Sound perceptions

[altivo]

Oddly enough, the same topic has come up twice today. First it was on the QRP-L mailing list, a discussion among amateur radio operators, and then again on Twitter in an utterly independent and unrelated thread.

My response in both cases is pretty much the same. Audiophiles, musicians, and, believe it or not, radio operators, are very much concerned with the quality of sound reproduction and as a result, endless discussions of digital vs. analog, transistors vs. vacuum tubes, and so forth do result. In the end, it's pretty subjective, since every individual has different ears and each has different expectations, shaped by their experience in the past and their understanding or goals in terms of the material to which they listen. (I won't even mention hearing damage, so common today among those who have listened to very loud music over fairly long periods of time. Oops, I just mentioned it, didn't I?) Anyway, my thoughts on the subject, as first offered in the radio discussion, are under the cut.

The difference in reactions is one part psychological, one part differences in individual hearing response, and one part familiarity, long before you ever get to real physical differences in the sound, I think.

I remember when audio CDs were still new I heard any number of people complaining that they "didn't sound real." In particular, I knew one person who was vehement that recordings of solo piano didn't sound like a piano.

My own reaction when I first heard those early CDs was just the opposite. Why? Because I have played keyboard instruments for many years. Eventually they engineered a lot of it away, but the early digital recordings were so accurate that you could hear the mechanism inside the piano. The hammers dropping against the felt backboard, for instance, or the very soft thump of the action lever when a key is struck. Someone with normal hearing who actually plays the piano is used to hearing those sounds. Someone who only listens in a concert hall or to traditionally engineered recordings never hears them. To me the CD was a marvel of realism, a recording where I could actually hear everything. But to this other guy, who was only accustomed to FM radio and vinyl recordings, the sound was full of "artifacts." Who was right? Both of us, and neither of us, I'd say.

It's true that vacuum tube amps have a different sound. Those who grew up with it may be so accustomed to it that to them it is "better" and hence the descriptions saying it is "warm" or "mellow" or whatever. For my ear, digital reproduction is more realistic most of the time, but I agree it isn't the same as what we've listened to from oh, say World War II until the beginning of the CD era. I wouldn't describe digital sound reproduction as "harsh" the way some do. Properly done, to me it is more accurate than analog recording, but with the understanding that it captures many things the analog system does not. Analog seems to have enough response lag that it smooths out tiny incidentals in the sound stream, where digital will capture them along with the rest.

I feel the same way about radio receivers. I love the glow of those vacuum tubes, and enjoy operating old style equipment as much as anyone. After all, I grew up with that stuff. Nonetheless, DSP and other digital methods are producing clearer, better reception in my opinion. I can't deny that. I like to think I'm fairly good at picking a weaker signal out from under a loud one, just using my ears. But some of the newer digital filter designs make it so much easier that there seems little question but what they are an improvement.

On other subjects, yes, I did complete the seven entries for the county fair. I like to keep promises, and I had promised to submit as many as possible if they let me off judging this year. Someone else is judging, so...

The last finishing work (a bit sloppy, but good enough for now) was done on my lunch break. No little mice appeared to help, nor chipmunks either.

Comments

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

I'm not really a Luddite as far as recordings go, and I'll usually say the advent of the CD was a big improvement in sound. But I'm reminded of a project Dave and I undertook to digitize one of my longtime favorite recordings, Chopin by Starlight, featuring orchestrated versions of about a dozen Chopin piano works, performed by the Hollywood Bowl Symphony in around 1962. As far as we can tell, it has never been out on CD — no surprise, as orchestrated versions of piano works have fallen into disrepute these days as inauthentic. I got my mom's not-very-pristine copy of the LP and digitized it, and Dave removed the pops and hiss via both software filters and the digital equivalent of razor-and-splice. He cleaned it up very nicely. He made three copies, one for himself, me, and my mother. It sounds great... but... I miss the pops and hiss from the LP! I remembered where the flaws were in the LP, and it sounded weird to have them not be there. I know that's somewhat different from what you were describing of how some say that LPs sound more real. But there's a kind of authenticity to having the pops and hiss in, even if it's more authentic to the memories than to the original recording when new. I'm still glad to have the cleaned-up CD, and I know Mom plays her copy a lot.

Vinyl is having something of a revival in modern pop music. Dave and I both wonder why. It almost seems gratuitous.

[altivo]

Yup, that's the "familiarity" element for you.

The vinyl "revival" seems to me to be just a fad thing, yet another "retro" fashion. Now that turntables are scarce and expensive, it's a kind of ostentation related to the yuppie syndrome that believes high price is proof of quality.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

As a ham operator (and not a musician) I have to say that I honestly don't have a preference. I agree there can be a difference between analog vs. digital and vacuum tube vs. solid state, but I don't perceive either as being "wrong" or "right." As you mention, and as seems to be popular perception, tubes tend to sound "warmer," while perhaps analog solid-state less so (but mellower than digital) and digital as probably most accurate, but perhaps to some ears, not as pleasant.

I will say, however, that digital storage mediums are a vast improvement over magnetic tape! (I'm not going to touch vinyl records, lest I start WWIII over that argument).

