Two Type of sound and listener preference are there more?
In our thirty years of professional audio system design and setup, we keep on running into two distinctly different types of sound and listeners.
Type One: Detail, clarity, soundstage, the high resolution/accuracy camp. People who fall into this camp are trying to reproduce the absolute sound and use live music as their guide.
Type Two: Musicality camp, who favors tone and listenability over the high resolution camp. Dynamics, spl capabilty, soundstaging are less important. The ability for a system to sound real is less important than the overall sound reproduced "sounds good."
Are there more then this as two distincly different camps?
We favor the real is good and not real is not good philosophy.
Some people who talk about Musicaility complain when a sytem sounds bright with bright music.
In our viewpoint if for example you go to a Wedding with a Live band full of brass instruments like horns, trumpts etc it hurts your ears, shouldn’t you want your system to sound like a mirror of what is really there? Isn’t the idea to bring you back to the recording itself?
Please discuss, you can cite examples of products or systems but keep to the topic of sound and nothing else.
Roy you might be missing our point. When we mean musical it is a system which to many will sound warm, pleasent, non-fatiguing.
Imagine a well prepared dish at a good resturant, take a great steak, one guy might add a dash of pepper and salt, and one guy drowns the the steak with kitchup and A1.
The issue sure is of course not what tastes good to you but to understand that there are extremes.
In our view a system which is tuned so that everything sounds good including bad recordings, you know you are going to have a system which has rolled off top end and perhaps a slightly fat midrange.
VS.
A system which makes things sound real and life like, if the recording is not good so will be the sound, but of course a good recording will be glorious.
So of course each person's system is going to mirror their tastes.
If you understand the context of the original question, it will help you understand our point.
Yes we tune our systems to sound natural and we feel that natural is musical, but in this context it means accurate without being unrealistically bright vs a system which is deliberatly tuned as mentioned above.
I still don’t understand what *you* mean with the term “musical.” I can’t find any other content here aside from you liking certain systems.
And I have to admit I long ago grew uncomfortable with some of the elitism in high end audio where someone declares certain systems “play music” while others do not. My son listens to music on his laptop and iPhone and is enraptured. Are they not “musical” systems? Does he need to learn he is wrong, learn to be dissatisfied and disconnect from his own experience listening and adopt yours?
If instead you give more detail about what specifically you mean by “musical” - actual sonic characteristics - then who knows we may agree. But if it reduces to various forms of “does it move you” then that, as I say is subjective, differs between listeners and therefore not a useful heuristic for identifying anyone being wrong or right about the musical capabilities of a system.
I was thinking of you guys today. While driving down the road listening to Sirius XM. (I listen to a channel called Deep Tracks. Off the wall,lesser played, mostly older rock and roll ). Joe Walsh,of the Eagles fame, was saying that while mixing in the studio, tons of time are also spent in their cars ! Joe was saying to truly find out what the "mix" sounds like, they would always take the tracks out and play them through their car radios out in the parking lot. He said "that is truly how you need to find out how the mix is going to really sound. That’s what’s important "..
This is illustrating why I'm in camp one. I don't have the patience for all of the navel gazing and tail chasing that goes into trying to come up with my own personal definition of musical. It's obviously subjective. It's the perfect amount of HF roll-off the, perfect amount of even order harmonic distortion, the perfect frequency response that has the preferred inaccuracies.
I have no problem with people having a preferred flavor but when they start to use their personal taste as a tool to belittle people who have different tastes they need to be called out on it. Anybody who uses the phrase "truly musical" should be dismissed entirely.
Does the music make your toes tap? There are different flavors in the high end. Components certainly have a 'house sound' to them. We all know what we like and don't like, but all too often we listen to dealers or even friends who are with us, thinking they know more and we should like what they do.
This thread has made me wonder, what if you were to go into a rooms with different sounding systems set up and you didn't know the price, couldn't see anything. What would you pick? No personal contact with anyone while in teh room and not until you have chosen your system. What would you chose? I have often gone to dealers and asked ahead of time to have them set up their three best systems in three different rooms (if they had three) and not tell me the cost. It's a fun test and it tells you a lot as to what made my toes tap, thats for sure.
Audiotroy, actually I prefer both , musicality and liveness, in the stereo set up , Liveness is not hard to accomplish but putting musicality and liveness in the system is not easy, but it can be done, good train ears is needed, familiarity in matching gears and cables as well. Audio reviewers usually they are able to achieve both easily, because they have good train ears, they listen a lot, and years of experience...
