Integer is King? - the challenge

[metamorphosis]

I love threads like this.

On a serious note. Does anyone have a dictionary of all the hi-fi terms like "punchy", "open", "having great depth", "clear", "tight bass", "3 dimensional".

Sometimes I think they have a real meaning that maybe "hi-fi" people know about but "scientific" people don't know.

Maybe "punchy" means pronounced transients.

Or maybe we're all being trolled...

They mean different things to everybody of course but there are certain things that engineers have used for decades just because words are needed to describe certain situations. For instance, "boxy", "tinny","nasal","hollow" etc. all point to certain frequency areas. I would say "punchy", "flat", "spiky", "lifeless" all mostly describe transients or a combination of both.

The thing is, in the end, science and exact measured patterns/distortion/whatnot is irrelevant as the human ear/brain connection is obviously subjective and is still quite a mystery.

Also emotion and "memory" of what sounds "good" is playing a large part. Just like food cultures. If you have grown up eating a certain dish then you will probably end up liking it very much at older age due to nostalgia and fond memories playing a huge role. Same goes for music and sound. Some older engineers say that the quality of audio engineering has gone drastically down since the 70's, personally I think it is utter bullshit. There are plenty of extremely well recorded modern records but these do not wake the nostalgic, warm, fuzzy feelings in the old engineer (there we go.. more magic words ). Same with the hardware creations. There has never been so many so high quality analogue/digital effects boxes as now. That desire for the vintage monster is completely unreasonable. Heck, I'd take an Elysia Alpha compressor any day over a vintage fairchild.. well, no, not really. I'd take the fairchild, sell it for some ridiculous sum and buy myself 2 or 3 Alpha compressors.

Cheers!
bManic

I agree (just, you know, for the record)...

[daverich]

Yeah I prefer the sound of division bell to DSOTHM. but then, I always do prefer digital over fuzzy analog - so shoot me *shrug*


(edit - always is of course not true, I really don't like the sound of David Gilmours recent solo album. HOWWWW much EQQQ!!!??)


Kind regards

DAve Rich

[nollock]

Kingston, a pill of humility might really do you more good than harm.

I dont see any problem with Kingstons attitude. If sombody is posting badly reasoned nonsense then it usualy hard to point this out without critisizing and or upsetting them.

Especialy when this person is unable to understand why there are problems with what he has said.

Why not try to understand what living sounds is saying instead of nit picking and trying to stomp him to the ground?

Because understanding what he is saying is the problem. Once you do you realize he's talking shite and doesnt show any grasp of the difference between anecdotal and empirical evidence.

Plus he's done the equivelant of walking into a physics lab and started telling the profs how to build a particle accelerator based on his experience kicking a football around a skateing bowl.

[living sounds]

Now where did I state that "science has failed"? It's your confirmation bias about me that's guiding your 'arguments', Kingston. "A brilliant board of developers" - your trying to argument from authority here. Check this:
http://theskepticsguide.org/logicalfallacies.asp

JonHodgson,

like everyone here surely knows EQs do affect phase. But scratch that as an argument, I wasn't even fully awake when I wrote it. I'm not proclaiming absolute truths here and am thankful for corrections if wrong (that's the scientific process).

As far as DSOTM is concerned, it sounds a little underproduced to my taste. Again, I probably should have said that I'm only voicing MY opinion.

[duncanparsons]

DSOTHM

Quid?

TDSOTM, surely.

I never know what this 'Dark Side Of The Moon' album people bang on about is, I've always liked that LP that Pink Floyd did in 1973, called 'The Dark Side Of The Moon'... Like their 1979 double LP wasn't called 'Wall' was it?

While we're about it, 'The Buzzcocks' never had a hit with a single 'Ever Fallen In Love', however Pete Shelley's band 'Buzzcocks' did...

OK, rant over.

We all like a good moan over this and that, but what matters is whether it appeals to our personal taste or not.

We can derive all kinds of empirical evidence for 'better', so long as we can define the boundaries of the testing. It's called a hypothesis, and you test against it. The testing may be very robust, but what is really needed is an agreement as to what the actual hypothesis is. The central thrust of this thread is to test the hypothesis that there may be audible differences between the realisations of an algorithm in CWB's plug. I like it as a project; but I seriously doubt if it will put to bed the whole FP/FxP thing, since the, shall we say, MetaHypothesis hasn't been decided...

At the end of the day...



























...it's night.

DSP

[Meffy]

*ahem* That's THE Pink Floyd, please.





(At least very early on. Before that they were The Pink Floyd Experience, and before that The Tea Set. =o.O=)

[duncanparsons]

Not forgetting, the Abdabs, the Architectural Abdabs, and the Screaming Abdabs...

DSP

[daverich]

theres a bloody brilliant band down here in cornwall who used to be called The Ammunition, but now they call themselves Ammunition.

I thought The Ammunition was a cool name, Ammunition I'm not so sure about.

Kind regards

Dave Rich

[living sounds]

[quote="nollock"]

For example, what has changed most since the 70s is actualy production techniques. Recordings have more bass because they dont need to worry about needles jumping the groove. A lot is over compressed and over processed in general. Lots of stuff is multitracked up, layered. Performance has been lost in the quest for perfection.

Imo the difference is not down to digital, it's down to a change in production techniques. The ocd turd polishers have taken over.

Dont get me wrong, i'm sure some analog processors do have somthing over their digital counterparts, but there is just as likely many things that are better done in digital.

[quote]



Sure. I absolutely love the sound of Christina Aguilera's "Stripped" album. It's probably horribly overproduced to your taste, but there you go. Dave Pensado used a lot of digital stuff in the creation, but also analog gear where crucial.

