The Cat’s Grin - a thread I’d have expected to be started by Ron ;-)

[Bobvin]

The Cat’s Grin - The Absolute Sound

The Cat’s Grin - Jonathan Valin considers the ways we judge stereo systems.

www.theabsolutesound.com

At the risk of ruminating over this topic yet again, what camp do you find yourself in?

Personally, if I am being honest, I’m in the 3rd group, though with respectful nods and lessons learned from the 1st and 2nd groups. Ultimately I recognize there is no “absolute” and only live music being played in my listening room will ever sound like live music, everything else will always be a re-creation so I want my system to entertain me. I have gone to considerable expense and even some extremes in that effort, but there are times my car radio does a fine job entertaining me. If its good music that I connect with a transistor radio (remember those) can be enough.

 

[dbeau]

The Cat’s Grin - The Absolute Sound

The Cat’s Grin - Jonathan Valin considers the ways we judge stereo systems.

www.theabsolutesound.com

At the risk of ruminating over this topic yet again, what camp do you find yourself in?

Personally, if I am being honest, I’m in the 3rd group, though with respectful nods and lessons learned from the 1st and 2nd groups. Ultimately I recognize there is no “absolute” and only live music being played in my listening room will ever sound like live music, everything else will always be a re-creation so I want my system to entertain me. I have gone to considerable expense and even some extremes in that effort, but there are times my car radio does a fine job entertaining me. If its good music that I connect with a transistor radio (remember those) can be enough.

This is insufficient in that many (myself) are not wholly into any of these specific 'groups' as delineated.
I am a composite of #1 and #3 primarily.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Tricky to like Tangerine Dream, or Ozric Tentacles etc, and use the approximation to live music as the benchmark for your system.
And of course, we've visited systems where the owner believes the sound approximates live, and that's their intention, and you wonder which awful acoustic venues they visit.
And those who just want an enjoyable sound, the rest of the world can go hang...they can't be audiophiles, surely? Lol.

 

[cjfrbw]

More angels dancing on audiophile pinheads? My system is a player piano that plays scrolls. I endeavor to make it the most pleasing and evocative player piano I can manage within the usual constraints. I guess I would call that "The Absolute Player Piano".

 

[Bobvin]

When it comes to the first camp... I only infrequently hear classical music live, and my aural memory of that event is usually gone by morning. Even less often live chamber music though I’d probably consider that a benchmark. Live jazz... yes but that is usually amplified somehow though at least the singer’s mic, if there are not other pickups and amps employed , which is always the case for rock and blues. So how the hell can those be references?

And I can’t speak to what is in the grooves. Thankfully we are still plumbing those depths with stylus shape, diamond cantilevers, tweaked magnetic flux density around the coils, etc. So much magic in those squiggly little grooves!

And as for measurements, I have to admit a little apprehension... what if my systems is sounding amazing and I learn something measures poorly? That kind of thing can lead to an OCD rathole, endlessly chasing one flaw only to uncover (or create) another.

I might be surrendering my audiophile bona fides, but at the end of the day, when the lights are down and the cabernet is opened up nicely, it really is about entertainment.

 

[tima]

I might be surrendering my audiophile bona fides, but at the end of the day, when the lights are down and the cabernet is opened up nicely, it really is about entertainment.

Just like that cabernet, Bob, isn't some entertainment better than others?

 

[Bobvin]

Just like that cabernet, Bob, isn't some entertainment better than others?

Sure, but the lovely and talented Mrs. Bob would take a dim view of dancing girls in the listening room.

 

[tima]

Sure, but the lovely and talented Mrs. Bob would take a dim view of dancing girls in the listening room.

Not that! I was trying save your bona fides.

 

[Robh3606]

I don't completely fit into it either. I am heavily into measurements but primarily a 3. There is no substitute for the real thing!

Rob

 

[stehno]

The Cat’s Grin - The Absolute Sound

The Cat’s Grin - Jonathan Valin considers the ways we judge stereo systems.

www.theabsolutesound.com

At the risk of ruminating over this topic yet again, what camp do you find yourself in?

Personally, if I am being honest, I’m in the 3rd group, though with respectful nods and lessons learned from the 1st and 2nd groups. Ultimately I recognize there is no “absolute” and only live music being played in my listening room will ever sound like live music, everything else will always be a re-creation so I want my system to entertain me. I have gone to considerable expense and even some extremes in that effort, but there are times my car radio does a fine job entertaining me. If its good music that I connect with a transistor radio (remember those) can be enough.