I think it depends on what we mean by "aggressive." Certainly trumpets have a lot of acoustic power and can play in the high frequencies. In that sense they can sound aggressive. But when it comes to hi fi reproduction, "aggressive" tends to mean overbearing upper/high frequencies, usually an unnaturally sharpened effect.
The effect can make our ears want to "scrunch down" even though the sound level being played back is not particularly loud, and not even approaching the volume of a real brass instrument.
I recently listened to a marching band (was in London, watching changing of the guard) and I was struck by how beautiful and smooth the tone of the horns were - loud yet "relaxed and smooth toned" - the exact opposite of "aggressive" in the hi fi sense.
I have my system dialed in to get a similar presentation for horns, trumpets etc: brilliance, balls, but smooth without the feeling of hi-fi artifice and wanting to "shut down my ears" when they play aggressively - like in real life.
Dave and Troy, I do understand your points above, which were:
In our view a system which is tuned so that everything sounds good
including bad recordings, you know you are going to have a system which
has rolled off top end and perhaps a slightly fat midrange. VS. A
system which makes things sound real and life like, if the recording is
not good so will be the sound, but of course a good recording will be
glorious.
So of course each person's system is going to mirror their tastes.
If you understand the context of the original question, it will help you understand our point.
Yes
we tune our systems to sound natural and we feel that natural is
musical, but in this context it means accurate without being
unrealistically bright vs a system which is deliberatly tuned as
mentioned above.
Dave and Troy Audio Doctor NJ
What you propose is a sensible and logical goal. But a system being musical is not about a system tuned so even bad recordings sound great. But the converse will be true. It is not about a system which makes things sound real and lifelike. But the converse can be true. It is not about a system being accurate without being unrealistically bright.
seanheiss1 above has it right:
Defining musical is like defining how to dance. We know when someone can
dance just like we should know when something is musical. PRaT?
prof, you wrote above:
If instead you give more detail about what specifically you mean by
“musical” - actual sonic characteristics - then who knows we may agree.
But if it reduces to various forms of “does it move you” then that, as I
say is subjective, differs between listeners and therefore not a useful
heuristic for identifying anyone being wrong or right about the musical
capabilities of a system.
Thanks for pointing this out, prof. What I have found over the years, quite by surprise, is how most right-brained listeners appreciate most music when played on a musical system. The music may not be their cup of tea, but they, far more often than not, smile and listen and come away feeling like they understand why others could really get into that. This never happens on an amusical system.
When I am describing musicality, I can use only words that convey feelings, emotions, and physical motions like toe-tapping (thanks, ctsooner!). If, like jon_5912, you do not agree, please consider you have received my best advice on what to listen for and what to read into reviews.
Most reviewers have not heard musical systems, or cannot hear when a system is musical, cannot feel when a system is musical. If they did, they would write about that before ever writing about soundstaging, details, dynamics. This is because to anyone able to experience musicality finds that something far more important to report about a product. This is a part of Joe Walsh's message that nitrobob related. Is the music fun even on a car stereo? Again, read magazines like Tape Op to learn the magic that studio pros try to capture, want to reproduce, because they can surely never, ever capture 'reality'.
I would add that we audiophiles could ask women and artistic people's to hear our systems. If their attention is not instantly grabbed and then held by almost any great artist, at a soft volume, that system needs work.
An important aspect of a musical system is finding out, unexpectedly, that we have no motivation to play a different selection right away- drawn in automatically to hearing the entire record or CD. We are lost in the performance, never thinking of its details, image, 'bass' or 'highs', impact, dynamic contrasts... unless one has sat down to listen precisely for those things. this takes ears educated, trained, in ways right-brained people do not get and can seldom be trained. The same goes for power tools, right?
On a truly musical system, those wired emotionally experience feelings best described with words like power and floating and singing and dancing and crying, yelling ,drifting, plunging, spinning, surprising, lilting, laughing, shredding, burning, ... Spontaneous new associations made from associations hidden in the music- concepts only music can communicate.
Words are insufficient to communicate what music does. This is not elitism, but acknowledging those listeners are limited in vocabulary to describe experiences. Ask them!
If you don't get that from your stereo, it is that system's fault IF you initially loved music as a teenager, no matter what the system. On the other hand, if you got into advanced audio because of the tech, then you have to work harder to connect with the music emotionally, hence my earlier advice.
