GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site - Asking right questions…

Audio Discussions
Topic: Asking right questions…

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 08-13-2009

Here is a good opportunity trying to debug a playback system. A site’s visitor sent email asking what is wrong with his playback if:

“The reedinest or wooden sound of the clarinet is missing. The edge and bite to brass instruments that give drama to Shostakovich is not strong enough. Prokofiev is colorful and can remind one of the circus, I can hear it on car radio but not on home system. The voice of Kathleen Battle is not heavenly as I know it should be. There is a form and shape which music should take that is being impeded.“

Is anything that you might say about the elements/topology of this playback? Any applied suggestions or experiments that you would try with this playback? Any further questions that you like the system owned would ask himself? Please avoid any questions or commentates about specific brands and models.

The Cat

Posted by Axel on 08-14-2009

can this be anything else but futile?

1) If analogue the first thing be the cart, if digital the payer?

2) If analogue the phono cable being the MOST important one in the whole system, and could yield some noticeable improvement.

3) Has the system got a pre-amp? Is it maybe playing with a variable output CD player?! Or is it an integrated amp and what is it all - solid state or tube?
To know this might give some indication whether it is a source issue.

4) Is the power condition known to be stable, does it sound the same late at night?

5) Are we using 'lamp-cord' to drive the speakers?

6) Is it a 'chip-board' speaker that swamps the treble with bad 'water-fall' box-resonances?

7) How it the room's acoustics, over-, medium- or under-damped. has any acoustic treatment been tried or already applied?

8) What speaker topology are we talking? 3way, 4, 5, D’Apollito, Monitors with woofers, HORNS!?

Without having some understanding of the set-up any debugging would be like shooting rubber bands at the moon.

Cheers,
Axel

Posted by Romy the Cat on 08-14-2009

Axel wrote:
To know this might give some indication whether it is a source issue.

I disagree. In order to be futile it is not the source of the problem that need to be searched but the reason of the problem. Finding source implies specifics. Finding reason implies understanding of causality and consequences. The questions you ask in my view are shooting rubber bands at the moon. Thinking about the necessary rubber bands acceleration and mass or projectile in order to hit the moon from earth would probably require different questions to ask.

The Cat

PS: REF http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/T/Tsiolkovsky.html

Posted by Axel on 08-14-2009

Your response indicates some presumption to me, as much as mine indicated to you. In my experience it is practically NEVER only ONE issue involved -- B U T, one would in my experience try to isolate where the most immediate benefit might be found. So see my questions in that light.

If the person for example would have a 'wide-band' single driver topology and I'd go out to tell him that he should first consider to change all his resistors in his cross-over to get rid of some energy storage, what's that got to do with the price of milk?

If he (or she?) for example only experiences the problem with his analogue rig, then why get into his digital front end? (same applies visa versa)

If he uses a Wilson Alex, no need to tell him to look into his cross-over (since it's cast in resin, sorry :-) --- so possibly I have made MY point.

I'm pretty sure in the general scheme of things YOUR point would HAVE to be a different one, - and if it's a good one, we might have learned something :-)

As to the rest of your response --- you are running TOO fast for me! I can already sniff out you going into energy storage of drivers (maybe he is using compression drivers?) or cross-over issues with caps. If I read you correctly we would then not able to see the trees for the forest either.

In closing, it could be the reverse problem of what causes sibilance distortion, --- and what causes that, will again have more then one reason - but possibly a root cause, as I'm sure you might be well aware of.

Still one more, if using a spherical stylus it will round over his transients, which will not produce the defined saxophone-reed to be heard either, so?

Axel
PS: Tsiolkovsky, as a top flight aeronautics research engineer would have endeavoured some logical deduction, so now we are looking forward to yours.

(I of course knew that I should have let some other poster pick-up that hot chestnut, but then I'd miss an opportunity to learn something, and even if it was one added piece of BS, it's always good to being able to discern.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 08-14-2009

Axel, I do not know what your motivation is and why you need to pretend that argue. Arguing implies a confrontational position and I do not think you have one in this subject. Anyhow, leaving your motivations (and my pretence that I do not know them) behind the scene I would like to propose to leave this thread to be on it’s topic.

Keeping it on topic I would suggests that your debugging methods are fundamentally wrong (in my view) and very much propone to inaccuracy and accidental results. You apparently perceive a playback installation as a static system where result is inert and flows from a function of ingredients. In that environment, I assure, you that you will not be able to debug anything, even if it is your playback and you have it in your own listening room. In realty a playback is dymick (as opposite to dymick) system and has an ability to react differently upon different “irritations” and stress. Observing those qualities you might not care about the specifics of components, the specifics might be self-indictable….

This is why I was asking about any applied suggestions or experiments and about further questions that the system owned might ask himself. Asking right questions is about to have 90% of answers.

The caT

Posted by Axel on 08-14-2009

YES! Now who wouldwant to argue, or even pretend to argue about that?!

You will of course realise that a lot of audio interested people have had their 'learning path' as you have had your 'learning path'. This implies if playback improvements where realized, a learning process took place. Now it is up to the teacher (other then oneself) to shine some light on a new or different path.
It is of interest only to people that have either no previous knowledge at all, or some that have aquired some knowledge, but are prepared to hear something else, or maybe new.

I had my apprenticeship absolved and learned from my Master many years ago (in my trade), then in some other endeavour (close to audio) in religion! There I learned, I'm not made for discipleship, too critically attuned. It may answer your ponderings on 'pretended argumentation' or what ever.

Please help me to understand your path, in less cryptic communication, where you see a better, clearer, and more result oriented path to system de-bugging.

Dynamic! Well, WHY WOULD THAT BE ANYTHING OTHER THEN I SUGGEST?
You, as much as I, might have the wrong idea of our 'paths' - I can only guess.

Dynamic to me means, that after a hopefully 'fruitful' first, and best to be assumed, issue has been worked on (perhaps not fixed...) it will give you feedback on what is the result. This is a reiterative process like writing a good software and then also do the de-bugging. (BTW, that's exactly what I did for for a living not so long ago).
This process is dynamic / reiterative - maybe not your exact same idea, I can't tell.

So, does that notion of dynamic make some sense in your context - or do you have another suggestion for the dynamics of the debugging process?

Axel
PS: Russian and German temperament are prone to be confrontational, and much more so, when trying to find some truth (think of F.Nietzsche and I. Kant, --- Dostoyevsky, Jwan Turgenjew, et all I leave for you, since I can’t this of Russian philosophers, sorry :-). Still there is a powerful abhorrence to bull-shit - you'd know that.

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