Analogue perfection vs. DEQX perfection (Off Topic)

by GC, Sunday, December 23, 2007, 09:46 (5941 days ago)
edited by GC, Sunday, December 23, 2007, 11:14

Analogue perfection vs. DEQX EQ, DSP'ed room tuning and filtering perfection.

It is most interesting for me to read about the different stances, such as Dons, Peters, sjef, Berts, robmatthew, some others and my own, how a good tuned in analogue filtered speakers system which sources arrives from bit perfect data streaming, and the comparison to what a DEQX could do to the very same system.

What I read among all our posts is that we compare apples and pears to a certain extend and how to come to a conclusion here, seems to be impossible the way we discuss it.

Some had luck with EQ'ing and DSP'ing their system. Some had luck creating a perfect data source to conversion. Some had luck to dial in a speaker that complies 100% to phase linearity, time alignment, and flat amplitude.

We have to see all this in the same context:

1. To really compare which approach would be the best requires several things. It must be the same speaker. It must be the same room. It must be the same amps etc. It must be the same music source and so on. I can't see any chance that anything can be concluded unless such a comparison is done. There is no science, to cry it out loud, that red is a better colour than green. It's nonsense.

2. One stance is: To me the DEQX really improved a lot to what I was used to before, dialling everything in over time.
The Other stance is: My system is faultless and any mess with the bits would kill my sound.

If we look at 1 and 2 not much can be learned from that.

If we look a way from that a DEQX could cure many things on imperfect made speakers, and to an extend also would be able to present a "Better listening room", then my next question would be this:


Scenario one:

1 You poses a decent listening room.
2 You have a bit perfect source
3 You have decent amps
4 You have perfectly time aligned, phase correct and dialled in flat amplitude response using passive components to achieve it.
5 The room it self manipulate with the amplitude of natural courses. A speaker is a smaller box in a bigger box (room).
6 You find your best speaker position and the best listening position, the sweet spot for that set-up.

Then: No doubt that such a system just delivers the music unspoiled. Let it be a bad recording or a good one. Such a system will always sound incredible good if the used drivers allows for it. OK?


Scenario two:

1 You poses a decent listening room.
2 You don't have a bit perfect source due to the DEQX in the game
3 You have decent amps
4 You don't have perfectly time aligned, phase correct and dialled in flat amplitude response using passive components to achieve it.
5 You find your best speaker position and the best listening position, the sweet spot for that set-up.
6 You use the DEQX to create the time alignment, 0 degrees phase turn, EQ, flat response and room correction.

Then: No doubt that this can sound good too. Let it be a bad recording or a good one. Such a system will always sound incredible good if the used drivers allows for it. OK?

Now to my 1000 $ question:

What if we assume you take the analogue perfectly dialled in speaker. Threw out the passive x-over and dialled that in via the DEQX changing slopes, EQ'ing and dragging a piston speaker with a phase turn, into a piston speaker with 0 phase turn. Let the amplitude response be flat in even way as the ordinary filtered speaker. Corrected the room amplitude response.

Will this harassment of data manipulations through everything corrected DEQX to speaker route stand against the bit perfect, speaker perfect, non room perfect set-up?

How can we know? How can we know if we don't try it? And have anyone of us really tried what I describe here?

We can have our religious standpoints, but will that prove anything scientifically?

So?

I would not know it, unless I have 4 physically equal speakers. Let 2 be one set and the other 2 be the other. Diall them in each way. Then compare and conclude for myself.

And this will not happen in my room simply because I don't want to invest in the experiment in time and money.

I have very little chance to evaluate if one is better than the other. And even my few aquatinted handshakes with TACT/room processing sessions, and similar attempts, does not allow for a conclusion as this is not what you can achieve using a DEQX based solution.

The only thing I can derive from say the TACT/room processing is what I heard:

With out room processing: A normal good sounding system. Lalala...

