...I have found that the quality of a mic can best be judged with our ears: how that mic processes complex waveforms arriving at the same time: a timpani's spike, a violin's scratchy bow, a trumpet's overtones, etc. all at the same time. Is that multitude processed without smear? Does the soundstage collapse? Can I still pick out individual nuances of each instrument from the whole?...
A wise rule is never to choose a complex explanation when a simple one can explain it just as well.
On this we can agree. For instance-- when someone asks "why is this microphone better in this application than that other one?" I'm much more likely to dispense with any objective or pseudo-objective justifications, and just say "it sounds better to me."
There are multiple audio problems with this presentation but notice what happens as the song progresses. Is it because of the added complexity of the multiple instruments, or is there a simpler explanation? What do you think?https://youtu.be/uF5E0w2h6wM
The mic channel is horribly overloaded on loud passages.
... why don't you tell me how an overloaded vocal mic track relates to my point how poorly executed audio components collapse when too many complex waveforms arrive, and how that is hard to quantify and isolate in technical terms?
Hey Tim,RE: your reply #135.When you quote something I said in post #118, i.e. 17 posts earlier, and don't fill in the context, it does not make for good reading or follow up. WHY something sounds better than something else can be a big, and still largely unanswerable question. But it often has to do with an incomplete rendering by the mic of what we heard in the original. What's missing can be lack of proper processing of many impulses in time at certain frequencies (congestion), or a deviation in the dynamic processing of the original's behavior, or a lack of synergistic interplay of sound-shaping components within a mic's architecture...Here is an example of the latter, and how misleading it sometimes can be to approach audio improvements by pure logic:Take tube biasing. Nobody would make the argument that fixed biasing of the impedance converting tube in a condenser mic is superior for the noise floor and frequency response than self-biasing. So I experimented changed the fixed bias of a VF14 tube in the U47 mic to cathode biasing. The effect? Much quieter! Cleaner! Better highs! Yet, it sounded horrible on the scale of listener satisfaction. The dynamic behavior of the mic had turned anemic, its famous characteristics -heft, rich texture in the lower mids, a hyper presence in all the frequencies that matter for a singer, were all gone. It sounded like an audio engineer envisions a linear processor by means of a theory, without feedback from the ears. This is just one component in a mic of immense consequences that, once altered, no longer worked in sync with the rest (capsule, transformer, supply voltage, etc.)We know from the mic's history, that at least some of its building blocks were haphazard, due to post-war shortages, and not what would ideally have made sense, yet the building blocks available fell into place and complemented each other in a most beautiful way. That again tells me it's fallacy to assume an ideal path towards an ideal mic. The variables are simply to many and their effect on the whole too complex to leave mic design to measurable quantification alone.
Microphones are not ears. While seemingly obvious, let's give a couple glaring examples(...)
Any complex signal can be represented by a sum of pure sine waves within an arbitrary interval (...)So if any instrument does well with a sine sweep (with little nonlinearity) it will do well with a sum.
You mention you are a microphone designer (if I got this right). Have you succeeded in engineering a mic that, while not as sophisticated in design as ears, at least delivers distortion-free (under any definition) audio?
Microphones, in my opinion, are an approximation of what we hear with our ears. In some cases that approximation- through clever engineering or random happenstance- gives us the emotional connection to the music, much like our ears can.
This reactivates the question if there is a perfectly accurate microphone. What would that accurate microphone deliver?Is that microphone that makes a strong connection to the music really accurate or just a way to make a very nice looking photograph?
To me a microphone is quite similar to a photo camera, and a recording similar to a photograph.
This relativates the question if there is a perfectly accurate microphone. What would that accurate microphone deliver?Is that microphone that makes a strong connection to the music really accurate or just a way to make a very nice looking photograph?
We can capture a sound field at a point accurately enough that any anomalies would be inaudible except for noise.
