Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

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Re: hearing the big picture?

Posted by tomservo (M) on June 19, 2006 at 11:44:31

In Reply to: Re: hearing the big picture? posted by thoriated on June 19, 2006 at 08:27:51:

Hi

The DPA 4004 has dynamic range of 124 dB (from noise floor to 1% thd) which is very high DR, there are larger mics which can do a little better BUT these begin to have excess directional effects.
The K2 (using the IEC weighted spectra) would be 150 dB which is extremely high (to the extent the marketing blurb says it can’ be done), but it is also an acoustically large (undesirable) pickup.
As with the loudspeaker, extended sources smear in time and are to be avoided in a perfect world.
In addition to the mic noise floor each stage (like the mic pre) and so on adds noise, each live mic adds noise.

Before CD’s, there were records that many folks enjoyed. Some people even thought they were pretty good as a recorded medium. Many records were even made of classical music and even now some people think they sound better than some CD’s.
One can argue about the difference is the two approaches but one cannot deny that a typical good LP had a remaining dynamic range of perhaps 35 - 40dB at best. Everything recorded on to it was done with tape which also had much less DR than Digital.

A reason for mentioning all this is that the “best” most realistic recordings I have ever heard were made with a minimum of stuff. The best, most realistic of all was “in the ear” recordings, made by slipping a tiny tube microphones down inside a volunteers ears (sort of a dummy head recording using real ears too).
None of the best recordings I have heard were particularly wide DR, rather, they paid much attention to mic usage, placement and such.
In the recording process, compressing dynamics is a normal thing to do, TV and FM take it to the extreme but for the same reason, to make it sound louder (by raising the average level).

For a band playing on stage, one big degradation in sound VS a recording is the fact that they have to have say 24 open mics on stage. One drum hit shows up 24 times, each separated by an amount of time equal to the various distances from the drum to the mics. In “modern” mix consoles, it is common to have 48 even 96 channels available.

If one takes a serious look at what loudspeakers do, one see’s they spread out the input signal in time. A very few speakers don’t, like the Manger and some electrostatics and horns over some range but even most multi way speakers claimed to be “time coherent” aren’t coherent enough to reproduce the wave shape of a complex signal like a square wave (or music).
If one listens to the speaker that is dispersive in time compared to one that is less so but the same measured SPL, the more coherent one will “sound” more dynamic. This is because a transient is produced and arives at the ears with the energy more closely packed like the original signal. While an SPL meter reads the same average SPL. None of this shows up on a response curve and only in a gross sense in a CSD, acoustic phase shows what the speaker does re: the input signal but many popular measuring tools don’t actually measure acoustic phase but calculate it instead..

I guess what I’m suggesting is that since it was possible to make beautiful recordings of complex things with FAR less DR than they have available now, it is worth looking at why so many modern recordings sound so bad. I think it partly has to do with trying to do “too much” and a general belief that “it” can be fixed with post processing / DSP instead of making it right from the beginning..
Best,

Tom

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