I mentioned in my last thread that I would discuss the idea that live, unamplified music played in a natural acoustic environment should be the gold standard for evaluating sound regardless of music preferences. Al M. captured the idea perfectly in his statement: “. . . improvements in the reproduction of unamplified instruments . . . have also led to improvements in the reproduction of amplified or synthesized music.”
Amplified or synthesized music doesn’t work as a reference except to those people who are directly involved in the performance and all aspects of the recording and music production chain because they know exactly what the end product should sound like. Because all the characteristics of this type of music are the result of electronic manipulations in a typically anechoic studio space, there is no way to anticipate the actual musical intent unless one attended the session in the studio and is totally aware of the mix and sound engineering decisions. Even though some of us may personally prefer electronically reproduced music, it is not, unless you are a music, recording, or production professional a reliable reference point if your desire is to build a hi fi system that is more capable of faithful music reproduction.
To fully evaluate a hi fi system and the components in it, we ideally would hear a lot of live, unamplified musical events and then hear well-executed master recordings of those very events on a well-balanced hi fi system in an acoustically treated listening room, but that experience is out of reach for most people unless one is involved with the music or hi fi industry.
When I began my career in audio, I operated under the guiding principle that components working together in a system should come as close as possible to revealing accurately all the information that is embedded on the source material. I have over time evolved this idea to a much more accessible principle: Create a system that gets out of the way of the music so that we can suspend our belief that we are only listening to a hi fi and feel more connected to actual music listening experiences.
Ears are the most sensitive instruments, but they need constant calibration with a reference point. Live, unamplified music is the standard because we know that the complex and intense tonal density and the expansive vibrational energy of unamplified instruments played in a natural acoustic environment are real when we hear these qualities. The human ear can’t be fooled about what is actually the natural sound of music over the long term. We know what a voice sounds like. We’ve heard pianos and violins before.
Although ears can’t be fooled over the long term, we all have a tendency over time to lose sight of the real reference unless we constantly massage ourselves with live music. It’s just too easy to become wrapped up in a never-ending process of trying to get the system more in balance without any real point of reference. Without the reference, however, sooner or later, we risk losing interest in the hobby all together.
If you want to shape the sound of your home audio system to become more musically believable, listening to recordings of the same music pieces you heard live can be instructive and useful. It’s easy these days because one can stream excellent HD digital audio performances of almost any piece of music.
Quite a few audiophiles will no doubt be groaning to read these words: I have found that recordings are generally good, if not mostly excellent, regardless of the recording platform. The majority of recording professionals that I have met bring their hearts and past musical experiences to the process. Most do everything within their power to capture as much of a performance as possible with the technology at hand within its limitations.
There’s no question that recordings vary in quality, and one is certainly entitled to preferences, but listening through a well-balanced hi fi system, reveals that most recordings capture enough of the gestalt of the music to result in enjoyable listening and a closer connection to the merits of a particular performance. If you can’t seem to find enough good recordings to fuel your continued satisfying participation in this hobby, I think one should question system and set-up before questioning the quality of a recording. Quite to the contrary, falling back on the old audiophile trope that a system is “too resolving to handle most recordings” is not a real justification for its price tag. Read more about this below.
Achieving and maintaining a believable level of tonal density in a hi fi system should be the foundation of building any system regardless of its price tag or the type of music that one prefers. Unfortunately, it is the first quality to fall by the wayside in a quest to hear more information. I think this is at least in part due to the fact that music cannot be played in a home setting on the scale and volume of music played live, and recordings also have their limitations in terms of capturing the scale and volume of live music. If we are on the hi fi improvement path, we just get inexorably drawn into trying to compensate for these limitations. Most of us tend to choose components or room set ups that reduce middle frequencies and lower harmonics below the level that they are present on the source material because large and enveloping middle frequencies and lower harmonics seem to diminish some of the detail that we think we need to hear. The result is a rather antiseptic listening experience where middle frequencies and lower harmonics are “purified” of their essential character. Reducing the power of midrange to hear more details is hi fi, not music, and I don’t mean “hi fi” in any pejorative sense if that is what you really want.
With hi fi set-ups that have full midrange power, all the recorded details are still present, but they are more in correct musical proportion. Professional recordists and producers of classical music take great care to preserve these natural proportions. The best recordings also capture dynamics and spatial information in a compellingly believable way, but we can’t fully appreciate all these musical qualities — tonal density, dynamics, and spatial information — in an out-of-balance system.
The pursuit of perfection in attempting to reproduce the sonic qualities of a live music event on a hi fi, even though we know we can’t achieve it, drives the hobby for many of us. Even the best of us, though, can end up being fooled from time-to-time.
