Can, you, hear "musical"?

Printable View

  • 03-02-2013, 07:55 PM
    Mr Peabody
    Can, you, hear "musical"?
    I can hear what I call "musicality" in certain gear, for example Conrad Johnson and Pass are great examples, what I call "musicality" is when the gear allows me to get a sense of the rhythm, pace or melody of the music being played through the gear. To the contrast I had a Bryston amp that didn't have the ability to do this. I wonder if any one else has heard what I'm talking about? It's like the difference in a bass line just being played versus hearing the bass line and getting a sense of the swing. This is real to me, one of the reasons that had me switch from Krell to CJ back when but a recent exchange has me wondering if this is unique to me and I should refrain from talking about it or others can hear this too and maybe the people I was talking with, though claiming experienced listeners, it just escapes them. I would also call this "musicality", "emotion" but I feel "musicality" more to the point.
  • 03-03-2013, 05:13 AM
    Feanor
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Mr Peabody View Post
    I can hear what I call "musicality" in certain gear, for example Conrad Johnson and Pass are great examples, what I call "musicality" is when the gear allows me to get a sense of the rhythm, pace or melody of the music being played through the gear. To the contrast I had a Bryston amp that didn't have the ability to do this. I wonder if any one else has heard what I'm talking about? It's like the difference in a bass line just being played versus hearing the bass line and getting a sense of the swing. This is real to me, one of the reasons that had me switch from Krell to CJ back when but a recent exchange has me wondering if this is unique to me and I should refrain from talking about it or others can hear this too and maybe the people I was talking with, though claiming experienced listeners, it just escapes them. I would also call this "musicality", "emotion" but I feel "musicality" more to the point.

    Frankly I've always had a problem with "musical" or "musicality". The qualities you describe are certainly desirable but I've heard them in degrees from every speaker, every amp, etc., that I've ever used.

    I know, of course, that components sound different from each other and that one might prefer one to another. But people also prioritize different things, e.g. powerful, bunchy bass; high resolution & detail; bloomy, dimensional mid-range; transient decay, etc.. So which of these is "musical"? Is the same combination of desirable attributes "musical" to everyone? I feel the "musical" is just too subjective to be a useful term.
  • 03-03-2013, 05:32 AM
    blackraven
    I get and agree with your point Mr P. I equate musicality with emotion or the music just sounding right. I find that the digital amps that I have tend to lack it a little. Thats why I pair them with tube preamps that tend to lend some emotion or musicality to the music. I can even say that my Martin Logan sub lends musicality to music over my Velodyne CHT sub. In my tube gear, certain tubes sound flat or sterile and others sound more musical.
  • 03-03-2013, 06:00 AM
    Mr Peabody
    All adjectives we use to describe sound are subjective and we run the risk of each of us having our own perception of what a term means related to sound. I suppose what I describe would be difficult to hear to say the least if not doing a direct comparison. In general I think you hit the nail on the head regarding differences we hear and like, it depends on your priority you want in your listening experience. One person said they heard differences in gear but have never heard gear make a difference in the "musicality" as I described it, which really had me scratching my head. But there are always those out there who are willing to argue about most anything but it did get me to wonder. I gave an example of a recording where there are shakers playing, on some gear it's just there more or less but on other gear, that I'd call "musical" I can hear the shakers more in time with the rest of the players. Some basically denied this is possible.

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Feanor View Post
    Frankly I've always had a problem with "musical" or "musicality". The qualities you describe are certainly desirable but I've heard them in degrees from every speaker, every amp, etc., that I've ever used.

    I know, of course, that components sound different from each other and that one might prefer one to another. But people also prioritize different things, e.g. powerful, bunchy bass; high resolution & detail; bloomy, dimensional mid-range; transient decay, etc.. So which of these is "musical"? Is the same combination of desirable attributes "musical" to everyone? I feel the "musical" is just too subjective to be a useful term.

