The language of Reproduction and the language of Music.

[tima]

Start me up ...

The protagonists in this thread are fans of live acoustic music. You seem to share those values.

Where the audiophile community is weakest is its inability or poor job of describing what we hear when lisening to live music. This not the same thing as listening - that is the organic, holistic experience many have described. Listening is not dissection into parts. This is about learning.

We learn from listening to live music. It is important not only to give into music through listening but to understand what we learn from that. What we learn through experience shapes our values and that experience and those values shape, can shape, what we want from our systems and how we build them. There is an order of precedence and it doesn't start with components.

There is much to understanding the live experience that can/should shape our values for reproduction and in turn the language we adopt when talking about reproduction. The live experience teaches us about tonality and harmonics, it teaches us about how the expressive use of dynamics and gradations of dynamics shape emotion. How innovative use of timing coupled with dynamics and tone bring interest, excitement, flow and fluidity - I think of Stravinsky, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and yes, even Bartok. We learn through listening. And you find these fundamentals in a score and their synthesis in performance - where you find genius in composition and great conductorial interpretation. Imo, these come first in experience and first in vocabulary.

What we learn from music we can carry to our systems - what is truly important - that is why the live experience is necessary to natural reproduction, why it is first in the order of precedence.

As I've said before, there are no psycho-acoustics in the score - they are a consequence of a live performance but they are not the goal of a performance. Don't misunderstand - there is no doubting that psycho-acoustics are a genuine part of the live music listening experience - music always occurs in a context and that context brings meaning to the performance. But, imo too often do psycho-acoustics take the focus for the modern audiophile in reproduction - I believe that happens because people can use and grasp more visual oriented language to describe what they hear and our language is stronger for visual stuff. Describing sound is harder - sharing sound verbally is harder. But it can be done. Yes, sometimes visual language is helpful - think of tone color - but a pure music experience is not visual. Read my first sentence again. If we want to build better systems we need to do better at not just experiencing, but learning.

The key for having a language of reproduction is to winnow the wheat from chaff in reproduced sound and the language of reproduction - we do that by using what we learn in listening to live music and understanding what is important about the live experience to the world of music reproduction.

... you make a grown man cry.

 

[bonzo75]

A great reminder for a big reason why I don't like audio shows. I don't want to hear this kind of crap music all day. What on earth are are exhibitors thinking? Do they think their audience is all stupid?

I always take my recordings to shows and listen only in the rooms they let me play them or where they have their own classical records

 

[tima]

He had to have a talk with me about what was the motivation of playing program material like this on such fancy equipment.

"What's Best" talk of just about anything attracts status seekers. Let's not make this thread about them.

edit: spelling

 

[tima]

A great reminder for a big reason why I don't like audio shows. I don't want to hear this kind of crap music all day. What on earth are are exhibitors thinking? Do they think their audience is all stupid?

Help me out, Al, I don't understand how this ties in to the thread topic.

 

[MarcelNL]

I think you are making some excellent points, Marcel, but I think the relationship between low frequencies and space is more than being able to recognize the location of a tympani drum. In live music, the long, slower lower frequency harmonics hit and reflect off the walls, floor, and ceiling of the performance venue which provides critical information to our ears and brains about the size of the hall, the scale of the music, and the acoustical characteristics of the environment. This reflected low level low frequency information on good recordings greatly adds to our sense of space and is a vital part in recreating a compellingly believable music listening experience at home.

Rather than "sound stage", I like to ask listeners to describe the "musical space" they hear and how different parts of the music and the instrumentation flesh out our sense of place. Because it includes the word "stage", sound stage is too easily misconstrued by those who do not yet have enough live music listening experience as meaning that which occurs on the stage and the location of each instrument on that stage.

agree, in my language the advantage is that sound stage is not a phrase, or at least one I never use...

 

[MarcelNL]

As I've said before, there are no psycho-acoustics in the score - they are a consequence of a live performance but they are not the goal of a performance. Don't misunderstand - there is no doubting that psycho-acoustics are a genuine part of the live music listening experience - music always occurs in a context and that context brings meaning to the performance.

