Is Live, Unamplified Music the Correct Reference for the Sound of our Audio Systems?

[andromedaaudio]

No cheating in a church, the reverb makes the need of amplification unnecessary

 

[andromedaaudio]

Brussels has some Nice churches , so has England , London off course.
I listened to most of my CD collection in my new place , with different acoustics, same conclusion, my cd's are finally in storage .
I only listen to tape and watch/ listen to dvd's .
Gonna ad some acoustic treatment , buy a halcro DM 68 plus a ml 32 and a tapemachine or 2.
Actually another player that i liked was the ml 390 s

 

[andromedaaudio]

Yesterday i was in one of nicest medieval historical towns in Europe , Leuven OR louvain in french
Visited the museums there incl the st Pieter s church.
They were holding unamplified vocal recitals there in different places in the church.
NO real need to change my Amps i think , i have vocal recitals on tape .
The tubes in the cat might soften things up a Little bit.
What i think more and more being the Achilles heel in high end. Is the recording medium / recording proces.
The rest adds up quite nicely.
And the room off course also extremely important

 

[853guy]

Not only do I believe in a live reference, I also believe in strategising the whole system experience around live? What do I mean?

So, sonically, as we have all discussed, the system should represent our mental template of the live experiences we have had. Generically speaking, and ignoring exceptions like Mike's, for me, the vocal and violin concerts are best done by planars - this is what I would choose for choral, opera, and arias. For piano, brass, and woodwinds, I prefer the flow and tone or SET+horns. For symphony, it becomes a tough choice. If it is a tutti based orchestra, like B's 9th, then I prefer planars. If it is a symphony largely dominated by softer, quieter movements, like Mahler 3 or 7 (which have an emphasis on brass and woodwinds), then SET+horns. Overall, I prefer SET+horns if I had to have only one system, while ideally I would like two. On a budget, it would be a planar.

None of these systems are capable of properly producing a good rock concert, or an amplified musical like Aladdin (seriously folks, of the 50 - 70 concerts I have attended the past year (17 unamplified since this Jan, just counted, plus two musicals (Hamilton and Grinning man)), one of the most exciting was Aladdin. Take your kids there, they will love it too. The bass, dynamics, choral, and overall music make it fun to attend as well as to fantasize from an audiophile viewpoint).

If you want to do both rock and classical, my best choice remains the big Apogees. And yes, I have attended a fair share of rock concerts, including watching GnR and ACDC thrice, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Soundgarden, Eric Clapton 5 times, Dylan, Knopfler, etc and some Zep cover bands.

That was the speakers. Regarding source, I cannot see bass and flow and liquidity and tone being recreated by digital like by vinyl. So, if one wanted to listen to violin or original rock LPs, vinyl should be the main choice. Bonham sounds anemic on digital and on the wrong LP reissues compared to how he sounds on originals and the classic 45s. But, how much do you give up sonically? Practically speaking, I wouldn't advise vinyl unless you can afford 10000 records, or very few well curated 200 - 500. Digital is good enough. Vinyl is better.

Why did I mention the point on the number of records? Everytime I go to a good performance, I come back on youtube and look at different performances of the same piece. If you visit sites like talkclassical, gramophone, violinist etc, you will find loads of recommendations for your favorite classical pieces. There is only one way to gain exposure to so many, and that is streaming. You can then pick a couple of favorites on vinyl.

As an example, read the performances mentioned here on page 5, and see if you feel like listening to them. If you strategised around this, you will need a streamer. If not,
for just sonics, vinyl. http://www.gidonkremer.net/uploads/Ludwig_UK-EN_FINAL_0.1.pdf

Hi Bonzo,

I had meant to respond to you a while back but got waylaid by… life, probably.

I think there’s a lot of validity to your post, so consider this an additional observation to perhaps be considered alongside.

While I understand the use of live acoustical music as a reference (as opposed to the reference, though some may/will disagree) since we as a species have been familiar with unamplified music for thousands of years prior to the invention of electricity, I would never personally strategise a whole system experience in reference to live unamplified music.

The reason for me not to use exclusively acoustic music for “stress testing a system” (to borrow a phrase) is not just because my musical diet is only partially satiated by those sorts of works (though I remain a huge fan of early music, classical, modern, post-modern, and the avantgarde apropos both orchestral/choral and jazz - Henry Threadgill, Pauline Oliveros and Bang on a Can in the last couple of hours).

