If you make your own recordings, it's easier to recognize whether they are colored on playback, or relatively neutral.
What exactly is colored sound?
I guess the definition would be a deviation from what what was originally intended but how do we really know what was originally intended anyway? I mean solid state mostly sounds like solid state. I guess that would be a coloration, push pull amps and set have their own colorations. It seems we try to denote certain definitions to either promote or dis certain sounds I guess. We could have a supposedly neutral amp but their just is not enough bass so we turn up the subwoofer or the bass, a coloration per se. I guess one could say that colored sound would be a good thing. after all, each instrument has its own sound (color). A mullard, a telefunken, I mean who knows what tubes were in the recording studios at the time of the recording. Syrupy, sweet, rich, NEUTRAL, forward, backward I mean really... I guess its all about certain preferences for each person. even in the studio. who knows, maybe a recording may be meant to sound syrupy or sweet and then we try to make it as neutral as possible. Maybe thats a coloration in itself. I guess what I am asking is why do reviewers use the word colored in reviews anyway?
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Colored sound is anything that is different from the recorded commercially available music as produced in mastering. Despite many claims to the contrary, it is actually the opposite of high-fidelity. It can be highly engaging and enjoyable - just as condiments (salt pepper, ketchup, mustard) can enhance your meal but it is not faithful to the original recording and not high-fidelity. |
When the original audiophiles in the 1950's coined the term "coloration", they used it in the same way video technicians do now with video projectors and monitors---in terms of the accurate reproduction of color "temperature". In video, that means greens look green, reds red, etc. In sound, that means a violin sounds like a violin, not like a cello. An alto singer sounds alto, not tenor. No "color" (deviations from flat frequency response) added to or subtracted from the recording. But as the op said, how does one know what a recording "should" sound like? Gordon Holt, creator of Stereophile in the early 1960's, and the reviewer credited, even by Harry Pearson, as the man responsible for creating, or at least codifying, the audiophile vocabulary, was very serious about lack of coloration, considering it the number one priority in the reproduction of music. Gordon recommended everyone make their own recordings, so as to have a known reference in terms of evaluating a components lack of coloration. I did just that, recording a Jump/Blues Swing Band live, using just a pair of high-quality condenser mics straight into a Revox A77 reel-to-reel. One can never be completely certain what any given commercial recording should sound like; one made by yourself is a different story. Record friends talking, or an a cappella group live; we are very familiar with voices, and immediately hear coloration in the reproduction of them. Record an upright bass; you immediately hear any "thickening" a speaker adds to it's reproduction. Another instrument very revealing of added coloration is a piano; that instrument has a very wide frequency response, and reproducing the two strings of every key equally in tonality, attack and decay, etc., is still far beyond the capability of any system to do perfectly. |
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I was the Exec Producer of a commercially recorded jazz album (Richard Todd - With A Twist) and I have a recording studio in my home. As a result, I've spent enough time with this question to weigh in. I can tell you from experience that many uses of the term are a stretch. If there's an obvious (and repeated across multiple source materials) FR deviation in (for example) a loudspeaker connected to neutral (preferably SS) electronics, that certainly justifies the tag. However, many people cite subtle timbral deviations which may be attributable to the recording or even the eccentricities of the instrument being recorded. The phenomenon is real, but overused IMO. |
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With Gordon, you knew exactly what he was looking for in hi-fi equipment, what his criteria was. I took his belief of the lack-of-coloration being the number one priority of a reproduction system as self-evident, also feeling that the reproduction of the timbre of voices and instruments as close to lifelike as possible is where hi-fi begins; if a speaker (in particular, as they are still the most colored component in a system) fails the timbre test, it doesn’t matter what other qualities the speaker possesses. Singing, both solo and in harmony and/or counterpoint, is my favorite element in the performance of music (the key word being "performance"; the music itself---chord sequences, melodies, harmonies, etc.) is more important to me than it’s performance. A great song performed only adequately is preferable to me to an adequate song performed greatly. But I have to admit, Art Dudley’s argument that lack of "vowel" coloration (as Gordon put it) was only one of many qualities gear has to have, and not necessarily the most important to any given listener (ha ;-), himself included. Gordon believed that not considering timbre the most important element in music reproduction was "wrong". Art argues that the notion of believing accurate timbre should be EVERYONE’S priority is "wrong", that a listener is equally justified in making any other criteria (such as Art’s desire for a component to reproduce a musician’s "touch", and to reproduce the "forward momentum" of a player/band that a recording has captured) his or her number one priority, that making that ability (or any other, such as many audiophiles preoccupation with imaging, a low priority for both Art and myself) one’s number one priority is just as valid as is Gordon’s. Even if I agree with Gordon about timbre, I agree with Art that Gordon's insistence that everyone see it that way is wrong. |
