Gadgetory

hi and welcome but they would like to talk about quite an important topic for many yeah also for myself what type what kind of music is best for testing speakers I get comments repeatedly like yeah why don't use any classical music or you can only hear the qualities of a speaker with acoustic music with natural instruments or with vocals you only play electronic music or I don't know well this seems to be a topic which bother some so some one of my viewers who also views other channels asked an expert from PS audio yeah let's have a look at this video the best for evaluating speakers this question comes from Gary in Honolulu Hawaii Hawaii hi Paul what are the best types of music to test speakers headphones or an audio system I was always under the impression that acoustic unamplified music was the best I've just read an opinion by an Australian and Oh an Austrian youtuber named Olaf who does reviews on Bluetooth speakers and recently in ear earphones on his channel called clavinet junkie okay he states the following in response to a viewer criticizing his use of electronic dance music and his tests ah and this is where you are mistaken together with many other wannabe audio files best for comparing differences between speakers or headphones would be pink noise this reveals immediately where the flaws and frequency response are the second is pop or rock Wow I'm not sure oh love my fellow youtuber and I agree yeah I'm quite flattered that other youtubers especially real audiophile experts like pop from peers audio are talking about me but I cannot quite confirm with this opinion I mean he was so kind to not start any flame war to stay with the topic to give us his points but I don't think I agree with everything many audio files forget some really important aspects of spirit testing and I mean Paul seems to be some real audio engineer but he's already a little bit older maybe about 60 years old so he probably won't even hear above 10 kilohertz or let alone fifteen point seven hundred fifty Hertz which is the typical frequency that they CRT monitor creates you can often hear this tone as a background artifact in many modern recordings the audio engineer didn't hear it I think my hearing is still good enough over I'm 45 years old I can easily hear these frequencies you can hear this on George Michaels patients always in the background some some high-pitched tone like this here so I'm not sure many of you hear this I heard easily 20,000 Hertz not anymore but I can still hear this tone so Paul has maybe is maybe competent but maybe his hearing is not that great and saying that acoustic music is best for testing is also wrong many forget about audios circle of confusion what is this the problem is that there is no reference to a of recording music so every recording will sound different as an example take some vocals some instrument is recorded by some microphone then processed also the frequency of the microphone is not always flat so processed by an engineer heard over monitors studio monitors which are again tuned by another one who was hearing recordings which were again recorded by some microphone do you see it's and it's not a reference circle so every recording depending on how you place your monitors how your studio is equipped how good your ears are again back to the topic that many other engineers simply don't hear well above 15 kilohertz Bruce Sweden the recording engineer from Quincy Jones who recorded the best albums he was maybe 60 when he did thriller or maybe 55 so his hearing was already not that great but still the recordings are works of art but when looking at them today they stopped simply thin so you cannot judge the sound of a speaker by listening to a great recording by Quincy Jones or Michael Jackson because it sounds free not to modern recordings every recording for example take a bright recording it will sound maybe okay on a dual speaker but on a neutral one it will appear way too bright also how you place them in a room if you have a room which has lots of dampening it was some different and there is no no real norm for this how to record every studio despite having the same exactly the same student monitor will sound different because of the room because of the ingenious ability because of it a is taste so if you hear the vocal of some no 9 9 Simone Nina Simone and you think it sounds likelihood of a nice speaker you never heard her in front of you so she was recorded in some recording booth with some particular microphone then to bring out her voice the engineer in ya process this may be boosted some frequencies if I change the equalizer for my voice like now here to make it more bass heavy you can still recognize my voice but it sounds different what if I make it brighter you can still recognize its name but it's brighter now so you don't know how the engineer recorded this vocal still many yeah her vocals sounds perfect uncoloured for my speaker how do you know how she sounds in reality I mean where she is standing in front of you so if you are listening to the recording of her voice inside your room you have so many parameters that you will never hear how she sounds in reality it will not sound as she was standing in your room here but rather where she was standing in the studio together with your room acoustics and my goal is not to play music because you like it or don't like it you like I don't know they are straight so you would expect data straight but I select tracks which reveal the differences of a