'Worse musical timing' - what does it mean?

Good question..Hungryhallibut .I changed from rega ela mk1 recently to b w 1800 speakers...The result was that the amps nac112x and nap150x sound more relaxed ' not out of time and not slow..There is much more depth to music now and soundstage is a lot bigger...These speakers are meant for use with amps between 30 and 200w ' so my modest 50w would soiund a little muffled..However not with NAIM EQ ...the amps are more than capable of controlling the speakers..A problem I have had with other amplification and these speakers...I can hear a lot more detail in recordings and as a cosiquence analyse new bits not really heard before...I think you can suspend disbelief sometimes when listening to music allways listening with every upgrade for new musical information..

Thats is my ten penneth ...

I think the musical timing is how the music appears to 'flow'. The same phenomenon can be observed when a band / orchestra plays the same piece of music - on one day they appear to be on top form. The other day it sounds a bit off. The tempo has not changed, music is the same.

Another phenomenon some of us have observed - some cables appear to make the sound 'slower' or 'faster'. The tempo has not changed.

Is it our brain that somehow processes the music differently? Possibly....

Maybe our ears are so sensitive that we can hear when something isn't quite right with the sound and that includes very slight timing issues. I had a listen to a brand new set of speaker cables and out of the box I felt the 'timing' was off. It sounded like the high frequencies were slightly faster and ahead of the lows. The lows sounded a little heavy and slow and stuggling to keep up. Timing? Or something else? 

The way I understand it is as a function of control, or what some call grip - the ability of a system to start all of the sounds which are supposed to start in a given instant and to stop all the sounds which are supposed to stop in a given instant. Bass boom or overhang would be an example of this going wrong. IIRC HH, you thought the 250.2 was slow, and it's something like the above that I've always taken that to mean.

Taking timing in the relevant sense to mean literally perceived effects on whether musicians are playing in time with one another has always seemed a bit absurd to me. Think about it in reverse - how that would entail that musicians playing out of time with one another might sound like they were locked into the beat if played through a system which 'times' poorly. 

But the phenomenon I describe seems like it could have an effect in this latter sense if eg the system is a bit slow in the bass, and therefore it feels like the full body of a bass note emerges very slightly after the impact of a splash cymbal.

I have to admit it's not something that has particularly occurred to me when listening to home HiFi (perhaps I don't listen loud enough at home), but it has when sound checking through PA systems at shows. Sometimes a PA can't seem to deliver snap (ie mid- & higher frequencies of a snare) and bass weight (lower range of kicks, bass guitar) with sufficient alacrity, and things become a bit of a blur, especially in very fast music. Very, very fast kick drums (common in my style of music) can be especially problematic, and so kicks are often EQ'd with a clicky top end to compensate. Otherwise they can sound like wool soup.

Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick, and HiFi people mean something else. If so, I don't really know what it is either.

Dave, I don't think you've got the wrong end of the stick, in fact quite the reverse: I think your observation on changing the FR (and hence phase relationships and transient timing) on kick drums may be the heart of the matter.  Amplifiers are inherently band-pass filters (at least 20Hz to 20 kHz), but within the pass band they are also behaving as all-pass filters, and different designs can cause different phase changes and delays in transients that depend on frequency / rate of change of the signal.

Other research has shown that for some people the ear/brain system is sensitive to transient delays in the 10s of microseconds, where as for others the detection limit for timing changes can be more than 100μs.  Keeping transient delays in an audio amp consistent within 0-100μs is easy, keeping the delays within 0-20μs isn't.  Maybe this has a bearing on the variance of perception between individual people?

Interesting question and all I can add is what timing means to me.

To me timing is about how well instruments and vocals keep pace with each other but is is a little more complex than this. Finkfan suggested it is partly about how different frequencies emanating from the same instrument or voice keep pace with each other and I would agree with this. This can be further complicated when timing is 'bent' by the performer intentionally. For example Ol' Blue Eyes used to love playing with phrasing during a performance of particular songs, purposely falling behind and then catching up with the rhythm by small, but 'meaningful' amounts. When this is reproduced spot on it sounds wonderful, but if the 'timing' of your system (and by system I mean hifi components and room acoustics) is out, it just sounds wrong and makes little sense. Joan Armatrading is another artist who loves to inject odd beats and phrasing (in a rather different way to Frank) into her music. Again if a system's timing is off it just sounds like an unintelligible mess.