And you are both right, prof and d2girls, about the sound of real horns not being aggressive or bright. Same goes for cymbals. I find these are problems caused mostly by non-time-coherent speakers which literally shred HF transients. This leads to seans' comment of
Basically, as sounds get louder, they abruptly go from being inaudible to painfully loud.
Not true from any real instruments nor from time-coherent speakers.
Go to a music store for goodness' sake and ask someone to play something!!
prof, your son who loves his music on his laptop and iPhone is still highly right-brained would be my answer, since teenagers are not rational beings. I think it worth noting that since good musicians are very right-brained, how many of those need or want a fancy hi-fi? It is not a high percentage.
This is what I would ask to try all of us to remember-- the experiences we first had back when we fell in love with music, a place in our lives that experiencing the music came first.
I hope my advice can be a guide out of the tremendous amount of non-musical gear out there. What do I do for our clients? Recommend certain brands and let them see the customer feedback to be, wait for it, always about musicality.
Sorry for the long post, but the variety of musings were nice to see and worth addressing. Thanks!
Interesting Roy, but wrong, ask a lot of people who have heard some of the Thiel speakers which are time and phase aligned would disagree with that premise that because a speaker is time and phase aligned it is going to sound smooth or musical.
I am willing to bet there are people here who have heard Thiels and were not finding them to sound musical.
There have been plenty of Thiel systems that we heard in fact , sold Thiels for years, and did find combinations of electronics which made them sing, at the time a set of CS 2.3 or CS 2.4 on a Vac PA 100, Bat VK3i made an amazing sound
If you have a recording which captures live music in its rawest form, or the recording is not a good one, some of the earliest Telarc discs for example on a system which has good high frequency extension is going to sound bright, if it is on the recording, however, if you have a system that rolls off the top end you are going to experience that recording in a totally different light.
They were indeed time-coherent (across a limited range) but that is their only similarity to my work, to Dunlavy, Vandersteen, and Meadowlark.
And you are indeed right about finding other gear to make them sing. Great! The difficulty of said search speaks to the speaker's level of muscality.
One may eventually find 'this gear' exhibits strong colorations in many other systems. Finding universality to the sound of a product among people's comments and reviews is a good thing, before deciding to give it a go.
If you have a recording which captures live music in its rawest form, or
the recording is not a good one, some of the earliest Telarc discs for
example on a system which has good high frequency extension is going to
sound bright, if it is on the recording, however, if you have a system
that rolls off the top end you are going to experience that recording in
a totally different light.
Either way, I can easily demonstrate to anyone here that either condition comes about because of flaws in the gear and in the speakers, especially in the speakers since there is more to go wrong there and, unlike amps, can distort in the time domain.
I have found that when the speakers are truly ’right’ in the time domain (not suffering from metal-cone breakups and cabinet/surface reflections), then the tone balance of the recording becomes secondary to anyone’s experience, not primary as you wrote
Please take note that I do know you heard what you did, and that I would have heard that too, right next to you. But I have scientific explanations and not just ’wow, that amp combo worked’ to offer, backed by specialized measurements you would have to see performed here, and numerous master recordings. Come to Colorado for some vacation?
When I am describing musicality, I can use only words that convey feelings, emotions, and physical motions like toe-tapping (thanks, ctsooner!).
Well, ok, but as I said I think that’s useless. My toe taps to everything on my car radio. And to speakers and systems of all sorts of types of design. I even get whisked away, toe-tapping etc, to music just played on my iphone’s speakers.
Does this help you predict ANYTHING about the sound of such systems? No. It’s non descriptive about the system; it only describes my reactions, and since people can have different reactions to the same system, this doesn’t help describe the sound of the system.
This is one reason I hate reviews that fall back on the reviewers emotional response. It’s the laziest form of writing and tells me nothing at all about what I might expect of the sound of the component.
This is not elitism
I’d say this is elitism:
Most reviewers have not heard musical systems, or cannot hear when a system is musical, cannot feel when a system is musical.
I’m sorry but...utter nonsense.
I used to review. I know many reviewers. I have listened along to systems with many reviewers. They get in to music as much as anyone else I know. And the idea that most reviewers - who have typically heard an enormous number of hi fi systems - have "not heard" a musical system, if you mean by that one that has engaged them emotionally - is absurd. Sorry to be blunt here. It is actually the most astonishing level of elitism to even try to tell anyone that.
