'Worse musical timing' - what does it mean?

I must admit, in audio engineering, timing doesn't usually, in my experience, specifically refer to musical timing... it's typically something rather different.. it's the ability to differentiate sounds by our brains by their relative timings. A system with a poor response that phase distorts and slews across the audio band, limits dynamic range and has limited resolution means our brains have to work harder to decode the audio and translate into sounds we recognize. The reproduced sound will sound more artificial and tiresome or will not hold our interest.. Now ultimately such a system might mean our brains have to work harder to establish musical timing within the reproduced audio, but that is in my opinion just a manifestation of poor audio timing.

A system that sounds natural and insightful that engages will always, I suggest, reproduce musical timing, along with many other aspects of timing queues in the audio that allow our brains to relate to it without having to work too hard.

just my musings.. as always. If you are a member, search the AES library, there are some interesting papers on audio timing and our hearing. Another interesting related phenomenon is extracting emotion from reproduced audio.. some interesting research on this and this introduces recognition, association and other sonic characteristics into the sound, by our brain but again this appeared to show to some extent this was audio reproduction system related.

There can be many factors. Another possibility is the decay of notes. A longer decay may be interpreted as poor timing. A short decay, good timing. The decay will affect the start and stop of the notes, hence timing.

The neumann head is.... interesting... but not very good. I dont particularly like the binaural it generates. I get much better results with my Soundfield mic and then using Harpex, which has a wide range of HRTF options. 

I don't find answers with numbers in them part of a compelling argument here.

I feel that the sensation of poor musical timing is brought about by the combination of poor seperation and a lack ability to deal with transients. The former causing more or problem for non percussive pieces and the latter for rythmic percussion. Ultimately, the sensation of good and poor timing is a matter of clarity - not true timing.

Considering the Naim sound comes largely from the the amplification chain, which has excellent current delivery, and is exceptionally clear (notice I say "clear" rather that "faithful" because I don't want to get into that whole discussion about whether Naim is really tonally faithful and balls on accurate), I think it is easy to understand why so many associate excellent timing with being a Naim virtue.

The worse the seperation, the harder a complex piece is to follow and therefore for the brain to keep track of the different threads on their own timelines. Similarly, the poorer handling of transients lessens the pleasurable impact and punch of rhythmic percussion and the lack of both makes things sound generally unconvincing as a musical whole. Jazz combines the requirements for both of these two extremes which may explain why so many audiophiles are Jazz buffs (I'm not one of them).

A key point here is understanding what the DR tech does

feeling_zen posted:

I don't find answers with numbers in them part of a compelling argument here.
...

1   I think that's a gross generalisation.
2   Refer to 1

jon honeyball posted:

A key point here is understanding what the DR tech does

Jon,

I may be a good idea to explain that a little more.

I think I know to what you are referring, but I'm not certain that I do.

Huge posted:

feeling_zen posted:

I don't find answers with numbers in them part of a compelling argument here.
...

1   I think that's a gross generalisation.
2   Refer to 1

hehehe. I'd thought you'd find it refreshing for an engineer to reject a technical discussion for change.

After all, your posts are soo touchy feely Huge

I've not heard a 272 based system so don't know if it has the timing to lose but if it has and you put a loose loop in the interconnect it will lose it, unless the SL has lost it for you anyway.

Using a CDX2/555ps into 282/Hi/250 and NBLs a loop in the DIN/canon lead made the sound analytical and lost the boogie but so did a SL interconnect to the 282 either with a loop or resting on the carpet. all else being lavender and NACA5.