closely as possible to that which was recorded. The only way to do that is to somehow remove the effects of the room. This isn't only some hifi, all speakers interact with the room, room treatment, positioning and DSP help to minimise these effects.
monya
pfm Member
So do headphones which is what I spend 90% of my time listening to now.
sunbeamgls
pfm Member
If it was the one with many amps etc. In glass racks under the screen then it was the disappointing Reference system.
I think the big problem with "Reference Systems" is that unless its nailed down and sounding great you will always find someone wanting to take a shot at it .
I was lucky enough to install a very very good system for someone about a year ago . It was a great sale for us , and the customer let us build the room round the system.
I have listened to many "Reference" systems that don't come close to this , yes it was a good chunk of money but i suspect a fraction of some
Eat Yr Greens
Member
Pardon me if I've missed the point here, but it's about the different needs for performance and reproduction.
For example, if you go to a performance by a piano quintet in a venue with a 'lively' acoustic like the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, you will hear the music conveyed directly to your ears, plus all the myriad reflections of those sounds that reach you, before every component decays to inaudibility (plus all the audience noise, traffic from outside, etc.).
If that performance were to be recorded with a pair of mics and then the musicians replaced onstage by speakers playing back the same piece, then not only would the direct sounds be played back into that room, but all the echoes and ambience captured by the mics. You would (ignoring the fact that the instruments and the speakers have different propagation patterns...) essentially be getting a double dose of the acoustic and the room sound played back from the speakers would echo around with extra delay, on top of the recorded reverberation.
This would apply (with different artefacts more or less obvious) to any form of music in any room or hall, no matter how it is conveyed, acoustically or with amplification. We have a tremendous ability to take into account the 'sound' of the room (and to an extent, that of the PA if such is used) and hear through that, to the sound of the performance itself. Of course, if the acoustic of the venue is good (and please treat yourself and visit the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, if you haven't yet) it enhances the music rather than requiring extra effort (from your little grey cells) to listen.
For an illustration of how much we rely on this mechanism, try listening to footage on Youtube recorded by fans at an amplified gig, capturing the sound from the speakers, hall (and audience!) particularly where they are some distance from the stage. This can sound pretty dire...
When you want to listen to any recording being played back, you can't avoid 'room sound' but you do want (or at least aspire to) a fairly dry acoustic that treats the audio spectrum fairly evenly. By the way, if you've ever visited an anechoic chamber you'll know how uncomfortable it is with no room sound, it's simply not an option one could live with even if it were remotely practicable.
Problems you might encounter (and mostly people get used to them ... to some extent) are flutter echoes, big reverberant peaks in the bass ('room modes'), surfaces too reflective or perhaps the opposite (loads of thick curtains, plush furniture) ... and so on into multiple threads on this site, and the even more numerous points of view, over room treatments and electronic correction for room sound.
We agonize over small differences in frequency response in equipment, but the differences in listening room sound are huge by comparison. However, they're reduced in impact because of the relative importance of direct sound; this is one reason why a reasonably large room is easier to set up in.
None of this means that you can't ever play back successfully in the same space as you've recorded, but more consistent results will be obtained with small-scale music that is close-mic'd (not that I'm saying that's the best way to make a recording!). Small rooms will be more problematic, higher volumes and deep bass also.
It will however never sound the same. When we hear recorded music in any room, our own or a dealer's demo room, an exhibition venue or wherever, we (more or less unconsciously) attempt to filter out the acoustic of the room that we're listening in, to better appreciate the sound of the recording/performance and the ambience and reverberations, natural or artificial, of that original. The less our surroundings get in the way of that, the better - and if the equipment itself can help, by reducing the interaction with the room and/or interacting in more benign ways, then we have to do less work in mental interpretation of what we hear and the experience is both more enjoyable and less fatiguing (in my opinion...).
I honestly think that with the advent of more and more sophisticated DSP, and better understanding of our hearing mechanisms, we are on the verge of breakthroughs in audio that will pose substantial, even existential challenges to the established high-end (domestic or studio) audio firms, and that these will at last begin to help properly with the rooms that we actually listen in. [Btw, all you people with Tact / Dirac / Linns Space Optimisation / etc., I know were already on the way.] There will be tools to better design room layouts and model what is already there and what is needed without the end result looking like a treated studio, there will be cheaper, smaller, more accurate active room mode correction devices (enabling accurate bass response direct from speakers without the associated overhang) and directivity will be better addressed.