Live music experiences are the most important tool I have found to prevent a hi fi system from devolving into a tonal caricature of live music, and sadly, many of us, including me, have not attended live music performances in a long time. Recently, I realized that the sound of my system had slowly become rather bloodless.
The system is back in balance for now, but it was a very humbling experience given my more than 40 years in the audio business. For less than the cost of many ultimate hi fi components, I have a new ultimate audio component to guide me: a Steinway B (Spirio/R) playing in my living room. It’s been so long since we’ve heard a piano close-up and live that Jack and I were at first actually put off by the immediacy and raw power of this magnificent instrument. Our reference hi fi system was sounding rather too polite and cerebral by comparison when listening to Grigory Sokolov, a majestic, powerful, artist who is also capable of shaping the notes with an almost spiritual level of nuance, play Beethoven and Brahms sonatas.
We also have Ed Pong to thank for driving the point home. We purchased his UltraAnalogue Recording, Tatsuki Narita (violin) and Yun-Yang Lee (piano) playing Danse Macabre – Zigeunerweisen – Block Nigun Introduction and Tarantella – Meditation. Upon first listen, we really had a hard time connecting to the artistic perspective of the performers and the recording.
Reference system changes were definitely in order. We subsequently have now changed a few component options from our collection, and we have very slightly reduced the speaker tweeter level. We have music again, not only in our living room on the B, but in our reference listening studio. Sokolov can now take us to the limits of what his recordings reveal, and Ed’s Narita tape shines with a high level of virtuosity in a performance that was lively and heartfelt. The recording itself presented a very tactile, unvarnished musical experience with a level of tonal density, dynamics, and texture in the violin playing that I have seldom experienced listening to recordings.
There was no doubt that our problem was with the system, not the recordings!
If you can make your hi fi sound believable with acoustic music, then it will sound great playing all types of music. Regardless of your musical tastes, doing your homework will help make your audio investments truly worthwhile. We all need to listen to more live acoustic music because hi fi is only an approximation, and when we listen only to hi fi, it is too easy to forget the raw power, tonal and harmonic complexity and nuance, and sometimes even unsettling brash sounds that actual acoustic instruments can make in a performance space.
While it’s true that we can’t recreate all the qualities of an actual music experience through a hi fi, as Treitz3 said about trying to get there, “I might just catch excellence.”
At the end of the day, however, I totally agree with Andromedaaudio: “Should you just buy what makes you feel good and you like to listen to?
.... 100 %!”
Amplified or synthesized music doesn’t work as a reference except to those people who are directly involved in the performance and all aspects of the recording and music production chain because they know exactly what the end product should sound like. Because all the characteristics of this type of music are the result of electronic manipulations in a typically anechoic studio space, there is no way to anticipate the actual musical intent unless one attended the session in the studio and is totally aware of the mix and sound engineering decisions. Even though some of us may personally prefer electronically reproduced music, it is not, unless you are a music, recording, or production professional a reliable reference point if your desire is to build a hi fi system that is more capable of faithful music reproduction.
To fully evaluate a hi fi system and the components in it, we ideally would hear a lot of live, unamplified musical events and then hear well-executed master recordings of those very events on a well-balanced hi fi system in an acoustically treated listening room, but that experience is out of reach for most people unless one is involved with the music or hi fi industry.
When I began my career in audio, I operated under the guiding principle that components working together in a system should come as close as possible to revealing accurately all the information that is embedded on the source material. I have over time evolved this idea to a much more accessible principle: Create a system that gets out of the way of the music so that we can suspend our belief that we are only listening to a hi fi and feel more connected to actual music listening experiences.
Ears are the most sensitive instruments, but they need constant calibration with a reference point. Live, unamplified music is the standard because we know that the complex and intense tonal density and the expansive vibrational energy of unamplified instruments played in a natural acoustic environment are real when we hear these qualities. The human ear can’t be fooled about what is actually the natural sound of music over the long term. We know what a voice sounds like. We’ve heard pianos and violins before.
Although ears can’t be fooled over the long term, we all have a tendency over time to lose sight of the real reference unless we constantly massage ourselves with live music. It’s just too easy to become wrapped up in a never-ending process of trying to get the system more in balance without any real point of reference. Without the reference, however, sooner or later, we risk losing interest in the hobby all together.
If you want to shape the sound of your home audio system to become more musically believable, listening to recordings of the same music pieces you heard live can be instructive and useful. It’s easy these days because one can stream excellent HD digital audio performances of almost any piece of music.
