Solving the "complex music problem"?

Thanks ghdprentice for letting me know how to post photos. The virtual system page is just showing an error message now. but when it's working I'll post the photo.

OP, put your photos under your UserID in virtual systems. It is easy to do and we will be able to see them. The link you posted does not work.

6 feet from the front wall? Ridiculous...just put the speakers outside in a field away from trees, or put bass traps on the trees. Or...don't fear the "room sound" as most (all?) music is played in rooms...it makes things sound...dare I say...REAL?

6 feet from the front of the speakers is not very far. I want to sound of the room used for the recording or some simulation of. I don't want the sound of my room multiplied by that rooms sound. That is where the confusion comes in.

6 feet from the front wall? Ridiculous...just put the speakers outside in a field away from trees, or put bass traps on the trees. Or...don't fear the "room sound" as most (all?) music is played in rooms...it makes things sound...dare I say...REAL? Did I say that already? Don't fall into the "bass trap" trap...it's a cabal or a conspiracy by those who want to control your low end...let freedom ring and reflect and bounce off the walls. Adjust the bass a little here and there maybe, I can live with that.

@ahuvia 

Your picture link does not work.

The NAD M10 is likely not your weak link. Your speakers 20" from the front wall probably is.  Can you get the front of the speaker at least 6 feet from the front wall?  If not, keep the M10, and invest in some broadband bass trap panels for behind the speakers. That will do more than upgrading the M10.

How far are the speakers from the side wall?

Hi, this is the OP again,

Not sure if people are still following this. It’s been a great conversation. Here’s a happy update.

At the suggestions of many, many people, I’ve been playing around with room positioning and set up more. It has made a huge difference. Just sat here blissed out listening for the past hour. My system does sound a lot better now. I’ve also realized that a certain amount of blurring is a natural part of a lot of music, and I’d do better changing my expectations rather than trying to "fix" the "problem" so it goes away completely (although too much blurring is still a problem).

That said, this thread wasn’t really intended to be about my system. I was curious about this general phenomenon that I’ve heard on many systems. I was curious about what the best way to minimize the issue. I got a lot of great advice on that here.

Some people are curious about my system. I stream Qobuz through a NAD M10 and play that through Focal Aria 948s. When I’ve got some spending money, the weak link in my system is clearly the M10, which is an amazing piece of equipment for the money but doesn’t fully exploit the speakers’ capabilities.

I’ve tried to upload a picture of my room without luck. I’ve pasted a link to a photo below. The speakers are about 20 inches from the wall, 9 feet from each other, and 11 feet from me. I’ve got them toed in more now than before, which helps a lot.

Thanks again for all your input.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipMeoUz0OSCuchK7tqI7YCj7OrxEfmvEi6_QGhdm

Some good responses here.

I agree with one commenter: room reflections matter. To cut down, try listening at a distance equal to the distance between the speakers, or just outside of it, so that the distances between you and any walls are increased relative to the distance between you and the speakers.

My speakers are 9 ft apart. They are 3 ft from the walls. I sit 9 ft away. I’m 7.5 ft from the walls left/right, and 10 ft from the rear wall.

Such an arrangement increases the difference in distance between direct and reflected sound, but the volume of the direct sound should overcome the reflected.

Dunno if this is bs or not, but hey it works for me. It helps that my entire ceiling and almost all of my walls are rockwool covered with burlap. Rugs help  I have a semi anechoic room.

Your amps must also be powerful enough that when you hit the crescendos, they can handle it easily. 

Complex musical passages can be a challenge for some systems and environments. To succeed with such music:

1: Your system must not be "power" starved. It needs gobs of power adequate to control the requirements of the particular speakers in use.

2: Your listening room can greatly influence what you hear. It should be fairly dead sounding, floors and ceiling. And room "modes" reasonable.

3:Your speakers should not be very "resonant" allowing speaker cabinet vibrations to muddy the sound.

Those are the top 3 in my experience.  I will add that IM distortion in an amplifier is notorious for muddying the sound of a system.  Make sure to use an amp with low IM distorion.

+1 on @subsystemtechnology ’s first post. Also +1 on displaying your system.

I have been on a buying spree getting concert bluerays and dvd's at local thrift shops for peanuts as streamers are clearing out their closets. Live recordings in 5.1 dolby or DTS, played from physical media, not streamed, and upmixed into 9.2.2 surround blow away any type of traditional CD or stereo mix. It seems the recording and production for these live concert discs are excellent. Check out your local thrift stores and get them if you have a home theater for playback.

ahuvia - we converge - nice with a thread that actually brings agreement. The recording (and production) sure means a lot.

A quite simple but important factor is playback volume. I can remember from way back when, turning down the volume on hard-sounding complex passages and then up again on more quiet passages, with a variety of playback systems and rooms from the 70s onwards. Not really a solution, but a quick-fix that made the album more listenable.

I also agree regarding the big role of the amp. Also connected to volume. Most amps have a 'volume window' where they sound best, above 'dull' and below 'hard'.  When the speakers match this window (some would even say; the optimal volume setting), there are sonic rewards.

@alexberger +1, a good amp can make mediocre speakers sound totally better, so you don't even recognize them.

Great speakers with a cheesy amp is hopeless.

IMHO for complex music good musical instruments and voices separation the most important component is amplifier.

Speakers and source are important too. But you can have a great CD player or vinyl setup and great speakers, good room acoustic and mediocre amplifier will make complex music sound congested. On another hand great amplifier with just decent speakers and source gives good complex music separation and such system will sound much better in general vs system described before.

My feeling as well.  I may have opinions about pin point imaging, but frankly it is nowhere near the top of my list of prioritizes when listening.  Most of my listening is done outside the sweet spot.  I focus more on tonal issues and rhythmic coherence.  In fact, as fun as imaging can be when in the mood for ear candy, I find it can be a distraction from other things that are more important to me.  

I use horn speakers pointed right at my earballs when I'm in my "sweet spot" chair and really only the bass is reflecting off of anything, but that's what bass does. I adjust the subs if they get too much or too little...rarely. Then if I sit elsewhere in the tall ceilinged largish room it sounds like great music is being played by musicians in that end of the room, and everything can be heard. Everything. If your system doesn't do that, well, I don't care. I don't even know you...get away from me...grumpy old man alert!

@subsystemtechnology , congrats on your first post and welcome to the forum. I agree with you 100%. When you have time could you post your system in your profile? Always interesting to compare. thx.

Room acoustics, Room acoustics, and again Room acoustics is the element that is most neglected in the home Hi-Fi environment.

Same system in acoustically treated room, and the very same room that you remove acoustical elements sounds way, way different.

Instantly you will put back your acoustical elements back no matter how ugly/nice looking they are.

Today you can find on internet tube bass trap units that are not ugly and dark as they where before, but they are more like room effective decorative element in wide range of colors and shapes that can fit in any space, and of course to satisfied woman's perspective.

To me, it is a combination of things. I call it congestion. Where it loses its direct, immediate quality of conveying the sound of an instrument and begins to sound like a recording playing at you. Some people opt for more analytical systems to deal with this-I’m not sure that’s a good answer.

I’ve found that as my current system (circa 2006 or so) improved, so did the ability to separate out instruments and not get the impression of a congealed, congested presentation.

I also think it has to do with the recording and mastering. I’m not a fan of "audiophile" recordings for sake of sonics, but instead, chase stuff that is interesting to me-- that often involves a search and sometimes, the OG is it; the recording has been reissued by not from the master tape or even a safety.

For later records, it is less of a problem but still an issue regarding quality of pressing and mastering. I try and stick with OG records, but have various remasters of some things. I was shocked by how good an old Delmark OG was compared to the Chad recut. Buddy Guy with Junior. Finding an unmolested mono or stereo from back in the day is nigh on impossible, so we settle for Chad’s recut, which is very good.

But we lose something in the process. That’s why there is so much variation in SQ among records, even those purportedly cut from the tape.