Excellent topic, Bob. As with perhaps any performance-oriented hobby, I suspect Valin's article including our responses and our playback system's level of musicality all boils down to our individual mindsets toward real performance and what priority efforts we choose to give it.

To be frank, I think the majority of participants in any performance-oriented hobby (not industry) really just don't care very much about performance. And as a result they just trust or lean toward the so-called experts, give matters a token effort, and call it a day. If true, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that but a little intellectual honesty regarding our own true performance mindsets could probably collectively save about 15 million hours spent in forums diving down the same 20 rabbit holes debating performance-related matters when many really just don't care very much - only to have others come along to say, there is no right or wrong way and in a high-end audio forum called whatsBESTforum.com to boot? IOW, as part our mindset toward performance, many don't really think matters through very thoroughly.

IMO, no matter how engaged, sophisticated, or intellectual we'd like to think we are about this hobby, it's not about the recording venue, nor the music genre, not the artists' intents, nor the recording or mastering engineers strategies, nor is it even the live performance itself. All of those events have already occurred in a moment in time in time past and are long gone. What is left is what was captured at the recording. Hence, our goal or target on the wall can be greatly simplified if our only focus was to ensure the vast majority of the music info embedded in a given recording remains audible at the speaker. That is the one thing every last one of us should be able to take to the bank in this otherwise entirely subjective hobby. But even then, we have some so-called experts claiming that all cables and all components retain 100% of the fidelity of the input signal. Maybe we live in a perfect world after all?

 

[cjfrbw]

Audiophilia: a hobby in which you hope your credit cards and bank account can keep up with your OC disorder.

 

[tima]

Background:
This 'guest editorial' is Valin's rehash of his earlier categorization of listeners that is similar to @Ron Resnick 's "A group here developed in 2016 four alternative, but not mutually exclusive, objectives of high-end audio: ..." (cf. for example here and here.) IIrc Valin's original was part of a review - if you can find that, please post a link.

Discussion:
I submit that Valin's take on what he refers to as the “absolute sound” bunch is something of a straw dog characterization, or at least misguided. He argues that "the idea of the absolute sound is not unproblematic." Aside from a cheap double negative (which tells us nothing) Valin plays off the word "absolute" to make his case "The trouble is that the absolute sound ...isn’t absolute."

V writes: "What you hear in a concert hall is fundamentally dependent on all kinds of variables (e.g., the hall’s acoustics, where you’re seated in the hall, how the players themselves are spaced on the stage floor, what kind of instruments they are playing, how “warmed up” or not those instruments are, etc.). The result of all this relativity is that what sounds “absolute” to you in your orchestra section seat ... will be ... different than what sounds “absolute” to another listener who sits in the center of the orchestra section or nearer to the strings, or in a loge or a balcony seat."

So goes Valin's case: there is no absolute sound that every listener experiences because no listener has an experience identical to any other listener; therefore the notion of an or the absolute sound is ... err, uh, ... not unproblematic. (Thanks Jonathan.) Okay, so what - that no two people can simultaneously occupy the same space and time does not change the fact that both or many hear the same instruments in the same hall during the same concert.

Valin, imo, steers assessment of "the absolute sound" in the wrong direction. He seems to construe the notion of 'absolute' as meaning 'identical for all' or perhaps 'universally shared'. That's silly. There's the straw dog.

Ron comments in his account of the 2016 WBF effort: Trying to answer “what is the absolute sound” actually seems to me to confuse the issue." And that seems correct although I'm not sure if any of that effort's four objectives quite hit the mark.

The notion of "the absolute sound" has been around since Pearson started his magazine. It is fine for a magazine name, but as Valin's misconstrual and discussion here have shown it ultimately is not helpful for use as an objective or as a reference and ultimately lacks explanatory or expository power. (If you like it or want to use it, fine go ahead - I reject cancelling words.)

If this leaves a hole in Valin's list or the WBF objectives I suggest filling it with the notion of the sound of real music. It does not require a specific concert seat to know the sound of a piano or a bassoon or a celesta playing. I cannot hear what you hear but we both can point and say I'm hearing that. We can go from one concert hall to the next or to a recital or practice room and agree, yes, that is the sound of a violin and not the the sound of a viola or an accordian. Having had the experience maybe a few times we can say "I know what a violin sounds like" without having to experience one when you say that.

I suggest we say things like: "I want my stereo to sound like real music" or "I want a believable sound" or "I want a natural sound". That doesn't mean it has to sound like any specific instrument (Jascha's) or orchestra (Chicago Symphony) or hall (Carnegie), but if it is violin music, for example, it needs to sound like a real violin.

