Re: (idm) 24bit 96kHz format

From Mark Kolmar
Sent Fri, Feb 19th 1999, 21:42

On Fri, 19 Feb 1999, ChairCrusher wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Feb 1999, Mark Kolmar wrote:
> > for example your speaker wires are different lengths for the left and
> > right channels, and you don't notice a problem, the extra bits and
> > potential frequency response are not going to mean much.

> If you have two speaker cables -- one 3 meters long, and the other twice
> as long, the phase error between the speakers would amount to 600 nanoseconds,
> or just under 1 millionth of a second.  Are you telling me you can hear
> phase errors in the microsecond domain? 

I sure hope not....No, it's not the phase error.  That would be even
sillier than you point out.  It must be the resistance and capacitance of
the wire.

All I know is I had switched from 16 guage wires of different lengths to
12 guage wires of the same length (so, yes, that's two variables).  There
was a change in the right channel, the one that used to have the longer
wire.  I had heard the difference before, but before I changed the wires I
thought it had to do with the room.

As long as we're on the subject of the finer points of sound, anyone who's
still reading will probably have some opinions on this: what kind of
production do you like, especially the soundstage?

A lot of the techno I like that you could theoretically dance to (UR, Jeff
Mills) gets a lot of its ambience from the room.  Fair enough for
something that will be pumped out of big, unrefined contraptions into a
room damped only be the people who occupy it.

Most of Atom Heart's stuff is sort of the same way, even if it is more for
living rooms.  Imaging can be excellent, but it is mostly very dry.  It
usually doesn't work in headphones. More often than not I'll start walking
around, or work at the computer at the other end of the room.  That goes
10x more for the discs that use total channel separation (e.g. BASS)
because you get a decent stereo image from just about anywhere.

Most of Aphex Twin's stuff (I opted out after _I Don't Care Even If You
Do_) is too sloppy to lose too much even if you are in a completely
different room.

At the other end of the spectrum is something like Underworld's _Second
Toughest in the Infants_, which has a clear soundstage, and a definite
sense of room ambience to sit inside, with foreground and background.  A
little overcompressed maybe.

Richard H. Kirk's productions are not crisp like that, but they can
envelop you like a warm bath.  The early Warp bleep stuff is dry, but I
know one of the reasons is so it will survive going through a PA into a
big room -- and that's where it gets the ambience.

--Mark


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