@frogman

Great and insightful comments.

Not related. But I have an album that the cover notes extolling the magnificence of the recording capturing the ambiance of the venue… I was excited… put it on the turn tablet… no ambiance… no venue sonics. Then on the back cover, diagrams of how they clustered instruments and put plexiglass partitions to isolate their sounds and mic them separately. OMG… the recording was dead… no venue.

Then there was this recording of a solo violinist… famous guy. The entire back cover talking about the incredible sweet wonderful sound of his playing. My immediate first impression was that is a description of the sound of a Stradivarius. I have had the privilege of hearing several. No where on the album did it say the instrument he played. I went and research it… he played a Stradivarius loaned to him until he stopped playing. The sound was not his virtuosity, but the instrument he was playing. He is a great violinist… but every comment was about his instrument and not his playing.

My point? Hmm, not sure… but learning about sound… and music you realize you can discover amazing depth and understanding. If you attend real (acoustic) concerts and make really good choices in high end audio you can experience and understand the real world of music.

Some people know what an aphorism is, others coach football.

Big difference.

You are listening to a great orchestral performance recorded in a great hall on a well balanced system. Think London Symphony in Kingsway Hall recorded by Kenneth Wilkinson for Decca. There is a passage in the score for solo piccolo. One hears within the soundstage a perfectly placed image of the piccolo with natural timbre and no placement waver. One can literally point to the image of the piccolo within the soundstage and say “There it is!”. Even as the piccolo ascends into its highest register natural tone is preserved with no high frequency splash making the piccolo sound the size of a tuba. Beautiful! “Actual” pin point imaging.

Then there is another passage where the piccolo is playing a unison passage with clarinets and xylophone creating a unique, even odd textural blend. The piccolo sounds as it should, blended and as part of the instrumental “mix”. Much harder to isolate it within the soundstage. Play this recording back on a system with speakers  (or, whatever) which have an accentuation (distortion) at say 2000-3000 Hertz. If the piccolo is playing in that range (not uncommon) the sound of that instrumental mix will lose the sense of blend and the sound of the piccolo will be accentuated as well. It becomes more isolated within the soundstage. “Illusion” of pin point imaging.

“Perception?”, yes. “Reality?”, no way.

What's the difference between the "illusion of pinpoint imaging" and actual pinpoint imaging?

No difference, perception is reality.

What's the difference between the "illusion of pinpoint imaging" and actual pinpoint imaging? Isn't all playback on any device an illusion? Are there tiny musicians trapped in some amplifiers? These are important questions...or the illusion of important questions.

Hi, this is the OP,

So many helpful and interesting comments here. I can't reply to everyone, but I can thank everyone. What a great community. You've definitely given me a lot to think about.

To the many people here (and elsewhere) you've given me pointers on positioning my speakers, thanks. I've moved them further from the wall, helped immediately, and I thought I was being careful about that. I've also been playing around with how much to turn them in towards the center. 

Thanks to everyone who said they've noticed the same thing and that at audio stores they always play simple music to make the rig sound best. IMHO if the music is simple enough, with a little reverb, even vary entry level systems sound terrific. It's when the music gets more complex that the better systems make the most difference.  It's always been surprising to me that there wasn't much talk about this. Nice to know I'm not imagining it. I now think that a lot of the reason people don't talk about it is that they normally place music from smaller ensembles, so it isn't that big of an issue for them.

dcoffee makes a good argument for why my theory of why the problem occurs may be wrong. I'm 3/4 convinced, but still not sure. As a Bayesian would say, you've caused me to significantly rethink my prior assumptions. 
jeffseight, on the other hand agrees with my original thinking and puts it very well. "If you consider that in symphonic music live you hear each instrument  however in a two channel stereo you hear only on instrument ,the driver, it seem obvious that the two can not compete." If any readers, say, design stereos for a living and definitively know the answer to this, I'd be very curios to hear it. 

