HF. RESPONSE

[twiiii]

I was reading some of my papers on sound system design the other night and found something very interesting. If you attend a live concert at 68 degrees with about 40 % humidity and sit 100 ft from the podium a 10 kHz frequency from that distance will be attenuated 9.14 db. And if you listening to a recording of that same sound in your home at 68 degrees at a distance of 5 meters you will loose another 3 db. So thats 12 db loss for natural sound reproduction at 10 KHZ. So lets say the mics are placed at 20 or 25 ft and have the typical 3 to 6 db rise at 10 KHZ depending on which element the recording engineer chooses. So he accented the response a total of 3 db, therefore when you play the recording at home with modern speakers the response is back to flat. Which is 10 db brighter than the experience at the live concert from out in the audience. With B&W 800 series the response will be 16 to 18 db brighter than it should be. Mcintosh current line up is to bright also.

Its no wonder I get upset with Deutsche Gramophone for playing with the mix adding and subtracting accent mics. The recording sound nothing like a live concert. Chandos can go to far the other way, but at least their recordings are more life like. It almost makes we want to buy a pair of point source speakers to move further back from the overly miked recordings with the ,mics placed to close to the performers. I guess I can see why some guys and gals use different pairs of speakers in their sound caves. I don't think we should have to do so, but I guess I can't fault those who do trying to achieve some semblance of accuracy from the un-natural digital recordings of today. Its no wonder some folks are going back to vinyl with it more faithful relaxed sound.

This just proves what I have been saying you need to have tone controls in your system. Depending on who is doing the recordings and the company. philosophy the results will be from very close to very far from the real concert experience. So listening at home if you want to recreate that. experience adjustment is almost always required..

 

[g..v]

IIRC, SPL and light from a flash work the same way. Double the distance and the intensity are reduced by 75 percent.

 

[bowtie427ss]

Until it becomes an outdoor listening environment with crosswind and solar thermals.

The higher the frequency, the more it is affected/steered by movement of the air itself. A light sunny breeze can blow the top octave or two away.

 

[ConradH]

Wow, never knew that.

 

[wyn palmer]

I was reading some of my papers on sound system design the other night and found something very interesting. If you attend a live concert at 68 degrees with about 40 % humidity and sit 100 ft from the podium a 10 kHz frequency from that distance will be attenuated 9.14 db. And if you listening to a recording of that same sound in your home at 68 degrees at a distance of 5 meters you will loose another 3 db. So thats 12 db loss for natural sound reproduction at 10 KHZ. So lets say the mics are placed at 20 or 25 ft and have the typical 3 to 6 db rise at 10 KHZ depending on which element the recording engineer chooses. So he accented the response a total of 3 db, therefore when you play the recording at home with modern speakers the response is back to flat. Which is 10 db brighter than the experience at the live concert from out in the audience. With B&W 800 series the response will be 16 to 18 db brighter than it should be. Mcintosh current line up is to bright also.

Its no wonder I get upset with Deutsche Gramophone for playing with the mix adding and subtracting accent mics. The recording sound nothing like a live concert. Chandos can go to far the other way, but at least their recordings are more life like. It almost makes we want to buy a pair of point source speakers to move further back from the overly miked recordings with the ,mics placed to close to the performers. I guess I can see why some guys and gals use different pairs of speakers in their sound caves. I don't think we should have to do so, but I guess I can't fault those who do trying to achieve some semblance of accuracy from the un-natural digital recordings of today. Its no wonder some folks are going back to vinyl with it more faithful relaxed sound.

This just proves what I have been saying you need to have tone controls in your system. Depending on who is doing the recordings and the company. philosophy the results will be from very close to very far from the real concert experience. So listening at home if you want to recreate that. experience adjustment is almost always required..

I agree that at 40% RH and 30m from the source the attenuation at 10kHz will be c. 9dB.
I also agree that the 10kHz loss at 5m from the source will be c. 3dB.
However, I'm not sure why you are adding the losses together.
Let's for the sake of argument assume that the concert listening experience is at 30m, and the recording mics are at, say, 5m- just to make it simple,
then the total loss at 10kHz (excluding the mic gain) in the in-home 5m listening position will be 3+3dB=6dB, and if the mic gain is +3dB the loss will then be 3dB.
Relative to the 30m concert experience this will be 6dB brighter.
If the recording position is say, 8m from the "source" then there will be an additional c. 2dB of attenuation and the reproduced sound at the 5m listening position will be only 4dB brighter than the 30m concert experience. In addition the measured speaker response at 10kHz at a distance of 5m will be -3dB, which I think is fairly close to reality relative to a "flat" speaker measured at 1m.
Is there something I'm missing here?