Good timing is about maintaining a flow to music (also mentioned by Adam) that bring about meaning and intelligibility to the listener. Music makes more sense when the timing is spot on. Bad timing manifests itself in the music appearing a little disjointed, lacking cohesion and sounding…well…off for want of a better word.

I strongly suspect it is not just hi fi components that are the culprit when it come to poor timing and that room interactions are partly to blame. From reading other threads it does appear that timing issues can resolve themselves as a hew hi fi component runs in (assuming you believe in the concept of components running in). The fact that some of us share the same components (on demo or owned) at different stages of run in and in very different rooms, could explain why some of us hear 'timing' issues and others simply don't with the same component. It could also be that some of us are more sensitive to timing issues than others. Pure speculation of course.

My two-penneth.

Musical flow I can understand. Control and grip I can understand as well. But when people say that the timing is off, is that what they mean. I have indeed said that I find the 250.2 slow, and something like the 300 I'd describe as faster. But to me that's about speed, and not timing, which seems to be different, I don't know. Maybe people simply bandy terms around without knowing what they mean? Maybe people use a term because it seems easy, rather than describing what they really mean? 

Thinking about the term when used to describe the SL speaker leads, i.e. the assertion that they mess up the timing, I simply have no idea what this means. To me, the music flows much better, in that it seems more immersive and real, and the grip and control are certainly not worse. So what can messing up the timing possibly mean? I'm listening to a string quartet version of Bach's Art of Fugue and I can hear all four players doing their thing and yet the four strands are locked together as a totally coherent whole. It certainly doesn't sound as if the cellist is out of time, which one might expect if my leads really were messing up the timing. 

Any more ideas?

If I'm right and it's a transient/phase problem, then, overall, the musicians won't sound out of time.  However, there'll be something perhaps 'jelly like' * about the edges that go to defining the cohesion of the music.  So, for those tiniest of moments, imperceptive in length, but important in the feeling of the music, the brain will detect something 'not quite right' about the sound.

Some people will be much more sensitive to this and others just won't get what all the fuss is about.  Here on the Naim forum I'd expect many more of the former than the latter, as most of us have demonstrated our ability to detect this in our purchase of Naim equipment.  This is a statistically selective process not a random sample of the population!

*  Perhaps 'less definite' is a better expression?

On a number of systems, I have often heard or been aware of bass "sounding" as if it's not precisely in time with the rest of the music. Sometimes, it's so bad it sounds as if the bass is playing to a different tune. Particularly noticeable in a pub/restaurant setting with badly set up small speakers around the ceiling and a sub (or 2)

I also once heard "Take A Walk On The Wild Side" by Lou Reed, played several times on different specifications of LP12.
I was AMAZED at how the timing or rather the "swing" of the beat appeared to alter depending on the configuration.

I'd say both of the above are examples of timing when listening to music. Knowing that a differently specification of the same turntable can affect the sound, I'm not surprised that other elements of a system can have the same or similar effect.

Hungryhalibut posted:

Musical flow I can understand. Control and grip I can understand as well. But when people say that the timing is off, is that what they mean.

The ability of the treble and bass to come out of the speakers at the right time. Together is perfect, treble first gives a "faster" sound and bass first gives a "slower" sound

Polarbear posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

Musical flow I can understand. Control and grip I can understand as well. But when people say that the timing is off, is that what they mean.

The ability of the treble and bass to come out of the speakers at the right time. Together is perfect, treble first gives a "faster" sound and bass first gives a "slower" sound

And presumably that is why some manufacturers engineer a slope to the front baffle of their speakers (e.g. PMC's 20 and 25 ranges) so that the tweeter is slightly further from the listener than midrange/woofers to time align the frequencies arriving at the listener from each driver. Presumably high frequencies travel slightly faster than low frequencies.

nigelb posted:

Polarbear posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

Musical flow I can understand. Control and grip I can understand as well. But when people say that the timing is off, is that what they mean.

