Soundtracks do. The natural noises on the attenborough stuff is full of it
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Soundtracks do. The natural noises on the attenborough stuff is full of it
No, not people I know (that would be a very limited sample, I can assure you!) It's the sense I pick up from many of the posts both on this forum and others. Many folk are preoccupied with making their hi-fi.s sound larger-than-life. Perhaps it's just a reflection of their musical taste ie. they have a preference for a style of music that benefits from a slightly cartoon-ized presentation. Many of the discussions and questions on here are about how to get ever more emphatic sounds out of the system. Nobody wants a system that just sounds musical and "disappears" any more.
Oh god! Sounds like a need a new pipe and pair of slippers, doesn't it?
IB
My point exactly!
Much music is not intended to sound like a film soundtrack or like Attenborough's highly-processed sounds of insects munching each other, yet I believe we are training ourselves to expect that kind of effect when listening to music on our hi-fis.
(OK, somebody is going to mention organ toccatas by Bach and Buxtehude; I'll give you that one).
IB
I think I understand what you mean now. People get confused as to what is on the recording and what the system is doing to the sound. Action film soundtracks are heavily EQ'd for impact, you wouldn't want 'Kind Of Blue' To sound like that. But maybe some do.
How long is a piece of string?
A lot depends on the venue as well as the music. A string quartet or a Lieder recital in a smallish room can make your ears ring in the ff passages, five foot from a single cellist giving it welly can be downright unpleasant.
The organist seldom hears how loud he's playing, it's damned loud inside if you are trying to tune the thing but often you don't get the full effect from the keyboard, you need to be down in the body of the kirk.
OTOH on a rare trip to the Proms at the Albert Hall I was seriously hacked off that from where I was sitting I could barely hear the orchestra churning out a Bruckner symphony. What a god awful barn that is.
I kind of agree though on artificially engineered slam being a bit cartoonish, there are cartridges and phono stages that do that, as well as (mainly sold state) amps and speakers. It's the opposite of musical and indeed does remind me of the hyperventilated synthetic muzak that passes for film scores much of the time these days.
(He says reaching for pipe, slippers and that old cardigan with the elbow patches. I was shouting at the phone today holding for the broadband people - just what marketing sadist thinks it's OK to inflict gangsta rap on people queuing to talk to a human?)
When I see a live band in a small venue or pub, I don't think the 'slam' I hear from the drums, especially kick drums, sound cartoonish, I just think "why can't my stereo be more like that?"
Does that kind of sound even exist on records, or would it cause the stylus to jump out of the groove? I know this makes me sound a bit mental, but I'm serious, is it possible?
It is apparent to me, and fairly accepted, that we can develop a false sense of what sound should be like from our systems.
I also think that it has become, rather like the loudness war, a competitive trait by producers to compete with violating and shocking sounds which attract attention. This was apparent to me in '97 at the Penta show where Mars Attacks was being blasted out, and sounded, well, really vulgar.
We are I'm afraid in an age in which loud, effusive, aggressive and ultimately vulgar, are reigning, because they arouse the internal threat instinct and attract attention. The days of subtlety, finesse and refinement seem to be over.
This principle has been being applied to food as well, more and more sources included which sere the senses.
But I agree that the system should reproduce what the recording has on it, and not add anything.
When I hear a live band I usually think thanks Christ my system doesn't sound like that, what a crap PA the vocals are shit I can't make the words out, the bass is causing the bottles on the bar to rattle and the drummer is half a beat ahead of the bass player.
Seriously though the sound levels involved in performing in venues are not what you'd want in your living room, domestic hifi is not designed either to reproduce that absolute level or the dynamic ranges involved (and neither are recordings produced with the intention of reproducing them).
I saw a horn system at the Munich High-End event playing dark side of the moon for 100 people. Interesting in its own way but utterly pointless, all they were listening to in my mind was a glorified and ludicrously expensive PA system.
And I'm not sure I agree that high-efficiency speakers are necessarily the way to go to attempt to replicate live sound levels, high-eff is often achieved by lightweight paper cones and fast suspension which behave oddly when pushed to extremes. PA systems use much tougher cone material (plastics) and equally tough surrounds, which need masses of higher power, cheaper amplification (000s or even 0000s of watts of Class B or latterly Class D to drive them - hence indistinct vocals etc, though some of that can also be down to the acoustic.
High-eff uses its efficiency best in my view to satisfyingly reproduce dynamic peaks at normal listening levels using lower power amplification capable of reproducing fine subtleties.
To best replicate a gig you'd be better off with a pair of old Linn 'Briks and many watts of SS AB, subtlety is not where it's at.
Yes It Is, but you need to be able to move a lot of air and I think the best way to do that, Is with large drivers. In theory you should be able to have the same effect with multiple small driver but I haven't tried It.
What I should have added to my post earlier Is that I have some 8" 2-way speakers here that are a sealed design and the bass rolls off at a much more shallow rate than my 10" ported speakers. Basically, on paper they should produce about the same amount of 'punch' but quite a bit more depth. They do have more depth but don't have the same raw Impact that the bigger drivers do. Turn the volume up and you can feel the bass hit you with the larger drivers.