resolution-the listening side

resolution-the listening side

Resolution is a matter of being able to see something or hear something in it's absolute state. Just because a signal language has assigned numbers this doesn't mean you are hearing it with your audio system.

I'm a stickler for soundstage size, here's why.

Being someone who has done the recording as well as the playback I've seen many cases where the audio recorded is not what the end user is hearing. It's kinda hard to get your mind around cause we live in an age where we are being told that we have more revealing systems than ever, but these are only words used to sell, and to convince the buyer to buy, many times. Fact is there are 3 extremely important parts to your audio chain and if any one of them is not up to the task you are going to come up short in the revealing department (electrical, mechanical, acoustical). Here's where things get tricky. Every recording made has it's own signature. A signature is a vibratory code that is unique to that recording. This code is made up of values called frequencies, and the pressure (vibrations) these frequencies are being shaped by. Together these become what we know as the source signal (the recording). A frequency is not a note. It's part of the translation scale of measurement that relates to cycles. A note is far more complex and uses both the cycles and pressure in it's formation. Where a frequency is a measured unit a note has flavors and textures. Example, same note played on different instruments sound different. Or this one, same note played back on different audio equipment sounds different. Every electrical system, mechanical system and acoustical environment plays that note different.

Every part that contributes to the audio signal and it's pathway from the mic to your ear has it's say so with the sound. Stop a second and think about it. You have never heard the same music played on two different playback systems sound identical. It's not going to happen and no matter how much someone has told you your buying reference quality gear unless you are able to produce the real space, real size of a recording you will not be listening to "the absolute sound". Fact is with every recording having it's own code (signature) in order to play it back in full you would need to be able to tune that recording in to it's particular set of values. Again stop for a few minutes and play one minute of 10 or so different recordings and you will hear how dramatically different they are from each other. Your system doesn't audio adjust each time a recording is played. Your system like each recording has one setting and is interpreting every piece of music according to that setting.

As you play your music some of it will or should sound bigger than other recordings, and some smaller, but if you are listening to a typical sized audiophile soundstage that is 10w X 6d X 7h or even double that size you are not playing all the imformation on that recording. Play through 10 other recordings now. Hear how some sound bright and some sound boomy and yet like the 3 bears some sound just right? This has as much to do with your system as it does the recording. Truth is, if you took the time to dial in that specific recordings "code" it's soundstage would grow and as we have noticed the tonal balance EQ's itself the closer the info gets to it's real size. This only makes sense when you think about what happens to music when it is squeezed. Parts of the music gets covered up or shifted in pitch because of the colapsing of the space. This forces the response to move from linear to ill-proportional.

Once again I don't want to put words in your ears so listen to your best sounding recordings. Notice how they have a bigger soundstage than the recordings that you don't like as well? This is because your, with the bigger sound, hearing more of the recording.

Resolution is not about how you can focus on one small part of a recording but about how you can get closer to what is really going on with that recording and that means size and space. The space of your soundstage is the recording. There really is no such thing as a revealing system that cast a small soundstage. This is an audiophile myth and frankly an excuse that some use who don't have systems that can open up the sound of a recording. When that soundstage starts to reach close to full size you will see all kinds of things in the music that you didn't know was there and you will also notice that the recording goes as much front to back as it does side to side, plus the height will gain greatly as well as a 360 presentation that includes the stage going behind you.

Hi Guys

Here's a thread that I started on Stereophile http://www.stereophile.com/content/resolution-listening-side Same thread as here but with the audiophile spins that seem to happen as I come up there to post.   

  

Take a look at some other links that will help with the understanding of space.

https://tuneland.forumotion.com/t201-what-is-a-soundstage
https://tuneland.forumotion.com/t222-don-t-kill-the-sound

You've heard me talk about resolution being something that can only be realized through the true picture of space.

below is the average "good" high end audio system soundstage


above is the true stage

As you can see there is a major difference between the two. With the smaller stage you can see how the recording is shoved into a box that the listener is looking at as only being part of the listening space. The bigger represents the full stage being used, and as you can see the true size of the performance is far bigger than the room. Most recordings made are bigger than the room you are sitting in, and with most audiophile systems you can see a stage in the room but you also see that part of the room is void of stage.

Physics says that if you put a source in a room the entire room responds to that source. If you have a recorded signal that is bigger than the size of the playback room and the playback is restricted to less than the the whole space you are listening in, you are listening to a partial stage, acoustical space distortion.

I want you to read this thread https://tuneland.forumotion.com/t228-the-loudness-wars so you can see my personal studies in real space.

Something that you will find interesting is when we get into the product part in resolution is how 180 degrees our concepts are from the ones of audiophiles, yet in line with the music industry from the making of sound point of view.

I really shouldn't say audiophile in that context cause we are all audiophiles but when I say this I'm refering to the typical audiophile mindset.

It has to be weird for the audiophile to read about me using low mass to gain better sound. It does seem to oppose the norm of the hobbyist who is use to thinking bigger is better, but what we have found is mass closes in the soundstage instead of opening it up. When you think about it this only makes sense in physics. More clustered mass less sympathetic response. In the instrument world we see how the mass is used to shape the sound of notal structures making each instrument have it's own particular deliverence of vibrations. The same thing happens in the equipment world and as we ran our testing of this we heard that the more mass applied to any part of the audio chain the smaller the soundstage got and the signal (info) reduced. We found that instead of using mass to dampen the sound, using transfer and tension tuning did the same job with a far more accurate result, and through transfer tuning you can actually get a gain increase instead of the decrease that comes for mass loading.

Why is this?

With mass tuning as you add the material you are shifting the pitch upward and if the mass is not distributed properly it begins to create an imbalance in the flat gain response. Meaning as the mass is applied the frequencies needed to recreate the info has dips and peaks instead of an equal response. You will find demos of this done all over TuneLand.