P.S. Ive definitely got carried away here and in my other posts on this thread, and the penny has dropped that I probably havent got much response because the Indulgence Show was so poorly attended. Never mind.
AndrewR
pfm Member
As promised, here are some photos I took from the show.
KEF AV by andrew.randle, on Flickr
Innuos music servers by andrew.randle, on Flickr
Yamaha room by andrew.randle, on Flickr
Cute stuff by andrew.randle, on Flickr
Michell Engineering and ProAc by andrew.randle, on Flickr
Michell Prisma by andrew.randle, on Flickr
LDA room by andrew.randle, on Flickr
VPi room by andrew.randle, on Flickr
Pearl acoustics by andrew.randle, on Flickr
Untitled by andrew.randle, on Flickr
Audio Note by andrew.randle, on Flickr
I hope you like them.
KEF AV by andrew.randle, on FlickrInnuos music servers by andrew.randle, on FlickrYamaha room by andrew.randle, on FlickrCute stuff by andrew.randle, on FlickrMichell Engineering and ProAc by andrew.randle, on FlickrMichell Prisma by andrew.randle, on FlickrLDA room by andrew.randle, on FlickrVPi room by andrew.randle, on FlickrPearl acoustics by andrew.randle, on FlickrUntitled by andrew.randle, on FlickrAudio Note by andrew.randle, on FlickrI hope you like them.
Rodney gold
Im just me...
Exceptional post!!!!!!
We went on the Friday and enjoyed the show. Really went to see the Kii's (as so many on here) and the Longdog Audio room. Have to reserve my opinion on the Kii's as they were well and truly bettered by the Emerging/AEquo system. Surprised no one has mentioned the very affordable Emotiva/SVS room. The SVS satellite speakers and sub sounded very intergrated. One more system worth a mention, Parasound with Cabasse. Now looking forward to the Windsor show.
Eat Yr Greens
Member
Hi there, Mr John Still,
I would guess that I have nearly that proportion of studio-created music as well. Some of it is pretty 'dry' in terms of the imagined / created / recorded acoustic (e.g. 'Peg' by Steely Dan), some of it is absolutely drenched in ambience like the Emmylou Harris track 'The Pearl'. (The Ultimate Stream people played both of these for me.)
Most often there are different treatments of different elements in the mix, so you don't have a single 'acoustic' in which the performance sits. At the extreme you have recordings with impossibly interlocking 'spaces' around the voices and instruments, like Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures'. This isn't a clean, hi-fi demo type recording by any means, but the drama and unsettling atmospheres created by the band and Martin Hannett are only heightened by a great system and listening room.
It might become obvious at this point that I have no truck with the idea that you can only judge system performance with clean, untreated recordings of acoustic music... I think the same (room sound) considerations apply to the treatments of tracks in a studio recording, even if there was never any original sound in any room at all, but just something generated entirely 'in the box'. However, the recording and production process itself is in effect part of the performance, and the acoustic(s) created by the technicians and musicians, not by the architect!
We now often hear detail, scale and colour in older recordings, that the artists and engineers could not themselves hear at the time, during playback. All of this is just such a thrill to me that I am an evangelist about audio quality; sometimes, when talking to friends and relatives I even shut up before their eyes glaze over.
What I'm looking forward to (and what I think is now inevitable) is cheaper, high-quality equipment that is much more compatible with ordinary living (spaces). Convincing people that sound matters will become easier.
[... Steps off soapbox and clears throat nervously ...]
sunbeamgls
pfm Member
Not sure if you're referring to my comments as 'taking a shot'. If so, please take a look at post 98 above which gives a balanced view
http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showpost.php?p=3216583&postcount=98
You can also look at my comments on the Reference system in the relevant post at last years show at audiophilemusings.co.uk
Still
he said his naim was ralph
Eat Yr Greens
You are most welcome to stand on this soapbox: http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showthread.php?t=207064
Cheers - John
You are most welcome to stand on this soapbox: http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showthread.php?t=207064
Cheers - John