Time to leave outdated audiophile concepts behind!

[@NathanOakley1980]

1:25 I have a 25db noise floor. Fully treated room, triple glazed, concrete floor, 12” thick walls with cavities. So yeah, 20db is very difficult to get.

[@gerritgovaerts8443]

30 db is the best what most people can hope for , so yeah , 25 is very good !

[@brucermarino]

Excellent work, as always! We so often forget the complexity and subjectivity of the audio signal's journey to our ears. Have a wonderful New Year!

[@realworldaudio]

Happy New Year Bruce!!! ;

[@emilianovalenciaa]

Amazing video! Very clarifying, thanks for sharing your knowledge Janos!

[@NickP333]

Perfect timing, Janos! It’s 6:30am on Friday, January 3rd, 2025, and I can’t think of a better way to start off the day than with a RWA vid, a little breakfast, and a cup of coffee or 2. The fact that there is no true perfection in audio, is somewhat akin to being young and thinking you’ve got all the answers, but the older you get, the more you realizes ya don’t know sh*t…. Both are realized over time, usually years, if not decades. Music has always and fortunately been a part of my life in some form or another. Again, when you’re young, you almost take it for granted, because you think ya got it all figured out, which is just not true. I have to remind myself to keep an open mind, and hopefully evolution of thoughts and conclusions is a byproduct. Looking forward to the next video! Thanks, Janos! 🐱🎶🐱💜

[@realworldaudio]

Hi Nick, I missed our holiday chat! Was super busy over the past two weeks with home remodeling... made good progress though! We are making the attic space more practical, and that's a project that's been in the waiting for so many years. The good news is that it will make a huge difference in a lot better access to all my DIY parts, and hopefully I can do more mods and builds in the future.

[@NickP333]

@ Hi Janos. No worries whatsoever, my friend. Crazy time of year for myself as well, and definitely the busiest time of year for me, but especially the last few weeks. Everyone needs their instruments set up, amps retubed, etc., for holiday gigs, but they tend to wait until they need their stuff back within a couple days 🤦‍♂️ That’s great news about attic. It’ll probably give you peace of mind to just know that all your DIY parts are located in the same place. Mine are all over the place. I even found a 500K Clarostat pot under the driver’s seat of my car. 😂 How it got there, I’ll never know. I’m sure we’ll catch up soon. 👍🎶😊

[@NickP333]

I can assure you that by the time the guitar goes to the mic, down the cable, etc. By the time it gets to the speakers / monitors in the control room the guitar sounds totally different. I only say that as I’ve had the chance to have recorded in studios many over the years. Btw, my friend George Borden, who I did that Sunday night show with, and that you were on, Janos, has been a recording and mastering engineer for 30+ years. George has a lot of knowledge.

[@realworldaudio]

@@NickP333 Sharing his podcast was a treat! Thank you for inviting me. I hope I can be part of more in the future, and get to pick his brains on his experiences. And yours too :) Kintaro and Machiko say hello to your kits!!! ;

[@gerihifi]

HAPPY NEW YEAR, DEAR MENTOR 🎉😊 Great, you brought up some Audio basics again, so important, especially recording & mastering is a very complex beast! Therefore I LOVE to watch very specific mastering and recording Studio yt-channels! As I'm a digital franatic, it is similar to all those audiophiles telling 00011100101 are always the same and therefore Streamer and DACs are all the same..soo wrong, so many components are in between the digital and analoge path. Awesome to see you so active again, thanks! Greets from Hamburg!

[@realworldaudio]

Gerald, Happy New Year!!!! I have truly great news - 1. I already bought the lumber for the SWR300A cabinet :))))) 2. my new years resolution is to improve my limited German, started learning German seriously - every day at least half an hour, already started mid-December, did not wait for Jan 1. :) Hopefully will be able to join in your channel more and more as my skills improve. :)

[@gerihifi]

@@realworldaudio freut mich zu hören. Ab jetzt nur noch deutsche Konversation mit Dir 😉

[@sarpozdemiroglu]

Audiophiles don’t listen the music they listen the loudspeakers or their thousand dollar power cable with their 60 year old diminished hearing who can not hear beyond 10khz.

