Merry go round

@kevn

Thanks for your friendly post.

A meal has ingredients, such as beef, which comes from a cow. The cow is processed and the material is configured in various ways that leads to the experienced taste perceptions.

A reproduced song has ingredients, such as sound, which comes from a plucked guitar (say). The sound is processed and the material is configured in various ways that leads to the experienced audible perceptions.

Everything at every step of the way is real. But all that means that everything at every step of the way exists. That’s a truism which we barely need to add.

The idea that there is some single "reality" or "original" which everything goes back to is, I think, the fiction. There is an event, an existence, at the start of the chain of causes. But it doesn’t have a meaning until someone interprets it -- selects certain details and omits others, emphasizes certain qualities over others and then takes all of those intial emphases and combines them (fries the beef, equalizes the audio, etc.). In other words, there is no "source" in a meaningful sense; there is a cause but not a reason which we could all agree on.

How close is the beef in the meal to the original? Or the audio sound to the plucked guitar? Depends who you ask, because people differ on which criteria are most important. 

So, when you say, "While we may each taste real beef differently, we all recognise the taste of real beef as real beef, regardless of how it’s prepared" -- all I can say is the word "real" is not doing any work here. In the same way people will disagree about whether something said was a "witty remark" or a "subtle put down," people will disagree about what beef "really" tastes like or what a plucked guitar really sounds like. We can each "point to the source," as you say, but that doesn’t solve anything. There is nothing automatically meaningful to converge on.

This is how I see it. I agree that accuracy in music reproduction exists, but it exists in the same way that "pawns can move one or two squares on the first move" exists. In other words, accuracy is a word we use in a certain style of talk, about audio. It means something different in archery. That’s all we have to go on, but it’s enough.

In the last fifty plus years I have changed everything in my system more times than I can count.  And as of right now, I’m close to my happy place. Improving my DAC is coming, but I am not in a huge rush to do so. I’m currently able to listen to music at comfortable levels for hours without any fatigue and for me, that’s what it’s all about.
 

Now if I hit Powerball, all bets are off.😁

@hilde - thank you for your kind response ; ) - just to clarify, I am certainly not saying there is one kind of reality, only that at any one venue that live music is being played, no one is going to point at the plucked string of a guitar and say that doesn’t sound like their sort of preferred reality. It is ‘real’ for everyone at the venue, for how they each hear reality. It is the same string, the same guitar and the same resonant air.

One may well ‘prefer’ the taste of us grade prime beef over that of New Zealand stock, but if high fidelity is indeed what one cares for, one certainly cannot prefer the recorded sound of a plucked guitar string over that plucked at a live performance. This sort of comparative evaluation is our only gauge of how well resolving a system is, not a random personal preference of taste regarding sound reproduction.

If you disagree, I would certainly like to understand how you critically evaluate the performance of your system ; )

In friendship - kevin.

Great reply, @kevn
I appreciate you pushing me on this. It helps me become clearer about my convictions and intuitions, perhaps even realizing that some are wrong. ;-)

At the venue, when you say something "is ‘real’ for everyone" I agree. But "real" is probably something which involves the immediacy of the experience but only partially (and very imperfectly) the various elements of sound we are discussing in relation to audio, here.

Why is that? Well, what counts as the single "real" listening episode? Now the questions come about the people at the show: Where are they sitting? Near or far? Right or left? Is the background quiet or is there (as at my jazz club) there a fan in the background? Are we talking about the 20 year old’s ears or the 60 year old’s? All those variations affect what is "heard as really happening" by those at the show. These include tonality, soundstage, texture, and more.

Now I think a sensible reply (perhaps yours) might be: "Right, right -- all those things are variables. But I’m thinking about what is real-within-a-range, a reality that most could agree with." After all, no one looks at a sunset and says, "What a beautiful moon." We are way more similarly equipped to agree with what is "basically real." And I agree with that. But outside of those basics, there will be a vast amount of disagreement about what is actually heard. And, of course, some listeners are paying more attention to the voice and not the plucked strings, or the cymbal not the bass, etc. What a person listens FOR influences what they perceive.

