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01-15-2012 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
haralanov


Bulgaria
Posts 130
Joined on 05-20-2008

Post #: 1
Post ID: 17711
Reply to: 17711
The invisible sound barrier
fiogf49gjkf0d
There is a sound reproduction problem that is very rarely recognized as a problem at all, and it is among the most important problems in audio at all.
 
The feeling is that the sound is contained in an invisible balloon and it is not allowed to flow freely in the air towards the listener’s ears. The boundaries of this invisible balloon are just in front of the listener, right in front of his nose, and the musical river’s flow is stopped by the balloon’s surface, so the ears hear only the sound information of the musical river but not the expression of that musical river. It may sound stupid, but it is as the musical river “knocks” at the internal surface of the balloon and the listener can hear the attempts (!) of the musical river to perforate the invisible balloon, but not the musical river itself. The sound of Music is heard somehow indirectly (because it is "circling" around the loudspeakers) and the music is presented like popping balloons containing sound memories of the original music event and the listener does not have the feeling he/she is part of the musical event – the same as watching a concert at 17" TV. All this directly affects the musical expression of a given system.
 
Pretend you are on the beach and you are having a sun bath – you can feel the energy of the sunshine directly with your skin. Now pretend you are watching a movie and there is a scene where somebody is having a sun bath. What happens here? Now you can see there is sun, you clearly recognize it is sun, you know it is sun, but you can not feel the physical properties of that sun (light intensity, temperature, the "touch" of the sun rays and so on). Well, the same is with audio. The "invisible sound barrier" problem is one of the biggest problems in audio, it is the one that is extremely hard to be solved, and unfortunately it is the one that is recognized once in a blue moon…
 
Best regards,
P. Haralanov


"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." -A.E.
01-15-2012 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
RonyWeissman
Lyon, France
Posts 138
Joined on 05-29-2004

Post #: 2
Post ID: 17712
Reply to: 17711
My criteria for playback
fiogf49gjkf0d
Hi haalanov,
When i listen to "music" from audio source i listen for something which isnexactly the criteria which you discuss but in very simple terms.  I do not discuss it as i dont want audio reviewers to lash onto what we are listening for and exploit it in every reciew of every piece of audio gear that lights up.  I can tell when someone knows how to listen when they mention it and it is not far from your topic.
R weissman
01-15-2012 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,049
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #: 3
Post ID: 17713
Reply to: 17711
This for sure need to be continue...
fiogf49gjkf0d
Haralanov, good post, clearly indicative to a person who uses single-driver speakers. :-)

I would have a LOT to say about it. The subject was very deeply researched by me in 2001-2002, before I had my site. From my current standing I disagree with your concussion and I do not acknowledge the problem. However, I acknowledge that the problem exists. In 2001-2002 I was learning to deal with the problem and I have to say that I successfully defeat the problem. It is not as much audio-technical subject but rather the way to deal with own listening experiences. As I have more time I will post the history of my events and the methods I used.

Ronny, your comment about not sharing anything valuable at public web sites as it will be exploited by marketing audio whores is also very valuable. Back to 2002 I made one very deep observation and posted it at AA, in a few months the observation made itself into audio magazine review as a sale pitch, I think it was TAS or something like this. The irony was that my comment contained among anything else one obscure mistaken concept that I impended absolutely intentionally. The idiot-reviewer who copied my observation did not have brain to understand what it was all about and copied the whole thing, including the mistaken concept and even used my expressions. I remember I was laughing like crazy.

Rgs, Romy the Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
01-16-2012 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
haralanov


Bulgaria
Posts 130
Joined on 05-20-2008

Post #: 4
Post ID: 17715
Reply to: 17713
The density of the Musical River
fiogf49gjkf0d
 Romy the Cat wrote:
Haralanov, good post, clearly indicative to a person who uses single-driver speakers. :-)


Hahhaha, good sense of humor, as always :-)

First of all, I want to mention that the reason I posted yesterday is not because my “system” has problems with it, but because many people do not recognize this problem as a problem at all, because they have got accustomed to that type of sound presentation during the years of listening to non correct sound and they do not know how much better it can be for the same level of person’s ability to be involved with the music. So yes, you are right – it has to do with our own listening experiences, but the trick is somebody to arrange his system (it depends of the technical part and of course his reference points) in a way to be so expressive, that even the people who listen at the first listening level to be able to understand the musical idea in details, no matter the fact they are musical/audio simpletons (I have witnessed it several times).

