Interesting post and perspective!This is an inaccurate depiction and misrepresentation of “natural sound”, is this the limit of your understanding of “NS”? ”Natural Sound” is the playback system and accuracy not coloring the recording. You’ll hear the differences in recordings some more natural than others, it shows the drawbacks of so called “audiophile” pressings, I’ve mentioned them many times and how fake they are. Fortunately there are thousands of decent to great recordings and pressings done outside of that group.
Fortunately ”natural sound” has a very wide listening window and not limited to a few hundred records like ”absolute sound” was assigned. There are many wonderful lists and great music from everywhere we don’t need to limit ourselves to one man’s list.
While there are similarities between the ideals “natural sound” and “absolute sound” there’s a fundamental difference between the philosophies and the people behind each. People behind “natural sound” were a group of doers and visionaries capable of accomplishing their goals in this field as they succeeded in capturing and recreating recordings of all kinds ”naturally” long before Pearson ever came on the scene and come with “AS” initially heavily borrowed “NS”. HP was a talker not a doer, he talked about something that I’m not sure he really understood. He spent 2.5 decades or more meandering and talking about something that he never achieved and if you ever visited Sea Cliff you’d know he never even close to touching. In the last decade even his writing fell apart and was throwing everything and anything including the kitchen sink into the mix, he was only a talker not a doer and maybe that’s his appeal to you, talk. A lot of his career was of a sales rep anyway, he’d promote one product as the ultimate answer to “as” just to knock it down and recommend another one in the next issue. This went on and on for decades doing the same for his pals and putting people on the insane merry go round of worthless and endless audio purchases parting with huge sums of money while never educating the audience and keeping them dependent on his lists and drivel. I never forget his one quote regarding $20k Nordost power cords, “you haven’t heard you system without them” or something to that affect. He’s the man you like and quote as the flip side(an emoji for you).
david
david
Natural Sound
- Thread starter PeterA
- Start date
I never cared about audiophile recordings, even though I now have a few as reference for friends, mostly. I buy whatever music and performance I want. The vast majority of classical and jazz recordings -- old and new -- sound good on my system. A lot of rock sounds good too.
This is an inaccurate depiction and misrepresentation of “natural sound”, is this the limit of your understanding of “NS”? ”Natural Sound” is the playback system and accuracy not coloring the recording. You’ll hear the differences in recordings some more natural than others, it shows the drawbacks of so called “audiophile” pressings, I’ve mentioned them many times and how fake they are. Fortunately there are thousands of decent to great recordings and pressings done outside of that group.
Fortunately ”natural sound” has a very wide listening window and not limited to a few hundred records like ”absolute sound” was assigned. There are many wonderful lists and great music from everywhere we don’t need to limit ourselves to one man’s list.
While there are similarities between the ideals “natural sound” and “absolute sound” there’s a fundamental difference between the philosophies and the people behind each. People behind “natural sound” were a group of doers and visionaries capable of accomplishing their goals in this field as they succeeded in capturing and recreating recordings of all kinds ”naturally” long before Pearson ever came on the scene and come with “AS” initially heavily borrowed “NS”. HP was a talker not a doer, he talked about something that I’m not sure he really understood. He spent 2.5 decades or more meandering and talking about something that he never achieved and if you ever visited Sea Cliff you’d know he never even close to touching. In the last decade even his writing fell apart and was throwing everything and anything including the kitchen sink into the mix, he was only a talker not a doer and maybe that’s his appeal to you, talk. A lot of his career was of a sales rep anyway, he’d promote one product as the ultimate answer to “as” just to knock it down and recommend another one in the next issue. This went on and on for decades doing the same for his pals and putting people on the insane merry go round of worthless and endless audio purchases parting with huge sums of money while never educating the audience and keeping them dependent on his lists and drivel. I never forget his one quote regarding $20k Nordost power cords, “you haven’t heard you system without them” or something to that affect. He’s the man you like and quote as the flip side
david
david
Careful David, you are pulling back the curtain.
One of my mistakes was listening to the recommendations of people to buy a few of the classics from Reference Recordings. These are used to show "more" and enhanced details so the systems excite. Always in demos. Listen for the bells.....What a waste.