  • 03-03-2013, 06:44 AM
    harley .guy07
    I know what you guys are talking about I believe. I am a musician (hobby) and have played bass and guitar for years and I know that when I used to play live somewhere with one of the bands I used to play with or at band practice I used to "feel" the grove of the other players and really get into the sound from the whole band playing together and really gave me a sense of emotion to the music that really made me get into playing. The point I am making here is that when I listen to music on a high end system part of what I look for is for me to get that goose bump emotional feeling when I listen to a band that I like or a certain song. Some gear just does not convey this very well. While brand like Bryston and Krell convey detail and bass they don't get you feeling the music like I have heard from others out there. My Adcom does a descent job of this but I am always looking for more that is why I got my Pass Labs amp and am awaiting its arrival. Others that I have tried in my system and or heard in other systems seem to lack this emotion.
  • 03-03-2013, 07:29 AM
    LeRoy
    Ya Mr. P., I can relate to your definition of musicality. That why I liked the Belles gear so much...the ebb/flow/sway/rise/fall of the presentation sounded "right/cohesive". A prior H/T Yamaha amp never did have the same musical delivery as the Belles does.
  • 03-03-2013, 10:00 AM
    Feanor
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Mr Peabody View Post
    All adjectives we use to describe sound are subjective and we run the risk of each of us having our own perception of what a term means related to sound. I suppose what I describe would be difficult to hear to say the least if not doing a direct comparison. In general I think you hit the nail on the head regarding differences we hear and like, it depends on your priority you want in your listening experience. One person said they heard differences in gear but have never heard gear make a difference in the "musicality" as I described it, which really had me scratching my head. But there are always those out there who are willing to argue about most anything but it did get me to wonder. I gave an example of a recording where there are shakers playing, on some gear it's just there more or less but on other gear, that I'd call "musical" I can hear the shakers more in time with the rest of the players. Some basically denied this is possible.

    Opps! I forgot to mention PRaT, (pace, rhythm, and timing), among the sonic attributes. I wonder about using performance attributes to describe reproduction aspects -- not that you actually used the term yourself, Mr P. It seems to me that usage of the term is inherently invalid.

    Of course playback can't affect the timing of individual instruments: an amplifier or speakers know absolutely nothing about instruments or even notes. All it knows that there is a wave form that it must amplified or transform form electrical to sound wave.

    PRaT, I'd guess, is the phenomenon of microdynamics, i.e. the ability of an amplifier to follow a complex wave form, supply adequate current without distortion.
  • 03-03-2013, 12:26 PM
    Feanor
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by blackraven View Post
    I get and agree with your point Mr P. I equate musicality with emotion or the music just sounding right. I find that the digital amps that I have tend to lack it a little. Thats why I pair them with tube preamps that tend to lend some emotion or musicality to the music. I can even say that my Martin Logan sub lends musicality to music over my Velodyne CHT sub. In my tube gear, certain tubes sound flat or sterile and others sound more musical.

    Yes, but emotion is just a subjective reaction. Do you respond emotionally to the percussive beat of a kick drum? Or to hearing individual voices among others in a sizeable choir? And what is "just sounding right" -- or for that matter, sounding wrong?

    I recently compared my new, Schiit Modi DAC with my SMSL DAC saying the the former sounded smoother; I suggested that most people would find it more "musical" than the latter. What I feel is true is that the Modi is an "easier" listen than the SMSL which can definitely sound harsh with many recordings. On the other hand with really good recordings I find the Modi a bit dull for, e.g. violins, missing some of the instruments' timbres while SMSL seems to deliver more of them.

    So what after all sounds right?
  • 03-03-2013, 01:06 PM
    Mr Peabody
    I did use those terms though, and your position, though stated more diplomatic, was similar as theirs, except for the one guy who basically denied any difference. So looks like maybe two camps on this issue. PY&T may have to suffice until I can think or learn of a better way to state it. I did try to make it clear though that the gear itself didn't create the PY&T but the gear was better able to present it or allow it to be heard. There has to be some way to describe the differences we hear when reviewing or discussing audio, I personally don't see any difference in using music terms or those terms such as "sterile", "cold", "warm", "dark", "analytical" etc. If one can understand what is meant by "sterile", then what is the opposite of that? I guess our choices are to stop discussing the sound of gear or just live with taking heat from those who don't agree with sharing adjectives until audio has it's own language. It's funny the first person who objected to the use of PY&T used the word "sterile", as I pointed out it is no more proper to use "sterile" in regards to audio if it is improper to use rhythm,pace or melody.

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Feanor View Post
    Opps! I forgot to mention PRaT, (pace, rhythm, and timing), among the sonic attributes. I wonder about using performance attributes to describe reproduction aspects -- not that you actually used the term yourself, Mr P. It seems to me that usage of the term is inherently invalid.