I defeated the problem in the end of 2009 and now, after I made my 12” main channel, the problem is practically non-existing. I’m blown away by the Musical River’s authority and sheer power when the music calls upon, even at quiet listening levels – the magnitude of this effect is so high that there is no way to escape it or even to resist it – the only option is to become part of that musical flow and energy… :

Sound barrier.jpg
 
 
The speaker driver caricature above is not a single driver, but it is an abbreviation of several perfectly integrated drivers (!) The lack of sound density around the rabbit’s ears is as wanting to drink some water, but to find there is no water available – only very humid air, so the density of the content is not there, although there is content and ways to extract and consume that content. Turning up the volume does not add water to the humid air (it only adds more humid air) and it also does not break the invisible sound barrier.



"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." -A.E.
01-17-2012 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,049
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #: 5
Post ID: 17717
Reply to: 17715
Fishing for Sound.
fiogf49gjkf0d

Haralanov,

What you are experiencing in my view is an inconsistency and confusion between listening of playback presentation vs. content of musical message. I know that it is fashionable among audiophiles to claim “not listening to audio but listening music” but there is much more to it and in fact in my audio-life I met only 2 audio people who were able truly to do it. This confusion comes from your inability to differentiate your personal relation between better audio presentation and better audio sound. Sure, there is no need to differentiate it but the combination of better audio presentation and better audio sound need to be combined ONLY after a person can differentiate them. I think you need to stop soldering for a moment and stop to experiment with speaker suspension and practice some listening training.

The reality is that most of audio people have extremely poor listening intelligence when they deal with audio. Listening intelligence, something that I been stressing for years, is not considered a commodity in audio world because the industry can’t buy and sell it. So, as the result the majorly audio people not only have very poor audio listening intelligence but they do not even understand what listening intelligence might mean and how it might be used in audio. A developed listening intelligence however allows no-impediment transition and self-administration of listening attention between observations of audio and observations musical phenomena along with many other things…

Anyhow, closer to your case.  The problem of cause is not your drivers or amplifier and there is no way to defeat the problem by using better speaker of lift up your cables on elevators. The problem exists in a head of listener and it need to be addressed either by metal exercises or by very-extended listening practice with potent playback/music. If you feel that you were able to defeat the problem then it came to you with listening practice and presumably you did something right with your playback but it for sure took for you long time. You can only imagine how fast these processes would go if you do not use a single-driver speaker. My comment about the single-driver speaker is only partially humorous. Anyhow, there are much faster and in my view more effective techniques to deal with the problem. Let not talk about audio methods and look at the mental methods that I personally feel are much more effective.

Back in 2001-2002 is felt something similar. I did not define it as “River hitting a wall” but I rather I defined it as “going to beach and do not wet own feet in water”.  The point was that you can inhale sea smell; you can see the sea width; you can hear the sea sound but you can’t swim the sea. I was wondering why the interaction with music during live event takes place at higher rate than during playback. Sure during playback we do not have life music and we use pretty much sonic surrogate but we do the same when we swim in pool or in bath – it is not sea. We do not have sea experience when we are lying in bath but we have body and spirit satisfaction from it that might be to a degree equitable or compared to the satisfaction from sea.

Thinking about it and observing myself at that time I develop a methodology that very much helped to deal with what I was interested at that time. I called it “Fishing”. If you are at sea, than you being outside the see might throw into the see a fishing line and begin to feel the events that takes place inside the sea. I was playing with application of the same pattern to listening experience. Let me to explain how it works. You sit in front if your playback and play some music. It is very important at begging phase that the music shall be absolutely irrelevant to you. It might be ANY music or even the TV program. Do not forget that his is pure mind training not listening experience. So, you basically need not Music as a cultural event but you rather need sound of playback, ANY playback sound. Listening the sound you got you need to very clearly disassociate yourself from this sound. In your case it will be the very distinctly to convert your “invisible sound barrier” into a very tangible, and well defined barrier. In my case it was a very clear distinction between where I am (on a pier) and where sea is. Then in the sound that you are hearing you need to discover for beginning one single thing that you are attracted. It does not be even need to be a named thing but it need to be something that you like. Then you need in your mind to throw a fishing line toward to this “something”. You need literally visualize you holding in your hand fishing line and the hook of your line is firmly imbedded into the body of that “something” that you like. You might throw your like multiple times until you get the firm filling that you got it.  The interesting thing is that if you do the above then you will have in your hand the physical, material feeling of “something” that lives in music but now it has a reflection in your hands. Thin that you play cello naked and you in addition to hearing sound you feel the vibration of the cello deck on your skin. You can have multiple simultaneous fishing lines hooked to the different “something” and this will be fine. BTW, if you have established one fishing line then in my experience to add more lines at the same time is much easier.

