Absolute Sound is Rubbish

[tomelex]

The very idea, that somehow two channel stereo, is ever going to give you absolute sound, as defined by publication TAS, the sound of an unamplified acoustic instrument is rubbish.

It is impossible for plain old stereo to do it.

Yet, for decades, TAS has been spewing rubbish about how thousands of components and hundreds of combinations give you everything but just say one little itty bit of the absolute sound.

People who believe in the goal of absolute sound as defined by TAS are in fairy land.

Look at it this way, almost everyone watches movies or tv or flatscreens , ie video. Even with 3D tricks, no one expects the absolute view from such technology....yet TAS expects the absolute sound from a couple of speakers.....and have said thousands of times that some system is a referecne system and thus projects absolute sound.

Originally, JG Holt AFAIK was interested in stereo accurately replicating the recording, and since he was an engineer he seems to have known there was no absolute sound coming from plain old stereo. Yet, somehow this whole absolute sound thing came out, and equipment that had the same specs or even better than the very nearly identical progear, somehow became inferior to replicating the recording, and a whole weird world of high end came about, each one claiming to present its part of the absolute sound, and audiophiles also jumping on board on how realistic their systems sounded or some component sounded and then even they were under the crazy idea of absolute sound.

There is no absolute sound in the very same way there is no absolute video.

If you were not told that there was something wrong with the sound of your system every month, decade after decade, you might still have some of the fine gear you originally purchased, and spent more money on finding transducers and working with rooms to get a sound that you absolutely loved, at least at that moment in time, as even our idea of what we absolutely like changes.

It is just ludicrous, and I have not bought into it for a long time, but early on, I did. However, its a futile goal with two channel stereo, absolutely futile.

Tom

[rbbert]

The Absolute Sound has enough problems dealing with stereo; no need to invoke the mutli-channel specter to expose the magazine's deficiencies.

[microstrip]

The very idea, that somehow two channel stereo, is ever going to give you absolute sound, as defined by publication TAS, the sound of an unamplified acoustic instrument is rubbish.
(...)
It is just ludicrous, and I have not bought into it for a long time, but early on, I did. However, its a futile goal with two channel stereo, absolutely futile.

Tom

Tom,

I suggest you read the first lines of the Viewpoints of TAS Volume one Issue one. It says no where it will give you an absolute sound. However it refers to an Absolute in the reproduction of music , but connected to A referential reality. There were many views and articles on it - but as far as remember most of the time keeping this line.

For me TAS is not a Reference book or a receipt book. It was a space a debate between individuals, voicing a trend in high-end under some guide lines. I enjoyed it and currently still read most of it with interest.

The magazine had high and low periods, poor articles, so and so so articles and great articles. No magazine is perfect, but I am happy it existed and I think audiophiles should be thankful for its contribution to the high-end. YMMV, as they say.

Disclaimer - I own the TAS collection since issue 1.

[jdandy2]

I have said it before many times. All recordings, whether played on a lowly Victrola or a modern ultra premium sound system, are facsimiles, just copies, nothing more. As such they will never be anything closer to the original event than absolute copies, no matter how well recorded and reproduced. If you want absolute sound in your living room, hire a band. Set Norah Jones and band up in your home and let them do their thing. That is absolute sound.

[rbbert]

Although TAS had its ups and downs when HP was running the show, readers at least know there was a guiding spirit, so to speak. Sadly, under Tom Martin and Robert Harley this is no longer true. The best example of that is the recent 4 part article on computer audio, full of inaccuracies and misguided recommendations. Even after the original article's publication, there was an editorial response to a letter to the editor which made a repeated plea for audiophiles and the download industry to avoid FLAC in favor of WAV or AIFF. I emailed Harley about this (one of many emails from me calling the magazine to task, only one of which has so far been published) and his response to me was that the published response to the Letter to the Editor had nothing to do with him and he didn't see why it should. Apparently neither the article nor the authors' responses to published letters are related to The Absolute Sound magazine itself? I can't figure it out.

[cjfrbw]

I agree that the term "absolute sound" is a ringing absurdity. One would have to have been at the original performance with an eidetic auditory memory, and even then, as soon as the vibrations hit the microphone and the sound studio, it became something different.

Otherwise, it is the ultimate conceit of subjective arrogance that one could surmise the original performance and assess its veracity from a recording, just using one's memory bank of recalled instrumental sounds.

It gives plenty of room for the critic to be entirely arbitrary, while sounding learned and profound.

Another term I don't like is the "straight wire with gain", used to justify some kind of amplification scenario. As soon as there is gain, there is no more straight wire, and even a straight wire implies loss.

