who wants tone controls on your next preamp?

No doubt, every recording we have is an altered version of reality, an altered version of the absolute. That wasn't my point. My point was if we could reproduce the original sound exactly then hearing differences don't factor in.

The argument that was presented was that the pursuit of the absolute is pointless because we all hear differently. I say that makes no difference. If we hear the same source then even if we hear it differently we should be able to tell when it changes. Your absolute and mine may differ, our brains may interpret the sound of a trumpet being played in front of us in a different manner, but we should both be able to tell when the sound of that particular trumpet changes.

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This is not a hobby, for me; this is a way of life. I am in pursuit of the most celestial music any musician ever created, reproduced on the best equipment ever engineered without "Tone controls".

Herman,
That type of mental exercise is a little naive as the only ones who have that type of traceability to the original performance where those who were there. How many of your CD's/LP's have you been a witness to their original recording/performance? You are obviously not familiar with the recording process, mixing and the mastering process. How do you know that the microphones pickup the entire spectral spectrum and spatial cues? You owe it to yourself to get the Stereophile Test CD1, which has the pickup of many different microphones on the same live person/speaker being switched real-time; it will shed some light on the effects of the recording chain. Ideals are only that!

Naive? please. You completely missed the point of my post.

The poster stated that since you and I hear differently then there is no absolute. I was refuting that idea, not that we would know what all original performances sound like. I stated that if we heard the exact same thing, even though our auditory systems might process it differently, if we heard the exact same thing again we would recognize it. That has nothing to do with traceability to the original performances of my recordings.

So yes, there is an absolute, or ideal as you put it. If our systems were ideal then we would be able to record a trumpet player standing in front of the room or any other sound and play it back and it would sound exactly the same. Jumping from that idea to assuming I though I would be able to know what every original performance sounded like is a bit of a stretch.

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Don't need them. Just got a pair of Katans and have my DBX 14/10 EQ for sale. Things (amp, preamp, sources, wires, ic's and speakers) must match up and that's a lot harder to do than using a good eq.