Hi Twoleftears,
You make an excellent point. What you describe is the curse of audiophilia:
If the system does not sound right, you do not get drawn into the music and the audiophile devil chases the music-lover angel away. I find there are several ways to deal with this:
1.Tweak the system first with trivial stuff you know well and then listen seriously. If it doesn't sound right, blame it on the software, relax and concentrate on the music.
2. Break off your listening session and wait until the electricity, your mood, the wine, or whatever gets better and try again.
3. Concentrate on the performance. Imagine you have a bad seat in the concert hall, relax and enjoy the artistry of the performers an wait for a better day, seat....
Happy listening, |
Newbee,
Bad accoustics in hall, a bad seat, because you had booked too late, can drive me bonkers. I've been known to leave the hall fuming at intermission soothing the savage breast in the next bar. I am much more patient with my rig, even patient with bad live performances as long as the accoustics are right. Bad accoustics insult the ear of a music lover. As you say, tonal balance, timbre, pitch, the reverbs must be right. Otherwise you start to itch, scratch and get restless in your seat. Your eyes and your mind wander as your insulted ears close up. With my rig, reacting with all sorts of different software, I find I am more patient, because disillusioned, I have learned that I am at the mercy of more or less gifted recording engineers who keep knocking my seat about in my "own private concert hall", while they twiddle their knobs and push their levers. The better my rig got through the years, the more I heard of their twiddlings, especially if they had not read the score and reacted too late, pushing the first violin quickly from right of center back to where it belongs after about thee bars into the music. Mind you, that can be amusing though for a jaded audiophile who knows, that the facsimile of real thing will never be perfect. It is pure Freud: The "reality priciple", which makes for patience at home but anger in the concert hall, if you, after overcoming your laziness, getting into some other cloths, commuting downtown, hunting for parking space, cued at the guarderobe, had to discover that you had better music at home..... |
Hi Chadnliz,
LOL, You've said it, friend!!
Cheers, |
Greg old friend, now finally you have made me understand why I had that odd compulsion to buy those huge Sound-Labs in spite of knowing that they would clutter up most of my listening space. I just can't move them. Ain't got the strength no more. So those fiddlers have to sit tight and that's it, because me, I'm not going to budge from my sweet spot once I've sat down. |
Twoleftears,
I have to agree with you right down to your every word. Your experience is also mine, but it took me quite a couple of years to understand what was going on, I must say. |
Actually I have found a more ( I suppose ) simple approach in dealing with the above mentioned problems:
I have LPs in my collection which I have used in a benchmark role through all the many systems I have owned in the last decades. I have- if you will- built my system around them. Later of course digital has also come into play. If my system meets those standards - and they have to do with timbre, prat, rendition of transients, soundstage, besides I'm particularly finicky with grand piano and female voices, as well as violins and big symphony orchestras, I relax. If it doesn't sound right, it is the take, not the system. Right or wrong, it helps peace of mind, as long as the benchmark takes - there are many - sound right. And those takes, being benchmarks to my ears come as close as possible to what I perceive as the real thing reproduced through my system. |
Hi Newbee,
What a beaut!! LOL. "audiophile analist approved" --AAA-- for short, I would suggest, but since AAA is already taken, I believe, by the motoring crowd, what would you think of "AA"-short for "anankast approved"?
Shadorne you make - as usual - an excellent point. Violins should be intentionally screeching at times. I am thinking of passages in string quartets by say Schnittke or Shostakovitch. Hilary Hahn can be quite strident in her splendid rendering of Bach's solo-sonatas and partitas. But the thought of an entire piece strident or screeching makes my ears close up even as I write this. At the moment I cannot even think of one. Generally music, like our speaking voice by the way, changes in pitch and modulation in many various ways of course.
Besides, an experienced listener, I think, will be able to differentiate between harshness, which is part of the interpretation and harshness which somehow is "wrong" and hence blamed either on the system or the software. Just a thought. |
Goldeneraguy, heck yes, you are so right, didn't think of those. Must have repressed that for a good reason, because I'm bent to go on soothing.
Twoleftears, Shadorne I could not agree with you more, though I will insist on dragging D.S. into the mix. My hunch is, that in spite of all the complexity both of you so rightly point out, we finally do agree more often than not, because no matter where and how the "sound" originates from, our love for music and our ability to get drawn into it and transported by it into moments of joy does unite us. The rest to me is a matter of taste, opinion, inventiveness, often sheer luck and last not least alas the pocketbook. Our rigs may sound as different from each other as we are as persons, but what unites us, I feel, is our passion for music and if our rig serves that, we are fine. |
