Maybe you should have just bought a Banjo and saved a whole hell of a lot of money
I just bought a Steinway which sounds like a banjo.
I have a question: I’ve seen a lot of terms in audiophile jargon: laid back, top end, low end, harsh, soft, smooth, etc.
I don’t understand them. I only listen to recorded music, almost nothing synthesized. So the adjectives I know are: pitch, timbre, dynamics and spatiality. I cannot think of sound characteristics that are not inscribed within these four adjectives.
I believe that a sound reproduction device must first of all take care to satisfy these 4 characteristics.
When I read that a loudspeaker sounds harsh to me it means that the timbre is wrong because nobody would describe as harsh the reproduction of an instrument that has a harsh timbre. That would be a speaker that has a correct timbre. It can only be described as harsh the reproduction of an instrument that does not have a harsh timbre. The same goes for the other terms listed at the beginning. For spatiality it is even simpler because it is a geometric, spatial question. An ensable of which occupies 5 meters must sound like an ensambe that occupies 5 meters, not as one that occupies 2 meters nor as one that occupies 20 meters. Then the dynamics is linear so it is the simplest of all.
When Steinway puts a Steinway on the market it does so by taking care of a certain amount of objective characteristics, i would say 96-98% and 2-4% are probably left to the "character" of the instrument.
In the audiophile field, judging by the immense difference between one reproduction technology and another, it seems that the opposite meter is used, that is 4% of objectivity and 96% of character.
As if a Steinway sounded like a forgotten Pleyel in a basement, and a Pleyel sounded like a Boesendorfer. The whole is defended with sword drawn by the audiophile community as and cleared as subjective perceptions or eventually as an incompatibility between the elements in play (source, amplifier, speakers, cables) Hahah! Obviously, if all the products that follow the 4% objectivity meter and 96% "character", it takes a lot of luck to have a system in your hands that allows you to recognize a Pleyel from a Steinway.
When will sound reproduction become serious?
I don’t understand them. I only listen to recorded music, almost nothing synthesized. So the adjectives I know are: pitch, timbre, dynamics and spatiality. I cannot think of sound characteristics that are not inscribed within these four adjectives.
I believe that a sound reproduction device must first of all take care to satisfy these 4 characteristics.
When I read that a loudspeaker sounds harsh to me it means that the timbre is wrong because nobody would describe as harsh the reproduction of an instrument that has a harsh timbre. That would be a speaker that has a correct timbre. It can only be described as harsh the reproduction of an instrument that does not have a harsh timbre. The same goes for the other terms listed at the beginning. For spatiality it is even simpler because it is a geometric, spatial question. An ensable of which occupies 5 meters must sound like an ensambe that occupies 5 meters, not as one that occupies 2 meters nor as one that occupies 20 meters. Then the dynamics is linear so it is the simplest of all.
When Steinway puts a Steinway on the market it does so by taking care of a certain amount of objective characteristics, i would say 96-98% and 2-4% are probably left to the "character" of the instrument.
In the audiophile field, judging by the immense difference between one reproduction technology and another, it seems that the opposite meter is used, that is 4% of objectivity and 96% of character.
As if a Steinway sounded like a forgotten Pleyel in a basement, and a Pleyel sounded like a Boesendorfer. The whole is defended with sword drawn by the audiophile community as and cleared as subjective perceptions or eventually as an incompatibility between the elements in play (source, amplifier, speakers, cables) Hahah! Obviously, if all the products that follow the 4% objectivity meter and 96% "character", it takes a lot of luck to have a system in your hands that allows you to recognize a Pleyel from a Steinway.
When will sound reproduction become serious?
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- 68 posts total
X @ replicnt6, what a shame for making such a mistake! Ahhhh .... Can I try the subjectivity game? For me they are adjectives! Joke. Shame. Let’s get back to the sound ... Obviously there is no system that can perfectly reproduce the sound of a piano. The same happens with color reproduction in print. Perfect color reproduction is not possible. Despite this, in this sector they do everything possible to get as close as possible to the ideal result. Measure everything possible and agree on certain standards. Converting RGB to CMYK is already a huge problem, because the CMYK space doesn’t have its own light, so it relies on an auxiliary light. More or less the problem of space when playing an instrument on a speaker that has its own space. A similar problem is faced by those who produce a Fazioli who have to grasp a lot of objective aspects, and then, right at the end, there is a small space for the "character" which is part of the differences between a great Yamaha, Steinway, Fazioli and so on. But in this area it seems they don’t want to define any stadard. It would be easy to agree even on multiple stadards. Imagine defining 128 recording standards, using different microphones, media and recording approaches in order to have the masters of something like a "history of audio recording" in controlled environments. You can do a lot of things with something like this. It is also possible to use this material to train neuronal networks in order to improve the digitization of old recordings. Now imagine you have a Steinway Spirio (it can mechanically record itself almost perfectly so you have the same live performance at your disposal as many times as you want), 128 recordings of the same Stainway and the most neutral amplification possible, and a new pair of Speakers in one space that matches the size of the recording space. Now you can start comparing the original with the master recordings played on the new speakers and learn a lot. If you want to agree on standards in an industry, you can raise millions so you can really do something like this with multiple music instruments. In other sectors they always do. In the meantime I have a pair of $ 10,000 speakers that sound much, much, much worse, from every point of view, than my father’s 1986 Bose 505, worth $ 300 driven by a cheap denon. It does not make any sense. P.S. Yes i sent them even back to the manufacturer and they come back almost identical. |
This company. it seems, was doing something like that: https://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/99dun4/index.html |
- 68 posts total