What can you hear?

L

Lossless

Super Member
I have recently purchased a ZOOM iQ7 stereo microphone for recording YouTube videos of my audio setup. I’m aware of the YouTube compression of audio, but this stereo video should give a fairly good audio representation. The audio in the video is recorded on my iPhone 7 as a WAV file via ZOOM iQ7 mic. The receiver Fisher RS-Z1 is in source direct mode bypassing any filter or tone controls. Speakers are Bowers&Wilkins DM640i. Any recommendations welcome, recording volume, microphone choice, room treatment , speaker placement, etc.

Recorded from 24bit/192kHz Hi-Res, ZOOM iQ7 microphone, Take 1

The 2L~ Britten simple Symphony official YouTube video
2L ZooM iQ7 take 2 4k video

2L Zoom iQ7 take 3
 
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Sounds pretty decent on my HK430. Highs are clean and transparent. Midrange a bit on the hot side. Some of the violins are almost overpowering. Bottom needed about a 2db boost to bring out the timbre of the violas and bass. I like your speakers.
 
Here is a female vocal:
Kacey Muskgrave~Butterflies 24bit/96kHz
Official YouTube video.

Official YouTube video

I’m still undecided on recording quality of the ZOOM iQ7 iPhone microphone. Has anyone had any experience with it?

OMG, I’m now realizing how much YouTube really really compresses the audio.:no: My recording attempts may be in vain using my present recording equipment.

Why does Kacey Muskgrave sound like she’s singing into a tin can, nasal? It doesn’t sound like that when playing the original track live. Am I doing something wrong with microphone settings? Does the $99 ZOOM iQ7 microphone just suck?
B07DADEB-05EE-49D9-896E-431351A29659.jpeg
 
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Rog Beltmann said:
Sounds pretty decent on my HK430. Highs are clean and transparent. Midrange a bit on the hot side. Some of the violins are almost overpowering. Bottom needed about a 2db boost to bring out the timbre of the violas and bass. I like your speakers.
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Very good ear...I think I must be somewhat tone deaf. I’ve been told that I seem to like my treble boosted. That probably explains my preference for hot midranges and the overpowering violins . Totally agree with the 2dB bottom end boost. I actually put my speakers on stands to tame some of the bass in an attempt to give my adjacent neighbors a little relief.:thumbsup:
 
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Lossless said:
I’m still undecided on recording quality of the ZOOM iQ7 iPhone microphone. Has anyone had any experience with it?

OMG, I’m now realizing how much YouTube really really compresses the audio.:no: My recording attempts may be in vain using my present recording equipment.

Why does Kacey Muskgrave sound like she’s singing into a tin can, nasal? It doesn’t sound like that when playing the original track live. Am I doing something wrong with microphone settings? Does the $99 ZOOM iQ7 microphone just suck?
View attachment 1529525
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So, you put a microphone into a room full of room nodes, since it's not a recording studio with sound treatments and not near field recording setup and expect us to hear what you think you hear?! Just move the mic 2 inches to the left or right and catch a totally different node where the nasal sounding singer sounds than raspy or such. Your mic records an interpretation of you system into a room that changes that interpretation through an uncalibrated microphone into an even so uncalibrated phone. What do you expect?!
 
E-Stat said:
The phone captured what can be.
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I would expect to get something similar to what I'm hearing, but I'm capturing exaggerated highs and nasal sounding vocals. :dunno: This characteristic nasal sound seems to be present in 99% of recorded home audio systems on YouTube. I can understand the room nodes explanation, but I do have room treatments making my listening area somewhat neutral, close to dead sounding. I'm determined to closely replicate what I hear coming from the speakers, which may take me the rest of my life at this rate.:idea:

Rog Beltmann pretty much nailed it with my first video’s extremely bright sonic shortcomings with his initial reply and I’ve worked on it from there.

Edit: If nothing else; It’s a fun exercise, considering what I’m working with, comparing my speaker output to the YouTube video audio. It also gives me a better idea of what I need to improve on.:music:
 
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Lossless said:
I would expect to get something similar to what I'm hearing, but I'm capturing exaggerated highs and nasal sounding vocals. :dunno: This characteristic nasal sound seems to be present in 99% of recorded home audio systems on YouTube. I can understand the room nodes explanation, but I do have room treatments making my listening area somewhat neutral, close to dead sounding. I'm determined to closely replicate what I hear coming from the speakers, which may take me the rest of my life at this rate.:idea:

Rog Beltmann pretty much nailed it with my first video’s extremely bright sonic shortcomings with his initial reply and I’ve worked on it from there.

