The Fremer lays an ostrich egg thread

[flez007]

I am with Amir here, and as relevant as it is to listen to live music as possible (which unfortunatly several times it is also amplified) a live instrument, a voice and the ambience surrounding it is "natural" for all of us who have the privilege of hearing.

This relates to some non-audio friends who say that in order to appreciate any good system they must have a trained ear, but once I convince them to seat and listen any good hi-end setup, they immediatly describe the good moment they are having, even pointing to some qualifications and judgement that their perspective bring and enrich mine own.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I think a good question to ask anyone who reviews audio equipment before you decide whether he or she is likely to give you good advice is to ask him or her how much time on average they listen each week to recordings of music compared to how much time they spend listening to live unamplified music. Hopefully they listen to as much or more live music than recorded music. Here's a fellow who reviews equipment for a living who had a real problem. Not only didn't he hear the difference between what he thought was a perfect reproduction of a live musical instrument to the point where his audience had to point it out to him, he didn't seem to understand what they were talking about. He explains his troubles starting at about 29:00 minutes into the interview;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mEsuKqj5wA&feature=relmfu

He's not a beginner at this either, he's been at it a long time. Evidently that doesn't seem to matter.

Who does this, other than musicians (and they do it from such a radically different perspective than the listener that it is not informative)? I would say that if you are actually hearing live, unamplified music as much or more than you're hearing recordings, you're probably not listening to recordings enough to be much of authority on them or their playback. And what recordings actually capture the perspective of the listener in the audience? Which seat? Is the violinist playing the same instrument on the recording that you heard in your live, unamplified concert? Do all violins sound alike? From all seats in the house?

If you listen to a lot of live, unamplified music and then judge recorded playback based on that experience, you're mostly judging your ability to talk yourself into believing what you would like to believe. Which is fine. We have two things we can get at with any certainty: 1) The fidelity of components and systems in the reproduction of what's on the recording. This we can measure. We don't often do that sufficiently, but we can. 2) What we like.

#2 has about 99.9%. And while we may be loathe to admit that a $5k system can actually be better than a $100k system, it can. Even if the $100k system is very good. Because, unless we measure, and thoroughly, and we give those measurements the last word (and we know how prepared most of us are to do that), it's all a matter of taste and the $5k system is better if you like it better. The comparison to live is a red herring because it is so far, on so many fronts, from what we can capture and listen to on recordings that it is not relevant.

Tim

 

[Soundminded]

Why? I am trained in hearing compression artifacts. I can easily outperform people who listen to live music far more than me. The advantage I have is what to listen for and it has nothing to do with knowing what the original music sounded like. That knowledge will not help you. We tested musicians in the past and they did not have superior skills relative to our trained listeners either.

With all due respect you may be highly focused in being able to discern the differences between compression artifacts (I'm not exactly sure what that means but I'll take your word for it that it exists and that you are familiar with it to the point of having expertise) but that alone does not demonstrate your equally developed familiarity and memory for the sound of actual musical instruments. There are many other aspects to it you may be familiar with, or you may not. I have no way of knowing which is why I brought up the issue in the first place.

I'm not surprised that musicians did not test well in this regard either. First of all, being immediately next to the instrument they are performing and where they sit or stand on a performing stage they do not hear the same sounds the audience hears just the way you do not hear the sound of your own voice as others hear it. Also they are more intensely focused on playing technique and composition than on say tonality. Becoming a trained (including self trained) golden ears requires a lot of repetitive listening to music from an audience's perspective to drum those sounds into your head again and again and again. Once that happens and you keep at it, I think people's memory for sound is can be very good. You'd be surprised at how many people are familiar with the unique sound of a particular violin of great pedigree and can identify it immediately and blindfolded. Its like hearing the sound of someone' voice you used to know well but haven't been in touch with in decades. You recognize it's particular sound instantly even over a telephone. Or the sound of someone with a cold or sinus condition. That peculiar sound is usually identifiable to most people also immediately over a telephone. So to become a qualified judge that can critically evaluate how well sound reproducing equipment emulates the real thing, IMO constant exposure and learning to focus on what characterizes those sounds as unique is the way to gain this skill.

Clearly the reviewer in the YouTube interview does not possess this skill in sufficient degree to convince me his judgments and recommendations reflect expert knowledge in this regard. He not only didn't hear the discrepancy himself others readily identified, he didn't seem to understand it. He lacked the skill to make critical judgments about the perceived size and power of the source of sound, an inherent element of tone. Tone is one of the four basic elements of music as I learned it.