That is so interesting. I got hammered for opposing such "hifi checklists" right here in this very thread. I call them the glossary of audiophile terms. People actually opposed what I was describing and doing with my old system with zero toe in and getting rid of audio treatments and power cords that actually brought the system back to life. They hated the sound asking for the pinpoint imaging back. I complained about black backgrounds, and people here defend them and strive for them. It is clear that people want this stuff, and I say fine for them. This is the stuff that came out of The Absolute Sound and much of the industry seems to depend on it.
Natural Sound is about something different. I agree that it can't be achieved with certain things that instantly kill it. I learned that lesson doing my experiments with my former system. Once removed from the room or replaced with something sensible, my learning about Natural Sound could begin.
I have to thank David and you for alerting me to the pinpoint imaging issue. Yet it had mostly resolved itself already since I had toed out my speakers for other reasons, i.e., tonal balance.
Funny, I don't hear pinpoint imaging in any of our friends' systems. But I guess that's only natural.
Aural memory does not last for long and depends a lot on listeners. After being at a live performance the stereo image of my system becomes considerably better for some time - say a couple of months. I have written elsewhere - I find the system much more enjoyable and more "realistic" after being at a good concert. Sometimes our imagination wants our systems to sound better than real!
Going back in a concert room after confinement was a great refresh.
The best recordings for evaluating an audio system are the challenging ones not the ones made to impress...
So recordings that have been recorded with care also can sound really nasty when not reproduced correctly. Especially with instruments that have a very close harmonic spectrum (voices in a choir or wind instruments). If these get mixed and smeared then you may think it is the recording that is faulty but instead it is the equipment used to reproduce this ....
24chambers | Mahler Symphony No.1 | Funeral March | New Amsterdam Clarinet Quartet - YouTube
TRACKS - Nieuw Amsterdams Klarinet Kwartet - YouTube
Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton - Layla - YouTube
Only for a few particular cables. Most of them keep their typical sound characteristics irrespectively of impedance.
Although we have differences in sound quality due to AC power characteristics and ambient EMI/RFI environment I could not correlate them with sound quality like I see with cables.
The effects of mains quality in a system is also at the "magic" level, the classical mains measurements do not show any correlation with sound quality, unless in extreme cases out of the normal ranges.
Jippie charging cables - AV Media Planet B.V.
These are magic ! Only with Euro connectors but you could contact them and ask...
I have one particular recording that was given to me by the engineer who made it. It is a recording of Prokovfiev's Romeo and Juliet and was made with a single stereo ribbon microphone about 6 meters from the stage. It has only about 2db of compression and a db or so of eq but otherwise is full on dynamic range...but with a mid-hall perspective. It has a dynamic range of over 40db and is extremely demanding of a system to sound correct. Most systems I have played on turn it to mush and can't handle the dynamics and balance of direct and reflected sound.
I actually got to hear a performance of this live (not the same one of course) where I was sitting around 6-7 meters from the stage right in the middle. The resemblance to the recording was uncanny when played on a capable system. Of course we are not talking an exact replica and the home listening still didn't have the power of live but the recording is very true to a live, mid-hall experience and when reproduced adequately it sounds very realistic.
Oh Peter, I have my own checklist.
Texture and palpability.
Mids density.
Tonal variation and discrimination.
Timbral accuracy.
Immediacy.
Gently delineated imaging.
Absence of excessive forward projected stage.
...and a few others.
I hear these all live and at the best systems.
...push come to shove, this would be my Natural Sound if I was ever to use such a title/objective.
So, no problem w the right list, and I agree, the list you object to, I'd object to as well.
Your opinion, many thanks. Should this thread now redefine the meaning of accuracy or is NS just the objective of Ron list "2) reproduce exactly what is on the master tape".
And yes, I know that you hate remasterings, particularly the so called audiophile ones. However, considering the opinions of people, including in this forum, about the mastering engineers who carry and their work I think it just an opinion of a few, that I respect.
Fortunately ”natural sound” has a very wide listening window and not limited to a few hundred records like ”absolute sound” was assigned. There are many wonderful lists and great music from everywhere we don’t need to limit ourselves to one man’s list.
