Does 'Accuracy' Matter or exist ?

The main hall at Carnegie seats 2,800 people. Am I to believe that you think whether the hall is empty or full of concert goers has only a subtle impact on the sound within the hall? If you do believe such, then I respectfully disagree. The presence of concert-goers will effect hall volume levels and the tonality of reflected sound. It's not a subtle effect.

I am not dismissing the relevance of a standard, instead I'm pointing out a severe limitation of that standard as commonly used.

This is very interesting; is the ideal of 'accuracy' at one and the same time quite attainable, but actually impossible (to all intents) to verify?
If so, we are left in a position of 'having the faith'.

Absolute proof of accuracy seems dependent on a multitude of variables (too many to consider simultaneously), even, as Onhwy61 points out, the number of seats filled in the venue. The case seems made.

I for one find this to be perfectly acceptable: to not have faith in what we hear would seem to be no more nor less than destructive: if the choice is to fret or not, I for one will choose not.
On the other hand I am exceedingly grateful to those who do......

Ohnwy61, please read my comment again: ***The easily identified, inherent, signature sound of Carnegie Hall (or any other hall) swamps any deviation caused by humidity, number of attendees, etc.***

I know how much some dislike the idea of absolutes, but this is an absolute fact. I never said that the sound is not changed by wether the hall is full or not; of course it does. What I am saying is that the change does not in any way cause the listener to not be able to identify the hall as being Carnegie; and easily. The hall's inherent sound is much more powerful than any change caused by the number of people in the the seats. From that standpoint, yes it's subtle. I have performed on that stage upwards of one hundred times in all my years as a musician. Almost everyone of those occasions involved a dress rehearsal or soundcheck prior to the performance, so I was able to hear the hall empty, and then full, during the span of a few hours at most. I can say unequivocally that not once have I felt that the difference in sound was anywhere near the difference in sound between two different halls. Moreover, if one could quantify this sort of thing, I assure you that the differences we are talking about are less than the differences we, as audiophiles, agonize over when choosing interconnects; in which case we could be talking about significant changes in tonal balance, and amount of detail heard. The difference is there to be sure, and important, but not to the point that the Carnegie sound could not be used as a reference. That was my point. Think of it this way: If your spouse has a slight cold, and she leaves you a message on your voice mail, are you all of sudden unable to tell it was he/she calling? You are intimately familiar with the sound of her voice; it remains a valid reference.

Hi Onwhy61 - thanks for explaining! While the variables you speak of are not insignificant, I must agree with Frogman - all halls have an "easily identified, inherent, signature sound" which will still be there despite these variables - and the same goes for the specific timbral qualities of every human voice and every acoustic instrument. Far too many recording engineers do not make recordings that are very accurate in Frogman's sense nowadays, and this is to me and most of my fellow musicians a much bigger issue than whether or not the playback equipment can then pass that info on. It certainly can't if it isn't there on the recording in the first place. I personally think that too many audiophiles blame the equipment when in fact they are listening to a bad recording job. But that's getting off topic.

Listening to music this afternoon this song, a recent favorite came up in random shuffle. Listening to the lyrics I said to myself, this is at the core of what moves me about music. It is why when I consider the question, "Does accuracy matter?" (regarding the reproduction and enjoyment of music), I have to say that it's just not the point...it matters if you make it matter, and if it happens to be important to you, but it is not a requirement to profoundly enjoy music, and focusing on such minutia in listening takes one further and further away from enjoyment, in my experience. This is especially so at the level of most indulging in this hobby where some seem to need to find any number of rulers to measure and compare their pride and joy with everyone else's (I really restrained myself there in that metaphor).

This is from Martha Tilston's 2006 release, "Of Milkmaids and Architects", in case anyone's into the contemporary Brit-folk scene. Those with 3 copies of Dire Straits BIA and 4 versions of Pink Floyd DSOM on their frequent rotation might find this a bit boring. It kind of goes back to what I was talking about those early introductions in ones life where it really sinks in and moves you, that you never forget:

_______________

we were the wild wild child of the street
we rollarskated everywhere
Jason and the Argonauts, with festival hair
we were taught to catch our dreams if you can
and put the babies wellies on and help them in the back of the van

oh and I remember
Sophie dancing round the room
singing 'here it comes,
here it comes,
this is the best bit of the tune'
she waves her fingers in the air
says 'doesn't it make you fizz?'
and I understand that Sophie knows
what magic is
I understand that Sophie knows
what magic is

sometimes I go back in my dreams to Bristol
you can hear Jamaican music and taste the Asian sweets
then to the adventure playground
running through the streets
we were both slow readers
we could make a bow and arrow
from the wood and flint with twine
and we cut the lawn with scissors
made sense at the time

oh and I remember
Sophie dancing round the room
singing 'here it comes,
here it comes,
this is the best bit of the tune'
she waves her fingers in the air
says 'doesn't it make you fizz?;
and I understand that Sophie knows what magic is
I understand that Sophie knows what magic is

so now she pours me a glass of pink wine
she takes the babies wellies off
and whispers to him 'bed time'
when he's sleeping she hunts through the CD pile
she says 'you've gotta hear this one, gotta hear this one'
she starts to smile
so now I'm watching Sophie dancing round the room
singing here it comes here it comes this is the best bit of the tune
she waves her fingers in the air
'doesn't it make you fizz?'
understand that Sophie knows what magic is

now I am reminded
what music is

so I get up with her,
dancing round the room
here it comes
here it comes
this is the best bit of the tune
we wave our fingers in the air
'doesn't it make you fizz'

I understand that Sophie know what magic is
you must understand that Sophie knows what magic is
though I am taller in many ways I'm smaller
then my big sis