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"Frightening" or "Relaxing" sound quality?

What do I mean by that?
Not that I wish to start a new controversy --- knowing some of the usual contributors, it may not be entirely avoidable, so let’s see what gives.

Following some of the threads on the –ultimate- ‘phase-coherent’, 'time-coherent' or yet better, both, 1st order up to steep slopes, an so on, cross-over opinions, I have these notions. So let me explain.

One quite well known ‘maverick’ (done some picking on some other well known reviewer, posting it on his site...), somewhere he states: a good speaker must have the ability 'to frighten you' --- his words, and I can see/hear what he means, at least I think so.

Some other dealer in Wilson’s marvellous products (he's around my place), tells me he can only listen for about ½ hour than he is 'exhausted' --- i.e. too intense to do any longer listening…

Nobody is talking about ‘listening fatigue’ actually, it is more an emotional fatigue, as far as I get it.

Now me, I go to a life orchestra listening and emerge pretty well ‘up-lifted’, never had any fatigue (maybe my bottom, when it got a bit too lengthy) never mind emotional fatigue! Gimme Mahler, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky, heavy (classical) metal, whow --- upliftment. Never occur to me run away, get uneasy, GET FRIGHTENED!

I clearly get ‘emotional fatigue’ listening to some types of speakers!
What were they?
I think they had one thing in common: They all where, in some way, VERY realistic, but they also had something else in common, --- they did not, as it seems, stick too well to a reasonably flat amplitude response… ah ha.

What this design regimen seems to produce during listening to keep on making you jump? Apparently always something rather unexpected in happening! Now we do also know what makes us (as humans) ‘jump’: it is some unexpected ‘something’ coming ‘out of the bush’ a snapping branch, some sort of VERY REAL sound, that does not quite go along with the general set of the acoustic environment.

Now take some ‘benign, dumb’ kind of speaker, it has so little in REALISTIC sound to offer, it just can’t frighten you. You (your instinct, subconscious) just don’t ‘buy’ into it.
Now take a VERY realistic sound-producer (the ones that can make you jump) and mess with the amplitude response, what you are getting is this on the edge of your seat reaction. The VERY opposite of what a lot of music has as its intention. (Not like AV ‘Apocalypse now’ kind of chopper going to attack you from any old angle, top, behind, etc.)

Lastly, has this something to do with why lots of folks perhaps shy away from these sort of designs?
I have listened to my share and I shy away, because as REAL everything seems to be in the reproduction, it keeps me in a state of inner tension, apprehension --- even listening to some Mozart Chamber music, as there is ALWAYS something very REAL, but somehow unsettling going on.

It might just explain why some of these designs don’t ‘cut the mustard’ and not survive in the long run. Unless, and open to opinion, that we are (most of us anyway) so messed up and transistor-radio-sound-corrupted that we seem ‘unworthy of these ‘superior’ audio-designs.
I honestly don’t think so, but you may have it otherwise, as they say YMMV.

I thought it is of value to bring this up, since it does not ever seem to be part of any of the more ‘technical’ discussions ---- the human ‘fright/flight’ element in ignoring proper FLAT amplitude response in favour of minimal insertion losses, or proper impedance compensation, notch filtering, et al, just so to obtain this form of stressful realism.

It might be also something to do with age, a much younger listener (in my experience) likes to be stirred up, and emotionally knocked all over the place ---- listening to Baroque music like bungee jumping?!
Maybe.
It be interesting to hear if it is just my form of ‘over-sensitiveness’ that brings forth this subject.
Best,
Axel
axelwahl
douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
A new reality series about audiophiles and planars: "Scared Straight"

I have a speaker system now in use which is so frighteningly good that I have to listen with the lights on!
axelwahl OP
788 posts
 
Hi Unsound,
so easy to get mis-taken, eish.
That link of yours just made my computer (that thing in front of me) get hang up, get stuck, is what happened. So I could not look at the page contents.