speaker there is some also like the circle of confusion Harman research had has lots of topics what kind of music you should use for speaker tasting and the worst was a jazz trio acoustic just where it might sound nice over a speaker and it might sound great but it won't reveal any differences of speakers this is what I'm trying to offer you I always show you two speakers and to demonstrate you the difference I need a high bandwidth signal with lots of frequencies containing not only vocals although vocals are complex like my voice you can distinguish it from an otherwise because of the four months I have individual kind of formats but I can still reduce frequencies and you will recognize my voice like I demonstrated before so in my case pink noise would indeed be the best signal to immediately show you the difference between one speaker and the other if you have one which is reference and you compare them to the other by simply playing peak noise not music you will immediately hear that there is some difference if I for example played some vocal track over one speaker and another one which sounds somehow off it may sound still the same but if you play pink noise or some really dense dense music rock heavy metal which is some kind of modulated pink noise you will immediately hear which speakers sounds okay which is the reference and which stands off so this is not a topic and not playing music because I want to play I want to play nice music but I select metrics which are revealing therefore I like to use so persona many have some problems with it because it's artificial instruments and so on no I don't care every recording is artificial to some degree because of the audio circle of confusion you will never be you will never know how it was recorded how it was processed how your room influences this even with with a chain that is completely I don't know yeah normalized but there is no such chain you just check some recordings from the 80s up to the 90s they were rather thin while modern recordings are really fed not only because of loudness war that's simply probably also because of loudness war but if you for example compare again Michael Jackson Thriller the original recording against them remastered one you will hear that the remastered one is way louder but also better somehow it's still far not as thick as modern recordings but it's definitely different so there is simply no absolute I don't know music which would say this is how it should sound or whatever I try to use tracks which are all also somehow dynamic with lots of attacks so you can immediately hear which because Travis with this with classical music you won't hear this and therefore I would like to demonstrate this with some examples so I selected some speakers which somehow sound similar somehow different and will hopefully here yeah they're the material the music that is played how it influences your perception of sound and if you can distinguish them better so I won't say that acoustic music or vocals or classical music let alone okay that doesn't have any real attacks for that to really make the speaker suffer you need some really heavy electronica stuff with bass drums kicks drums with some square waves which are not present in the nature you won't get any instrument that that creates a perfect square wave imagine the the membrane the driver for a square wave it has to move like this very very quick not smooth like with a violin which also with an whole Orchestra which is rather mushy kind of sound but he you have two distinct positions very a hundred percent to the front another percent to the left and if a speaker cannot do this you will immediately hear that it creates some distortion some some farting or whatever so let's start me with the first example here I have the nine bass which many people seem to like yeah I think it sounds way off mmm although in the meantime we can get it for $50 or something so it's okay for this kind for this money but it's still not a great speaker and here I have the title boom strap you can see compared in size which is not flat either but it has quite a balanced sound a slightly mmm yes madam responds but no Peaks or no no frequencies that are and first I would like to play a vocal track so an a cappella version of soul persona and princess and project I have no other trade which are copyright free so I have to use this and later on I will play the same track well let's let's listen to the vocal track first they're driving they're they're writing it on the wall subjective they're gambling the rambling regulations for the nation that that's true but which one's looking straight up I can fake up where's the proof q back to the anchor see the bankers and I'm real he's on our think tank girls got the red girls thank the so could you hear any distinct difference is on the solo volkov between the nine bass and the toy foot boom Stern yeah they sounded still Maul is the same so let's try the same track but as a full arrangement now and then you will hopefully hear it better I think now you could immediately hear it that the nine base has some trail problem I can show you some frequency response measurement from both you have you can see the nine base this is the one with this heavy peak here in the treble so it sounds just horrible and I cannot quite understand why people like this the treble had this strange metallic character but it was not easy to to hear this out from the solo vocal you needed the whole arrangement then you could also hear the