chad the chaos
1 BigUp
our ears/brains are very well adapted to detect changes in environment to keep us safe, music is so recent in our evolution that it has nothing to do with music imo but moreso that the music we make is because of how well we can discern audio
3 Likes
absolutely not true at all!
a speaker cone is at its best when receiving the correct voltage for its designed application, music is magical, but speakers are not
very few speakers, maybe none, are going to sound best going from zero to max excursion very very quickly. A pure squarewave will absolutely shred a speaker cone when played loud
1 BigUp
No, it is true. If the transient is broken up, the speaker cant react in time
it’s the same thing you are sayin really
If a transient that looks like 〜 is broken up into I><I a speaker will have more trouble replicating it
a natural transient never has a hard ‘I’ attack portion, it would always be gradual and no zero cutting
they react to pitch (or phrased another way: dynamic modulations)
and are now super accustomed to notes
which are kind of the same thing - its a tonal distribution of frequencies
its a matter of how abstractly you look at it
yeah, im not denying that, our ears have been ‘tuned’ to hear pitch very well, because its incredibly important in detecting changes in environment, our brains get programmed to enjoy certain tonalities of pitch and harmonies, but it is not intrinsic (imo). Our brains are also incredibly sensitive to volume, and where a sound is coming from as well. Even more interestingly imo, our brains secretly notice when there is a sound and there this isn’t. And our ears actually even make their own sounds because they are basically tiny speakers/mics. Called ear modality
I dont think looking at hearing in a biological way removes any of the abstractness actually, i think it really solidifies how powerful hearing is, and how powerful music can be. Even more so, I think removing the biology from music is dehumanizing where you can just say people like these notes, this note makes someone feel bad, this one makes them feel good (culture dependent i.e “notes” are basically bullshit). This stuff has been examined for a very long time and is more a cultural thing than a ‘human’ thing. Especially look at cultures that have mostly atonal music, the rythym and timing is the important part
2 Likes
= dynamic modulations like pitches or trails or switching between notes innit
No, I Know what you mean but there’s really no reason to make the distinction. I’m saying to look at it more abstractly, if you put all these bits in one pool - you can address them all the same way - it gives you some leeway to reason with it. Make sense of it/take it in.
Thats when I would argue that notes are just microrhythms and its all about rhythm in the first place.
We just react to dynamic modulations, some of them we group as notes, and make little tonal hierarchies - but its just the change from one dynamic to the other that affect us. Before a feeling we are affected - its that whole Deleuzian, Massumian thing of affect.
I guess here the defining qualification is what is ‘broken up’, and i guess what it means to say when a speaker is performing it’s ‘best’. I guessing you will say what sounds most natural, but that doesnt make sense
no, the comparison is between
A) a pitch
B) a pitch that has been broken up by having phase introduced to it
theres not a transient without a dynamic modulation/ pitch or a sound without a transient
but B will necessarily be broken up: I><I
and A 〜 will be more fluid/unbroken
a speaker prefers 〜
i saw your comparison before, but youre making me choose between two theorical choices that dont actually match reality.
you are literally explaining (and only very barely) the concept of “distortion”. Yes, clean signal vs different signal. But you are not actually demonstrating how clean signal is actually better than different signal other than saying, the speakers like it more. Which, as someone with quite a bit of experience in the field of audio now, will tell you, a raw signal will never ever play out on a speaker compared to one that has been appropriately adapted to suit the playback method.
1 BigUp
the reality is that ANY sound has a transient
you cant pick a sound without a pitch or a transient
the playback will compromise what the sound originally is
natural does not mean raw
in a real abstract or wide or long perspective
there can exist a form of harmony with natural sound playing off another/ form a harmonic structure of live sound that any system will have a harder time to reproduce, but that when you hear it ‘unfold’ with your ears physically harmonizes
and really trippily - there’s a point where that harmonic content is ‘overriden’ and turn back into noize
say you listen to a creak or live water - all the little droplets can be perceived as having their individual harmonic content that turn into a larger harmony
but then when you lose focus or a playback system is created to try to represent that fidelity - it turns back into harder transients and are distorted and sound more ‘percussive’ than harmonic - and you perceive it as noizy
so are we getting into basic performative academia now where we discuss if anything recorded will ever capture the original intent? lol
im trying to talk to you about the reality of taking a sound from a source and then adapting that sound for usage in whatever application is desired
you seem to have certain ideals about sound that don’t actually make a lot of sense to me, even if the end result of what youre talking about is actually something i agree with
2 Likes
its not that any sound has a transient, all sound is actually just sound, the transient is measured at the loudest peak (the attack). Its a construct, not a natural phenomenon, its used to measure sound, it is not sound itself
2 Likes
yes
above ^
(but its not about intent, but about ideal conditions for sound)
natural does not mean raw
in a real abstract or wide or long perspective
there can exist a form of harmony with natural sound playing off another/ form a harmonic structure of live sound that any system will have a harder time to reproduce, but that when you hear it ‘unfold’ with your ears physically harmonizes
and really trippily - there’s a point where that harmonic content is ‘overriden’ and turn back into noize
say you listen to a creak or live water - all the little droplets can be perceived as having their individual harmonic content that turn into a larger harmony
but then when you lose focus or a playback system is created to try to represent that fidelity - it turns back into harder transients and are distorted and sound more ‘percussive’ than harmonic - and you perceive it as noizy
the pitch is the natural condition for sounds being (re)produced
the transient is the same movement only in a dynamic measurable sense
but thats your problem lol
ideally any system will have to adapt to try to reconstruct what is possible in nature
its often turned upside down where people assume machines can do stuff that is beyond nature
but we’re talking about a natural physical phenomena - what machines can do here is only exaggerate
physical conditions - not override them - not yet
its like how are you going to invent a new color
im not really following you here honestly, are you straying into the mystical here?
I think I’m trying to talk to you about EQ/compression artifacts and how they are bad for playback and how our brains actually perceive sound.
1 BigUp
but we’re beyond that now
if you have
A not-EQ’ed sound vs B a digitally EQ’d sound
then B has artifacts introduced by the phasing