Principles

[Richard Dunn]

The most important factor for me is correct timbre, at least what I feel is correct, particularly piano, I grew up listening to my family playing piano...

Then liveliness, when I look to see if someone is in my room playing...

I also like to 20hz to 20khz, meaning extended response, not exactely this numbers...

Do you look for these things when you attend a live concert?

Richard

 

[Richard Dunn]

I find it very interesting that often the most enjoyable listening takes place when I am sitting in the next room from the audio equipment. Maybe there's something psychologically beneficial about not actually looking at the gear, and not being distracted by it.

And to throw a thought into the ring, some twenty-something years ago I bought a Linn LP12/Ittok/A&RP77 largely because of reviews and because it was expensive (although the LP12 clearly was much better than the Logic that I also tried). When I got it home, I reallly couldn't enjoy it, but a few weeks later everything fell into place - I started listening to the music, and it was the LP12 that 'taught' me how to listen to music. Ever since then I have been a 'subjectivist' at heart. A few years later I bought NVA amps, and more musical enjoyment resulted. Neither product is perfect by objective standards, but each (and the combination) gave great enjoyment. I believe that Ivor T was, and still is, fundamentally correct in his views on musical reproduction, even though I no longer own the LP12.

So, to sum up my thoughts on this, my priorities are for a presentation that is clear enough to hear small details and nuances, power enough to approximate the dynamic contrasts of real performances, and it should have an almost indescribable pleasure factor that gets sometimes grabs you by the stomach and makes you think "by God, that was good". I do not care much for imaging, ultimate bass etc, but the sound must be coherent. If I start thinking about the technicalities of HiFi then it is impossible to hear the music.

Regards etc

S

Sounds like someone has found the (a) path to satisfaction. Why, because he hasn't turned it into an intellectual pursuit. He is pursuing *feelings* - different process and the basis behind this discussion.

Richard

 

[melorib]

Do you look for these things when you attend a live concert?

Richard

I dont have to, they are there, I only look for this when it is missing...

Also, in live music, it bothers me when the room is bad and music gets mufled by too many ressonances, or on non acoustic music timbre is wrong, particularly too harsh...

 

[Richard Dunn]

I dont have to, they are there, I only look for this when it is missing...

Also, in live music, it bothers me when the room is bad and music gets mufled by too many ressonances, or on non acoustic music timbre is wrong, particularly too harsh...

Good then it is wrong terminology but right direction.

Richard

 

[Richard Dunn]

I suppose I am not surprised, but no one has mentioned the most prevalent of all principles - self image - !!

As males we have a desire to impress. If we are not naturally impressive or imposing as individual we have to find a substitute. It starts in school with our first contacts with our peers and having better toys than them, and if you don't grow out of it it can then dominates your life. It mostly manifests with cars, but hi-fi can also follow this prerogative. Are you a victim? The answer is yes if you always have to find someone to *listen* to your hi-fi and give you affirmation as to how clever you are to choose it. If you want people to come and *look* at your hi-fi, then you are even sadder, especially if you tell them watts, THD, bandwidth etc - big willy syndrom, probably to compensate for the lack of the real thing This manifests in the arguments and the so called "bake offs".

Are there any women on this list as we are far more likely to get sense out of them!

Richard

 

[melorib]

Nothing wrong with wanting people to come and *look* at yours, even God, I know it is not God, but those who use Him...

 

[Effem]

What a brilliant post. This gives us the priorities and the need for realism in our assessment. Now if we look at what makes equipment achieve this we should start with principles (every conceptual exploration starts with principles) before we look for *energies*

Richard

I think we make some truly fundamental errors in the way we currently asses hi-fi systems. Instead of looking upwards from a low point seeking perfection, make your judgements upon flaws a system has and the huge perceived gaps between the budget and the esoteric/high end suddenly collapses dramatically, especially when the label/price factor is removed and under unsighted conditions. That really is terrifying.

