"Rob" wrote in message
...
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Keith G wrote:
It is reputed to have some of the lowest noise and distortion
figures on record (Martin Colloms) yet, last night when I was
listening to a particularly fine 1958 recording of Grieg's Concerto
in A minor (Solomon), I switched from the Technics on the TLS80s to
my 2A3 SET on the Fidelios and got a much better, more *exciting*
(more listenable) sound. As the SET (according to the pundits here)
produces enough distortion to bend light and the Fidelios have
little or nothing outside the range of the human voice, I am
intrigued as to what's going on?

Is it me?

Almost certainly.

Plenty of people prefer the colour saturation turned up on the their
telly
for that 'technicolor' look. So actually preferring some types of
distortion doesn't seem that unusual to me. That's why so many like
vinyl,
after all.


It's all 'reproduction', and it all 'distorts'.

It could just be that certain modes of reproduction produce a more
satisfying result. A painter's rendition, a musician's performance, a
poet's meter, a writer's (etc). These examples may result in a more
satisfying, more *realistic*, experience of the original event,
despite the fact their efforts are not technically facsimiles.

Is distortion always bad?


The instant you touch a volume control you distort the sound to suit
your needs....

"Rob" wrote in message
...
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Keith G wrote:
It is reputed to have some of the lowest noise and distortion figures on
record (Martin Colloms) yet, last night when I was listening to a
particularly fine 1958 recording of Grieg's Concerto in A minor
(Solomon), I switched from the Technics on the TLS80s to my 2A3 SET on
the Fidelios and got a much better, more *exciting* (more listenable)
sound. As the SET (according to the pundits here) produces enough
distortion to bend light and the Fidelios have little or nothing outside
the range of the human voice, I am intrigued as to what's going on?

Is it me?

Almost certainly.

Plenty of people prefer the colour saturation turned up on the their
telly
for that 'technicolor' look. So actually preferring some types of
distortion doesn't seem that unusual to me. That's why so many like
vinyl,
after all.


It's all 'reproduction', and it all 'distorts'.

It could just be that certain modes of reproduction produce a more
satisfying result. A painter's rendition, a musician's performance, a
poet's meter, a writer's (etc). These examples may result in a more
satisfying, more *realistic*, experience of the original event, despite
the fact their efforts are not technically facsimiles.

Is distortion always bad?

Is distortion always bad? Now there's an interesting question.

For me yes, High Fidelity sound reproduction for me has been constant battle
to identify forms of distortion and eliminate them. When I first started in
Hi-Fi, few amplifiers were "transparent", and bit by bit they improved such
that by the mid '80s, no further subjective improvement became possible.
Amplifiers since have become relative cheaper, more reliable and higher
powered, but performance hasn't improved, in fact can't improve, as our
hearing thresholds haven't improved. CD removed the distortions of vinyl
reproduction, but we're still left with the limitations of loudspeakers,
listening rooms, poor recording (and getting worse) and the most fundamental
limitation of all in my view that stereo or surround does not recreate a
convincing soundfield for the listener. We will need a completely new way
of generating sounds at home, not using discrete loudspeakers, before we can
realistically recreate a complete soundfield.

However, the improvements in sound reproduction have bored some, who have
returned to very obsolete technology in an attempt to stir up some
excitement. So, plenty to exercise us.

S.

--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com

In article ,
Rob wrote:
It could just be that certain modes of reproduction produce a more
satisfying result. A painter's rendition, a musician's performance, a
poet's meter, a writer's (etc). These examples may result in a more
satisfying, more *realistic*, experience of the original event, despite
the fact their efforts are not technically facsimiles.

Is distortion always bad?

No. A fairly classic example was over driving analogue tape with open
brass to get more 'edge'.

Trouble is with a home system is that most use it for a variety of stuff.
And whilst a coloured speaker, for example, might sound ok on some stuff
it will be very tiring on speech.

--
*Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Serge Auckland wrote:
We will need a completely new way of generating sounds at home, not
using discrete loudspeakers, before we can realistically recreate a
complete soundfield.

Ambisonics come close using conventional speakers. At a cost.

However, the improvements in sound reproduction have bored some, who
have returned to very obsolete technology in an attempt to stir up some
excitement. So, plenty to exercise us.

There could well be something in that. When I started playing around with
audio, the norm in a domestic environment was pretty poor. FM radio was
near non existent, and TVs had poor loudspeakers. Record players had small
loudspeakers driven off SET valve amps ;-) with pretty nasty crystal
pickups. So it was relatively easy to bring about a real improvement which
gave one a great deal of pleasure. Not so easy these days given even a
modest but decent sound system straight out of the box.

--
*I am a nobody, and nobody is perfect; therefore I am perfect*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Keith G" wrote in message

"Rob" wrote in message
...
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Keith G wrote:
It is reputed to have some of the lowest noise and
distortion figures on record (Martin Colloms) yet,
last night when I was listening to a particularly fine
1958 recording of Grieg's Concerto in A minor
(Solomon), I switched from the Technics on the TLS80s
to my 2A3 SET on the Fidelios and got a much better,
more *exciting* (more listenable) sound. As the SET
(according to the pundits here) produces enough
distortion to bend light and the Fidelios have little
or nothing outside the range of the human voice, I am
intrigued as to what's going on?