It’s because even though woodwind instruments (especially the oboe and clarinet) produce strong second- and third-harmonics relative to the fundamental and some higher order harmonics (particularly around the 11th through 13th through music lower in level) that cause the wave form to depart from a sinusoidal shaped form and take on a more square-waved shaped form, it’s not possible for it to produce a pure square wave (in the same way no acoustic instrument can produce a pure sine wave, although this becomes less true the higher the frequency relative to the instrument, i.e. pipe organ comes close).

Even where multiple oboes are played simultaneously and overblown, their behaviour as acoustic instruments is defined by the limits of their physical structure - they cannot exceed those limits via player technique alone, and will only produce a finite number of harmonics (which is of course true of all acoustics instruments and gives them their unique timbre).

Aside from the fact that I personally listen to a lot of electronica (including variants of analogue synths, digital synths, sampling and “pure” computer music), there’s nothing in nature that approximates a pure square wave.

Therefore, while most acoustic music will produce sinusoidal type waves in the main, only electronic music has the ability to create pure square waves and, depending upon musical content, in combination with waveforms that include sinusoidal, square, triangular and sawtooth simultaneously. (1)

The combination of these waveforms is a very different proposition for a system to attempt to play, generating multiple harmonics (odd-integer harmonics exclusively in the case of a square wave, and of an infinite number) and inharmonics at amplitudes and intervals that do not occur in nature requiring far more bandwidth from the system itself (2).

Of course, if one’s diet is comprised exclusively of acoustic music, than it’s fair to argue submitting a system to music genres one is disinterested in is redundant, and in fact may allow one to assemble a system that excels at the recreation of those genres to a (highly) satisfying level via specific combinations of gear, especially if of limited cumulative bandwidth and amplitude.

However, for those of us whose musical diet is comprised of genres that are not just acoustic, and especially, genres that generate sounds that do not occur in nature (i.e. acoustically), then it would seem prudent to submit the system in question to the type of music that will generate tones, harmonic/inharmonic content and amplitudes that will push the limits of that system, since all a system is ever doing is recreating waveforms of various types (being genre illiterate).

Nevertheless, I think it’s perhaps true that most if not all of us build our systems around the type of music we prefer to one degree or another. At the same time, appreciating that unamplified acoustic music does have a role to play in shaping our sensibilities should not deter us from appreciating music itself has evolved both as an art form and sonically too. For those of us whose collection is more varied, then, sounds produced acoustically alone will not suffice in determining system suitability.

Be well!

853guy


(1) Were electricity never invented then perhaps acoustic music would be considered “the” reference. Of course, what then would power our systems…?

(2) Hence the predilection of many for ‘girl and guitar’ at audio shows and demo rooms.

 

[morricab]

Hi Bonzo,

I had meant to respond to you a while back but got waylaid by… life, probably.

I think there’s a lot of validity to your post, so consider this an additional observation to perhaps be considered alongside.

While I understand the use of live acoustical music as a reference (as opposed to the reference, though some may/will disagree) since we as a species have been familiar with unamplified music for thousands of years prior to the invention of electricity, I would never personally strategise a whole system experience in reference to live unamplified music.

The reason for me not to use exclusively acoustic music for “stress testing a system” (to borrow a phrase) is not just because my musical diet is only partially satiated by those sorts of works (though I remain a huge fan of early music, classical, modern, post-modern, and the avantgarde apropos both orchestral/choral and jazz - Henry Threadgill, Pauline Oliveros and Bang on a Can in the last couple of hours).

It’s because even though woodwind instruments (especially the oboe and clarinet) produce strong second- and third-harmonics relative to the fundamental and some higher order harmonics (particularly around the 11th through 13th through music lower in level) that cause the wave form to depart from a sinusoidal shaped form and take on a more square-waved shaped form, it’s not possible for it to produce a pure square wave (in the same way no acoustic instrument can produce a pure sine wave, although this becomes less true the higher the frequency relative to the instrument, i.e. pipe organ comes close).

Even where multiple oboes are played simultaneously and overblown, their behaviour as acoustic instruments is defined by the limits of their physical structure - they cannot exceed those limits via player technique alone, and will only produce a finite number of harmonics (which is of course true of all acoustics instruments and gives them their unique timbre).

Aside from the fact that I personally listen to a lot of electronica (including variants of analogue synths, digital synths, sampling and “pure” computer music), there’s nothing in nature that approximates a pure square wave.

Therefore, while most acoustic music will produce sinusoidal type waves in the main, only electronic music has the ability to create pure square waves and, depending upon musical content, in combination with waveforms that include sinusoidal, square, triangular and sawtooth simultaneously. (1)

The combination of these waveforms is a very different proposition for a system to attempt to play, generating multiple harmonics (odd-integer harmonics exclusively in the case of a square wave, and of an infinite number) and inharmonics at amplitudes and intervals that do not occur in nature requiring far more bandwidth from the system itself (2).

