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The focus and air lie

There always have been some kind of fashion in the way a system sounds and since a few years it seems that more and more people are looking for details, air and pinpoint focus / soundstaging.
There's a lot of components, accessories and speakers designed to fill full that demand... Halcro, dCS, Esoteric, Nordost, BW, GamuT are some examples.

This sound does NOT exist in real life, when you're at a concert the sound is full not airy, the soundstage exist of course but it's definitely not as focused as many of the systems you can hear in the hifi shops, it just fill the room.

To get that focus and air hifi components cheats, it's all in the meds and high meds, a bit less meds, a bit more high meds and you get the details, the air, the focus BUT you loose timbral accuracy, fullness.
It's evident for someone accustomed to unamplified concert that a lot of systems are lean and far from sounding real.

Those systems are also very picky about recordings : good recordings will be ok but everything else will be more difficult...
That's a shame because a hifi system should be able to trasmit music soul even on bad recording.
In 2008 this is a very rare quality.

So why does this happened ?

Did audiophiles stopped to listen unamplified music and lost contact with the real thing ?

Is it easier for shops to sell components that sounds so "detailled and impressive" during their 30mins or 1 hour demo ?
ndeslions
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shadorne
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Sineburst - there is an interesting paper in the latest AES journal on concert halls - you will be pleased to know that Boston is rated very highly and its dimensions are based on a famous hall in Europe ( also Sabine from Harvard got involved in the design ). Anyway the paper is fascinating stuff - it lists several features that have been found to be important in the acoustics of a great concert hall. Anyway - it is more interesting then circular philosphical arguments on Audiogon that a radio is good enough to appreciate msuic and that, by similar logic, the qualities of a concert hall are not important to music appreciation - anyway there is a chance you come away with some deeper understanding if you were to delve into this paper....
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mapman
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Lots of music lovers have only radios or boom boxes often because that is the best they can afford, especially in lesser developed countries (though the gap is rapidly closing).

It would be a bit condescending to suggest that they do not or cannot appreciate music as a result.

So it is a bit of a circular philosophical argument that cannot go anywhere.

All I can say is take my system away and I'll break your hands!
thomp9015
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mrtennis,
wow, you missed the point entirely...in refutation of my argument you simply restating it: since we cannot get inside others' heads, so we cannot assert through any objective fashion that something external to their heads is where the music lies. if you think this is all too conjectural, i suggest you read some aesthetic philosophy. we may not know why those with poorer stereo equipment can and do enjoy music as much or more than those without, but you will find nothing anywhere to refute that widely held belief.

as for communication, well communication is what music is all about, and if you think technology is the key to communication, i suggest you take a look around at your modern world, saturated with communication and divisiveness. i am genuinely shocked you or anyone could find this perspective, which is by no means something i am making up, but springs from powerful philosiphical traditions, so offensive. the idea that art, and the love of art, is a product of pain and struggle, the effort to deal with that pain by expressing it to others, is not exactly novel. frankly, i'm at a loss for words as to your response. what did i say that was so divisive? you don't think the implication that money and technology is necessary to truly appreciate music is divisive! Please...tis sad.
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shadorne
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It would be a bit condescending to suggest that they do not or cannot appreciate music as a result.

Agreed. I feel bad. What do you suggest - should I sell everything and buy a Bose wave radio.... ;-)

Rush had a good song about this "The Trees" - the theme was that the short Maples (Canadians)were jealous of the tall Oaks (Americans) - the proposed solution was a law that all trees were cut to the same height removing the height advanatge of the oaks. (does the forest look better now?)

I propose we pass a noble law and outlaw all Hi-Fi systems that are not Bose or Sony....
thomp9015
79 posts
 
shadorne, using terms like "circular argument" fallaciously hurts whatever point you are trying to make. there is nothing circular in my argument. as i stated before, you argument, if it can be called that, is reductionist. like much reductionist rhetoric (it is more rhetoric than argument), it is also elitist. but to be fair, i think you have simply conflated music appreciation, which is a westernized practice submitted to its characteristic practice of rationalization and objectification, with the love of music, which is a much broader, more universal phenomenon. music appreciation is not a bad thing at all, it just doesn't and cannot add up to the love of an art form. read Kant, Hegel, Schaupenhaur, Nietzsche, Adorno, Cassirer, and Badiou on aesthetics and see if the genuine love of music, which is often spontaneous and, like much that is valuable in life, utterly inexplicable, can be reduced to "appreciation," which is more of a technical term referring to a very specific set of purely objectivistic metrics. Love and passion can only be taught by life itself. Can't buy me love.
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