neutrality vs. realism

Paulup, I think you've said something quite important - that our minds seem able to fill in the blanks.

How can we get deeply into the music in a stereo if, admittedly, it doesn't as yet sound much like "real" sound sounds, or how "real" music sounds for that matter (my stereo certainly doesn't, yet still produces in me a musical experience)?

That must mean that a stereo need not convey a complete simulcrum of how sound is, and how music was when we heard it live, for the mind to go into the music. Which means that we are not trying to merely create a soundfield "out there" that is just like "reality" (read: the absolute sound), but rather, trying to create a stereo that creates a SUFFICIENT catalyst to our minds for them to sink deeper.

We have trouble seeping into the music when it doesn't sound sufficiently "real". When we first sit down, our analyzing mind wants accuracy and detail, but then as we go deeper, our deeper listening mind wants more existential nuance that has to do with continuity. At each level, if that stimulus is not sufficient, then we don't go deeper. And, contra, if there is too much accuracy we don't go deeper (a system that is overly detailed can be seen as being "hyper-real", or rather, the person who constructs it only wants sound at that level, or only knows that level exists until he hears a component that has SUFFICIENT detail yet also something deeper).

In this view, musicality is not simply found in a component, but in the component's relation to the mind that is listening; "musical" components are ones that SUFFICIENTLY catalyze the mind to go to the next deeper level.

And this means that "the absolute sound" is not some-thing out there that we need to find, as if it is an object we can get ahold of if we can make our components "real" absolutely, but rather, the "absolute sound" is found in a component/mind dynamic - one that does not, in a stereo context, necessarily need the rendition to be infinitely accurate in order to catalyze a musical experience.

Which, in turn, explains why we can have components that are not overwhelming detailed (what the accuracy school defines as how you get more "real")yet are very musical - just like live music is.

With that said, live music is better. Definetly an important reltionship - comparing live sound traits to stereo sound traits (and this of course makes sense because we evolved hearing "live" sounds, not recreated ones) - but perhaps not wholly determinant towards catalyzing a "musical" experience, the dynamic, in the listening mind.

Just some thoughts. Would be interested in you thoughts too.

I don't think that systems that perform suffieciently close to reality are ever boring, its just that - and Paulwp please take note here - the variables used to describe or define what is sufficiently close are many times not reducable (at least not yet) to measurable responses. The accuracy school I'm referring to looks to measurable variables like frequency (by your last paragraph, Paulpw, I don't think you fall completely in this school, no one ever does by this decade, but I do notice the mention of frequency as you main defining quality, one that measures relative quantity across of spectrum of observation). The result is a bias that seems to imply that such factors are determintive towards this sufficiency, and the default towards that "accuracy" bias leads invariably to its contra-implication, namely, that that which may not be measurable is less important.

We seldom see dogmatic acolytes of scientism anymore, but the bias, as an operational force in the argument, still remains.

So, are there sufficient qualities of stereo rendition that are also not measurable?

Question: When listening to a stereo, as the mind "let's go" of its tendancy to think (deepening musical perception DEFINED by its cognitive fading)does the mind percieve qualities of music that frequency et al can not define?

My point is that at deep levels of stereo perception we experience existential spatial/temporal cues that, as yet, are not measurable, and YET, are VERY important for sufficiently catalyzing the mind to these deeeper levels.

Its not only that our mind is filling in "frequency" in places where it is insufficient, but that at a deeper level - beyond present empiric abilities of quantitative analysis - the stereo component that is highly "musical" is "filling in" spatio-temporal cues so that our mind perceives that existential perception as congruent with "real" space/time.

At the more surface levels of listening - when the thinking mind is "looking" for sound - the measurable variables are critical; a stereo that has insufficient frequency performance draws the thinking mind's attention to that incongruency so you would never go deeper. But a stereo (or the mind of its assembler) that looks PREDOMINANTLY towards measurables such as frequency et al, and whose creation in sound reflects that bias, will not go AS DEEP.

Its not as simple as saying that bias towrds hyper-detail is the issue...also bias towards (attachment of) the measuring ruler of science and its Galilean perspective.

I will stop there; enough to digest.

Paulw, the foregoing is a foil/catalyst for your response, if any, not personally directed.

Interesting point, Subaru.

Even live music can be un-musical, as in, keep you from falling into the musical meaning deeper.

So, even if frequency is OK, that is not the determintive variable in the dynamic of "musicality", or catalyzing the thinking mind to let go. Of course, your point addresses performance, not how a stereo performs. Fun issue though.

Maybe Paulp can integrate it into a response...?