Of course, if one’s diet is comprised exclusively of acoustic music, than it’s fair to argue submitting a system to music genres one is disinterested in is redundant, and in fact may allow one to assemble a system that excels at the recreation of those genres to a (highly) satisfying level via specific combinations of gear, especially if of limited cumulative bandwidth and amplitude.

However, for those of us whose musical diet is comprised of genres that are not just acoustic, and especially, genres that generate sounds that do not occur in nature (i.e. acoustically), then it would seem prudent to submit the system in question to the type of music that will generate tones, harmonic/inharmonic content and amplitudes that will push the limits of that system, since all a system is ever doing is recreating waveforms of various types (being genre illiterate).

Nevertheless, I think it’s perhaps true that most if not all of us build our systems around the type of music we prefer to one degree or another. At the same time, appreciating that unamplified acoustic music does have a role to play in shaping our sensibilities should not deter us from appreciating music itself has evolved both as an art form and sonically too. For those of us whose collection is more varied, then, sounds produced acoustically alone will not suffice in determining system suitability.

Be well!

853guy


(1) Were electricity never invented then perhaps acoustic music would be considered “the” reference. Of course, what then would power our systems…?

(2) Hence the predilection of many for ‘girl and guitar’ at audio shows and demo rooms.

Hi 853guy,

I cannot really buy your premise that the reproduction of electronic music is fundamentally different than acoustic music because it doesn't exist in nature... A reference is something that you can refer to determine the accuracy of the thing you are trying determine the accuracy of. For real, unamplified acoustic instruments and other sounds, we have that reference and it is burned into our DNA and daily experience. This is the reference and live sounds are rarely mistaken for a reproduction. The concept that seems to be difficult is that if a system is accurately (hypothetically speaking) reproducing the wide pallette of acoustic music then it will also be accurate with all other kinds of sounds, including electronic sounds. The system doesn't care what kind of music it is...it just passes a signal voltage and current in time and does so accurately or inaccurately. Think of it like the musical equivalent of the transitive property...

The difference is whether or not there is any way for you to tell if the sounds it is generating are accurate or not. Here is where real acoustic music can tell you how close you are to the right track and electronica cannot even begin to tell you if it is being reproduced correctly...there is no reference...nothing to compare it against...how would you know what a square wave really sounds like? I have heard many...but only through a speaker so they always sounded different and so I actually have no idea what a square wave really sounds like...

What does this mean? Well, I think it means that IF you manage to get a system together that sounds more like the real thing with great recordings of acoustic music then it will also be more like the "real" thing for electronic music because the system doesn't change its properties depending on the music played.

There is one possible exception and that is if the electronic music for some reason overloads the system (more likely the electronics I would think) and then it begins to distort in ways different than it would with acoustic music. I think under most circumstances this is unlikely unless the electronics have a narrow window for overload.

IMO, this has nothing to do with taste in music. If a system seems to do acoustic music well but is not "accurate" (again, how would you know?) with your favorite electronica then probably a closer listen to the acoustic music will reveal it is not so accurate afterall. Conversely, I have heard many systems that seemed to better with synthetic music than with acoustic music but these are almost certainly inaccurate systems because the only thing we can reference tells us they are wrong. The electronic music can sound like almost anything and perhaps a system that truncates natural acoustic and instrumental decay works "better" for the clarity of complex mixes of synthetic music...but that doesn't mean it is accurate.

 

[KeithR]

No - because on this thread there are 500 people with 500 different versions of what sounds live to them.

Just on this thread: Brad has never confessed a SS amp that sounds real because he heard a Strad at home. Kedar visits a symphony every other day and thinks amp decisions and topologies are relatively unimportant. I personally don't find symphonic performances representative of SET amps. I have a friend that says the only way an acoustic guitar sounds real is through a SET amp.

So all of this is just meaningless. It makes for internet forum banter, but doesn't matter in real life.

 

[Al M.]

No - because on this thread there are 500 people with 500 different versions of what sounds live to them.

Just on this thread: Brad has never confessed a SS amp that sounds real because he heard a Strad at home. Kedar visits a symphony every other day and thinks amp decisions and topologies are relatively unimportant. I personally don't find symphonic performances representative of SET amps. I have a friend that says the only way an acoustic guitar sounds real is through a SET amp.

So all of this is just meaningless. It makes for internet forum banter, but doesn't matter in real life.

