"I am there" is of course the correct ideal model of what we want a music reproduction system to accomplish. But Sndsel and Danner (above) have gotten to the crux of our shared dilemma as critical listeners - what you might term the "Audiophile Condition". By far the two most important variables affecting a system's ability to approach this ideal are the recording itself and the room in which we listen to playback. Unfortunately, and paradoxically, these are precisely the areas in which we have the least amount of control: none, in the case of the recording; and usually very limited (and almost never to the ultimate degree) in the case of the room. If these starting conditions were effectively dealt with in our playback systems first, I strongly suspect that any competent (and competently assembled) high-end component chain could transmit the "I am there" sensation to near the limit that two-channel reproduction allows (although this may not be so high to begin with - theoritcally more so with some sort of multi-channel scheme, but this leads us back to the optimization of the recording process [and let us not forget the visual aspect, basically unaddressable but for to close one's eyes!]). Is this conundrum - our essential lack of control - what directly results in our becoming susceptable to "audiophilia nervosa"? I would like to able to think so, but I frankly doubt it. I suspect our preoccupation with gear would, alas, probably persist even if all our recordings and listening rooms were idealized tomorrow. This is because gear is just sexier, more of a status symbol, and upgrading and tweakage are more receptive (not more productive!) outlets for our neuroses, than purpose-built rooms and recordings bought "as-is" will ever be. But think about the further implication of all this: It also means that we may really prefer to wallow in our audiophile tendencies over and above what is, after all, the ostensible aim of any high-end system and its owner - to enjoy listening to music reproduced in our homes with as little distraction, and as much suspension of disbelief, as we possibly can! Let's put that in our peace pipes and smoke it a while. |
Spotted this one again as I was going through my old threads looking for something else. I've changed my mind somewhat on this question lately. I now think "I am there" is too impossible as a realistically achievable goal to be worth pondering over. (Yes, I still think an idealized multichannel/DSP/room setup could come close, but the bigger obstacle would be the recording-end standardized process required, and I just don't believe this is workable on a generalized scale for a variety of reasons.) I propose a third choice beyond the incorrect "They are here" or the unattainable "I am there": "They are there". To me this much better encapsulates what we're all trying to accomplish and what we actually base our sonic opinions on. What do you think guys? |
Yes Calanctus, the 'window' onto the original performance analogy is conceptually closely related to my "They are there" formulation. The metaphor of the window has often been used to describe the system itself, i.e., how transparent the glass is, how free of distortion it can transmit the image, how large or small it is, etc.
Rx8man: Glad you're where you are if you are, my friend. ;^) My point about 'standardization' has to do with the theoretical necessity for a perfectly complementary encode/decode process to be adopted for both the recording and playback ends of the chain, if you're hoping to closely approach faithfully recreating the impression of being present at the original performance. But beside being totally impractical, IMO it's also fundamentally technically impossible to ever achieve, even on the basis of an all-out, one-off attempt - much less some kind of standardized system applicable for widespread use by sound engineers and music consumers. What we'll always have, to my mind, is what we have now: a haphazard, largely arbitrary, technically chaotic approximation, but one that can be made more than occasionally pleasing, and maybe even slightly reminiscent of some flexible notion about what 'accuracy' might be if you're willing to stretch your imagination.
About your system sounding halfway between "They are there" and "They are here", you're stressing an important point. We can never eliminate a large dose of the "They are here" syndrome from the reproduction, because our systems and rooms always impose themselves inappropriately upon the recreated original signal. Things like acoustic treatment and DSP technology can reduce this undesired effect, but they can't ameliorate it entirely. I've always figured that for even the most scrupulously put-together home systems - well beyond what even most audiophiles (myself included) have, especially in terms of room design - you're still going to be hearing a huge contribution of spurious info superimposed by the playback chain and environment. That's a contribution which has no relation whatsoever to the original performance event, and that remains the same across every recording replayed. It's that constant quality which constitutes the "Here", and we can't ever completely get rid of it. |
Sorry Rnm4 and Aroc that I might not have made myself entirely clear about what the shorthand "They are there" catchphrase represents for me. The "there" in question is the space the original performance was recorded in, while "they" of course are the performers.
