Pitch is exactly the same and I'm sure relative pitch and tuning has similar brain electro-chemical responses to ones induced by rhythmic violation which means all individuals will have different levels of sensitivity to pitch variations too. The whole Equal Tempered vs Just Intonation tuning is a fascinating subject in its own right.

Just intonation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think many years ago the Western obsession with Equal Tempered/Pitch-Centric and written/scored composition methods started to overshadow the importance of pure rhythm and feel as a musical language in its own right - maybe J.S.Bach had no sense of rhythmic feel either.....

African Children Dancing - YouTube

And that 'all human feel' locks in way tighter than my Rev 1 TR-909 let me tell you ... (....to my brain I mean!)

Just to point out what I'm on about here...

There are different concerns with regard to this issue.

I've done up my own audio - not intended as a test, but more a demonstration. It won't be much good to those who can't hear the differences I'm demonstrating, but I suspect most people will be able to (including the OP, I imagine).

What I'm showing here is that offsetting two similar sounds by a period of any duration greater than 1/2 a millisecond results (at least for me but no doubt most others as well) in an audible difference of some sort.

Note: a) isn't very surprising if you know much about sound, and b) only addresses a single aspect of the OPs concerns, but in doing so shows that this is a multifaceted issue.

Description of audio in this file:

* several separate demonstrations separated by short periods of silence.
demo 1) two similar short, high frequency sounds, played simultaneously, regularly 16 times.

demo 2) as above, except with the two sounds now displaced by 1 millisecond.

demo 3) as above, except with the two sounds now displaced by 2 milliseconds

demo 4) as above, except with the two sounds now displaced by 4 milliseconds

demo 5) as above, except with the two sounds now displaced by 6 milliseconds

demo 6) as demo 1, but immediately followed by another 16, this time with the displacement being 1/2 a millisecond.

demo 7) as demo 1, but the succession of sounds is now at a slower tempo, immediately followed by sounds with a displacement of 6 milliseconds.

Speaking for myself, I can discern a difference in each case, between the sounds occurring simultaneously and with any amount of displacement. I think this will be true of almost everyone. After all, we discern different pitches by hearing differences in frequency.

Indeed, in demo 2) I can only discern the difference in terms of a change in pitch (speaking for myself), and also a slight alteration of the attack of the summed sound. Demo 4) I can begin to distinguish a temporal separation, as well as a difference in pitch, and a change to the attack of the summed sound. In demo 4) the temporal difference (4 ms) is quite apparent to me. I provided demo 6 in order to juxtapose an offset of 1/2 a ms with a simultaneous occurrence - I can clearly hear the difference, though only in pitch and/or timbre, not in terms of duration, or at least only vaguely - the attack is ever so subtly lengthened, yet it is noticeable. Example 7 I provided because it seems to me that the tempo of the successive sounds has an impact on how we note the temporal difference between the sounds - here, a 5 ms difference is very discernable, more in terms of temporality than pitch.

I understand people will hear these differently. At least in my music, such audible differences, if they are unexpected and resulting from unstable timing in my system, would often be undesirable.

This is an example of only 1 interesting aspect of discerning the difference between sounds separated in time, i.e., high frequency sounds in very close proximity. The point being that there's a lot a play here - it's no simple matter - and that there are legitimate musical consequences.

p.s. just realised I bounced this as a stereo file, where I should have kept it mono - stereo is overcomplicating the situation... still I think the example is ok.

...

you again mix up things.. it absolutly dont matters wether people can get timing differences under all circumstances...
These only matter at points where they effect your production in a negative audible way...and than you deal with it..and the listeners wont get that there ever was a problem..
The innersync devices can help people to fix such problems..and people that never run into this kind of problems just dont have them..But are probably no in depth electronic music producers. Only working 100% itb will rid you from syncing troubles.. at least as long you dont use plugs with internal sequencers.. Than you might realize that not any daw gives the same performance ..and that logic might sound tighter on 125 bpm than on 123 when using reaktor devices with intermal sequencing for example.

