Acoustic guitars also change over time and some are better than others, in fact much better even among the same models of the same brands. A late 30s Martin D-18? Astonishing or unplayable depending on the guitar's life over time...Richard Hoover of Santa Cruz says you gotta play the things to make 'em great.
How can a system be judged with highly processed, non acoustic music?
I basically know what an instrument or human voice sounds like. I understand that almost all recordings, analog or digital, go through some level of processing. I also know that there are many, many recordings which strive to present a natural, real sound. To me, I can best judge a system playing lightly or non processed acoustic music.
This is also my preference for listening in general. And for me, it is vinyl.
This is also my preference for listening in general. And for me, it is vinyl.
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frogman -- I'll bet my memory is playing tricks on me, but I'm pretty sure that when I went to L.A.'s piano shops and played those three brands brands, it was only the Fazioli that gave me the shakes. It was only the Fazioli that compelled me to return to the dealer and drive them nuts with my horrible playing, once again. I might want to say, too, that for a while I lived within walking distance of a very good piano store. And that I continue to love the early 20th Century, 52" Mason & Hamlin upright. I was compelled to buy it when the wife lost patience with the living room hogging Petrof Grand I'd been banging on previously. |
I agree with your characterizations and might describe what I hear a little differently. Not sure it’s an issue of truth, but more of tradition vs more modern. A similar trend toward a certain kind of sound can be found with many manufacturers of acoustic instruments other than piano. In addition to what you describe, I would add that the Fazioli, a modern company, also has a hollowness and shouty quality that I don’t like, the Steinway (my favorite) has warmth and the best balanced sound, and the Bosendorfer is somewhere in the middle with more power than the Steinway. All great in their own way and, of course, there is the issue of feel and action which are important only to the player. |
frogman -- Hey, thanks for the comparison vid. Routed it through the old hi-fi. As for making a choice among the three makes, all three axes offer up equivalent versions of the truth. The Bosendorfer gives me a just a little bit more power. The Fazioli a bit more sparkle & presence. The Steinway a bit more old-fashioned seriousness & comfort, i.e., the sense that this is what the classic/romantic composers probably actually heard when they composed. I gotta say, though, that the YouTube was the proverbial beotch to get through. Each time I'd put it on, several minutes through it'd be hijacked by a different, abjectly inferior Piano YouTube that could not be gotten rid of. Eventually I was able to hear all three pianos go through their paces, but what a headache! It made me nostalgic for the time when, in L.A., I'd just get in the car and brave the traffic to different piano emporia. |
For me yes.... Metallica is like a very good detailed " white and black" drawing...At best.... A lute piece very well recorded is like a color oil paintings...Or a rendition of Chopin or Listz at the piano.... The sonic "cues" are way more subtle and evoke way more subtle mix of emotions...For me.... i like the group "Nightwatch" for example but i listen to only the albums with their first female singer.... The voice add to the group something more poetic and more natural....a unique set of colors.... She was a classical singer educated.... Amplified or electronically amplified instruments for me sound more "white /black" pixellation...And natural acoustical sound more like oil paintings... |
Speaking of Fazioli. Interesting comparison. Rolls Royce? I’m not so sure. https://youtu.be/mrB8IthgoRQ |
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mglik How can I forget Fazioli? I actually played one at one of the piano stores I used to haunt. (Yeah, is this refrain getting old. I'm a more of a sucker for musical Instrument stores than stereo stores.) I think Maurizio Pollini was playing a Fazioli when I saw him live. And oh yeah. I sweet-talked a 1930's L-00 out the owner's hands at an Old Time jam. He said it had spent WWII aboard a Navy ship. I was loathe to admit to him that it sounded a ways better than my brand new Ren Ferguson-built edition...my current fave among my gits. |
edcyn I own a '37 Gibson LOO! It belonged to a Vaudeville performer named the King of Strings. And boy, is it... Not all Martins are as described. The dreds more so. I also have a sweet 017 Martin. Also spent many hours at McCabes. Used to have a Santa Cruz Tony Price Pro. Great Brazilian. But I prefer the older small ones. Many pianists say that a Fazoli piano is the Rolls Royce. |