With room processing: Wow...the room "disappeared", the speakers turned to 0 phase (not time aligned drivers of course). Only the summarised amplitude showed 0 phase turn and flatness.
It was as if the walls framing the room just fell down and left me floating in the air together with the sound. Fantastic, I thought.
But 5 minutes after I simply got a headache to listen to this. My brain were so disturbed by anti-processing against it, I think. It did not sound of music at all as you find it in a concert hall.

I could only conclude that DSP'ing a speaker to technical perfection did not rival even the sound of the non-corrected speaker and the untreated room.

But this conclusion doesn't count for my believes that a DEQX'ed system might appear differently to me? I simply don't know.

At that moment I concluded. Don't harass with my brain with DSP'ed sound please.

That lead me to forget devices belonging in that category. I took my stances as you can learn from my posts about all this. And now you all know why.


Merry Christmas

GC :heart:

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Analogue perfection vs. DEQX perfection

by GC, Sunday, December 30, 2007, 12:04 (5933 days ago) @ GC
edited by GC, Sunday, December 30, 2007, 12:46

Another angle....

Guys let's mirror the things completely. It's crazy, but why not do the experiment...:shame:

In this case

Scenario 1:

Today we have let's say a concert hall. The orchestra is on place, the hopefully correct placed mike's are turned on and the show starts.

The route goes as follows:

Musicians -> sound in concert hall -> mikes-> studio-mix ->
master -> CD printing -> ripping -> player -> DAC -> amps -> speakers -> room -> ears -> brain.

Let's assume everything goes pretty well here until the chain is broken by anomalities caused by the room we listen in.

Then we throw in a EQ-DSP thing to eliminate the last prithole, the room.

The mirrored situation will then look like this:

Scenario 2:

brain -> corrected room -> speakers -> amps -> DAC EQ-DSP -> player -> rips -> cd -> master -> mixer -> mikes -> concert hall sound -> correctly placed mikes -> musicians.

What should be done to the concert hall sound (?) as this will now be molested by the EQ-DSP thing we have thrown in in our listening room.

Just think about it. :teasing:

GC

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Analogue perfection vs. DEQX perfection

by PeterSt. ⌂ @, Netherlands, Sunday, December 30, 2007, 12:50 (5933 days ago) @ GC

From http://forum.bd-design.nl/index.php?id=14938&page=0&category=0&order=last_a... :

PS: Now start thinking about what you would prefer :
1. An exact copy of the hall etc. where the recording took place (fake in
90 % of cases anyway)
2. Let your room act as the room where the recording took place.

Hint : When you don't choose 2, you get a headache. :secret:

GC,

I thing these are our options. Anything in between would be the worse, or the most fake.

To my experience option 2 can be achieved, and it goes by a kinf of automation. That is, I myself never experienced that the church ect. expanded beyond the walls of ny room, no matter the church *is* bigger (yep, even compared to mt room :satisfied:).

On the other hand, where the recording captured the size (= hall) from the church, something must be wrong afterall. That is, if the hall indeed would extend to beyond the walls of the room. But is it ? will it ? can it ?
Somehow it is not working like that. Maybe this is because of this :

As I said elsewhere (and it's just my opinion), only "real flat" can be judged as wrong in an absolute sense; And, all which is not real flat caNot be easily judged for reality (unless you were there at the recording). Now :
It seems to me that any large hall is perceived as being in the middle of the sound. And mind you, I mean *not* being on the sweet spot. On that matter people might know that I explicitly stribe for listening not being (necessary) on the sweet spot (in fact I don't have one, unless a barstool is appointed for it :prankster:).

When you take the assumption that indeed it is not necessary to be on the sweetspot to perceive all there is to perceive, it becomes a bit more easy to understand that there's only one thing really (and in fact explicitly) influencing this : the "hall". Or better : the projected size of the recording room.
From this theory comes that the smaller that recording room was, the more far away the sound(stage) is at listening at a relative far distance from the speakers.