Yes, but you will certainly know that some opinions are more equal than others

 

[bonzo75]

To be precise, amps need to be matched to the speakers. All my favorite valve (power amp) systems are SETs on horns (and real horns, not cones posing as horns). And there are many bad SET horn systems too. And all my favorite non horn systems are SS. Couple of exceptions.

But yes, I have never heard a Strad in my room. And when I go to a concert it is to enjoy the concert, not to say the orchestra is recreating my sound at home

 

[DaveC]

I have never found improvements to acoustic music and vocals music made electronic music worse and vice versa.

However, it is definitely true that some systems simply can't reproduce demanding electronic music, panels don't handle square waves well at all! So electronic music can test a system past the limits of acoustic music. Whether this matter to someone who never listens to electronica is debatable though.

 

[bonzo75]

I have never found improvements to acoustic music and vocals music made electronic music worse and vice versa.

However, it is definitely true that some systems simply can't reproduce demanding electronic music, panels don't handle square waves well at all! So electronic music can test a system past the limits of acoustic music. Whether this matter to someone who never listens to electronica is debatable though.

I have no clue to electronic music but Justin who owns apogee duettas loves them because he is into electronica. He is a bass head.

ps: I don't disagree it can stress a system more, especially in the bass

 

[KeithR]

I have never found improvements to acoustic music and vocals music made electronic music worse and vice versa.

However, it is definitely true that some systems simply can't reproduce demanding electronic music, panels don't handle square waves well at all! So electronic music can test a system past the limits of acoustic music. Whether this matter to someone who never listens to electronica is debatable though.

Electronic music is much more demanding in the bass than acoustic and has the tendency to show people what real bass should sound like. Play the new Aphex Twin and watch meters on a Mac or ARC go buck wild

 

[andromedaaudio]

I have yet to hear a set amp do that well.
The relentless drive of housemusic for example
NO good on a set , furocious /epic sounding on the Boulder 1060

 

[DaveC]

Electronic music is much more demanding in the bass than acoustic and has the tendency to show people what real bass should sound like. Play the new Aphex Twin and watch meters on a Mac or ARC go buck wild

Thanks, I'll check it out.

One track to check out is "Never Mind" by Infected Mushroom on the album Army of Mushrooms. And pretty much anything by Opiuo. Amon Tobin has super-low frequency bass going on in some of his music that most probably don't even realize exists.

 

[morricab]

Electronic music is much more demanding in the bass than acoustic and has the tendency to show people what real bass should sound like. Play the new Aphex Twin and watch meters on a Mac or ARC go buck wild

What real bass? You mean synthetic bass, where you have no idea what it should sound like?

 

[morricab]

No - because on this thread there are 500 people with 500 different versions of what sounds live to them.

Just on this thread: Brad has never confessed a SS amp that sounds real because he heard a Strad at home. Kedar visits a symphony every other day and thinks amp decisions and topologies are relatively unimportant. I personally don't find symphonic performances representative of SET amps. I have a friend that says the only way an acoustic guitar sounds real is through a SET amp.

So all of this is just meaningless. It makes for internet forum banter, but doesn't matter in real life.

Live sounds live and for unamplified music nearly everyone will easily hear the difference from reproduced. How they explain what live means to them is an issue but not that we have different versions of live. So, you may not be able to describe Live but you sure know when you hear and and when you don't. Note, I am never discussing amplified live...that is something different again.

I don't single out SS amps (although I have yet to hear one that really approaches the presence and real feeling of a good SET)...most amps, SS or tube, are inadequate.

Listen to your friend...he sounds like he knows something.

" I personally don't find symphonic performances representative of SET amps" This comment has no meaning...how are a symphonic performance and an amplifier even comparable?

It matters in the believability of the reproduction...if you don't care about that then we are really talking past each other.

 

[853guy]

Hi 853guy,

I cannot really buy your premise that the reproduction of electronic music is fundamentally different than acoustic music because it doesn't exist in nature... A reference is something that you can refer to determine the accuracy of the thing you are trying determine the accuracy of. For real, unamplified acoustic instruments and other sounds, we have that reference and it is burned into our DNA and daily experience. This is the reference and live sounds are rarely mistaken for a reproduction. The concept that seems to be difficult is that if a system is accurately (hypothetically speaking) reproducing the wide pallette of acoustic music then it will also be accurate with all other kinds of sounds, including electronic sounds. The system doesn't care what kind of music it is...it just passes a signal voltage and current in time and does so accurately or inaccurately. Think of it like the musical equivalent of the transitive property...