Varidian notes that live music has this issue also. You're right. My rethinking was greatly influenced by the fantastic concert I attended last night in Ann Arbors' "acoustically perfect" Hill Aud with an excellent sound system. It was a music festival with a bunch of different groups, so I got to hear a lot of different styles. The sound was amazing. But when I listened and thought about this particular issue, I realized that the sound was "mushing all together" there, almost as much as it does at home. So, to a significant extent, that's just what happens when a whole lot of sonic vibrations share the same air. This insight has helped me lower my expectations in this regard, which helps. 

Many people say the biggest issue is the source. Totally agree. I was streaming HD music from Amazon and the complex music problem was a big issue. Then I switched to Qobuz and the improvement was immense. IMHO the single biggest difference maker in audio is the quality of the recording itself. That said, even with great recordings I've still noticed that complex music presents problems. 

Thanks again for all your thoughts!

That's more clear @frogman , thank you. I think that is a common outcome in setups. People say what they did, then claim to have way better imaging but what they did can't do anything but the opposite.

Actually, to be more precise.  The fault CAN be at playback, @thespeakerdude.  Some gear accentuates (distorts) high frequency information which may give the illusion of more pin point imaging.  Other gear (also) does a poor job of resolving very low level information which is where the sense of “blend” is manifested.  That was my point: be careful in the pursuit of more separation and pin point imaging. It can be a rabbit hole and not have much to do with reality, 

That goes without saying.  With a few variations, the seating of musicians in an orchestra is fairly standard and that is what recording engineers have to work with. As far as the hall goes, good conductors, musicians and hopefully the recording engineers themselves have to understand a hall’s tendencies and make the appropriate adjustments.  More times than not, IMO, fault (if it’s there) can be placed on the engineers and the overly aggressive or faulty use of spot or close micing.

@frogman ,

It's not just the composer, or the conductor, it's also the placement of the musicians and the hall and how it is recorded. 

If you can pinpoint two musicians in a piece where that is not the intention then the flaw isn't at playback but the setup of the performance, the hall, and the recording.  You can't extract what isn't there.

As always with discussions such as this, it’s difficult to know exactly what the poster is trying to convey. “Less”, “more”, “not enough”, “too much” are usually relative characterizations based on personal taste and sonic goals for one’s system. Not meaning to dismiss the possibility that there may be a real deficiency in the OP’s system, one listener’s pin point imaging can be another listener’s, as @viridian points out, a sonic “parlor trick”.

In the case of Classical orchestral music I think it’s important to remember a couple of things. While we may find thrilling the kind of pin point imaging of individual instruments in an orchestra that the OP feels is lacking in his system and that some systems seem to provide, this is not what is typically heard in even the best concert halls. Sure, sitting front row center is as close to the often mentioned “conductor’s perspective” as the listener can get. However, keep in mind that the “conductor’s perspective” is not what the composer him/her self intended for the listener (live or at home) to fully convey the musical message. Composers (and good conductors) understand and exploit the fact that instrumental sounds blend in specific ways and they compose and choose instrumental combinations accordingly.  For example, a melodic line may be composed and assigned to be played by a cello and a bass clarinet in unison because of the specific way that those two instruments blend and create a particular texture. If the recording and/or its playback separates those two instruments with the coveted pin point imaging then one doesn’t hear the desired sonic texture and the musical intent is diminished. There are many similar examples in a complex orchestral work.

@ghdprentice ”Among the many reasons great classical composers remain popular is the skill they exhibit at all levels of using an orchestra to create incredible sonic experiences.”

Exactly! IOW, as concerns the topic of the thread, be careful what you wish for.

I agree with many points in this thread - how to improve the playback system, and not least, the integration with the room. Yet I think many problems of ’complex music’ are inherent in the recording. You can reduce them in the playback but they don’t go away.

I would rather think of the problem like this:

recording problems x format limits x playback limits

Meaning that whatever problem is there in the recording, will be accenuated with a poor format and playback system (even if ’masked’ by low resolution etc).

