Before you read this, let me tell you a story about how a simple mod made the picture on my TV so much better. It made the colours brighter, all the shapes become more defined, a haziness vanished from the screen, the blacks get blacker and the contrast became more pronounced. The experience of watching was more absorbing, thrilling and involving.
Spoken like a true hi-fi reviewer. What's the mod?
I drew the curtains. Which in anyone's house will make all those things happen, if the TV screen is in a room with a window.
So not snake-oil then.
My speakers used to be above my height on bookshelves, about eight feet apart, and about six inches from the wall. Nothing around them. The sound was good, but could get overwhelming quickly on turning up the volume, and orchestral symphonies were often a bit of a mush. Also, sitting on the couch about ten feet away and half-way between the speakers, the sound would seem to come predominantly from the right-hand speaker, and on some recordings, more from a triangle between the speaker and the right-hand side wall (!), than from between the speakers. The left speaker never felt like it was involved in producing sound: it was just there. I would notice this especially after I had been writing for a while.
Then the venerable Paul McGowan of PS Audio said something that had me leaping off my sofa. If you really are going to put your speakers on a bookshelf, so they are near the back wall, put books around them to act as baffles.
Oh. Because I thought I shouldn't do that. But if Paul McGowan says so, and John Darko quotes him with respect, maybe I should give it a try. What can I lose?
So I put books round my speakers, and, um, well, the sound changed. It felt less harsh in the treble and more contained. Less bounce off the back wall I guess. But the music was still veering to the right.
Then I saw a video by Hans Beekhuysen in which he said that the speakers should be at ear height. So I stared at the shelves again and figured out how to do that. And I moved the speakers in so they had books on either side of them. Those changes made another difference. That mythical stereo sound stage between the speakers would appear now and again, only to wander away when I started concentrating. The sound was more contained and much less splashy, since the speakers were now surrounded by books to the side and shelves above them, cutting down a lot of leakage. I could play the music louder without getting confusion and harshness.
It's a small room, by the way. And there are French windows behind the couch, so the sound can bounce straight back off the glass. Yes, I know. One step at a time.
Saturday morning, I'm still noticing the sound veering to the right. By now a number of thoughts are occurring to me:
Maybe a lot of lower-cost orchestral recordings were not made with an ear to the stereo sound stage? (1)
Maybe it's my hearing? Who said my ears worked equally? (2)
Maybe the amplifier favours the right channel? (3)
Maybe working takes away the brain-cycles needed to process sound into a stereo picture? (4)
Maybe it's time to abandon Source Direct and use the balance and tone controls like a normal person? (5)
The tone controls on the Marantz PM6003 don't make a lot of difference: the bass doesn't suddenly boom, or the treble hiss, if you turn either up high. It's more like some of the weight goes out of the sound when turning that bass down, and some of the edge goes off the treble when turning that down. I skewed the balance WAY OVER TO THE LEFT.
At last. The sound stays where it should be, in the middle. It now feels like the left speaker is doing something.
Except, I then discovered from another Paul McGowan video, that the sound should not feel as if it is coming from the speakers. It should seem to be coming from somewhere in the middle, which is what the `sound stage' idea is all about. The speakers should be there, but the music should be elsewhere.
So I turned the balance back to neutral and sat in a chair to make an equilateral triangle with the speakers, shut my eyes and listened to the music. The orchestra was in the middle. The sound was coming from between the speakers, rather than from the speakers. As it should be.
But the moment I started working, the orchestra shuffled over to the right while I was looking at the screen. I looked up: there they were, and the right speaker was in the middle of the orchestra. Which is actually what I had been experiencing.
It's definitely me. I'd say it makes sense. The sound comes from the speakers and the brain translates it into music and makes it seem to be coming from the space between the speakers. That's a reasonable amount of processing: think about how hard you have to concentrate to hear where a sound is coming from when you have no visual cues. So when I take a whole load of processing capacity to write some of the things I do, it's maybe not surprising that my audio processing gets a little sloppy.
Hefting the balance to the left cancels out that `processing drift'. If I'm listening in full attention mode, which I would do more on headphones, then I would put the balance back to neutral.
Maybe a lot of the hi-fi stuff about speaker placement and room set-up is the same as drawing the curtains. Maybe the sound from the right speaker is bouncing off the table in front of it? Who knows? That's what the balance control is for. It works. Who cares if it's not the purest hi-fi practice? I have a decent stereo sound image and a tighter sound that I can crank up the volume on without it turning into mush.
Which is what I want.
(1) I think that is definitely true. I'm not convinced that sound design in classical music is as good as in pop/rock/dance, or even if they've heard of it. After all, if you're sitting at the back of the Festival Hall, you're really getting mono sound. In posh churches, the choir doesn't even face the audience, but sings across the aisle to each other.
(2) When I use headphones or in-ears, I don't notice a skew to the right. Just a wonderful all-over stereo sound-stage. So I think my ears are okay.
(3) You would think they tested for that.
(4) Possible, if not actually plausible.
(5) Because I fell for the whole real-audiophiles-use-Source-Direct thing. Which is a conceit that assumes all your kit is electrically and sonically transparent. And anyway, who says the source CD / music file was mixed properly? DJ's adjust the EQ to suit the mood (or at least they say they do). Using Source Direct is like trusting the chef to add the right amount of salt and seasoning. The chefs who can be trusted to do that make very expensive food. Eating what I can afford, I'll taste-and-add, thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment