From: pieterh@sci.kun.nl (Peter Herweijer)
Newsgroups: rec.audio.high-end
Subject: Re: rec.audio.high-end is humorous
Date: 29 Sep 1992 12:57:43 GMT
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.7.4
Originator: tjk@csd4.csd.uwm.edu

M.J.Landzaat@fel.tno.nl (Maarten Landzaat) writes:

>mailrus!samsung!ulowell!aspen.ulowell.edu!antonp@uunet.UU.NET writes:
>
> >Yes, rec.arts.audio.high-end is quite humorous.
>
> >I'm surprised more people don't think so.
>
>OK, here I am to back you.
>
>I don't trust my ears. They can tell me what is beautiful,
>but they can't tell me what is accurate reproduction.

Of course they can, if comparison with an original is possible.

>Here's why:
>I am a musician, I play guitar, bass guitar and double bass using
>instrument amplifiers. These amplifiers are bad. I mean, they add
>a lot of distortion, accentuate some frequencies much more than others,
>etc. And this sounds just great. But if you plug your electric guitar in
>HIFI equipment, it sounds very silly. Distortion is beautiful! 

... for electronic instrument processing.

>The moral is: if you think that some piece of equipment sounds better,
>it probably is not. People with 'golden ears' are probably very good
>at discerning small differences. It is my opinion that they cannot
>be good at judging accuracy of playback. You need electronic
>instruments for that.

I'd say that it is not yet firmly established what the human ear
is exactly able to hear. Therefore measurements cannot give a complete
picture of the quality (for human listening) of a piece of equipment.

Implicit in your argument is that your preference for music with
electronic or electronically processed instruments. That kind of music
does not enable you to hear the differences between (good) equipment. A
classical music fan will be able to compare the sound in the concert hall
with the sound he hears at home, and he will be able to say how much the
equipment (and the recording) does audibly distort the aural image.

E.g., one of the most difficult things to get right is the placement of
instruments in space. Bad equipment produces an image that seems to
hover somewhere between the loudspeakers. Good equipment
gives an illusion of depth in the sound picture, with instruments
locateable at various directions and distances from the listener.
Very good equipment (and recordings, I might add) can also introduce
the element of height, with e.g. the organ being placed both higher
and at a greater distance than the violins in a symphony orchestra.

>I certainly would NOT buy a speaker/amplifier that "sounds so warm",
>even if I like it. It just means it always sounds warm, even when it
>shouldn't.

Depends. If an amplifier sounds warm even when playing music that
doesn't sound warm in the concert hall, it's a bad amplifier. But
when an amplifier sharpens the warm tone of a viola, it's also a bad
one.

>I will certainly NOT spend thousands of guilders (yes, I'm from Holland)
>more for some piece of equipment that sounds better just to my ears. I'd
>like to see some figures then. 

I just spent a considerable amount of money on an amplifier that
managed a more faithful reproduction of a concert hall experience
than my last one could. I don't know much of its technical specifications.
I discovered even its output power only after buying. The only thing I
needed to know is that, weighed_with_the_perceptive_response_of_my_ear,
its 'distortion' (and I don't just mean harmonic distortion) is lower.
Figures are important only insofar as they correlate to audible 
differences.

By the way, I do know more than a little about electronics and I'm
perfectly capable to interpret some figures. But I'm not so naive as to
think that a amplifier with 0.001% THD sounds better than one with 0.1%.
THD, for example, doesn't include dynamic (time domain) distortions
that are very important in placing instruments in space; nor does it
say anything about practical behaviour since it's almost always measured
with a resistor load instead of a loudspeaker. Even when I do want to
judge only the harmonic distortion of an amplifier the figures given
are almost always inadequate since they give neither the spectrum of
the distortions nor the dynamic behaviour of this spectrum. And even
if I got all that, I'd hesitate to draw definite conclusions about
reproduction quality without listening...

>>anyone wishing to kill me should please notify me in advance 

>Then notify me also, I'll try to defend you!

Asbesto suits are obtainable from most sysops.

Peter Herweijer
pieterh@sci.kun.nl