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  3. 183880-83215

Does anyone know where this J. Gordon Holt comes from?

Interviewer: “Do you see any signs of future vitality in high-end audio?”

JGH: “Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing.

Remember those loudspeaker shoot-outs we used to have during our annual writer gatherings in Santa Fe? The frequent occasions when various reviewers would repeatedly choose the same loudspeaker as their favorite (or least-favorite) model? That was all the proof needed that [blind] testing does work, aside from the fact that it's (still) the only honest kind. It also suggested that simple ear training, with DBT confirmation, could have built the kind of listening confidence among talented reviewers that might have made a world of difference in the outcome of high-end audio.“

fusian

Showing 2 responses by viber6

viber6
2,440 posts
 

Gordon and Harry both emphasized that the supreme goal of a high quality audio system is high fidelity to real sounds in a real space.  Nowadays, the lesser goal of merely what sounds good is pursued.  The latter goal merely relegates such an audio system to a toy, not necessarily devoted to reality.

The other day I was in a subway car in NYC.  Guys came in with unamplified guitar and accordion.  Even in a crowded car, the snap of the strummed guitar strings was instantly apparent.  Almost no audio system of today recreates this live excitement. That's because of lousy recordings drenched in muddy processed effects, warm dynamic speakers and tubed or euphonic SS electronics.

You don't need fancy concert halls to experience this live quality of sound.  People should get exposure to close encounters with the real thing, not audio shows and dealers who promote high priced goods that still don't deliver the excitement of real music.

viber6
2,440 posts
 

Idiotic statement of Jim Austin--".....an album shouldn't sound like live music unless it was recorded to sound like that." 

Why are albums recorded NOT to sound like live music?  Deliberate distortion like this, antithetical to the live experience of reality, is merely a toy at best.  The equivalent in visual art is throwing a paint can on a canvass and calling it great art. Why would a sane person throw the price of a nice house into playback of such crappy deliberate distortion recordings?

Austin' statement is true--"99.99% of Pop studio recordings will NEVER sound---couldn't POSSIBLY sound---like live unamplified acoustic music."  These pop recordings are created mainly for teenagers to have fun with that type of music and who don't care about high fidelity.  Natural unamplified instruments sound more exciting than when they are deliberately distorted on these recordings.  The pity is that the listeners to these bad recordings and bad  pop/rock concert PA systems don't have sufficient exposure to natural sound to appreciate what I have said.

"The absolute sound" of course varies with the acoustics of the venue and seating position.  As an experienced performer, my most exciting listening has come from immersion at close distances.  Maximum detail is revealed close up, and greatest appreciation of the intricacies of the music is obtained.  Greater distances allow acoustics to cause time smearing and loss of musical detail.  Similarly, recordings with a close perspective offer more musical understanding from greater detail, than recordings with a distant perspective.  Accurate playback of both distant and close perspective natural recordings meet Harry's quest for the absolute sound, but a live experience way back in the hall has lost much of the musical detail, most severely at high freq.  I actually prefer an audio system designed for accuracy playing a closely miked recording, to the live distant experience of the natural absolute sound.  Am I inconsistent in my values?  Possibly, but the real objective is to obtain the greatest understanding of the details of the music.  This is best done with live listening at a close distance.

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