Real or Surreal. Do you throw accuracy out the window for "better" sound?

Your english mastery exceeded mine ...I am a philosopher but in audio i am pragmatic ...

Doing the best possible with a low cost system/room was pragmatic , as reading about basic acoustics instead of possible  upgrading gear reviews ... Tuning my room was pragmatic ...

😁

There is an "accuracy" of the measures set of electrical parameters in audio material design ...

There is another concept of "accuracy" derived from acoustics basic science parameters and derived from informed musical experience , this is why there is always a consensual agreement when a playback system /room sound optimally ...

I imagine that when you speak of accuracy you refer to the second acception of the word ...

My best to you sincerely in spite of our sometimes disagrements...😉

@mahgister ,

No, I speak the most horrible english ever, but far better than I write.

I am not a philosopher, I am a pragmatist. As others have mentioned, there is no such thing as accurate in regards to reproducing the actual event. With most studio recordings there is no actual event, there are multiple small events pieced together in the mind of the mastering engineer.

It is not so much that an audio system is accurate, it is with the proper recording that a system can convince you you are at the actual event. This in itself is a moving target because it depends on how the individual hears things. There is no way to absolve ourselves from the fact that this is a personal experience.

What I have noticed, in spite of what I said above, is that everytime I am in the presence of a remarkable system everyone else seems to come to the same conclusion. There is a shared concept of accurate reproduction even if it is hard to quantify. It is one of those, "you’ll know when you get there," events.

@mahgister --

Thanks for the elaborations. Your posts are interesting and informative, but in the context of my previous reply I don’t see a significant take-away from your writings to alter my basic position.

Thanks for your appreciation...

My post was not there to dismiss your point but to point toward his limit...

We all agree that physical acoustics , not only room acoustic, but psycho-acoustic RULE... Even if a system is designed to be the best OBJECTIVE design , it will be embedded acoustically, well or not, in a specific room for an objectively different Ears/brain...

My point is electronical design accuracy of components does not reduce to acoustical and psycho-acoustical accuracy...And what the BEST  gear design does is not the only guarentee for an audiophile experience...It can be necessary to some level but is NEVER sufficient... We need a dedicated room for specific ears/brain if it is a SMALL  room dedicated  for one listener owner  and not a great Hall...

It is not the same CONCEPT of measures accuracy in electronic design, acoustic design and psycho-acoustic measures ...

It is so true that Dr. Choueiri revolutionized acoustic experience of stereo system in a room with his BACCH filters which are based on psycho-acoustics research...The foundation ground of audiophile experience is psycho-acoustic science not electronic design of amplifier or speakers or even of dac and not even the powerful room acoustic ....

In this thread most people use the word accuracy in one way and one meaning , but there is three distinct ways or meanings which can be optimally convergent in an experience or be divergent or not optimal for an audiophile experience ... The electronic design accuracy and the physical acoustic accuracy in a room and the psycho-acoustical measured accuracy...

The OP thread speaking of real versus surreal confuse these three meanings and three accuracy concepts...But what is "accurate" for my ears inner filters and sound perception personal history and training can be inaccurate for other ears...

That was my point...

The only OBJECTIVE common basis for the word accuracy in these three conceptual case is mathematics not the necessary listening subjective experience...But listening music or speech is neither subjective nor objective experience...It is a symbolic form, an interpreted phenomenon...

Humor enlarge all brain, save those too big to be enlarged...😊

It seems i need something you have.... 😉

@mahgister

That’s exactly what I have, a nanobrain.

Do the variations coming from your specific experience and seated position fundamentally change the sound from a cello or other, even compared to that perceived by another individual sharing the same event, and the variations at play here? I know, no way to check on the latter part of the question posed, but it doesn’t matter - to me that applies more to intersubjectivity than subjectivity per se; while you wouldn’t have the very same sonic experience as the other person sitting at a distance from you (or yourself in another position), you’d nonetheless - both of you - take part in the same event and share its overall characteristics.

From my chair, in the context of audio reproduction, it’s a fallacy thinking something not achieved as an exact replica of an original event can’t represent, in variations or approximations of realness in a progressive manner, said event as an objective "something." Too many seem to believe that what can’t be emulated in every aspect in audio reproduction is in essence a venture suffused in subjectivity.

Immersiveness is my lodestone... But i like smoothness for sure but timbre rendition cannot always be smooth ......

For me cymbals attack and decay, piano and vibraphones are important index qualities of the timbre soundfield...

Cymbals are the hardest thing to get right in my experience even more than violin ...😁

Their attack , rise, and decay ratio reveal how our system is able to restitute timbre in the time domain for the ears ...We can recognize piano timbre as acceptably good at some time in our optimizing process  but if the cymbals are not right , the system is not optimal yet ...

This is something about myself as I live with an audiophile who is not enjoying music if the production, I mean recording, could be better, in his view, done! Even the perfect execution of the piece of music, in his view, is not worth listening to if there’s something wrong with the recording. I agree and disagree at the same time.

Most music lovers dont need to be audiophiles and dont really want to be one at all cost...Music is all for them...

A serious audiophile  in my opinion must learn musical concepts and styles , and also acoustic concepts, to be serious...A superficial audiophile with obsessive disorder and compulsive disorder to some degree will refuse to listen to classical music badly recorded for example because he  always FOCUS his attention on sound quality recording to TEST his system level  and not on musical interpretation or  not onto his room acoustic properties  and  ways of translating optimally the bad as well as the good recording ...And he will do anything to improve the fidelity of the recorded translation BUT  with the focus on the gear component with costly cables for example way more than with the real acoustic controls of his room ...

