Awhile back I posted a three-part series on "You Are There" Absolute Sound: Can We Get There From Here? here, here, and here. Since I wrote that series there has been further abandonment of the sound of live unamplified music from a good seat in the concert hall where the music was recorded as the standard by which home music systems should be judged.
I think it is safe to say that those who go to concerts of such live unamplified music are more likely than others to want their home music systems to sound like the concert hall experience, at least tonally. But still, I think that because we don't have the literal visual aspects of a concert at home in an audio-only system, even the systems preferred by such folks tend to sound at least a bit bigger than life, at least if they can afford such sound. And these folks are a small and waning portion of the music listening public, basically because only classical and some church music is regularly performed this way, and the number of venues for that is shrinking, as are the audiences for such music in most parts of the world.
Of the magazines in the US which espoused the absolute sound as the goal, one--Stereophile--explicitly gave that up years ago. TAS, is a mixed bag, as far as I can tell, both in terms of the goal of the reproduction the reviewers seek and the type of music used to judge the results. The absolute sound is not talked about much as a goal even in the magazine which bears that name. Even the founder, HP, a few years back talked about digital reproduction and surround sound as "alternate realities." HP left the magazine, of course. Of the current contributors, only Robert Greene, Paul Seydor, and perhaps one or two others still seem to be True Believers in "the absolute sound" as the goal of home audio reproduction.
While I hear as much live unamplified classical and sacred music in great spaces these days as I ever did, I find that I, too, have abandoned the pure goal of recreating the truly realistic concert-hall experience at home. I tend to like my music served up surrealistically good sounding these days. Why is this?
Perhaps this is the fate of all audiophiles. While I do love music, at home my pursuit and concern has usually been at least as much about the sound of the music as it is the musical art portrayed in recordings. "Music lovers" care less about the sound of music playback at home, and are more transfixed by the beauty of the art. "Audiophiles" have trouble getting into the art if the sound gets in the way. Audiophiles are also concerned more about being able to clearly hear musical lines and details and are less concerned about blend. Perhaps because of the emphasis on clear separation of musical lines (and most audiophiles, not being well-trained musicians, cannot hear musical lines as clearly as trained musicians do in live performance anyway), audiophiles have emphasized the spatial aspects of music reproduction so that musical lines can be more easily unraveled from the concert's blend.
Audiophiles--and videophiles for that matter, and probably moreso--are looking for something that sounds and looks bigger than life. By bigger sonically I mean louder, larger, closer, bassier, treblier, more intimate, more detailed than in life, while at the same time having plenty of hall ambiance. Absolutely accurate midrange timbre is fine to add in, but not crucial to the experience as long as timbral inaccuracy does not rise to the level of an actively annoying omnipresent coloration, and the amount of permitted deviation from real tonality will vary widely with listeners.
The Muddy Waters Folksinger recording is a good example. That recording at once captures a very close-in perspective on the singer, the voice is both bassier and breathier/more intimate than one would ever hear from the audience. While capturing a close-in perspective with a huge presence of a person, there is room ambiance galore, too much, in fact. It's a surrealistic amalgamation that allows you to hear all the details you could possibly hear from an inch away to a hundred feet away, and then some.
The composite creates a close-up "visible" image of the performer, stage, and huge hall from mere sound. Most audiophiles are visual visual in their orientation to reproduced sound. They want to "see" the performer in front of them in a VERY DRAMATIC way. This visual aspect of sound reproduction is why audiophilia has been so preoccupied for a couple of generations now with the spatial aspects of sound reproduction. Audiophiles want to "see" the performers synthesized by how the sonic presentation is interpreted by the ears/brain even in the absence of any real visual cues. Thus, each aspect of the sonic presentation needs to be overemphasized in order to make the visual picture more obvious to the ears/eyes/brain. The performers need to appear bigger than life--right in the listening room a few inches or feet away. At the same time audiophiles want to hear the surrounding room in a very dramatic way in the form of room or artificial ambiance.
Think of how a football game is televised these days. If the screen is big and detailed enough, and the surround sound is good enough, even without 3-D effects many sports fans PREFER the home theater sports experience to going to the live game. Put aside the parking, crowds, smells, noise, and weather considerations of attending a live football game--those are probably overall a negative of the live event. But, beyond those considerations, think about what you can literally hear and see from even good 50-yard-line seats. Now compare this to the parabolic-mikes, multiple angle zooms, slow motion, instant replays, and overall shots which make up a fine televised football game. At home, you literally can see and hear more of how the action takes place, and hear and see it louder and the players bigger than you ever would from your game seats. It can be more exciting and involving at home and you don't have to put up with smells, sounds, weather, and parking of the real event. Yes, you can hear and see the crowd's excitement, the cheerleaders, crazy fan antics, famous personalities attending, all in an idealized way. And that's even before the play-by-play and color commentary. Bigger than life. A technologically enhanced experience.
That's what's going on in high-level home audio. Even those of us who love the real thing in the concert hall want a somewhat surreal experience at home to make up for the lack of real visual anchors. And we want the spatial aspects of the music reproduction exaggerated to make up for the fact that we don't have surround sound at all or, if we have surround sound, we don't usually find it satisfactory in recreating the visual illusion I'm talking about.