The difference is whether or not there is any way for you to tell if the sounds it is generating are accurate or not. Here is where real acoustic music can tell you how close you are to the right track and electronica cannot even begin to tell you if it is being reproduced correctly...there is no reference...nothing to compare it against...how would you know what a square wave really sounds like? I have heard many...but only through a speaker so they always sounded different and so I actually have no idea what a square wave really sounds like...

What does this mean? Well, I think it means that IF you manage to get a system together that sounds more like the real thing with great recordings of acoustic music then it will also be more like the "real" thing for electronic music because the system doesn't change its properties depending on the music played.

There is one possible exception and that is if the electronic music for some reason overloads the system (more likely the electronics I would think) and then it begins to distort in ways different than it would with acoustic music. I think under most circumstances this is unlikely unless the electronics have a narrow window for overload.

IMO, this has nothing to do with taste in music. If a system seems to do acoustic music well but is not "accurate" (again, how would you know?) with your favorite electronica then probably a closer listen to the acoustic music will reveal it is not so accurate afterall. Conversely, I have heard many systems that seemed to better with synthetic music than with acoustic music but these are almost certainly inaccurate systems because the only thing we can reference tells us they are wrong. The electronic music can sound like almost anything and perhaps a system that truncates natural acoustic and instrumental decay works "better" for the clarity of complex mixes of synthetic music...but that doesn't mean it is accurate.

Hey morricab,

How are you doing? Forgive me for the length of this post as I don't have time to write a short one.

Ah, the ol’ “accuracy” thing, huh?

Fundamentally, though I agree with you on many things, I disagree with your hypothesis here because for me “accuracy” as an independent arbiter is nothing more than individual preference expressed with a level of conviction.

Unfortunately, we are now only repeating arguments covered here previously. Though there are many who wish to discuss this topic, hence perhaps why it seems to emerge into new threads each year, there is still no single, fundamentally agreed upon concrete ideal as “accurate”. There is only “accurate to within an objectively measurable threshold” and “accurate to how I remember it or think it should sound”. One is an objectively defined correlation apropos audibility, the other a subjective preference formed into an opinion. Both of those are completely problematic, and have nothing to do with the experience of live unamplified music.

We can have two world-class classical engineers show up to the same scoring session asked to bring their most accurate mics, and they will bring different ones. They can then be asked to record/mix/master the results as accurately as possible to what they just heard live and will be doing so via memory relative to preference. We can ask two world class component designers to create the most accurate amplifier possible and they will diverge in topology, implementation and parts selection. What’s more, we can have those two designers produce amplifiers that by accepted methods of measurement are completely objectively “accurate” yet still diverge in how the subject perceives the way in which those amplifiers make music when paired with a transducer to convert the signal into sound waves.

Yes, we as a species have a long history of listening to unamplified (non-electronic) music as I mentioned above. But even acknowledging that fact, with thousands of years of experience burned into our socio-cultural DNA, if not our biophysiological makeup, we can still not get two people to agree on what the most accurate way of recording and playing back the same acoustic performance will be, even if they were there at the time.

So “accuracy” in-and-of-itself has no meaning for me. It’s a term that has no utility value apropos my perception of music. Not just when applied to the question of “how do you know your favourite electronic music is being played back accurately?” but also when applied to the question of “how do you know any type of music is being played back accurately?”.

Why? Because the answer will mean either one of two things with the following justifications:

A) Yes, because it is “accurate” to within an objectively measurable threshold (though directly comparing the musical waveform of the encoded format versus that same waveform when played back and measured at the speaker/room interface will of course render any illusions of accuracy to indeed be illusions), or;

B) Yes, because it is “accurate” to my individual preferences expressed with conviction (or in other words, yes, it matches what I like to think/remember/believe “accuracy” sounds like based on my prior experience).

Therefore, if it’s possible that two individuals possessing a lifetime of attending and/or playing/conducting classical concerts at the highest level will still be overwhelmingly likely to diverge in their preferences apropos their choice of hi-fi system, each claiming theirs must be “more accurate” because they can back it up with superior knowledge of what live unamplified music sounds like, what does that tell us about the utility value of that reference?

Nothing. Again, it only tells us about their preferences, and the justifications they use to make them.

Granted, it has some utility value for the manufacturing and measuring of components. But even in cases in which those measurements are off the chart amazing, we still have plenty of people who do not prefer those components in spite of their objective “accuracy”. I’ve heard plenty, as perhaps have you. Their designers are adamant I am wrong, since they have many, many years of unamplified live music attendance, and can produce a chart showing me how accurate their amplifiers are when playing test tones on a bench.