differences with bass still quite similar both betrayal is definitely the problem on the 99 bass apart from treble the response is small s flat but yet treble sounds just horrible and I would like to show you another example with classical music here I have the driver from 20 Bose because around $50 and the tribe it makes on + both have a quite natural flat response and we will play a classical track first so it will hopefully hear which one renders it more realistic but again how do you know how this orchestra sounds in real life because it was again recorded through some microphone in some room which already affects the sound yeah but let's have a listen to the album first and the tribute afterwards so I think it's really not that easy to say which one rendered it moralistically but now let's try some electronica track which so many hate because it's not natural make this classical track and then you will hopefully hear which one struggles more so I think now you could hear that this dance track was definitely way more revealing especially this 909 kick drum made both because rattle a bit although the tribute was still cleaner the Vavoom became quite messy afterwards after the kick together with the whole arrangement the snare all this little stuff made it sound really really quite bad you couldn't hear it from the classical music so for people who only listened to classical music they might even not notice all the errors of the if you listen over just some full-range speaker you won't probably notice intermodulation distortion all four inch rather suffer from this therefore you have to add some Twitter or some additional second weight whatever but you get you have to fight with other problems then with time domain with no with frequency with the crossover and so on and so on sound dispersion so just listening to classical music it's nice and I listen to classical music but I won't use it for speaker testing because it doesn't reveal anything except if a speaker sounds really off if it has some zigzag frequency response then you will hear that something is wrong but most because sound okay with me too except yeah bangle dollars because take the Mendelssohn pure play a - it sounds so Hollow still people can listen to this but it has such a strange mid response and people think it sounds balanced so this was classical versus electronica what else do I have yeah this is the bank you travel two or three what is it I don't know it's an electrostatic speaker and let's play some solo piano stuff first so you will really only hear piano mostly mates quite complex frequency spectrum but not as revealing maybe and let's compare it against yeah maybe the FIFA Helsinki which I didn't put it put here now but we will switch between these two so yeah I'm not quite sure what to say usually electrostatic speakers are famous for their precision especially with mitts and Trevor but here with this solo piano track it was not that easy to maybe say I could maybe even hear some more direct sound out of them Thank You tremolo and now let's play again a so personam princess freesia track which so many hate because I don't know it's not natural whatever and let's compare these two speakers again yeah and I think now it was easily here able which speaker renders this correctly or normally yeah the FIFA made the sound quite close to the original it has a pretty flat response why the Bank you being some electrostatic twelve some dynamic drivers it was some miss I mean it sounded just horrible you couldn't hear it that well through the solo piano track and but as soon as there is more going around more frequencies more a dancer mix yeah we will maybe have a look at some spectrograms later on I think this example also showed that in my case the music that I would have chosen would immediately reveal the differences and this is what my channel is about I want to demonstrate you as easy as quick as possible how the one sounds compared to the other one I cannot play just one and expect from you that you can judge the sound because you have no absolute reference but in this case you can compare to relatively and with the piano track or with the classical you're probably wouldn't say you couldn't hear classical music doesn't contain real bass notes like electronica music which offer has frequencies below 20 Hertz I mean bass lines down to 40 30 that you can distinctly here with some speakers we played often tracks with this NCS that had really deep frequencies that you don't hear it with smallest because but all the larger ones play them easily without distortion so maybe another last example acoustic music because it's so revealing so let's listen to the downy a7 this is the retune version which was not made by me my when I gave them my suggestions I tried to make it sound quite natural then they somehow change the tuning and it sounds like this so let's play me some acoustic Peter first and compare it against the denim and yeah maybe you can already hear some differences here both speakers have some some sterile enhancement some artificial hello max max 3d or whatever so both already create and nights nice soundstage but with the solo Gaeta track it's not that easy to say which one sounds correct so let's check them now yeah I could only hear that the Donnie was way more hissy yeah there was some hiss in the background but now let's try some heavy metal or rock track which is some kind of modulated pink noise so you have all frequencies represented with this distorted guitars