I think you are wearing the blinders of a manufacturer. Which is very typical, a sort of tunnel vision created by long hours of trial and error leading down your own particular path of "getting it right." I think that’s great and usually an asset for producing a product that demands such devotion. But it’s not always conducive for producing a more generalized wisdom. You get instead manufacturers who just think their approach is the right approach, despite the fact enormous numbers of people find just as much joy and satisfaction from other designs.
I’ve had plenty of phase/time coherent speakers. Right now I own 3 Thiel speakers - Jim’s last flagship 3.7, the 2.7 and some old non-time/phase coherent 02s (which sometimes I love as much as the newer models). I’ve owned Meadowlark speakers as well. And my Quad ESL 63s were time coherent. Of course you will want to caveats that those speakers "don’t get all the things right" that you think they should. But that’s exactly the manufacturer blinders one expects to see. It’s the same response the other manufacturers will give about other competing designs.
I also have owned (and still own) plenty of non time/phase coherent designs that have made me swoon to music.
This is what I would ask to try all of us to remember-- the experiences we first had back when we fell in love with music, a place in our lives that experiencing the music came first.
And most of us were spellbound by music on a variety of playback systems, often pretty crummy compared to your speakers or any other high end system. So what does "being in love with the music" tell us about any system? Not much at all. Which is again why I find mere emotional appeals useless as descriptors. It’s like someone coming from a dinner out and simply describing "I loved it! It brought back so many memories!" Doesn’t tell me whether it’s something I’d like, or if they had the best liver and onions they’ve ever eaten (which would make me barf).
I know the intentions behind your advice are very well-meaning, but I have to point out from this side it also comes off as a bit condescending, as if we here have to be reminded or taught to enjoy music. I enjoy music quite a lot - having just spent hours with some of my favorite soundtracks and electronica on my system tonight - thanks.
This has been a stunning display of transparent nonsense. It boils down to a sales pitch similar to "all the cool kids are smoking lucky strikes, you should too." We have right-brained vs. left-brained and musical vs. amusical. People have to describe sound how he wants it described. good grief.
I've noticed that small manufacturers are frequently arbitrary and a bit nutty. This is no exception. It doesn't mean their products are bad but it's funny to find out where they're coming from.
These are all just words. We all have our own ideas of what these words mean. If I say the word house we have different pictures of a house in our minds. If I say the word undistirted we all have a different idea what that means, or the word warm, or the word presence. Or musicality. They are very general even vague terms. Your idea of what great HiFi sound can only be as good as the best system you ever heard. Pop quiz: where does one go to hear a really good system?
This has been a stunning display of transparent nonsense. It boils down to a sales pitch similar to "all the cool kids are smoking lucky strikes, you should too." We have right-brained vs. left-brained and musical vs. amusical. People have to describe sound how he wants it described. good grief.
This is commentary on commentary.
How would you make sense of the different types of listeners?
"I've noticed that small manufacturers are frequently arbitrary and a bit nutty. "
Yup. Noticed this too. Similar to obsessives who run smaller high end audio stores.
There was a guy who ran an audio store for a long time near me who had tons of strong opinions on everything, and how so many other audiophiles "just didn't get it" and "don't understand what music really sounds like" etc. After listening to his strong opinions forever I finally had a chance to hear his own elaborate home set up, which purportedly was the result of all his insight. It left me cold and unmoved. But they think they are uncovering some Absolute, Objective Truth about how a system should sound. It's a blinkered way of thinking.
BTW, I should add some caveats as far as my own thoughts.
I think there is a huge subjective aspect to the hobby as people are chasing different things, have different criteria, and for those chasing "realism" no system regularly produces sound indistinguishable from the real thing. Hence, like the blind men and the elephant, we grab on to the parts of reality most important to each of us, and try to maximize this in our system. But I don't think that rules out some objective truths about what people tend to prefer, or that some sound can't be more accurate and real. Subjective preferences can be studied, and used for predictions, etc.
Secondly, I don't necessarily think the conversations between audiophiles, that remain in the subjective realm, are doomed to talking past one another due to pure subjectivity. I think someone with good ears, experience with sound, and an ability to put into words what they are hearing, can have some hope of describing the characteristic of a certain hi fi system or speaker, with some accuracy. I have found some reviewers are very good at this, insofar as when I hear the speaker in question it has very much the character the reviewer described (or alternatively, I may hear a speaker first, and then read the review later, and note how the reviewer really nailed the characteristics of the sound in his/her description).
