For me, the major source of aggravation is having people who aren’t trained to test things, do so. It’s like having your neighbor’s six-year old listen to your car engine. “Does this sound normal to you Freddy? Great! It must not need a tune up.”
It’s easy to be fooled when inadequacies relate to things people aren’t used to being critical about. It calls to mind stereo add-ons of the 70s and 80s (and computer sound cards today), which emulate “Cathedrals” “Concert Halls”, etc. They sound very impressive when sales people demo them. And they’re abandoned by most people as soon as they get home.
If concrete flutes sound the same as expensive silver ones, then it means the material has nothing to do with the sound, as has been noted. However, this isn’t true for the player. The feeling that comes through their hands and lips could not possibly be the same. As a piano player, this is one of the things that feels “dead” about electronic keyboards–you can’t feel the sound in your fingers.
I wish I could… but I’m not sure I can. I’ll give it a try.
What I mean by “reflectivity” is the response of the material to the column of air resonating inside it. Different materials will reflect (or absorb) differing parts of the spectra. Perhaps a simpler experiment for you to try, no machinery required:
Get a length of 1/2" tubing a few inches long. Plug one end, and blow across the other in the manner of whistling a bottle, pen cap, or various other things you probably made noise with as a kid. This is about the simplest flute there is. Try different plug materials. Start with something extremely elastic: tape a piece of balloon on the end. Then try, say, styrofoam. Then maybe a 1/2" wooden dowel.
This will not have the same impact as making the entire tube out of different materials, but I am hoping that the balloon and the dowel will make a drastic enough difference for you to hear it. We are talking about something fairly subtle here…
I think we can agree that by the time you’re buying $1000 cables, fine tuning is by far the best you can expect.
By the time you’re into $1000 cables, NOTHING different is the best you can expect. Audio frequencies pass virtually unchanged through pretty much any conductor. Things like ‘skin effect’ have no influence at audio frequencies, for any reasonable wire size. 16 ga lamp cord is all you need.
Some of the most expensive cable solutions actually distort the sound. It’s a gimmick - they DO sound different, and because they are very expensive you think the difference is ‘better’. Then you open them up, and find that there’s an RC network in the connectors…
But as for flute materials - I can accept that there might be a difference, because every material has a different absorption curve. If wood absorbs higher frequencies more than lower, but steel does not, then it makes sense that a wooden flute might sound a little different than a steel one.
That’s in theory - in practice, the difference may be too small to be audible between hard materials. The question is, would a flute covered with a rubber coating inside sound the same?
By the time you’re into $1000 cables, NOTHING different is the best you can expect. Audio frequencies pass virtually unchanged through pretty much any conductor. Things like ‘skin effect’ have no influence at audio frequencies, for any reasonable wire size. 16 ga lamp cord is all you need.
Some of the most expensive cable solutions actually distort the sound. It’s a gimmick - they DO sound different, and because they are very expensive you think the difference is ‘better’. Then you open them up, and find that there’s an RC network in the connectors…
But as for flute materials - I can accept that there might be a difference, because every material has a different absorption curve. If wood absorbs higher frequencies more than lower, but steel does not, then it makes sense that a wooden flute might sound a little different than a steel one.
That’s in theory - in practice, the difference may be too small to be audible between hard materials. The question is, would a flute covered with a rubber coating inside sound the same?
Well, the SciAm article I read indicated that one must use rigid materials. So I’m not sure that using balloon/styrofoam/wood is the proper test.
So here’s my question to you: If I did your experiment with plugs made of two very different ductile metals – say, lead and gold – would I notice any difference?
Well, that’s interesting, because that’s exactly what some of my cables do have. Also I’m well-prepared to believe the added electronics intentionally modify the current. Whether that’s to take out something bad (say a 60 cycle hum) or put in something artificial.
What unimpressed me about the NASA hw guy’s arguments was that they were standard philosophy from electronics classes. I was a sw guy who had to educate myself to solve a nasty electronics problem. So I read up-to-date material on power control, spikes, etc. The hw guys still refused to believe what I guess now are fairly well known facts, given the proliferation of consumer power products. There’s a lot of folklore out there mixed with fact.
A fat copper wire of modest purity will pass a signal that’s almost entirely undistorted. Ok. BUT, my $200 amplifier cables (without electronic add-ons) sound noticibly better than $100 ones. They’re louder. They sound as if a muffler was removed from the speakers. I’m a (lousy) musician, I still have to I trust my ears to tell what sounds more like an instrument.
Although this didn’t enter in our NASA argument (which I felt the audiophiles mostly won), if some kinds of impurity lead to superconduction, isn’t it possible that others lead to improved transmission speed, or more uniform speed?
And that factor alone doesn’t support the idea that a silver flute sounds better than a lead one. I was beginning to wonder last night, though, whether sound radiated from the body of the flute created weak sounds that generally were heard only by someone within a couple feet. If that were the case the test audience (presumably at least a couple yards away) would notice no difference. But since the critical listener for an instrument is the person playing, those very weak sounds, such as differences between metals, could be important.