Therefore, if it’s clear that despite the fact we can measure degrees of accuracy objectively but still not prefer it subjectively - or worse, consider the possibility the first-order effects of achieving objective accuracy have come with second-and third-order effects of emotional detachment or psychological objection, how useful is accuracy as a construct in reality?

Of course, the argument goes that in order for a component to be “truly accurate” (we now get even more qualifying), it must reproduce both the waveform without deviation and the emotional content. And we measure the emotional content of the original event how, exactly? By relying on the subject’s opinion? Do we then use a subjective criteria to judge an objective one? Wouldn’t that be just as problematic as relying on the subject’s… er, subjectivity?

We could measure the brain’s response directly to see what areas were stimulated and certainly I am all in favour of such an approach. I’ve posted many links to research to those who are studying the brain’s neurobiological response to music. By mapping the brain’s emotional centres relative to musical stimuli we could indeed bypass the subject’s subjectivity and get closer to some ideal of what the brain considers to be accurate, but even then, all we are ever really doing is understanding more about individual preference and how the subject perceives reality - it does not necessarily tell us anything about reality itself.

I get that in theory we say want accuracy. In practice, our divergence of how we go about achieving that suggests we just want to be happy. Claimed preference (what we say we do) is often very, very much at odds with revealed preference (what we actually do). All our systems are testament to this, with very, very little consensus among us. Even in cases in which two parties will have areas of mutual agreement as you and I do and have a lifetime of live unamplified music attendance as we also do, how we would actually set up and fine tune the same system would likely diverge in our quest to achieve the most “accurate” sound (though I, of course, would attempt to be more intellectually honest and simply say I prefer it, and give the reasons for my preference).

As I’ve said before, my perspective is that the live performance in-and-of-itself is not a particularly useful arbiter for assessing a system as the live performance begins and ends in time relative to the subject’s presence. If the subject is not there in time then they cannot experience it. Even in cases in which that performance is recorded, it is no longer live, but a series of electrical impulses stored in a medium. Therefore we can no longer experience that live performance, only the recorded one, captured relative to the preferences of those who designed and built the recording chain, relative to the preferences of the ones who recorded/mixed/mastered it, and played back via the preferences of the ones who designed and built our playback components. Preference has shaped the process far more than “accuracy” ever will.

Those variables in themselves distance us from the notion that we can ever be listening to live unamplified music via the reproduction mechanism, because fundamentally that is not what we are listening to. We are listening to sound waves transformed into tiny voltages and amplified and reamplified and reampllified again before being turned back into sound waves. Via a hi-fi system we are never listening to live unamplified music - we are listening to dead reamplified music.

That it has the incredible power to render us emotional sobbing messes at the end of the the forth movement or indeed, at the end of the first second is not lost on me. Many, many times have I have felt like I’m listening to live unamplified music, but that’s far more a testament to our brain’s ability to find meaning in the medium, than it is the medium itself (which of course, we never mistake for the real thing in the same way I never walk into the living room and actually believe Harrison Ford has a best-friend who is an eight-foot dog/bear thing and really hope he makes it out of Jabba’s palace alive).

My point in my previous post is much simpler than all the above. A girl and guitar recording tells me nothing about the ultimate performance of a hi-fi system, expect how that system plays back that girl and that guitar. That’s a useful data point. But if I want to know how it plays Beethoven, or Bizet, or Bang on a Can, or Bjork, or Tim Berne, or the Beastie Boys, to be intellectually honest with myself I’m going to need to assess those on their own terms, not the girl and her guitar’s terms.

Extrapolation of individual data points that result in a conclusion one then labels with a moniker of certainty justified via reinforcement of preexisting biases (“I heard one song on the Lyra and immediately knew it was the most accurate cartridge based on all my years of attending live classical concerts…”) is a form of hasty generalization, a logical fallacy - no more and no less. We should also not conflate consensus with robustness of evidence.

Live unamplified music is a reference for those that wish it to be so. Yet it confers on them no special ability to assemble a system or design components all others will deem accurate other than perhaps themselves, even in cases in which a degree of objective accuracy has been achieved.

Back to my main point: A square wave in-and-of-itself is a useful test for a system because it subjects the system to phenomena that do not occur in acoustic music. Given that occasionally electronic music contains multiple square waves, at multiple amplitudes, all modulating over time, combined with waveforms of other shapes, suggests it may be useful to use such music in addition to acoustic music when evaluating system suitability.

Be well, morricab!

853guy

 

[Rodney Gold]

Wow..what a post..
Me .. well I think my Hifi sounds better than live.....