I think it is safe to say that those who go to concerts of such live unamplified music are more likely than others to want their home music systems to sound like the concert hall experience, at least tonally. But still, I think that because we don't have the literal visual aspects of a concert at home in an audio-only system, even the systems preferred by such folks tend to sound at least a bit bigger than life, at least if they can afford such sound. And these folks are a small and waning portion of the music listening public, basically because only classical and some church music is regularly performed this way, and the number of venues for that is shrinking, as are the audiences for such music in most parts of the world.
Of the magazines in the US which espoused the absolute sound as the goal, one--Stereophile--explicitly gave that up years ago. TAS, is a mixed bag, as far as I can tell, both in terms of the goal of the reproduction the reviewers seek and the type of music used to judge the results. The absolute sound is not talked about much as a goal even in the magazine which bears that name. Even the founder, HP, a few years back talked about digital reproduction and surround sound as "alternate realities." HP left the magazine, of course. Of the current contributors, only Robert Greene, Paul Seydor, and perhaps one or two others still seem to be True Believers in "the absolute sound" as the goal of home audio reproduction.
While I hear as much live unamplified classical and sacred music in great spaces these days as I ever did, I find that I, too, have abandoned the pure goal of recreating the truly realistic concert-hall experience at home. I tend to like my music served up surrealistically good sounding these days. Why is this?
Perhaps this is the fate of all audiophiles. While I do love music, at home my pursuit and concern has usually been at least as much about the sound of the music as it is the musical art portrayed in recordings. "Music lovers" care less about the sound of music playback at home, and are more transfixed by the beauty of the art. "Audiophiles" have trouble getting into the art if the sound gets in the way. Audiophiles are also concerned more about being able to clearly hear musical lines and details and are less concerned about blend. Perhaps because of the emphasis on clear separation of musical lines (and most audiophiles, not being well-trained musicians, cannot hear musical lines as clearly as trained musicians do in live performance anyway), audiophiles have emphasized the spatial aspects of music reproduction so that musical lines can be more easily unraveled from the concert's blend.
Audiophiles--and videophiles for that matter, and probably moreso--are looking for something that sounds and looks bigger than life. By bigger sonically I mean louder, larger, closer, bassier, treblier, more intimate, more detailed than in life, while at the same time having plenty of hall ambiance. Absolutely accurate midrange timbre is fine to add in, but not crucial to the experience as long as timbral inaccuracy does not rise to the level of an actively annoying omnipresent coloration, and the amount of permitted deviation from real tonality will vary widely with listeners.
The Muddy Waters Folksinger recording is a good example. That recording at once captures a very close-in perspective on the singer, the voice is both bassier and breathier/more intimate than one would ever hear from the audience. While capturing a close-in perspective with a huge presence of a person, there is room ambiance galore, too much, in fact. It's a surrealistic amalgamation that allows you to hear all the details you could possibly hear from an inch away to a hundred feet away, and then some.
The composite creates a close-up "visible" image of the performer, stage, and huge hall from mere sound. Most audiophiles are visual visual in their orientation to reproduced sound. They want to "see" the performer in front of them in a VERY DRAMATIC way. This visual aspect of sound reproduction is why audiophilia has been so preoccupied for a couple of generations now with the spatial aspects of sound reproduction. Audiophiles want to "see" the performers synthesized by how the sonic presentation is interpreted by the ears/brain even in the absence of any real visual cues. Thus, each aspect of the sonic presentation needs to be overemphasized in order to make the visual picture more obvious to the ears/eyes/brain. The performers need to appear bigger than life--right in the listening room a few inches or feet away. At the same time audiophiles want to hear the surrounding room in a very dramatic way in the form of room or artificial ambiance.
Think of how a football game is televised these days. If the screen is big and detailed enough, and the surround sound is good enough, even without 3-D effects many sports fans PREFER the home theater sports experience to going to the live game. Put aside the parking, crowds, smells, noise, and weather considerations of attending a live football game--those are probably overall a negative of the live event. But, beyond those considerations, think about what you can literally hear and see from even good 50-yard-line seats. Now compare this to the parabolic-mikes, multiple angle zooms, slow motion, instant replays, and overall shots which make up a fine televised football game. At home, you literally can see and hear more of how the action takes place, and hear and see it louder and the players bigger than you ever would from your game seats. It can be more exciting and involving at home and you don't have to put up with smells, sounds, weather, and parking of the real event. Yes, you can hear and see the crowd's excitement, the cheerleaders, crazy fan antics, famous personalities attending, all in an idealized way. And that's even before the play-by-play and color commentary. Bigger than life. A technologically enhanced experience.
That's what's going on in high-level home audio. Even those of us who love the real thing in the concert hall want a somewhat surreal experience at home to make up for the lack of real visual anchors. And we want the spatial aspects of the music reproduction exaggerated to make up for the fact that we don't have surround sound at all or, if we have surround sound, we don't usually find it satisfactory in recreating the visual illusion I'm talking about.