The art and science of measuring sound looks for ways to measure such that objective results correlate well with what is perceived. Clearly that art and science has not developed to the point where it can measure this apect of perception yet. It's one of the many shortcomings of the current state of affairs. So by both the ability to make critical subjective aural judgments and the ability to measure objective results, this reviewer's skills fall short in this regard. When reading a review, before accepting what the reviewer says, I think it's important to review the reviewer to make a judgment about his qualifications. As I hear a lot of live music by virtue of circumstances (there will be a string ensemble rehearsing in my house later today for at least two hours) I have become my own most trusted reviewer. As these people keep saying "trust your ears" and so I do. And the conclusions I come to are very different from what they come to in their reviews. If I wrote for these magazines, nobody would be able to sell anything.

 

[A.wayne]

We listen thru our hi-fi system to "recordings " of live instruments , very different from live music itself and yes not even close ...

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

We listen thru our hi-fi system to "recordings " of live instruments , very different from live music itself and yes not even close ...

Correct. So the goal of hifi is either to accurately reproduce the recording, or to simply please us. It gets a whole lot easier if those goals are in sync. But faithful reproduction of instruments, as heard in concert? Even if that last phrase didn't have a zillion variations, the instruments do. Andy Fein makes violins, on the Stradivarius design model, from the low $2,000s to more than $10,000. Do we imagine that they all sound alike? Do the audiophiles who tell us their reference is live music know the difference? If they do, do you suppose they can hear it from the 10th row? If not (and yes, the answer is not...) then what is their reference? Whether or not their system can produce something that sounds like a violin? Some violin?

An incredibly low standard.

Thankfully that's not the standard. The standard is that the system produces a sound that allows the listener to embrace the illusion and imagine it is like the live experience.

Tim

 

[A.wayne]

Correct , as your system gets closer to the "truth" one gets the illusion of being " there" or their "here " and on that very rare occasion, both !!!

Regards ,

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Correct , as your system gets closer to the "truth" one gets the illusion of being " there" or their "here " and on that very rare occasion, both !!!

Regards ,

Which truth was that?

Tim

 

[Soundminded]

I've been most privileged to hear many violins including the incredible Guanari del Jesu ex Kochanski in many venues. These included many concert halls including Carnegie Hall, my own home, the owner's home. I came to know the sound of that violin very well. I also heard Heifetz play Carnegie Hall in the 1960s and Mischa Elman at Charles Colden Hall at Queens College. But the ex-Kochanski is the one I can't forget. Most remarkable besides its tone is its amazing power, it's ability to project. I sat where I usually like to sit, about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way to the rear in the orchestra seats. This allows me to hear both the instruments and the acoustics of the hall in a balance I prefer. At Carnegie Hall, row K is reserved for music critics in the press. We hear a lot of violins and violas in this house. Many are brought by students for evaluation to make a decision about purchasing them. Tone is only one factor, there are many others including the ease of playing them, where wolf notes occur and how bad they are, etc. We also have a couple of pianos including a Baldwin and a Steinway grand. I hear these instruments practically every day of my life.

Compared to live music, recordings of music from the best commercially sold sound reproduction systems sound to me flat and lifeless. They are a pale facsimile of the real thing. The technology just isn't that good. Is the fact that the discrepency between what I hear and what the reviewers say about the equipment due to the fact that they just don't hear it also? That's the conclusion I got from the YouTube interview. He just didn't seem to get it because he didn't hear it. For all his commercial success he's no golden ears in my book. Others of his ilk while often equally well intentioned seem to have the same shortcomings. That's why I ask the question; what do they listen to more, real music or recordings of music. What are they most familiar with?

 

[Gregadd]

The standard is that the system produces a sound that allows the listener to embrace the illusion and imagine it is like the live experience.

TIm

My work is done.

 

[A.wayne]

Which truth was that?

Tim

The one you believe ....

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I've been most privileged to hear many violins including the incredible Guanari del Jesu ex Kochanski in many venues. These included many concert halls including Carnegie Hall, my own home, the owner's home. I came to know the sound of that violin very well. I also heard Heifetz play Carnegie Hall in the 1960s and Mischa Elman at Charles Colden Hall at Queens College. But the ex-Kochanski is the one I can't forget. Most remarkable besides its tone is its amazing power, it's ability to project. I sat where I usually like to sit, about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way to the rear in the orchestra seats. This allows me to hear both the instruments and the acoustics of the hall in a balance I prefer. At Carnegie Hall, row K is reserved for music critics in the press. We hear a lot of violins and violas in this house. Many are brought by students for evaluation to make a decision about purchasing them. Tone is only one factor, there are many others including the ease of playing them, where wolf notes occur and how bad they are, etc. We also have a couple of pianos including a Baldwin and a Steinway grand. I hear these instruments practically every day of my life.