[@naturalverities]

If one assembles a system that is capable of translating a recorded waveform to acoustical energy at the listening position with a high degree of accuracy and completeness, one can then pass judgement on the success of the recording in capturing the essence of a sonic event, and can at best enjoy that translation to a high degree of organic sensual satisfaction. When ALL the "holes in the Swiss cheese" align, a truly magical result can be experienced. We are at the mercy of recording quality, and recordings are at the mercy of our reproduction systems. Great post, Janos, cheers!

[@hugobloemers4425]

Hi Janos, happy new year. This is a great video, it forces us to think about things. I can see where you are coming from, but whenever the comparison engineer versus audiophile is made, as engineer I can say this is not the case. If as engineer you want to exceed a mediocre level, you have to allow for practical experience to sometimes overrule the theory of operation. I have countless examples out side the audio industry for this. The one that radically changed my opinion about how audio works, was when I observed the influence different cables between a DC generator and a PVD deposition tool (the difference here was that later, we could puzzle together a hypothesis that could stand up against scrutiny, a luxury that is not possible with audio). All those cases are not examples of equipment defying the laws of physics, but rather us not taking in account the (for us hidden) laws of physics we do not understand well enough yet. The biggest fault engineers make is to ignore the existence of these laws. BTW, I am also weary of adding extra bracing to dead cabinets. Specially if they are iconic speakers. In doing so, you will shift the frequency of resonance peaks and may make them sound worse, even though they have a visually better waterfall diagram.

[@realworldaudio]

Happy New Year Hugo! Just read one of your comments 5 months ago, it was so relevant to this video as well. Indeed, a good engineer thinks practical and looks for solutions. I should really correct what I say about engineers in general really applies to what the textbook fanatics think "the finest" engineers are. There's so many folks who want to think super squarely, and do their best to ignore reality to bend it to a mold that fits a textbook statement, rather than looking into what is really happening... haha. Indeed, it would serve much better to show good examples of the engineers and engineering. Thank you for the reminder! : )

[@hugobloemers4425]

@@realworldaudio Hi Janos, your observations apply to many engineers and they never fail to say they are engineers when they go on the comment section. But not all are like that and if you go in to complex problem solving, a dogmatic approach will get you nowhere. I am looking forward to the next video of this series also because one of those dogmatic approaches is to get on a high horse and proclaim that only an exact reproduction of the original recording is worth perusing. So it is a very good question to ask, what is the actual original sound like?

[@jimmiedean8035]

The JBL line array concept. AKA a tower speaker. As pictured in the photo. Is a very old concept. I break up comb filtering with passive radiators in between driver's. Massive bass increases. With sames mid/high frequency SPL output. With half the driver's. ( Destructive wave energy. ) Theater speaker manufacturers , wanted to bring pro quality audio to the home. Mainly due to declining theater system sales. The audiophile industry has forgotten it's roots , and is stuck. A DAW can render massive studios and equipment , obsolete. As well as test wattage , distortion levels of amplifiers, octive ranges , etc. And precipitate full driver frequency analysis. Etc. Multiple , different low cost microphones can be used at the same time to cover full vocal/instrument ranges. Many new artists are recorded on DAWs in bedrooms. With combinations of cheap Mics. The over use of effects and plug in's can be a problem. The more one records and plays back. The better or worse the recording sound becomes. 🤔😊

[@realworldaudio]

Passive radiators between the drivers! That's ingenious! ;) Indeed, so true that the audiophile industry has forgotten its roots. Or, rather, is denying its roots.... and wants to become hyper-niche rather than functional.

[@jimmiedean8035]

@@realworldaudio The equipment seems to be getting more garish , and overpriced. Everytime I go to an event. While sound quality remains close to the same level. There's no dream , of the unubtainiuam system anymore. I leave happy knowing I build my own. And it sounds better. 😎

[@robjordan63]

I agree with you in so far as you say that the product created by the recording engineer / mastering engineer is not judged by its fidelity to the original instrument. We know that there is a chain of creative decisions that lead the creation of a digital master for distribution. However I think you went further and said that we should not expect perfect reproduction of the final digital master when we listen to the recording in our domestic listening space. If so, I disagree. The creative process is over once the digital master is finalised. The home playback chain should aspire to accuracy, transparency, high-fidelity, call it what you will. Accurate reproduction of the digital master, which is the culmination of the creative process.