 

[Bobvin]

Thanks Tim. As per my title, I was perhaps unwittingly acknowledging Ron would have (did already), as you have done, apply a bit more intellectual rigor to the discussion. I suppose I lean to wanting a believable sound, but this thought has always given me pause... when I’m in my car I know the musician is playing a piano, guitar, saxaphone etc., and I can easily identify it. Does it sound “real” — not particularly, but I know the guitar is not a sitar. So in this case it sounds, at least, believable. So maybe I should say I want a “realistic” sound and could easily say a ‘natural’ sound but that term, as we’ve learned, leaves too much to interpretation (at least to some of us.)

And I find it interesting our hobby is not filled with professional musicians. Is it because they spend their time making music they don’t care as much their stereos or radios don’t perfectly replicate the sounds they hear when performing? Is “believable“ enough to get them to the music. Perhaps they don’t see a value proposition in trying to recreate the “real” sound of a violin in their living room knowing it can only ever be an approximation?

When audiophiles tweak their systems, I have yet to hear of having someone play a violin live in their room and then painstakingly a/b compare it to the sound coming from their rig. Or a guitar, or cello, etc. And what setup guru comes to your home and brings an instrument with them? It is immediately evident when you are hearing a real cello. I think behind a curtain a real cello would be identified by even the least experienced audiophile vs. a stereo playing the same material.

This brings me back to entertainment. I feel bad for the fellow who can’t stop to enjoy the music because they feel their system is not yet reached an absolute, real, believable, natural sound. I am quite astonished, myself, how much more I am enjoying my system with my latest cartridge, cable, phono stage changes. The additional information that is being exposed is allowing me to connect to the music in a more visceral, emotional, intimate way, but is it somehow more believable? Maybe it could be said it is more accurate? The same music played before my latest changes was no less believable, but still didn’t connect the same way.

 

[marmota]

There are four groups, but there should be 5.
I'm in the 5th group: I want to best reproduced sound for my tastes.


What I want to say is that, "live sound" from speakers is impossible, because it is not a live performance, and the sound is going to be colored, always, because it comes from speakers, amp, source and cables, and not from musicians in your living room.

5th group has an idea, a mental image of what type of sound is the one that they want to achieve and enjoy, instead of listening to their system and saying vague terms like "neutral", "life like" or "completely natural", and as such ignoring the sound characteristics on purpose to feel good in the short term but suffering from huge financial expenses in "sidegrade level" gear every year due to the constant change of audio gear without a clear "sonic objective" in mind.

As always, IMHO and YMMV

 

[dbeau]

And I find it interesting our hobby is not filled with professional musicians. Is it because they spend their time making music they don’t care as much their stereos or radios don’t perfectly replicate the sounds they hear when performing? Is “believable“ enough to get them to the music. Perhaps they don’t see a value proposition in trying to recreate the “real” sound of a violin in their living room knowing it can only ever be an approximation?

Yes - in agreement! As an aside; i play classical guitar so do have that comparison to our system and often when I'm listening my wife is practicing in another area of the house on her harp, It interferes with my listening BUT i compensate by comparing the naturalness of one against the other.

 

[ddk]

Background:
This 'guest editorial' is Valin's rehash of his earlier categorization of listeners that is similar to @Ron Resnick 's "A group here developed in 2016 four alternative, but not mutually exclusive, objectives of high-end audio: ..." (cf. for example here and here.) IIrc Valin's original was part of a review - if you can find that, please post a link.

Discussion:
I submit that Valin's take on what he refers to as the “absolute sound” bunch is something of a straw dog characterization, or at least misguided. He argues that "the idea of the absolute sound is not unproblematic." Aside from a cheap double negative (which tells us nothing) Valin plays off the word "absolute" to make his case "The trouble is that the absolute sound ...isn’t absolute."

V writes: "What you hear in a concert hall is fundamentally dependent on all kinds of variables (e.g., the hall’s acoustics, where you’re seated in the hall, how the players themselves are spaced on the stage floor, what kind of instruments they are playing, how “warmed up” or not those instruments are, etc.). The result of all this relativity is that what sounds “absolute” to you in your orchestra section seat ... will be ... different than what sounds “absolute” to another listener who sits in the center of the orchestra section or nearer to the strings, or in a loge or a balcony seat."

