What do you listen for in music?

Ditton,

It should have read 'I love the Live feel', the intimancy & presence and dynamics of the preformance from single harmonica and acoustic guitar blues to a melodic involving piece of fret work.
My system is geared up for this presentation, in this instance the texterious feel of the sound is (Wm explanation here) Palpable, rich & deep (with great trailing note definition and decay), tangable, intrinicaly raw & intimate with all those neuonses capatured giving that 'Live experiance'
Texture can also be described in vocal sence, with the inflections, solidity & gravitas totally presented in wholy convincing & realistic fashion.
Very few systems can do this (even expensive ones), therefore its difficult to fully give a genuinely accurate answer. Wm

 

thanks Wm, I get the drift, and have some empathy with that viewpoint: a real sense of presence, without the obligation to get the performers a cup of tea!

 

I'd like to add a few more comments, but I haven't got time just now and will be away for a week . So I'll just say: anyone whose appetite has been encouraged by all this talk of The Planets might like to tune into Radio 3 about now, as it's being played at the Proms tonight.

 

"... I think my hi-fi does do imaging, it's just that I'm not very interested in it. To me, music is about melodies, rhythm & emotion. I don't think it matters if you can tell where the various instruments have been placed in the mix, or not."

Found this when following another link/train-of-thought and stumbled into ManaSoundStage Land. It's from Bub/Devil, circa 2003. Seems spot on.

 

I've thought that before but you miss out on so much like the weird shapes instruments make between each other- the magic band and mercury rev spring to mind for doing this, and all the moving about in electronic stuff and so on. That can be the music in itself

 

OK, I'll check it out. Must confess that I've not really got into electronic stuff - have to get me an education.

 

Personally I listen for something innovative and new in music..
Not necessarily weird and deliberately obtuse, but stimulating.
Oh, and it's got to have rhythm first - though that doesn't have to mean a pounding drum beat. Bach and Schubert have both got it, as well as Parliament!

 

What an interesting thread. I think a tune is the thing I look for most in music, but not always. Like some of the previous contributors lyrics are relatively unimportant IMO, yet I know plenty of people who look into them very deeply and ignore the music. I used to work with a bloke who would wax lyrical about how the words in current pop songs were banal and meaningless [perhaps he had a point there] compared to the stuff that was about when he was growing up in the seventies, but conveniently ignored the music, which I heard as lumpy and dated. There are also times when the lyrical message is so clear that it can't fail to affect me, but not often. With people like Johhny Cash or Maria Callas I can't tell whether it's what they are singing or how they sing the words that move me.

I read very few books/poetry, mostly magazines. Maybe if I read more I'd get more out of lyrics...

I like most forms of music, excluding most heavy metal, most country and most western and opera. I like a good quality sound but it's not essential [have just bough some gamalan recordings from 1928 which were recorded from 78s, the recordings are crackly but the quality of the playing shines through].

Paul

 

Absolutely, especially since imaging/soundstaging doesn't actually exist in live music, certainly not to the extent to which it (may) exist on recordings. So if you think about it, the 'image' has no musical value whatsoever, and in the context of this thread, at the very least, the idea of the soundstage is redundant to music and what we may enjoy about it. Well, it is to me

 

I'm suprised you say that when you listen to aphex etc. Theres that track on druqks with the huge orbiting bass 'thing' that goes round the speakers. Wouldn't be much of a piece of music without it.

 

imaging does appear in music - live unamplified music that is.....apart from a pub tribute band, proms, busker (sometimes) how would you experience it? Maybe HiFi can help a little with that.

 

I think that you are right, I should have recalled my delight at hearing Kind of Blue played through GaryG's set up. I delighted in the focus of each player.

 

True, but I think that is one of very few exceptions to a general rule, exceptions which do largely come from electronically created music, at which point there is no real world reference for what we are hearing, unlike live forms of acoustic music.

 

I've been to plenty of classical performances in my life, from solo piano to string quartets to big orchestras and choirs performing works such as Beethoven's 9th and Brahms' Requiem in a variety of locations, and I have never heard imaging like it occurs in recorded music. At best it is very vague by comparison, nothing like the pinpoint placing that can be heard on some hifi. When was the last time you heard someone say of a live performance, "Wow, that imaging was awesome"?

My point is that I find imaging to be a completely non-essential element when enjoying music. Stereo is just an effect after all, and can in fact interfere with music when not properly implemented. Every mono record I have ever heard has not suffered for the lack of any 'soundstage'.

 

So, we have
a) for live music:
the work/score; the performance; the ears
and
b) for play of recorded music:
the work/score; the performance; the recording process; the reproduction; the ears.

In large part the score and performance involve more than one voice/instrument, and the intention is not always a wall of sound, so imaging, and yes also texture, is characteristic of (a) the live experience. For (b), our different time/space substitute for (a), we depend upon the recording process as well as the reproduction. Just as we dont want artefacts of the hifi kit for the reproduction, we can get distracted by the artefacts of the recording process (where the mikes are put, how the tracks are laid down etc).

 

Is that due to the room acoustics? Or is this a normal phenomenon? I am genuinly intreaged, as normaly human hearing can quite accurately pin point the sources of noise (required for survival?) - I dont have any scientific knowledge of this so if anyone can fill in the blanks, please feel free.

cheers //lamboy

 

Quite possibly when you think about it - most live music takes place in venues which are many times the such of our relatively small listening rooms.

 

imaging isn't that important to me either, good thing given the size of the speakers flanking my tiny room . the sound there can be a little in your face but nice all the same. there are records that my system gives a good account of imaging wise though - zorns spy vs spy seems to have been recorded by a couple of overhead mics although when i realised that i could have been pissed. so maybe it wasn't .either way it doesn't matter.

it's difficult to describe the sound of music in words and perhaps that's why only the illiterates that write for hifi mags think they can do it. giving it a shot though I 'd say i like some bass ( a 10 inch bass cone and evo 4 does that well to the volume point when the room has too much to do with it), i like some detail and for it to sound real. what 'real' becomes in this context is for my ears only though given it probably doesn't sound real at all.

forget it i'm rambling

 

Nice to see this is still going.

Who ever first mentioned 'Pulse' has probably hit the nail on the head for me. Rhythm is probably too orientated to Rock/Pop, whilst pulse works for most music and probably explains why I can listen to Jazz/Electronica/Prog quite easilly.

Imaging's importance varies for me. I suspect it partially depends on the attempt of the recording engineer/mixer to simulate a soundstage. A lot of live recording of Jazz has tremedous soundstage as do studio recordings. I guess because so many of these are relatively live in the studio.

 

Hurrah for me!