    Of course playback can't affect the timing of individual instruments: an amplifier or speakers know absolutely nothing about instruments or even notes. All it knows that there is a wave form that it must amplified or transform form electrical to sound wave.

    PRaT, I'd guess, is the phenomenon of microdynamics, i.e. the ability of an amplifier to follow a complex wave form, supply adequate current without distortion.

  • 03-04-2013, 06:15 AM
    Feanor
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Mr Peabody View Post
    I can hear what I call "musicality" in certain gear, for example Conrad Johnson and Pass are great examples, what I call "musicality" is when the gear allows me to get a sense of the rhythm, pace or melody of the music being played through the gear. To the contrast I had a Bryston amp that didn't have the ability to do this. I wonder if any one else has heard what I'm talking about? It's like the difference in a bass line just being played versus hearing the bass line and getting a sense of the swing. This is real to me, one of the reasons that had me switch from Krell to CJ back when but a recent exchange has me wondering if this is unique to me and I should refrain from talking about it or others can hear this too and maybe the people I was talking with, though claiming experienced listeners, it just escapes them. I would also call this "musicality", "emotion" but I feel "musicality" more to the point.

    Practically everybody will recognize the difference between the Conrad Johnson/Pass Labs extreme and the Bryston/Krell extreme -- the Right-Left or Yin-Yang distinction. Whether they define the one or the other as "musical" is ultimately a matter of preference, but among audiophiles I think a majority, (not necessarily a huge majority), tend to give the "musical" nod to the CJ/PL side.

    My perspective on this is that a power amplifier ought not to exacerbate negative qualities of (a) the recording, nor (b) upstream components. I suppose nobody will disagree. But further, I'd add, a power amplifier might compensate for negative qualities of signal it receives -- lots people are bound to object to this suggestion. How does could an amplifier possibly compensate for flawed signal? Stay tuned.

    But first, what does not make signal worse? There is a strong school of thought that says the high-order harmonic distortion (HOHD) sounds bad: this is probably true. Typically this school asserts that any amount of high-order distortion sounds bad, even at .001% or less of total harmonic distortion (THD). Further, they typically assert that 2nd order distortion is not only benign but inaudible up to 1, 2 or even 3%.

    It is a fact that Bryston, Krell, and other typical class A/B and class D amps use high levels of negative feedback to achieve very low levers of THD, but at the expense of some high-order products. On the other hand typical tube amplifiers need less negative feedback and some solid state amps are also designed to use little or no negative feedback; they tend to have higher THD but with lower HOHD. The two design approaches typically sound different: Yin and Yang (or is it vice versa? :smile5:)

    To reiterate, one school says any high-order distortion is bad while far higher low-order (2nd order at least) is benign and inaudible even even at relatively much higher levels. My hypothesis is a bit different, though.

    I believe that low-order distortion, (2nd and maybe 3rd), is not inaudible -- not subliminally at least -- and isn't merely benign. It is, in fact, salutary in that it not only cloaks HOHD in the amplification change but also cloaks or sooths flaws in the recording, noise and grunge for DACs, etc. This soothing effect of low-order distortion is interpreted as "musical" by many people.

    So for example class D amps I've owned have sound best playing my best recordings, whereas my low-feed back Monarchy amps sounded better playing my less good recordings.

    My "2nd order sooths" hypotheses predicts that if you add some of it somewhere in the reproduction change you will get the the soothing, "musical" effect. This is born out for example by Blackraven preferring to use the tube buffer in his Maverick DAC-preamp vs. bypassing that stage and going direct to his class D amp.
  • 03-04-2013, 08:34 AM
    blackraven
    I agree with what you say Feanor. I have always felt that "sterile or dry" sounding systems sound unnatural. They certainly do not sound like live music and are lacking those certain harmonics for lack of a better term that convey's musicality, emotion or what ever you want to call it. Although the Class D amps that I have don't sound dry that do seem to lack something and adding tubes to the preamp (at least in my system with the Grant Fidelity and Maverick Tube Magic) seem to fix this problem. Are they adding some distortion or harmonics? Yes, but the sound is better in every way.
  • 03-04-2013, 09:19 AM
    frenchmon
    Yeah count me in the Musicality crowd.....normally gear that doesn't move me, has no musicality to it.
  • 03-04-2013, 11:10 AM
    JohnMichael
    I do not look for musicality in amps but I do want neutrality. I find my Krell S-300i to be neutral and allow you to hear what the speakers are doing. I tried as long as I could to like the RS6's but it just never happened. The OML 1's and Studio 530's are both very musical speakers. A warmer sound might improve the RS6's but not the OML 1's or Studio 530's.
  • 03-04-2013, 02:22 PM
    harley .guy07
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by JohnMichael View Post
    I do not look for musicality in amps but I do want neutrality. I find my Krell S-300i to be neutral and allow you to hear what the speakers are doing. I tried as long as I could to like the RS6's but it just never happened. The OML 1's and Studio 530's are both very musical speakers. A warmer sound might improve the RS6's but not the OML 1's or Studio 530's.

