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Are you hearing  the instruments or the music?

 

I find that as my system is warming up, it sounds pretty good. The instruments sound as I would expect instruments to sound. The imaging is great and the bass is distinct, clear, and powerful. I appreciate the accurate and extended dynamics. But over time, like an hour or so, I find myself not listening to instruments, but rather to music. I slip into it unconsciously. It would likely be faster with class AB amps.

This is the end goal of audio. Just being able to listen to music. Horns, planars, dynamics, tubes, transistors, etc. are all capable of accomplishing this, just in different flavors. For some, a JBL Bluetooth speaker gets them to their “music place” and so there is clearly a personal and idiosyncratic aspect to this. But it supports the notion that all a system has to do is get you there. 

This is also how I know if a change makes a difference. Does it do no harm or does it add or detract from the sense of music? Going from Takatsukis to Western Electrics was more music, not as much instrument. Some might say analytical versus warm, but that’s not what’s important. And for some, analytical might be their music.

If your system delivers instruments well but does not carry you to music land, at least occasionally because some recordings are better at this than others, you might consider changing something. 

tcutter
newton_john's avatar
newton_john
191 posts
 

@tcutter 

This is one of the interesting threads that has attracted me to this place. Please correct me if I am misunderstanding you, but I see them as attempting to explore what it is we like about listening to music - the visceral experience of it. I was trying to get at the same thing from a different angle with a thread I started recently on warm up. Others that I would put in the same category are those on the sound of vinyl and altered states of consciousness. I think I’ve already quoted Frank Zappa, who said something along the lines of “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” It’s still a worthy exercise, even though no one has quite nailed it yet.

 

 

tcutter's avatar
tcutter OP
182 posts
 

It’s difficult to put into words, but it’s almost like instruments stop at my ears but music makes it into my head.

tcutter's avatar
tcutter OP
182 posts
 

Another way to say it is that instruments are in the cognitive domain but music is in the affective domain. If you start dancing, that would be the psychomotor domain.

https://academicaffairs.sonoma.edu/sites/academicaffairs/files/blooms_all_domains.pdf

stuartk
3,510 posts
 

@tcutter 

I don’t know how you can separate instruments and music, given the degree to which instruments affect how pitches are sounded/shaped/presented. You believe timbre, for example, isn’t "affective"? 

sns
4,026 posts
 

I still don't get how these modes of listening have to be so discrete. I integrate multi modes into a single bushel of enjoyment. I still don't understand why listening to the 'sound' is considered inferior to listening to the music. Integrating the two has absolutely been my goal since the very beginning. Listening solely to the music means I'm ignoring the sound, listening solely to the sound means I'm ignoring the music. I get the criticism of solely listening to the sound, love of music is or should be the fundamental reason for this entire pursuit. On the other hand, why should I ignore the sound, I"m an audiophile which means I'm very immersed in sound, I specifically voiced my system to pleasure my senses, and I'm supposed to ignore this! Nope, I'm pleasured both by the music and the sound, this just heavenly, exactly what I've been reaching for over the decades.

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