i've just been rearranging the synths and shelves and stuff and thought it would be fun to plug in my old Sequential synth as a master keyboard (i used it as such before getting a big Fatar some years ago). The synth is one of the eighties ones from SCI with MIDI, but still has the wooden ends and looks good and knobby :-) [doesn't matter what synth it is for these purposes]

Anyway... plug into the rack, switch on and tinker with the keys and ALL of my VA modules sound SO much better! They sound responsive, and deep, and exciting and just like the real thing. Suddenly i was enjoying myself again!

At one point i brought the fader up for the real analogue synth... and it sounded a bit thin, so i put it back down :-)

OK OK - of course i know this is psychological - the look of the instrument and the feeling / feedback it gives is very important to the player. But it is very interesting, isn't it...

[Other factors might be a better keyboard action (the Fatar isn't very nice, but nor is the SCI) maybe even a faster MIDI response, or the fact that in the rearrangment of kit all the FX sends got turned up to 11 :-) ]

I wonder what everyone else thinks..?

In the meantime i'm going to be jig-sawing and staining... putting some wood on the Fatar. He He!

You know this is rubbish, why are you asking us?

I have a nice brass light switch in my bedroom. The light is so much better than the one in the kitchen where the switch is plastic. This is true because I believe it to be so.

Put some A/B comparisons on a CD and see if anyone can tell the difference on a blind trial.

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Dynamite with a laser beam...

i don't think it's rubbish at all.

who's to say that the pleasure of looking at a nice wooden cabinet has no effect on what we hear. as if our senses can be neatly separated and pigeonholed into distinct categories. it brings to mind that dysmorphicwhatdyacallit condition where folk hear colours and see sounds and so on. it suggests to me a fundamental overlap between the senses.

anyway, my modular's in a totally smart walnut cabinet and it sounds brill. the cabinet even smells good. so in a way my music sounds, looks and smells good. haven't found a way of tasting it yet though.

i'll get me coat.

Some double-blind research was done recently with food. People were fed chocolate brownies on a paper plate and asked to rate it. The same chocolate brownie was then placed on a beautiful china plate and lightly dusted. The china plate brownie was judged to taste much better than the paper plate one.

Wood and other items can make a difference in a recording studio. Try placing a CD player on a cushion, on a wooden table or a glass table and it will sound very different. Whilst I have not tried this with instruments I know that Pink Floyd have all of their studio equipment on steel and glass hifi racks. Just a thought but do all guitars sound the same because they are just a bit of wood and some strings. Maybe wood, metal, glass concrete can all make a difference although sometimes more subtly than others.

Dominic

You obviously have very little understanding of digital (or analogue for that matter) electronics and physics. If an instrument is electro acoustic and features pickups (including solid electric guitars) wurlies, rhodes etc then of course what its made of affects the sound - but for anything electronic it makes no difference. Of course you are right that the ambience and subjective effect of nice wood etc can have a phycological effect and so have their place, but affecting the sound - nah!

Sorry that post look a bit bossy - but you know what I mean

Quote SunShineState:

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Sorry that post look a bit bossy - but you know what I mean

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nicely defused!

i suppose it depends what you mean by 'the sound'.

this gets a bit philosophical, but if you regard the sound as something independent of the listener then of course a bit of wood has no effect on a digitally produced sound at source.

however, if you regard the sound as something that takes place within your mind, then any number of external factors can affect it, such as how you feel, what you're thinking, the colour of your wallpaper etc.

the latter is a valid way of looking at our interaction with the world. the tradition in modern times has been to look at ourselves as separate from the world and everything that goes on in it. i wonder though if this might be changing so that we come to regard ourselves and the world as one and the same thing. a feeling of separateness can be held to account for much of the stress and disquiet of modern western living, whereas a sense of unity with the world generally leads to a profound feeling of well-being, regardless of the difficulties of life.

gosh, that was a bit off at a tangent wasn't it. sorry.

