What's left of importance in Hi Fi?

[Bob Smith]

Does anyone agree with me that the only areas really worth discussing with regard to audio quality are loudspeakers and digital coding algorithms?

[Master Theseus]

[QUOTE=Bob Smith]Does anyone agree with me that the only areas really worth discussing with regard to audio quality are loudspeakers and digital coding algorithms?[/QUOTE]

I don't know if it's the only thing, but I can tell you that I care little for anything except how it sounds. I could care less about the technology that delivers it, as long as it sounds good.

[Dmon4u]

I always love the great and ongoing discussions about how MP3 is symbolic of the downfall of quality sound. At least the HD Radio technology is considered by most to be a step up in quality.

and

Utilizing some Political terminology, there is the lack of support and naturally the lack of the Middle Class of audio these days. You go from your BB or CC mainstream equipment (up to around $1,000 CE Audio) and then seem to jump up into the Upper Class (realm of thousands of $$$) Component equipment with very little in between.

Where are the Phase Linear, S.A.E., GAS, Rabco, Soundcraftsmen, Dokorder and other companies that were the Icons of Middle-Class Audiophiles of previous generations ?

[Bob Smith]

They're gone, there's no market.

Audio now falls into two groups. Mass produced stuff from the Pacific Rim, or ridiculosly overpriced cult electronics using triodes and magic crystals.

I think a really good and VERY price effective middle ground can be found with Outlaw components. Their equipment is built very well, not wimpy on most of the things the standard AV receiver is based on, and works great.

If a friend were to ask me what to buy for a reasonable stereo system today, I would recommend he buy the Outlaw two channel receiver, and spend the rest of the budget on the speakers. I don't like the ticky-tacky 2000 Knob and button receivers you buy at CC, with PWM output stages and power transformers the size of your thumb. Outlaw buys into the old school design criteria while not rooking you for exotic capacitors and power cords.

Granted, their stuff is produced in the Pacific Rim, but the designs are solid and so is the construction.

The great designs of Great American Sound/Hafler, and the dozen or so other companies are now mainstream, unlike the quasi-complementery circuit challenged designs they replaced. Honest manufacturers like Outlaw are using them and selling them at very reasonable prices.

It used to be I said to spend about 50% of the cost of a system in speakers, the rest in electronics and a turntable. Now I believe only about 1K$ should be spent on electronics and a CD player, and the rest spent on speakers.

[Paul Cordingley]

[QUOTE=Master Theseus]I don't know if it's the only thing, but I can tell you that I care little for anything except how it sounds. I could care less about the technology that delivers it, as long as it sounds good.[/QUOTE]

Couldn't care less.

COULDN'T CARE LESS.

Come on kids, this is elementary grammar.

[Mike Walker]

What's left? Bass extension (not bass BLOAT, which is all about having lots of bass, but extension to at least 30hz, preferably 20, with enough power to convincingly reproduce any music "down there". Then there's bass LINEARITY. Our reproduction of bass has massive variations due to standing waves, etc.

Having conquered that, let's concentrate on realistic reproduction of space (fhe final frontier. Sorry!) While surround sound is just groovy for movies, to my ears the reproduction of the world around us made possible through binaural miking techniques and headphone listening. Let's concentrate on making that realism possible on speakers as well. And it won't take seven of 'em!

[Bob Smith]

Yes, Mike, You're right.

I forgot to mention the most important thing, Rooms. The bass is tied in with the speaker, the room, and most importantly the interface of the speaker to the room.

The "Crazy Uncle in the Attic" no one talks about is the fact that speakers, even if they could be designed with a perfectly flat frequency response, will all sound different due to the way they radiate sound.

I think the theory that the perfect transducer is a point source is wrong. In a live concert (of acoustic instruments, not the electro-techno-crap they're calling music), a real instrument will have a completely different frequency response depending on the relationship of the observer to the instrument. A piano (even in an anechoic chamber) will sound completely different from one side to the other, or above it. In a room, it's even much more complicated than that. for a speaker, or even multiple speakers to reproduce the space around it is impossible.