@wolf_garcia. Yeah, stereotyping guitar brands with a particular type of sound is ultimately treacherous as hell, but I still can't help but do it. I also gotta say that me and the wife have more than our share of steel string acoustics in the house. Damn, her Everett sounds lovely! And in earlier days I spent an inordinate amount of time at McCabe's Guitar Shop and similar joints, taking guitars off the wall to sample. At any rate, I think of a Gibson acoustic as sounding dry and midrangey -- a sound particularly designed not to get in the way of vocals. A Gibson L-00 (yeah, it's tiny) suits this sound to a T, as do many Gibby dreads. Martins, particularly dreadnaughts, sound big and complex -- made for propelling bluegrass bands. I've never heard or played an Olson Guitar, but I've played the other brands you mention, and sound-wise they all generally hew to the Martin sound. And oh yes, I truly love the Froggy Bottom and the Santa Cruz. @mglik -- I gotta tell ya' that pianos' sounds can vary remarkably by both brand and size. Again, I'm typecasting here to beat the band, but Steinways tend to sound clangy and Baldwins tend to sound mellow. Bosendorfer inhabits the tonal spot between them. |
So like I said hard to explain. But I think we are trying to listen for those patterns that are "true" to the whatever it was, and then do something very demanding. We have to somehow put aside all the many different aspects that came before our system, because we can do nothing about them. But then focus on the aspects that come after, because that is our system and that we can do something about.i agree... My only added point is our brain data base is heavily programmed to recognized timbre voices from all origin in closed or open space... Survival mode.... My experience is the same as frogman.. My experience has been that building a system that best reproduces unprocessed acoustic music allows processed music to sound best. |
@frogman we are on the same page. Hardly throwing in the towell. Impossible with my growing microphone collection. A steady diet of unamplified music in reverberant space, captured simply ( a great three channel mixer, anyone ? Rudy Bozak get busy . My mentor and i are currently discussing why a particularly fine Earthworks microphone, while fine for a stereo pair high up for ambience, is not accurate enough for loudspeaker production quality control… i am a student…..but i make my own references….. i don’t go looking for timbre in an ELP piano….. |
The old J Gordon Holt mic story made me think some more. This whole listening/evaluating thing is incredibly complex. Nothing new, known about it since like forever. What's hard is trying to put into words what I've been doing this whole time. It comes down I think to pattern recognition. Everything has its own unique sonic signature or fundamental character, whatever you want to call it. Like, when you hear someone's voice, anyone you have heard before, you know who it is. Some of them, a wife or mother for example, you will know even coming to you far off in the distance, through a storm, over a cell phone, no problem. So we can recognize these things even when distorted all kinds of different ways. The way I see it, what we are doing when evaluating a system is not so much trying to say it sounds like it did originally. We can't ever really know what that was. Not exactly. We can't ever really know all the stuff that happened before it went down on tape. That is kind of like mom yelling in the storm, we can sort of tell the wind was blowing, rain, etc but we have to sort of put that aside. That part is nothing we can do anything about. The recording is what the recording is. All we can do is try and evaluate our end of it. So like I said hard to explain. But I think we are trying to listen for those patterns that are "true" to the whatever it was, and then do something very demanding. We have to somehow put aside all the many different aspects that came before our system, because we can do nothing about them. But then focus on the aspects that come after, because that is our system and that we can do something about. Learning to sort those out. One of the bigger keys to the kingdom. |
On the first Stereophile Test CD they have a track where JG Holt reads from a Stereophile and is recorded in mono by about 15 different microphones including Shures, AKGs, Neumans, Telefunkens, etc. It’s not hard to tell when the microphone changes.What you just said about mic is right but you miss the important point about what is the difference between natural non electrically amplified instrument and voices timbre recognition in the database set of our brain species... Natural human voice listening is the better test for an audio system....unamplified piano is good...Because of the sum of all the subtle cues there is associated with them... Electronic music is the worst choice to determine more objectively if a system is good or not in a comparison implicating many people... We dont speak about OUR taste here we speak acoustic... Anybody could prefer moog electronical music over opera singing for sure....Saying that is saying nothing.... |
