resolution and imaging

Hi resolution is what makes high end,high end! We would all agree that our current rig is more transparent than our earlier rigs. It's about hearing more and more. Resolution in it's most natural form is where it's at.

Some of my favorite recordings are live...

Diana Krall live in Paris
Don Ellis Orch. live Monterey Jazz Fest.
Keith Jarret standards live
Hollywood Bowl live movie music
Judy Garland at Carnegie hall DCC....to name a few

I guess the spatial cues just draw me in....along with the interaction of the crowd...There is just so much more...picked up by the mic.

Shadorne, I partially agree with the notion that more resolution makes it an obvious recording. I agree that you may hear more disagreeable things, but lately I find that even sonically challenged recordings often have certain sonic aspects which are not that disagreeable. With more resolution I seem to be able to hear those less disagreeable things more, my mind focuses on the less disagreeable things, making the recording more palatable and organic. For instance, I like a lot of garage rock, this weekend I was listening to Bubble Puppy, mostly pretty badly compressed with the exception of the vocals. Because the vocals were not compressed I was able to focus my attention here, the vocals made the recording sound palpable in spite of instrumental compression. I would also add, even with the excessive compression, my system seemed to be extracting every last bit of dynamics from this recording, ie. even the compressed instrumentals sounded better than I recall from previous listenings. I would agree that certain sonic deficiencies suffer more from increased resolution, tonal anomalies bother me the most.

while also preserving spacial cues around instruments that make instruments sound denser, rounder, larger and more organic in space

That would be retrieving ambient detail on the recording - a good system will retrieve it and it will not be masked by distortion from the energy of the pprimary sounds (high S/N, low distortion and great dynamic range necessary to get the ambient stuff). This means you hear the "room" around the artists or the "virtual room" that the recording engineer created (through added reverb in teh mix stage and through real effects like voice plates, mike distance to floor, or a concert hall in the case of a live recording etc.)

If you have ever had the odd impression someone moved up to stand close behind you (you did not see them) but were rewarded when you turn around... that is ambient sound - just a person standing in the doorway may be enough to clue your brain that someone is there. We use it all the time. Some people feel sick in an anechoic chamber due to the lack of spatial cues. Without it a recording sounds terrible and anemic.

And now you guys have me thinking about live music. I ask, should live music really be the holy grail of audio experience? Based on my live concert experiences, I would more often choose to hear my audio system over live music. I point to poor sound reinforcement, less than favorable venue acoustics, even poor performance as reasons to favor the in home experience. While I can accept live music as the ultimate musical experience, it more often doesn't live up to it's promise.

Sns, I completely agree with your notion that with progressive refinements to electronics, precise imaging comes together with density and dimensionality. Higher resolution reveals some types of fast transients as pin-points (say plucked strings or spitting at a reed of a wind instrument), while also preserving spacial cues around instruments that make instruments sound denser, rounder, larger and more organic in space. I'm not completely sure whether this effect is additive or substractive-- a really transparent system has the ability to clear the smog around instruments so that fine detail is revealed. Increased resolution is also critical to communicating depth and width of soundstage. People say "the room's the thing", but IMO superior electronics contribute more.

I also agree the more resolution, the less it sounds like a recording

Disagree. The more resolution usually the more obvious it is a recording - you become aware of things like the choice of microphones and the unnatural compressed sound of percussion and overly forward sound of lead guitar and vocalist (most recorded music lacks balance as band members fight to have the engineer drown eachother out - usually they all fight against the drummer to make sure drums can be barely heard). Of course, the all too rare but excellent recordings can certainly fool you into thinking it is real - but not the majority.

Sns,

Thanks for the music tip - here is another - get Rebelution "Courage to Grow" - stellar recording of reggae music.

In my experience the amplifier has a lot to do with all three. Not to leave out the speakers either

Indeed everything plays a roll - source and amplifier too. Room plays a huge roll too - the less cluttered the midrange and treble sound from near reflections or baffle edge diffraction then the more tightly in focus the image will be.

I love Roger Waters but I would hesitate to use "Amused To Death" as a reference disc, no matter how well recorded it may be.

Agreed. It is just an extreme example of spacious sounds versus tightly focused centered vocals. Not a reference but one of many tracks.

All I am saying is that some systems give you a wide expansive sound permanently - nothing ever becomes tightly focussed and shrunk to a point. In essence the tighter and more shrunken the image the sharper and more precise "the lens".