This is more gear fetischism than learning experiments in acoustic and learnings experiments with other  embeddings controls for his system ...Price tag will mean something ultimate , and he can be a measured fanatic audiophile or a subjective hearing audiophiles that does not matter ...None of them experiment in mechanical,electrical and acoustical embeddings... Objectivist and subjectivist audiophile tend to be gear fetichist or tool fetichist  and are enemy brothers on the same ground : the gear measures or the gear "taste" and price tags first and last ...

The superficial audiophiles , being objectivist or subjectivist, put acoustics science to be secondary to the electronic gear system , and they reduce complex acoustics concepts to simple recipe of room acoustic ( buying panels) and they are more occupied with sound than with music genre and style  learnings  ...

Exactly....Thanks for the post and welcome here...

I am a photographer and this is the same debate that occurs in photography circles.

True photographer are painters in their own way they dont collect the photographic gear and they dont focus on the gear collection as their main activities ,they choose it and they use it, and they dont despise painters either as some "audiophiles" can live well  it seems without learning how to understand music language and genres......But it is not at all the general case at least i hope...

True audiophiles are first and last music lovers, musicians in someway even with no musical abilities as me and acoustician in the egg not gear collectors and price tag collectors ...They studied acoustics as photographers studied painting and drawings as much as colors theories and hues ....

Every form of art has boundaries

You are right for sure ....But at the root of creativity in the internal "physiology" of the creator, the boundaries melt in one complex creative gesture...

This is how opera was invented coupling theater and singing...Or this is how poetry as an oral artform and much later as a written art form is born from speech and music or this is how speech is born, before poetry itself was born as a separate art, speech begun as a complex rythmical and melodical gestures set BEFORE music as a separate art form ...

The boundaries between arts and sciences resemble more to the skin of a creature under metamorphosis than to static boundaries through history and through creativity ...Some people perceive synesthetically... Etc... With Artificial consciousness science in his birth cradle we must understood how was orchestrated the cosmos to manifest consciousness... Here we must read the book " nanobrain " by this Indian genius who identified the microtubules as quantum computer few years ago and created the first artificial brain :

https://twitter.com/anirbanbandyo?lang=en

Goethe created the physiology of colors science by going on in spite of these "boundaries" separating optics as a physical science and the color qualities, and he created then their relation to the perceptive physiology and a new science ...This is why Edwin Land admired him so much and many others ...

Goethe created the morphogenetic and dynamic description of mammals or plants trespassing the boundaries separating the static objects and the static perceiver ... All his method is described by the physicist Henri Bortoft very clearly in three books ...

Music and Audiophilia are two separate issues. One is art the other is technical with the exception of speaker enclosures and faceplates. Any artistic intent is purely visual.

This is not even wrong then you are right in a way ...But without acoustics which is also a craft not only mathematical equations and a controlled subjective experience and set of experiments not only a science; without acoustics and without musical knowledge, audiophiles are lost in marketing and lost in an audio vocabulary which has lost his roots from the acoustics vocabulary as well as from musical concepts ...

Distinguishing between audiophiles and musicians and music lovers is certainly legitimate but separating these three activities may make them more and more meaningless ...

Mathematics is not reducible to any logic nor to any algorythmic thinking... It is at the end a creative intuitive ART.... Explaining why will ask for too much space here...

Music perception is not reducible to any acoustic theory and certainly not to the Fourier analysis , it is the reverse, it is acousticians who try to understand musical perception and musical phenomena with their tools  ...

It is more true to describe mathemathics as music than the classical Pythagorean reverse claim that music is mathematical said the French mathematician genius Alain Connes... listen his many deep but hard to grasp , sorry, youtube courses begin with the "the music of shapes" ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z52ZAPrRbqE&t=2s

And i recommend to anyone with a strong basis in maths and A.I. to read this Indian scientist, for whom all the cosmos is hierarchies of orchestrated musical time crystals based on the prime numbers distribution matrix ... Read Connes and link him  and his work with Anirban vision...Anirban is no joke, he work with Penrose-Hameroff , developed his own ideas and the first proved that microtubules are quantum computers... He designed the first artificial brain...

His twitter with his book title which is revolutionary ( beware he spoke a worse english than me ) 😊 :

https://twitter.com/anirbanbandyo?lang=en

frogman, you are a musician, so you got almost everything wrong. Music is first of all mathematics not art in a usual sense.

What you just said is so completely meaningless and absurd , i think nobody can teach you why in few words...

You get everything in reverse even mathematics... I will not answer... You are a lost cause it seems.. 😊

Alain Connes the creator of non commutative geometry say the exact opposite...Mathematic is musical... Guess why ?😊

I will give you a cue because i cannot explain it in few words...

The music of primes :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBArTv71Edk

Wow, @mahgister who the heck said room control only addresses the frequency domain.

I said my tuning adress LARGE band frequencies range... LARGE not specific precise frequencies... When we tune a room for a nuance of timbre we adjust a LARGE band of frequencies; this means that with our EARS when we listen a human voice we tune our resonators grid for the encompassing large band of an instrument or a human voice ... Read me right before putting words in my mouth...And anybody know that Fourier analysis adress sound in his LINEAR MAPS and use a specific abstract time domain which is not the time domain on the concrete human ears/brain... As muuch as the map is not the territory because the ears/brain dont work in a linear way at all but in a non linear TIME DOMAIN ...

Only a digital system can affect time by delaying groups that are ahead. Phase can also be corrected.

For sure DSP advanced as the Choueiri filters BACCH do it very well it is an acoustic revolution... But even Choueiri Filters DSP cannot replace small room acoustic...No DSP replace physicaL acoustics or work as Helmholtz resonators...I plan to upgrade my system by this DSP of Choueiri an acoustic genious..