I would go along with an argument that said you might play better (more accurately, better articulation) on a nicely-made old-fashioned keyboard. And the result would then sound better.

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Instant gratification is actually pretty good. It's fast as well.

Quote SunShineState:

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You obviously have very little understanding of digital (or analogue for that matter) electronics and physics. If an instrument is electro acoustic and features pickups (including solid electric guitars) wurlies, rhodes etc then of course what its made of affects the sound - but for anything electronic it makes no difference. Of course you are right that the ambience and subjective effect of nice wood etc can have a phycological effect and so have their place, but affecting the sound - nah!

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hmmm, I could roll out my credentials but will not do so as you are so obviously an expert! ;-)

There have been so many tests done confirming that what you place a piece of hifi equipment on will actually affect the sound in the same way that a guitar and a piano sounds different depending on what they are made of. Have you actually carried out your own tests to see if you could detect a difference or is it just your opinion?

I often find that many people find this hard to believe until they do their own test and of course you are entitled to believe whatever you like. Stating what you believe in such absolute terms though, especially when there is so much evidence to the contrary, is a little naive and misleading for others. Try it out, you might be surprised. The easiest test to demonstrate the effect is to place a CD player on a cushion and then to place it on a hifi rack or table, preferably glass, to demonstrate the maximum effect.

Dominic

Absolutely it does.

I know a mastering engineer who has huge blocks of quartz crystal in his studio to "soak up the high frequencies" - I think he's talking VERY high frequencies here. If crystal, wood, stone, steel, plastic etc have measurable effects on radio waves then they MUST effect the way an electronic circuit works.

Why bother record at 48 or 96 Khz if ultra-audible frequencies don't effect the sound ?

PS I'll post pictures of my new Macbeth M5 with wooden end cheeks to prove my point !

Quote:

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hmmm, I could roll out my credentials but will not do so as you are so obviously an expert! ;-)

There have been so many tests done confirming that what you place a piece of hifi equipment on will actually affect the sound in the same way that a guitar and a piano sounds different depending on what they are made of. Have you actually carried out your own tests to see if you could detect a difference or is it just your opinion?

I often find that many people find this hard to believe until they do their own test and of course you are entitled to believe whatever you like. Stating what you believe in such absolute terms though, especially when there is so much evidence to the contrary, is a little naive and misleading for others. Try it out, you might be surprised. The easiest test to demonstrate the effect is to place a CD player on a cushion and then to place it on a hifi rack or table, preferably glass, to demonstrate the maximum effect.

Dominic

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Why don't you try sticking big pink cushions into your speakers - sounds great

and while you're at it why don't you buy some solid gold snake oil impregnated speaker leads too - I'm sure there's lots of tests showing how great they sound too.

This thread seems to be getting a bit out of hand, soon someone will come along and say they can hear a difference between VCOs and DCOs!!

Quote SunShineState:

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and while you're at it why don't you buy some solid gold snake oil impregnated speaker leads too - I'm sure there's lots of tests showing how great they sound too.

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Sunshine, just buy the cheapest of everything in life, it will save you a fortune as you obviously will not be able to tell the difference! ;-)

No I'm actually really interested in why the CD sounds better on a cushion - what is the effect you hear - do bad singers sound in tune, and bad drummers sound in time? I'd be interested in an explanation of the physics behind how an electro-optical laser device in a sealed box is affected by the cushion?

Quote SunShineState:

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No I'm actually really interested in why the CD sounds better on a cushion - what is the effect you hear - do bad singers sound in tune, and bad drummers sound in time? I'd be interested in an explanation of the physics behind how an electro-optical laser device in a sealed box is affected by the cushion?

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If you re-read my post you will see that I never said that it would sound better! It will sound different. Placing a CD player on different surfaces makes it sound different, the cushion is very different to the table and you are more likely to hear a difference than say between two different tables. You do not need a doctorate in physics to hear the difference, just a set of ears. I listen with my ears and not by reading an explanation of the difference betweeen two different sounds, perhaps you could do the same when you have a minute rather than just stating an opinion - or enlighten us with the double blind tests that you have carried out confirming your theory that all cable with connectors at each end carried sound in exactly the same way.

