The focus and air lie


There always have been some kind of fashion in the way a system sounds and since a few years it seems that more and more people are looking for details, air and pinpoint focus / soundstaging.
There's a lot of components, accessories and speakers designed to fill full that demand... Halcro, dCS, Esoteric, Nordost, BW, GamuT are some examples.

This sound does NOT exist in real life, when you're at a concert the sound is full not airy, the soundstage exist of course but it's definitely not as focused as many of the systems you can hear in the hifi shops, it just fill the room.

To get that focus and air hifi components cheats, it's all in the meds and high meds, a bit less meds, a bit more high meds and you get the details, the air, the focus BUT you loose timbral accuracy, fullness.
It's evident for someone accustomed to unamplified concert that a lot of systems are lean and far from sounding real.

Those systems are also very picky about recordings : good recordings will be ok but everything else will be more difficult...
That's a shame because a hifi system should be able to trasmit music soul even on bad recording.
In 2008 this is a very rare quality.

So why does this happened ?

Did audiophiles stopped to listen unamplified music and lost contact with the real thing ?

Is it easier for shops to sell components that sounds so "detailled and impressive" during their 30mins or 1 hour demo ?
ndeslions

Showing 8 responses by mapman

Lots of music lovers have only radios or boom boxes often because that is the best they can afford, especially in lesser developed countries (though the gap is rapidly closing).

It would be a bit condescending to suggest that they do not or cannot appreciate music as a result.

So it is a bit of a circular philosophical argument that cannot go anywhere.

All I can say is take my system away and I'll break your hands!
Testify, brother Shadorne, testify!

I like nice looking things as much as the next guy, but the irony is that good looks is not required for good sound though many may equate the two.

Good sound can be had for not very much if you really just pay great attention to the details.
"On second thoughts I guess I must add that I probably listen very differently from most people. I listen to recordings and concentrate on a particular individual instrument and then play it again listening to another"

Shadorne, I tend to focus more on different individual or group played lines or elements in the music when I listen also.

Some of these may be more prominent in the mix or buried way back in the mix somewhere.

I suspect a lot of people do this.

One big goal that drives my system design is to be able to do this as often as possible without limitation with as many different recordings (both good and bad) as possible.

Sometimes I'll just listen for specific parameters of the overall sound as well, more so when I suspect that some specific aspect of the detail I am focused in on does not sound right for some reason.
"That means that you should choose a seat in the 1st row of the balcony, with no ceiling or second balcony above yours. You will find these seats to be absolute magic and will give you a memorable performance in sound quality"

I have had some of the best experiences at the symphony in seats like these.

In a good venue, like the Meyerhoff in Baltimore, these can be forward and to the side of the stage and not necessarily dead center. The perspective on the performance will be different but the sound still top notch.
"That's a shame because a hifi system should be able to trasmit music soul even on bad recording.
In 2008 this is a very rare quality."

Maybe our technology these days is just too resolving and revealing and we don't like what we hear as much as a result.

Maybe we should do what television producers do to deal with flaws in human appearance on HD TV: put more make-up on our performers, ie degrade recording quality on purpose in order to add more "soul".

Maybe this also has something to do with the seeming popularity of tubes and vinyl with audio buffs these days.
"Walk outside your house at 3am and listen to the birds chirping. One is three feet away and the other is thirty feet away. Ten more are in between. How do you tell they are separated? What is between them? How many terms does it take? "

I like this test scenario for air very much!

Is there a test recording out there that does anything like this?
We're audiophiles! Of course we're mad! Why else would we throw so much time, money and energy into this?

You were expecting???