So goes Valin's case: there is no absolute sound that every listener experiences because no listener has an experience identical to any other listener; therefore the notion of an or the absolute sound is ... err, uh, ... not unproblematic. (Thanks Jonathan.) Okay, so what - that no two people can simultaneously occupy the same space and time does not change the fact that both or many hear the same instruments in the same hall during the same concert.

Valin, imo, steers assessment of "the absolute sound" in the wrong direction. He seems to construe the notion of 'absolute' as meaning 'identical for all' or perhaps 'universally shared'. That's silly. There's the straw dog.

Ron comments in his account of the 2016 WBF effort: Trying to answer “what is the absolute sound” actually seems to me to confuse the issue." And that seems correct although I'm not sure if any of that effort's four objectives quite hit the mark.

The notion of "the absolute sound" has been around since Pearson started his magazine. It is fine for a magazine name, but as Valin's misconstrual and discussion here have shown it ultimately is not helpful for use as an objective or as a reference and ultimately lacks explanatory or expository power. (If you like it or want to use it, fine go ahead - I reject cancelling words.)

If this leaves a hole in Valin's list or the WBF objectives I suggest filling it with the notion of the sound of real music. It does not require a specific concert seat to know the sound of a piano or a bassoon or a celesta playing. I cannot hear what you hear but we both can point and say I'm hearing that. We can go from one concert hall to the next or to a recital or practice room and agree, yes, that is the sound of a violin and not the the sound of a viola or an accordian. Having had the experience maybe a few times we can say "I know what a violin sounds like" without having to experience one when you say that.

I suggest we say things like: "I want my stereo to sound like real music" or "I want a believable sound" or "I want a natural sound". That doesn't mean it has to sound like any specific instrument (Jascha's) or orchestra (Chicago Symphony) or hall (Carnegie), but if it is violin music, for example, it needs to sound like a real violin.

Hi Tim,

If you look at Valin’s AS types in context of HP & Carnegie Hall it’s not really a straw dog argument. For close to 10 years I had season tickets to Carnegie Hall and on average attended 3 concerts per week during the season. Add to that the many occasions I was let in during rehearsals by my friend who worked there part time. Over time I became very familiar with hall and how depending on your seat the sound and experience can be drastically different, down to tone and timbre and dare I say even imaging; this is what I believe JV is alluding to.

HP always sat in the same seats, front right under the bass section. In that location bass was very prominent and with sidewall reflections quite overwhelming and even overpowering at times. You would hear the string section specially violins and violas with an upward tilt and extra presence almost as a detached section with extra prominence and definition? on their own followed with brass, woodwind and percussion blending in as one but still apart from the rest. If you went to SeaCliff and heard HP’s system you’d notice the similarity to how he heard the orchestra from his location in Carnegie Hall. Bass was always overpowering, probably why he liked speakers with separate woofer section he could put in the corner and crank up. Everything else came 2nd to the bass in the face balance struggling to come through so he had to tweak the system for focused images and carved out sections of the sound to be able to hear all the bits through the muddy bass. JV is simply saying that HP’s concept of absolute sound which I think of as basically music in bits and pieces with overly defined imaging and ever prominent bass is a result of what and how he heard at Carnegie Hall. I think he has a valid point here and definitely HP preached a type of absolute sound that might have been based in a reality it’s definitely not what I’d call natural.

Like many for years I was in the 3rd group with primary focus on an easy to listen to beautiful musical sound that would draw me in without any fuss, probably the most entertaining period for many if we can get there. I had a 2-3 year unsatisfying and expensive foray into HP's absolute sound hell before abandoning it for group 3 again until around year 2000 with more access to live music and recording sessions with a some incredible musicians I developed a deeper understanding of live and real sound in many different venues. This is when I transitioned to “natural” sound which JV partially gets in his definition of group 2.

david

 

[Ron Resnick]

This is insufficient in that many (myself) are not wholly into any of these specific 'groups' as delineated.
I am a composite of #1 and #3 primarily.

I don't think Jonathan is suggesting that the groups (what I and others here call "objectives") are mutually exclusive. One may have a mix of objectives, or have may have one primary objective and one secondary objective.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Yes, Bob, you beat me to it!

As you and TimA note well a group of us here developed in 2016 four alternative, but not mutually exclusive, objectives of high-end audio. While this structure still attracts debate and dissent, it was at least a good place to start:

1) recreate the sound of an original musical event,

2) reproduce exactly what is on the tape, vinyl or digital source being played,

3) create a sound subjectively pleasing to the audiophile, and

4) create a sound that seems live.

These Objectives are not mutually exclusive, and an audiophile might seek a combination of them.