So, what it is all about? For sure it is just a metal exercise but with proper practice you can get all of it done in your head within a second and as soon you hear music you can instantly “hook your fishing lines”. The idea is to have a PERSONAL FEELING and in a way a PERSONAL CONTROL over the played music. Very soon you would be willing to pull one or another fishing line connected to one or another aspect of played sound.  This will be time when you will develop your PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE PLAYED SOUND and you will start to build your playback only in accordance and in reflection to your own musical vision.

This was what I went over in 2002 and it is reflected in the Macondo page:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/MacondoAcousticSystem.aspx

I do not use my “fishing techniques” for years as my listening awareness is (in my estimation) is well trained and I can engage music regardless what sound is, table radio or horrible car sound are very fine. Nowadays if I need to recognize what is wrong with sound and selectively to turn up my critical perception of audio then I do not need to activate my “fishing techniques” as I my perception has been trained. There were techniques, different than “fishing techniques” that I practiced in past but this is not the point. The point is that in your, Haralanov, particular case, if the barrier effect is something the bothers you, it might be very useful for you to practice my “fishing techniques” for a couple weeks. In my case it was “fishing techniques” in your case it might be something different – feel free to develop your own metaphors. The key is to develop some kind of mental exercise that will be BRIDGE BETWEEN YOUR SENSATIONS AND THE SONIC EVENTS OF PLAYBACK.  If you learn how to walk that bridge then you can add to sound of your playback a cultural component of greater music and then you just start the high-audio hobby. I am 44 and I have been practicing audio since 8 years old but I do feel that only in 2002-2003 I got proper understanding of what audio is all about: shaping and sustaining of that bridge in accordance with own creativity….

Anyhow, Haralanov, I think that after a 1-3 weeks of practicing some kind of craziness similar to my “fishing techniques” you will stop to acknowledge the problem with your sound barriers.

Rgs, Romy the Cat


"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
01-18-2012 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
RonyWeissman
Lyon, France
Posts 138
Joined on 05-29-2004

Post #: 6
Post ID: 17719
Reply to: 17717
Nice post
fiogf49gjkf0d
Interesting romy, i play guitar. When i was learning to play the sound of one instrument vs another was very important too me.  After playing for years i can enjoy playing almost any decent quality guitar as i can adjust my playing to get what i want out ofnthe instrument, i always enjoy myself.
I am nowhere near this with my audio playback where i shuffle, plug, unplug, change around the rig while always listening for "better result"
I will now try to "play" my audio playback, ifni can find myself in there like my with my guitar that would be very rewarding!
For exmple i am now  listning to bach cello,suites. The sound is very good, nice string presence, good tension, very expressive melody line, instrument nicely presented in space behind speakers, but not nearly enough midbass bloom, not enough of a reason, as a musicien, to choose a cello instead of a violin!
I will work on this, thanks.

01-27-2012 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
N-set
Gdansk, Poland
Posts 609
Joined on 01-07-2006

Post #: 7
Post ID: 17755
Reply to: 17711
Table radio example
fiogf49gjkf0d
I used to listen to one of those German tube table radios. Graetz Sinfonia or whatever.
IIRC it had a SEP stage with some EL84 and a plastic kind of mini-horn for HF and in general was running old
tubes, has never been cleaned etc. But nevertheless after around 1 hour of listening the sound would detach/escape
from this piece of crap and would start to circulate freely in the room, living it's own life.
It was a very peculiar, repeatable feeling and I was surprised that
such a crap could produce it.
Cheers,
N-set




Cheers,
Jarek
STACORE
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