Compared to live music, recordings of music from the best commercially sold sound reproduction systems sound to me flat and lifeless. They are a pale facsimile of the real thing. The technology just isn't that good. Is the fact that the discrepency between what I hear and what the reviewers say about the equipment due to the fact that they just don't hear it also? That's the conclusion I got from the YouTube interview. He just didn't seem to get it because he didn't hear it. For all his commercial success he's no golden ears in my book. Others of his ilk while often equally well intentioned seem to have the same shortcomings. That's why I ask the question; what do they listen to more, real music or recordings of music. What are they most familiar with?

I think you know the answer. I envy your experience with those instruments, but do you actually get to the concert hall more often that you listen to recorded music? For me, that would mean getting to a live, unamplified performance more than daily! And let's say you could do that. What do you hear there and how does it translate to a recording?

Go to your favorite venue, sit in that seat 2/3 to 3/4 toward the rear of the orchestra section. Hang a stereo pair of the best quality microphones right above your head and record the music in the highest resolution possible, or to tape if you prefer. Take it home, plug it into your $500,000 high-end analog wondersystem and hit play.

It will sound nothing like what you heard in that seat. The fidgeting of the woman behind you will be incredibly distracting. The rustling of your clothes, your own breathing may be audible. The music will sound hollow and distant as if you are hearing too much reflected sound, not nearly enough direct sound, which you are. It will be...wrong.

Our brains, our psychoacoustics have this remarkable ability to focus on the music and filter out the crowd noise right next to us. They have the ability to seemingly alter the very acoustics of the room and hear more of the music and less of its reflections. But run it through a microphone, a recorder, a playback system and now our brains are filtering, processing and altering the environment of our listening room, not the hall in which the recording was made. Or at least that's my best guess at what's wrong. That it's wrong, I'm sure of.

Our brains are perhaps the subtlest and most perfect of audio processors. But they have no switches or knobs, and we have no control of them and they don't translate well to our systems. We must record much differently than we hear to create recordings that are even a reasonable facsimile of what we hear.

What is the sound of one brain processing? On a good night, it's better than the original event. Much better. Your reference does not translate. And of course that doesn't keep audiophiles from hearing it in their systems. Another form of psychoacoustics.

Tim

 

[Steve Williams]

Compared to live music, recordings of music from the best commercially sold sound reproduction systems sound to me flat and lifeless. They are a pale facsimile of the real thing. The technology just isn't that good. Is the fact that the discrepency between what I hear and what the reviewers say about the equipment due to the fact that they just don't hear it also? That's the conclusion I got from the YouTube interview. He just didn't seem to get it because he didn't hear it. For all his commercial success he's no golden ears in my book. Others of his ilk while often equally well intentioned seem to have the same shortcomings. That's why I ask the question; what do they listen to more, real music or recordings of music. What are they most familiar with?

Hello Sound

Reading most of your posts it seems to me that I have never once seen a comment by you wherein you actually like recorded music. For the record, is there any recorded music which you do like and to help us understand perhaps you could give us a brief background of your music education. I apologize if you have done this elsewhere but for me at least, I feel that this would add credence to many of your postulates. You continue to always knock recorded music and I am amiss to understand what you are all about. Suffice it to say that IMO you are preaching to the choir here with your comments between live vs recorded music. Is there a point somewhere that I am missing. Can you also give us a brief synopsis of your sound system

 

[amirm]

With all due respect you may be highly focused in being able to discern the differences between compression artifacts (I'm not exactly sure what that means but I'll take your word for it that it exists and that you are familiar with it to the point of having expertise) but that alone does not demonstrate your equally developed familiarity and memory for the sound of actual musical instruments.

I think you missed my point. That was an example of non-linear distortions that we all agree readily exists. I used to not hear it or hardly at all. I then went through training myself to hear them and then acquired abilities way beyond the general public, audiophiles and musicians. Occasionally an untrained person could match or even exceed my abilities. But otherwise, I could hear distortions that no one else (untrained) could hear. I got there with both understanding the cause of the distortion and then correlating it with listening tests that demonstrated them. No listening to live music was involved.

As humans, we all have good ability to hear linear distortions. If I chopped off half the bandwidth of the music to 10 Khz, we all can tell. For that ability, e.g. frequency response variations in a speaker or caused by the room, we need no training. Listening to live music need not apply either. As these variations get smaller, again, training helps. Such training involves listening to music that has had incrementally smaller and smaller amounts of frequency response variations applied to it. Once more, listening to live music is not the tool.