Prove in this domain works the other way.. not winer testing with people.. you hear that there is trouble.. than you measure it..and voila.. with 123 bpm a much higher timing jitter.. source for the problem found and proven with measurements.. Thats the way you deal with real problems..and when you came along that route you know that the problem wasnt imaginary.. you proved it with a measurement and not with statistics..



its absolutly pointless to prove such age old production problems to newbs or lucky guys that just never came along them just for some pdeudo science and pseudo intelectual debate.
Thats like asking people to prove that water is wet or that people feel red to be a warmer colour than blue, or whatever.. just pointless..

When you are producer enough you know about the issues..and you know that 5 ms are a ridiculous amount of timing shifts in this regards..

maybe its debeateable where the border exactly is where such things dont matter anymore...but out of question its way below 5 ms.
When you experience 1,5 ms shifts on a mpc as too rough, and thats what they are, you just know that 1,5 ms is still too much.

So somewhere below 1 ms..thats a fact proven often in praxis, easy to get during production.. but nothing you can answer statistical. There are people out there that just cant dance.. pretty pointless to let them judge about groove feels i would say.. and than ther is still the factor of taste.. i really dont see how you want to prove a good rhytmical taste to somebody that just dont gets the subtile differences..

I suggest to keep on producing and earlier or later any of the guys that cant believe it will find their very own and personal prove in the process. As more hardware and external sequencers get involved as earlier..

first you dont belive that it matters at all..than you act like 50% getting it is nothing.. thats 50% on a winer test.. on a proper test that is designed to show the phenomen and not to hide it, 100% get 5ms shifts.. thats teh border even the unrhytmic and halfdeff get..

in this thread there was was at least 2 tests that showed this with 100% right answers..its only the stuff that you do that creates the errors.. just as your own sensory and intellectual capacity. So blame nature but not electronic music producers for talking about ms issues.

Cool link, thx

And actually, if you go into the "articles/for resarchers" section the site itself does very much go deep into science


I just read one of the articles ( this one ) called "Bhatara, A. K., Tirovolas, A. K., Duan, L. M., Levy, B., & Levitin, D. J. (2011). Perception of emotional expression in musical performance."

What i noted - not saying that this is the be all, end all of this argument - is that in the "general discussion" part there is a small mentioning of the "Yamaha Disklavier Pro grand Piano" where it mentions and i quote (my bolding):

Goebl & Brezin (2003) have shown that timing of the Yamaha Disklavier Pro grand Piano can vary as much as 30 ms in reproduction, yet this is still considered to be highly accurate, so much that it is used for judging piano performance in international competitions /Tommasini, 2002).

Whoah, that leaves even me stunned...

You may know something about recording - but what you just wrote is the exact opposite of how science works.

You do not design a test to show that your hypothesis is correct, you design a test with the intent of disproving your own theory.

Only if that (and subsequent tests) then fail you can assume that your hypothesis may actually be correct.

what a bull.... science? you?

we are into engineering here and dont have the time for fooling our senses.. And its not about hypothetical things..its about real world technical problems. Therefore you design a test that shows the problem as clear as possible in order to find the source and means to eliminate it.. thats called trouble shooting.

What a stupid idea to try to disprove that a problem exsists when your senses tell you otherwise.
Thats the dilemma of this thread. Just calling the standard problems with syncing in audio sequencing hypothetical is a bad joke. People wouldnt talk about it when there wouldnt be issues and difficulties.

And the dismissing of tests where you easily can hear the fx is a bad joke too.
What is proven by tests that make it difficult to get it? Just that its possible to mask certain things.

taking that masking possibility as total prove for all cases turns such things into a winer test..

thats like saying.. because i cant light my cigarette under water its proved now that they dont burn...

So you're obviously doing it wrong then, with all your tests designed to prove your point. Oh, and the 30ms piano thing is just beautifully moronic in how you cannot fathom that the reason that 30ms is within useable in THAT context is merely because the only thing you measure against is notation on paper. In effect there is no measuring stick to show up a problem.....

Perhaps... as a personal challenge... taken with large grains of salt... among friends. But as I said waaaay back in the thread, you clearly had a hidden agenda which tainted this thread from the very start. It was never going to be "scientific" or "impartial." It was doomed from the start. I know, I know. You claimed innocence, but that doesn't mean it was granted! heh

30ms?! Yuck!!