 

[tom67]

I was reading some of my papers on sound system design the other night and found something very interesting. If you attend a live concert at 68 degrees with about 40 % humidity and sit 100 ft from the podium a 10 kHz frequency from that distance will be attenuated 9.14 db. And if you listening to a recording of that same sound in your home at 68 degrees at a distance of 5 meters you will loose another 3 db. So thats 12 db loss for natural sound reproduction at 10 KHZ. So lets say the mics are placed at 20 or 25 ft and have the typical 3 to 6 db rise at 10 KHZ depending on which element the recording engineer chooses. So he accented the response a total of 3 db, therefore when you play the recording at home with modern speakers the response is back to flat. Which is 10 db brighter than the experience at the live concert from out in the audience. With B&W 800 series the response will be 16 to 18 db brighter than it should be. Mcintosh current line up is to bright also.

Its no wonder I get upset with Deutsche Gramophone for playing with the mix adding and subtracting accent mics. The recording sound nothing like a live concert. Chandos can go to far the other way, but at least their recordings are more life like. It almost makes we want to buy a pair of point source speakers to move further back from the overly miked recordings with the ,mics placed to close to the performers. I guess I can see why some guys and gals use different pairs of speakers in their sound caves. I don't think we should have to do so, but I guess I can't fault those who do trying to achieve some semblance of accuracy from the un-natural digital recordings of today. Its no wonder some folks are going back to vinyl with it more faithful relaxed sound.

This just proves what I have been saying you need to have tone controls in your system. Depending on who is doing the recordings and the company. philosophy the results will be from very close to very far from the real concert experience. So listening at home if you want to recreate that. experience adjustment is almost always required..

You may have an even bigger complaint. You speak of mic placement which tells me this was an amplified concert. So....you were actually just listening to someone else's idea of a sound system and not real live music and there was little natural about it. As I have opined before, if my home stereo sounded as bad as half the concerts I have attended, I would not own a sound system....

 

[wyn palmer]

You may have an even bigger complaint. You speak of mic placement which tells me this was an amplified concert. So....you were actually just listening to someone else's idea of a sound system and not real live music and there was little natural about it. As I have opined before, if my home stereo sounded as bad as half the concerts I have attended, I would not own a sound system....

Truly live unmodified quality music is increasingly hard to come across these days. Even symphony and chamber performances seem mostly to be in venues that now employ systems like the Meyer Constellation or even worse, and unamplified jazz also seems to be going the way of all things. Yes, having a quality system at home that approximates the ideal of a live performance seems to be the only way to go, but it can't hurt to understand at least some of the limitations and trade offs that exist.

 

[JoeESP9]

I believe twiiii was primarily referring to classical orchestral recordings. Even live unamplified music needs microphones in order to be recorded.

FWIW: I agree with him about the relative brightness of many orchestral recordings. IME many DG recordings are overly bright.

 

[twiiii]

So we agree on the losses and we also agree that mics used for classical recordings are usually chosen to make up for the loss at the position they are placed. So the mic makes the recording brighter. We get that recording home and if you have flat speakers the over all recording is to bright. How much to bright is the question? Well for sure its 3+ db to bright depending on the choice of the mic element. So if we want the experience of the sound where the mic is located the sound is accurate. But it doesn't represent what you hear at 100 ft, where the 10 kHz level has dropped another 9 db. mean while 1KHZ hasn't dropped do to air absorption. 2khz has almost dropped 2 db. So there is a nice roll off to live. sound. But not in our sound systems today.

Now what comes out of a studio or an intimate recital is a totally different sound , its totally engineered to those involved tastes. I have no fault with that. What happens at live concerts with amplification is a totally different story, too. Here again is all about what the performers and sound engineers have pre determined.