Rather than climb UP a scale of accrued positive attributes of hi-fi components as most magazine reviewers tend to do these days that inevitably ends up resulting in absurd statements being made like "giant killer" and other such nonsensical rhetoric which extends beyond reality, we should instead give demerit points for system shortfalls such as for example dynamic compression, sibilance, or bass boom, so all these "differences" between components become much more delineated, hence I think more easily understood by the layman. What is sorely needed to make that system work however is a hi-fi system used as a reference point that has no such flaws, because how for example can we be certain the sibilance or bass boom isn't in the original recording? After 35 years in this caper I believe that no such animal exists because all hi-fi systems are flawed in some way or another and what we end up with is a particular set of compromises we can happily live with and a set of faults we cannot.

 

[Richard Dunn]

I think we make some truly fundamental errors in the way we currently asses hi-fi systems. Instead of looking upwards from a low point seeking perfection, make your judgements upon flaws a system has and the huge perceived gaps between the budget and the esoteric/high end suddenly collapses dramatically, especially when the label/price factor is removed and under unsighted conditions. That really is terrifying.

Rather than climb UP a scale of accrued positive attributes of hi-fi components as most magazine reviewers tend to do these days that inevitably ends up resulting in absurd statements being made like "giant killer" and other such nonsensical rhetoric which extends beyond reality, we should instead give demerit points for system shortfalls such as for example dynamic compression, sibilance, or bass boom, so all these "differences" between components become much more delineated, hence I think more easily understood by the layman. What is sorely needed to make that system work however is a hi-fi system used as a reference point that has no such flaws, because how for example can we be certain the sibilance or bass boom isn't in the original recording? After 35 years in this caper I believe that no such animal exists because all hi-fi systems are flawed in some way or another and what we end up with is a particular set of compromises we can happily live with and a set of faults we cannot.

Some nice lateral thinking.

Richard

 

[eisenach]

I think we make some truly fundamental errors in the way we currently asses hi-fi systems. Instead of looking upwards from a low point seeking perfection, make your judgements upon flaws a system has and the huge perceived gaps between the budget and the esoteric/high end suddenly collapses dramatically, especially when the label/price factor is removed and under unsighted conditions. That really is terrifying.

[...] what we end up with is a particular set of compromises we can happily live with [...]

Which is in essence similar to the point I was trying to make in my post about choosing your "ultimate" system. Find a "whole" you can live with and which delivers the kind of music / sound balance you want. This demands patience, an open ear and mind, a willingness to listen to several systems, periods of reflection (no hasty decisions, or you'll end up with something shiny!) and a bloody good dealer who's not trying to force an agenda. In the end, it's how it all works together, wires and all, and not the individual parts. Then, for God's sake, don't fiddle with it! It's for listening to music.

 

[PeteH]

This thread is wandering into the tired old "round earth versus flat earth" territory, with the local outbreaks of inverted intellectual snobbery and slightly woolly thinking thus implied . So let's just skip the tiptoeing around the subject and cut to the chase, shall we?

'Flat earth' and 'round earth' are two different fetishes, neither of which has anything to do with music, though they're harmless enough in their own ways. Being fetishes, they're qualities of people rather than of equipment (it's always handy when thinking or talking about hifi to keep in mind the difference between people and objects). The 'round earth' fetish is well known, namely immediately impressive sound for its own sake: thus, only the 'best bits' of CDs get played, invariably at very high volume levels, and records are added to the collection or put on the player on the basis of their particularly deep basslines / jangly close-miked acoustic guitar / exaggeratedly centre-of-stereo-image closed-miked vocals / etc. The CD collection will often favour elevator 'jazz' from the record branches of Naim or Linn.

The 'flat earth' fetish, however, is a less-well-understood beast, and is an extension of the anthropomorphic thinking I've already mentioned a couple of times in the thread. This fetish ascribes human and/or mystical qualities to particular pieces of equipment, such that "music" is no longer a human phenomenon but one which can be possessed, produced or destroyed by a box of electronics. Sufferers cannot attain musical satisfaction in the absence of the fetishised object or in the presence of anti-fetishised objects (which in extreme cases includes microphones in concert halls or digital watches anywhere), and believe that some hifi kit cannot 'hold a tune' (a belief shared by remarkably few trained musicians and nobody with perfect pitch). At the logical limit are those who claim that their hifi is "more expressive" or "more emotional" than live music - which I've actually seen written on a hifi forum, though mercifully not often.