[@xsamitt]

THIS!

[@realworldaudio]

Very good summary, but at one point I would correct that we cannot achieve perfect reproduction of the digital master, as there is no such a thing. Every reproduction is just an interpretation, and that includes the monitoring gear used at the studio. The monitoring gear at studios are geared towards flat sound that allows for ease of mastering, and do not serve as indicators of how it should sound in your living room. The job of the engineers is not to get accurate sound, but to produce sound that sells. The playback systems in studios have been painstakingly developed based on what is the EQ that will suit the majority of commercial systems, and not based on sonic accuracy. For example, the Altec 604 was used for mixing and general monitoring (in the days when people had efficient speakers), and then in the 70s it was changed to the LS3/5 (developed by the BBC, mostly as a convenience to allow mobile recording studios, but also to mirror the low efficiency speakers appearing on the market / becoming the new standard). Neither of these represent an accurate rendering of the recording. The 604 has a tonal imbalance at the crossover region, but it also has tremendous dynamic resolution. On the other hand the LS3/5 has no tonal imbalance at the crossover region but it has pitifully compressed dynamic resolution compared to the 604. As a consequence these two allow for recordings with vastly different sonic abilities / properties. The LS3/5 allows the production of a flat, compressed sound that sounds squashed and neutered on an Altec 604. Vice versa, the 604 masters yield a result that is superemely dynamic on a super efficient loudspeaker, but sound absolutely dead and lacking power on a modern loudspeaker.

[@lohikarhu734]

@robjordan63; He said "expect", which is not the same as saying that it's not a goal to get accurate reproduction... But the producer and engineers "build" the master in their own "space" with their own transducers, and their own ears. It's simply unreasonable to expect to be able to reproduce what they hear, because even your ears have a different shape, different placement on your head, compared to theirs. What I hope for is something that will be pleasant, or exciting, to listen to, and that might, at least, "resemble" the live performance of the band, or orchestra, or singer...A perfect reproduction...Ain't never gonna happen!

[@johnshaw359]

A system tries to faithfully reproduce a stereo recording not the actual event as experienced by the actual audience if even there was an audience when the recording session was made. Stereo is meant to give you some phase information which is critical to its raison d'etre as well as needing low colouration because speakers are meant to as 'acoustically neutral' (but not necessarily all the same) as possible and that costs money and research. Not sure why you like to hear the same boxy colouration despite different recording structures, that's not hifi in fact it's the opposite of hifi but perhaps it's what you like to hear regardless of the source.

[@adissabovic]

If hi-fi was a real thing we wouldn't be able to tell the recording from reality. :)

[@CarlVanDoren61]

Panels w subs, best of both worlds 🌎

[@megamond]

H-frame subs, perchance?

[@stephanel.4555]

Best wishes for 2025! Modern multi-mic studio recordings do create an "artificial" soundstage, but does that mean we cannot enjoy them just like we enjoy single mic recordings? Can a system/speaker not work well for both?

[@megamond]

Aren't most "soundstages" artificially created? This is what gets me when KZbin reviewers talk about "soundstages" as if they're real, i.e. Janos' grand piano source exhibit is hard panned somewhere in their room naturally?. A good system should sound great, even with a mono source.

[@realworldaudio]

Thank you Stefan! I think both are fully enjoyable. I often enjoy the modern, artificial image. Especially for music that is generated mostly / entirely in the artificial domain, and where the engineers were driven by inspiration instead of trying to fix errors in the recording chain. Kraftwerk, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Jarre, Vangelis... microphones, synths, lots of editing / processing, where the processing/editing was an integral part of the music, and was part of the vision of the band. However, when I listen to Beethoven symponies for example, the recordings with excessive multi-mikes and excessive editing are often cringe-worthy when contrasted to the 1 / 2 / 3 microphone recordings. There, the artificialness/gimmickiness is very stark, and the few mic versions offer a staggering dynamic range in comparison to the carefully manicured multi-mike recordings. Of course, there's exceptions to everything. One can find poorly done 1/2/3 mic recordings, and exellent multi mic. I was doing videos on recordings, but there was minimal interest so have not done much the past few years.