A sharp lens can still throw out a large soundstage IF that is on the recording.

A blurred lens will simply always throw out a large soundstage even if the vocalist is very tightly focussed and shrunk to small size.

These points are worth considering when selecting components. In A/B comparisons of equipment it is often likely that the bigger soundstage is preferred (more musical - more live concert sound - a "bigger" sound - less "Hi-Fi"). However, there is a trap here - one may be simply projecting one's subjective preference for how the recording best sounds. In these A/B's - it is the most tightly focussed equipment that is performing most accurately - no matter how "artificial" or "hi-fi" the particular recording may be - Amused to Death being extremly artifical to the extent of being a novelty or amusement! The point is that anything that tightens up the imaging between the speakers must necessarily be better performance (in accuracy).

Caveat: Collapsing of the soundstage to either one speaker or another or giving the distinct impression that sound is coming from the speakers is BAD and not at all what I mean by tight focussed narrow image between the speakers - speakers should, as they say, "disappear".

Wavetrader, you hit the nail on the head. SET amps and coherent speakers go a long way in presenting these sonic virtues. Not to say other amp designs can't do the trick.

I also agree the more resolution, the less it sounds like a recording, maybe not live, perhaps we could call it palpable and/or organic?

Speaking of live performance and imaging. I have a friend of 30 plus years who owns a sound reinforcement company and does some recording studio engineering. Jimmy was the first audiophile I ever encountered, this back in high school, 1970's. He remains perhaps the most anal retentive audiophile I've ever met, nothing misses his attention. Anyway, he constantly berates the sound reinforcement and recording establishment, poor equipment and poorer technique. The sound of his concerts and recordings is beyond reproach, I hear much more in the way of imaging cues at his live concerts, I suspect most of the live music events most of us attend sound less than stellar.

Jimmy does most of his sound reinforcement these days for reggae artists in the Caribbean, also some periodic jazz dates up here. An example of his work can be found on the Winston Walls with Jack McDuff release, "Boss of the B-3", on Schoolkids Records. This is live recording done at the Ark in Ann Arbor, Mi. and the SerenGeti Ballroom in Detroit. Jimmy does sound from an audiophile's standpoint, ultra rare in the concert and studio business.

Imaging,resolution,transparency at the highest level go hand in hand. In my experience the amplifier has a lot to do with all three. Not to leave out the speakers either. This is what makes me continue to upgrade my system. I look at it this way....does it sound like a recording? If it does(majority) I have room for improvement....if the sound has high levels of the three characteristics mentioned it doesn't sound like a recording. It might not sound live...but in the best reproduction....all that a microphone can absorb I can hear. You can't ask much more than that.

Newbee, I would agree that live symphonic music does not contain many of the imaging cues we get in audio reproduction. However, listen to a small unamplified quartet or grouping, I do hear a lot of the same imaging cues. Still, the point isn't a comparison to live music, rather the resolution/imaging dynamic.

And yes, I agree with you and Tvad, I do think imaging drives many of us in this hobby. I guess this all came to mind as I listened this past weekend to two cds that had a combination of mono and stereo tracks, (some tracks were from the exact same recording session, music was released in mono and stereo, I see this a lot from 60's releases). I just didn't hear as much information on the mono tracks as the stereo tracks. This diffentiation was the greatest I had heard up to this point.

I love Roger Waters but I would hesitate to use "Amused To Death" as a reference disc, no matter how well recorded it may be. Too many unknown recording tricks and processes used. Only someone who was present at the recording and mix down sessions would have a clue as to what it might have sounded like thru the mic feed. Only a minimalsit recording of a band or orchestra playing in the same space at the same time can be used to compare things such as imaging and dimensionality. By the way, live music may or may not be percieved as having imaging depending on where you sit and the acoustic environment your in at the time.

Jax2, my point is not to equate audio reproduction to live music. I'm only pointing out live sound is dimensional as well. The point I want to focus on is the resolution/imaging dynamic. Also, when I speak of live sound, I'm focusing on unamplified live sound, I've been to plenty of concerts that had very little percieved image dimensionality.

Its hard to take issue with your observations as resolution/imaging is a priority for me, especially when the resolution is so fine that you get excellent front to back spaciality. BUT...........

I go to live unamplified performances regularly, and I try when at all possible to sit in the center main floor seats in rows D thru H. Apart from fantastic dynamics which I do hear, what I don't hear is high frequency overload from the strings, great seperation of individual instruments, and the general spaciality effects of a recording. Now I'm sure that if I was on the podium I would hear it differently.