The time domain for the human ears perceiving act must not be confused with the Fourier mapping of linear frequencies analysis of abstracted factors as phase , frequency and period etc ...The ears/brain work non linearly , in the opposite the Fourier analysis work with abstract concepts which are linearly related .. This is why we had not understood all hearing mysteries to date and why there exist competiting complementory theories of hearing... Go and read about ECOLOGICAL theory of perception for example and try to understand why these theories exist in the first place...

There is no such thing as a tuned acoustic room. The best you can do is Boston Symphony Hall and I doubt you are going to stick one of those in your house.

In APPLIED acoustics, there is a great difference in using the same laws and principles when you work in THE ARCHITECTURE of great Hall Acoustic and very small room acoustic ... You dont use time measured parameters in the same way for example...You dont use the pressure zones distribution the same way either...

When i spoke about TUNING a small room , i was speaking not ONLY about material passive classical balanced treatment in absorption/reflection/diffusion, i was thinking of working with a distributed grid of 100 mechanically tunable Helmholtz resonators... Do you catch ?

My brother is a MIT Ph.D. acoustician and he never uses his ears for anything!

My mother is a very good cook , i am not at all a good one... 😊

The problem is not the ear or ears. It is the brain connected to them.

What are you talking about ?

The brain of a musician and of an Applied room acoustician who work for customers wanting to design small acoustic room for themselves is TRAINED by ears , they dont used only DSP and tools...They listen... Ask Floyd Toole ...or any acoustician working in APPLIED acoustics...

Acoustician teaching in university taught mathemathical formulas and basic experiments and work in refined scientific projects... Their job is not designing small room with tools and ears...

Ears/brain is the basic object of study in psycho-acoustic...The brain is no more a problem than the ears they are coupled and tested in experiments about the way human perceive LARGE band frequencies bundles called human speech or singing not in the abstract Fourier time linearly MAPPING domain but in the real concrete time domain... The map is not the territory... Do you catch ?

Then recommending to people that they must forgot about their allegedly deceptive brain/ears and trust ONLY tools , saying that audiophiles must not train their listening of sounds through simple experiments and through listening classical music , (non amplified) or jazz etc but must use ONLY DSP is preposterous ignorance...

Electronics EQ is useful but do not replace ears nor small room acoustic... Eq and Ears do not work the same way ...Simple... They are complementary tools in acoustic room design ... it is so evident i cannot say more...

No EQ can replace ears tuning+ physical acoustics... EQ is a tool not the main tool...

someone who know among others say this :

«The problem with digital room correction is that it only addresses the frequency domain. Depending on the room, it may do a rather good job.

However, if your room is causing a 30 dB cut at 100 Hz, these digital systems won’t be able to fix this. Most of them can only boost the signal by something like 6 dB, which isn’t enough to cover the 30 dB lost by your room acoustics.

As far as the time domain goes, I think it’s obvious to note that no amount of EQ will fix this problem.

I’ve used both acoustic treatment and the IK Multimedia ARC system. My findings? I heard an immediate difference as soon as I put up some acoustic foam to the left and right of my loudspeakers. The sound was instantly tighter and more defined. With ARC, there was a difference, but it wasn’t as dramatic.

The goal of this article is not to sway you from digital correction products. They can be a valuable tool in helping create an accurate mixing environment. I love the JBL LSR monitors. They sound amazing, even without any room correction.

Digital room correction, when added to acoustic treatment, can be very effective. However, nothing…I repeat nothing…can replace the need for acoustic treatment.»

https://www.prosoundweb.com/in-the-studio-acoustic-treatment-vs-digital-room-correction/

I tuned my last room a dedicated one with a distributed array of 100 Helmholtz resonators mechanically tuned... I used many other devices ... All homemade ...

I call this a mechanical equalizer because i worked with some large band frequencies not precise frequencies... I use a compensation and balance effect by the numbers of resonators, their location and distribution and tuning ...

Saying that we cannot trust our ears say a lot about the people saying it more than about acoustics ... I disagree... My room was not PERFECT, but optimal for my ears structure and filters and ASTOUNDING with immersiveness at no cost because homemade ( not esthetical for sure) 😊...

I had not the wallet for paying 100,000 bucks which is the minimal cost of a tuned acoustic room ...

Thinking that some electronic EQ will replace acoustic and psycho-acoustics knowledge is preposterous for me..

Now guess why all acousticians use their ears?

This is due to the room not the speaker and this is what is screwing up the image. You can mess around with acoustic treatments until the cows come home and you are not going to get these speakers within 1 dB of each other without turning the room into an anechoic chamber. Digital EQ is the only way you are going to conquer this. Next time I go over I am going to bring a digital preamp to show him what happens when you make these adjustments. I find it interesting that very few "audiophiles" have ever measured their system. They want to do it by ear. Right.

I figure it out only after reading you a second time...😊

My english mastery is shitty and i am familiar only with technical abstract vocabulary with no dialogue  with no  humor or subtleties or slang ...

But there is plenty of people who despise so much audiophiles as "tin foil hat" or people who listen to the sound not to music, i reacted to give an opposite view... I consider myself a satisfied audiophile who listen all type of classical music in jazz, european classical, or Indian and Persian and near east classical or fado and some other traditionals... ...

if i read your posts you are one too...

@mahgister

That was me with the tongue in cheek comment.

The feeling with a piece of music is here in me positive, negative, indifferent , and all in between WITH any sound system even very mediocre one...

I was in audio hobby to discover way to improve ANY sound system beginning with the low cost one i owned...

Sound CANNOT change the felt musical impact, only convey it in a more impactful way but cannot change it...You dont like a piece of music you always hate because you listen to it in the best possible system...

Music is not sound... But through good sound and in spite of bad sound ... music is supra sensible meanings coupled to sensible information ...Sound is a physical medium...If you tap a fruit with your finger through sound vibrating modes you perceive a suprasensible meaning through a sensible vibration interpreted qualitatively by your ears/body : the fruit is ripe or not...