To avoid this just becoming a tit for tat battle - let me explain what I'm really getting at:-

Firstly without making a big thing about it I too have some “credentials” to know what I'm talking about - I've worked in recording and as a musician since the mid 1970's, also had jobs repairing things like amps and hammond organs - and I have an HND in Applied Physics & Electronics.

People seem to confuse sound with aesthetics – of course nice looking synths with nice wooden end cheeks are desirable and may enhance the playing experience etc, but they make no difference to the actual sound of the synth. The aesthetics are therefore important but different to the sound capabilities. The issue is that hearing is subjective and people may imagine the two things (ie with or without end cheeks) sound different.

Moving on to cables – there are of course areas where the choice of cable is very important to the quality of the sound and others where it is not – the “snake oil” purveyors exploit these misunderstandings in order to charge large prices for stuff you don’t need. For example in a low power signal path – electric guitar to amp/pre-amp for example, a good quality, low capacitance cable with gold connectors would give an audibly better performance than an inferior cable, whereas in my opinion when driving high power circuits – ie speaker connections – all that is required is a thick cable capable of handling the current – and 5A household mains cable is as good as anything. By the way to answer one of the other posts here, using the right cable for digital connections is essential due to the “characteristic impedance” required to avoid reflections in the cable – audio cables will not do. What I’m really having a go at here is some of the bullshit and mythology involved in the audio business.

The point of all this is that the physics of what is happening does always effect the way something sounds, whether you like it or not – anything else is really imagination – so therefore great old vintage hammonds full of tone wheels and valves certainly have a sound that is influenced by what they are made of and their surroundings – whilst I’m afraid a CD player on a cushion does not! If you have anything to prove me wrong here I’d love to see it?

To answer one of the other posts about blocks of quartz or whatever – if you are talking about a studio environment where you are listening through speakers (electro – acoustic devices again, where the physics involves actually moving air) then the objects in the room may well have a bearing on the sound due to reflections, and absorptions of the sound by different materials.

So if you tell me that your “CD player” is in fact a “ghetto blaster” with speakers then I may completely agree with you that the cushion can effect the sound, however if its just a CD player - as I’m pretty sure you’re suggesting- then I completely disagree with you – you can’t divorce sound from physics I’m afraid – however romantic we all want to get!

Cheers

Just for a laugh, and not because I have any intention of moving my CD player one way or another:

I suppose that a more stable surface could mean less vibration and thus less error correction being applied by the CD player ... and thus kind of sort of improving the sound. A little bit. Maybe.

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Instant gratification is actually pretty good. It's fast as well.

Edited by SecretSam (05/05/05 01:16 PM)

I wondered how long it would take someone to come up with that one! If you really have excessive vibration then mounting the CD on something soft (prob neoprene rather than cushions!) will help stop serious errors like skips - but I don't believe there is much error correction used in Audio CDs anyway compared to data CDs and even if there were I don't think this would have any effect on the quality of the sound - Hugh ?

Anyway it makes the "Floyd mount all theirs on hard glass surfaces for a better sound" myth even more ridiculous!

Hey - but at least you have noted a real physical posibility here rather than magic!

Quote SunShineState:

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To avoid this just becoming a tit for tat battle - let me explain what I'm really getting at:-

Firstly without making a big thing about it I too have some “credentials” to know what I'm talking about - I've worked in recording and as a musician since the mid 1970's, also had jobs repairing things like amps and hammond organs - and I have an HND in Applied Physics & Electronics.

People seem to confuse sound with aesthetics – of course nice looking synths with nice wooden end cheeks are desirable and may enhance the playing experience etc, but they make no difference to the actual sound of the synth. The aesthetics are therefore important but different to the sound capabilities. The issue is that hearing is subjective and people may imagine the two things (ie with or without end cheeks) sound different.