You've just given me another reason to hate piano competitions. Besides, I seriously doubt the more prestigious competitions use Yamaha Disklaviers!!

This whole thread has inspired me to put my own technique under the microscope -- something I've never done before. What I'm finding is that my precision is better than I thought -- but only has real relevance to the issues at hand when getting into subdivisions, trills, grace notes, etc.

In other words, depending on the tempo, I'm finding my precision increases as I divide the beat, which makes sense, because it's actually easier to do. This leads to issues of accuracy and resolution in the recording medium. With extremely fast trills, grace notes, etc. you would want the absolute maximum resolution and precision you can obtain to remain faithful to the original performance.

Last night I did an experiment where I played a synth as quickly and precisely as possible recording both audio and MIDI at the same time. The audio turned out to be more precise than the MIDI upon playback!

I'm also finding that precision comes and goes as the music flows... which also makes sense.

In any case, what this means to me is: 1) millisecond accuracy is important when trying to faithfully reproduce a performance -- especially over MIDI and 2) humans are more capable than some people want to believe.

...sorry, you obviously don't understand the principles behind testing.

The first test was designed to disprove the hypothesis that you can hear a 5 ms deviation on a prominent rythmic instrument (hats) in a mix.

That is how the basic principles of science (ideally) work, you question a theory/hypothesis*, and design a test that exposes the flaws you think the theory has.

And guess what - the test showed that some people actually can hear it, and others not.

This actually means (which is something you have not understood) that we can conclude that the lower limit for hearing timing differences in a mix for some people is below 5 ms.

So far the hypothesis actually has stood its ground.
Against a test that was designed to disprove it. (As it should be.)

However, what you also fail to see is that not all respondents have correctly identified the timing differences, so that it should be easy to see that we are getting close to a limit of some sort.

What would be interesting is actually finding that limit.



* What is really interesting here is how people respond when challenged to their beliefs - a few have been open minded about it, and the rest of you just went into stubborn denial. A bunch of 3 year olds having tantrums - not very rational, but definitely "artistic" behaviour heh

For anyone with just a slight bit of confidence in that his theories/belief systems actually can hold up to scrutiny, there would be no reason whatsoever to oppose a test at all.

That would have been great, if that were feasible on this board.
And yes, with quite a lot of salt at the side (...and lemon slices and tequila, perhaps? )
Not that hidden really heh
Yes, i am still not sure that it isn't a typo, as said, 30 ms sounds excessive to me as well (3 i could accept), but it is in a published paper, so you'd think that they would have someone checking for that...

Hey, that's exactly what Innerclocks system is for
Then again, are humans that capable?

We have just been told the story of the very best session drummers in LA being replaced by a machine because they weren't tight enough


And let me add that to me it shows a remarkable openmindedness that you in this way "test yourself".

Also, i would like to add that for me this is all in the spirit of curiosity, because even if it had turned out that you weren't as accurate as you thought you were, it would have no relevance to your artistic output - because that just is what it is, ms or not

I'm confident that I've heard the jitter in my Machinedrum and Monomachine combo, which should be in the 2.5 ms range, if I recall the litmus test stats correctly. Just moments of 'good, good, good, ah groove loss'.

Donald Fagen - New Frontier - YouTube

You can never have too much Wendel Jr cowbell ...

Full Album - Masterpiece:-

Donald Fagen - The Nightfly (1982) [Original LP] Full Album - YouTube

Interesting

I made the test, without reading the thread.

If A is tight, and B comes too late then:

A
B
B
A
B
B
A
A

is it right?

regards

Somebody on page 1 said, it doesn't sound groovy anyway. I don't agree.

Without reading the thread? And missing 700+ posts of squabbling?

Anyway, the answer was given on page three, and here is the link:
The result of test one

I am sorry to say that you are not entirely correct, but not totally off either.

Thx for playing

I have an idea for a new thread.

so I'm on this stage with a bass player and a drummer and they are both 20 feet from me and each other.
I start listening to the drummer and play to his feel. but what I'm hearing is late so when he hears what I'm playing
it's late too. so then he slows down a bit and this paradoxical loop just continues and continues.

would this make a rehearsal last longer than it needs to be ? :I

I'm paying by the hour ffs. !!!!