One benchmark criteria for a high fidelity recording (in the sense Harry Pearson described in coining 'The absolute sound') is that it perceptually succeed in capturing/transmitting some sense of the performance acoustic and the players' relation to it/interaction with it - "They are there". All I'm saying is that to finish this job we must include the proper function of the playback system. Again, of the conventional choices listed in the title of this thread, "They are here" (the performers are in your room) is wrong, and "You are there" (you are in the performance space) is impossible, so a modicum of "They are there" (the performers are in the performance space, with you observing through the imperfect 'window') is what we can actually achieve/ought to strive for. "They are there" hinges upon the regrettably accutely limited ability of the recording process to capture the total effect; the best we can attempt with the replay system is to try to avoid fatally further obscuring whatever degree the recording accomplishes that goal.
Anyway, I've gotten a lot heavier here than the whole topic really bears scrutinizing. This was just something that had dawned on me recently during listening: it's not "they're here", it's not "I'm there", it's "they're there". Just a simple distilled concept, no biggie, but it's more satisfying and less cognitively dissonant to me than the dichotomous choice of the other two. And Rx8man, were I an English major, I hope I'd be a lot easier to read than I fear I probably am... :-) |
Rwbadley: Not wacky. A couple of years ago we brought in a string trio to play for a function at our house, and they were seated in the area of the living room right in-between the system and where my listening chair normally resides. I was a little surprised during their performances to realize that if I closed my eyes while listening to them play, I couldn't really locate the individual players in space with any sense of precision.
In fact, not only wasn't there a feeling of 'pinpoint imaging', but I also couldn't describe the sound as being 'detailed', 'present', 'bloomy', 'finely resolved', blah blah blah etc. I couldn't even say it seemed especially dynamically unrestricted compared to playing recordings through my system in the same space. Rather, it sounded quite unremarkable from a standpoint of audiophile terminology - somewhat amorphous and congealed together, a little murky and rolled-off in the treble, spatially a bit small and not terribly dimensional, and not nearly as 'involving' or 'easy to follow' as I expected. Sonically underwhelmed would be a fair despription of my overall reaction. (All this is leaving the attributes of the performance itself to the side - we're talking about a pick-up group sight-reading without prior rehearsal for the occasion, so there was some shaky ensemble and intonation among the inevitable flubs and misses.)
Part of this I'm sure had to do with the less-than-ideal performance-acoustic attributes of my listening room as well as the background noise of the party, but still, I was probably the only person there who was thinking about any of this crap - and not simply because I was probably the only audiophile in the place, but specifically because this performance was occurring where I normally listen to my own system. That it didn't necessarily sound 'impressive' by comparison speaks not only to the fallability of the "They are here" paradigm, but confirms for me that a whole lot of what we talk about in relation to reproduced sound qualities are in truth largely artifacts of the record/playback processes, and not inherent to the original performance itself. That truth doesn't invalidate those technical processes, or the ways in which we verbally deconstruct what they accomplish, but it does help keep me mindful of the reality of what I'm dealing with when I listen critically at home. |
I agree that my system - which to my mind is good but by no means great judged by the standard of being able to transmit or recreate the 'absolute sound' of a live performance - could not fool one into thinking they were hearing a live trumpet, and would suffer by comparison if a live trumpet were played in my listening space, certainly dynamically, and I assume tonally as well. But I wonder if such an experiment would still reveal that the live instrument did not give the impression of emanating from a particularly well-defined point in space. I actually hear a live acoustic instrument on a regular basis in my house, but since I'm the one playing my guitar, the sonic perspective can't really be compared.
The rest of what I usually hear live is either amplified through a PA, of if it's all-acoustic, the performance is taking place in a very different kind of space than I have at home. Thinking about this topic has reminded me of the art museum in my town which keeps a concert grand piano in a largish wood-panelled hall for recitals; I recall that when I've heard that piano played live on a couple occasions, it sounded diffuse, muffled, and dynamically restrained, too 'quiet' even (and from only a few feet away) - a sound that if an audiophile were to accurately reproduce it at home through their system, would ironically be unlikely to satisfy or impress in terms of fulfilling our typical preconception about what a live piano 'ought' to sound like. Listening to recordings, we're listening to microphones as much as to instruments. |