We could use + rather than x, in this formula. But in my experience, the problems tend to interact. So if the recording is medium but the format and playback poor, they will appear larger. The sound will be even worse.

Maybe we should put x2 for the recording factor. It means a lot. With high dynamic and complex music, recording can become very difficult. Witness, from way back when, Procol Harum: In Concert With The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, a pioneer effort from 1972. And we still hear recording problems, e g when The National plus guests try to redo the grand Grateful Dead song Terrapin Station, sounding noticeably worse than most of the more simple tracks on this Day of the dead 10xLP box, 2016.

Why? Recording a lot of instruments and voices together, each sounding their best, is hard to do. Integrating them into coherent sound is difficult. A notable "problem area", just mentioned, is integrating a band and a symphony orchestra, pioneered by prog rock bands like Procol Harum, Deep Purple and Pink Floyd. The best recordings succeeded, like Dark Side of the Moon, but then again, this was due to heavy production - we dont hear a lot of individual players.

My best-sounding recent LPs are less complex music. Like Bhatt and Cooder: A meeting by the river. Two string instruments. Or piano and voice, like D Krall or P Barber. My less-complex music sounds great, the problem is the complex music.

For a problem case, compare the Danish group Mew. I like them a lot, and have heard them live, plus on cd, and on lp. They switch from soft (simple) to strong (complex) passages, and the sound is clearly better on the soft parts. We heard the same thing from Mew live, some years ago. The sound on the strong parts was too loud. (cf Mew: No more stories... LP 2009)

@ahuvia

Looking only at the speaker, what you are describing is intermodulation distortion. It’s intermodulation distortion in components too, but unless you have poor or poorly set up vinyl (or listening to inner groove songs) , or highly distorting tube gear the rest of your component aren’t contributing much to this (always rare exceptions).

The rest of the issue and probably dominant is your speakers and room as a system. Too strong of first reflections off walls, floor and ceiling, too much back wall reflection energy, front was reinforcement and suckout, and reverberation in general. *Add in that all these reflections in combination with the speaker dispersion can have vastly different effect depending on frequency. That’s why some component changes can appear to help the problem by changing tonal balance but at that point you are painting the pig.*

What can you do?

• Get your speakers away from walls if you can
• Toe the speakers more in towards the listening position
• Treat the first reflections points and front and back walls
• Fix bass nodes issues
• Use advanced room correction
• Use speakers with better (and consistent) directivity control. Speakers with waveguides, well designed horns, etc. Floor to ceiling line sources can be good too but can introduce new problems if you don’t implement properly.

Multichannel has advantages as the direct sound will be louder in the intended direction towards your ears, but you still need to address the room. It is not a magic bullet.

I like air or vacuum capacitors, electrostatic speakers, air bearings in 3D, and Koetsu’s. None of these are cheap, and some are DIY only. But each makes its contribution, as does the room.

Digital literally gives me pain. YMMV

@wolf_garcia ..”Wanna hear the result of "room acoustics?" Go listen to a live symphony. A good system in any reasonable room (with a good recording) can easily reproduce either a solo instrument OR a symphony brilliantly, they’ve been able to do that for decades.”

+1. Very important .

I have been attending a live symphony for ten years religiously. It changed the direction of my audio system upgrades completely.

I have spend time simply listening to the ambiance… the reflections from walls and ceiling. Also, individual instruments, then as they are used en mass… purposefully to create a wall of undifferentiatable sound. Sometimes starting on the stage right with the basses, violas and cellos and migrating to stage left causing a cascading wave of sound roaring across the auditorium. This sounds like a tube of a crashing wave.

Among the many reasons great classical composers remain popular is the skill they exhibit at all levels of using an orchestra to create incredible sonic experiences. Also, allowing conductors to mold the pieces into different experiences.

One of the most fundamental tools is the individual instrument versus the massed undifferentiated sound wave… the character of this sound wave they control in the amount of bass, midrange, treble and location. Symphonic orchestras are among the most amazing and complex creation of man.

What @kota1 said ✅️

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@joshua43214

The critical bandwidth in a 2 way speaker almost always contains the crossover point.

