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

The perennial question for audiophiles (assuming by "surreal" the OP meant something like "super-real"; I doubt any but the oddest of us would prefer our systems to sound "unreal," "bizarre," "freakish" or any of the other synonyms of "surreal," which originally designates visual art like that of Salvador Dali). No, you don't want reproduced music to be the acoustic equivalent of clocks melting over table tops! So: do you want your system to sound like "real instruments at a live (acoustic) concert"...or do you want MORE than that? This, I presume, is what the OP meant to ask.

Mahgister always brings us back to the fact that perception of sound is a complicated thing involving a lot more than the straightforwardly measurable (that is, the "undistorted"). If that were not true, we'd all like the same equipment—and the same music, too, probably. If measurable accuracy were the gold standard, everyone would prefer solid state to tubes; tubes add distortion. But we often like the "right" kinds of distortion; don't be misled by the seemingly pejorative character of the word. 

Having said that, I'll admit to being fond of various kinds of "distortion," despite the fact that I play cello and guitar, my wife plays piano, my daughter violin, and we all play here in our home in the same environment where I also listen to piano, violin and cello as recorded music on my system. Yes, getting timbre right is important. Yes, conveying the scale of the instrument, and its position in space in relation to other instruments in an ensemble—all that is important. But finally, a kind of "super-realism" is often desirable in reproduced sound. Perhaps it compensates somehow for the displacement effect created by the domestic space, which inevitably reminds the brain that it is not actually listening to live music.

Here's a possible analogy to make this point. I used to be a photographer, back in the pre-digital days. I've won awards at juried shows, had my photographs published, etc. I knew what I was doing with a camera. Now, however, I find that I rarely can resist using one or another post-production retouching program for my digital images. I can not only correct for an out-of-true horizon, or crop the image easily; I can actually enhance the color contrast in ways that make the image "pop." Whether you know it or not, most, if not all, published images have been manipulated in such ways. Is that "realistic," "true" to the "original"? Strictly speaking: No. But we often like it better. There's nothing wrong with that. A photograph of, say, an Alpine vista simply cannot capture all the features that make the "original experience" so compelling: the freshness of the air, the sense of grandeur that comes with the sheer physical scale, and so on. So tweaking the photo a bit may trick the brain into supplying some of that missing visceral excitement. The photo is a simulacrum, not a substitute. So with reproduced music.

Despite all this, I agree with tvrgeek about the relative importance of the different elements in the audio chain, no matter what final effect one is striving for: "In order:  Source ( fixed, stuck with it). Room (we can do [adjust] within limits). Speakers (pay to play [not sure what this means here]). Electronics (small differences, even ss to tube is small in relation). Tweaks (tiny tiny tiny)."

I've got two systems, both built over many years, both excellent (to my ears), both in acoustically sympathetic rooms. One is "more accurate": I've had PSB Synchrony Ones in there, which measure extremely well; then Von Schweikerts, which sounded a little "better"; now Magneplanar 1.6 QRs, which are the "best" yet. That's my second system. My favorite rig has speakers you've probably never heard of (Scientific Fidelity "Teslas"), which were very badly reviewed by Stereophile when they were made in the 1990s, which pretty much killed them on the market. So be it. They create a more compelling simulacrum of piano, violin, cello—to my ears, which hear these same real instruments in this same acoustic environment daily. They also are more exciting for jazz and rock: better imaging (more than "realistic"), more bass punch, etc. Are they more "accurate"? Draw your own conclusions....

"Real" as "flatus vocis"; me like! But then, to some degree, ALL language is flatus vocis, since words are not the things they stand in for. On the other hand, Webster says that words should not be, but "correspond" to, some "objective reality" in order to be more than (or other than) mere flatus vocis. If that's the standard, then the word "real" used in the audio evaluation context surely is NOT a mere flatus vocis. The "real" here which is to serve as the "corresponding objective reality" is the sound of a piano, violin, cello, guitar, voice produced not by one's audio system, but by the things themselves.

Unless, of course, you want to insist (as Mahgister always does) that "perception" is not "reality." Granted; I'm a Kantian, too. But then, we're back to my first disclaimer here: that ALL language is flatus vocis! 

