We all wish for something better...Relax ,have a refreshing drink and enjoy the music.....my system sounds great to me .Learn to relax and enjoy the system you have, I'm sure it's fantastic....
Real or Surreal. Do you throw accuracy out the window for "better" sound?
I visited a friend recently who has an estimated $150,000 system. At first listen it sounded wonderful, airy, hyper detailed, with an excellent well delineated image, an audiophile's dream. Then we put on a jazz quartet album I am extremely familiar with, an excellent recording from the analog days. There was something wrong. On closing my eyes it stood out immediately. The cymbals were way out in front of everything. The drummer would have needed at least 10 foot arms to get to them. I had him put on a female vocalist I know and sure enough there was sibilance with her voice, same with violins. These are all signs that the systems frequency response is sloped upwards as the frequency rises resulting in more air and detail. This is a system that sounds right at low volumes except my friend listens with gusto. This is like someone who watches TV with the color controls all the way up.
I have always tried to recreate the live performance. Admittedly, this might not result in the most attractive sound. Most systems are seriously compromised in terms of bass power and output. Maybe this is a way of compensating.
There is no right or wrong. This is purely a matter of preference accuracy be damn. What would you rather, real or surreal?
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@hilde45 wrote:
Do the variations coming from your specific experience and seated position fundamentally change the sound from a cello or other, even compared to that perceived by another individual sharing the same event, and the variations at play here? I know, no way to check on the latter part of the question posed, but it doesn’t matter - to me that applies more to intersubjectivity than subjectivity per se; while you wouldn’t have the very same sonic experience as the other person sitting at a distance from you (or yourself in another position), you’d nonetheless - both of you - take part in the same event and share its overall characteristics.
From my chair, in the context of audio reproduction, it’s a fallacy thinking something not achieved as an exact replica of an original event can’t represent, in variations or approximations of realness in a progressive manner, said event as an objective "something." Too many seem to believe that what can’t be emulated in every aspect in audio reproduction is in essence a venture suffused in subjectivity. I disagree. Let’s not confuse the philosophical distinction of "das ding an sich/für uns" (thing-in-itself/to-us) as anything applicable to audio; both the original event and final reproduction is an experience "für uns" anyway, so I’d leave whatever is "an sich" to mere speculation about the world’s supposed murky-mysterious, inherent true state. |
So, Is it that your father's images were unrealistically dark or is it that the indoor lighting did not create that perception? You said initially that your father's images appeared natural. And now you say they are unrealistic. So are naturalness and realism two different things? Kind of like musical and analytical gear? I personally think they are the same thing but if they are different I'll go with natural. A lot of photos are not taken in daylight so there's that. Images taken on cloudy days tend to be less saturated than images shot in daylight. Many photographers will do their best to avoid daylight photography. One thing I have noticed is that some folks painting outside considerably oversaturate and enhance their work. There is clearly a huge market for unrealistic takes on reality. Folks who represent reality less vividly are rare. So I would probably appreciate your father's images. Even if he goes the other way somewhat. Better to want more than to overdose. |
A sound can seem realistic even if it's not accurately being reproduced. It might have been intended to sound like it's being heard in a different listening context than it's coming across, but it's coming across in a way that sounds very realistic in a false context. For instance, the soundstage is the wrong size and the sense of acoustic space and ambience is wrong, but still plausibly realistic if you don't know that what you're perceiving isn't what was intended or what was originally recorded. |
We spoke about an acoustic experience here....I will repeat in my answer to you one of my post above:
«sound is a pressure wave which is
created by a vibrating object» Is this definition truthful to the phenomenon? Not at all.... It is not even wrong ...
It is true if we define sound as a purely material physical phenomenon...But sound is not a purely material physical phenomenon but a qualified phenomenon for a specific consciousness...