Bass can really only be optimized in one position in a room. The movement of even a few inches of the observer will have a tremendous effect on the quality of bass.

The linear electronic side of things have all been solved. Noise is as close to the Johnson Noise limit as is possible today, and I don't believe reducing non-linear distortion from .01% to .0001% is audible. Regardless of what the cultists say, 16 Bit dithered 48K/sample audio is perfect, as far as audible differences. I haven't seen a true double blind test show otherwise, and I believe in double blind testing more than I do in some self-appointed 'Golden Ear's opinion.

The thing that's left in the electrical domain is compression. It looks like we're stuck with it one way or another, and since I no longer believe the self-appointed Golden Ears opinions, who are we to believe in the quality of compression.

You could say that if you don't notice it, what difference does it make? There are people with far better hearing acuity than me. We should strive for what algorithm is un-noticable by people at the edge of the bell curve, not the middle. Once this has been proven by scientific (double blind or otherwise) testing, it is a good enough standard to use for the ultimate sound system.

IBOC is good enough for the masses, I must admit in Mike's tests, in the limited time I had to listen, I couldn't tell the difference. That's probably good enough for almost anyone. When I get a chance to sit down with several of my favorite sources of music and do a comparison, it might be different.

Wouldn't it be great if someone came out with a CD (or several CDs) with each track either compressed or uncompressed and that information hidden from the person using the disc.

Then, people could send in their opinions on which is which, with the results still unpublished, and over time publish the statistics of how much of the population could really hear a difference. These are the kinds of things that are missing and need to be addressed to have any forward progress in the reproduction of music today.

Talking about the subtle nuances brought out in the music by a single ended triode amplifier with 10% distortion is not moving us forward.

[Master Theseus]

[QUOTE=Paul Cordingley]Couldn't care less.

COULDN'T CARE LESS.

Come on kids, this is elementary grammar.[/QUOTE]

Although I am often wrong, this time I am not. I could care less, but I don't. I still like to know the information because I enjoy being informed. What I was trying to project was that it is not the most important decision.

[Master Theseus]

Ok, so let's start there.

Well, we are here discussing theorie. Let's put it to the test. If we were to build a receiver, a tuner, a set of speakers, and a subwoofer, where would one begin? Let us speculate for a few moments that someone had the technology to produce everything we wished to accomplish and that this would eventually make it to market.

What features, specs, materials, etc. would be used to create what most would agree to be the best method of sound reproduction?

[Bob Smith]

Well, assuming this is all blue sky stuff, I would start with speakers, or more correctly a device to recreate the acoustic space of an actual event.

I would start with an invisible sphere with an infinite number of (perfect)microphones on it's surface with the sphere encircling the space where a listener (or group of listeners) would normally be seated. The output of each of these microphones would be recorded on a medium with infinite channels or transmitted to another sphere or number of spheres using an infinite number of channels.
The microphones on the surface at the live acoustic event would be replaced with an infinite number of perfect transducers at the listeners location,and the listener would be seated in the center of this sphere on an acoustically transparent floor placed in an anechoic chamber. The recorded or transmitted signals would be ported to these perfect transducers to reproduce the original acoustic event.

Is this blue sky enough?

Bob

[redjr]

[QUOTE=Paul Cordingley]Couldn't care less.

COULDN'T CARE LESS.

Come on kids, this is elementary grammar.[/QUOTE]
:)

[hphase]

[QUOTE=Master Theseus]Ok, so let's start there.

Well, we are here discussing theorie. Let's put it to the test. If we were to build a receiver, a tuner, a set of speakers, and a subwoofer, where would one begin? Let us speculate for a few moments that someone had the technology to produce everything we wished to accomplish and that this would eventually make it to market.

What features, specs, materials, etc. would be used to create what most would agree to be the best method of sound reproduction?[/QUOTE]

How about moving this rhetoric to another thread, probably on a different forum as well? This excercise has nothing to do with HD Radio.