What I understand, that this product is well regarded by you and not in any way causing 'emotional unease' during longer listening --- have I got that right?

Some audio folks seem to be 'VC hardened', don't get rattled no more when out of 'natural' context sound-biting(pun intended) is produced by a speaker. Like rim-shots, trumpets, a singer sitting right in your lap, I'm sure your must have heard some of that. Take all of that with some heavy overdose of 'immediacy' and hyper-reality (the microphone ear) and you'll be emotionally exhausted in no time.

Can of course blame it on screwy mastering, shown up by an excellent system... and it can be that, no doubt. But if a speaker is behaving this way as a matter of course, then a change of software will not make any difference at all.

I still ‘feel’ that there is a connection to a hyped-up presentation and resulting physical/emotional unease. It is most often the speaker that grabs your by it’s presentation immediately, that after say ½ hour tires you out somehow ---- information overload? I think so, because in nature this just does not happen that way, nature is more kind to you and your ears (unless in a war situation). It does not pepper you with ‘low-level’ overemphasised detail, it gives you some time to integrate what's going on ---- and so does what's called MUSIC.
Only in some very reverby room you would get this kind of experience, detail-overload, the wrong AMPLITUDE. In a speaker of this nature this is of course FAR more subtle, it works kind of behind your immediate perception. That’s why it takes at least a while to work on you. Like subliminal add-pics they tried out in the movies, can’t see them but they affect you. So it seems is the micro roller-coaster of a loose cannon amplitude response. The worse the speaker's REALNESS the less this matters, the better the it’s REALNESS, THERENESS, the more it ‘startles’ and somehow affects you after a short while. If your senses are sufficiently blunted or ‘adjusted’ your brain will of course tune it out --- but it's work for the brain to do this balancing act ---- and this makes for a kind of exhaustion, sometimes even aggression.

Funny, we must have only VERY fine, or very many not so fine transducers about, that this has not been more noticed.

Greetings,
Axel
PS: I really don’t want to make a ‘new’ problem where none exists, so let’s all then agree to have minimum 1st order designs and all else SUCKS?
axelwahl OP
788 posts
 
Hi Mrtennis,

>>> these peaks are not relaxing, but not frightening either. <<<

Bet your bottom dollar that they can be --- the more everything else is right i.e. immediacy, phase, time, dynamic depth or sound floor.
What I'm saying is, for a more 'average' speaker this is no issue, since it makes enough other mistakes so as not to be able to 'startle' (frighten... I know real man don't get frightened only sisies) with some well recorded material almost constantly.

If you have not had the experience it may be pretty hard to accept, that this is what's going on. Those 'nasties' you mention >> 1000 to say 4000 hz << are then much more 'hidden' with the general 'first impression' of rather impressive reproduction.

There where some of these at the RMAF and inevitably in the most HIGHEST ranks, and with the absolute best?! front-ends!
So we are talking serious HiEnd, forget HiFi, and never mind MidFi, that stuff gets just plain anoying (when it does). If things get THAT REAL, and THEN there's some 'funnies' going on in the amplitude (what else can it be?) THAT's when this effect is present, it can chase you from the room, at least that's what happens with me.

Greetings,
Axel
unsound
7,362 posts
 
Axel, is English your first language? I'm having a hard time following you and I'm not sure when and where your being sarcastic, if your being sarcastic at all. "VC hardened"? Perhaps your unease can somtimes be blamed on amplitude problems and sometimes perhaps not. I think you are correct, in that "screwy mastering" can have a definite effect on the kind of problems I think your refering to. And yes, if the those problems(?) always exist regardless of the recording being played back, there is a system problem. On the other hand, if a system doesn't portray the problem with recordings known to have the problem, then we open the hornets nest of whether or not the system is indeed capable of true fidelity.
jaybo
4,478 posts
 
only retail prices and buyers remorse are frightening....if we are listening for all this 'stuff' we are 'by nature' unhappy...and thats frightening after you've made a major investment.
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