and so on very dense and we will hopefully hear which one renders it correctly yeah I mean against the donee the denon suddenly sounded muffled although you could hear it's way more balanced way more precise the Donnie made some mess out of this song still acceptable with this acoustic guitar track but as soon as some more complex arrangements electronic I don't know heavy metal regardless you can immediately hear the flaws of a speaker so to conclude this topic I'm not playing music or no acoustic music because I don't like it or because my taste in music is bad I simply think that it doesn't reveal it won't reveal any or any significant differences over this video so I try I often sit for hours comparing back and forth especially worse because that sound quite similar to each other it's really hard to find tracks that reveal this particular frequency that is off some speakers have just some hump or some some deep in some particular freak frequency area that you usually won't hear with many tracks depending on a mix depending on the circle of confusion it might even be that the speaker that sounds off some somehow better because just the mix is bad but then you put up some particular track and it it it reveals this this this this error of the speaker so my take on this that classical music acoustic music vocal music is not best for speaker testing check Hammonds research they also say that some rock jennipher walls or whatever they selected these tracks for as being reference for a kind of recording type because the recordings different way too much on the sound quality depending on how great the engine is how could their monitoring system is the recording system and then on top of this it comes the mastering which puts again some effects to make it louder to push it more forward so you will never hear the the original sound so an acoustic guitar recorded will never sound like an acoustic guitar in your room you will recognize it as an acoustic guitar but won't have the impression as if the kita was playing here because you hear lava the the original room where it was recorded together with your room acoustics which alters the sound already there for my purpose my my my idea was always to offer you a quick way to compare speakers to each other and I tried to selecting tracks which vocals are not always revealing needs often sound nice to a speaker it starts to become wonky in the trail and bass area if a speaker has meat off like many bang losses because then he will hear it immediately they sound some hollow honky a bad treble and bass is most because simply struggle especially this bottom portable ones that I usually try to offer you and show you what the bigger speakers like my audio pros sometimes it's not easy to really hear the differences especially if you are recording listened on your site through some crappy headphones because I doubt many of you are using some high-end headphones with a flat response or tuned to be flat so they listen over some cheap I don't know cause pata Pro and think they can really judge the sound of course all the cause the thinner speaker will maybe sound better because the other one would appear more boomy that causes or you some some bass boost therefore the relative difference is to demonstrate you I need to use some high bandwidth signal yeah I forgot I wanted to show you some some spectrograms like we have from the vocal from Princess Rita so this is the solo vocal already looks quite complex but you can see most of the Mizzou is around up to maybe 4 kilohertz above that is probably just this breathing from here so if we look at the spectrogram of the full arrangement you can see that there is way more going on so you have the snare which adds some some frequencies the bass and so on and so on if we look at the classical track so the classical track is very there is nothing just some some mash you see also up to maybe 2 3 kilohertz so if I put the what was the track are there dense track so it's really the whole frequency spectrum is filled out and you get some attacks you get some some some some pauses which with the classical track was just some some some no real attacks so you cannot judge the transients well how the speaker behaves with first at texting and so on and so on the same with the solo guitar track look at this so quite interesting spectrogram you can see the upper tones there form ends of the guitar and quite nice and the heavy metal track is way denser so really up to 20 kilohertz everything for therefore I don't want to talk about the stopping anymore please don't tell me use some acoustic track because it reveals or you cannot listen to electronic music over speakers to judge the song quality of course I can because the electronic music is what makes the speaker really suffer this this heavy bass often down to 20 Hertz and you hear that the bass reflex port heart suddenly or the you can hear that the main brain cannot cannot it deforms it cannot move in such a way it cannot extend and so on his own so I think the type of that of music that I selected or I try to select I always stay try to stay within my my taste I won't play I don't know country or I really I I hate hip-hop because it's not music from you just some sample beats with some vocals so it has also heavy bass so you can judge it you can maybe judge some speakers for their bass response but I don't listen to rap and and trap and crap and everything so I still to try finding tracks from my repertoire I would have liked to play