Some questions about bass integration and XOs (Oris Horns)

by GC, Thursday, December 20, 2007, 12:42 (5969 days ago) @ GC

The quote continues:

This phasing must be correct, else you will not be able to judge the

correctness of the reproduced signal at all.
The absolute phase differs from disc to disc and can furthermore differ
in one take from instrument to instrument, believe it or not.
All needed by the recording should according to Richard Heyser be a
single clap of a pair of hands. In that clap all necessary information for
later improvements of the recording are present. As it is now, you are
the judge. There are no help to find anywhere, than in your brains
capacity to distinguish between over- and under-pressure. It would be
wonderful if someone could develop a device that could tell us this
absolute phase from the signal itself. It should be possible, as
transients have a tendency to generate a low frequency unbalance,
which could be used for that purpose.
Try to change the absolute phase, playing a recording made in a
church. If you can't hear the difference, something is very wrong
somewhere in your equipment.
This absolute phase has also to be correct, all the way from the main
outlet through cables and components to the loudspeakers.
This goes for power source, the one you can feel with your fingertips
on the cabinets, and equally important, cable direction must be correct.
Why? I don't know for sure.
A bet would be that it is a question of treatment of distortion slightly
different for the positive and negative half caused by net polar diodeeffect
between the crystals and the facts that high and low level aren’t
treated equally. To make it even more complicated the direction is
further dependent of the frequency the wire is carrying. When it is
used for digital transfer, you can’t be sure that the direction is the same
as for analogue transfer.
Should you be the owner of a single-end amplifier you even have an
absolute phasing between that and your loudspeaker to complicate it
all.
The brain, the near future, and some thoughts.
In this chapter I will try to give an explanation of how I think the brain
works with sound. It must be understood that our hearing is the latest
of our senses to be developed and that it is the most important one for
our surveillance, as it out of our 5 senses is the only one always turned
on. Even when you are unconscious it still works. You can’t react on
its information, but they will be stored no matter what.
Our nerve system has a reaction time at about one tenth of a second.
In this little time the brain interprets the information received, before
they are presented for your conscious mind.
From the information it somehow builds expectations of what to come,
to verify rhythm and melody in music or concentrate on speech,
whereby it suppresses disturbing sounds. It so to say reduces and sorts
in the amount of information received from the ear nerves to
concentrate on, what it expects to come – to listen for.
But there is also a short cut, always open for transients and some
unexpected silent sounds. These serve as a signal of danger, to zoom
into and especially listen for in the sounds treated by the brain. These
specific sounds serve in the same time as a trigger signal for

production of adrenaline - surely a reminiscence from our wild life.
The silent sounds are of great importance. Just remember, how scaring
tiny sounds in silence could be from childhood in the dark.
These silent sounds are even stranger - how can we distinguish them
from other more noisy sounds? Simply because they are not expected.
They are out of order so to say.
If you are a trained listener, you often feel these signals more than you
hear them, you get warm or irritated - the adrenaline productions is
raised. A fact you are not consciously aware of.
By use of these signals, the brain can, so to say, look into the future
(1/10 of a second or more) and simultaneously use them in the sort of
the sound received. It if necessary even can clear the working area
from which the conscious mind is fed, prepared with all capacity to
recognise the echoes of these trigger signatures. Some information is
thereby left untreated – masked - and so to say not heard. This is
strange but true. Further it can listen for these recognisable echoes
deep into the noise around us. (Up to -20 dB below the level of noise.
Experienced in space communication).
The brain does more than that. Based on music or sound received, it
somehow builds expectations for further development.
When in a piece of music, unknown to you, a wrong key is struck, or
your loudspeaker colours one tone, you react. Why? You know neither
the piece nor the specific instrument.
Should it be a Steinway grand, its resonant character doesn’t bother.
Modern music, where the development can be hard to predict, is of
most music lovers heard as noise.
A tone from a clarinet, sampled and used for the rest of a keyboard,
sounds wrong except from the sampled one - again how can we know?
I'm sure that our perception of sound is heavily based on predictions.
Are they right you feel good, and starts singing along. Are they too
often very wrong you get irritated.
Pianists, to get the music more tense, earlier used a playing technique
where the rhythm was changed just a little bit, called rubato. -
Disturbance of expectation.
Before we continue, I must emphasise, that sound happens in the run
of time - that you can't freeze it, as you can with a picture.
All that really matters, are the brain and its tremendous work in the
dimension of time, with that enormous amount of time-distorted
information.
I really get more and more impressed of its capacity. That our hearing
Never rests even if you are unconscious, and that it is the last of our
senses to be developed, tells the importance of that sense in particular.
It is well known that closing your eyes and open your mouth will
improve your hearing capacity - you look foolish but what ever.
Anything that helps you understand the event better, should be
judged as good no matter, what measurements say.
It is e.g.. well known, that distortion distributed in the right manner
makes sounds more realistic, than with no distortion. Does air distort?
Is that distortion part of our expectations?
It is also well known that a loudspeaker with linear frequency

response sounds wrong, compared to one with mild decaying level
towards the upper end.
But beware! There are traps of simplicity and emotional taste for the
brain within to rest.
To understand, what I mean, think on pictures, painted contra
photographs, or photos with low contra high resolution, graphics to
pictures with a myriad of grey tones. What do you prefer?
You should of course prefer that with a myriad of grey tones following
logic, and none of the others. But all the different ways of reproduction
can be used, for you to see the subject. The principal question remains,
if this analogy can be used for our hearing - which does the brain use?
I would guess the last two in combination. Graphics for instant
recognition and gradually within parts of a second adding more and
more detail much like a painting is started from raw sketch to the end
result. In this work many hear it as right that the reproduction is
marked with a multitude of resonance. Much the same as the intensity
of colour on the TV is chosen too high. No matter how pleasant it may
seem – it is wrong.
Our brain only needs few seconds of sound, to manipulate with the
signals building a kind of basic understanding of the sound received,
and expectations of, what to come. This ability creates by itself traps at
listening, as the brain will try to glamorise it all, it's an active part,
especially experienced with musicians, who as critical listeners often
are of no use.

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