[@Peter_Cetera]

HiFi = 95% marketing & 5 % truth...

[@antonsyd7077]

Hello, Janos. Happy New Year! Wish you to get many more views on this topic. Hope that matrix will be destroyed for most of true audio enthusiasts

[@realworldaudio]

Thank you Anton, Happy New Year! I just recorded two follow up videos continuing on this subject, they will be up shortly :)

[@CraigAdams-s9i]

Appreciate what you’re trying to explain… but that explanation contains several crucial errors. Might be worth getting a recording engineer on your channel, to go through this in more detail. For example there’s a big difference in the method for recording an orchestra, vs a rock band. There’s also issue such as source (and even feed) phase coherence, bleed, and natural reverb reflections. I mainly work on live recording popular music at a grassroots level, which is a completely different hill of beans from recording the same band in a studio. I’m working with artists that almost no one has ever heard of, and I’ll never win a grammy or go multi-platinum. Hell… I won’t even go remotely bronze. There isn’t a metal assigned to sales this low… but it’s absolutely essential work that props us the rest of the ecosystem. Imo, in some ways it’s also more skilled since I’m working on a much lower budget. The process I use consists of: Mic selection and placement (up to 45 concurrent mic and direct feeds). Recording Clipping anomalous transients Reamping Overdubbing (ugh!), but only if absolutely necessary! Bleed mitigation Layer extraction Phase alignment Gating Feed optimisation Emulation Source processing Mixing Editing Mastering Slicing Rendering During the source processing and mixing stages I’ll use EQ, compression, various FX, and extensive reverb modelling. During mastering I’ll also use more EQ, saturation, multi-band compression, layer tuning, stereo imaging, and limiting. What the listener hears might sound like it was produced via an ORTF stereo pair of Neumann studio condensers… but it absolutely wasn’t 😂

[@realworldaudio]

Thank you for your wonderful post! I was invited to one of George Borden's podcast where we talked about various audio topics, with additional musicians (with Nick Pantazzi) and people in the music industry. I would love to have more of those talks, he invited me to join more of his podcasts, and I'd love to (but super-duper busy on weekends with home remodeling... sigh). Would love to pick your brains as well. (Sadly, timing is the hard question, but can be arranged). There's so many aspects to recordings and reproduction, the genre, the playback equipment.... in these past few videos I made I talked about what I perceive in my system with classical music recordings, but of course, there's a lot more to it. First and foremost , it is up to the recording/mastering engineer how the recording turns out. Number of mikes, method used, media used is totally secondary to that. I have excellent recordings with super-multi-mikes, and I also have (had-got rid of it) an atrocious Revox B77 recorded U47 direct-miked (no editing apart from level adjustment for the cutter head) Handel's Messiah production, which had unlistenable sound. Out of my 17 version of the Messaiah, this was about the 5th best in terms of audiophile terms (might have been best in dynamics, but other aspects not that good). It also had a weird solid state grain and unexcusable harshness to it that made it unlistenable. (Which distortion was inaudible with a low-resolution system, though...) What I noticed (on my system) is that a minimalistic approach to recording CAN open up a layer of extremely deep access to layers of appreciation that is not there with heavy processing. It is not how the recording "sounds", but the recording changes the perception of my body and the perception of the world and surroundings - it's when music steps beyond being just sound. (Others also report it who hear my system, so it's not something exclusively personal to me.) BTW, this type of experience is also highly dependant on the music and musicians, for example Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygen does this in a very potent way, despite of being made in digital domain entirely.... in the era when digital was in its infancy...