Moving on to cables – there are of course areas where the choice of cable is very important to the quality of the sound and others where it is not – the “snake oil” purveyors exploit these misunderstandings in order to charge large prices for stuff you don’t need. For example in a low power signal path – electric guitar to amp/pre-amp for example, a good quality, low capacitance cable with gold connectors would give an audibly better performance than an inferior cable, whereas in my opinion when driving high power circuits – ie speaker connections – all that is required is a thick cable capable of handling the current – and 5A household mains cable is as good as anything. By the way to answer one of the other posts here, using the right cable for digital connections is essential due to the “characteristic impedance” required to avoid reflections in the cable – audio cables will not do. What I’m really having a go at here is some of the bullshit and mythology involved in the audio business.

The point of all this is that the physics of what is happening does always effect the way something sounds, whether you like it or not – anything else is really imagination – so therefore great old vintage hammonds full of tone wheels and valves certainly have a sound that is influenced by what they are made of and their surroundings – whilst I’m afraid a CD player on a cushion does not! If you have anything to prove me wrong here I’d love to see it?

To answer one of the other posts about blocks of quartz or whatever – if you are talking about a studio environment where you are listening through speakers (electro – acoustic devices again, where the physics involves actually moving air) then the objects in the room may well have a bearing on the sound due to reflections, and absorptions of the sound by different materials.

So if you tell me that your “CD player” is in fact a “ghetto blaster” with speakers then I may completely agree with you that the cushion can effect the sound, however if its just a CD player - as I’m pretty sure you’re suggesting- then I completely disagree with you – you can’t divorce sound from physics I’m afraid – however romantic we all want to get!

Cheers

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Well sunshine you really have shot yourself in the foot there! Rather than try to theorise and end up contradicting yourself, ( and mis-reading my posts - I never stated that a cushion improved the performance, just to try it and listen to the difference) why not just listen to the differences for yourself!

Quote:

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Well sunshine you really have shot yourself in the foot there! Rather than try to theorise and end up contradicting yourself, ( and mis-reading my posts - I never stated that a cushion improved the performance, just to try it and listen to the difference) why not just listen to the differences for yourself!

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I think my arguments are entirely consistant - I see no contradictions in my post - perhaps you would like to enlighten me as to which bit you're refering to?

Regarding the sound - please refer to the bit about imagination....

Quote:

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hmmm, I could roll out my credentials but will not do so as you are so obviously an expert! ;-)

There have been so many tests done confirming that what you place a piece of hifi equipment on will actually affect the sound in the same way that a guitar and a piano sounds different depending on what they are made of.

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By the way having "shown you mine" I'd be interested in what your "credentials" are - and where I can find these tests you talk about??

Quote:

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By the way having "shown you mine" I'd be interested in what your "credentials" are - and where I can find these tests you talk about??

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You seem to have gone very quiet??

I guess he just mispelled his post in the first place. maybe he was trying to say that *weed* does make synths sound better, not wood.

Yeah maybe that's it!

Quote SunShineState:

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If you really have excessive vibration then mounting the CD on something soft (prob neoprene rather than cushions!) will help stop serious errors like skips - but I don't believe there is much error correction used in Audio CDs anyway compared to data CDs and even if there were I don't think this would have any effect on the quality of the sound - Hugh ?

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There are 2 levels of error correction on audio CD's and a further level of error concealement where the CD player interpolates between the last and the next good parts of the signal. Data CD's add another layer of error correction instead of the error concealement.

The big problem with arguments like this is that they are very dependent on the particular CD player tested. Bruno Putzeys from Philips has done some testing on this and has found that many CD players have very poor jitter immunity and power supply separation which means that anything that affects the laser tracking could have an effect on the audio output. Any noise on the digital/tracking power supplies will also leak through to the audio side.

Good CD players should be immune but there are very few of those around.

As far as the Pink Floyd thing is concerned - I've had a listen to a set of high resolution files that one of the engineers connected with their studio supplied and I'm not sure that I can really tell a difference between them.