At judging this phenomenon, I'm always at 10-12 meters from the speakers, those being 5.5 meters apart, the projected sweetspot being at some 6 meters.

Although my (3m heigh) room has quite an amount of hall itself, I am very sure that this is not what "we" perceive as the hall I'm talking about here. This is just in the data of the music.
Note : when you want to hear the hall of your room, go stand in between the speakers with your eyes in the same direction the speakers radiate.

The above can be proven by turning your system in a lousy playback system (or have a very bad recording) so that all (the stage) is completely flat. If the room would contribute so much to the perceived hall / size of the recording room, it would be impossible to have such a flat stage ever.

Lastly, and I said this quite a few times before, when you can pinpoint a sound somewhere in the 3d space of your room, you can walk around it and it keeps on its place. Well, I can, in my room with my playback means.

To summ it all up :
With unprocessed (and good) playback means, the size of the recording room caNot (will not) be bigger than the room you are listeing in;
The smaller the listening room, the less recording rooms you will be able to listen to for reality (you'll miss out on the larger rooms).
When you have really large rooms for playback (like a church), things will go the other way around : the small recording room will start echoing indeed.

Whether the last is really true I don't know; anyway I recall myself playing classical music via my playback system in a church. I don't recall anything else than natural perceivement of the enormeous hall an undecorated church would produce. The recording sure wasn't taken from a church, but from an acoustically well treated concert hall.

Peter

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Analogue perfection vs. DEQX perfection

by GC, Sunday, December 30, 2007, 13:12 (5933 days ago) @ PeterSt.

To summ it all up :
With unprocessed (and good) playback means, the size of the recording room
caNot (will not) be bigger than the room you are listeing in;
The smaller the listening room, the less recording rooms you will be able
to listen to for reality (you'll miss out on the larger rooms).
When you have really large rooms for playback (like a church), things will
go the other way around : the small recording room will start echoing
indeed.

Whether the last is really true I don't know; anyway I recall myself
playing classical music via my playback system in a church. I don't recall
anything else than natural perceivement of the enormeous hall an
undecorated church would produce. The recording sure wasn't taken from a
church, but from an acoustically well treated concert hall.

Peter

Hi Peter

Run to your :grin: barstool....the favourite one I normally use when I'm listening in your Church. (You certainly also serve better booze than the churches does :party: )

I find my self more agreeing with you, than disagreeing.

However one small comment which after all might not conflict with you learnings:

Let's schrink our listening rooms as far as to a pair of headphones. I think this is as small as a listening room can get.

Then we don't hear our traditional listening room anymore. It's outside the headphones.
But when I dress myself with a pair of headphones I hear of course the sound somewhere inside the middle of my head.....but have certainly an illusion that that head is as big as a Cathedral? :shame: Its does not look too good from outside though... hehehe :grin:

If I use my big headphones called my present speakers, would that situation not take sound beyond the physical wall as an illusion?

In your barstool I noticed several orchestral members sitting outside your house somewhere on your laun.

GC :wink:

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Analogue perfection vs. DEQX perfection

by madprofessor ⌂, 27777 Ganderkesee, Germany, Sunday, December 30, 2007, 17:10 (5933 days ago) @ PeterSt.

Hallo Pater!

Quote:
To summ it all up :
With unprocessed (and good) playback means, the size of the recording room caNot (will not) be bigger than the room you are listeing in;
The smaller the listening room, the less recording rooms you will be able to listen to for reality (you'll miss out on the larger rooms).
When you have really large rooms for playback (like a church), things will go the other way around : the small recording room will start echoing indeed.