In daily life , natural perceived sounds and speech and music are not only physical pressure waves uninterpreted by the ears/brain they are interpreted by a hearing consciousness to be perceived as meaningful in a concrete time domain where the qualitative experienced acoustic factors are always related in a non linear way; in the opposite a physical pressure wave is defined in an abstract parameters space where these abstract factors as frequencies, phase and amplitude are linearly related in a MAP describing often IN AN UNCOMPLETED WAY the conscious/subconscious perceived TERRITORY.... There exist many competing theories of hearing and different mapping theory for the same territory...
The fact that a fruit tapped by a finger indicating his ripeness or his lack of ripeness constitute an interpreted sound qualities whose meaning is not sensible ....
In the same way a flute is a material object with holes of some size in such distribution to make it able to produce qualified sound , with some tonal timbre qualities; these sounds exist for a consciousness as meaningful conveyor of an information that transcend physical time because the tonal scale develop a musical time domain of his own called a rythmed melody , which is not reducible to the abstract factors linearly related in the Fourier map...The same goes for speech "musical time" in speech recognition studies ....
The human ears/brain is trained to live in this concrete non commutative time domain ( the speech and the musical domain ) because it is a non linearly qualified domain; it is why the ears/brain if trained well can beat the Fourier uncertainty principle thirteen times...
This is the reason why audiophiles must study music and acoustic and not only listening their gear if they want to understand sound...And they must forget about marketing and price tag focussing on acoustics and music learning...
Accuracy in a Fourier abstract map does not always linearly translate automatically as accuracy in the concrete perceived territory...
Real in a Fourier abstract map may become surreal in the perceived concrete territory....
Time domain in the map NEVER coincide perfectly with time domain in the territory ...
Acoustics science without perceiving ears/brain will not exist is it necessary to mention this common place fact ? ....😁
The mere physical waves would not be qualified for an absent consciousness, hence without conscious/subconscious ears there could not be a "sound" as a quality and a meaningful " symbolic forms" living in his own transcendant time and space ...
Now sound studies being not only material physics subject but as recognized sound also psycho-acoustic studies; we can safely say that sound experience as experience is NOT OBJECTIVE NOR SUBJECTIVE , but this experience integrated these two aspects to make it possible experience...
Now no one listening music in a live event will hear the same exact TIMBRE experience , by the acoustic difference in time and timing of the waves and the specific location ... Even the violonist will hear his tonal playing timbre in a specific location no more truthfull or erroneous, no more objective nor subjective than any other position ...
But you are right, there is some truth about the sound timbre of a cello describeable in acoustic parameters... But a specific experience of a tonal playing timbre of the cello will be differentiated in as much perspective as the multiplicities of ears/brains locations... And we speak here about a live event... With a recording playback, the trade off set of choices of the recording engineers will be translated differently as much that there is different ears/brains with different systems in different room ... Which cello timbre experience is the objective truth among all this ? NONE... But for sure there exist some objective acoustic common parameters between the live event, the recording one, and his translation in your room ...But the timbre experience is different in all these for all listeners...
Then if you understand what i said above , we must distinguish the acoustic objective SPECIFIC perspective in location of any listener in the original live event and his subjective interpretation and the OBJECTIVE trade off choices of the recording engineer which will be transformed in an OBJECT ( music album ) and our own specific location and acoustic situation in our listening room ... Then there is no absolutely objective truthfulness in audio reproduction as you claimed , there is only a correlated set of links in a CHAIN of trade-off choices INTERPRETATION ...
But thanks to mathemathical acoustics laws we can translate a recording, more or less acoustically truthfully for sure, for a specific room specific system and specific ears.. ...Dr Choueiri even discovered a way to gave us an information lost with this crosstalk obstruction of stereo speakers and then translate for our ears/brain more accurately this lost recording of spatial information by the stereo crosstalk... Then there is an absolute objective "reality" or an objective symbolic form : mathematics is...
And to conclude with a philosophical remark, what is missing in Kant because of a residual Cartesianism and a residual nominalism so to speak, what is missing which is already in Charles Sanders Peirce vision is the necessary participation of consciousness in the definition of any reality which cannot exist in itself anyway and is always to use the concept of one of the greatest interpreter of Kant , a "symbolic form" said Cassirer ... Consciousness is ONE...
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