para straights Pink Floyd Beach Boys Beatles but it's all copyrighted stuff I already have to think around that a little bit to find tracks which are still copyrighted but maybe not recognized by YouTube's Content ID so a rather trying to find some obscure tracks I would have liked to really play some reference tracks there are some that I used on every audio exhibition you can hear the same tracks because they think or they are regarded as reference but I cannot play them due to copyright so I try to find tracks that are still revealing but somehow enjoyable as well so Paul from Pierce audio yeah tell me if you could hear the high pitch tone I doubt I mean in five six years if I continued listening over headphones I probably won't hear it either but I'm still happy to hear up to 60 milli 17 kilo Hertz I could easily hear above 20 kilohertz we made it once at school with some frequency generator he pushed it towards 21 and towards 20 and I could still hear it I was probably the only one I can also hear in beds when they are flying around it's this high-pitched it but it's not 20 it's something below so they have some really yeah I think this was it I hope you like this I hope I could clear up some confusion about this topic because I really think I am doing my best I try to select tracks that are somehow revealing and can offer you an idea how these two speakers compare if I play just some acoustic stuff you won't hear anything it may sound nice you may enjoy the music but it's not about music enjoyment here rather about speaker tasting and showing where the flaws of a speaker when I get a new speaker I listen a lot with different kind of music to find this errors where the speaker really has some flaw it's not easy if I just listen to classical music I probably won't notice but I too might be hesitant people still complain so and don't want to volume anymore it was already long enough so Paul sorry but acoustic music is not the best for speaker testing it's nice to listen to and I also love to listen to - Simone or whatever then Warwick any kind of music I like pop I like but I usually don't play it but for revealing for demonstrating you the differences it won't reveal anything therefore I don't play it sometimes when I think there is some issue with meets whether vocal suddenly sounds I did this with the Bo play it to it sounded horrible of classical music compared against the Viva it sounded just like some some some saw some some chainsaw so you could easily hear that the pendulum sounds off although the classical orchestra nobody can prove that it was recorded in a way which represents the orchestra we hundred percent is different if you sit in a concert and listen to it you get lots of room ambience you hear more early reflections than from the orchestra because it's far away 3040 meters if you accept if you are maybe sitting at the front at the first row but if you are rather at the back you hear more of the room and who knows how its recorded if it's recorded with just one microphone or if or if there are several microphones that pick up several parts and then mix together again leveled through the engineer and maybe pushed some frequencies so yeah but this is how today's recording unfortunately without any reference without any standard without any norm and we are again with this audios circle of confusion and really quite surprised that so many audiophile lovers or audio fools maybe don't know or are not aware of this audios circle of confusion they really think that an acoustic instrument played over their speakers would represent how the acoustic instrument sounds in real life no unfortunate doesn't so a recording will never represent the real sound except maybe binaural recordings heard over headphones this is why I really concentrate on this topic it's the only way to really show you how a particular sound source we gotta do if a speaker or something if you hear over a referenced pair of headphones then you get all the natural ambience the room the whole yet the whole sound you just need a really reference pair of headphones best would be maybe some automatic that omit all ear resonances eternal resonances and tuned for that you can maybe get an idea of how some particular sound source sounds in reality an orchestra recorded by some artificial head which again has different ears than yours so you would probably have to record it by your own ears it's not easy so a recording will never represent the reality there were some funny studies in the 30s 40s where they compared a recording of of a singer back and forth in a blind test and somewhere holding their dose is probably because of he had some breath smell or whatever so there is lots of research done but it's still impossible to represent the reality acoustically maybe with a binaural with an optimized binaural recording technique but not on an orchestra recorded by 10 or 12 pairs of microphones and then mixed together it doesn't represent how it sounds in reality it just sounds may be nice over a pair of speakers but it doesn't sound like it sounds in reality I mean if you go to a live band a jazz concert and listen to it life and then listen some life recording of a jazz band over either headphones or us because it doesn't sound the same it's a completely different sonic brush but I really I want to stop all this I hope I didn't bore you too much I hope I could really mmm close this topic about music choice and I hope others you get the idea yeah thanks for watching and bye bye