So when folks say they don't need all of the 'imaging' that we prize I can easily understand why. Interestly I lived without it (the appreciation of these reproduction qualities) for years and still enjoyed music thoroughly. Perfhaps even more so then than now.

Lets face it. Excellent imaging is a product of excellent components AND set up, but it is far more the result of fantasy that the stereo recording/reproduction process creates than anything else. And 'imaging' is, IMHO, what drives so much of the interest in Audio as a hobby. And this is exactly what music enthusiasts do not NEED, all of this audio refinement, to get a full measure of what is recorded. Ignorance can be blissful! :-)

Shadorne, yes, you are correct, you do not want an inflated image, that would sound less lifelike. The image could also be asymetrical, relative width, height or depth could be out of synch, those sorts of issues I would describe as phase issues. I am talking about correctly formed images, precision AND spaciousness.

Food for though - inflated dimensionality is not always better - it just means the system has phase issues.

Amused to Death deliberately takes advantage of some very distinctive technology called Qsound to create spatial effects via processing. There are not that many projects recorded using this effect and it is more of a novelty in my opinion. Here's a quote from that wiki:

It is important to distinguish 3D positional processing (example: QSound i.e. the multi-channel QSystem professional processor used in the production of pop music and film audio) from stereo expansion (examples: QSound QXpander, SRS(R)Sound Retrieval System). Positional 3D audio processing is a producer-side technology. It is applied to individual instruments or sound effects, and is therefore only usable at the mixing phase of music and soundtrack production, or under realtime control of game audio mixing software. Stereo expansion (processing of recorded channels and background ambience) is primarily a consumer-side process that can be arbitrarily applied to stereo content in the end-user environment using analog integrated circuits or digital signal processing (DSP) routines.

That said, holographic presentation is very important to me in listening to my system, and is the primary reason I think I prefer SET amps. As far as live music, I think it depends entirely upon the space/venue and the way the music is amplified (if it is). In general, it certainly does exist in that we can hear spatial cues, but many performances I hear live do not occur to me as spatially compelling, for lack of a better descriptor.

Furthermore, I think it's pretty absurd to compare, or rather to base one expectations of a home system upon what live music sounds like. They are two entirely different things and can be enjoyed on different levels and to different degrees. Fundamentally they both present music and connect with us emotionally on that level, but trying to reproduce "live" at home is the proverbial carrot on the stick - it's never going to happen and is a sure way to stay on the merry-go-round of continuing to strive for the impossible (when there is SOOO much to enjoy in what actually IS possible and holographic presentation is part of that).

I do enjoy, Amused to Death, by the way, I just consider it's spatial presentation to be a novelty and I don't think I'd want to hear all my music presented that way.

"Laugh" - I've heard this oversized imaging on a lot of line arrays. It's like Nat King Cole's nose is 3 feet high and 2 feet wide right between the speakers. The sax stands 8 feet tall, etc.

Yes, the spaciousness is precise and the dynamics are great, but in my view the line arrays I've heard belong in a concert hall.

Enjoy,
Bob

must maximize image dimensionality

Well maybe. If it is on the recording sure but a system that maximizes image size or dimensionality on every recording simply lacks precision. The hallmark of precision is razor sharp tight imaging where things fall precisely along a line between the speakers - on recordings mixed that way of course.

As an example, I listened to a system the other day with $16K speakers and as much if not more in ancilliary gear. I listened to track 3 of Amused to Death. The soundstage was incredibly wide - impressive as hell - backgroud vocals coming as if somebody was speaking immediately on your left close to your ear - but, unfortunately, Roger Waters and the female vocalist where NOT centered precisely (as if standing there) - a kind of broad vague supersized female vocalist and broad inflated oversized Roger Waters is what I heard - an image roughly the size of the width of the speakers from the front - hardly convincing but "maximized dimensionality" for sure.

I am sure many of you know this recording - so you can go check your system - does it "inflate" the dimensionality or do you get BOTH the outrageous sound effects (in the left ear) AND the tight small correct sized image of a female vocalist and alternately Roger Waters in front of you.

Food for though - inflated dimensionality is not always better - it just means the system has phase issues. Like a good camera lens - every blemish or defect to the lens and its construction will broaden or blurr an image and lens perfection will make things as sharp and narrowly defined as they can be.