 

[KeithR]

Listen to your friend...he sounds like he knows something.

It matters in the believability of the reproduction...if you don't care about that then we are really talking past each other.

Brad- with all due respect, please stop belittling my opinion based on my own ears.

 

[morricab]

Brad- with all due respect, please stop belittling my opinion based on my own ears.

You brought up your friend, not me. I simply said listen to him.

The other comment you have taken out of context because you said: "So all of this is just meaningless. It makes for internet forum banter, but doesn't matter in real life." And I begged to differ.

 

[morricab]

Hey morricab,

How are you doing? Forgive me for the length of this post as I don't have time to write a short one.

Ah, the ol’ “accuracy” thing, huh?

Fundamentally, though I agree with you on many things, I disagree with your hypothesis here because for me “accuracy” as an independent arbiter is nothing more than individual preference expressed with a level of conviction.

Unfortunately, we are now only repeating arguments covered here previously. Though there are many who wish to discuss this topic, hence perhaps why it seems to emerge into new threads each year, there is still no single, fundamentally agreed upon concrete ideal as “accurate”. There is only “accurate to within an objectively measurable threshold” and “accurate to how I remember it or think it should sound”. One is an objectively defined correlation apropos audibility, the other a subjective preference formed into an opinion. Both of those are completely problematic, and have nothing to do with the experience of live unamplified music.

We can have two world-class classical engineers show up to the same scoring session asked to bring their most accurate mics, and they will bring different ones. They can then be asked to record/mix/master the results as accurately as possible to what they just heard live and will be doing so via memory relative to preference. We can ask two world class component designers to create the most accurate amplifier possible and they will diverge in topology, implementation and parts selection. What’s more, we can have those two designers produce amplifiers that by accepted methods of measurement are completely objectively “accurate” yet still diverge in how the subject perceives the way in which those amplifiers make music when paired with a transducer to convert the signal into sound waves.

Yes, we as a species have a long history of listening to unamplified (non-electronic) music as I mentioned above. But even acknowledging that fact, with thousands of years of experience burned into our socio-cultural DNA, if not our biophysiological makeup, we can still not get two people to agree on what the most accurate way of recording and playing back the same acoustic performance will be, even if they were there at the time.

So “accuracy” in-and-of-itself has no meaning for me. It’s a term that has no utility value apropos my perception of music. Not just when applied to the question of “how do you know your favourite electronic music is being played back accurately?” but also when applied to the question of “how do you know any type of music is being played back accurately?”.

Why? Because the answer will mean either one of two things with the following justifications:

A) Yes, because it is “accurate” to within an objectively measurable threshold (though directly comparing the musical waveform of the encoded format versus that same waveform when played back and measured at the speaker/room interface will of course render any illusions of accuracy to indeed be illusions), or;

B) Yes, because it is “accurate” to my individual preferences expressed with conviction (or in other words, yes, it matches what I like to think/remember/believe “accuracy” sounds like based on my prior experience).

Therefore, if it’s possible that two individuals possessing a lifetime of attending and/or playing/conducting classical concerts at the highest level will still be overwhelmingly likely to diverge in their preferences apropos their choice of hi-fi system, each claiming theirs must be “more accurate” because they can back it up with superior knowledge of what live unamplified music sounds like, what does that tell us about the utility value of that reference?

Nothing. Again, it only tells us about their preferences, and the justifications they use to make them.

Granted, it has some utility value for the manufacturing and measuring of components. But even in cases in which those measurements are off the chart amazing, we still have plenty of people who do not prefer those components in spite of their objective “accuracy”. I’ve heard plenty, as perhaps have you. Their designers are adamant I am wrong, since they have many, many years of unamplified live music attendance, and can produce a chart showing me how accurate their amplifiers are when playing test tones on a bench.

Therefore, if it’s clear that despite the fact we can measure degrees of accuracy objectively but still not prefer it subjectively - or worse, consider the possibility the first-order effects of achieving objective accuracy have come with second-and third-order effects of emotional detachment or psychological objection, how useful is accuracy as a construct in reality?

Of course, the argument goes that in order for a component to be “truly accurate” (we now get even more qualifying), it must reproduce both the waveform without deviation and the emotional content. And we measure the emotional content of the original event how, exactly? By relying on the subject’s opinion? Do we then use a subjective criteria to judge an objective one? Wouldn’t that be just as problematic as relying on the subject’s… er, subjectivity?