On the first Stereophile Test CD they have a track where JG Holt reads from a Stereophile and is recorded in mono by about 15 different microphones including Shures, AKGs, Neumans, Telefunkens, etc. It's not hard to tell when the microphone changes. So I would say that what you are doing is making your system sound most natural to you. It may not sound most natural to someone else who uses different minimalist acoustic recordings to determine natural. |
Most music today is NOT worth listening to....let alone purchasing. The Days of quality music and recording are long gone. A sad state of affairs, and a reflection of society today really....I long for the good old days, hence why I choose to live in the past in this regard. I have my own time machine....I will temporarily transport myself to wherever, old records are my vehicle....tonight I'm going to Gay Paris.... |
Of course it’s possible to judge a system’s sound using highly processed non-acoustic music. The question is not whether it can be judged, but whether one’s goal is to achieve a sound one likes without any aspirations to meeting any particular standard of fidelity; or, whether it is to achieve a sound that gets as close as possible to the sound of acoustic music. It’s not the same for everyone and, yes, no matter what many think it is possible to have acoustic music as a real and very useful standard. To throw in the towel because timbre is altered by the first microphone is, in a way, a little like saying: “why should I shower at all, I’m just going to get dirty again”. Point is, of course the process of choosing components that, in combination, best mimic the sound of live acoustic instruments is imperfect. Of course that first microphone alters timbre as well as other aspects of the music. However, the goal is to choose pieces and combinations of pieces of rec/playback electronic gear that does the least damage; and some do a much better job than others. Its become popular to dismiss the use of a sonic standard and there certainly is nothing wrong with simply aiming for what “sounds good” to us for whatever reason. It is obviously a personal thing. However, with enough exposure to the sound of un-processed acoustic music it becomes possible to form an aural “database” of the characteristics of unprocessed musical sounds that let’s one be a better judge…..if that is one’s goal. Ask yourself this question: how is it possible to tell that the friend or loved one on the phone is getting over a cold? Shouldn’t all that “processing” and crude playback device make it impossible to tell; never mind, tell who it is? Familiarity with the sound. My experience has been that building a system that best reproduces unprocessed acoustic music allows processed music to sound best. However, “best” for me may not be best for someone else. With processed music, “best” for me also includes being able to hear the warts in the recording that were the result, at least in part, by the choices that the engineer/producer made. The fun part is to be able to tell if Phil Woods is playing his Yamaha or his Selmer alto saxophone. There is no professional mic that will do so much damage that it becomes impossible to tell. |
People have no idea generally of the weight of acoustic on audiophile experience.... They listen to their gear, compare it to other, without knowing that no gear has a sound of its own ONLY but must be embedded mechanically, electrically and acoustically especially to shine by itself... Especially many reviewers are there to sell, not to explain how to create audio experience at no cost... No acoustician use electronica FIRST AND ONLY to asssess a Hall or a room....Hall or musical room are designed for centuries FIRST for natural human voices and natural non electrified instruments...This is the point about "timbre " perception... But Who dont want to understand will not.... 😁😊 Too much work to understand anyway.... It takes me 2 years full time listening experiments in my room to figure out acoustic for audio, i will not try to convince someone to do that... If you had money anyway you will buy ready made passive treatment and think the job is done.... Most of the times the job is not done especially in small audio complex room... It takes me active mechanical control devices to ADAPT the room to the speakers system....Passive treatment was not enough at all here... Anyway.... My best to all... |
fwiw john darko, well known, and imo, a very good audio gear reviewer in print and online (much on u tube) puts right up front he pretty much exclusively listens to electronica, old and new, and indie rock music https://darko.audio/2011/04/electronica-for-audiophiles-part-1/ despite this, and while i don’t agree with some of his points of view, by and large i find his equipment reviews very much on point and accurate in describing the sound of his review subjects, be they speakers, amps, dacs and so on |
Depends. If you listen only to non-acoustical music then yes, but one should test the system with music they prefer and maybe a good idea to test highs, mid, bass. If you listen to acoustic music then it’s probably foolish to not test with such music especially at the usual lofty prices we pay for our hobby. Then it’s hit or miss whether the system will be to your liking or not when you play acoustical music. |