When I was reviewing for a brief while, years ago, it was my mission to attempt this: to describe "what it sounds like to be sitting in front of these speakers" with enough specificity such that someone reading could get an idea of whether it would likely appeal to him or not. (From reader feedback, it seemed I had some success, and I'm sure many reviewers get this as well).
So, yes it's obvious there is a heavy amount of subjectivity in this hobby. But I don't think it is entirely insurmountable subjectivity, depending on what one wants to accomplish or establish through careful testing.
So, yes it's obvious there is a heavy amount of subjectivity in this hobby. But I don't think it is entirely insurmountable subjectivity
This ambiguity surrounding what is subjective/objective and how people react to it makes this hobby great for people watching. There's no getting around the possibility that you are imagining something or that you'll find out that you were wrong about something. For those of us that are just hobbyists this isn't usually such a big problem. I think for those in the industry whose livelihood depends on it, it can be a big stressor.
You've got those who try to take advantage of it by selling snake oil. What we've got here I think is someone who is very personally invested and who just can't handle the ambiguity so he pretends it isn't there.
Analytic-- looking for defects, tone balance, image, special effects, distortions, ... a very long list. This is the style of listening used by studio engineers, stereo store proprietors, reviewers, editors, designers, and most home enthusiasts to ’make better sound’. A left-brain process, with no doubt.
Subjective-- for enjoyment, for where the music takes you, what it makes you feel, think. Which is important for all of us listed above to be able to do.
After spending much time listening analytically, it can be difficult to switch that off, to kick back and enjoy whatever the music brings us, where it takes us. For listeners most impaired, the British remark, "They have ears of cloth."
I wrote my (and others) observation that a musical system makes its mark on a right-brained listener when playing any good music. From the top artists, we have:
Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is. Miles Davis
Beethoven tells you what it’s like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it’s like to be human. Bach tells you what it’s like to be the universe. Douglas Adams
There’s music in the sighing of a reed; there’s music in the gushing of a rill; there’s music in all things, if men had ears. Their earth is but an echo of the spheres. Lord Byron
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. Gustav Mahler
Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. Henry David Thoreau
Music does bring people together. It allows us to experience the same emotions. People everywhere are the same in heart and spirit. No matter what language we speak, what color we are, the form of our politics or the expression of our love and our faith, music proves: We are the same. John Denver
Music - The one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend. Ludwig van Beethoven
Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife. Kahil Gabran
Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul. Plato
You are completely right. We are users of crazy machinery expected to generate any music on command over there, where we live. We don't want to hear any noise, nor any distortion or test tones. We want the sounds coming out to be musical sounds.
Those artists' views can be guides on what we should expect, to conceptualize where internally music might take us. When the system can do it and when the listener can actually hear that. Two different subjects. Above, I proposed paths through these two difficult subjects.
LOL I play in an 11 piece band. i also have live sound and recording experience. I know exactly what your saying. As far as listening i tend to lean towards Dialing in the overall sound. It varies with the type of Music and recording Era and process. I like to dial my System into what i am listening to. My favorite is the sound i grew up with. Late 60s early 70s Rock. All Hi Fi is The reproduction of Music so it varies with music style, your individual taste and the flexibility of your System. John www.thebstreetbombers.com
Let's just go into everyone's brain to see how much their pleasure centers light up on each system and each tracked played. That's the truth if folks want to label things. It's even scientific to make those folks happy (daughter is a physic's major and I am more of a show me guy).
First a couple of admissions: 1: I have the smallest audiophile phallus in this conversation 2: I am a fanboy of Dave Audiodoctor. He has a wonderful small shop with an incredible inventory and lots of patience and spent hours moving equipment in and out for me and my wife.
Having gotten that off my chest, now my comments.
I once read an article by someone who went out with a coffee reviewer. These are the people who test coffees. They do it black, no sugar slurping sips and rolling them around in their mouths before spitting them out. The writer was amazed that the reviewer had his coffee with sugar and cream. When asked about it, the reviewer said that he was drinking the coffee for enjoyment at that moment, and not to review.
In my mind, it is about enjoying listening to the music. Whatever floats your boat is right FOR YOU. My new amplifier, Primaluna Dialogue HP with KT150 tubes has a remote that can change from triode to ultralinear. There are recordings that IN MY MIND sound better in one mode than the other, and the next recording might be the opposite. This will depend on the type of music, the way it was recorded and my mood.
