Holographic imaging

Pubul57, I hear about timing a lot these days but its one of thoese things that I really can't say what causes it, although I do know that a lot of circuit complexity does prevent it. I don't like the word 'dynamics' as too many times I have found that audiophiles use it when what they really should have said 'distortion'. So I like to use the words 'impact' and 'authority'. Impact is the ability to respond to intense dynamic change, and authority is the ability to sustain it in the way that the source demands.

Both seem to arise more easily if the circuitry is kept simple, and certainly avoiding loop negative feedback will make the circuit more responsive to dynamic change.

As I have mentioned before, imaging and soundstage seem to derive from bandwidth, extending well beyond audibility. Oddly, what a lot of people would describe as holographic, wherein the image places *in front* of the speakers, or there seems to be unusually wide soundstage effect, nearly always seems to come from phasing anomalies near the edge of the passband. For example, as much a fan of tubes as I am, a tube amp that has poor high frequency bandwidth deriving from its output transformer can exhibit a form of this behavior. If they have good bandwidth, nearly all amps will image in a very similar way, with the variations being in how well they can render the individual images as 3D entities rather than as a cardboard-flat images, and how well the more subtle ambient cues are articulated or truncated, depending on how well the amp can reproduce detail.

Quote from a ultra high-end German manufacturer (with regard to their top-of-the-line power amplifier):
"...but this was not the point: it just plays even more relaxed, controlled and holographic then the stereo version."
Here being more "holographic" seems to be a major criteria to depict that a unit sounds superior to the other :)

Chris

Tbg,

I know I'm right in regards to reproducing what a person hears at a live performance. The way most recordings are miked, the geometry involved in detecting sound is different than that involved with human ears, I think that is a fact.

A system should have a good chance of reproducing to some degree of accuracy what the mikes actually picked up though, spatial cues included. That is the best you can hope for.

When you hear holography on a system for whatever technical reason, it is the perspective of the microphones that is being reproduced and this is always different than the perspective of the ears. That is a geometric fact I believe.

Ralph, impact and authority as you describe it is a very good way to describe what I mean by dynamics and related it to that is what I call microdynamics (there might be a better word) which is the ability to resolve small changes in volume and small changes in pitch that can sometimes be obscured - and that too might be related to distortion and/or poor S/N. These two aspects of reproduction are very important to me. I also enjoy the "holographic" trick as long as it doesn;t effect these; whether the holography reflects "live" or not.

I agree with Mapman here - the human ear is a much more sensitive instrument than any machine yet invented. No audio equipment I have ever heard or probably will ever hear can recreate the sound of a live performance.