When I listen to my system.......


As I have stated many times, I listen to the musicianship and the composition. As I listen to SRV, just as an example, there are three musicians working together to create a "performance". How is it that anyone can put tone, sound staging, or anything else with the "sound" before the performance. There is much information on our recordings, and generally, many of these recordings are just so so with the fidelity. In fact, why do many listeners only listen to top notch recordings of higher fidelity, of the "sound", rather than appreciate those qualities I look and listen for. Is it because I was a singer / vocalist in my youth? Is it because I was around musicians who shared the joy of "music"? Is it because at a very early age, I was introduced to big band music and eclectic performances by so many, via my dad (he would have been 100 today; happy birthday dad). Yes, I consider myself an audiophile, because I spend money on gear and am careful with my dedicated room....my system allows me to hear more of the performance. But, it is the "music", the "performance", that matters most to me. I suppose I am feeling a bit nostalgic today, because of my pops. I am bringing this up again, because I do not understand the mentality of folks who listen differently than I. I know this subject might be ad nauseum to many, but some of the folks I used to design systems for, became less interested in the music, and more about the sound, placing the music and performance secondary, or not at all. I am just venting. If you would like to add to this post, I welcome all thoughts. No judgement from me. I wish everyone well. Enjoy! MrD.

mrdecibel

Showing 3 responses by stuartk

@mrdecibel

I’ve always regarded myself first and foremost as a music lover but if I didn’t care about sonics I wouldn’t be typing this!

Stiil, I want to be carried away by the emotional/physical/aesthetic aspects when listening. Carried away from what? From thinking!  I don’t want to be in left brain mode, analyzing resolution or sound-staging or whatever. That’s simply not why I listen, or look at art, or read poetry, for that matter. But I recognize this is just one approach.

 

 

@larsman

YMMV but I’ve experienced a big (!) difference in the foot tapping factor when changing integrateds. My current Hegel H390 really moves the music along. Its predecessors by contrast were downright sluggish by comparison. And it is not dependent upon the music being played. BTW, I didn’t know what I’d been missing in this regard until I experienced it for myself.

As soon as we turn on our equipment, we are NOT listening to music - we are listening to reproductions of music on our equipment.

This is a FULL STOP moment. None of us are listening to music on our systems, which truly invalidates the performance vs. sound conundrum that is discussed above!

This strikes me as absurd. Even if we were all in the original venue or recording studio, what we would hear would differ for each of us due to differences in our hearing!

Mozart, Ellington or Hendrix heard on a transistor radio is still Mozart, Ellington or Hendrix...

At least to those of us who play, music is not defined by sonics.

Following your line of reasoning, every one who enjoys visual art should stop kidding themselves that what they see and enjoy at home in the form of photographic reproductions of paintings is not art.