I don’t know if you would notice any difference, or if I would either, changing the metal of the plugs only from gold to lead. But I chose the balloon/styrofoam/wood plugs as materials with extremes of rigidity. If SciAm would not consider wood or PVC to be rigid, then the comparison is invalid, as differences in rigidity would be a critical factor. It would seem silly to say “All flutes of identical dimensions and design sound the same, except the ones that don’t, which we won’t consider.” You couldn’t (with validity) make a generalization and then throw out all the exceptions as not meeting the case.
It is clear that if a flute’s material absorbs all the vibration, it will not function. That said, it should also be clear that wood, plastic, glass, metals, crystal, and bone all have enough rigidity to make a functional flute, they each could have their own characteristics of absorption and reflection of sound, and that those characteristics could have an effect upon the sound of a flute made from any of those materials.
I’m not an acoustics expert and I don’t play (shudder) flute, but in the case of this instrument, it’s a resonating column of air. It could be trapped in a magnetic field, with no body at all, and approximately the same effect would occur.
Even given all the qualifications I’ve been suggesting that would cause a silver flute to sound better than a brass one, it is a little, tiny suspicious that the preferred sounds come from the metals that cost more. Not much status in a ceramic flute.
partly_warmer: There has never been a double-blind test that showed that expensive cables could be identified over plain old 16 gauge lamp cord. The people who believe so (most ‘audiophiles’) are not educated in electronics, and have a heavy bias towards wanting to believe that they have a ‘golden ear’ that allows them to hear things others can’t. They are helped along in their belief by a willing industry in ‘audiophile’ components that sell with outrageously high profit margins.
I remember reading about one published ABX test in which an audiophile could not hear the difference between a set of expensive audiophile speaker cords and an old rusty coat hanger.
As for differences in propagation velocities… That’s ridiculous. Do you know how FAST the speed of light is as compared to the speed of sound in air? I guarantee you that something as trivial as a difference in room humidity will have far, far more effect on the phase relationship of your signal than any impurity in the wire.
Save your money. Buy good quality speakers, a good solid amplifier with a good power supply with good filtering, and connect your speakers with 16, 14, or 12 ga speaker wire.
For interconnects between components, get yourself something equivalent to the Radio Shack ‘gold’ line of interconnects, or the low end ‘monster’ cables if you must. What you want here is good shielding and quality construction. Forget the exotic gimmicks. Anyone who spends more than a total of maybe $300 for all cabling in their system is being ripped off.
I practice what I preach, btw. I just finished wiring the walls of my new home theater, which will have about $20,000 worth of various electronics in it when it’s finished. I wired the whole thing with Home depot 12 ga in-wall speaker wire, for a total cost of about $50.
I’m going to give a yes, a no, and maybe.
I purchased those cables by having the salesperson switch them while I was listening (physically pulling out the cables, and replacing them). I noted the differences, and bought the ones I could live with.
Unfortunately for the sake of this discussion, I’m a software engineer type. What I remember distinctly about the NASA Ames arguments was that several PhDs were practically shouting themselves hoarse on either side of the argument. For days. People got really angry. It was one of those two or three times at NASA where the experts had reinforced their own world view so successfully, I couldn’t tell which side I believed.
As far as propagation speed, look, it was just a guess. If part of one frequency got slightly out of phase wouldn’t it cancel other parts? If impurities in the copper get magnetized, they wouldn’t affect transmission? If the reflection at the cable terminals isn’t well-controlled resonances aren’t set up within a cable? These were some of the arguments I remember.
Also, getting off topic, I suppose, have you heard about recent discoveries that the speed of light can be slowed? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/02/990223083631.htm Granted, this is in a highly specialized situation, but
seems like if light can be slowed, so can electricity.
Violin makers utilize an iterative technique to establish the final thickness over the top and bottom sections of a violin. They tap a section they are working on and, based on the sound of the tap, decide whether that section needs to be shaved down to reduce its thickness. While this process sounds simple, it requires a person with outstanding hearing, judgement and craftsmanship. The application of the varnish is also critical, and requires a great deal of skill. There are violin makers today who produce instruments that are purchased and used by world class soloists. http://www.alfstudios.com/ The best modern instruments are likely to cost on the order of at least $26,000. http://www.alfstudios.com/news/Sotheby.html Finally, there is still a tremendous prejudice toward the old master instruments. As a result, the makers of fine modern instruments will antique their instruments to give them the appearance of an old instrument.
There is another factor to be considered; tension debillitates the frame over time. A Kurt Vonnegut novel includes the plausible chestnut that “there are no antique harps” due to the deterioration over time of the frame under the tremendous tension of the many strings (wires?) Pianos are similar in nature to harps. Presumably this would extend to any stringed instrument. (Does anyone advise relaxing the tension on strings when not in use for violins, guitars, etc ???)