I had visited a number of shops and listened to a number of very nice speakers. When I went to Dave's shop I again listened to a number of speakers at different price points, sizes and construction. For me, the speakers I chose were a pair of Vivid Oval 1.5s. I felt like I was glued or velcroed to my seat. I just didn't want to get up. I went back to the shop and had the same experience and bought the speakers. Several months later and an upgrade to my amplifier, I have the same experience every time I listen.
There were other speakers that Dave clearly preferred. He explained his reasoning clearly, but he respected my reaction to these speakers. Again I have no second thoughts. If I looked at impedance, frequency response, off axis response, etc, it would not matter one iota, I like the sound, and I want to listen.
We have all heard systems that for no clear reason from which we wanted to walk away. The last thing any of us want to have is "listener fatigue."
Aside from a classical concert hall, all of the music to which we listen is amplified and manipulated.
The one thing I think we on which I think we can all agree is that compression and loss of dynamic range is not consistent with "live" music even when amplified and needs to be avoided.
When I met my wife, my therapist said that she "resonated" with me.
I think that my system also has to resonate with me..
It is certainly wonderful to feel happy and satisfied from a listening session. It’s understandable to expect higher levels, greater versions of those events.
Now, we experience ’things’ whenever we can name them. Perhaps here we seek the experience itself. This would make ’being happy’ a thing experienced. What then is ’the experience’?
Every artist says, "It’s something beyond words, but here are some ideas." I get some of ’that experience’ hearing artists up close and live, and when playing music myself. I am never thinking ’I’m happy’ until it’s over.
This would mean always A: Seek deeper experiences, not greater satisfaction. B: Expect to simply recognize an experience when ’it’ happens. C: ’It’ can happen with one change in a system, unexpectedly, D: and most ’deeply’ while playing the best artists, who commune with the deepest places.
It has helped to remember I’ve no idea what the best artists wish me to experience. Poor gear reduces the artistry and mastery of the best artists, blocking deeper connection. Someone right next to me may not be wired to make the connection. Perhaps he or she is not really into the arts, beyond "I like that." I am glad they are happy! The world is a better place right then and there anyway!
Does not the above seem right to keep in mind while striving to make systems better? Granted, it’s deep and hard to discuss, but that’s music! Or any art.
Does this fit with anything you’ve been thinking about?
A good sound system's job is to accurately reproduce the recording which in itself is a snapshot in time.
You have absolutetly no idea what the original recording sounded like you can only imagine what it would sound like if you were there.
As to deeper meaning there isn't any. If the reproduced sound moves you then it has deeper meaning for you.
One personas nirvanaha is another persons hell.
Everyone responds to stimuli differently, if you are in a good mood that system could sound wonderful if you are in a poor one you may not respond favorably. Art and beauty and meaning are all open to interpretation.
I'm usually with you on your posts, however this one has me searching for meaning... : )
As to deeper meaning there isn't any.
Is this nihilism?
You have absolutetly no idea what the original recording sounded like
I imagine some do. I of course do not know if @royj was present at the recording session, but the sentence comes across as personal. Did you mean "WE" as in most of us?
Yes if Royj was at the session then he can use that session as a barometer.
The reality is we have no idea of what a John Coltrane performance was actually sounding like unless we were there.
Many mastering engineers can alter tonal balance, add echo and reverb and change the actual taped performance to make a recording sound good as a finished product.
Not all recording and mastering engineers belive in a more hands off approach.
Again if that particular performance moved Royj great for Royj that doesn't mean another listener will find that same sound to be as good.
We set up a Naim system with ATC SCM 40 on a Naim NAC 272, 250dr, XPS system with Isotek power conditioning, all high performance cabling, and the sound was very realistic, with an excellent sense of image width depth, clarity and dynamics. The top end was very clear.
We played Beatles a Hard Days Night and it sounded like a great 60's recording, with a tad bit of brittleness on top, went to Black Sabath and it was spooky. Played some more modern recordings and the sound was more refined.
The point is the Beatles recording sounded like a recording from its time, the slight hardness was in the recording. and the system accurately conveyed that, if you don't like reality a system such as this one might not be to your tastes, YMMV
"We set up a Naim system with ATC SCM 40 on a Naim NAC 272, 250dr, XPS system with Isotek power conditioning, all high performance cabling, and the sound was very realistic, with an excellent sense of image width depth, clarity and dynamics. The top end was very clear.