Is it me?

Almost certainly.

Plenty of people prefer the colour saturation turned up
on the their telly
for that 'technicolor' look. So actually preferring
some types of distortion doesn't seem that unusual to
me. That's why so many like vinyl,
after all.


It's all 'reproduction', and it all 'distorts'.

It could just be that certain modes of reproduction
produce a more satisfying result. A painter's rendition,
a musician's performance, a poet's meter, a writer's
(etc). These examples may result in a more satisfying,
more *realistic*, experience of the original event,
despite the fact their efforts are not technically
facsimiles. Is distortion always bad?


The instant you touch a volume control you distort the
sound to suit your needs....

Contrary to the author's apparent belief, it is possible to play a recording
at the same SPL as it was recorded.

However, if you took what he said seriously, the instant you choose a
listening location at a live concert, you distort the sound to suit your
needs.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Serge Auckland wrote:
We will need a completely new way of generating sounds at home, not
using discrete loudspeakers, before we can realistically recreate a
complete soundfield.

Ambisonics come close using conventional speakers. At a cost.

However, the improvements in sound reproduction have bored some, who
have returned to very obsolete technology in an attempt to stir up some
excitement. So, plenty to exercise us.

There could well be something in that. When I started playing around with
audio, the norm in a domestic environment was pretty poor. FM radio was
near non existent, and TVs had poor loudspeakers. Record players had small
loudspeakers driven off SET valve amps ;-) with pretty nasty crystal
pickups. So it was relatively easy to bring about a real improvement which
gave one a great deal of pleasure. Not so easy these days given even a
modest but decent sound system straight out of the box.

--
*I am a nobody, and nobody is perfect; therefore I am perfect*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

--

Ambisonics came closer than quadrophonics did, but still relied on a small
number of loudspeakers, and the creation of phantom images between the
loudspeakers to fill in the gaps between them. A real soundfield is all
around the listener, with sounds coming from an infinite number of
directions.

At the European AES a few years ago, I heard an experimental sound-field
creator which used something like 200 small loudspeakers arranged round the
periphery of a room, each loudspeaker driven from a separate power amp, and
each loudspeaker being given an individual feed off a large DSP driven
routing matrix (the same matrix that's currently in BH as the main and
programme routers and at Bush House). The demo didn't have any height
information, but the surround soundfield was most impressively realistic.
One demo was of a city street recorded with the Soundfield microphone and
then synthesised in the room. It was the most realistic portrayal I've yet
heard. Walking round the room gave the same sort of effect as walking around
in the open air in a city. To be complete it would have needed several
hundred more sound sources to portray height, but the principle was sound.

Clearly this sort of system wouldn't be domestically acceptable, but I think
we have to get away from the current paradigm of 2 or 4/5 or even 6/7
loudspeakers and to some sort of sound-field synthesiser if recorded music
is to make real progress. Can't see it happening though, as the concept of
listening to music in one place, without distraction seems as old-hat as
wearing spats.

S.

--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com
http://audiopages.googlepages.com

On Mon, 21 May 2007 20:14:05 +0100, "Serge Auckland"
wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Serge Auckland wrote:
We will need a completely new way of generating sounds at home, not
using discrete loudspeakers, before we can realistically recreate a
complete soundfield.

Ambisonics come close using conventional speakers. At a cost.

However, the improvements in sound reproduction have bored some, who
have returned to very obsolete technology in an attempt to stir up some
excitement. So, plenty to exercise us.

There could well be something in that. When I started playing around with
audio, the norm in a domestic environment was pretty poor. FM radio was
near non existent, and TVs had poor loudspeakers. Record players had small
loudspeakers driven off SET valve amps ;-) with pretty nasty crystal
pickups. So it was relatively easy to bring about a real improvement which
gave one a great deal of pleasure. Not so easy these days given even a
modest but decent sound system straight out of the box.

--
*I am a nobody, and nobody is perfect; therefore I am perfect*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

--

Ambisonics came closer than quadrophonics did, but still relied on a small
number of loudspeakers, and the creation of phantom images between the
loudspeakers to fill in the gaps between them. A real soundfield is all
around the listener, with sounds coming from an infinite number of
directions.

At the European AES a few years ago, I heard an experimental sound-field
creator which used something like 200 small loudspeakers arranged round the
periphery of a room, each loudspeaker driven from a separate power amp, and
each loudspeaker being given an individual feed off a large DSP driven
routing matrix (the same matrix that's currently in BH as the main and
programme routers and at Bush House). The demo didn't have any height
information, but the surround soundfield was most impressively realistic.
One demo was of a city street recorded with the Soundfield microphone and
then synthesised in the room. It was the most realistic portrayal I've yet
heard. Walking round the room gave the same sort of effect as walking around
in the open air in a city. To be complete it would have needed several
hundred more sound sources to portray height, but the principle was sound.