Edit: If nothing else; It’s a fun exercise, considering what I’m working with, comparing my speaker output to the YouTube video audio. It also gives me a better idea of what I need to improve on.:music:
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It is nothing else than a fruitless exercise. Through what are you doing your monitoring? Are you playing your recording on the same system back you recorded it from? In that case you exaggerate also the characteristic of you playback system twice. First when you play it to record and than when you play back the recording. Just do that over and over and you will find it gets worse with every iterwtion. Additionally YouTube cuts off everything above 16khz with their codec, that in addition to the loss during your recording (MP3 or whatever codec you use) brings out any little issue your system and your recording chain has. All what you do is adding one failure or inaccuracy on another.
The nasal characteristic is in your system already happening when you play the original, you just don't recognize it since your ears and brain are trained to your system. Your brain also adjusts to room nodes that way (like it helps you with your white balance in your vision under changing light conditions due to experience as a different example of what a brain can do). If that wouldn't happen, you would puke every time you hear a song on a little transistor radio due to the bad quality of that particular reproduction. Nothing else :-) Sound engineering has that in their courses of study as a lesson.
 
darg said:
It is nothing else than a fruitless exercise. Through what are you doing your monitoring? Are you playing your recording on the same system back you recorded it from? In that case you exaggerate also the characteristic of you playback system twice. First when you play it to record and than when you play back the recording. Just do that over and over and you will find it gets worse with every iterwtion. Additionally YouTube cuts off everything above 16khz with their codec, that in addition to the loss during your recording (MP3 or whatever codec you use) brings out any little issue your system and your recording chain has. All what you do is adding one failure or inaccuracy on another.
The nasal characteristic is in your system already happening when you play the original, you just don't recognize it since your ears and brain are trained to your system. Your brain also adjusts to room nodes that way (like it helps you with your white balance in your vision under changing light conditions due to experience as a different example of what a brain can do). If that wouldn't happen, you would puke every time you hear a song on a little transistor radio due to the bad quality of that particular reproduction. Nothing else :) Sound engineering has that in their courses of study as a lesson.
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My source is 24bit/192kHz FLAC from steaming Hi-Res. The YouTube 2L video is their official lossy AAC or MP3 low bit rate video. I’m not hearing the nasal sound when playing the 24bit/192kHz hi-res streaming live, only when captured on the Zoom iQ7 microphone. I totally understand your white balance analogy, but I think it is the $99 Zoom iQ7 microphone and or the phones video software.

I’m fully aware that I’ll never ever be able to reproduce the dynamics and subtle nuances of a hi-res file with a cheap microphone and loudspeakers. I only wish to create a similar lossy MP3 quality audio representation of my system, less the nasal sound and subdued bass. I feel a 126kbps lossy AAC quality playback file would be sufficient enough to represent my budget Hi-Fi setup that would be outputting 24/192kHz streaming audio from it's speakers.

This is the first time experimenting with lossy YouTube sound playback, capturing a hi-res file. I feel with a better recording method/equipment I may be able to closely reproduce what I’m hearing live from my system even though YouTube down samples and compresses the the final outcome. The most obvious sonic difference that I can perceive has been in the upper midrange and bass roll off. My only real variable has been the gain adjustment on the Zoom iQ7 microphone.
 
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I just now compared the professional recorded vid with the mic. Yeah I think that mic does a great job. In studio recordings, everybody has their mic a few inches from their voice, some instruments may be plugged directly into a recording device. So you're going to get that clean sound presence with professional recordings. Holding any mic up several feet from speakers will pick up the acoustics of the room. I'd guess the best mics would create a similar recording from the distance you were in the vid from your speakers. That mic would be designed for interviews, concerts, nature recordings, things like that I assume. My 83 year old dad couldn't figure out why his headphones sound better than his relatively small speakers in the room they are in that is the size of a church. The room's too big, the sound gets lost, I just couldn't get him to understand it. Do those mics swivle?
 
