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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
mg16's avatar
mg16
113 posts
 

Perhaps we are not supposed to take it literally. The musical presentation sounds so good, that over exuberance sets in, in describing the experience. Where in reality, it would be shut off in a more reasonable time frame. Not hours upon hours.

mg16 

ishkabibil
422 posts
 

He just means his system is non fatiguing as live recordings especially on a system that rips your head off after 45 seconds and puts you in flight mode...etc. 

We've heard it before.....

 

Your being way over the top trying to analyze this one.

jhills
610 posts
 

@stuartk

Thanks for the interesting post.

Having attended many live concerts and performances, of about every venue and genre, over the years - I can concur that listening at those SPLs for the amount of time I spend listening to music at home, would be a bit fatiguing, not to mention ear numbing.

I think that Erik says it well. We can achieve the same level of emotion and enjoyment at lower volumes but it does take a bit of compensating (as per the Fletcher Munson curve) and some attention to the room.

Like audioguy85, while I did enjoy, I found most live (especially rock) performances to be loud and of poor acoustics. Aside from the excitement and engagement of the audience, the performances I most enjoyed, on a musical level, was the small venue, acoustic performances. For the most part, I now prefer to listen to the music I love at home, at levels that don't numb my ears......Jim

 

pmiller115's avatar
pmiller115
95 posts
 

"What is it that I’m failing to grasp, here? " I don’t think you are failing to grasp anything. As a corollary to your point, no one can say that live music is always perfectly presented. Many of the same problems with acoustics, etc. exist in a live performance and no one even mentions the sound engineers that are typically present on live performances. In my experience there are several sound engineers that have accompanied top flight live performances that I have attended that had tin ears or no ears at all. We eventually will reach a saturation point with anything and emulating our personal playback systems to sound like a live performance misses the point anyway, I think -i.e. live performances are simply not always great and if you reach that point with your home system so it sounds like a live performance, sometimes it’s not going to sound good. Yes, certain, but not all, recordings are going to sound good but that is likely true on almost any system. If you consistently enjoy listening to your system, that, I think is the finish line at least until some new system improvement takes hold of you that you simply can no longer live without.

 

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