Cerebral versus Visceral?


Generally // Generically 'framed' as Musical vs. Accurate.

I have issue with the above two words being separated as I find that to be musical there must be accuracy or preferably (to me) 'realism.' Further, I believe that both 'words' have been appropriated and attributed with connotations by respective 'camps' and that 'musical / accurate' is generally discussed as being on a continuum or sliding scale with each on polar ends.

Below is a link to a Steve Guttenberg video on the this topic. I like his choice of 'cerebral' vs. 'visceral.' 

He discusses this from a "speaker" perspective...I see it as a SYSTEM result. 

Thoughts and Reaction?

"With some speakers you feel the music, and with others you just think about it."  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWqcu1wR1sw
david_ten

Showing 4 responses by nonoise

I'm not too proud to admit that I had an emotional reaction once, to a demo at an audio show a few years back. It was over in Irvine, Ca. and it was at the Brooks Berdan room. They had a rather expensive TT set up with some top notch electronics and they put on Louis Armstrong's St. James Infirmary and my eyes welled up and a tear ran down my cheek.
It was bliss. 

A hand gently touched my shoulder and he said something like "take you time, there's no rush." I wish that happened all the time.

All the best,
Nonoise
@david_ten 

Thanks for the links. Now I know I'm not crazy and
I want an Emoti-Chair as well. 👍🎼🎹🛋

All the best,
Nonoise
@erik_squires 

I feel that the skin is a receptor in more ways than we give it credit for. There's touch(ing), feel(ing), and the like for navigating our bodies on a daily basis. There's levels of that for everything from simple tasks to making love to playing sports to life and death scenarios. 

It's our skin that was the first organ to deal with life as we evolved and our ears that eventually became the finely tuned instruments that they are. There's still some purpose of hearing left in the skin on a rudimentary level that works in concert with our ears. It's not just the bones in our skulls that aid in hearing, as I see it.

That accounts for frisson, which I've brought up a couple of times before and it looks like now it's relevant, again. It could be that through simple disuse coupled with technology that we don't rely on our skin's hearing ability as we used to but some of us are still in touch (pardon the pun) with that innate ability as simply crunching the numbers statistically would bear out. It couldn't just cease in all of us at the same time. 

Food for thought.
All the best,
Nonoise
Gee, if only I had a system with Marantz and JBL components...
wait a minute, I do. 👍

Like SG says, it sounds right within the first 10 seconds. Almost every time. It's a system I don't have to think about unless the upgrade bug is bitting and even then, whatever I'm listening to lulls me back to the music and I just give up on the thought of that MacBook with the Holo Spring DAC and drift off.

It's music that I can feel even at moderate levels and I'm not talking about bass or SPLs.. It's everything. If your system can't elicit some kind of sensation that you can feel in your skin, your body, engaging your emotions, without turning things up to lease breaking levels, then there's something amiss with your system.

Sure, the mind is always working as audiophiles are never content but as the music plays, those thoughts should dissipate into the ether and the right system will do it. 

All the best,
Nonoise