It is true that you have not claim anything and just give an opinion...😊

Though, i dont consider as you do , that audiophiles are occupied with the gear more than with the music...

Those who purchase without end dont LEARN...Obsessed people are not audiophiles...

Real audiophile like music first but dont accept to listen music on mediocre gear then they buy synergetical gear and once it is done they studied the problem : acoustically, electrically amd mechanically...but one day their audio journey in search of minimal acoustic satisfaction is done they are no more bothered by the sound ... They had learned how to do the optimization and installation once for all and they can do it for any system at any price...

Obsessed compulsive people are lost in a string of upgrades with no end , no satisfaction and no musical learnings...They listen their gear and buy recorded audiophile  album  to listen through their gear... 😊 I am an audiophile but i love music first and i listen anything i love even badly recorded..

i am done listening my gear because i dont need to at all now, my job is done ... I listened music all my life but sometimes on crappy system or not well embedded one , even with very good gear at the times; i did not know what to do and most people around me did not know what to do too EVEN THE CLAIMED audiophiles who start my first purchase with Tannoy...They were GEAR FOCUSSED , they think buying the costlier gear was enough...They even build their own speakers and put them in a room with no acoustic embeddings... That was it...Vibrations ? electrical noise floor ? optimization of the components ? they never adress this and never taught me this... Because of their example i bought some Tannoy and never learn how to embed them rightfully for 45 years... I sold them few years ago without having benn able to  listen to them at all in their optimal level as most people do... I will learned it alone after my 65 years birthday by reading acoustics science articles which inspired me my experiments with among other things Helmholtz resonators and i studied many "tin foil hat" audiophiles too and that gave me too many ideas... I studied vibrations control in headphones and speakers... I designed my own homemade EMI control... etc

True audiophile learn and study and experiment way more than they purchase...

Obsessed people purchase way more that they experiment and studied...They even laugh at those who experiment and call them "tin foil hat" because they are very proud of their gear...Their gear is all they have...Especially costlier one... 😁

i am glad with my music sound and my learnings.. I can replace my actual gear with other gear and i will know what to do....I dont need to brag about my gear choices ...

It is easy to spot those who never learn anything because they are unable to make a low end system sound good, by modifications and optimization and also simple tweaks in the electrical,mechanical and acoustical working dinmensions... They are like sellers and they will say to you : this system is low-fi , you can do nothing for it... This system is hi-fi , buy it...

Those who spoke like that know nothing sorry...

Sound serve music and a minimally acoustic satisfaction level can be reach with relatively basic good synergetical low cost system in a DEDICATED ACOUSTIC ROOM ... Mine cost me 700 bucks ( 2/3 vintage)...

Give me a 500 thousand bucks system i will do what i learned in the last 10 years and it will sound way better than the same in a plug and play condition in average living room ...

«A bundle of straws of different size well located can change the sound of a system/room»-- Anonymus acoustician

😁😊

@mahgister

I did not say they are not related. The vast majority of audiophiles love music. The vast majority of music lovers are not audiophiles.

@asctim

That was tongue in cheek. The problem really is that I have to beg, borrow and steal to get the equipment I want, at least until recently.

What I really want is a certain sound and image quality. It is not imaginary even though most of the time I have to imagine it. It is an audiophile process, not a music lover process and I am not on any antipsychotics......yet. I also have a clear path to that goal. I know exactly where I am going and why.

I did not wanted to criticize you with my answer...

Just point out that there is more than "smoothness" for an audio system to be set right...

I wish you the best there is... Thanks for your explanation... I understand better your point...

I understand where you are coming from. When I first plugged in my cost-no-object DIY phono/pre, I wasn’t sure I liked it - where were the high frequencies? It was all too smooth and too easy to like - then I played some Chopin, and the piano on the system sounded a lot more like the piano upstairs. Vocalists sounded like people that I knew. I realized that I had been listening to more distortion than music.

My pursuit of smoothness is predicated on a certain basic level of equipment, like not a single electrolytic cap anywhere in the signal path. Even so, YMMV.

I agree, and it’s a type of psychological disorder that’s not uncommon. The equipment or whatever the object of desire becomes the ultimate end point in our minds when it is supposed to be a means to an end. The question to keep in mind is what do I really, really want? What are all the ways I might be able to get there? Are there ways to get there that are better than others, with fewer drawbacks and side effects?

If I go down the rabbit hole too far I start to see that ultimately I really don’t want anything. So I have to back off and settle with the notion that I want to be happy and physically well. I’m not really sure I even want that, but I’m sure I don’t want to be unhappy and physically unwell.

You are right!

But i will add that it is not only the mere question about what we really want with the gear we purchase, it is about BASIC ACOUSTICS knowledge , which is missing among obsessed audiophiles who focus on gear ownership instead of learnings.. ...

And being not an english speaker i made the mistake for years speaking about acoustics to write it with no (s) at the end of the world... But acoustic in the singular form is an adjective relating to room physical acoustic not to the more general science called acoustics which include room acoustic and psycho-acoustic...

The love of music and audiophilia are two entirely separate issues. You do not even have to love music to be an audiophile!

Sadly your claim is not even wrong! 😁

Musical learning and understanding and audiophilia done right are acoustically and psycho-acoustically RELATED... Claiming that an obsessive compulsive disorder for gear upgrade is the center of a hobby instead of acoustic and psycho-acoustics understanding and music learning and understanding is preposterous...

By the way i am a relatively informed audiophile and a music lover...

Gear obsession with no love or understanding for music nor for his acoustics and psycho-acoustic embeddings is a psychological disorder not a hobby ...

And acoustic and music experience are about optimization not about an inexistant "perfection" through gear upgrades purchase...