Soundbite time: 'round earth' fetishises something that doesn't really matter, 'flat earth' fetishises something that doesn't really exist.

To return to the notional subject of the thread. Music indeed has an emotional dimension as (usually) the most important element. Because people feel an emotional attachment to music they tend to resist any attempt at understanding it, because of a barely-recognised fear that this might 'destroy the magic' (see here for a simplistic example of an attempt at a discussion of some technical aspects of a particular album, which was received in a rather hostile manner in some quarters - though that could also be because it was written by some insufferable smug idiot with quasi-intellectualist pretensions ).

This anti-intellectual attitude to music then tends by association to spill over into an anti-intellectual attitude to hifi kit, with woolly thinking to the point where the distinction between the production and reproduction of music becomes blurred - the road leading to the fetishisation of equipment known as 'flat earth'. For the record (pun not intended), music is produced by musicians, then is converted into a signal at the microphone. It remains a signal all the way across the transmission chain until it is converted back into music at the ear (for the present purposes - let's not get into wrangling about the auditory system today, shall we? ). Hifi is thus about transmitting signals and exists in the domain of engineering - not about creating music and thus in the domain of aesthetic philosophy. As titian has indicated, hifi is about getting the sound right so you hear the same thing as you would in the concert hall - and obviously if you get the sound right, the music follows. The degree to which communication of the music depends on precise reproduction of the sound depends on both the music - tone-colour, dynamic range and sheer sonic spectacularness are perhaps more central to the experience of Respighi's Pines of Rome than of Bach's Goldberg Variations - and on the listener. I think that some people whose experience of "live" performance means amplified music probably find undistorted playback distracting because it's not what they're used to, but that's a different issue.

Trying to use terms like 'tune' and 'rhythm' to describe an amplifier is a near equivalent of trying to use terms like 'total harmonic distortion' to describe a violin, and is just as appropriate - ie. not at all.

 

[sideshowbob]

Soundbite time: 'round earth' fetishises something that doesn't really matter, 'flat earth' fetishises something that doesn't really exist.

Very good, I wish I'd said that.

Because people feel an emotional attachment to music they tend to resist any attempt at understanding it, because of a barely-recognised fear that this might 'destroy the magic'

I agree, although a technical understanding is not the only understanding that matters, and can, on occasion, lead you in the wrong direction (I can think of examples where someone's technical knowledge leads them to dismiss popular music entirely, for example). There's lots to argue and understand about music which has nothing to do with musicology in a technical sense, history, sociology, ritual, religion, all sorts of other elements need to be drawn upon.

music is produced by musicians, then is converted into a signal at the microphone. It remains a signal all the way across the transmission chain until it is converted back into music at the ear (for the present purposes - let's not get into wrangling about the auditory system today, shall we? ). Hifi is thus about transmitting signals and exists in the domain of engineering - not about creating music and thus in the domain of aesthetic philosophy.

Well put. I entirely agree.

-- Ian

 

[Richard Dunn]

This thread is wandering into the tired old "round earth versus flat earth" territory, with the local outbreaks of inverted intellectual snobbery and slightly woolly thinking thus implied . So let's just skip the tiptoeing around the subject and cut to the chase, shall we?

'Flat earth' and 'round earth' are two different fetishes, neither of which has anything to do with music, though they're harmless enough in their own ways. Being fetishes, they're qualities of people rather than of equipment (it's always handy when thinking or talking about hifi to keep in mind the difference between people and objects). The 'round earth' fetish is well known, namely immediately impressive sound for its own sake: thus, only the 'best bits' of CDs get played, invariably at very high volume levels, and records are added to the collection or put on the player on the basis of their particularly deep basslines / jangly close-miked acoustic guitar / exaggeratedly centre-of-stereo-image closed-miked vocals / etc. The CD collection will often favour elevator 'jazz' from the record branches of Naim or Linn.