[Phelonious Ponk]

But, Tom.....how do you feel about it?

Tim

[whart]

Were you around when it first came out? And the original Stereophile when it was published, somewhat eratically, by J.G. Holt out of Elywn, Pa.? Both magazines sought to address the things we take for granted today and that make up a good part of the discussion on this board and many others. They both refused advertising and sought to define why equipment sounds the way it does, contained philosphical pieces on reproduced sound, the shortcomings of recordings and equpment and in fits and starts, carved out the niche that we refer to, for better or worse, as the "high-end" of audio. They both sought to encourage a form of enlightened listening, that directed potential purchasers and owners of the equipment to look beyond the specifications and consider equipment as part of a larger 'system' approach. I'm no apologist for either founder, but I think we all owe both of them a nod of thanks. Granted, both magazines have had their ups and downs and have suffered as new markets for home theatre, computers, and the like, drew potential entrants into this hobby. And, there were and are others to whom we also probably owe a debt of gratitude.
The theoretical construct of 'an absolute sound' is, I suppose, one working construct to approach how to listen and assess the sound of equipment. I'm not going to quarrel with whether that is right or wrong- to me there is no 'holistic' approach to any of this - but I have to give both Pearson and Holt credit- l learned an awful lot from reading both magazines back in the day- and also recognize that as defining principles, these guys were on to something as far back as the early 70's- when I first came into this hobby seriously- that we continue to refine, think about, strive for- and yes, even argue about -today.

[MylesBAstor]

Were you around when it first came out? And the original Stereophile when it was published, somewhat eratically, by J.G. Holt out of Elywn, Pa.? Both magazines sought to address the things we take for granted today and that make up a good part of the discussion on this board and many others. They both refused advertising and sought to define why equipment sounds the way it does, contained philosphical pieces on reproduced sound, the shortcomings of recordings and equpment and in fits and starts, carved out the niche that we refer to, for better or worse, as the "high-end" of audio. They both sought to encourage a form of enlightened listening, that directed potential purchasers and owners of the equipment to look beyond the specifications and consider equipment as part of a larger 'system' approach. I'm no apologist for either founder, but I think we all owe both of them a nod of thanks. Granted, both magazines have had their ups and downs and have suffered as new markets for home theatre, computers, and the like, drew potential entrants into this hobby. And, there were and are others to whom we also probably owe a debt of gratitude.
The theoretical construct of 'an absolute sound' is, I suppose, one working construct to approach how to listen and assess the sound of equipment. I'm not going to quarrel with whether that is right or wrong- to me there is no 'holistic' approach to any of this - but I have to give both Pearson and Holt credit- l learned an awful lot from reading both magazines back in the day- and also recognize that as defining principles, these guys were on to something as far back as the early 70's- when I first came into this hobby seriously- that we continue to refine, think about, strive for- and yes, even argue about -today.

The problem being then that the mags of the day only paid lip service to the sound of the equipment.

[Gregadd]

Much more likely that it exists between your ears or sitting close to your speaker?

There is of course an absolute sound. Live music. That must be the standard. Of course Mikles Davis is not in my living room. It's an illusion. But I try to come as close as I can.

Harry Pearson said:

Most of the extant reviewers now at work in the fields of high fidelity are writing ad copy, not critical assessments that compare componentry to a known reference, such as an absolute sound (to wit, real music occurring in a real space). To use such a standard would require the thinking reviewer to make distinctions among equipment, in effect grading them on how well they translate the reality of music. Without using a standard of this sort, then everything can be good because there is no touchstone. The situation is now the worst it has been since I felt impelled to start a magazine three decades ago. [emphasis added]
TNT-AUDIO > http://www.tnt-audio.com/intervis/pearson2008_e.html

J.Gordon Holt siad
J.Sounds Like? An Audio Glossary
By J. Gordon Holt • Posted: Jul 29, 1993
Subjective audio is the evaluation of reproduced sound quality by ear. It is based on the novel idea that, since audio equipment is made to be listened to, what it sounds like is more important than how it measures. This was a natural outgrowth of the 1950s high-fidelity "revolution," which spawned the notion that a component, and an audio system as a whole, should reproduce what is fed into it, without adding anything to it or subtracting anything from it.
Traditional measurements of such things as harmonic distortion, frequency response, and power output can reveal many things a product is doing imperfectly, but there have never been any generally accepted guidelines for equating the measurements with the way they affect the reproduced sound. And there was strong evidence that many of the things people were hearing were not being measured at all.

Subjective reviewing simply skirts the question of how objective test results relate to what we hear, endeavoring to describe what the reproducing system sounds like.

