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. |
Asa, actually most of the people I know who aim for an accurate frequency response do not do so in the interest of excessive detail. Rather, they find audiophiles perverse because audiophiles tolerate frequency response aberrations in the midrange and tend to like an elevated high end with lots of detail, e.g., the early famously popular moving coil cartridges. Pros who strive for accuracy tend to use the live concert hall as a model. In electronics, they want complete accuracy. In speakers, they aim for a flat frequency response from bass through upper midrange, and a somewhat downward sloping upper end to approximate what happens in real life. That sort of accuracy is generally musical. Speakers that are ruler flat in the treble off axis as well as on can be sort of relentless in real world rooms.
The members of the accuracy school with whom I am familiar regard excessive detail as unnatural and an inaccurate representation of live music. It's in the midrange that accuracy is paramount.
There are people who like amps that are demonstrably inaccurate in the bass and midrange. Maybe because their speakers are inaccurate in some complementary way, or maybe they just like a mellow sound. I dont know.
It's an old-fashioned idea, one that has been ridiculed in Stereophile, but I want my electronic components to do nothing to the signal but pass it along. Any deviation from a flat frequency response, and distortion, and character like grain or hardness (which I think can be explained by some small deviations from a perfect frequency reponse), I don't like - unless it's in a portion of the frequency spectrum where it doesnt really hurt, e.g., a little added warmth, a little less presence giving more of a sense of depth or outside of my hearing range. I think accuracy is important, because accurate components allow designers and users to focus on what needs to be improved. This idea that everything sounds different and needs to be matched with their components synergistically is a saleman's boon, and a bore. A perfectly accurate system still needs help with room interaction.
Yet, we fill in the blanks, and tolerate, as you suggest, a variety of inaccuracies, mostly subtractive deficiencies rather than additive. (It's hard to ignore an excess of energy in any part of the frequency range, except maybe the mid bass. It's hard to ignore noise and distortion components.) We are especially adept at filling-in, completing patterns, finishing sentences, and I think that the part of our brain that processes sounds does the same thing.
Now to your really interesting McLuhan-esque idea, an experience or replication of the absolute sound through the listener's interaction with his system. We know that stereo can't recreate the live event, it can only make a suggestion (Like Michelangelo's last works in marble, which some might think unfinished). Yet, some of us sit there and feel very much like we are in the presence of our favorite performers.
That's my objective.
I think I agree with you that musical components, good components, are those that "sufficiently catalyze the mind" to complete the pattern. And I would add that do not give false cues that might lead to an unrealistic picture.
Regards,
Paul |
Hear hear, Paulwp. Well said, and without hyperbole. When I hear a fine live performance, as I do several times a week, it would be a silly argument indeed, for one to tell me the accuracy of the sound precludes mind/music catylization. It should be without saying, when it comes to home music systems, the last thing I want is a component malady detracting me from enjoying music. If one thinks a system that performs sufficiently close to reality is boring, then, oh well... |
Paul, great post!
Muralman, whereas I fundamentally agree with your premise, but even in a live situation (actually, quite often for me, in some of the cheaper seats!), the INaccuracy of the first-arrival/secondary arrivals mix DOES get in the way of that mind/music (or better: ear/brain) catalyzation.
Just recently I heard the glorious Andre Previn conductiong the BSO and Thobodeau in the Ravel Left Hand Concerto, and the orchestra sounded SPLENDID from 6th row center. After the overture the 9' Steinway's way OFF-axis sound was anemic, lacking body and normal spectral protrayal! As a pianist it took me quite a few minutes to get past this, and I was reminded again that one doesn't listen to pianos too close at Symphony Hall!..................
Likewise a week before I heard my friend Marty Pearlman leading his marvelous Boston Baroque in his orchestration of a Monteverdi opera in my favorite Jordan Hall. But instead of my usual center balcony perfect seat (!), I had to sit front left orchestra, which provided more detail of the period strings, especially (orchestra was on the left, soloists on the right), but too many times the acoustic ping-ponging of a vocalist as he/she turned while holding a note, resulting in a sidewall reflection overwhelming a first arrival, threw me off the "total music appreciation" cart. Such a bouncing acoustic image would NEVER be tolerated in the recording of the piece (which should be available next spring. So unless one sits in line with the mics, for example, live music in even the best halls can be a dicey affair to us who are trained BOTH by such AND our audiophilia. Live sound is perfect? By no means, unless you're sitting in the right place (seat)in the right place (hall) in the right place (frame of mind/receptivity)!
Yet there's of course something still so magical about a live performance well done despite acoustic impurities, thank god! |
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. |