We could measure the brain’s response directly to see what areas were stimulated and certainly I am all in favour of such an approach. I’ve posted many links to research to those who are studying the brain’s neurobiological response to music. By mapping the brain’s emotional centres relative to musical stimuli we could indeed bypass the subject’s subjectivity and get closer to some ideal of what the brain considers to be accurate, but even then, all we are ever really doing is understanding more about individual preference and how the subject perceives reality - it does not necessarily tell us anything about reality itself.

I get that in theory we say want accuracy. In practice, our divergence of how we go about achieving that suggests we just want to be happy. Claimed preference (what we say we do) is often very, very much at odds with revealed preference (what we actually do). All our systems are testament to this, with very, very little consensus among us. Even in cases in which two parties will have areas of mutual agreement as you and I do and have a lifetime of live unamplified music attendance as we also do, how we would actually set up and fine tune the same system would likely diverge in our quest to achieve the most “accurate” sound (though I, of course, would attempt to be more intellectually honest and simply say I prefer it, and give the reasons for my preference).

As I’ve said before, my perspective is that the live performance in-and-of-itself is not a particularly useful arbiter for assessing a system as the live performance begins and ends in time relative to the subject’s presence. If the subject is not there in time then they cannot experience it. Even in cases in which that performance is recorded, it is no longer live, but a series of electrical impulses stored in a medium. Therefore we can no longer experience that live performance, only the recorded one, captured relative to the preferences of those who designed and built the recording chain, relative to the preferences of the ones who recorded/mixed/mastered it, and played back via the preferences of the ones who designed and built our playback components. Preference has shaped the process far more than “accuracy” ever will.

Those variables in themselves distance us from the notion that we can ever be listening to live unamplified music via the reproduction mechanism, because fundamentally that is not what we are listening to. We are listening to sound waves transformed into tiny voltages and amplified and reamplified and reampllified again before being turned back into sound waves. Via a hi-fi system we are never listening to live unamplified music - we are listening to dead reamplified music.

That it has the incredible power to render us emotional sobbing messes at the end of the the forth movement or indeed, at the end of the first second is not lost on me. Many, many times have I have felt like I’m listening to live unamplified music, but that’s far more a testament to our brain’s ability to find meaning in the medium, than it is the medium itself (which of course, we never mistake for the real thing in the same way I never walk into the living room and actually believe Harrison Ford has a best-friend who is an eight-foot dog/bear thing and really hope he makes it out of Jabba’s palace alive).

My point in my previous post is much simpler than all the above. A girl and guitar recording tells me nothing about the ultimate performance of a hi-fi system, expect how that system plays back that girl and that guitar. That’s a useful data point. But if I want to know how it plays Beethoven, or Bizet, or Bang on a Can, or Bjork, or Tim Berne, or the Beastie Boys, to be intellectually honest with myself I’m going to need to assess those on their own terms, not the girl and her guitar’s terms.

Extrapolation of individual data points that result in a conclusion one then labels with a moniker of certainty justified via reinforcement of preexisting biases (“I heard one song on the Lyra and immediately knew it was the most accurate cartridge based on all my years of attending live classical concerts…”) is a form of hasty generalization, a logical fallacy - no more and no less. We should also not conflate consensus with robustness of evidence.

Live unamplified music is a reference for those that wish it to be so. Yet it confers on them no special ability to assemble a system or design components all others will deem accurate other than perhaps themselves, even in cases in which a degree of objective accuracy has been achieved.

Back to my main point: A square wave in-and-of-itself is a useful test for a system because it subjects the system to phenomena that do not occur in acoustic music. Given that occasionally electronic music contains multiple square waves, at multiple amplitudes, all modulating over time, combined with waveforms of other shapes, suggests it may be useful to use such music in addition to acoustic music when evaluating system suitability.

Be well, morricab!

853guy

I wrote a long reply that got lost somehow...So I will keep it simple. A) is not possible in the here and now. B) There are studies that show that preferences converge based and so I think a consensus can be reached on some level for a reference. What this really means is our experiences are not so divergent as you are implying in your post. This fits with the writings of the likes of Jean Hiraga, Cheever and others who are taking a psychoacoustic/statistical approach to accuracy. As in all things psychological there will be significant outliers.

A system that has been built to reproduce the full spectrum of acoustic music will do very well indeed with electronic music. The reverse situation is not at all guaranteed. There are a lot of musically relevant parameters a square wave or layers of square waves will not tell you about a system's ability to reproduce "accurately" acoustic music.

A real reference, even one that is difficult for most to access, is still preferrable to no reference at all. Again, most people know live when they hear it and may be able to judge how far away something is from that reality but I think most don't know how to steer their system to get to that sound...this is where the real difficulty lies in building a realistic sounding system, IMO.