Complex music can benefit from active speakers by:

1) Placing the crossover right before the amp giving the amp more control. In complex music with high level dynamics lack of control can smear the music:

In a passive crossover all that speaker wire is a choke point, do you think they get the best speaker wire or the cheapest for a crossover?

Many active speakers (including my own) are biamped or triamped with each amp chosen by the speaker designer for that particular driver. This makes the presentation exceptionally clear and articulate. You know how much clean articulate amps cost right? This is a budget friendly strategy to get a clear and articulate signal for the cost of that amp/speaker system:

@kota1 

Not sure how that solves anything.

Powered speakers have the same issues as passives.

Active crossovers are another animal entirely, I expect there are very few option for a powered speaker with an active crossover, and even fewer that would be considered good.

Unless you mean DSP, then that does not solve the issue of the room in this context let alone crossover points.

@joshua43214 

or powered speakers with an active crossover

I agree about room acoustics, what you hear is mostly the room.

That said, the next major issue is 2 way low sensitivity speakers. No matter how good the room is, it is limited to what the speakers produce.
The critical bandwidth in a 2 way speaker almost always contains the crossover point.

If you really want to hear every instrument and all their dynamic range, then 3 way high sensitivity speakers might be in your future.

Wanna hear the result of "room acoustics?" Go listen to a live symphony. A good system in any reasonable room (with a good recording) can easily reproduce either a solo instrument OR a symphony brilliantly, they’ve been able to do that for decades. Sorry, that’s the truth. All the elements are there in the recording for you to enjoy, even with some "room sound" unless you listen only in your vast, neighborless yard.  

 The amazing part of all this is the fact that the tiny interworkings in our ears can convert countless soundwaves into signals our brains interpert. Then we decide the quality of the sound.

And thats only a nano example of Gods amazing creations.

Micheal Romanowski calls the problem of complex music the "two speaker" problem, he basically is sharing that atmos is superior to two channel:

@viridian 

I have not attended as many live events in relatively recent history as you have but I've also noticed on those occasions  that if I closed my eyes it was difficult to tell exactly where sounds were coming from. At the last concert there was a choir and one voice stood out. I could see who she was. If I closed my eyes her apparent location shifted further to the left and would move around a bit depending on which note she was singing. So yeah, pinpoint sound staging could be considered somewhat of a parlor trick but considering other limitations of sound reproduction I find it helpful to get a little boost there. I consider reproduced sound to be a bit of an art all it's own - like photographs or film needing curves applied to make up for the fact that printed paper or even newer HDR displays can't reproduce the actual dynamic range of many real scenes. We have to fudge a bit to get the apparent contrast or separation clarity to perceptually remind us more of reality. 

It isn't just the signal going out to the speakers, it is also the signal goijng into the mic that compresses complex music. Hopefully new microphone technology will help resolve this problem:

@curiousjim 

I have never heard a system where I could hear every instrument in an orchestra, especially at louder volumes.

I don't know of a one size fits all solution, even at a live performance you need good seats for that. That problem has been studied by Tomlinson Holman and they did a lot of research into great halls and acoustics. The first reflection points and the space above the performers are key and he developed a system of speaker placement to replicate that, check this out:

Agree with @dcoffee.  No matter what the recorded performance is, there is always just one complex signal going down your speaker wires. It's the sum of what was laid down for that channel.  Unless one's electronics are that unresolving, I'm thinking that the speaker driver is usually the limiting factor in accurate reproduction.  It would seem to be the more difficult task.  

I have never heard a system where I could hear every instrument in an orchestra, especially at louder volumes. Even with headphones. There’s something about live music, with a good sound system, in a well designed venue 

Why do you think many Demos and Audio Show exhibits use music like Dianna Krall and a few Piano notes? They rarely play Complex Music. I have fun with my favorite store owner when he puts out videos with Simple music.

On classical I used Winston Ma DECCA box set FIM label. This box set will really test your system if indeed is capable playing complex music.