The 'flat earth' fetish, however, is a less-well-understood beast, and is an extension of the anthropomorphic thinking I've already mentioned a couple of times in the thread. This fetish ascribes human and/or mystical qualities to particular pieces of equipment, such that "music" is no longer a human phenomenon but one which can be possessed, produced or destroyed by a box of electronics. Sufferers cannot attain musical satisfaction in the absence of the fetishised object or in the presence of anti-fetishised objects (which in extreme cases includes microphones in concert halls or digital watches anywhere), and believe that some hifi kit cannot 'hold a tune' (a belief shared by remarkably few trained musicians and nobody with perfect pitch). At the logical limit are those who claim that their hifi is "more expressive" or "more emotional" than live music - which I've actually seen written on a hifi forum, though mercifully not often.

Soundbite time: 'round earth' fetishises something that doesn't really matter, 'flat earth' fetishises something that doesn't really exist.

To return to the notional subject of the thread. Music indeed has an emotional dimension as (usually) the most important element. Because people feel an emotional attachment to music they tend to resist any attempt at understanding it, because of a barely-recognised fear that this might 'destroy the magic' (see here for a simplistic example of an attempt at a discussion of some technical aspects of a particular album, which was received in a rather hostile manner in some quarters - though that could also be because it was written by some insufferable smug idiot with quasi-intellectualist pretensions ).

This anti-intellectual attitude to music then tends by association to spill over into an anti-intellectual attitude to hifi kit, with woolly thinking to the point where the distinction between the production and reproduction of music becomes blurred - the road leading to the fetishisation of equipment known as 'flat earth'. For the record (pun not intended), music is produced by musicians, then is converted into a signal at the microphone. It remains a signal all the way across the transmission chain until it is converted back into music at the ear (for the present purposes - let's not get into wrangling about the auditory system today, shall we? ). Hifi is thus about transmitting signals and exists in the domain of engineering - not about creating music and thus in the domain of aesthetic philosophy. As titian has indicated, hifi is about getting the sound right so you hear the same thing as you would in the concert hall - and obviously if you get the sound right, the music follows. The degree to which communication of the music depends on precise reproduction of the sound depends on both the music - tone-colour, dynamic range and sheer sonic spectacularness are perhaps more central to the experience of Respighi's Pines of Rome than of Bach's Goldberg Variations - and on the listener. I think that some people whose experience of "live" performance means amplified music probably find undistorted playback distracting because it's not what they're used to, but that's a different issue.

Trying to use terms like 'tune' and 'rhythm' to describe an amplifier is a near equivalent of trying to use terms like 'total harmonic distortion' to describe a violin, and is just as appropriate - ie. not at all.

Absolutely wrong and not the point of the thread. The point is to side step this issue entirely. It matters not if your assessment is objective or subjective. You are fighting the old battles I am not. I require people to *think* what is their motivation, what are the principles behind that motivation. I would call it a third way if the terms hadn't been patented by the labour party.

Richard

 

[titian]

Aha more like it. Compare this with the previous post

Now when you go to a concert do you concern yourself with "dynamic, loudness, colouration, power, hall ambience, transperance" - no! - so why do you do this with your hi-fi? Why do you try to compare with something you do not even try to observe but take for granted at a concert. Why, because one is reality and the other is an illusion trying to recreate reality!

You go to a concert for the music, why does it become a different pursuit when you listen to your hi-fi?

Richard

You're absolutely wrong when you regard me!
I start to get concerned of those charachteristics becase when I listen through a HIfi I notice big differences. Therefore I try to find out what are those differences.
Then I don't only go to over 50 concerts a year, I go to the rehearsals (over 35), where I can concentrate on these sound charachteristics in order to compare them at home.
A main factor to get rid of in a concert hall is the emotional factor. One way is to get rid of the feeling that you are in a special place. Going there 2-3 times a week helps a lot. Then going to the same concerts 2-3 nights in the row (here several concerts a repeated for 2-3 following nights) can also give you time to concentrate in sound qualityââ'¬Â¦
Of course at home I'm creating an illusion but I try nevertheless to stick the most possible to what I hear in concerts halls. I also measure the sound level to compare it with what I listen to at home.
So I go to concerts mostly for the music but I use the reheasals and repetitions of concerts mostly for sound analysis.