We played Beatles a Hard Days Night and it sounded like a great 60's recording, with a tad bit of brittleness on top, went to Black Sabath and it was spooky. Played some more modern recordings and the sound was more refined.
The point is the Beatles recording sounded like a recording from its time, the slight hardness was in the recording. and the system accurately conveyed that, if you don't like reality a system such as this one might not be to your tastes, YMMV"
Using your words, how can you know since you weren't at the recording.
Hearing is personal, so as you say "One personas nirvanaha is another persons hell." Based on that, maybe you should not be so absolute and just say to YOUR EARS.......this is how something sounded. Maybe not even write down what gear you used that you sell. it's just a thought Dave, that's all. Nothing more than that.
Bottom line is that the question may make folks think, but in teh end, it's irrelevant as we like what we like and don't like what we don't like. It's personal and maybe factors change constantly.
I used to spend a ton of time recording in a studio. I know what my interpretation was, but that also differed from others. etc... A good friend of mine owns a store in Houston and he spent many of his years recording for some of the greats in the industry. He has plenty of reels of 'live recordings' that he can call on. It still comes down to what moves us and who doesn't.
@audiotroy "One personas nirvanaha is another persons hell."
Correction: One personas (sic) nirvahahaha is another person (’) s hell."
Sounds as if you are referring to audiophile ceilings and floors, but I could be wrong. Maybe it’s an "either or" kind of situation, depending on the number of personas. Lots of variables, though. Personally, I know I’m on to something if my toes are tapping, which is, of course, one of the most important principles of Dahn Yoga.
Interesting discussion. Two things that have been somewhat alluded to but, I think, haven't gotten enough emphasis:
1) State of mind/body. The degree to which music through an audio system speaks to you, pleasantly or unpleasantly, is largely dependent on your mental/physical state at that time. If you're unduly stressed or otherwise mentally preoccupied (consciously or subconsciously), the music and its message will not fully penetrate. If you are ill and/or suffering a serious malady, same thing. This is the "car radio" phenomenon we always hear about. Or, in my case, the sonos effect. I have experienced as many musically magic moments from my $150 remote sonos speaker as I have from my mega buck system. Why? In those moments I was primed and ready to fully absorb and enjoy the music physically and mentally. Critical faculties were switched off and there was a clear channel for the music to pass through. The quality of the system was secondary.
2) Confirming biases. This is a well known phenomenon, we're all susceptible to it. Say, as an audiophile, you did all the work to build your system. You read all the reviews, went to dealers and audio shows to hear a variety of gear, then, you landed.....somewhere. Doesn't matter where, could be a planar/electrostatic based system, high efficiency horns and low powered tube amps, big, dynamic floor-standers, mini-monitors, etc. This, no doubt, was the the right answer for you. The music spoke most loudly to you via that approach. The problem is, you must be right, after all, you invested all that time and money and you're a smart, well intended person. You, naturally, look for confirmation that you were right when you hear your, and other, systems. It's normal. This is why I trust non audiophile or "non-educated" ears more than audiophiles. IMO, audiophiles are mostly hopeless in this regard. Despite their best efforts, audiophiles (and reviewers) with those "educated" ears cannot turn off their analytical filter and fully suppress their biases, they have way too much invested. In my case, if I can get my wife (non educated ear) to sit still and pay attention for an entire record side or CD and say, "wow, that was great," my system is doing a lot right. This is worth more to me than my audiophile buddy prattling on about the size of the sound stage or the slight mid-bass hump that smeared a transient.
This doesn't mean we should give up pursing gear that truly enhances our personal enjoyment of music. But we should do it fully aware of our own biases and with the grace to realize that what's meaningful to us is not universal.
Let’s say like this, type A is a Blond girl and type B is Brunette.
What about other girls ??? Black, Hispanic, Asian, Indian etc. etc. :)
If you ask me, I would like to have them all :)
I love Music and I love a good sound, but A without B it’s not complete for me.
I have to have Detail, clarity, soundstage, Transparency, High resolution...........and to have all of this without "Musicality" it’s "mission unaccomplished" IMHO.
Thank you joc3021-- good points above with which I agree! Your first one was about someone being in the mood, etc. The second was walking into the confirming-biases trap.