The opposite of smooth is harsh...

Then your choice of word reflect a past audiophile post traumatic stress disorder : wounded by harshness...

But there is way more to upgrading and optimizing than just reaching smoothness...

I throw out everything for ’smoother’. Every major upgrade has made my system smoother.

Better electronics for my ESL’s - smoother.

Better electronic components, battery power, continuous power - smoother.

Air tonearm, turntable - smoother.

Koetsu - smoother. Grado Epoch - smoother yet.

Smooth is my lodestone - it gets me ever nearer to the grand piano upstairs.

You are a gentleman indeed..

But no need to be offended it seems i am not as yourself an audiophile either.. I thought i was one but it seems no...my research for the optimal ratio soundfield quality/price is a renunciation to be a member of this selected club for the OP it seems ... The most important members must had the biggest wallet it seems.. Perfection had a cost in gear price... 😊

Anyway i listen music without being bother by sound gross defects with my low cost well embedded system ..

And i smile reading some "audiophiles" lost in their "perfection" quest...😁

This hobby for me is about optimization methods and tools in the embedding working dimensions, electrical, mechanical and acoustical for the goal of reaching a minimal acoustic satisfaction threshold at the best price ; not about price tag race and "perfection" dead end in most case ...

Anyway anybody owning a demi million bucks system in a living room is fooling himself if he think he has reach "perfection"... It is not even optimal yet for the system quality he own here ... The costlier component in a really "perfect" system is the acoustic dedicated room for a specific system by far...Then i am afraid that most self title awarded "audiophiles" are simply in delusion when upgrading to very higher cost some of their component... 😁 But there is a price to pay to play in a very selected club indeed.. 😊

If i was knowleadgeable enough  i will prefer to be member of the acousticians or musicians club....Alas! i am not even an "audiophile" now it seems...

This person is not an audiophile. He enjoys music like the rest of us, but that is a different subject. Being an audiophile is all about building a high performance audio system. The question is what do we mean by high performance. Is it the accurate reproduction of timbre and space or just a system that sounds good to the owner.

I would say that audio hobby is a journey beginning with the wished basic gear synergy ending at an acoustic specific destination... it has ended for me... Lessons learned and applied... Music is my hobby as decades ago it was but this time with no frustration at all about sound because i learn minimal basic acoustics and few other things ...

it is called the minimal acoustic threshold of satisfaction or M.A.T.S. when each acoustic factors defining timbre, spatial qualities and immersiveness are there in a MINIMAL synergy state, this M.A.T. S. make us able to create the irresistible desire to never end any album we listen to....M.A.T.S. is the end of a journey...Not perfection which is anyway a result of acoustic knowledge more than the result of an illimited wallet... ...

If it is not for such experience,we became like a dog calling for a solution to some problem and mistaking another problem for the next solution, which upgrading is very often ; or worst, not recognizing the problem at all then staying frustrated and calling that the normal state of THE journey...

My two cents... 😊

Music is the wave and the sound and the gear  are only the navigating  surfer plank... Learn how to Control your body on the plank and dont mistake the plank for the journey...

In my opinion you are right...

All I’m saying is that, although I also go for "realistic" audio reproduction, and consider the "real" sound of acoustic instruments a kind of benchmark

Add to that all the information lost in stereo system by crosstalk , about spatial aspects of sound... A subject very well studied by Edgar Choueiri...

For me "realistic" dont refer to the gear but to acoustic and psycho-acoustic controls about real acoustic instrument in a real acoustic space... Heavily processed music is not the benchmark with which we can judge a system ... We speak about acoustic here not about taste in music or taste in gear ...😊

Thanks for the beautiful Quote snilf ...

Like the pragmatism, but not so sure about Pierce (despite mahgister’s fondness). And I don’t see how we can do away with the ding an sich! The "I’m not a nominalist either" remark was a response to mahgister’s opening line.

The thing- in- itself idea came from the brain-in-itself idea ...

And Kant decided to fix for himself the task to explain how is it possible that we can know something in spite of the thing-in -itself, or with it...He suppose a brain-in-itself facing a thing-in-itself to do the job via active schematizing imagination ......

Peirce was a reeducated and a recuperating Kantian ,because he was also a polymath scientist, a more pragmatic man and then he created pragmatism to face and cure Kantism , because he never bought the thing-in-itself nor the brain-in-itself double ideas ...Peirce is nearer to Goethe IMPLICIT phenomenology and semiotic in his scientific books than to Kant ... Contemporary science had quit pure materialism since 1925 and any Cartesian claims of dualism is void now...

My best philosopher of science right now is an Indian genius , who discovered how the microtubules work on each neuron at another frequencies scale and in a quantum way... All the universe is based on musical synchronization in a way...The synchronization tool clocks are time crystals arranged geometrically by the prime number distribution...

His ideas are so novel creative and complex i can only refer people to his book ; nanobrain... All other A.I. scientist resemble each other mathematically compared to this new innovative and completely different genius on a level of creativity of his own with a new information theory and a new concept of Artificial consciousness ...

But beware he spoke the most horrible english possible, be patient...

Here two short conferences :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNKRbujzSok&list=PLnQJF3Qi_4_ANsyFHeEjTVNyZ-OWWoY9Q&index=3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5YyxHzT6QI&list=PLnQJF3Qi_4_ANsyFHeEjTVNyZ-OWWoY9Q&index=1

His twitter account :

https://twitter.com/anirbanbandyo/status/1696414403531264483

Anirban work with Penrose and Hameroff, on the microtubules physics but his own ideas are independant and totally revolutionary by themselves...

Here Hameroff in a short take on microtubules physics :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDgFFvu-0Z8&list=PLnQJF3Qi_4_ANsyFHeEjTVNyZ-OWWoY9Q&index=2

The recording engineer take also a perspectival angle on this reality pie which is also himself ...My system is a link between my acoustic perspective and his own trade -off...And the recording engineer and me we can partake the same conscious inner core through acoustics knowledge...