tzh21yColoured sound can happen when the sound of preceding equipment is changed by the next piece of equipment, and so on and so on all the way to the speakers. Ivor Tibenbrun inventor of the Linn Sondek turntable, had a famous saying, "It all starts with the source get that as right (uncoloured) as possible and your 1/3rd of the way there" Cheers George |
Coloured and sterile sound is what we want to avoid. What we don't want to avoid is colorful sound, that's how the instruments sound live. When recording, you can never fully capture it, so if reproduction system adjusts for that - that's good. In other words - what the microphones heard is not good enough, they distorted the sound picture. Only what ear heard is good enough. |
In other words - what the microphones heard is not good enoughIn other words your saying mega dollar recording microphones are not flat or calibrated flat? I think a lot of recording engineers would have something to say about that. Then if your saying they have distortions, there’s no piece of equipment can un-distort something that has distortion without worse side effects. Cheers George |
It’s a fine line. Obviously, the sound should be "colorful" and instruments should have their own characteristic color. Otherwise all violins would sound the same, all trumpets and saxophones would sound the same. Without color there would be no music. Untreated stock out of the box digital is what I would call music without color. Monocchromatic. Music should have character. |
Lets take a wedding band for example. In one hall the same band will sound different from another. Same musicians, the same instruments.. maybe they would sound worse in say a cinderblock walled firehall than say a drywalled hotel hall. These are "colorations" I would think. Is a lot of it room dependent? I mean maybe a certain, lets say "neutral" sounding system may sound terrible in a basement with a concrete floor and walls vs a interior room with hardwood floors and drywall. |
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Tzh21y, whatever is done in that case, to process the music would be done to achieve a sound that the producer intends. So the finished product is a sound that is intended, whether one agrees with this processing or not. This is why I usually prefer a system that is neutral, because I want to hear the music as the artist and producer intended. Having components or speakers that color the sound would be detrimental to that goal. I have found that some loudspeakers are intentionally designed to color the sound. The ones that surprise me are the brands that attempt to hide this fact from customers, and just present their product as "sounding" better while hiding certain specs from the public. |
Let me offer a thought. What you call 'color' is technically referred to as 'timbre'. We consider a 'sound' made up of collections of individual audio domane energies that each in turn are made up of : 1 - Amplitudes - audio energy filling a frequency domain, such as a guitar string plucked. Such a signal has 'overtones', usually but not exclusively sequentially harmonically related energies as in 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on. Non-harmonic information can be included by the author of the 'sound' as part of this design, like some energy as noise or posing some weird harmonic relationship (it is an art afterall). 2 - Phases - each of the individual Amplitudes or overtones maintains a physically and thus sonically unique relationship with every other overtone. Kind of a Mach's principle but in audio. Thus is the timbre of the sound as the ear hears it. Change any of the individual overtone's amplitude or phase and you change its relationship to the 'ensemble', the 'sound' through any given time interval. In effect the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, it is a gestalt. It in interesting that the measurement of Total Harmonic Distortion would suggest a good method of assessing performance relative to upsetting the Timbre of a sound in circuit. The fact is that THD is not very useful, it does not tell you anything about the Timbre. Nothing about either the amplitudes or phases of the overtones, Nothing al all about what has been subtracted from the overtones. 0nly the aggregate has an amount. In theory it will tell you a circuit adds to a overtone set of energies but says nothing about the important issue of relationships of overtones. So we know what 'color' is along with a whole bunch of descriptive terms for sound. May a better way to talk about is the 'color of the tambe", who knows. Good luck in your pursuit of knowledge, it is commentable. BarryThornton |
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Since there are so many variables that affect the sound of recordings (mics, placement, venue, mixing, processing etc.), every recording should sound different. A good system should be chameleon-like, and make these differences clearly audible. If there is a characteristic sound that is consistently heard across a variety of recordings and types of music, then that is a coloration. Some colorations can be perceived as improving the sound of certain types of music, but be detrimental to others. That’s how we get statements like “These speakers are best suited for jazz or classical.“ A good system should let you clearly hear the differences between recordings, while also letting you enjoy ALL the different types of music you listen to. |
One of the most beloved films ever made was The Wizard of Oz. It starts out in black and white. When the scene gets to The Land of Oz, everything is suddenly shot in Technicolor. It looks beautiful and impressive no doubt. It's not natural. It's "colored." Go outdoors in the real world and look around. That's "uncolored." That's real. Isn't this what we want from our audio systems as well? .... as close to real as possible? Frank |
