TONE

I think the difficult part of assessing the ability of your system to accurately reproduce musical tone, as is call it, is that relatively few recordings capture the true sound of the instrument.  I spent many years in the recording business and I know that most recordings are eq'd and heavily processed to achieve the sound that the person paying the bills wants to hear.  So you never really know.  I've always considered starting a thread in which we list some recordings that we believe accurately convey the true sound of musical instruments, but like so many threads, they just turn into arguments and lectures, so I dropped the idea.  All this said, if you're system reproduces the human voice accurately, you have a good shot at having a system with good tonality.  That's how Alan Shaw from Harbeth designs speakers and he's doing pretty well.  

.I remain pleased with my systems dynamics, soundstage, detail, BUT am always wondering about TONE...

Human ears/brain are programmed by the voice timbre perception...

When i worked fine tuning for 2 years my acoustical treatment and other controls, and for the last month full time my mechanical equalizer, i listened instrument timbre playing a tone for sure.... But EVERYBODY know how must sound human voice.... A voice singing tone, for example using a choir recording with children, women and male, or opera singing.... This is the best test....

No need to be musician to recognize the natural human voice....Just use many voices type....


Try this one to begin with....Only four male voices very well recorded on youtube....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTdZ2cSkW0U


This opera is exceptionally well recorded.... The youtube file give an idea...

You can test ALL acoustic features with only this file : Timbre perception, soundstage, imaging, listener envelopment, source width....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR33bL5aNTk&list=PLnQJF3Qi_4_CvjtOvZypmfmC4ygxSxOgm&index=52...

 If you listen the singers singing behind your back or walking and turning head when singing your system is good if not you lack acoustical control....

Some representations are more pleasing than others even if they are not "realistic."

I like impressionism more than hyperrealism in painting because it conveys something meaningful with the way it represents.

My search for the sound I was looking for in audio was helped somewhat by looking for realism, and also helped by looking *past* realism.

In other words, "true" has many meanings, and "simulation" is only one of them.

@chayro ,
"I spent many years in the recording business and I know that most recordings are eq’d and heavily processed to achieve the sound that the person paying the bills wants to hear."


That’s seems about right. Everyone else is just an employee with little say in the final product.

It seems as if most artists don’t bother to question sonic decisions made by those higher up.

I can’t think of very many who did.

Maybe the Velvet Underground (probably drove their engineers mad with deliberate overload), Dylan, Neil Young, Kate Bush, Steely Dan, Dire Straits and a few others.

"Commercial music" or very polpular one  is heavily processed even voices and with voice on a good system it may sound unnatural....