Where it gets complicated is non-linear distortions. These are the ones that we have poor tools to measure them with. For example, no one ever measures audio compression artifacts with our suite of audio tests. Listening tests is the only tool. This is why I used it as an example here since I assume this is the area you are going after as per above, linear distortions are audible to many people and can be measured.

Back to your original point, let's test your hypothesis. You and I both get a copy of Tori Amos' new album. Please explain how you are better situated to hear distortions in it than me. For the record, I rarely listen to live music and by what you say, you listen to a ton of it.

Let me also add to Steve's last post and ask if there is anything in this hobby that satisfies you. We usually hear what doesn't works in your mind and never what does.

 

[Gregadd]

iIthink we are confusing the words duplicate and reference. Can we duplicate the original event? We lack the recording and playback equipment to do it. My guess is if you played a Sheffield disc on mike Lavignes system you'd be close.
Rfeerence the action of mentioning or alluding to something

It is somewhat contradictory to suggest you can rapidly switch between 15 second clips of music for comparison but you can't remember what a live instrument of performance sounds like. Differences between some instruments are subtle. Those are errors in execution and method. Not an absolute.

 

[amirm]

iIthink we are confusing the words duplicate and reference. Can we duplicate the original event? We lack the recording and playback equipment to do it. My guess is if you played a Sheffield disc on mike Lavignes system you'd be close.

For that guess to be right, it would need to falsify your previous statement! If you don't know what the original sounded like, then you don't what the original sounded like. You can't proceed to then guess that some reproduction is close to it. You simply do not know.

What are the chances of that the Tori Amos album that I mentioned was previewed/mastered with Mike's speakers and room that had similar acoustics? I say zero. Likely they use pro speakers and in a completely different surroundings. The sound therefore that Tori heard, is not what we are hearing at home. It would be an interesting experiment to have Tori try to tell us which two home reproduction systems are closer to what she thinks her music sounds like. I suspect even she would be baffled.

I believe this business is about an art form. A new art was created in the form of the recording, different than the original art which was them playing the instruments and signing to them. The new art form needs to be judged and fidelity done justice to it. It ultimately is a copy far removed from the original. And what we hear at home, are further copies that are more removed from that.

It is somewhat contradictory to suggest you can rapidly switch between 15 second clips of music for comparison but you can't remember what a live instrument of performance sounds like. Differences between some instruments are subtle. Those are errors in execution and method. Not an absolute.

Not sure why this is relevant here Greg. Compare however you like for the purposes of this discussion.

 

[Bill Hart]

My suspicion, to be proved wrong when SoundMinded responds, is that he (assuming male) believes that since live music can never be faithfully duplicated over a reproduction system, all the twists and turns of 'audiophilia' amount to nonsense, marketing gimmicks, and the gullibility of high-end hi-fi enthusiasts. Accepting this premise, much of the time and effort, let alone money, devoted to high end audio is basically pointless.
I accept the premises for the most part: (1) that live is impossible to duplicate and (2) that there is a lot of nonsense in the marketing; but, I still think there are systems that can do a better job than others in attempting to create the illusion. And that doesn't necessarily correlate with the amount of money spent since so much is room, set-up and synergy.
If I understood Tim's point, it is that 'live recordings' are often worse than studio recordings- they don't have quite the immediacy and often have an aura of the original room acoustic that complicates things when being played back in the listening room.
I think SoundMinded will find that a lot of us do get out to listen to live music and quite a few here play instruments.
So, I'm interested in SoundMinded's response as well.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

iIthink we are confusing the words duplicate and reference. Can we duplicate the original event? We lack the recording and playback equipment to do it. My guess is if you played a Sheffield disc on mike Lavignes system you'd be close.
Rfeerence the action of mentioning or alluding to something.

i did play Sheffield Labs DTD LAB-3 'The King James Version', Harry James & His Big Band Lp last night and it was 'spooky real'. certainly all the bass, very close to the microdynamics and impact and vividness. maybe slightly short of the full air on top of the horns of live, but it gets very close to all of the piano and drum kit. big band full dynamics? well, the system would do it in my room if i could endure it, which i choose not to.

how close does it really get?

i think that is a matter of state of mind. if you have your brain trying to figure out what it's 'not doing' to the the full degree that it would do with hearing it 'live' then you are right.

if you are in awe that it comes 'so close' then you are also right.

then there is the idea of 'the same' or 'is it better?' i'd say with full conviction that my system has a much better chance of sounding better than 'live' most times while not sounding 'the same' as live. you will get more of the musical message with my system while not quite measuring up to the 'event'. then there is the whole mixing/mastering process which has it's warts and high points.

we have a jazz club at the bottom of the hill from my home here in my little town that has live jazz every night.....5 minutes from my home. we'll go down for dinner and listen for awhile then i'll go back home and listen. trade-offs with the 'live' dynamics trumping the system in degrees.

added note; with the new amps and the bass towers there is a whole new world of subterrainian bass information i'm hearing on many recordings which has musical significance especially on involvement. i'm hearing lots more from acoustic bass's, foot tapping galore, and just a driving forward aspect of the music. the big dart mono's have fleshed out and harmonically enriched everything and brought such an ease to the bass which makes the music so easy to listen to like 'live'.