As far as two-way radio goes, digital filtering and DSP is definitely an advantage. However, in many applications (such as land-mobile radio), the available RF bandwidth is really too small to allow decent A-D rates, so fidelity suffers. Even worse, with true digital modes, packetized audio is either present or it's not. With analog modes, even if the signal faded or was interrupted by noise, the human ear could fill in for the lost syllables, but with digital, the audio is dropped completely, which can make the difference between a message received or not. Additionally, analog usually allows for voice recognition, whereas (due to limited A-D conversion/bandwidth) digital often does not! So in terms of two-way radio communications, I still much prefer analog over digital.

Digital is superior over the wire, but not superior over limited bandwidth RF!

[altivo]

For voice communication, I won't quibble with you. Even SSB is so lacking in sound fidelity that I find it unpleasant to use. Digital voice? Ewww. And I know all about the signal either being there or not, with no fringe. We have absolutely no broadcast television reception here since last year's switchover to all digital. I'm not about to plunk out for satellite, because I only watched the news and weather anyway, but the whole thing was damned stupid in my opinion, and clearly showed how the government was sold out to commercial interests rather than to the common good.

On the other paw, true digital modes such as PSK31 or Olivia are miraculous. They pull intelligible content out of the air when I can't even hear a signal in the earphones.

You apparently got stung by not being logged in on DW. The fix is easy enough. Go to www.dreamwidth.org, log in with your OpenID, and then on the confirmation page that comes up, set your option to "stay logged in" and save it. Then you'll be logged in at Dreamwidth as long as you are still logged in at LJ. I use the same method to stay logged in at LJ.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hit "anonymous" by accident :P Hopefully I can manage to stay logged in here.

Yeah, I lost most of my TV as well. There are only two VHF stations in NH, and the rest came from Boston. They were somewhat snowy on analog, but watchable; now they're completely gone altogether. Thanks FCC! And yes, they sold out. Honestly, it didn't save that much spectrum. The whole TV bandplan was based on the "who the heck would ever need any frequency above 500 MHz" theory, which was true in the 1950's so the FCC just went ahead and allocated 70 channels to UHF TV and left it that way for 50+ years. If they had done it correctly, they could have allocated maybe 20 channels to UHF TV and partitioned out the rest to other services or kept it in reserve. It also angers me that the FCC has become a money-making entity by auctioning off spectrum to the highest bidder without regard to the public good.

Oh well, end of rant :P

[altivo]

Fortunately, I can usually think of better things to do than watch television anyway.

However, if the FCC messes up broadcast radio I'm going to be a lot angrier about it. I know they have proposals afoot to do just that.

[farthing]

The "perfect audio" conversation does get a bit silly sometimes. One podcast had some audio expert mentioning one theory of producing better listening experience. It involved in-ear headphones with a tracking system for head movements, so that the brain could be tricked to figure out the room characteristics of the recording site. Though the recording would have to accommodate the same head movements, or simulate them by somehow reproducing all the necessary "directions". :-)
Interestingly that's the reason why those echo-free rooms sound creepy, since the lack of the room noise makes no sense to the brain, while it's trying to get its filters set.

Then again it was mentioned by some other expert, that he believes the usual loudspeaker burn-in period would more benefit the listener, than the loudspeaker. I gather loudspeakers do change a bit under the first hours of use, but human perception does definitely change to accommodate the changes in the listening experience. I guess it's something evolution has produced, even with hearing damage one still has to figure out where those sneaky predators are rustling in the forest.
People have gotten used to listen lossy compression audio too, and even worse, compressed radio broadcasts. :-P

[altivo]

It's a really old topic of discussion and disagreement. Audiophiles are weird.

When I was a teenager (yes, we had stereos and radios even back then) a neighbor gave me a large console AM-FM radio from the 40s. Unfortunately, he kept the speaker enclosure from it because he thought he could use it with his stereo setup. As it turned out, the speaker was a "dynamic" type that had no internal magnet. Instead it had a large choke coil as part of the speaker itself. This coil was used in the power supply as a secondary filter choke, and at the same time, created an electromagnetic field to work the voice coil against.

I put a smaller dynamic speaker in so I could use the radio. A year or so later, the same guy gave me the original speaker. He couldn't make it work. Funny thing, since there was no way to power the choke coil from his (then) modern stereo. It was an interesting speaker, too. Someone back in 1940-something thought it was the ultimate in speaker design. The actual speaker cone was suspended in hinges of (get this) llama hide. o.O That was supposed to make it sound better somehow. Of course it was about 16 inches across and sounded pretty decent anyway, but I doubt the llama had anything to do with that.

[farthing]

I think the silliest thing I've seen so far was some package advertising gold plated optical cables. Anything for increased sales... :-)

I gather permanent magnets are somewhat recent invention, though that technology is pretty much everywhere by now. (I think it's something price related too.) It's not been long since I've learned that those electromagnetic loudspeakers even existed, they're that rare these days. My brother just mentioned that he had managed to acquire one in the past, but has lost it since then. Curious thingies.