The timbre of a violin dont exist in itself in some inaccessible absolute reality or truth over all others ... The violin timbre is always a relativized perspective from some location , for some ears, from some material violin design wood etc... Even the violonist does not have the truth about the playing timbre experience..His near position implicate a trade-off exactly as each musician playing around and exactly as any listener will have their "truth" experience about the timbre experience and they will recognize it and they can analyze it psycho-acoustically and acoustically ...

We are what we experience together, there is no absolute inaccessible material or sensible reality OUTSIDE , there is only only relatively inaccessible levels ;it is consciousness itself on his many layered levels...But they are all synchronized and manifest each one as different consciousness at different level...The core is ONE for ALL ...

Nobody had access to his own whole being to his own core save God ...Material reality is not the reflection of a head-set as claim Donald Hoffman, a Kantian too...Reality is a musically synchonized event...I like Cassirer who being more than just a mere Kantian add a Goethean perspective ... For Goethe there is no theory BEHIND the phenomena , there is no theory without the phenomena either , the phenomena are themselves the perspectival potential and manifested theory... The meaning and the sensible sign then are related through symbolic forms which are read as many possible synchronized perspectives ...This view is so deep... Husserl rediscovered it without refering to Goethe phenomenology, Henri Bortoft the physicist explain it for EVERYONE in few books...Read them...

The Infinite is scary because we cannot be outside of it, and we are held captive of it,if we dont recognize that we are it... We are chained by our own acts and we may free ourself by another act; this is why we need the act of thinking, the producted content on which we may focus to free ourself and be conscious of what we are doing...

This is the reason why the qualitative content of any sound must be created anew inside the listener perspective for example but it is also why the qualitative content of a sound reflect the vibrating body source qualities ( wood,metal, plastic , hard, soft, empty, full, and these qualities inform us about our relation with the world and ourself ...

We need air for the fire to awake, but the fire is not the air; we need air for the sound to travel but the air waves or their abstraction content  are not the sound experienced  qualities...

I will stop here...😁 And i apologize for being a bit too much... 😊

Exactly... Thanks...

@snilf There is no corresponding "objective reality." That’s right. Everything that "is" must be somehow taken by us. No raw given, no way to check. Even the "real, objective" cello on the stage, playing live, is heard by me -- my sitting position, my ears, my distracted mind -- and, most important -- my interpretative taking of that acoustical experience.

If, in my home, I want to experience what I did in the concert hall -- ok, then I try to figure out how to do that. (And, as @mahgister points out: there are a hundred interpretive acts which are between me and that moment: engineers, mastering, etc.) But in this enterprise, let me not fall into the trap that I’m "really" getting back to something "more real." That’s folly and, worse, obfuscation. But it makes for some great chest-beating online.

i am not nominalist...

Perception is not the capture of a non transformed nor participated reality outside an isolated subjectivity...

We dont perceive the world through a head set...

We "resonate" and "synchronize" with the phenomenon we focus on and we perceive them with some filtering through our specific species evolutive and personnally acquired filters...The fil;ters are not arbitrary either...

Words exist on two levels : conscious and unconscious... Each word exist as a Poetical metaphorical MUSICAL deep grounding on some layer in the body/world relation and history and on a prosaic conscious habit and conditioned surface manifesting level...The iceberg peak... Any meaning is the result and the cause at the same time of this partially unobserved dynamic...

Then when you use a word we condition our mind in some perspectival take on the phenomena but this conditioning is unconscious but never completely arbitrary ...

UNIVERSALLY ALL WORDS are born from a metaphor...Because the prosaic level is completely derived from the basic poetical-musical-metaphorical deepest level...

When Saussure established the belief in the COMPLETE and ABSOLUTE arbitrary of signs by commodity for his analysis he was wrong and his disciples make a dogma of this isolation tool principle ...

But going there and explain it will be too long here...

The choice of words matter...Yes...

When we say a sound is REAL , the only objective meaning come from experimental acoustics and psycho-acoustics ...

Timbre, transients, dynamic, tonality, etc all concepts are scientifically described in controlled acoustic settings as a laboratory ...

But when we dont know these concepts by experience , we used isolated conventional metaphors and we use the words as metaphors to translate our subjective experience with the gear disconnected from acoustics conditions and knowledge in many case...

Then using the word "real" to qualify our system experience has no clear meaning for someone else...This metaphor is then disconnected from the necessary acoustic concepts necessary to assign meaning to it... We say often our system experience is "real" because we are unable to relate our experience with acoustic concept to substantiate it ... It is not false because it is not even wrong ... We must live always on two language levels but we must distinguish them but not negate one at the exclusive profit of the other...Creative non conventional metaphor revived our dead prose but must be inspired by real experience to do so...

Here is my philosophical belief as an aside :

I dont believe philosophically in a world completely separated from consciousness ... I am a Perceian not a Saussurian and i am a disciple of the french linguist Gustave Guillaume whose works even if very different different from Peirce semiotics perspective, anyway as Peirce himself negate an absolute separation between the sign and the meaning, as between the soul and the Body separated in such a way in the Cartesian frame ...