The ability of the treble and bass to come out of the speakers at the right time. Together is perfect, treble first gives a "faster" sound and bass first gives a "slower" sound

And presumably that is why some manufacturers engineer a slope to the front baffle of their speakers (e.g. PMC's 20 and 25 ranges) so that the tweeter is slightly further from the listener than midrange/woofers to time align the frequencies arriving at the listener from each driver. Presumably high frequencies travel slightly faster than low frequencies.

Indeed Nigel.

When I had the Neat Ultimatums we made them sound quicker by angling the speaker forward a little allowing the treble to reach you slightly quicker than the bass. I guess, if you did the reverse they would sound slightly slower

nigelb posted:

Presumably high frequencies travel slightly faster than low frequencies.

No. All frequencies of sound travel at the same speed.

Physically aligning the acoustic centres of the tweeter and the other drivers assures that all frequencies are launched from the same plane. But that still doesn't guarantee phase alignment... Depending on how the crossover is designed, treble can still be launched out of phase with the rest of the spectrum.

I guess some manufacturers time align their speakers electronically in the crossover network and others physically time align with enclosure design. I do like the Sopra design for that as the speakers still aim at the listener rather than the 'lean back' design used by others. 

Jan-Erik Nordoen posted:

nigelb posted:

Presumably high frequencies travel slightly faster than low frequencies.

No. All frequencies of sound travel at the same speed.

Indeed, otherwise the 'speed of sound' wouldn't be the fixed 640mph, which we all learn in our school physics classes. 

... more like 767 mph, surely ?

As I understand it, the speed of sound is dependent on the temperature, higher = faster, lower= slower.

You're right! I was always rubbish at physics. But while the exact speed depends on temperature and humidity, all frequencies travel at the same speed. Or so I believe......

Which I suppose is the difficulty,  how do you control the speed of frequency...

Hungryhalibut posted:

There have been a few mentions recently of system changes that some members say negatively impact on musical timing. One example was adding a second power supply to the NDS, and another was the Super Lumina speaker leads. I'm not trying to reopen those debates, but am intrigued by exactly what people are getting at when they say that something makes timing worse. It is simply that the members of a group, quartet or whatever don't appear to play as well together? Or is it something that can affect a solo performance? Could a singer be made to appear out of time with their own guitar? Could a solo piano piece be affected? Or am I being dim and it's something else entirely?

Not dim but it is something else though not in any entirety. Talk about PRaT and others will pick up on one aspect - P over R and not bothered about T and likewise other permutations. Although my hypothesis is that it's PR²=T√.

The video below, from Australian company DEQX, is the best visual representation that I've seen of how timing errors (group delay) affect what we hear and visualize in our minds. Note that two aspects of sound reproduction are dealt with in the video : timing errors (group delay) and frequency errors (frequency response).

It's fundamentally to how the elctronics (and cables) move those big vs small speaker cones (subs vs tweeters). That's why electrostaic speakers sound so neutral / natural - there is no timing errors accross the frequency bands.

Jan-Erik Nordoen posted:

... more like 767 mph, surely ?

The speed of sound is the distance travelled per unit time by a sound wave as it propagates through an elastic medium. In dry air at 20 °C (68 °F), the speed of sound is 343.2 metres per second (1,126 ft/s; 1,236 km/h; 768 mph; 667 kn)

Hungryhalibut posted:

You're right! I was always rubbish at physics. But while the exact speed depends on temperature and humidity, all frequencies travel at the same speed. Or so I believe......

Clearly not as rubbish at Physics as me!

So is it that the mechanical side of sound reproduction (i.e. electrical energy converted to mechanical energy in the drivers and the resulting physical movement of the driver) is somehow faster in a tweeter than in a woofer? That is, a high frequency sound is produced and emitted slightly faster than a low frequency sound? So even though different frequencies travel at exactly the same speed, high frequencies get spat out slightly faster than low frequencies, hence the sloping front of some speakers?

I would assume the time it takes for a tweeter to respond with such tiny physical movements would be faster than the considerably larger movements required of a woofer.

Or am I talking bo**ocks again?

Jan-Erik or someone help me out here!