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The eternal quandary

Is it the sound or is it the music?

A recent experience. Started to listen to a baroque trio on the main system, harpsichord, bass viol and violin. The harpsichord seems to be positioned to the left of centre, the bass viol to the right, and the violin probably somewhere in the middle. The sound of the two continuo instruments is "larger"/more diffuse than I would expect in "real life". The acoustic is slightly "swimmy". Worse still, impossible to tell if the violinist is standing in front of the continuo instruments, on the same plane as them, or even slightly behind them (in a kind of concave semi-circle). Then that tiny little doubt creeps in: although you want to blame the recording, the acoustic, the recording engineer, the digital recorder, could it be the system that's not quite doing the trick? Could its soundstaging abilities be somehow deficient? After about six shortish tracks I have stop.

Later, I finish listening to the CD on the secondary system. No, the timbral textures are not as fleshed out, no, the sheer presence of the instruments is not as intense, and no, the soundstaging is certainly no better, but I listen through to the end, in main part I think because my expectations are not as high now, and I'm listening to what's being played, not how it's being reproduced.

So are we listening to the sound or the music? Is this why car radios, table-top radios, even secondary systems have a certain, curious advantage over the "big rig"? By having so many expectations for the big rig, are we setting it up for failure? Is that one reason why lots of enthusiasts are on an unending upgrade spiral? Does this experience strike a chord (no pun intended) with anyone else out there?
128x128twoleftears
markphd
667 posts
 
If you listen to and are moved by the music, it does not matter that an instrument is larger/more diffuse/not clearly imaged, etc., etc. Many people listen to the sound and not the music. I feel sorry for them.
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears OP
1,457 posts
 
Detlof--wise words indeed!

When you think about it, even before you add that last anti-vibration device to the system, we're already listening to music reproduced at a level that is superior to what 99% of listeners are hearing from their boom-boxes, car radios, etc.

But--and this goes out to Markphd--would the *pure* music-lover be on this site in the first place? Don't they have to have at least a little of the "audiophile" in them? Does this have to do with the fact that so many practising musicians have such notoriously deficient equipment in their own homes?
newbee
4,093 posts
 
Twoleftears, consider that it may have nothing to do with the quality of the replication of recorded music in the home vs the 'live experience'.

It has, to me at least, more to do with tonal balance and pitch. Timbre. At one concert hall I regularily attend unamplified performances, I would rather listen to the performance over a Bose system in a bathroom, than sit in the balcony, even with an oxygen mask. There it is very unbalanced - overly bright, no bass. Just like a lot of audiophile grade monitors. On the main floor the sound is, generally speaking very good, excellent and great!

Perhaps that raises the question whether I would be an acousticsphile and not a music lover? I think not, no more than I would love to listen to a voice or an instrument off key. Pitch and timbre, naturalness, and ease rules, live or canned for me anyway, music appreciation comes from a source that draws me in.
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Newbee,
Bad accoustics in hall, a bad seat, because you had booked too late, can drive me bonkers. I've been known to leave the hall fuming at intermission soothing the savage breast in the next bar. I am much more patient with my rig, even patient with bad live performances as long as the accoustics are right. Bad accoustics insult the ear of a music lover. As you say, tonal balance, timbre, pitch, the reverbs must be right. Otherwise you start to itch, scratch and get restless in your seat. Your eyes and your mind wander as your insulted ears close up. With my rig, reacting with all sorts of different software, I find I am more patient, because disillusioned, I have learned that I am at the mercy of more or less gifted recording engineers who keep knocking my seat about in my "own private concert hall", while they twiddle their knobs and push their levers. The better my rig got through the years, the more I heard of their twiddlings, especially if they had not read the score and reacted too late, pushing the first violin quickly from right of center back to where it belongs after about thee bars into the music. Mind you, that can be amusing though for a jaded audiophile who knows, that the facsimile of real thing will never be perfect. It is pure Freud: The "reality priciple", which makes for patience at home but anger in the concert hall, if you, after overcoming your laziness, getting into some other cloths, commuting downtown, hunting for parking space, cued at the guarderobe, had to discover that you had better music at home.....
chadnliz
3,736 posts
 
Soothing the savage breast......sounds like a Lifetime movie :)
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