While there are similarities between the ideals “natural sound” and “absolute sound” there’s a fundamental difference between the philosophies and the people behind each. People behind “natural sound” were a group of doers and visionaries capable of accomplishing their goals in this field as they succeeded in capturing and recreating recordings of all kinds ”naturally” long before Pearson ever came on the scene and come with “AS” initially heavily borrowed “NS”. HP was a talker not a doer, he talked about something that I’m not sure he really understood. He spent 2.5 decades or more meandering and talking about something that he never achieved and if you ever visited Sea Cliff you’d know he never even close to touching. In the last decade even his writing fell apart and was throwing everything and anything including the kitchen sink into the mix, he was only a talker not a doer and maybe that’s his appeal to you, talk. A lot of his career was of a sales rep anyway, he’d promote one product as the ultimate answer to “as” just to knock it down and recommend another one in the next issue. This went on and on for decades doing the same for his pals and putting people on the insane merry go round of worthless and endless audio purchases parting with huge sums of money while never educating the audience and keeping them dependent on his lists and drivel. I never forget his one quote regarding $20k Nordost power cords, “you haven’t heard you system without them” or something to that affect. He’s the man you like and quote as the flip side
david
david
Two lines about NS, twenty lines on HP.
(my emoji for you) I do not care about the man or his system, although I read a lot of testimonies about them, but care about his articles and views and really enjoy discussing them - and surely I like and dislike them, audio debates imply criticism. Surely I have a distant perspective on TAS, created monthly along more than two decades.
You picked the less interesting ones. I avoided those used in shows and demos and have a few that sound really natural - perhaps not Natural Sound
. But the musicians seem to be in my room!
Not my opinion I simply gave you a clear example of recordings that don't sound right on a "natural system" in response to your inaccurate comment:
"As far as I see it, part of the "Natural Sound" build is the elimination of any aspects that listeners with such preference find "artificial" in the stereo recording process of most recordings."
Don't twist it around to personal preferences which my comment had nothing to do with!
If you want to ignore 25+ years of heavily gear biased ramblings and who the author was is your business but it doesn't change the reality of what he was about. Discuss them as much as you want but you have to accept all of the content of his essays and the conclusions since high end is a tangible real world product not fantasy.Two lines about NS, twenty lines on HP.
david
PS. There's plenty on NS in this just one thread and I refer you to Marc's post #1624 as a consummation of "natural sound"
Well, ten years ago ACK said most of it a great post: https://www.whatsbestforum.com/thre...and-does-it-require-cleaner-electronics.2504/
"Images exist within the soundstage... images refer to the size and location of sources of sounds and how distinct they are within the soundstage. Images can be flattened if the soundstage is shallow, squished if the soundstage is narrow, not life size if the soundstage cannot accommodate them, etc.
Realistic images have the right size and you can easily identify their rough location, if the recording is right. For example, the first violins close to the left but filling most of the hall, tubas far back to the right sounding big, the soprano right in front of you, tall, a point-source and loud, the tympani right in the middle but recessed a bit in the back, a loud bass drum whack a bit diffuse and filling the entire room (depends on the hall), etc. If everything sounds diffuse, your images are ill-defined (but still perhaps the right size) no matter what the soundstage is like - not necessarily a bad thing, e.g. sitting far back in the orchestra won't give you as well-defined imaging either, just a different perspective.
In general, not the same thing, but related. Getting life-size images from all sources of sound is probably very expensive to reproduce and I am not sure what sort of recording techniques and technologies would be able to give you that. Or, I haven't experienced it yet". (End of quote)
In order to debate pinpoint we must define what is meant by it. It is completely different saying it means ability to locate the sources of sounds in the sound stage or that it means extremely focused sound with sharp contours around point like sources.
Aural memory does not last for long and depends a lot on listeners. After being at a live performance the stereo image of my system becomes considerably better for some time - say a couple of months. I have written elsewhere - I find the system much more enjoyable and more "realistic" after being at a good concert. Sometimes our imagination wants our systems to sound better than real!
Well your aural memory seems pretty strong then, if you say you are remembering the concert sound for two months while listening to your system
IMHO all our comments are connected to the preferences of people, unless we are being objective. My question concerned mainly your definition of accuracy in your comment. You twisted it in another aspect.
Yes, I am sorry but I am not really interested in the past business of high-end. The same way I am not interested in the recurring themes of the history of Mark Levinson or MIT/TA cables.
And yes, our systems are tangible.
I saw it with interest, but he was addressing reality at 3 meters, not sound reproduction. See post #1620. Surely it was natural.
( it deserves a smile)
I did not say that, sorry.Well your aural memory seems pretty strong then, if you say you are remembering the concert sound for two months while listening to your system
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