Solving the "complex music problem"?
I have noticed that, regardless of the system, simple music (i.e. music with only a few sounds at the same time, such as a solo instrument) sounds way better than what I'll call here "complex music", meaning music like symphony that has a lot of instruments all playing different sounds at the same time. I'm assuming that this is an inherent problem for audio equipment. In a live symphony, you might have, say, 15 different unique instruments (i.e. counting all the violins as 1 unique instrument), each of which is vibrating in a different way; but in a speaker, each driver might be trying to reproduce 10 of those sounds at the same time. So each driver is a single physical object trying to vibrate in 10 different ways at the same time. The result is that the music sounds muddy, all the different parts blend together and you lose a lot of the detail.
I have a number of questions about this that I'm hoping all you experts can help me with.
1. Is there an established name or term for this issue?
2. Do you think my diagnosis of the problem above is correct? Or is something else going on?
3. Although this is always a problem, it's a much bigger problem on some systems than others. Are there some types of components, or some brands, that are particularly good (or bad) when it comes to this issue?
4. To what extent is this issue related to the components you have as compared to speaker placement and room acoustics?
5. To me, this is a huge issue. But I don't see it discussed all that often. Why do you think that is? Or, perhaps, it is being discussed all the time, but people are using a term I don't recognize? (hence question 1).
Full disclosure, I asked a related question under the heading "need amp recommendations for more separation of instruments" and got a lot of super helpful responses. I'm very grateful to everyone who took the time to respond there. That discussion was focused on a solution to my particular problem. Here I'm hoping to have a more general discussion of the issue. I know it's bad form to post the same question twice, but in my mind, this is a significantly different question. Thanks.
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The relative scale of music recordings is a very good topic and something that does not get the attention it merits in discussions about good sound at home It’s true the room is the biggest difference maker in the end especially for recordings of large scale ensembles where you essentially stuff a sound meant for a concert hall into a tiny room at home. For the most part it’s all a matter of relative scale. The good news for all in regards to cost: in a small room, less is often more. |
I've been struck with similar observations while listening @ahuvia . And I think I agree that small combinations of instruments often seem easier to present nicely. I also agree that this may be why one often hears sparse arrangements at audio shows and environments designed to show off hi-fi equipment. But what if the space provided by fewer instruments simply allows easier brain processing that gives the impression of enhanced fidelity? Or allows subtler details to stand out (a breath here, a brief string buzz there) simply because they're not masked by other noises, giving an impression of greater detail and clarity? I have no idea if explanations like these are actually true, but I mention it because I'm pretty sure the assumptions you've made to explain this (potential) phenomenon aren't right. I mean, your speakers aren't fighting to create the sound of the instruments that were playing, right? They're delivering information stored in the recording of the instruments that were playing -- a very different thing. You're worrying that the speakers are attempting to deliver too much information while being inadequate for the task, but in fact the microphones that recorded the instruments themselves have already squashed the entirety of those data into something different, haven't they? Your speakers have only to correctly deliver that information. Your whole system knows nothing of 15 instruments, it only knows up, down, right, left... Or, you know, zeros and ones. But for the original question I hope someone with much more knowledge than I can weigh in on why less info. in a recording seems easier to make sound good? |
I agree with @erik_squires that it's usually the room acoustics that are the bottleneck. One way of thinking about that is that a good set of headphones usually doesn't have the issue to anything like the same degree. The main difference is that headphones pipe sound directly into the ear, without its being influenced by the room. |