First point: for flutes, the sound, beyond a point, may not be the deciding factor. Once you’ve got a flute with good intonation, action, etc., and with a good headpiece (wood and silver will split your breath differently :smack: ), you think about how the instrument feels (if you’re in a huge orchestra and can’t always hear yourself with perfect clarity, it is a huge help to be able to feel the tone of your instrument). You also want a prestigious, beautiful instrument that will let you play with confidence.
Second point: audiophiles are dogmatic egomaniacs. I was in a band with a friend who wanted to record on tape for that ‘warm analogue feel’. Well why don’t you put it on a DAT to record it ACCURATELY, then if you want it to sound sloppy, put some reverb on it! There’s no goddamn difference, particularly when you put it right onto a CD afterwards.
I don’t relax the tension on my instruments, I play them often enough that it would be a pain to bring the up and let them down all the time. I have rebuilt a couple of classical guitars that had been put in storage under tension, and had bellied up. In one case, the bridge had actually gone from being flat on the bottom to being arched, and the strings were about an inch above the twelfth fret.
This clearly would not have happened if the strings had been let down when it was put away. It might have happened slowly while the instrument was played, but the player would have noticed the change.
Um, well…-there is. Digital recorders clip, where analog tape doesn’t. With straight digital recording, the drums end up recorded 30 dB or more below everything else to avoid clipping the drums, and then you have to reduce everything else that much, mix the two, and compress to get the level back up. ~ With analog tape, you can record everything at the same level and have it all sound good, which is why most commercially-released music is still originally mastered to analog tape, and most big studios still maintain analog recording equipment.
Digital recording’s only advantage is that it has dropped in price along with the microchip, and that the average Joe or Jill can record/process/mix/burn a music CD on their ordinary home PC they probably already had. - DougC
The dynamic range of digital recording is entirely dependent on how many bits are used to encode the analog signal. Typical dynamic ranges for professional digital equipment are far higher than analog equipment. So I don’t buy the ‘digital clipping’ argument, if the digital and analog gear is of similar quality.
There can be differences, though. Jitter, artifacts introduced by poor A/D - D/A, and cheap input and output filtering are the prime culprits.
Analog has better characteristics when it’s over-driven, which is why guitar amplifiers still have tubes. When you overdrive a digital input, you get a horrible mess. Analog sounds better.
But in stereo gear, you should never be overdriving anything. You should be staying in the linear operating range of the gear. In which case, digital is almost always superior to analog.
But that’s not what happened. Scientific American made a generalization: All flutes that satsify criteria X sound the same. You’re proposed counter-example clearly does not satisfy criteria X. Your point would be valid if Scientific American had arbitrarily restricted its definition, but Scientific American doesn’t appear to have done so.
Tell you what, Lucwarm… YOU give a very careful, specific definition of “criteria x”, and I will attempt to devise the experiment (if I can afford it. I’m not buying any platinum tubing!) to be as simple as possible, so that it can be performed without special tools. I will rely upon you, if it is within your capacity, to attempt it as well; then we can compare notes.
By the way, the usefulness of the generalization is inversly proportional to the width of the scope for “criteria x”. Thus, if we are limited to only one or two specific materials, then the generalization that material makes no difference is useless.
I’ve heard, perhaps from Gryphon Stringed Instruments, just up the road, that slightly slackening guitar strings is appropriate for guitars that are going into long term storage. I seem to remember the London museum saying that completely removing the tension from museum pieces was a very bad idea.
I have a sitar with a weak neck (although it’s not particularly cheap). Some of the strings are removed, on recommendation of the Ali Akbar Khan School of Music, since it’s all too apparent that the instrument can’t stand up to constant pressure.
Relaxing piano strings, I’ve only heard of being recommended in the situation of the metal harp being so old it was liable to crack. (“The Piano Book”, Larry Fine)
When I said that digital clips, what I was referring to was the practical problem of recording typical rock music with lower-priced digital recorders. If you’re using analog tape and your drums bump 4 or 5 dB, it’s no big deal, but that don’t work with digital.
~
In my experience the Radio Shack gold-plated stuff is an overpriced gimmick, too. I have noticed that they have stopped selling the plain black plastic versions of many cables/connectors in the stores, furthering my suspicions. -To do minidisc recording, I use the “headphone extension cables” that electronics/music-stereo places sell, except that I also use them as miniature microphone extension lines. The pretty gold/shielded one from Radio Shack is 6 feet long and costs $11, the black plastic one (made by Cable Up/Teac) sold at Mars is 25 feet long, also shielded and only costs $4. In use, I have not been able to hear or otherwise detect any difference between either… -I only buy stuff at Radio Shack if I need it right now and Radio Shack is open. The big music stores in St Louis are 45 minutes away, even longer during rush hour. - DougC
