I am curious to learn what percentage of the membership uses live music as a reference against which to judge the success of an audio system.
There is the argument that we should instead evaluate a system in terms of how accurately it copies the original recording, because that is all that we, as consumers, have. I contend that we also have our memories of what live music sounds like, and that these memories can also guide us in our audio evaluations. The criticism, as I understand it, is that our ears and memory can not be trusted, and that the recording does not fully capture the performance, so referring to live music is fundamentally flawed.
Are these seemingly opposed approaches toward system evaluation irreconcilable?
There is the argument that we should instead evaluate a system in terms of how accurately it copies the original recording, because that is all that we, as consumers, have. I contend that we also have our memories of what live music sounds like, and that these memories can also guide us in our audio evaluations. The criticism, as I understand it, is that our ears and memory can not be trusted, and that the recording does not fully capture the performance, so referring to live music is fundamentally flawed.
Are these seemingly opposed approaches toward system evaluation irreconcilable?