How close to the real thing?


Recently a friend of mine heard a Chopin concert in a Baptist church. I had told him that I had gone out to RMAF this year and heard some of the latest gear. His comment was that he thinks the best audio systems are only about 5% close to the real thing, especially the sound of a piano, though he admitted he hasn't heard the best of the latest equipment.

That got me thinking as I have been going to the BSO a lot this fall and comparing the sound of my system to live orchestral music. It's hard to put a hard percentage on this kind of thing, but I think the best systems capture a lot more than just 5% of the sound of live music.

What do you think? Are we making progress and how close are we?
peterayer
"My conclusion is that it is just one of many design and execution factors that affect results depending on how well it is executed."

That seems sensible to me. It's hard to believe that anyone would employ negative feedback in their design if there wasn't, at least in the designer's mind, some net benefit to doing so. Maybe not directly, but perhaps because it allows the employment of something else in the design that more than compensates.
Better yet , how many KT88's would one need for 500 watts necessary for the real thing ?

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How close are we to the real thing?

Since I listen exclusively to classical, I find this subject fascinating.

The truth is: we are very far. Why? - Because audio and acoustics are still treated as an art, not a science. I think that audio is now in the same stages as medicine was in the Middle Ages: we know the basics (anatomy), but the remedies are still experimental. A trepanation is made to extract madness; blood letting is supposed to be the cure for many illnesses. Our amps, cables or speakers are tweaked in the same empirical way.

Sound engineers and other people along the music production line DO NOT scientifically aim at achieving an exact reproduction of the acoustic sound; instead, they mainly make sure that the recording sounds nice, and they all use different microphones, monitors, consoles, room sizes, etc.

On the listener's end, we all use different amps, speakers, and our rooms all have different acoustics.

If there was a real willingness to achieve the sound of the real thing, the whole process would have strict standards: microphones, amplifiers, consoles, cables, loudspeakers, rooms, etc. would have ideal specifications. Listeners who can afford would be able to reproduce these specifications at home - if necessary going as far as building a room to the exact specifications.

The Middle Ages ended 600 years ago. Let's hope we won't have to wait that long for audio to be close to the real thing. All what it takes, is one producer setting up a recording standard that can be replicated at home.
Hi Kirkus, that one is easy! Its the same issue of when you hear a really good digital recording, one that is really convincing. What would it sound like it had been done analog?

The whole experience here comes down to one of expectation and intent. If you *know* that the system is underpar (maybe its only a table radio) *then* you don't have much expectation of it. But if its a real high end system- it had better bring home the bacon, because it has some high expectation attached.

I heard a system across the hall from me at THE Show about 10 years ago, maybe a little more. It was Joni Mitchell, singing with a full orchestra. It had been recorded by Sony, digitally, in 6 channels. The system was entirely solid state. The format was a digital reel to reel, 1/2" wide. I really did not hear the system, it was only the experience of the music.

So what would it have been like if it was 2" analog with my amps on each speaker? Hey, maybe it would have been better. We'll never know. I can say this though- if that system/recording does the job for you, if somehow it manages to sound *real* than that is worth paying attention to.

I have never said that feedback should be eschewed- all I have done is point out what it does. Now if you are reading between the lines, you will also see that I have also been pointing to how things can be dealt with. I'll give you a couple of examples. FWIW, these are all on the cutting edge of the art.

1) since feedback is bad, build tube or transistor amps without,
2) since the evil of feedback has a particular cause (propagation delay), build circuits that gets around this problem. Then you can have all the feedback you want.

There are people who are doing both, or at least are approaching both. Nelson Pass is one, Spectron is another. I think there are some class D amps out there that do some timing things to get around this issue too. And of course there are all the zero feedback tube amps out there...