Myself I had several different experiences with real good systems. Of course depending on the record, the preceived soundstage can be bigger than the listening room. In all cases it were completely analouge systems, without any processing.
The experience happened as well with electrostats ( The big Sond-labs) conventional Speakers ( Vernissage Echnaton, Avalon, Kharma) as also with a horn- based system, I´m using now.
How much is lost during recording and reproduction, I experienced quite stunning in the mid-eightys:
In my rather large listening room, I removed my speakers and placed there an amateur-band, to produce a demo. In the listening position I had a Jecklin-disk with two tube NeumaGC microphones. That output run straight into a studio Telefunken open reel recorder. Only vocals were recorded later and mixed to that signal.
When the recording of the music was done, I left the recording gear on. During clearing up, somebody dropped a hi hat in the front left corner, and afterwards went, speaking to the right rear corner of the room.
When I put my speakers back in the room and played back the recording. That movement could be heard exactly, which mens you heard that guy moving and speking behind you in the rear right corner. Only two speakers in front were used for reproduction.
Such kind of real 3 d room information is very seldom found on "normal" record. But the impression of a wider soundtage than the room size happens quite frequently. My listening room is 4,5 x 6 m 3 m hight, accoustically treated. The perceived soundstage can start two meters in front of the speakers, about 10 m wide and 8 m deep. Of course that perception is very subjective and anybody can of course argument, its "wishfull thinking"
Best regards
Stephan

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Analogue perfection vs. DEQX perfection

by GC, Sunday, December 30, 2007, 20:45 (5933 days ago) @ madprofessor

Was that meant for me or Peter?

:confused:

GC

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Analogue perfection vs. DEQX perfection

by madprofessor ⌂, 27777 Ganderkesee, Germany, Monday, December 31, 2007, 01:10 (5933 days ago) @ GC

Basically, it was about the possibility to reproduce the illusion of a bigger soundstage than the listening room, without digital processing of the main signal. Primarly it was a response to the part I quoted from Peter.

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Analogue perfection vs. DEQX perfection

by GC, Monday, December 31, 2007, 08:22 (5933 days ago) @ madprofessor

OK Stephan...

Your experiment is interesting and a proof of, I think, it is possible to expand sound beyon the walls.

If you throw Roger Waters "Amused to Death" into your playback system...hehe..
this recording shows sound far beyon any walls here in my big room.
But of course this record has been phase manipulated.

GC :grin:

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Analogue perfection vs. DEQX perfection

by madprofessor ⌂, 27777 Ganderkesee, Germany, Monday, December 31, 2007, 10:29 (5932 days ago) @ GC

Hallo GC!

Yeah I know that record - same experience oer here!
I like the music of Roger Waters - there are also other records, with the same very much extended room-illusion.
But also without ( unknown) phase manipulation - There is a stereophile test record, were someone hits a small bell ( like used for cows in Bavaria) with a drumstick, while walking and talking in a big church. Also there the illusion of the reproduced room is bigger than my listening room!

Best regards
Stephan

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Analogue perfection vs. DEQX perfection

by PeterSt. ⌂ @, Netherlands, Monday, December 31, 2007, 10:57 (5932 days ago) @ GC

Guys ...

Let me stress first that this is not about what is and what should be in absolute sense, but it is only my opinion / ideas about things.

Your experiment is interesting and a proof of, I think, it is possible to
expand sound beyon the walls.

If you throw Roger Waters "Amused to Death" into your playback
system...hehe..
this recording shows sound far beyon any walls here in my big room.
But of course this record has been phase manipulated.

I was not saying that it is not possible to expand the sound to beyond the room boundaries. What I do say though, is that it should not be so. And if that happens, something is (very) wrong. Even with Amused to Death it wouldn't happen (nor with the other Q-sound albums I have).

If the sound expands beyond the walls of the room, this is no virtue. It causes brain damage (ok, so to speak).

Things are more complicated than can be put into words, already becausr it's no absolute science (IMO). It more or less comes down to (or is related to) what GC said about the headphones; the music will be inside your head;
Now, with (I think) a good playback system, being on the sweetspot, the music will be in your head just the same, but, this only happens at closing your eyes. Leave them open, and it won't work. You will see a room, and the sound comes from that room('s walls) (more or less virtually spoken, but you'll know what I mean). When the music is inside your head, the sound is around you. Is that right ? ... no. Not to me ...