[@kineahora8736]

Excellent. I just crystallized it in a very similar fashion recently - I said to a friend, “when we were kids, we used to talk about hearing things exactly as they were played: ‘absolute Fidelity’ “. But I said, I suddenly realized that I didn’t want that paradigm anymore - I don’t want to re-create the experience of going to a concert because a lot of times if you’re sitting in a concert hall- it sounds like crap! I’m in the cheap seats very far away … or I don’t know where to sit for the best sound in that particular hall. I also perform- so I have a lot of experience knowing that each hall sounds extremely different and it is clear if you don’t know the place where to sit. No - what I want is for all of those musicians to be perceived by me as being right in my living room with me! That’s an entirely different goal. and I was also having a recent argument with somebody talking about op amps and how you are basically listening to the product of tons of cheap op amps and the person I was arguing with had this idea of Sound engineer is producing the music that were using the highest quality and highest Fidelity stuff with extraordinary attention to detail and perfection- now I don’t have a lot of experience with what sound engineers do, but I suspect strongly as you were starting to say- the main factor is convenience and getting the sound that *they* want- and I doubt that they are going out and buying expensive op amps and other expensive things to optimize all their equipment…

[@amitanaudiophile]

❤

[@amitanaudiophile]

The Sound we always listen in nature, natural way is the direct and reflected sound of the sound source and which is always in MONO form. But we as Human being Listen it by combination of our ear brain mechanism....which uses two ears..... ..........🎉.......🎉..........🎉🎉🎉...........you can understand what it means further.. Now about recording chain flaws. Mic to recording media the waveform of the signal must be clean/never clip at any moment any condition that has to be handled,control wisely. All A to D and D to A converters where original recording mess up because the mediocre/ resolution equipment and very tight THD. Mic catches direct and reflected sound waves while recording but these converters removes reflected waves (partially) consider it's as distortion. Many more to learn as an audiophile to get very authentic playback experience we must understand the true hi fi capturing recording technology also... And how we listen (psychoacoustic)

[@realworldaudio]

Thank you Amit, you summarized the process so well!! :) Much appreciated. Have a wonderful 2025!!! Janos

[@amitanaudiophile]

Happy New Year 2025 bro...

[@megamond]

Not sure if you mentioned mic compression? That is the start of the dynamic range compression in the audio chain. (The more money an audiophile spends on their system, the more deluded/ignorant they are? ) Likewise, e.g. monster JBLs to monitor the studio session's dynamics, with final mastering to follow with say Yamaha NS10's to represent the dull bookshelves at home.

[@realworldaudio]

No, I have not mentioned it yet! :) Thank you ; )

[@StrangeBrewReviews]

Audiophile is cringe , AudioFun is the secret to great sound

[@joefish6091]

The big fancy loudspeakers are big and fancy to allow for a higher sales price and margin. Single full range driver with maybe a single tweeter in a cabinet could not be sold for such extortionate prices. And its very noticable the people promoting these monster speaker stacks are kids in their twenties who have little musical experience. beyond crap and pop they play in cars. A good (and cheapish) pair of headphones makes loudspeakers obsolete anyway, same as ultra quality 4K VR goggles/glasses will make TVs obsolete. esp in small pokey rabbit hutch dwellings.

[@RennieAsh]

There are still some aspects of sound that headphones cannot create, as great as they are . I like to EQ headphones too, because most aren't to my liking stock response.

[@BaileyWiggebutt]

I have several high end headphones from Sennheiser, AKG, Sony, Hifiman, etc. They sound amazing but not the sound experience versus speaker system.

[@realworldaudio]

I love headphones, as they allow for a very relaxed, deep, personal listening experience. Especially when playing quietly, headphones present music in a whole lot better textural and dynamic detail level than most loudspeakers. (Although there are lousdpeaker / amp combinations which excel at that as well, but that's almost non-existent in the commercial market.) To me HPs are a lot more personal/intimate than speakers, as you are the only one experiencing it. However, sound perception is also occurring with our whole body, our muscles, internal organs provide neuronal and chemical (hormonal) feedback to sound - and that part is missing with the headphone experience. I think the two different perspectives are both wonderful, and we have two very different means of experiencing music instead of one. I take that any day, compared to being limited to one only.

[@aronhidman1]

"Modern mastering creates imaginary sounds with imaginary acustic spaces" Not quite: that is what mixing does, not mastering. The mastering engineer doesn't set the levels of individual instruments, like you claim: that is done in the mixing stage. Mixing and mastering are different things.

[@q0w1e2r3t4y5]

No Hungarian subs? Ffs 😉

[@realworldaudio]

I have a couple ;)