Evaluating a system - what do you listen for?
Though Art Dudley disagrees with me, my number one priority is lifelike vocal and instrumental timbre---lack of what J. Gordon Holt called "vowel colorations". Next up is immediacy and presence---the illusion of living, breathing humans singing and/or playing right there in front of me, fully formed and fleshed-out. Too many systems I've heard create "whispy" (ghostly apparitions), miniaturized voices and instruments that sound thin and small, lacking body and substance. Live music sounds big and bold, I like it's reproduction to as well. Live music is experienced not through just the ears, but the entire body. Reproduced music often sounds eviscerated, robbed of it's physicality, appealing to the intellect only! That for me is the main failing of music reproduction systems, apparently even harder to achieve than the ability to provide lifelike vocal and instrumental timbre. |
Just an opinion here, on the subject of the ability of any given component to provide an emotional connection to the music it is reproducing. That concept implies that that ability is separate from sound itself, that the sound of music alone does not necessarily communicate it's emotional content. Art Dudley is a proponent of that concept, and I find it a bit hard to accept. Music IS nothing more than sound, in one way or another. Sure, the emotion in music, and even the "intent of the performer(s)", as Art and others like to say, is affected more by some aspects of sound than others, but it is still the sound itself which contains and conveys that emotion. To characterize the ability of a component in such personal terms as to how it conveys emotion is just too subjective to me, too personal. The emotional connection to reproduced music as provided by any given component can be affected by many things other than the component itself, very personal things that one listener may not share with another. Sorry, J. Gordon Holts version of subjective reviewing is about as subjective as I am willing to embrace! |
“The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.” ― Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart knowwnothing I think Bpd expressed himself very well with what is important to him. I think that different aspects of sounds are different for different people. They are drawn to different things. For me it is the timing of music more that a couple of degrees off tone, timbre, warmth or cool or frequency response. So after those thing are close for me the music has to bounce and groove naturally for me, on a micro level as well as a macro level, all of it altogether at the same time. And as music is played a lot of things make that up. I think Amadeus was eluding to that. I think the phrase 'starting and stopping on a dime' use to be kind of used for what I am saying. And it is not just the overall sound that needs to do it for me but all parts, all instruments, voices, hall/venue noises, etc., so it doesn't alter the timing for the completeness of the music. I think Bdp was a musician and I would think that probably is important for him to. I don't think it is easy for the reproduction of sound to do that real well. It can be likened to a not very good band to me. To me that is a big(huge)difference between live and reproduced. When it fits, it's tight, it's more right as a musical fabric, it is satisfying. Then the knit fabric of music paints a more colorful, emotional? picture to me. It fits all together much better. I think it effects those other things already mentioned( tone, timbre, warmth or cool or frequency response), for good reason, in the reproduction of satisfying sound. So in a roundabout way I am saying some of what Bdp did, and that is, I am most concerned in how I connect to the music on the system I am listening to. So I would take a spectrum of favorite music and listen. Takes note of how each piece, on each system, moves me and move in the direction that I like most. Not necessarily audiophile approved, but satisfying for me. |
