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What is it I'm failing to grasp?

I come across statements here and elsewhere by guys who say 1) their systems come very close to duplicating the experience of hearing live music and 2) that they can listen for hours and hours due to the "effortless" presentation.  

I don't understand how these two claims add up. In tandem, they are profoundly inconsistent with my experiences of listening to live music. 

If I think about concerts I consider the best I've witnessed (Oregon, Solas, Richard Thompson, SRV, Dave Holland Quintet, '77 G. Dead, David Murray, Paul Winter Consort), I would not have wanted any of those performances to have extended much beyond their actual duration.

It's like eating-- no matter how wonderfully prepared the food, I can only eat so much-- a point of satiation is reached and I find this to be true (for me) when it comes to music listening as well. Ditto for sex, looking at visual art, reading poetry or playing guitar. All of these activities require energy and while they may feel "effortless" in the moment, I eventually reach a point where I must withdraw from aesthetic simulation.

Furthermore, the live music I've heard is not always "smoothly" undemanding. I love Winifred Horan's classically influenced Celtic fiddling but the tone she gets is not uniformly sweet; the melodies do not always resemble lullabies. The violin can sound quite strident at times. Oregon can be very melodious but also,(at least in their younger days) quite chaotic and atonal. These are examples on the mellower side of my listening spectrum and I can't listen to them for more than a couple hours, either live or at home. 

Bottom line: I don't find listening to live music "effortless" so I don't understand how a system that renders this activity "effortless" can also be said to be accurate.   

What is it that I'm failing to grasp, here?  


 

stuartk

Showing 3 responses by mapman

mapman's avatar
mapman
21,887 posts
 

YES!!! So why do some audiophiles speak of "live music" as if it’s some sort of reliable constant? !

Well you can’t listen to everything that comes out of some people’s mouths . Even audiophiles. 😉

However live music serves as a frame of reference. You can’t aim for the target until you know where it is. One may never hit the target exactly dead center perfect but you can get pretty close most of the the time if you really know what you are doing and you have a decent recording to start with.

 

 

mapman's avatar
mapman
21,887 posts
 

@stuartk

 

I guess the other key thing is live/real music runs the gamut as well in terms of how it sounds. REcordings are reproductions of what occurs live, often in a studio, and the engineers decide what goes into the recording and how it sounds. May or may not resemble live.

So you see there is practically infinite variety in how things sound. All I ask of my hifi is to reproduce it as accurately as possible FBOFW and I will handle the rest. I am a music lover first and have no preconceptions that everything should sound a certain way because that is what I like best. YMMV as always of course.

Digital streaming of course adds another place where someone can decide how something should sound before you actually hear it. Pretty much anything is possible in the digital domain. It’s very exciting and interesting to see what different vendors and products are offering in terms of features in their streaming systems that the user has control over...or not. Not for the faint hearted old school classic 20th century audiophile necessary though.

 

 

Cheers!

mapman's avatar
mapman
21,887 posts
 

You do understand that not everyone necessarily thinks like you do right?   That's the only thing that I can see you might be missing.

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