Quite a few audiophiles will no doubt be groaning to read these words: I have found that recordings are generally good, if not mostly excellent, regardless of the recording platform. The majority of recording professionals that I have met bring their hearts and past musical experiences to the process. Most do everything within their power to capture as much of a performance as possible with the technology at hand within its limitations.
There’s no question that recordings vary in quality, and one is certainly entitled to preferences, but listening through a well-balanced hi fi system, reveals that most recordings capture enough of the gestalt of the music to result in enjoyable listening and a closer connection to the merits of a particular performance. If you can’t seem to find enough good recordings to fuel your continued satisfying participation in this hobby, I think one should question system and set-up before questioning the quality of a recording. Quite to the contrary, falling back on the old audiophile trope that a system is “too resolving to handle most recordings” is not a real justification for its price tag. Read more about this below.
Achieving and maintaining a believable level of tonal density in a hi fi system should be the foundation of building any system regardless of its price tag or the type of music that one prefers. Unfortunately, it is the first quality to fall by the wayside in a quest to hear more information. I think this is at least in part due to the fact that music cannot be played in a home setting on the scale and volume of music played live, and recordings also have their limitations in terms of capturing the scale and volume of live music. If we are on the hi fi improvement path, we just get inexorably drawn into trying to compensate for these limitations. Most of us tend to choose components or room set ups that reduce middle frequencies and lower harmonics below the level that they are present on the source material because large and enveloping middle frequencies and lower harmonics seem to diminish some of the detail that we think we need to hear. The result is a rather antiseptic listening experience where middle frequencies and lower harmonics are “purified” of their essential character. Reducing the power of midrange to hear more details is hi fi, not music, and I don’t mean “hi fi” in any pejorative sense if that is what you really want.
With hi fi set-ups that have full midrange power, all the recorded details are still present, but they are more in correct musical proportion. Professional recordists and producers of classical music take great care to preserve these natural proportions. The best recordings also capture dynamics and spatial information in a compellingly believable way, but we can’t fully appreciate all these musical qualities — tonal density, dynamics, and spatial information — in an out-of-balance system.
The pursuit of perfection in attempting to reproduce the sonic qualities of a live music event on a hi fi, even though we know we can’t achieve it, drives the hobby for many of us. Even the best of us, though, can end up being fooled from time-to-time.
Live music experiences are the most important tool I have found to prevent a hi fi system from devolving into a tonal caricature of live music, and sadly, many of us, including me, have not attended live music performances in a long time. Recently, I realized that the sound of my system had slowly become rather bloodless.
The system is back in balance for now, but it was a very humbling experience given my more than 40 years in the audio business. For less than the cost of many ultimate hi fi components, I have a new ultimate audio component to guide me: a Steinway B (Spirio/R) playing in my living room. It’s been so long since we’ve heard a piano close-up and live that Jack and I were at first actually put off by the immediacy and raw power of this magnificent instrument. Our reference hi fi system was sounding rather too polite and cerebral by comparison when listening to Grigory Sokolov, a majestic, powerful, artist who is also capable of shaping the notes with an almost spiritual level of nuance, play Beethoven and Brahms sonatas.
We also have Ed Pong to thank for driving the point home. We purchased his UltraAnalogue Recording, Tatsuki Narita (violin) and Yun-Yang Lee (piano) playing Danse Macabre – Zigeunerweisen – Block Nigun Introduction and Tarantella – Meditation. Upon first listen, we really had a hard time connecting to the artistic perspective of the performers and the recording.
Reference system changes were definitely in order. We subsequently have now changed a few component options from our collection, and we have very slightly reduced the speaker tweeter level. We have music again, not only in our living room on the B, but in our reference listening studio. Sokolov can now take us to the limits of what his recordings reveal, and Ed’s Narita tape shines with a high level of virtuosity in a performance that was lively and heartfelt. The recording itself presented a very tactile, unvarnished musical experience with a level of tonal density, dynamics, and texture in the violin playing that I have seldom experienced listening to recordings.
There was no doubt that our problem was with the system, not the recordings!
If you can make your hi fi sound believable with acoustic music, then it will sound great playing all types of music. Regardless of your musical tastes, doing your homework will help make your audio investments truly worthwhile. We all need to listen to more live acoustic music because hi fi is only an approximation, and when we listen only to hi fi, it is too easy to forget the raw power, tonal and harmonic complexity and nuance, and sometimes even unsettling brash sounds that actual acoustic instruments can make in a performance space.
While it’s true that we can’t recreate all the qualities of an actual music experience through a hi fi, as Treitz3 said about trying to get there, “I might just catch excellence.”
At the end of the day, however, I totally agree with Andromedaaudio: “Should you just buy what makes you feel good and you like to listen to?
.... 100 %!”
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