The point: if we can't use the word "real" in discussing a "reproduction" of something—if it is a "mere sound without a corresponding reality"—then there is no way to evaluate the "re" in "reproduction," and we must just shut up altogether. "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen."

Mahgister and hilde45:

I'm not a "nominalist," either, nor was I trying to suggest that either of you might be. ("Not that there's anything wrong with that.") My philosophical intuitions are mostly Kantian these days, after half a century contributing to the discipline. But this is not a philosophy forum.

Reality "in itself" (in the Kantian sense) is inaccessible and not worth even trying to talk about anyway, since it's inaccessible. Still, for practical purposes, "reality" can be said to be the source of the "source," as it were: the performance which the recording attempts to record and that our audio systems attempt to play back. Now, obviously we were not present at the recording session, nor do we have access to the acoustics of the recording studio in which mastering decisions were made. Etc. 

Nevertheless, a violin has a slightly different timbre than a viola (violists and violinists would challenge that qualification "slightly," but I presume you see what I mean). For that matter, a Guarneri violin has a slightly different timbre than an Amati, or a Stradivari. BUT...a "live" violin has a characteristic timbre, whether played in one's living room or in Carnegie Hall. If you are familiar with the sound of a live violin—especially if you are familiar with that sound in the acoustics where your audio system is set up—then you know, in your own head, whether or not, and to what extent, your system reproduces that timbre (mutatis mutandis: again, the differences between a Cremona instrument and a good modern "copy" are subtleties we can argue about in a different thread, and one can parse those differences in terms besides "timbre"). 

Bottom line (for me): I want to be able to hear the "voice" of the first violinist as against that of the second, and I certainly want to hear the voice of a violin in a string quartet as against that of the viola, or the cello. That's partly a matter of timbre, but also of imaging: I like to be able to "see" where the sound is coming from in the recreated "soundstage" of my listening room. That's essential to really following the music: I need to be able to discern the "voices" that make up the Gestalt. And that point bridges the "audiophile" concern for sound quality with the music lover's love of the music: it's difficult to fully appreciate what's in the music without a high level of fidelity to the subtle features of sound quality.

"Reality," as I was using the word (without all the philosophical asides), simply refers to the signature features of the live instrument as a perceptual baseline, against which the "accuracy" of the reproduction must be judged. 

Is this really problematic? Or unclear"

hilde45: 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.

Mahgister: "It is the strangest claim in the world—raised sometimes, but never lived up to even by those who raise it—that one should present experiences without any theoretical link between them, and leave it to the reader, or the pupil, to form his own convictions.  But the mere looking at a thing gradually merges into contemplation, contemplation into thinking, thinking into establishing connections, and thus it is possible to say that every attentive glance which we cast on the world is an act of theorizing.  This, however, ought to be done with consciousness, self-criticism, freedom, and, to use a daring word, with irony…."  "Theorizing is inherent in all human experience, and the highest intellectual achievement would be to comprehend that everything factual is already theory."  Goethe, in a translation by my former teacher Erich Heller.

(Listening now to Mozart's "Linz" symphony in the superlative performance by Berlin and Abbado in a great 20-bit Sony recording.)

mijostyn,

You mentioned a "bright" system imaging the cymbals "10 feet in front of the snare." Well, there are more egregious imaging manipulations, especially with drums, that are a deliberate artifact of the original mastering. The drums on Tool’s "Fear Inoculum," for instance. The drum set seems HUGE, spanning the entire width of the (reproduced) soundstage and even indulging in moving back and forth across the breath of the stereo image! It has been remarked on this forum before that, in a jazz ensemble, the drums "should" be in the center rear, as they would actually be on stage, and they should STAY there. But that exaggerated effect with Tool is undeniably exciting—and not at all uncommon in rock, where a simulacrum of a live club performance is not what the engineers were going for. Think of the drums (again, just for instance!) on any Rush album. During the instrumental section of "Tom Sawyer," the drums start on the left and move across the "stage." This is NOT "realistic," but it is kind of thrilling.

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 (given the many remarks in this thread already about the questionable status of "the real"), heavily produced music is obviously not bound by this principle. And that doesn’t make such music somehow a failure.

None of which is meant to suggest that you’re not right to want to restrain the frequency response of your system so that a not-intended effect of foregrounding certain frequencies is defeated as much as possible.