Just a note...Nobody can tell the difference as Gibsons and Martins can sound very similar or dissimilar depending on the tone woods, age, model, manufacturing techniques, etc. I've owned and played both brands extensively for decades so I know what I'm talking about. In real life. What does an Olsen sound like? A Bourgeois? Froggy Bottom? Santa Cruz? Also, if you're a huge hippity hop or EDM fan you might have discerning tastes regarding the sound of that even though it's not "acoustic." So what? Mic cables, mixing boards, ear wax, microphones (first Stereophile test CD had a great thing where somebody read into a bunch of different microphones...check THAT out), engineers, the acoustics of a live venue, the engineer's ear wax, on and on all have a big influence on recordings. If it sounds right to you, whatever you're into, it's right. |
timbre is altered with the very first microphone choice…For sure, it is a common place in acoustic that the choice of microphones type, their numbers and their location CHANGE the PERSPECTIVAL perception of timbre... It is the reason why if you read attentively my post i spoke of RECREATION of the timbre experience not of his alleged perfect REPRODUCTION... A natural event is not a recorded event and a recorded event cannot be a natural event....It is always a "translation" with something lost in the process... Our own listener history in life is the sum of all the perspectival aspects of the human voice perceived in different natural settings... Our body/memory treat the new timbre perceptive event, from a recording or from a natural voice, with this background of past perceptive events in different natural settings...This past experience made our brain more apt to RECREATE the timbre experience meaning and aspects... |
It is a very good question mglik and one I have thought about a lot and first wrote about going back to the early 90’s. It is nowhere near easy with synth, but neither is it all that simple even with all minimalist recorded and classical acoustic instruments. Not even solo human voice. All these no matter how carefully recorded are altered and colored all kinds of ways by the recording venue itself. There really is no Rosetta Stone, no silver bullet, nothing we can grab hold of. Probably because there is nothing there to begin with, but that is another subject for another time. All we can do is listen to a lot of different stuff, and the more the better, and try and look for patterns. We can’t say what is "bright" or "harsh" or "lush" or anything based on any one recording, other than relative to another, because we can never know for sure if it is indeed the recording. With records we cannot even know that much, because it may well indeed be the individual pressing copy and nothing to do with the recording! We must at all times keep an open mind.There is something that is missing here.... Of course if we compared audio system to other audio systems," We can’t say nothing absolute based on any one recording, other than relative to one another, because we can never know for sure if it is indeed IN the "original" recording or not. We then speak about our own system and taste, and sure we want it more "bright" or more "lush" or less "harsh"... Of course.... But for a musician and for an acoustician, there is no "bright" "harsh or "lush" vocabulary FIRST AND MOSTLY inherited from audio gear market and from audiophiles... Acoustic use concept like "timbre" experience and perception, and if we dont know how a specific "original" recording of a piano is supposed to sound,all audio system being different, we already know how natural voice and piano are supposed to sound...It is the reason why the best way to fine tune a system acoustically is with non amplified natural instrument... I fine tuned in the past 2 years all my room listening piano and voices...Because i feel how they sound naturally better than a moog synthetizer...They give me more natural and way more subtle "cues" about my system S.Q. anyway than electrical guitar...This does not means that we cannot use electrified instrument to fine tune our system.... Yes we can, and we must, BUT NOT TO BEGIN WITH AT ALL in the first steps...It will be an error... The so called "inexistant" meter exist it is the natural timbre experience in acoustic...We dont pretend here to retrieve the "original" recorded event at all, it will be an illusion, we claim only that a natural and optimal RECREATION (not reproduction) of it through our own audio system/room acoustic is possible...In spite of all limitations coming from each audio system /room acoustic for sure... We must create a synergy where our room complement our specific audio system....We cannot REPRODUCE the original recording... We can only recreate it in our room.... Then when we used electrical, and mechanical and acoustical controls of our gear we dont fine tuned ANYTHING to be more "bright" or more "lush", FIRST AND MOSTLY, INSTEAD we fine tune the audio system to mimic more a natural "timbre" of instrument or a natural voice which we know of already to begin with...We dont fine tune to retrieve the "original" recording event through