scoloheros said:
I just now compared the professional recorded vid with the mic. Yeah I think that mic does a great job. In studio recordings, everybody has their mic a few inches from their voice, some instruments may be plugged directly into a recording device. So you're going to get that clean sound presence with professional recordings. Holding any mic up several feet from speakers will pick up the acoustics of the room. I'd guess the best mics would create a similar recording from the distance you were in the vid from your speakers. That mic would be designed for interviews, concerts, nature recordings, things like that I assume.
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Well that is good to hear that my small microphone investment and iPhone recording efforts are not all in vain.:thumbsup:

I like watching videos of other peoples Hi-Fi. Usually you only hear people in forums explain how great their system sounds, but you’ll probably never get a chance to actually hear it. This is a single “show and hear” thread on AK with a few videos, but nothing near to the amount of active AK members. The usual explanation is that a lossy YouTube video and microphone could never accurately reproduce their system’s superior sonic abilities.:blah:

And yes the mics do swivel 180 degrees vertically and horizontally.
 
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Lossless said:
Well that is good to hear that my small microphone investment and iPhone recording efforts are not all in vain.:thumbsup:

I like watching videos of other peoples Hi-Fi. Usually you only hear people in forums explain how great their system sounds, but you’ll probably never get a chance to actually hear it. This is a single “show and hear” thread on AK with a few videos, but nothing near to the amount of active AK members. The usual explanation is that a lossy YouTube video and microphone could never accurately reproduce their system’s superior sonic abilities.:blah:

And yes the mics do swivel 180 degrees vertically and horizontally.
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Because you started this thread I have to now horn my way in and ask the same of at least one of my recordings. Mine is through the mic of a cheap phone. A Samsung Luna J3 to be exact. I just yesterday tried doing a video with my new to me Canon EOS Rebel T5, thinking it would probably have better sound quality. It was FAR worse. I've also used a very cheap, but calibrated mic, from Parts Express. The Dayton iMM-6. That sounded different, but not noticeable better, than the phone mic. And the thing is, perhaps they are being nice, but people have told me the sound from these videos is pretty good. Of course, now I have my doubts... I was under no delusion that they were anything like the sound of the original, or even the sound of my actual speakers and room. I'm aware of the YT compression layered on top of whatever my phone is doing with it's compression.
And this is the best version of the original song I could find on YT,
 
It sounds fine for what it is -- a phone recording a stereo system.

Every recording is limited by the worst component in the audio chain. It's hard to say what the worst component is here. Is it the microphone? The microphone placement? The room (as a recording space; I'm sure it's fine for listening)? Or the ADC (Analog to Digital Converter) in the phone or microphone?

Even with excellent recording gear and space and careful microphone placement, you're still getting a second-hand listen to the original gear; like looking at a photograph of the Mona Lisa rather than seeing the real thing. At best, it gives you an approximation what the recorded system sounds like, but to truly appreciate it, you need to be there.
 
With these still images the video transcoding is trivial - one "I" frame, basically. So I don't see any incentive for YouTube to mash the hell out of the audio, which is typically a very small part of the stream. Try playing around with Audacity.
 
Lossless said:
I would expect to get something similar to what I'm hearing, but I'm capturing exaggerated highs and nasal sounding vocals.
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You may be aware that I've participated in Glenn's "Speaker Video" post with both the main and garage systems using an iPhone 8. I don't find any overt coloration with my results. In the garage video, you can clearly hear the lower midrange shift as I walk into the garage from the drive. The old Advents are not entirely neutral in the midrange, but are rendered pretty much as I hear them.

Lossless said:
If nothing else; It’s a fun exercise, considering what I’m working with, comparing my speaker output to the YouTube video audio.
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It is a fun exercise. Having heard dozens of videos in the the speaker video post, I find you can draw some conclusions about tonal balance and speaker directivity (when the camera is moving about). I won't pick on the specifics, but one sounded like there was a sock over the drivers. I believe that AKer ended up replacing those speakers. Perhaps as you say, hearing the videos of others might have helped him realize that. :)
 
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Midrange push with over emphasis of upper bass, and no bottom end. The area around 500 to 1600 is to strong and where is the top two octaves? Kind of like listening to a Altec A7 placed in the middle of a room.
 
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