I'm just saying if you want some semblance of faithful sound reproduction, you have to experience live sound in its many facets and then your system should have the flexibility to allow you to adjust the system to give the sound you have learned to love faithfully if you wish in your environment. To do that you have to be able to adjust not only the volume, the balance sometimes, be able to reverse the channels, and to be able to altar the sound spectrum. That means the Pre-amp or integrated amp or what ever control section must have flexibility. Giving up that flexibility is tying your hands, pinning your ears and preventing you from experiencing the best the performance can be.

My issue is most of the buying public that determines choices the recording producer makes don't know what true live sound is, and therefore, what comes out of the studios is not for those of us have experienced true live sound or participated as musicians. But are for those consumers that are duped into loving music that is not natural . When was the last time POP music was trying to produce sound as faithful as possible in the majority of cases. 50's, early 60's? When Peter Nero (Sp?) was popular capturing that piano sound was very important, even when with Roger Williams, and OP, Basie, the piano sound had to be right on. Today, most of the time its electronic keyboards. Sure Diana Krall, and a few other insist the piano sound be close to perfect. But does sound created be as if you were listening in auditorium, no usually as if you were in a small club or almost in your living room. If you prefer the latter, OK. But what if you don't. Lets say you want to take some of the edge off the voice singing or the piano. Need tone controls folks. Or point source speakers with the tweeters turned down a bit. But what happens when you want to listen to a a Michael Murray recording from a large cathedral. There is nothing that point source can do to get the definition you might wish for or the dynamics. So we choose horn loaded, horn hybrids or line arrays to cut down on the room influencing the recording and hope the mics aren't to bright, if they are, tone controls. Its all about flexibility. I don't care if you use a tube pre-amp or SS, just make sure for the money you spend you have flexibility. The idea of spend $10,000, or 20,000 or 30,000 dollars for a pre-amp without flexibility just rubs me the wrong way. It would be like buying a Rolls Royce without a steering wheel. And that may happen sooner than we think.

Half the reason for buying a class a motor home is the experience of driving and traveling to your destination. Take the driving experience away and you might as well fly to the destination. Take flexibility away from your sound system and you might as well have a Bose table Radio. YUK!!!

 

[wyn palmer]

I like to listen to symphonic works from row N dead center- which, given the normal comfortable row-row spacing is 3', would place me about 50' from the conductors podium. I believe that is the best position from a stereo image/sound perspective. That means that the losses I hear are about half in dB what you would hear at 100' so the choices that are made as far as a "normal" recording environment are about right. For chamber I like to sit row A or B and slightly to the left of center, so typically I'm less than 20' away from the performer.
My speakers are electrostatics- and I drive them with tube amps so there's a significant output inductance induced loss in response at 20kHz, which combines with the air attenuation.
By the way DG recordings sound a bit off to me in general- and not excessively bright- just flat and unreal. I prefer 1970s era Decca/London over everything almost everything else and I really can't say that there's a single DG recording that I believe is in the same class.
I do use DSP and equalization at the LF and room treatments at the HF, but I've yet to hear a "tone control" (including my own analog PEQ designs) that don't cause significant and undesirable changes in those aspects of the sound that audiophiles hold dear as the frequency response is tweaked.
Hey, it's an imperfect world.

 

[bimasta]

IME many DG recordings are overly bright.

Let's not let Columbia off the hook. Like DGG, they had an amazing stable of artists in the Classical arena, like we'll never see/hear again, and the recordings are often appalling. They were entrusted with musical history during a true golden age, and blew it.

 

[musichal]

I always liked the DG recordings. However, I've never been a frequent concert-goer. I've heard and read this complaint for decades from those who are, and fully believe the criticism. But remain blissfully ignorant in this case, and able to enjoy the music. Of course, I think some of Bruno Walter's mono recordings sound great, too, so what do I know?

 

[tom67]

So we agree on the losses and we also agree that mics used for classical recordings are usually chosen to make up for the loss at the position they are placed. So the mic makes the recording brighter. We get that recording home and if you have flat speakers the over all recording is to bright. How much to bright is the question? Well for sure its 3+ db to bright depending on the choice of the mic element. So if we want the experience of the sound where the mic is located the sound is accurate. But it doesn't represent what you hear at 100 ft, where the 10 kHz level has dropped another 9 db. mean while 1KHZ hasn't dropped do to air absorption. 2khz has almost dropped 2 db. So there is a nice roll off to live. sound. But not in our sound systems today.