But what should it sound like? The pat answer, of course, is that it should sound like "the real thing," but it's a bit more complicated than that. If the system itself is accurate, it will reproduce what is on the recording. And if the recording itself isn't an accurate representation of the original sound, an accurate sound won't sound realistic. But what does the recording sound like? That's hard to tell, because you can't judge the fidelity of a recording without playing it, and you can't judge the fidelity of the reproducing system without listening to it---usually by playing a recording through it. Since each is used to judge the other, it is difficult to tell much about either, except whether their combination sounds "real." But it can be done.

Even after more than 116 years of technological advancement (footnote 1), today's almost-perfect sound reproduction still cannot duplicate the sound of "the real thing" well enough to fool someone who has learned to listen analytically---a trained listener. But the goal of literal realism, or "accuracy," remains the standard against which a subjective reviewer evaluates any audio product design. Emphassi supplie]The casual audiophile hears reproduced sound as a whole, and judges its quality according to whether it sounds "good." Many reviewers never reach that stage of perception because---convinced by their measurements that all competing products sound "essentially the same"---they never make the effort to listen critically to reproduced sound. The reason a subjective reviewer hears more than the "objective" reviewer is not that his auditory equipment is superior. It's because he has accepted the premise that identical measurements do not necessarily ensure identical sound, and has trained himself to hear the differences when they exist.

The experienced listener does not just hear the totality of reproduced sound. He hears into it, observing how the component or system handles a variety of sonic attributes which make up the whole. Instead of simply "all the highs and all the lows," he may hear a coloration that his experience has shown to indicate a treble peak. Or he may hear a lengthening of normally brief bass notes which he has learned to equate with a low-frequency resonance or a lack of woofer damping. Of course, both these problems would be revealed by measurements, but equating their measured severity with their adverse effects on the sound is another matter. To do that, we need words to attach to these effects. Those words are what we call subjective terminology.

The language of subjectivity has been around since before Edison. Musicians have long been familiar with terms like "mellow," "strident," "rich," and "euphonic," but the advent of reproduced music introduced new kinds of sonic qualities for which new descriptive terms were needed. The 1953 Radiotron Designer's Handbook---for its time, the "bible" of electronics design---listed more than 70 terms, most of which are still in use today.

Stereophile magazine, launched in 1962, was the first to review audio products on the basis of their sound rather than their measurements. Stereophile and other like-minded magazines have expanded subjectivity's working 70-word vocabulary to over 300 terms, all of which are listed and defined in this series of articles.

Most subjective-audio terms that are not drawn from everyday usage (such as "strident") fall into three categories: 1) Onomatopoeia---words that sound like what they describe; 2) Imagery---words that evoke a mental image; and 3) Sensories---words that relate things we hear to more-familiar things we see or touch. For example, the term "boomy" is onomatopoeic, because a bass peak sounds like the word "boom." The term "airy" elicits an image of expansive openness, like a large, high-ceilinged room with lots of big windows, to describe treble extension that seemingly has no limit. And the sensorial term "gritty" will have immediate meaning to anyone who has ever chewed lettuce with sand in it.

Some terms listed here are not descriptive at all, but designate certain things that are of concern only to audiophiles who listen carefully. Examples are resolution and soundstaging, which are two of the sonic characteristics used for judging system performance. Other terms---descriptive and otherwise---relate exclusively to reproduction from vinyl LPs, which are still favored over Compact Discs by many audio perfectionists.

Different subjective terms often have the same meaning, and some have more than one meaning. Don't be put off by this. Subjective terminology can never be as precise as the language of physics. But imprecise or not, it's still a much more meaningful way of describing reproduced sound than just saying, "It sounds fine."

Now that this glossary is available, there's no longer any excuse for an audio reviewer saying, "I can hear a difference, but there's no way of describing it." Now, there is a way.

I am indebted to Old Colony Books, of Peterborough, New Hampshire, for permission to excerpt extensively from my book, The Audio Glossary (footnote 2).




Tom you do not need to attack stereo to pursue other alternatives. Those who pursue it need not indulge in the circular logic that they have already achieved it.

Changing Equipment.

The change of equipment may be based on mayy factors. Men are by nature Hunter/Gathers. No more is this palyed out by the tv remotes control men ar constantly hunting for the perfect program. Once we achieve we are on to something else. The two moist prevalent lead is to seek different equipment. One we never heard it before . Two we can't afford. Our creatror seemd to have designed us not to be complacent.
The statement is true we were often led astray by reviewers. They of course were on a similar journey. They never heard it either.

Lighten up a little.