Technically spoken it is not even necessary to be on the sweet spot to perceive things as intended. I'm not saying that this would be equal to attending a live concert where there is no sweetspot (necessary), but I do say that this is related to the 2 radiating sources, the speakers. Phase alignment sure isn't happening at one spot only, and instead there are lines that can be followed.

[image]

Don't look at the circle or the actual positioning of the lines (this graph was made for something else) but think of it being allowed to be anywhere on a solid part of a line to perceive proper phase alignment. This includes the time the soundwaves need to travel. Note though, that when it comes to the latter, this graph was made for/with speed of light waves; with sound waves theories would work out the same, but because sound travels so much slower, the lines caNot be so near the "antennas" (speakers).

Ok, I myself am not sure why I showed the above without an additional couple of pages to eleborate further. The point is, that where this is about localization by means of phase shifting, it works the other way around just the same : by means of proper phase alignment you can perceive sound radiating objects (like a small bell) in a 2d plane just by means of two radiators (speakers) BUT the sound radiating object may shift across lines depending on where you are listening to it. This is because two radiators (speakers) is not enough (it takes 3 for 2d and 4 for 3d).

If you, for fun, look at the circle now, and think that this circle is a small bell, this picture tells that where the bell actually is at the position of the circle, it can be perceived anywhere on a solid part of the lines. Not good.

To make it one step more wild :
Some time ago I found that when all "wobbling" is eliminated -and this is the standing waves subject- harmonics need not to be on a recording to let them emerge again in free air anyway. On this matter, note that "air waves" (which is sound) is one big pile of coliding matters, and the less "wobbling" is in the base, the more tight the intended colisions will happen (a small bell becomes more like a real bell which can be pinpointed).

The more our radiators are beaming themselves, the less influence there will be from walls, the more individual sounds can be pinpointed. BUT :
The more walls influence, the more the music will stay in the room and the more it will be the room producing the sound.

With headphones this caNot work, because there are no reflections from walls. You will be in the middle of the sound.
With a good damped room and being on the sweetspot, again you will be in the middle of the sound (eyes closed); with proper time alignment of speakers (and drivers) all comes together at this line which will be running through the middle (unlike the graph above where no line is running through the middle -> never mind), although that line will not stay on the same vertical level (it will bend vertically like you see it on the graph horizontally).


I am very sorry for the fuzzy mixed unstructured things above, but my own conclusion of it is that sound will extend beyond the room when the room is damped "sufficiently", or when the sound produced is so bad that no pinpointing can happen. On that matter :

GC, your reference to my barstool was about that exact moment the filters were wrong, and a.o. there was (way) too much bass. You will recall that. :cool: As well as how we all disliked the produced sound in general. So this is when the sound leaves the room ... :wacko:

Peter

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Analogue perfection vs. DEQX perfection

by GC, Monday, December 31, 2007, 14:33 (5932 days ago) @ PeterSt.
edited by GC, Monday, December 31, 2007, 15:49

That was a big piece of typo-meatloaf there Peter...:shame:

Of course the sound stayes in the room. If we caNot believe that, just go outside your house and listen.

Look, the two radiators should be able to send you a *picture* of the environment the mike/mikes were placed in. And this *picture* envelopes a code for our brain, that gives us the illusion of being in a bigger room. E.g. a concerthall or a church.

Think of our brains or what is left of them: They caNot produce a believeable illusion? You bet it can.

Just use dreaming when sleeping as a very good example.

Another example: Think of people are brought into hypnosis. Don't you think they believe in what they are told. Yes they do.

The main dominator in hearing tones outside our physically boundaries is:

THE BRAIN

IMHO

GC :drinks:


Edit: And maybe we can put it more simple: At least we can hear/detect that an orchestral concert hall performance takes place in a bigger room than our listening room.

GC :drinks: :drinks: :drinks: :swoon:

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