a specific "vinyl" or digital file, this would be a deceptive illusion...We fine tune to recreate a natural timbre for our ears in our room...It is the best we can do.... Remember that no audio system sound the same in different room with his content and geometry, it is because of that that acoustic is very important and a room must be dedicated to a specific audio system when it is possible... After being audiophile and after picking the right gear for us and our room we must become acoustician to fine tune them all right....And the vocabulary of audio market is not the acoustician or musician vocabulary.... Any music lover must take 2 hats on his head: audiophile hat and acoustician hat.... Otherwise frustration without end even with costly gear.... Before upgrading anything we must embed it rightfully.... It is my experience.... |
Unless you were at the mastering session were the final sound was agreed upon by the artist, producer and mastering engineer, then you have no real knowledge of what a recording sounds like. Even then, you only know what the recording sounds like in the mastering suite played through the mastering system. That being the case, then any music or even non-musically sounds can be used to evaluate any random system. Purist recording techniques are probably best for instrumental timbre, but complex, highly processed recordings can reveal overall frequency response, polarity, soundstage dimensions, imaging specificity, timing, etc. |
I think what you are saying is that it is all relative. I listen to no rock. I don't listen for impact or excitement. I want to hear a relatively clear sound. Speaking of tweaks, I will always remember your raves about Townshend Podiums. The difference between the SQ before the Podiums and after is that I entered a new world of clarity, relatively. Could I also hear that with rock? Sure. But I have no idea what an electric guitar or electric bass sound like... relatively speaking. I have the good fortune to be involved in the design of what we hope will be the world's best upright bass amp. Our goal is to make it sound as much like an acoustic bass as possible. Considering the challenge of having to go through an electronic recreation. |
It is a very good question mglik and one I have thought about a lot and first wrote about going back to the early 90’s. It is nowhere near easy with synth, but neither is it all that simple even with all minimalist recorded and classical acoustic instruments. Not even solo human voice. All these no matter how carefully recorded are altered and colored all kinds of ways by the recording venue itself. There really is no Rosetta Stone, no silver bullet, nothing we can grab hold of. Probably because there is nothing there to begin with, but that is another subject for another time. Anyway, what I learned is yes you most certainly can judge and evaluate and build a high end system using highly processed non-acoustic music. It really is not any different than what it takes to do it with all acoustic minimally processed music. In both cases you simply have to slowly and gradually over time build up a knowledge base of how things sound through your system. This is a seriously big challenge. Not least because it is completely at odds with the conventional wisdom and the prevailing advice parroted by so many of the importance of having a "reference" whatever. Reference recording. Reference speaker. Reference system. Whatever. You want to to do it, seriously do it, let me give you the news: There is no reference! None! None at all! Nowhere! Best thing I can ever tell you, whatever you think is a reference, it is no more a reference than a meter, which is to say no reference at all. All we can do is listen to a lot of different stuff, and the more the better, and try and look for patterns. We can’t say what is "bright" or "harsh" or "lush" or anything based on any one recording, other than relative to another, because we can never know for sure if it is indeed the recording. With records we cannot even know that much, because it may well indeed be the individual pressing copy and nothing to do with the recording! We must at all times keep an open mind. We talk for simplicity sake as if this weren't so. But if you want to take it seriously that is the first thing to understand, most of what we talk about is for simplicity sake. Got to keep straight what is, and what we pretend is for the sake of simplifying things down to the little bits we try and pretend to understand. You see what a phenomenally big challenge this is? And yet, when we do it right.... I spent the vast majority of my time listening to rock and hardly any classical or jazz. Never once in 30 years did anything, not one component or tweak, with the aim of making a sax or violin or string bass sound better. Not one time. All the great improvements I heard were with plain old U2 Tom Petty etc rock and roll. Yet lo and behold, now I put on Brubeck or Miles and oh my God does it sound right! So it ain’t easy. But it can be done. |