 

[Bill Hart]

i did play Sheffield Labs DTD LAB-3 'The King James Version', Harry James & His Big Band Lp last night and it was 'spooky real'. certainly all the bass, very close to the microdynamics and impact and vividness. maybe slightly short of the full air on top of the horns of live, but it gets very close to all of the piano and drum kit. big band full dynamics? well, the system would do it in my room if i could endure it, which i choose not to.

how close does it really get?

i think that is a matter of state of mind. if you have your brain trying to figure out what it's 'not doing' to the the full degree that it would do with hearing it 'live' then you are right.

if you are in awe that it comes 'so close' then you are also right.

then there is the idea of 'the same' or 'is it better?' i'd say with full conviction that my system has a much better chance of sounding better than 'live' most times while not sounding 'the same' as live. you will get more of the musical message with my system while not quite measuring up to the 'event'. then there is the whole mixing/mastering process which has it's warts and high points.

we have a jazz club at the bottom of the hill from my home here in my little town that has live jazz every night.....5 minutes from my home. we'll go down for dinner and listen for awhile then i'll go back home and listen. trade-offs with the 'live' dynamics trumping the system in degrees.

Mike: the biggest difficulty I have is kick drum. it's just so explosive in a real venue. Maybe it's the limits of the vinyl playback system. The other difficulty is big complex stuff and the ability of the system to 'scale' in the same way. I'm not sure this is a 'dynamic' issue like the kick drum, but more about congestion in the source material and electronics, though I can't be sure.

 

[RBFC]

While Sonny Rollins, Al DiMeola, Eva Cassidy, or Placido Domingo are obviously never standing in my room, my system does enough things right that I can form the illusion that they are there. Yes, there are currently insurmountable hurdles to an exact reproduction of the live event. However, I (and many of us here) derive great pleasure from the imperfect illusion created by our playback systems.

I'm saddened to read the posts from members (a few who are quite prolific) that basically purport a Scrooge-like dislike for high-end audio AND attempt to ruin it for those who deeply enjoy the hobby. Yes, there should always be inquisitively-directed discussions about the value-performance ratio of various components, etc. To simply spread darkness over an enthusiast's forum makes no sense, except to feel superior to those who you deem uneducated suckers.

I propose that such individuals:

1. Go to a car forum and tell folks that a Yugo is sufficient, and that Ferraris are a waste of money.

2. Go to a fishing forum and tell that guy that his heirloom fly rod performs worse in tests than the new K-Mart model, so how could he possibly enjoy using it?

3. Go to a cooking forum and state that all foie gras tastes the same.

You get the point. The negativity displayed here discounts the all-important human element of experience.

Do any audio systems sound like the real thing? NO.

Do more expensive/complex audio systems do a better job of creating a pleasing, often convincing illusion of "real" music than Philips Home Theater in a Box (inside joke) systems? YES.

Should I care if Mr. X spends ten times the money on a system that Mr. Y does? NO, AS LONG AS IT'S NOT MY MONEY. But some will tirelessly ride Mr. X regardless. Do you lean out your car window and chastise the Mercedes and BMW drivers? It wasn't your money. Let people enjoy. The world is filled with things to not enjoy ( go to the death & taxes forum ). It's fine to ask collegial questions among a group of friends... it's another to call them all idiots repeatedly before one's welcome wears out.

My opinion, not in green.

Lee

 

[DaveyF]

Hello Sound

Reading most of your posts it seems to me that I have never once seen a comment by you wherein you actually like recorded music. For the record, is there any recorded music which you do like and to help us understand perhaps you could give us a brief background of your music education. I apologize if you have done this elsewhere but for me at least, I feel that this would add credence to many of your postulates. You continue to always knock recorded music and I am amiss to understand what you are all about. Suffice it to say that IMO you are preaching to the choir here with your comments between live vs recorded music. Is there a point somewhere that I am missing. Can you also give us a brief synopsis of your sound system

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