Cheers.

James.

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JRP Music - Audio Mastering and Restoration.
http://www.jrpmusic.net

Quote SunShineState:

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Quote:

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By the way having "shown you mine" I'd be interested in what your "credentials" are - and where I can find these tests you talk about??

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You seem to have gone very quiet??

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I've been having fun in Barcelona and buying some more vintage synths; how about you?

Had a listen to your CD player on a cushion yet? Once you have had a listen to your CD player on different surfaces we can talk some more.

Quote:

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does wood make synths sound better?

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No

If you'll forgive grappa fused ravings from a student with an exam in fourteen hours and fifteen minutes and hence the psychological stability of a schizophrenic woman carrying sextuplets:

I think the crucial argument here is whether we are talking about sound an sich or perceived sound - and obviously things sounding 'better' or 'worse' is a discussion about perception.

The cake on different plates argument was a well made one (have any of you ever eaten winegums with no added colour? Not nice. Not nice at all), as was the one about synaesthesia. I won't have any of your fancy degrees telling me that state of mind and environment does not affect perception; that's not even philosophy, it's medical fact!

If you don't believe that, remember back to when you were a student and had had a bit to drink, and had an exam in fourteen hours and twelve minutes, and how even Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah would feel like a busy city street full of screaming children scratching at black boards.

My point is,

Q: does wood make synths sound better?
A: If you say so!



-Paws

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Signature (up to 200 characters). You may use UBBCode in your signature

Those wooden ends...

Did you put them on with glue laced with diamond dust, Stradivarius-style?

Quote Jupiter_4:

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Wood and other items can make a difference in a recording studio. Try placing a CD player on a cushion, on a wooden table or a glass table and it will sound very different.

Just a thought but do all guitars sound the same because they are just a bit of wood and some strings? Maybe wood, metal, glass concrete can all make a difference although sometimes more subtly than others.

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You kind of blew the expert act with that guitar question!

Wow.

Way back in the first post Baron De wrote:

"OK OK - of course i know this is psychological - the look of the instrument and the feeling / feedback it gives is very important to the player. But it is very interesting, isn't it..."

I don't think he was saying saying that wooden bits on a synth make it sound better - he wasn't even listening to his old SCI. He was playing it, and it was making him happy. And happy people like what they hear.

Can't we all just get along?

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http://www.musicthing.co.uk

thanks Tombola

some people really didn't spot my sense of humour, and tripped over their own boring egos.

but it's ok - i'm still happy :-)

We are not all boring, and some of us may even have a sense of humour - but when somebody suggests that an electronic instrument actually SOUNDS better because it has wooden end cheeks then I'm sorry but I feel we have to pull them up on it! If we had said - "yes you're right it does sound better" would we have really helped anyone?? and all that stuff about CD players on cushions - I'm sorry but life is too short.

Mr Humourless of Kingston Upon Thames

Hey, I don't know why I thought of this now, but have you found the 'ignore user' function on this forum?

You click on someone's name in the left hand column - it takes you to their profile page, and there's a button which says 'ignore this user'.

Then, whenever they post something, the header comes up in the thread, but with a little box saying:
*** You are ignoring this user ***"

Very gratifying! Anyone know where I can get the hardware version?

(You can ignore me, now)

***You are ignoring this user***

yeah... it was the CD players on the cushions and the credential swapping that finally got to me...

That's a bit judgemental - surely people are allowed to express their opinions and have the odd heated debate - isn't that what these forums are for? If you agree / disagree you can post replies - and if the subject or post bores you you can move on to something else - what's the problem

Oh dear, I re-ignited another argument...

Guys, do your own thing, & in the meantime, please get on!

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Be cheerful - learn to deny the coffee!

***You are ignoring this user***


:-)

OT: somebody told me that electricity makes synths sound much much better - can somebody please explain exactly what electricity is, as I just don't understand it.

It has something to do with physics, no?

I have come a long way, but there is still so much I don't understand...

ML