[Bob Smith]

Sorry! I'm really more concerned with how audio compression impacts quality, guess we should stay away from speakers, at least. To me, the big question about HD radio is whether we should limit all future quality for terrestrial broadcasting to that achieved with 96 Kb compressed audio. Is compression fair game? I don't know where else on this forum it is being discussed.

Bob Smith

[Mike Walker]

If hpphase means that bickering has no place here, then I agree. But if he means that a discussion of wha't missing, and where do we go next has no place in a discussion of hd radio, then I couldn't disagree more. FM was the first truly high fidelity source available to the masses. It's still a place where people even on limited budgets can go to get free music...sort of a "public library of the masses". Everything discussed here...frequency response, the audibility of compression artifacts, the proper reproduction of spatial properties, is being discussed by movers and shakers in the broadcast industry as we sspeak (er, type). This IS an important discussion, and this is where it belongs!

[hphase]

If you want to blue-sky a design of the ultimate sound reproduction system, there are plenty of esoteric audio forums to discuss that in. Casual readers of the HD Radio forum may not care to respond, and you might get more opinions from posting in other forums.

Bickering is most certainly in-bounds, as long as we are bickering about the topic described by the forum topic!

[Bob Smith]

[QUOTE=hphase]If you want to blue-sky a design of the ultimate sound reproduction system, there are plenty of esoteric audio forums to discuss that in. Casual readers of the HD Radio forum may not care to respond, and you might get more opinions from posting in other forums.

Bickering is most certainly in-bounds, as long as we are bickering about the topic described by the forum topic![/QUOTE]


Since you're the self appointed gate keeper of this forum, are we allowed to talk about audio compression? Does it have to be only in the context of HD radio? I'd like to know the rules.

Bob Smith

[hphase]

I'm no gate keeper of anything. I do like to follow the progress of HD radio, and it has nothing to do with perfect microphones and perfect transducers. Not that they aren't important, it's just that there other places where you can get more informed opinions than you can get here. That seemed to be what Master Theseus (sic) was asking for in his post.

There are eight forums in the audio area alone, and one of them is called Audio Theory, Setup, and Chat. That sounds like a place where you can get a lot more feedback than you can here.

Don't take it personally.

[Master Theseus]

[QUOTE=hphase]I'm no gate keeper of anything. I do like to follow the progress of HD radio, and it has nothing to do with perfect microphones and perfect transducers. Not that they aren't important, it's just that there other places where you can get more informed opinions than you can get here. That seemed to be what Master Theseus (sic) was asking for in his post.

There are eight forums in the audio area alone, and one of them is called Audio Theory, Setup, and Chat. That sounds like a place where you can get a lot more feedback than you can here.

Don't take it personally.[/QUOTE]

I can easily understand that this could have gotten off track and will defer that to another place.

So then audio compression in association with HD Radio. I have noticed that one of my major problems with HD Radio is that I can notice a digitized sound on many of the HD stations. . . Similar to what I would hear from a poorly compressed MP3.

I can say with certaintly, since I have been listening to HD Radio for 4 months or so that the signal and sound has dramatically improved. So the question is chicken or egg? What drive will consumers have to buy HD Radio if the sound they hear in the store is not qualitative? And on the same hand, what incentives do the broadcasters have to improve the sound if no one is listening?

I think that we all have to accept that HD Radio is coming and buy the units and let the stations know that we are listening as was suggested in another post. Begin demanding more from your stations on HD.

[ChrisW6ATV]

In the bigger context of "radio as free/ad-sponsored entertainment", I have no expectation for more than "reasonably good" sound; that is, not totally annoying for casual listening. The same would be true for "free" (OTA/FTA) TV. Having said that, I will happily accept better than "reasonably good" and "not totally annoying"; indeed, the better the quality/selection/variety is, the more I will choose that station over others. Paid radio/TV on the other hand, such as satellite or cable, has to meet a much higher standard for me, a standard that is clearly not met by any of the current choices since I no longer subscribe to any paid live-content services. It is this "paid versus free/ad-supported" distinction that makes HD Radio such a cool system to me.