What is accrurate sound?

[Confused]

This is shamelessly linked from Audiophile Style, but I found it to be a very well written article with some fascinating technical detail. 

It is perhaps also worth mentioning that it is written by someone who has an outstanding reputation in the areas of room correction and related topics.

Well worth a read if you have the time:


https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/bits-and-...ound-r923/

EDIT: Has anyone ever heard those Tekton Ultberht speakers that are mentioned and photographed in the article? They look like some kind of marvelous craziness for quite reasonable money …..

https://www.tektondesign.com/ulfberht-pmd-monitor.html

[ogs]

Thanks! Another excellent article from Mitch! The Tekton speakers look strange to me with tweeters and mid-drivers all over the baffle. Shows how easy it is to be fooled by looks and 'narrow' thinking. They probably sound very good.
Are you using HAF filters in your system?

[bernardl]

All the reviews I have read of Tekton speakers describe them as absolutely terrific qualitywise but also an insane bargain.

The competitors of each of their models cost btwn two and 10 times more.

As far as I know they do direct business without any high end dealers in between.

This is probably a key reasons why they are getting less coverage. We all know how the high end niche works.

The day I have more space I’ll most probably with one of their large models.

Cheers’
Bernard

[David A]

@Confused ,

If one man's meat is another man's poison then one man's accurate is another's inaccurate.

I know an audiophile who once told me that he knows what music sounds like and that what it sounds like is what he hears when he goes to a concert in a particular hall and sits in a particular part of that hall. I remember once standing in a very small empty hall used for social gatherings with a friend who played Irish music on a tin flute. He propped up some music on a surface near a wall and played a piece while I stood a few feet away and listened. I then asked him to stand in the middle of the hall and play while I stood a bit further away towards the middle and listened. The sound was distinctly different to what I heard when we were closer to the wall but both sounded like music. It would be ridiculous to suggest that one of those sounds was more accurate than the other or that one sounded like music and the other didn't. The room acoustics certainly changed the sound I heard when we changed locations but it didn't make one more musical than the other, even if one sounded a bit warmer and the other a bit brighter.

Years ago, on a different system than my current system, I once played a recording of a friend to him and asked if he thought the sound I was getting was a good representation of the sound of his clarinet and he said "yes". He didn't say it was perfect and, in any event, I know from my own experience of listening to my guitar while I was playing it and listening to the sound of my guitar while someone else was playing it that the sound musicians associate with their instrument isn't quite the sound as someone in the audience hears that instrument, even allowing for differences in player technique. Overall I took his "yes" as an indication that I was getting "reasonably accurate" sound in some sense of the word "accurate" but what we were hearing would not have been an accurate reproduction of the signal nor of what the recording engineer heard.

Does the term "accurate" really define the goal if a musician can listen to a recording of a performance he made and say it sounds like what he played yet measurements show that the sound reaching his ears when he listened to the recording was different in significant ways to the signal on the recording? I can assure you that room acoustics do affect the sound in significant ways, especially at bass frequencies where room modes can change the amplitude of the sound by many dB producing a result that no one would ever call an accurate reproduction of the signal.

Accuracy sounds as if it offers us an objective standard to assess our systems against but I think in the end it turns out to be just as subjective as any other goal we assess our systems against. I think it's informative that 2 people with differing tastes for the sound their systems deliver can go to a live concert, sit side by side, and at the end share the same opinion about how good or bad the performance was, accept that what they were hearing was the sound of the instruments and voices, separate that sound from the effects of the environment that modified those sounds in significant ways and agree about what those affects were yet if the same 2 people sat down together to listen to a recording, at the end you can find them arguing about whether the piano sounded like a piano or the singer sounded like themself, and ignore the effect of the room on what they heard. Not only are they likely to attribute the good and bad aspects of the sound of the instruments and voices to the system, they may even disagree about whether a particular voice or instrument sounded like that voice or instrument should sound. We obviously don't judge accuracy the same way when listening to a live performance as we do when listening to a recording and that tells me that there's a lot less objectivity to our concept of accuracy than many like to believe.

[bernardl]

Very true David!

Cheers,
Bernard

[Confused]

@ogs  - no I am not using HAF filters.  For some reason as much as I tried various different filters, different tweaks for overall tonality etc, I never reached a point where I preferred the HAF filters over running the system in "purist mode".  I do see it as unfinished business though, plus last year I discovered something rather curious.  When I was performing the REW measurements for the HAF filters, I used REW to produce a pair of left / right frequency sweeps.  These I played in Roon so I could stream through my normal SOtM / Mutec kit.  The curious thing is that I used these two left right sweeps at some time last year, at which point I noticed that for some reason the right sweep is at a slightly lower dB level than the left sweep.  I created the two frequency sweeps at the same time, one after the other, changing no settings.  So why the level between the sweeps is different baffles me, it remains a mystery.  So yes I tried HAF filters, but clearly what i was trying was not quite right, although my big issue was that the bass seamed less dynamic to me, never quite as satisfyingly as the bass in "raw mode", which I suspect is one aspect not influenced that much by the sweep imbalance, but who knows, I guess it certainly cannot help.  As much as the HAF filters are impressive, I always feel that using any form of DSP takes something away from the performance.  Subsequent to trying the HAF filters I have changed the room at little, relocated the rack and changed the speaker positions slightly, so my old HAF filters are definitely wrong now for at least two reasons.

If I was to try room correction again, I think I would want to try something like the MiniDSP SHD Studio.  The reason for this is that I could set it up, then experiment with different settings and house curves etc, and have full control over everything, maybe then I might get results that I like. 

That said, I am actually very happy with my system as it is, so I have no strong desire for Room correction to fix anything. 

In other news, I have just set up a new rack, and have performed a rather crude but curiously effective experiment with room treatment.  When I get some time I will update my system thread, there is a fun story behind the rack and the room treatment thing.  From where I am now, I will be doing something with room treatment before I start playing with room correction again.

@David A - I agree with almost everything you have written above.  It reminds me of visiting a Hifi show once, in one room I heard someone saying how these were his "dream speakers", he was in the room when I arrived and still there when I left.  Whist I was listening, someone sat next to me for about one minute, exclaimed "never liked these things, treble to slice your bloody head off", then left shaking his head. (which had not been actually been sliced off by treble)  So yes, each to his own.  I would add one point, in Mitch's article he does talk about personal preferences with tonality and target curves, so it actually looks that in terms of one man's "accurate" being anther man's "not quite right" it seems even "accurate sound" Mitch agrees with you.

@bernardl - I will be honest, I had never even heard of Tekton speakers until reading the above linked article.  I would love to hear a pair, but as they have no dealers and as far as I am aware have never exhibited at a UK show, it looks likely this will never happen.

[ogs]

@Confused
the SHD Studio has been on my 'radar' for a long time. If it weren't for my time invested in Audiolense over many years I'd probably own one already. Another DC member @supaDean is using a SHD Studio with Reactors. I have been thinking of Reactor Customs with an AES/EBU input. Would make a very neat setup! RAAT, PEQ and room correction in one unit... My current speakers are nice and exceptionally cheap, but I have a feeling Reactors could be a much better match for my taste. Then there is the Mutec reclocker. I might get even better results with Roon, Audiolense. Mutec and Reactors. Time will tell...