Here what Peirce think :

«Peirce understood nominalism in the broad anti-realist sense usually attributed to William of Ockham, as the view that reality consists exclusively of concrete particulars and that universality and generality have to do only with names and their significations. This view relegates properties, abstract entities, kinds, relations, laws of nature, and so on, to a conceptual existence at most. Peirce believed nominalism (including what he referred to as "the daughters of nominalism": sensationalism, phenomenalism, individualism, and materialism) to be seriously flawed and a great threat to the advancement of science and civilization. His alternative was a nuanced realism that distinguished reality from existence and that could admit general and abstract entities as reals without attributing to them direct (efficient) causal powers. Peirce held that these non-existent reals could influence the course of events by means of final causation (conceived somewhat after Aristotle’s conception),[1]and that to banish them from ontology, as nominalists require, is virtually to eliminate the ground for scientific prediction as well as to underwrite a skeptical ethos unsupportive of moral agency.»

https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/peirce-and-the-threat-of-nominalism/

In a word, qualitative experience and subjective experience are not completely arbitrary meaningless isolated experience from a reality itself isolated from consciousness ... Husserl go deeper here after Goethe...And Peirce is philosophically right...It is the greatest American thinker...With Whitehead who is British anyway...

The more i read audio threads the more i realized people are unsatisfied in many cases and frustrated...

This had nothing to do with price tags or branded name choices very often...

Synergy between components at any price and embeddings of components at any price is necessary...

But it was almost impossible for me to figure out ways to do it with my components before studying general acoustics concepts and i dont speak about only specialized small room acoustic here but about acoustics in general, what is crosstalk or what is an Helmholtz resonators for example among other acoustics questions, or what define TIMBRE acoustically and how can i use that ?...What is listener envelopment ? What is the sound source width ? Etc...

People dont study acoustics and pick their experience with gear changing one after the other pieces...They became consumers slaves of marketing...They must read acoustics articles to understand their experience FIRST not the owner of gear manual...

Am i deaf if i claim to be happy with low cost components well embedded ?😊

Am i delusional?

Am i someone who claim happiness because i decided to live with a relatively bad sound pretending the opposite ? Delusional people exist by the way...

Why am i not envious of any system here and most if not all other system are costlier and better than mine in design especially compared my actual speakers choice?

No...

I am happy because i optimize my system till i reach this minimal acoustic threshold where details and musicality became ONE and did not impose on me mandatory "taste" choices...

There is no tastes choices forced upon us in well done acoustic environment , only factors under control... And without any mechanical and electrical embeddings controls no system can be optimal...

And there is also "necessary "tweaks" for me of my own i used without which my soundfield dont please me...

All that cost me NOTHING or peanuts but it must be experimented and learned, it takes time...

Or pick your choice and call me delusional...

I dont care listening my music...

Acoustics , synergy, and the rightfull embeddings controls rule in audio not the gear pieces and the price tag ...Sorry but i am not the one delusional...😊

Without experiments we cannot embed our system rightfully...

Anyway almost nobody will put a bundle of different straws of different volume and lenght behind their speakers in the porthole to increase bass depth and extension as i did knowing that any vented speakers is an Helmholtz resonators often badly designed in his ratio volume/ neck section and lenght ...Most people will upgrade this low cost speakers instead of experimenting and learning  to a very costlier one giving more bass... Me i did it at not cost and now instead of 85 hertz i enjoy 50 hertz on my 4 inches driver and 50 hertz very clear and punchy with even taste under is ENOUGH  for most music instrument save deep organ note ...And i also introduced other changes to decrease crosstalk mechanically to some degree with success it was possible because i listen near field and the small speakers are on my desk......

It look "nuts" yes... I even increase the tweeter directionality in my near listening field with success..

It look as some laughing ignorant will call "tin foil hat" system but i am not frustrasted with beautiful unsatisfying costly speakers with no acoustic optimization as many are  ... Thats my point...

We dont need money we need experimenting and learning in acoustics...And we need to control a bit the EMI and electrical noise floor ... Etc...

By the way there is no "surreal" concept of sound in any acoustics book...These distinction had no meaning for me at all they are gear focussed metaphor not grounded in acoustics ... It is a metaphor not an acoustic concept... Natural TIMBRE sound is an acoustic concept and experience well defined by at least 5 characteristics in acoustics with which we can play  and experiment...

I am not bothered if i analyse my soundfield at all because it was done right... It was not easy to do it , we must learn about acoustics and few other things..

I refused to listen music with unnatural sound component...I cannot it bother me too much...

I am not bothered now by ANALYSING the soundfield if i listen music because AFTER my embeddings controls and the right synergetical components picked up, i can listen the sound EFFORTLESSLY, all is at the right place in space, differentiated , and timbre...

What disturb me was CONCENTRATING ON THE MUSIC knowing in the back of my head that my sound stay bad...Then i adressed it in headphone and speakers because i disliked them all anyway right out of the box ...I optimized them... After that only music captivated me with a very good sound on ALL my recordings even the bad one sound less bad and i can listen to them...In my headphone and in my speaker...

There is no difference now between listening sound and/or music because nothing bother me in the back of my head and i am not in the obligation to concentrate on the music through a bad sound...music and sound became   ONE...

Acoustics rule... Mechanical and electrical controls and synergy matter...

There is difference between some of my recording for sure, but not as much as you describe... I listen jazz, classical and world music where bad recording is not as rare as in jazz and classical...

A good system give us all recording choices takes by the recording engineer clearly, then discovering these choices different in each case, we enjoy them and no more separate them in few good one and a majority of acceptable and few top one... my system IMPROVE all even the bad recording because it give me a fair representation and a good translation of the recording acoustic choices...Almost no recording disturb me now as so bad as unlistenable...They became interesting each one because each one present a unique set of choices......

To me, surgically dissecting each track and obsessing about instrument placement isn’t enjoyment, it’s an OCD vampire sucking all the enjoyment out of music and probably life in general. I listen to music for pure enjoyment.

i perceive clearly a difference in your video as evweryone who will hear them ... One is more fatiguing than the other and you were right , one is more natural it is evident especially  when coupling your voice with the recorded one...