Now what comes out of a studio or an intimate recital is a totally different sound , its totally engineered to those involved tastes. I have no fault with that. What happens at live concerts with amplification is a totally different story, too. Here again is all about what the performers and sound engineers have pre determined.

I'm just saying if you want some semblance of faithful sound reproduction, you have to experience live sound in its many facets and then your system should have the flexibility to allow you to adjust the system to give the sound you have learned to love faithfully if you wish in your environment. To do that you have to be able to adjust not only the volume, the balance sometimes, be able to reverse the channels, and to be able to altar the sound spectrum. That means the Pre-amp or integrated amp or what ever control section must have flexibility. Giving up that flexibility is tying your hands, pinning your ears and preventing you from experiencing the best the performance can be.

My issue is most of the buying public that determines choices the recording producer makes don't know what true live sound is, and therefore, what comes out of the studios is not for those of us have experienced true live sound or participated as musicians. But are for those consumers that are duped into loving music that is not natural . When was the last time POP music was trying to produce sound as faithful as possible in the majority of cases. 50's, early 60's? When Peter Nero (Sp?) was popular capturing that piano sound was very important, even when with Roger Williams, and OP, Basie, the piano sound had to be right on. Today, most of the time its electronic keyboards. Sure Diana Krall, and a few other insist the piano sound be close to perfect. But does sound created be as if you were listening in auditorium, no usually as if you were in a small club or almost in your living room. If you prefer the latter, OK. But what if you don't. Lets say you want to take some of the edge off the voice singing or the piano. Need tone controls folks. Or point source speakers with the tweeters turned down a bit. But what happens when you want to listen to a a Michael Murray recording from a large cathedral. There is nothing that point source can do to get the definition you might wish for or the dynamics. So we choose horn loaded, horn hybrids or line arrays to cut down on the room influencing the recording and hope the mics aren't to bright, if they are, tone controls. Its all about flexibility. I don't care if you use a tube pre-amp or SS, just make sure for the money you spend you have flexibility. The idea of spend $10,000, or 20,000 or 30,000 dollars for a pre-amp without flexibility just rubs me the wrong way. It would be like buying a Rolls Royce without a steering wheel. And that may happen sooner than we think.

Half the reason for buying a class a motor home is the experience of driving and traveling to your destination. Take the driving experience away and you might as well fly to the destination. Take flexibility away from your sound system and you might as well have a Bose table Radio. YUK!!!

Actually, very difficult to duplicate live amplified or unamplified music. There are too many variables to discuss. For one thing, at home your side and rear walls are probably 20 feet from your listening position. At a hall, you may be 200ft from reflecting surfaces or in an open air concert, there are no side or rear walls....Probably that's why Yamaha and others give us those sometimes silly sound field settings such as "Roxie Theater and Vienna Hall". I agree with your points completely but just saying that other factors outweigh a 2 DB roll off from microphones...

 

[jazzmans]

IIRC, SPL and light from a flash work the same way. Double the distance and the intensity are reduced by 75 percent.

except from a line source.

 

[E-Stat]

Need tone controls folks... The idea of spend $10,000, or 20,000 or 30,000 dollars for a pre-amp without flexibility just rubs me the wrong way.

Somehow I've managed just fine using preamps sans tone controls since 1974 (H-K Citation Eleven). Don't miss them a bit. Especially those using gaggles of op amps for both active stage and tone controls.

It would be like buying a Rolls Royce without a steering wheel.

No one would ever confuse steering a 5000 lb Roller as a "driving experience". My automotive metaphor would be a Ferrari or Porsche with components using zero feedback class A discrete devices backed by a heroic power supply. My Audio Research preamp (and DAC) meet those performance oriented criteria. No Grey Poupon involved.

My speakers have HF level controls, but rarely if ever adjust them.

 

[E-Stat]

IME many DG recordings are overly bright.

Perhaps that is why I have so few as I abhor overly bright sounding anything. I was mentored favoring EMI, Decca, Philips, Telarc, Everest, Mercury, RCA, Reference Recordings, et. al.