While there is a great deal of overlap, I, personally, think that this framework is more analytically intelligible than Jonathan's framework.

 

[tima]

JV is simply saying that HP’s concept of absolute sound which I think of as basically music in bits and pieces with overly defined imaging and ever prominent bass is a result of what and how he heard at Carnegie Hall. I think he has a valid point here and definitely HP preached a type of absolute sound that might have been based in a reality it’s definitely not what I’d call natural.

The autobiography stuff is interesting with you and Valin sharing experiences of Harry Pearson and yourselves. You say that Pearson's concept of the absolute sound does not represent natural sound because his experience of music at Carnegie hall had overly prominent bass and because of that he emphasized bass in his stereo system. Valin says one's experience of live music is relative to where one sits in a hall and therefore the absolute sound is not absolute.

First, I'm particularly wary of a notion of natural that ties to listening to live music or a stereo only in a specific way such as an optimal listening position, however one regards that. (This starts getting too close to a notion of natural based on performance characteristics.) Pearson's seat at Carnegie was said to be close to the double basses. Regardless of that, he was hearing live acoustic music. Yes, one gets a particular sonic perspective at any concert tied somewhat to listening position. If Pearson or anyone is so naive or unthinking to base both their notion of natural sound or absolute sound and base their stereo setup on a singular perspective of live music - their specific seat in a specific hall - then we should gauge what they say with that in mind. Remarks become prefaced with a disclaimer: "Based on limited experience ..."

Was Pearson naive or unthinking?

Don't confuse Valin's assessment of Harry Pearson's take on absolute sound (which Valin (and David?) presumes is flawed because Pearson had a specific concert seat and setup his stereo accordingly) with attempts at categorizing listeners or listener objectives. If Valin's first category of listeners is based on Valin's notion of Harry Pearson's notion of absolute sound, then that's the straw dog, namely an argument set up to be easily refuted. It appears that Valin's motive in creating confusion for his first two categories is to solve the confusion with his third category, as he writes: "the “as you like it” or “musicality first” listeners." "...musicality listeners are simply looking for a good time."

But there are issues with that third category. Valin writes: "In worst case scenarios, musicality amounts to subjectivity taken to an entirely personal extreme. There can be no general standard of what constitutes excellent playback because no standard (except one’s own) is needed or applies. Put simply, you like what you like." I call this the Mick Jagger's Brown Sugar School of Music Appreciation: I ain't no school boy but I know what I like.

In effect, Valin's entire enterprise in his guest editorial is a straw dog. It is not a genuine effort at categorization. In fact he critiques the categories he himself offered a few years back. It is designed to take us not to categories one can match against oneself but to Valin's quasi conclusion which is not about categories or groups of listeners.

“We all know real when we hear it.” Figuring out why that should be the case in the face of the obvious contradiction (to wit, a stereo system is manifestly not a real symphony orchestra ...) has been the challenge of a hi-fi lifetime. And I haven’t figured it out yet, save to speculate ... that when a stereo sounds “real” it isn’t just a matter of superior parts ... but also of the way those parts are grouped together—of their gestalt—and that this magical gestalt regrouping of parts depends in some unmistakable way on the neutrality and completeness of the presentation."

Why do we all know real when we hear it? In answer Valin says we it takes both superior parts grouped together in a way to provide a neutral and complete presentation. That's actually a non-sequitar, but I suspect most don't care; Valin's words sound nice - who could disagree with them? Is that what real or 'natural' mean - neutral and complete?

 

[VladB]

In a way, all of the three (four) groups remind of an old joke about a bunch of blind men who try to apprehend the shape of an elephant by touching different parts of its body - leg, tail, husk etc.

That is not a way to reach a holistic apprehension of the best technique (and technology) in recorded music performance at home.

Still - and purely IMHO - “the live performance” school is probably the closest to truth, as through live performances you can at least establish a certain mental memory benchmark to which you can compare the overall performance of a home system and decide, do you want/need to have as close experience as possible at home.

If you narrow these performances to say a classical symphony/opera, a live jazz club session and a rock/metal group concert, you already know deep inside how difficult and almost impossible it is to really get to that levels of emotionally-charged sound through a two-channel system..

Ultimately, it all gets down to psychic energy states which you aim to replicate/achieve with a recording, and this is what drives one to perfection.

I need to get the same level of “mental high” from home listening as I get from attending a live event...This does drive a lot of things differently then which one would not need to touch if the only goal was to get an accurate reproduction of a recording (at what SPL level, btw?) or be just pleasing at some “oh it’s a nice melody” level...