Different styles of music and recordings, some of which we don’t want to listen to for 24 hours. Put on AC/DC Live and you’ll enjoy the album and be satisfied when it’s finished. My system gave me all the energy and volume I could have wanted at the time but it won’t have been what it truly sounded like there. However you play some delicate vocal with a couple of accompanying instruments and you might find it sounds very lifelike and isn’t fatiguing. I guess systems can do both depending on the music genre and recording. For my main type of music tastes I can listen to my system for hours on end without feeling fatigued or having a headache, but I couldn’t put AC/DC on repeat at the kind of volumes that music requires to come alive. So for me I think a system can do both, it just depends what you’re listening to at the time. Having said all this, I don’t believe any system will truly be like you’re there, I just think it sounds as close to that to people who have the experience.
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?
Showing 3 responses by pabs85
@baylinor that work looks incredible, that’s a seriously dedicated room which I bet sounds amazing. |
@rifraf4u you’ve got the wrong site, this isn’t the place to be soliciting. |