Clearly this sort of system wouldn't be domestically acceptable, but I think
we have to get away from the current paradigm of 2 or 4/5 or even 6/7
loudspeakers and to some sort of sound-field synthesiser if recorded music
is to make real progress. Can't see it happening though, as the concept of
listening to music in one place, without distraction seems as old-hat as
wearing spats.

S.

As I understand it Ambisonics is a system to encode directional
information, 3 channels can encode from any direction in a plane
accurately and 4 channels can encode sound coming from any direction
on a sphere accurately.

The reproduction decoder is a seperate function from the recording and
it has always been recognised that the more speakers the better, but
practicallity dictates that commercial decoders are designed to drive
a small number of speakers. However, ISTR that the WW/Integrex decoder
of about 1978 was capable of driving 6 speakers and the current
Meridian designs can drive 7 speakers. There are other non-commercial
decoder designs that can drive many more speakers.

Improving image accuracy with multiple drivers has been tried even
with normal 2 channel systems. E J Jordan described a system using
many drive units arranged in a horizontal line. The speakers were
linked with delay lines, the left signal went in one end, the right in
the other. He claimed that the result gave very accurate imaging
independent of listening position. If it worked as he claimed it
should have been a significant improvement over normal 2 speaker
stereo.

Bill

In article , Dave Plowman (News)
writes
In article ,
Serge Auckland wrote:
We will need a completely new way of generating sounds at home, not
using discrete loudspeakers, before we can realistically recreate a
complete soundfield.

Ambisonics come close using conventional speakers. At a cost.

However, the improvements in sound reproduction have bored some, who
have returned to very obsolete technology in an attempt to stir up some
excitement. So, plenty to exercise us.

There could well be something in that. When I started playing around with
audio, the norm in a domestic environment was pretty poor. FM radio was
near non existent, and TVs had poor loudspeakers. Record players had small
loudspeakers driven off SET valve amps ;-) with pretty nasty crystal
pickups. So it was relatively easy to bring about a real improvement which
gave one a great deal of pleasure.


Not so easy these days given even a
modest but decent sound system straight out of the box.

Including yer DABble radio eh Dave;?...


--
Tony Sayer

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Keith G" wrote in message

"Rob" wrote in message
...
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Keith G wrote:
It is reputed to have some of the lowest noise and
distortion figures on record (Martin Colloms) yet,
last night when I was listening to a particularly fine
1958 recording of Grieg's Concerto in A minor
(Solomon), I switched from the Technics on the TLS80s
to my 2A3 SET on the Fidelios and got a much better,
more *exciting* (more listenable) sound. As the SET
(according to the pundits here) produces enough
distortion to bend light and the Fidelios have little
or nothing outside the range of the human voice, I am
intrigued as to what's going on?

Is it me?

Almost certainly.

Plenty of people prefer the colour saturation turned up
on the their telly
for that 'technicolor' look. So actually preferring
some types of distortion doesn't seem that unusual to
me. That's why so many like vinyl,
after all.


It's all 'reproduction', and it all 'distorts'.

It could just be that certain modes of reproduction
produce a more satisfying result. A painter's rendition,
a musician's performance, a poet's meter, a writer's
(etc). These examples may result in a more satisfying,
more *realistic*, experience of the original event,
despite the fact their efforts are not technically
facsimiles. Is distortion always bad?


The instant you touch a volume control you distort the
sound to suit your needs....

Contrary to the author's apparent belief, it is possible to play a
recording at the same SPL as it was recorded.

However, if you took what he said seriously, the instant you choose a
listening location at a live concert, you distort the sound to suit
your needs.


I refrained from adding to a recent thread that was getting a bit
carried away with the subject of 'realistic reproduction of an
orchestra' in one's own listening room - fuelling the notion that there
is only one true, accurate (distortion free) rendition of (presumably)
every single piece of music ever composed or created. Farcical, to say
the least - I have as many as half a dozen *different* recordings of
some works and can therefore distort the sound (and runtime) by choosing
whichever one to play...

"Serge Auckland" wrote in message
...
"Rob" wrote


Is distortion always bad?

Is distortion always bad? Now there's an interesting question.



It certainly is - I have often wondered why some people run away
shrieking at the mention of the word 'distortion' like it's a contagion
when it only describes a characteristic of non-linearity and one which
is ultimately inescapable...??



However, the improvements in sound reproduction have bored some, who
have returned to very obsolete technology in an attempt to stir up
some excitement. So, plenty to exercise us.


The words 'dull' and 'bland' are the ones that come to mind when I think
of the sound of some of the 'blameless' kit playing certain (most) CDs -
so shoot us for wanting/seeking summat a little more *emotionally
involving*...!!

Proof of the pudding? Give a person a CD to play on an SS system and
give him the remote control - then wait and see how long before he/she
starts 'track skipping'...