You see, this how a thread can be reasonable and mature between two groups who just see things from different angles. Because you rely upon science and its accuracies in the first instance, but default ultimately to the product of your accuracies, the result of your science (namely, listening), does not make you an over-bearing materialist; similarly, if you believe scientific measurements are an important tool, but not determitive to the end result of the experiement and that an over-reliance on their veracity can itself be a limitation towards improvement, does not mean you are a regressive New Age romantic idealist. This dialogue, absent egos which identify with ideas as who they are, can occur.

Paulp, interestingly we come down slightly on different sides of the line in ideas on how to get there - not very far apart I would think if we could talk face to face - but still seem inseparable on what "musicality" we are searching for, and which is, I would submit, the dermining factor in why we are here; our love of the beauty of Music transcends our views on how to achieve it.

The difference between us in not in listening, but, again, in the varibles used to get there, our main difference being, again, the assumptions we make, or do not make. Science operates by comparative reductionism; that is the empiricism within its method. In other words, an assumption has developed in science that if you divide something far enough you will disclose all its truth, even though science has not, as yet, conducted this experiment (which is then, by definition of science's own rules, an unscientific assumption). When you say that all sound can be described by scientific terms of further reductionism, even though this has not ocuured with sound (much less music), you commit this fallacy. Perhaps one day science will reach that Grail, or sufficiently so to sufficiently catalyze the mind, but that day has not arrived; scientific measurements can not describe spatio-temporal nuance to a sufficient degree to enable adjustment of the component in that regard strictly based upon those measurements. Even ignoring a Zeno paradox-like problem inherent in such a position (you can divide 1 infinitely, ergo, you can divide sound-pieces infinitely, so you never approach the definitive Truth through that reduction because there is always a remainder), there is no rational basis to conclude that such a reduction will reveal the essense of Truth/Beauty/Music.

My position is that you will always have to listen to hear that beauty in its deepest symmetries (and the experiment of science over the last three hundred years confirms this continual regressing truth into the infinite, i.e. Popper's observation of method that science always disproves the truth which they just "proved" was the Truth). I don't think the "what is" that is suseptible to the imposition of measurement wants you to only use your measurements - or believe that they will eventually be sufficient in and of themselves - to hear the deepest beauty.

As I said, however, the true paradox is that regardless of assumptions in our thinking - and, because we don't need to impose our ideas on each other but share them regardless of their differing content and orientation - we still meet in the middle on what we are here for: to find the beauty in Music.

At its finest, science and its measurements are an integral part of that/the Search.

People who are attached to either pole, namely, of romanticism (denial or reduction of science as a means towards that search), or of materialism (denial of Truth beyond material manipulation) are really the same; in their denials of the truth that each holds forth like a weapon towards the other, their claim of false exclusivity to the Truth, they deny themselves, and ensure their stagnation. They are not searchers, but egos with ideas that they seek to use against others. Regardless of our differing ideas, we are both Searchers, and in that, we transcend our differences - which turn out not to be SUFFICIENT differences at all. This is how we go forwards, together.

I look for Searchers.

Ying/yang is the function of cognition directed at the "what is", which, presto!, even science points to as infinite in its physical reflection to this structuring perception (remember, "infinity" is an abstraction for an experience beyond terms, beyong dualistic encompassment; if all is infinite, then there can be no non-infinite separate from it; words and science point to it so we can talk, but the infinite is expereinced in a trans-dual space of the mind).

Ying and Yang, twl, you say perhaps never meeting but never apart? The symmetry of your observance determines whether you only see one (Ying/Yang as manifestation of your dualistic cognition, seeking to manipulate things) or view the world dualistically AND a perception beyond those limitations that integrates both IN THE SAME MOMENT OF SIGHT (integrating Ying/Yang seen manifesting through the cognitive's mind construction of "what is" and, also, at once, through the trans-cognitive sight integrating opposition). This "see-ing" both ways at once has to do with the causal ground of Ying/Yang, and seeing this arisement as it arises as your own mind's constructed cognitive processing. You have to observe your own processing until you know that "you" are not only those constructs; you settle by "letting go" of your attachment to all thought as defining your ground nature. This open space of the mind, stably reached, reveals both sights at once.

Every road is a road towards this integration. "Data" may point in that direction, or our words here for that matter, but only YOU can go there with your OWN MIND; the "what is" is suseptible to measurement of others to give you pointing koans, and pointing mathematics on subset and/or chaos and/or quantum uncertainty theories, but you can not look to the others' "measurements" to go there; you must have the courage/faith to go there yourself, beyond the ideas of yourself. Until then, you will live in a world where you believe in the paradox, a dualism of separablity your thoughts inherently impose, rather than seeing its integral resolution in each moment of experience, thinking or not, "you" or "other".

It is not only a knowledge for Kings, or for Kings of knowledge...

PS Wonderful words twl.

Have a nice wkend all.