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Colorations occur due to: 1) the room in which playback occurs 2) frequency response errors which all loudspeakers have 3) incorrect interactions between amp and speaker which cause frequency response errors 4) distortion, which is found in all things electronic It turns out that the ear is less sensitive to certain colorations and a lot more sensitive to others. For example the ear is not particularly sensitive to the 2nd harmonic (which is responsible for the coloration of 'warmth', often found in tube equipment) but is extremely sensitive (moreso than most test equipment) to the 7th (which is part of what causes harshness and a metallic quality and is why solid state has the coloration of 'bright' and 'hard' and the like). Frequency response errors are also obvious colorations with multiple causes! But its much more complex than that- the ear has tipping points where it will favor distortion over actual FR errors. Brightness in solid state is one example of that. Digital and analog recording processes both have colorations associated with distortion and bandwidth, although in the digital world, the word 'aliasing' is used because digital guys don't like to admit that digital makes distortion (my 2 cents on that....). Microphones also have colorations- as a recording engineer, I love my Neumann U67s which turn out fantastic results, but I'll be the first to concede that they aren't perfect by any means! @tzh21y with so many sources and causes, it might be helpful to put this in a context as the topic is a bit broad. Did you have a specific area of interest? |
One of the early Stereophile test CDs (the first one maybe) has a recording of J. Gordon Holt reading something with different mics swapped in every sentence or so. A great demonstration that should be heard by anybody wondering about recording coloration as it clearly and simply cuts to the chase. Flat SCHMLAT! |
Again, before the recording itself there are microphones that cannot 'hear' as well as the ear. It goes from there. We should try to recreate in our listening rooms what ear would have heard not what microphones 'heard'. Of course, it's impossible. The closer the better. One or maybe main reason why some hi-end systems don't really sound good - too far. They can sound impressively but that's not how it sounds in reality. |
Uncolored sound is natural sound, as close to real as possible. It should be neither brighter (many systems are on the bright side) nor darker than life sound. I should be neither warmer nor colder than the real..
Correct timbre...
and so on. When I go to concerts (of course not those organized in stadiums) it happens to me to pay attention, to listen to the mentioned attributes and then compare sound of my system.. |
If you actually had a copy of an original master tape, for example, and you played it on two different systems, lets say they are extreme high end, I bet that master tape would sound different on each to some degree even if you used the same reel to reel device. So, unless you were present at the actual recording and heard it with your own ears, would you really know how it sounded? |
Think in terms of the government’s claim to “transparency” -- that which obscures the TRUTH is colorization by whatever means that is used to distort, change, obscure, pervert, or even enhance the original and change what the recipient receives no matter what the media used or form of communication implemented. IF you are receiving a facsimile, no matter how “good or bad” the results appear to be to you . . . then you have been knowingly and willingly -- or unwittingly, but decidedly, have become an accomplice to the transformation . . . which is, of course, ultimately the individual’s choice and personal satisfaction. |
You would know approximately or very close, depending on the recording. I have a few records of the musicians that I heard live without any microphones, I also have a few records of the musicians that I heard live with microphones. Really good recording played on high-end system in a tuned room that is big enough does bring you close. Some systems sound sterile - that's coloration too. |
You could listen to a dozen different $100k audiophile systems, and guess what, they will all sound different. You could go into a dozen different recording studio's and listen to their monitors, and guess what? They will all sound different. They are all colored in some way. They all have areas of excellence, and areas of deficiency. To me... certain "colorations" only need to be minimized such that when i close my eyes, i can just listen to the music and "suspend the disbelief". If a system can draw me into the music and make me forget about the speakers, the room, the amps...... then it's doing it's job. |
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I am still trying to figure out exactly what coloration means. I guess that the only thing I could think of is that I want a trombone to sound like a trombone, a piano to sound like a piano and so on. I cannot say I have heard systems that a trombone sounds like a trumpet lets say. Whether in a hall that sounds warm or neutral, well I guess if we want to hear it in a warm hall, we may decide to tweek our systems to that way of listening and so on. |
If you actually had a copy of an original master tape, for example, and you played it on two different systems, lets say they are extreme high end, I bet that master tape would sound different on each to some degree even if you used the same reel to reel device. So, unless you were present at the actual recording and heard it with your own ears, would you really know how it sounded? I guess that the only thing I could think of is that I want a trombone to sound like a trombone, a piano to sound like a piano and so on. I cannot say I have heard systems that a trombone sounds like a trumpet lets say. Whether in a hall that sounds warm or neutral, well I guess if we want to hear it in a warm hall, we may decide to tweek our systems to that way of listening and so on.I have master tapes, and have encountered colorations due to playback. I actually made two master tapes of one project, as we wanted a backup. The backup machine was solid state. Starting right there, we noticed colorations simply on account of the machines used- the tube master sounded best on the tube machine in playback, sounded better than the solid state master while played back on the solid state machine, and the solid state master sounded best played back on the tube machine. So there is the initial colorations that the recording gear imposes... Then there are the room, speakers and amplification, all which impose some sort of tonal coloration (more or less bass, more or less highs and so on). Its impossible to know what is right unless you were there to hear how the actual performance sounded. |