 

[Tenson]

Okay lets try. I think my aspirations are to have it sound as if I am standing in the studio with the band playing at their absolute best in an optimal environment – could be described as a supernatural live performance. I can't say 'live' as a lot of the music I like goes through a PA when live.

I think I achieved that goal a while ago now, it sounds better than I can imagine/remember so every time I play something I sit there enthralled. The only reason I continue to change kit and post on places like this is because music reproduction interests me in itself, not just the end goal.

 

[Tenson]

You're absolutely wrong when you regard me!
I start to get concerned of those charachteristics becase when I listen through a HIfi I notice big differences. Therefore I try to find out what are those differences.
Then I don't only go to over 50 concerts a year, I go to the rehearsals (over 35), where I can concentrate on these sound charachteristics in order to compare them at home.
A main factor to get rid of in a concert hall is the emotional factor. One way is to get rid of the feeling that you are in a special place. Going there 2-3 times a week helps a lot. Then going to the same concerts 2-3 nights in the row (here several concerts a repeated for 2-3 following nights) can also give you time to concentrate in sound quality…
Of course at home I'm creating an illusion but I try nevertheless to stick the most possible to what I hear in concerts halls. I also measure the sound level to compare it with what I listen to at home.
So I go to concerts mostly for the music but I use the reheasals and repetitions of concerts mostly for sound analysis.

Titian, you truly are a dedicated man! I think that sort of dedication deserves a lot of respect as well.

 

[Shuggie]

One more point - why does one's frame of mind influence the enjoyment of music so much, whether via the HiFi or not? How many of us have wasted hours or days trying to find a technical explanation for why the 'system' may be sounding crap, when it is likely that the culprit is within our heads?

I have to admit to being guilty of much of what PeteH says, particularly the impressive recordings bit, but as I get older I just wish to sit back and enjoy the music. The key is to stop listening for individual details (within reason) and mentally step back to enjoy the whole. There are limits, of course, and I defy anyone to enjoy Coldplay's X&Y! I do wonder if professional HiFi reviewers, who have to listen for the technical stuff, are capable of listening to music as well? Which reviewer is most likelely to succeed? Someone like Dave Berriman, perhaps?

Cheers

S

 

[felix]

Excellent post, Pete.

 

[Tenson]

State of mind defiantly changes the enjoyment and also changes what you listen for I think. When you are drunk do you listen to details? I don't I just enjoy the emotion.

When I have been doing a lot of engineering work if I then stick on some other music to relax in the evening I find it very hard to stop analysing them music like I am mixing it and just listen to the thing as a whole. It takes quite some time to switch modes I find and just enjoy it.

 

[Effem]

Absolutely wrong and not the point of the thread. The point is to side step this issue entirely. It matters not if your assessment is objective or subjective. You are fighting the old battles I am not. I require people to *think* what is their motivation, what are the principles behind that motivation. I would call it a third way if the terms hadn't been patented by the labour party.

Richard

The primary motivation must be entertainment surely? Rather than watching the tripe on TV, running around a muddy pitch chasing a ball, or doing gnome impersonations with a rod by a riverbank, we presumably have chosen listening to music as a way of relaxing and escaping the world. If that music makes you laugh, cry, angry or whatever, then it has made the connection, fuelled your imagination and elevated itself to something much higher than mere lift muzak.

However, if you spend the whole time admiring your shiny boxes, critically picking faults with your system, scanning the likes of ebay for your next cheap "uprade", buying all the hi-fi comics to absorb the reviews each month you are something other than an appreciator of good music and more into a hobby/passion/fixation with the kit itself and music has as much relevance to you as a 1khz test tone.