    I felt the same way with my old Paradigm monitor 7's that I used for years, I just could not get the detail out of the midrange and the highs were a little too much on the bright side in stock form for me. It helped when I installed custom tweeter pods that I made with 1 1/8" soft dome tweeters and tweaked the crossover with zobel networks to keep the impedance the as flat as possible. But in the end I gave up the fight and moved on to speakers that would give me what I craved and am very happy for that until I get in the mood to upgrade to better Dyns or whatever else comes along.
  • 03-04-2013, 04:20 PM
    Mr Peabody
    JohnMichael is an example of what Feanor mentioned earlier about "musical" is subjective to the listener. I still have yet to hear the amp to beat Krell in transient response, this makes for a very lively drum kit or anything where transient is important.

    Feanor I have not done a lot of research on distortion. Here's a clip from a Nelson Pass interview. In addition, in another spot he mentions that tubes and tube circuits aren't as fast as solid state due to transformers in the tube amps. I wonder if that slight variation in speed helps our ear to pick up on the PY&T.

    "There are other design elements where we depart from the mainstream. One is that we use single-ended input stages and initial gain stages. The output stages are complementary; push-pull. That's a necessity: a single-ended stage in that area would make class-A look efficient. Push-pull class-A has a 2:1 efficiency, a 50W output requiring an idle of 100W. But a single-ended 50W output requires an idle of 200W; not only that, it current-limits at exactly that point, no more, whereas a push-pull can at least extend in higher currents into class-AB.

    So there is every reason in the world why nobody's building single-ended output stages. But those conditions don't constrain the rest of the front-end circuitry which doesn't have to deliver a lot of current. The overriding consideration here—and this relates to people's perception of absolute phase; audiophiles who believe in the importance of absolute phase are, I believe, essentially correct—is that air is single-ended and is not symmetric with regard to plus and minus. True, the nonlinearities and the asymmetry are quite small in the level that we normally like to think of, but in fact, when you're in the high end you're dealing with subtleties. This is a subtle thing, but it's real.

    It so happens that if you vary pressure around, say, a static 14psi pressure, you can't go any lower than zero, but you can certainly go much higher than 28. The characteristic of air is not symmetric in both directions. This means that there'll be a different characteristic off of say, a, bass drum pulse, positively phased vs negatively. I think that that's one of the areas where absolute phase has some measure of importance. And because air is single-ended (I think that the ear is also a single-ended mechanical structure), single-ended distortions don't stand out as much to the human ear and brain as symmetric distortions. And so I prefer even-ordered harmonics: second-order over third-order, fourth-order over fifth. That's consistent with a slight asymmetry.

    We always set up the amplifiers so that the asymmetry of the front end is the same polarity as what we expect that of the signal to be. And what we expect to see in the case of the way the atmosphere will behave responding to the loudspeaker. Toward that end, that's why we use single-ended gain stages in the earlier stages of an amplifier. This is in contrast to quite a few other people who go with push-pull symmetry, which has a way of lowering distortion but also pushes the distortion energy into the more-discernible odd-order harmonics. "
  • 03-04-2013, 07:44 PM
    Feanor
    Nelson Pass strikes me as a profoundly philosophical person in a way that most engineers are not. I can't comment intelligently about air being single-ended or absolute phase, but I have no doubt that Pass's philosophical bent shows up in his equipment. I'd have no greater audiophile goal than to hear his equipment in my system.

    Pass's key article on distortion can be found HERE. He is in the any negative distortion is bad school and recommends minimal negative feedback designs. Personally I wonder (1) if there isn't a level of THD that is inaudible even if it contains high-order harmonics, and (2) as I spelled out earlier, whether the benefit of some designs is not so much that they have very little high-order distortion but that they have relatively much more low-order distortion.