A room a studio, a concert hall even outdoors they all contribute to the sound you finally hear.When I was a kid on Saturday nights there was a bar across the street from where I lived .The guys would sing Doo woop under the no 7 IRT train line the el was concert and it had an echo you could hear for blocks.These guys ,some of them anyway sounded so great.Just them sing under the El....... |
Obviously, recording music is an electronic process-mixed and mastered. However, many recordings clearly strive to recreate the real, original sound. I would point to “Audiophile Recordings” which, mostly, are acoustic and “natural”. Surely, such recordings are sweetened and adjusted but the goal is a natural SQ. |
If you assume the "standard" is real, live music, it is harder to evaluate something that has been heavily processed or involves electronic instruments. But those can inform too. From my perspective, anything done in a studio is likely to have undergone some "adjustments" whether they actually improve the sonics or not. (I’m reminded of the line that a lot of gimmickry goes into making something that sounds "natural"). Leaving that aside, if I listen to something like Crimson, Live Toronto 2016, I know what the actual band sounds like rendering that performance in a large concert hall, so the bass, for example, from Tony Levin, on the "stick" can tell me how deep and loud a system can go- whether that is of importance is a different question. I listen mainly to small combo jazz, combined with early proto-heavy rock (kind of an odd juxtaposition, but there it is) and can only evaluate a system meaningfully by listening to a range of recordings. Having a "natural acoustic" that is being reproduced in your room, imposing the sound of the recording venue as part of the delivery, is only one of a number of aspects I listen for. I do like live recordings for this reason. I’m not listening for "thrills" but mainly for tonality and realism, but that’s pretty subjective. |
The OP question is this: How can a system be judged with highly processed, non acoustic music?it is not about your taste in front of your system... Hold on, wait one second, I’m judging my system again... Yep, still sounds GREAT to me, and I’m listening to amplified rock music. But at least it’s socially conscious amplified rock music... this time.You confuse acoustic with your taste.... The OP question is not asked to some dude about their fad.... The OP question is a serious one implicating facts in psycho-acoustic... What is a timbre? For example... And recognizing a timbre is the hallmark of any good audio system...You cannot judge this with heavy processed heavy metal ONLY sorry... If the meaning of the OP question was what you say it is, this thread will be trivial : do you love your system and are you able to say that it is a good audio system for Rock music? Off course it is....I created it for my rock music.... Do you catch it? |
Here’s the thing… if an instrument or voice is recorded, it’s processed. Period.You also MISS the point... Everything is processed in a way or in another,yes, but some music is TOTALLY processed... If everything is processed to some degree, ANYWAY we know how must sound a natural voice and a noremal piano ALREADY in our memory.... We have an imprinted distinctive physionomy of the sound in our brain... Acoustic science is not taste or fad. Period. Judging an audio system ask for an archetypal model to go with, human voices and natural non electrified instrument timbre are these phenomena acoustician or musician use.... Not Moog synthetiser or electrical guitar....Or too much processed voice.... |
@mahgister - I don't think I missed the point at all. The OP asked a simple question. I answered it. Hold on, wait one second, I'm judging my system again... Yep, still sounds GREAT to me, and I'm listening to amplified rock music. But at least it's socially conscious amplified rock music... this time. |
Here’s the thing… if an instrument or voice is recorded, it’s processed. Period. There will always be some sort of EQ, effects or otherwise present on any recording. The only exceptions are recordings done in halls with open room mics. Even then, the type of mics and other room anomalies are tweaked in mixing/mastering. It’s just the way it is. The key, as mentioned above is, no need to over analyze the thing. If it sounds good to you, in your space, golden. |
It's pretty simple. Listen to some highly processed, non acoustic music. Judge it. I'm doing it right now. My judgement? It sounds good...It seems you confuse taste with acoustic science here... You dont get the point: our brain are linked to recognise voice TIMBRE for million years and a natural piano timbre we know already what it is for all our life, we can separate here the artefact aspect of the sound and his natural aspect ... But how are we supposed to know how would be the sound of any ELECTRICALLY processsed instrument? Where do you separate the "artefact" from the "natural" in the timbre of an electronical instrument? A moog synthetiser...A theramin.... An electrical guitar....It is way more difficult here to separate what pertain to an artefact and what pertain to the natural....The border between the 2 dont absolutely exist.... |