To get out of that trap, the following has helped me:
Whenever a change is made in the system or gear, I listen always for increased nuance in HOW each and any note is being expressed, being phrased, being sung. No matter the music, no matter the recording's quality, and relying on many recordings I've come to know really well, of one-in-a-million artist(s), often recorded live.
Then I ask if someone right there could hear 'that' when I pointed 'it' out? Not a judgment call.
As I was not at the original event, my reasoning is based on the following:
A one-in-a-million artist has included many nuances I have yet to hear.
Artists know most of us can hear these nuances, because when they are practicing, the results are visible in all the nearby faces listening up close and personal- just as recording mics will be placed.
Artists put in these nuances because whenever we do hear 'them', that helps us 'feel' whatever the artists are bringing forth.
So I think improving a system must include getting it to resolve more nuance, no matter the music or recording. It will be a more 'musical' system. 'Things', expressions, flow along better, which is a time-domain issue, not a tonal-domain issue for designers.
You wish these nuances to be obvious, to get your attention quickly, because this leads to feeling better soon, even when you're in a dour mood.
Thank you for following along. See any flaws in this logic? Let me know your thoughts.
+1 royj. With new Benchmark DAC3 + AHB2 combo, in the background I hear instruments that used to be just "sounds". Imaging is wonderful and dynamics/slam is beyond believe. People assume that highly resolving gear is less dynamic - completely false.
What’s up with this one side or another camp? This is not an accurate representation of how life is. We know there are two definitive sides filled with the majority of opinions smack dab in the middle and I am not referring to just politics. There is absolutely nothing preventing you from assembling a system to have both attributes? I am positive that my gear does both. Tube preamp and solid state amps. There are shades of grey in between black and white.
You forgot the camp who's tailored their systems to where they only sound acceptable with very select music genres ,female vocals are a good example ,I don't belong to any camp but I do have priorities when building a system .
#1 Dynamics are the most important to me . #2 Detail aka imaging are next . #3 Listenabikity with all genres without listener fatigue .
#3 is most likely why I spent 15 years with an all Mcintosh system because every component is forgiving ,if I can't enjoy my systems every second I'm listening then I'm not happy ,something is off and it's usually the speaker ,for me line arrays are the only way to go .
The attempt to install the 'original recording' as the objective standard for judging a system is doomed to failure from the start because It begins with the false premise that there is one, unique objective sound associated with the recording - which of course is entirely dependent on who is listening to it, what equipment is being used, the room it is being listened in, etc.
My own opinion is that of Justice Potter, who famously opined on the subject of obscenity: "I know it when I see it." I can't define the sound of a good home stereo system but - I know it when I hear it....
I'll revise my response…there's everybody else and me. Here's a weird thing…in the 70s I was vacationing in L.A. and got to hang out a little bit one afternoon in a studio where Glynn Johns was mixing something...I didn't stay long because the playback monitor level was so loud it was driving me nuts…I mean REALLY LOUD…and this was when I was a full time loud-ish musician and if it was loud for me, well you get it. I felt that I didn't want to seem uncool by making earplugs out of something...lame I know. A mystery to this day (Was he deaf? Insane? English?).
great story Wolf. I love that. I have spent a lot of time in studio years ago. I never played so loudly that it hurt our ears, lol. I would hate to hear how the final tape sounded, lol....wow.
"The attempt to install the 'original recording' as the objective standard for judging a system is doomed to failure from the start because It begins with the false premise that there is one, unique objective sound associated with the recording - which of course is entirely dependent on who is listening to it, what equipment is being used, the room it is being listened in, etc."
100% correct. More than that, it's not nearly so reliable as everyone seems to think even as a method for evaluating the inherent level of (lack of) quality of the recording itself. It's quite hard to resist concluding a given recording's lack of quality level from having lived with it for some time, despite the occurrence of any system changes at all. Too many times a listener will hear the same or similar levels of 'defect' in a recording as the system progresses and can't help but conclude that it's the recording itself that is to blame. I've been there and done that myself. But after major system breakthroughs, I've since discovered that my percentage of "bad" recordings went from at least 35% down to about 1%...and I suspect that were I to manage even more breakthroughs, that number might shrink further still.
When it comes to judging the lack of sound quality in a recording, there simply is No reliable method, period. It's a complete myth. Just think of all the ultra-mega-buck systems here at Agon. Would anybody be carried away on spending all that on their system if most recordings were even half as bad as everyone says they are??
The above statement was prepared by: https:pleasesendyourbadrecordingstoivan_nosibor.com
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