If the above is correct, then the reply should probably be: "Ok, but what is real is what the ideal listener would hear. With great hearing, and with no particular attention to this or that, etc. They don't care more for the voice than the bass, etc. They are ecumenical." Problem is, there is no such listener. We listen because we're interested and we're always interested in some way or another. (Only God is indifferently interested, I suppose. Which makes it weird to think that God cares. But I digress.) Differences in interest explain why people always differ about particulars. So, when someone mics the show and then engineers it, they have to decide which particulars are aesthetically best to convey -- this is why they call it the "recording arts" rather than "science."

As for your statement, "one certainly cannot prefer the recorded sound of a plucked guitar string over that plucked at a live performance" -- I have to disagree. Most concerts I go to are plagued with sonic imperfections -- where I’m sitting, the mediocre PA’s the use, background noise, etc. If you mic the performance and then use technologies to "clean it up" it can sound much better. That is not a random personal preference at all -- I’m am looking for a recording and mixing process that makes me happy, aligned with my aesthetic values.

Cheers!

@hilde45 

- thanks for your response, there was a lot in there to parse out, and i hope you won’t mind me thinking aloud.

To start with, my apologies for not writing with greater clarity earlier - when I stated ‘one certainly cannot prefer the recorded sound of a plucked guitar string over that plucked at a live performance’, I did not mean any number of varieties of live performances, but specifically an intimate live performance, of perhaps one, or two guitarists in a duet. Nothing else to get in the way in order venue imperfections get in the way. Better yet, if we can even let go of the word ‘performance’, and just focus on the sound of a plucked string - for those accustomed to listening to the true timbre and tone of each instrument unblemished by space or venue, location in the space, room reflections and the like, there is a deeper understanding gained of how that ‘true’ sound changes with all those variables you mentioned thrown in, such that even with everything going on, there will be good sense of what sounds right, or if someone has messed around too much with the sound engineering. 

This was the unexplained context for my statement which, phrased better, should have read ‘one certainly cannot have a preference for any kind of recorded sound of a plucked guitar string over that of a live plucked string.’ The sound of that live plucked string, together with the sounds of live struck pianos, timpani or bass drums, blown piccolos saxophones and clarinets, forms the the basis of how we each calibrate our systems. None of it is preferential, however deeply involving, complex, or long the process takes.

I hope I’m making sense, so far.

And if you accept my reasoning, then many things follow that help explanation on the issues of listening and the common refrain that we are all different and selective listeners. Thing is, the fact that most of us are selective in what we listen for is far less of a virtue regarding our wonderful diversity than it is an indictment of our incompleteness as listeners. It is often stated we build our systems for each our own ears and no one else’s, as a banner to our individuality no one else need appreciate and yet, the common ground we all share far exceeds the individualism we espouse. Part of the problem is due to the fact many audiophiles believe our hobby to be about putting together a nuanced, resolving and dynamic system, particular to our individual tastes and selectiveness. At its most foundational level, however, I believe the joy of being an audiophile is simply about learning how to listen and to hear as many aspects of music and its recorded outcomes as is possible - to be a balanced listener rather than a perfect one. And, this joy comes not from whatever one might already know and prefer, but over every other aspect of listening we are not familiar with or aware of. 

And that is what I have found my journey of music reproduction to be - less one which is selective, but rather as encompassing as it could possibly be : ) - there is one other issue regarding your search for recording and mixing processes aligned with your sensibilities which, however much I appreciate, I also find limiting, primarily because of the huge wealth of everything else I haven’t yet learned how to listen for: I’ve mentioned it before that ‘good’ recordings are quite easily identified, whereas truly bad recordings are very very difficult to pick out - in part due to the ability of a particular system to tease out all the nuance of resonant air found in any recording studio, but also over our abilities to detect those less unfamiliar aspects of the entire sound spectrum. That said, Adele does have some of the worst sound engineered recordings I have ever heard 😂 - in any case, I hope you too find yourself challenged by this absolutely magical hobby we share : )

In friendship - kevin