Trevor Horn talking about the Synclavier in the May/June 2012 TapeOP magazine

Trevor Horn talking about the Synclavier in the May/June 2012 TapeOP magazine

Found this great quote yesterday too from Donald Fagan:-

"'It's too bad that we can't get a machine to play the beat we want, with full-frequency drum sounds, and to be able to move the snare drum and kick drum around independently.' Nichols replied 'I can do that.' This was back in 1978 or something, so we said 'You can do that???' To which he said 'Yes, all I need is $150,000.' So we gave him the money out of our recording budget, and six weeks later he came in with this machine and that is how it all started."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaucho_(album)

At a live show last night and listening to the drummer play along to a loop made me think of this thread. OK, the music got boring sometimes, what else to do but listen to timing delays.

I was at the side of the stage so I was hearing the main monitors from behind and the sound of the instruments onstage. About 15 feet from the main speakers and 20 feet from the drummer. What I was hearing was that the drummer was on and consistent, but the timing delay between the two made it sound like he was behind the loop a little. Since the kit was miked up and the sound was also coming out of the mains, there was flamming. The drummer's headphones (headphone?! oh noe, maybe thatrs how they overcome somes of this timing dly issues) stopped working partway through the performance so he had to rely on a stage monitor which he said gave him a hard time but it still sounded pretty tight apart from the lag between the kit and the mains.

No surprises....

My guess is that for a cool sum of $150,000 in 1978 (probably close to half a million plus in today's money) Mr Fagan and Mr Nicholas were hearing something way more obvious than hypothetical hyperbole or audiophile voodoo.... I'm sure there were much better things to spend your record company advance money on than imaginary concepts don't you think?

As entertaining as those stories are, memories of (apparently drug fueled) recording sessions from more than 30 years ago is not really anything i'd rely on for accurate information on timing problems...

Also, the logic that "if it costs a lot it must be better" is not applicable in all cases...

No one with any intelligence (Nichols = Nuclear Physicist) spends half a million dollars (in 2012) of anyone's money and three years developing a product and concept from scratch, bringing it to market, selling every unit to many well respected studios and industry professionals and complete a number of Grammy award winning recordings with said system no matter how out of it any of the band members may have been. Your posts trying to minimize the importance of their work and it's relation to this thread just make you seem more and more irrational.

I thought you were going to stop wasting your breath......lol....hard, isn't it? Horse, water....bla bla......our grumph has run himself into a corner and to think he'll come out waving a flag that all he's been on about might have been drivel after all is to not understand a viking.....

P.S. Thank you for the SDE3000/Fagen one, that is a classic I shall never forget.... ;-)

If his contribution to music technology had been that important he surely would have a reputation like fairlight or synclavier today.

But as it turned out, his products didn't live for very long* because the music industry as a whole found that the midi standard covered their needs.

...and again apart from his valiant effort, only since the days of the visible miliseconds - i.e. the common use of daws has timing on this scale been a topic at all.


*Yes yes, i know they still work, but again - had they been useful, instead of the latest "must have" gadget for bigger studios i am sure the name "Wendel" would be a lot better known than it actually is.

i am allways puzzled how a hobby musican can make such bg words about the industry and history behind it.. You obviously lack practic experience, otherwise you wouldnt ask this redundant questions and wouldnt make these bold statements.
what can we do to shut you up? a barrel of beer? or met?

Grumphh, The Wendel Slayer

it might be useful to cut up the original loop or some other loop in recycle,
then randomize the midi within a range of 5ms. do a bunch of randomizations
and see what transpires. it doesn't matter if a HH falls on a kick etc or not.
That's just a part of normal music content.

I guess you could do it by using any MPC example as well. as long as you know the limit of the
timing excursion is 5ms. then you could even try differing BPMs.

at the end of the day, the objective is to show (any) contexts in which 5ms
might have negligable or greater or lesser impacts.

afterall, any case where this is obvious, undermines any case that this
kind of timing threshold might be argued as being irrevlevant.