Paul's Posts — 20 February 2012
By Paul McGowan
One of Paul’s Posts readers, Mark S, asks the question of why we manufacturers seem to work so hard at building kit that serves all music and all tastes equally well. I think it’s a good question and one worth thinking about.
In most fields a “one size fits all” mentality isn’t optimal. Sports equipment, musical instruments, cameras, cars – just about everything you can think of has focused products that are designed to enhance a particular aspect of the task – but not necessarily audio.
Certainly there are loudspeakers that are better suited to a particular style of music – classical, rock, jazz – but these seem to come across as weak because they don’t work for all music types – as opposed to coming from a position of strength.
Rarely does a loudspeaker or electronics manufacturer go to great lengths to design a classical music speaker, for example, because it limits the market and what the heck does one do if she has varied tastes in music as do most of us.
But it is an interesting idea and one that needs more thought.
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kcisobderf
I don’t think there’s a point to design equipment to particular kinds of music. If you magnify the waveforms enough it all looks rather the same. Besides, the music and performances we come back to time and time again are what sounds good to our ears. Maybe that’s the target to design for.
Bassman23
There are many directions one can take this. First, it is not as much different types of music as it is different people’s taste, but there are many different types of equipment that “dial in” certain playback features. A single-ended triode amp is not the default choice for listening to rock, nor is an electrostatic panel. A mini-monitor delivers a huge soundstage, but is a poor choice for organ music. In other words, there is a ton of equipment that could be defined as great for the reproduction of specific music, but it is the consumer who will make that choice, not the manufacturer. Stevie Ray Vaughan actually sounds great through single-ended triodes and horns! It’s just not a system I would choose for myself.
The average manufacturer I’m sure wants to deliver the most frequency response and the most natural dynamics they possibly can at their price point. Other manufacturers will trade off some frequency response and dynamics for the tonal characteristics of music reproduction thatr most appeal to them.
hahax
Does a speaker(or any piece of audio gear) know what kind of music it’s being fed? No,. If the purpose of audio is fidelity and not ‘sounds good’ to some ‘arbitrary’ ears, then it there is no need to design for any kind of sound. If the purpose is marketing, then designing for a paticular market segment makes sense but the it’s no longer reproduction of sound but the gear conciously becomes part of the production.
Ivan
Who listens to just one kind of music? I admit that >90% of the music I listen to is acoustic, but that includes classical, jazz, folk, show tunes, and even pop music on acoustic 78s. And I do listen to some rock as well. I’d hate to have to swap out speakers every time I changed discs!
By the way, years ago, I tested some speakers and decided that AR-3s sounded a wee bit better than Rectilinear IIIs on classical, and the RIIIs outdid the ARs by a smidgen on the rest. Then I moved to a new apartment and found my preferences reversed.
Paul McGowan
Indeed but when we make a choice in a piece of equipment it generally serves our needs based on what we mostly listen to – for example if you mostly listen to acoustic then you might be happiest with a planar type of loudspeaker because of how well it handles transients – as opposed to something with great dynamics if your preference ran towards the large orchestral music.
The point wouldn’t be to change speakers with the music, as you correctly point out, but rather the original choice in equipment was perhaps made with your tastes in mind.
Good to hear from you Ivan!
Dick Burwen
What is wrong with using equalization to adapt to different kinds of music? I use a different EQ for every recording, even my own live classical recordings made the same way with the same orchestra in the same hall for many years. If you don’t want to fiddle with each recording, at least have a few selections to get your system in the ball park of balanced sound.
In this digital age equalization is all mathematics. Any distortion added is not even 1/100th of that of analog equipment and it is really transparent when set at flat frequency response.
Paul McGowan
Nothing whatsoever except for skill. The problem with EQ is you have to know something about what one should do to get it right – what area of the spectrum would one adjust to obtain a certain improvement to the sound. I am sure with someone of your skill that’s easy, but would question whether or not that would apply to others.
jerry95
Part of the reason I bought my speakers was the review stated that they sounded great with classical music which is all I listen to. I’m sure they were not designed that way, but I found it important that the reviewer did listen to all kinds of music and noted this.
Terry Franklin
If you are going to develop equipment for a particular type of music, that leaves me outta luck. I am listening to Gielen’s Mahler’s 2nd. A few hours before it was Bruckner’s 9th. And before that it was Steely Dan. I was told that there are two types of music: good and bad. What is works for Steely Dan may also be good for my Jr. Walker and All Stars, but I doubt if it will work for my Vivaldi’s Mandolin Concerti. My musical interests are all over the place so my vote is just design equipment for good music.
Soundminded
Here’s something some might find interesting. I don’t but I figured others might.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9562304.stm
“So it will always sound A BIT DIFFERENT.”
Seems at least some Brits really do have a penchant for understatement.
Soundminded
An ideal all purpose sound system would be able to create any sound or combinations of sounds a human being can hear. This would not only include accurate reproductions of live musical performances but of any other sound possible including every sound system in the world that exists or is yet to exist. This is not possible today for at least two reason. Inadequate understanding of the physics of sound and inadequate understanding of the psychoacoustics of hearing. For example, in the problem of reproducing the sound of live music there is not sufficient knowledge to recreate temporal and spatial elements we know people with normal hearing easily perceive. That is a sufficient reason why recordings are immediately distinguishable from live music in nearly every case.
The lack of correlation of what is measured and what is heard is the result of inadequate models on which to base measurements. We either measure the wrong thing or we are only measuring part of what we need to understand what we have, critical elements being absent.
The only way to overcome this is through basic research. Developing the existing technology to its absolute limit will not prove any more fruitful than what has been produced up to now. That cow has been milked for all it is worth, most of it a long time ago. This brings up the question of why anyone would invest in this effort or having stumbled on new knowledge why they should share it. If they cannot profit from it themselves and they are not the philantropic sort but expect to win at least some of the money to be made from it why should they reveal anything they’ve discovered unless it already belongs to an employer?