Much of the stuff in the (late) 80s sounded horrible because of production techniques, no question. But (from my experience with gear) you wouldn't get the James Taylor track to sound the same with a transformerless mic into a "clean" preamp and AD and then mixing everything ITB with no outboard. At least I know what results I can get with the transformer-coupled frontend + outboard-supported ITB mixing vs. cleaner frontend (which for example has better transient response in the measurements) and pure ITB mixing. There are too many factors involved to make a 1-1 comparison, but the results with outboard are (for pop/rock music) most of the time substantially better.


As for the FM synths: Do a comparison for yourself. I tried Sytrus once again yesterday just to be sure. The difference to a TG77 (FM part only) is as big as it was the last time.

[daverich]

sytrus is one synth that really benefits from running at 88.2khz and above, not merely oversampling in the plug itself.

Kind regards

Dave Rich

[living sounds]

I know I haven't presented any evidence here. Anecdotal evidence is none at all. But this is about perception, and I haven't got any way to do objetive measurements to show what is actually different.
I've uploaded two examples of 6-OP FM synthesis by the TG-77. Try to program any VSTi in a way that:

1. (bass)
- the program sounds good over the whole range of keys the way the example does
- the envelope is as fast "sounding"
- the whole sound is as well-behaved and the bass "kicks" as well
- the sound is as complex and diverse

2. Clavi
- the attack phase "clicks" as pleasantly
- is as bright yet not unpleasant
- sounds as rich and "textured"

These are all subjective terms but there's simply no way I can describe it better.

Thanks to anyone who takes his/her time.

www.scherer.de/Download/FMTEST.rar (1.7MB)

[aciddose]

. (bass)
- the program sounds good over the whole range of keys the way the example does

complex key scaling envelopes. very few (do any?) software synthesizers support this

- the envelope is as fast "sounding"
linear envelopes with time spent selecting exact ranges. the specifics of how the envelope is used for modulation in this particular patch. if you'd like examples of fast "sounding" envelopes how about this: http://xhip.cjb.net/temp/public/boo.mp3

- the whole sound is as well-behaved and the bass "kicks" as well
it all just has to do with exactly how the synth works. the dx-7 and relatives are known for sounding very good. they are extremely limited though no matter how good they sound for a particular few patches. what you're really liking there is just the dx-7/related synthesizer family. obviously nothing like this exists in software or ever will unless somebody can get all the logic of those synthesizers studied in depth, or the original documents/schematics.

- the sound is as complex and diverse
same thing. actually it doesnt sound that diverse to me, it sounds like a basic phm patch.

2. Clavi
- the attack phase "clicks" as pleasantly
- is as bright yet not unpleasant
- sounds as rich and "textured"

same answers. you're either using the wrong software or the software you're looking for doesnt exist. this doesnt say anything about software vs. hardware, or analog vs. digital. all this says is apples vs. oranges. obviously one instrument wont fully duplicate another unless they're the same instrument.

[living sounds]

Thanks acidose for taking the time!

Well, I've really got a lot of different patches for the TG77 I really like, so I wouldn't call it limited. It's really a thing of the overall sound to me. But if I remember correctly many FM patches of the Nord Modular I once had were in the ballpark as well...

. (bass)
- the program sounds good over the whole range of keys the way the example does

complex key scaling envelopes. very few (do any?) software synthesizers support this

- the envelope is as fast "sounding"
linear envelopes with time spent selecting exact ranges. the specifics of how the envelope is used for modulation in this particular patch. if you'd like examples of fast "sounding" envelopes how about this: http://xhip.cjb.net/temp/public/boo.mp3

- the whole sound is as well-behaved and the bass "kicks" as well
it all just has to do with exactly how the synth works. the dx-7 and relatives are known for sounding very good. they are extremely limited though no matter how good they sound for a particular few patches. what you're really liking there is just the dx-7/related synthesizer family. obviously nothing like this exists in software or ever will unless somebody can get all the logic of those synthesizers studied in depth, or the original documents/schematics.

- the sound is as complex and diverse
same thing. actually it doesnt sound that diverse to me, it sounds like a basic phm patch.

2. Clavi
- the attack phase "clicks" as pleasantly
- is as bright yet not unpleasant
- sounds as rich and "textured"

same answers. you're either using the wrong software or the software you're looking for doesnt exist. this doesnt say anything about software vs. hardware, or analog vs. digital. all this says is apples vs. oranges. obviously one instrument wont fully duplicate another unless they're the same instrument.

[jens]

complex key scaling envelopes. very few (do any?) software synthesizers support this

Rhino comes to mind...

[bmanic]

Kingston, a pill of humility might really do you more good than harm.

I dont see any problem with Kingstons attitude. If sombody is posting badly reasoned nonsense then it usualy hard to point this out without critisizing and or upsetting them.

Especialy when this person is unable to understand why there are problems with what he has said.

Why not try to understand what living sounds is saying instead of nit picking and trying to stomp him to the ground?

Because understanding what he is saying is the problem. Once you do you realize he's talking shite and doesnt show any grasp of the difference between anecdotal and empirical evidence.

Plus he's done the equivelant of walking into a physics lab and started telling the profs how to build a particle accelerator based on his experience kicking a football around a skateing bowl.

I see your point but what I meant with the "try to understand him" is in general, in broad terms. Basically he started off in this thread with a kind of question (not using the ? mark): why? what is different? etc..

So, instead of putting somebody down, no matter how silly the argument is, a more gentle approach may yield a far more pleasant overall feeling of the thread, which did start out excellent until mudslinging began (and no, living sounds definitely didn't start it). Another approach is to simply say: "dude, I think you are completely wrong but hey, that's just me" and leave it at that.

Cheers!
bManic