Now i will not like this unnatural sound nor on my headphone neither on my speakers exactly as you dont like it at all ...😊

i dont have this fatiguing sound on neither my headphone and my speake only one in the worlr exactly as you but me i can explain WHY... Before my various modifications i disliked the sound of my actual speaker and from my 9 headphones... I implemented 6 modifications critical for my less ARTIFICIAL sounding headphone and as much on my speakers...

Describe what you have done for the benefit of others...😁

Where is your explanation ?

I perceive your difference clearly but you are not the only one in the world owning natural sound...

An artificial sound is easy to spot...i hate it...I dont think that i can change as i did for my speakers all headphones i ever owned because i dislike headphone artificiality...I succeeded only with the K340 to my satisfaction ...

For example all my 9 headphones without exception sounded "artificial" , the only one i did not discard was sounding better but unbalanced and muffled the AKG K340 ... It takes me 6 months every day to discover how to make them natural sound so much that i NEVER listen to any other headphone again after that and i will never need to upgrade...

Same for my speakers which i owned for 12 years and which i discarded for computer use not music for 12 years 😁... But when I lost my big speakers and room acoustic one year ago... I did not have any other choice than modifying and optimizing the small one i hated... In a dedicated acoustic corner tailored made for them for the first time .... To figure it out with specific box modifications , vibrations control and EMI shielding , take me 6 months of experiment ... All homemade modifications by the way...

Then my sound too is now as natural as yours ...I can explain why and how...

What are your explanation ? You never gave one and then you claimed to be the only one with a natural sound in the world ... It is a bit too much claim....Synergy, modifications , and acoustic optimization can be done ... I did them with complete success ...it was not e3asy to figure it out... Most will not... There is not one road only nor only one possible piece of gear to modify, optimize and put in their right acoustic environment designed for them...😊

My audio system sounds the closest to the original music. That makes my system the most accurate sound system.

All your speakers behave like a left speaker in below. Only my speaker sounds like a right one. Alex/Wavetouch

Killing me softly - Natural vs. Un-natural sound, PA speaker comparison.

The original recording is an acoustic perspective or take resulting from trade-off choices  conveyed by the gear system to another acoustic perspective ,where they will be translated  in our room  for specific ears/head...

Accuracy refer to measured numbers of specific factors  of any kind .... Digital, electrical, acoustical or psycho-acoustical MEASURES  but the end PERCEIVED EXPERIENCE is not about accuracy it is about the way a gear system convey an acoustical trade-off set of choices by the recording engineer and how it is translated through your speakers-room by ears and by your specific HRTF or head related transfer function to your speakers/room...

And i need an explanation about YOUR speakers being the only possible one accurate in the world, in any room for any inner ears structure and any HRTF sorry , Why and How is it possible ?

😊

Since every audio systems (low-end, hi-end, all $million systems) sound un-natural (except my audio system). Your audio sounds un-natural and you may not know exactly what is real or surreal sound.

The concept of "accuracy" is misleading completely here...

Accuracy in electrical engineering is not accuracy in digital engineering nor accuracy in music experience nor accuracy in physical acoustics nor accuracy in psycho-acoustics perspective... And accuracy for audiophiles is not any of these different accuracy concepts, it is most of the time gear choices  related though not musically and acoustically related first and last ..

It is why we must study fundamental basic acoustics and psycho-acoustics concepts to understand what we spoke about speaking of "accuracy"...

Accuracy is most of the time a design marketing keyword used most of the time coming from electrical engineering measured specs or from digital audio engineering coming from Fourier analysis...

An audio system well embedded must sound NATURAL not "accurate"...Musical not "detailed"...

And all this it is not grounded on our tastes for some gear component or branded name so much as grounded in acoustics knowledge and controlled factors in a general sense of the word including psycho-acoustics when we learn how to embed an audio system nevermind his price ...

Buying with the money to buy will not replace acoustics knowledge...

I own a system with headphone and speakers under 1000 bucks... 😊 With no major defects...Upgrading will cost me 10,000 bucks but it is unnecessary because i already enjoy immersiveness and good timbre...On my headphone and even with my speakers...

My system is better than what you described...

My system show me ALL but did not tell me what to hear... As Hilde45 put it well...

Amazing how there is no linear relation between price and sound...

Nothing replace acoustics knowledge because if you dont understand the 5 factors interplay describing TIMBRE or the many factors related to spatial dimensions of the soundfield how can you create them by learning how to control them in some way for yourself ? By buying costly components ?🤨

We create,ourself or not, our sound experience with any basically good synergetical components RIGHTFULLY EMBEDDED IN OUR ROOM/HOUSE...This is related to basic knowledge and synergy ONLY ,not price tag AT ALL ...

By the way did you know why i did not recommend my low cost speakers and headphone choices to eveyone ?

It is because they are optimal ONLY after many modifications and the rightful embeddings ...

I recommend studying, reading, embeddings controls, experiments with creative and fun imagination based on ACOUSTICS not only room acoustic here... I never recommended my brand name gear pieces as solutions as many did... I recommended acoustics learning and experiments... I modified my speakers after i studied crosstalk effects reading in acoustics and Helmholtz resonators ...Same for my headphone and other acoustics concepts ... Without modifications they are not so good at all even if i bought them because of the users reviews unanimously good almost...

We must dare to read about all acoustics concepts to understand what we perceive when we hear a sound... If not we will go on the upgraditis wheel and marketing hype...

There is a MINIMAL acoustic satisfaction threshold, when you get it, music became immersive so much that you forget sounds and marginal and most useless upgrades...

You can economise much money but you cannot economise time study and experiments sorry...It is why most people pay with money instead of thinking and paying with time ... Most have not my time leisure in retirement... I will never had did it before my retirement ... Then i understand people... But the truth must be said...😊 Investing time can be fun and it is way more rewarding than most  upgrading...