contradictory communication

MrTennis, thanks for letting us know who you are. I went to audiophilia.com and read your "Accuracy and Musicality" article to get a better feel for where you're coming from.

I dropped syllogistic logic class nearly 30 years ago (seemed like the logical thing to do at the time), so can't say that I followed it all.

Being somewhat simple-minded (though hopefully not overly narrow-minded), I don't go through nearly as thorough an analysis as you do. My philosophy skills are probably at about an eighth grade level.

I start with the premise that at the present level of technology it's either impossible or impractical to recreate at the listener's ears the exact waveforms that would have been experienced at a live performance (or in the case of heavily processed recordings, at the "virtual performance" the artists intended).

My next premise is that not all departures from absolute waveform fidelity are equally objectionable to the ears. Certain measurably small deviations are are quite objectionable, and certain seemingly large ones aren't.

So my goal would be to recreate (as closely as is practical) the same perception as the listener would have experienced at a live performance (or at the "virtual performance" the artists intended). This calls for an exploration of psychoacoustics as well as acoustics when design trade-offs are made.

An example of mis-directed perfectionist zeal would be the pursuit of vanishingly low levels of total harmonic distortion via the liberal application of negative feedback, which in effect replaces large percentages of low-order harmonic distortion with small percentages of high-order harmonic distortion. This looks good on paper, but psychoacoustically is a step in the wrong direction because the ear finds even very small levels of high order distortion fatiguing.

So to sum up, I'm in favor of focusing on recreating the perception of a live performance rather than on recreating the exact waveforms experienced at the ears of the listener at a live performance.

Duke

The term you folks are reaching for here is "analogy" using warm to describe sound is an analogy; using warm to describe relative temperature is not. To be precise in meaning, the reviewer should state what he or she means when they use that sort of analogy, but that may be asking too much.

And Goatwuss: "Take 2 speaker drivers, one made out of aluminum, the other paper, and the third plastic composite." WTF????

Just busting you, Goatboy! Its been a $hitty week.

hi duke, i agree with you, namely that i would like my stereo to recreate as closely as possible the sound of an instrument, meaning its timbre.

it's not easy to do this and, unless one has a collection of well recorder lps and cds, one has to use ones creativity to achieve some semblance of realism.
by the way, you might want to look at some of my other feature articles. hopefully, you will find one of them useful.

hi duke, i agree with you, namely that i would like my stereo to recreate as closely as possible the sound of an instrument, meaning its timbre.

it's not easy to do this and, unless one has a collection of well recorder lps and cds, one has to use ones creativity to achieve some semblance of realism.
by the way, you might want to look at some of my other feature articles. hopefully, you will find one of them useful.

Mrtennis sez:

i would like my stereo to recreate as closely as possible the sound of an instrument, meaning its timbre

Rather than focus on how "music sounds" (i.e. sonic attributes) I would suggest instead, to focus on reproducing the intent/signature of the musicians playing together. The music in this case makes sense. Whether or not the bass is jaw-dropping or the hi-frequency extension is mesmerising, taken individually, is immaterial. What is material is how the cello correlates say with the violin and so on -- AND if the interpretation comes through. Especially with complex music (take a concerto for example).

Duke sez:

I'm in favor of focusing on recreating the perception of a live performance rather than on recreating the exact waveforms experienced at the ears of the listener at a live performance

If you mean that the musical result is "alive", comprehensible, consistent -- i couldn't agree more. I like the second part of your sentence:)
CHeers