More than accurate, I simply want recordings to sound good to ME. I have actual instruments around for reference, but to say I use those for that purpose isn’t particularly accurate (no pun intended) since I don’t. How an "actual performance sounded" is also relative to where you sat for it, and what the sound tech (sometimes actually me) was thinking, except when there is no sound reinforcement (saw Brad Mehldau last year playing an unamplified Steinway in a hall near Harvard…lean in man…lean in…softer notes were eaten by the room, but I still enjoyed it). I mix live shows with the sound check as the point where my goal is to make the artist think (!) it sounds good so they can relax and play, and when the great unwashed show up to hear the show it all changes anyway…experience allows one to adjust for that, but the goal should be clarity and balance and audience happiness. It’s always a head scratcher when I work with somebody (jazzers mostly) who’s recordings have a great sounding and prominent kick drum, and they insist that no drum mics be used…uh…OK…or after the sound check the bass player completely changes their amp settings causing the whole mix to change…I get paid anyway, but I won’t run up to the stage to tell a bass player to turn down as I don’t want to Harsh Their Mellow so to speak... |
Commercial recording engineers are endeavoring to make a "good" sounding recording, sure, but what good means to them may be very different from what an audiophile means by good. In all the studios I’ve been recorded in, the engineers have mics they have come to prefer for specific applications. A lot of them like the Shure SM57, for instance---a PA vocal mic, for snare drum. The mic has a presence peak deliberately engineered into the mic’s frequency response, to make vocals coming through a PA more audible. Used as a recording mic, it adds the same presence region boost to snare drums, making them "pop" and "cut" in a mix better than does a mic with a flatter frequency response. Those engineers are not in the least concerned with capturing the inherent, true timbre of the drum, but rather to get a "good" snare sound, one that will suit the sound he is after in the entire mix. I have recordings of the same snare drum, a Ludwig Supraphonic 400 (the snare preferred by John Bonham, Alex Van Halen, Roger Hawkins, and many others, myself included. John and Alex in the 6.5" deep version, Roger and myself the 5"), made in different studios by different engineers, and though the drum in all the recordings is obviously a Supraphonic, the same drum sounds very different in some of them. Listening to a commercial Pop recording, the listener has absolutely no idea what the recording "should" sound like---what an accurate reproduction of the recording actually is. The idea of using exquisitely engineered High End components to reproduce the trash on most commercial products is actually comical. Who can blame a music-loving consumer for being more interested in a "good" sounding system than in an "accurate", uncolored one? Of what value is an uncolored system if the recordings are colored to begin with? Then there is the problem of audiophile loudspeakers being very different sounding than studio monitors (Oy. You wanna talk about colored?!), a subject too complicated to go into here. There is the old argument that the more transparent a system, the more it will reveal the excellent sound of good recordings, but also the poor sound of bad ones. I believe most audiophiles try to assemble a system that balances the ability to faithfully reproduce good recordings with the ability to make average or poor recordings sound as tolerable as possible. That’s a tricky balancing act! Good "enough", but not "too" good. |
In all the studios I’ve been recorded in, the engineers have mics they have come to prefer for specific applications. A lot of them like the Shure SM57, for instance---a PA vocal mic, for snare drum. The mic has a presence peak deliberately engineered into the mic’s frequency response, to make vocals coming through a PA more audible. Used as a recording mic, it adds the same presence region boost to snare drums, making them "pop" and "cut" in a mix better than does a mic with a flatter frequency response. Those engineers are not in the least concerned with capturing the inherent, true timbre of the drum, but rather to get a "good" snare sound, one that will suit the sound he is after in the entire mix.I hear you loud and clear on that one- I've run into the same thing myself. With such recordings the idea of reproducing it in an uncolored way gets pretty weak... |
Yeah. If you want to really enjoy your music played at home, never go to live concerts. Unamplified music. Amplified - that’s different. Recording engineers have their own f...... ideas, we have ours. In any event, as I advocated before, the reproduction system should try and correct the recording without making things worse. That’s not coloring the sound, it’s an effort to uncolor it. |
The source should be able to extract as much as possible from the recording without interventions on its part, interventions, whatever they might be, should happen down the chain. Happen exactly where? We can discuss it. I would say probably mostly at the end of the chain, that's speakers/room . Playback head and cartridge amps appear to be exteremely important too. |