No disagreement, just an addition; I'm fairly certain some composers DID intend to play with psycho-acoustics OR they managed unknowingly. For some I think I'm able to pick it up, for some it takes a while, and some that point may come later... or never at all;-)

Some random quick examples:
When I first heard Sibelius I 'saw' vast Scandinavian woodlands I knew from vacations long past, that was well before I knew he was a Fin...(Naively I assumed he was French until I did my homework)
Strauss 'Eine Alpensinfonie', yeah the name of the piece is a giveaway ;-) certainly paints the soundscape of the Alps to a point where I have begun to believe that conductors who understand that soundscape can create more involving (to me) performances of such pieces. Similar but not identical; non native speakers singing in a language mostly do not work for me.

For me that is also language of music, performers and reproduction systems can kill these often tiny cues pretty effectively.
Introduce too much whatever 'fave' of the year plating, wire, fuse, tube, you-name-it in your chain, and you likely end up with a one track pony...literally as judging from what I hear at audio gatherings, on various YT videos and at the shows (I tend to avoid shows as gear never has rested long enough, rooms are a drama, power is a nightmare etc...any such demo is like having to run the 100 yards with both hands tied behind your back -been there done that- not worth it)

 

[rando]

I wanted to stay out but saw this video posted today on my forum feed

Ked, the nonsense filling up your forum feed came to a head in relatively few posts after that video was posted. "All this anger I'll put aside" didn't require further exposition here.

Tying this back on topic. I have to ask if you consider leaving a thought unvoiced on purpose, thus allowing one confronted with it pause to reflect on what arrives in their own mind, a relevant means of communicating harder to define terms. Specifically ones with too many or too hard to pin down meanings.

The key for having a language of reproduction is to winnow the wheat from chaff in reproduced sound and the language of reproduction

In your writings do pregnant thoughts have place in the language of reproduction.

Is there seed or only the harvest to be gathered for sale.

 

[Gregm]

Quite often recorded music doesn't sound like live in-person music, depending on mic'ing techniques, production, etc.

Agreed. And, obviously, all recorded music isn't always the best reference to gauge the reproduction system as we do not know said mic'ing techniques and how well the mixing & mastering was done...

Defined outlines, pinpoint images during playback are often true to a recording. Whereas if the playback system instead diffuses the source material into a different presentation, even if some aspects of it are now more representative of the live experience, that can be to some people a highly undesirable coloration.

Again agreed, and I would add that, to a certain extent, hi-end conditions us to listen for this "separation" of instruments i.e. the ability to see an hologram of the musician playing in our home-- playing back the ubiquitous ref recordings, of course.

Coming to think of it, I don't remember seeing any pin-point imaging in any concert hall, at least not where i usually sit (usually centre rows 23-35)! Unless it's a solo

 

[PeterA]

agree, in my language the advantage is that sound stage is not a phrase, or at least one I never use...

This is a wonderful little post Marcel. It got me thinking and perhaps the whole subject of soundstage would be an interesting thread topic, but I am afraid of how Bonzo might react.

I used to think of soundstage as a characteristic or attribute of my system in my room. Sometimes it was reshaped by the addition of a different component in my system context. Soundstage was a more or less fixed concept based on the gear I chose. It was independent from and not something inherent on the recording. It was a term I used because it was a strong characteristic resulting from decisions I made with my gear, particularly cables and speaker set up.

With my recent system change, I now think of soundstage in much looser terms as simply the environment or the recording venue in which the musicians are playing their instruments . It is the spatial context for the instruments and music as presented on the recording. It is no longer fixed but it varies depending on what LP I put on my turntable and it is an interesting element of the presentation. This seems to be related to the choices one makes in gear and set up. Either the system gets out of the way, or it determines to a large degree, the character of the soundstage.

I am still learning and find these thread discussions pretty interesting as a way for me to sort out my own thoughts and learn from others.

EDIT: I am rethinking my aversion to the glossary of terms. DDK is correct, it is not the terms themselves that are the problem; they can be quite useful in describing what one hears from a system or gear. The more important thing is the direction one chooses to take with gear/system/set up choices. That seem more related to what the listener/system owner values, and that in turn depends in large part on how he or she prioritizes the actual sound of real instruments at real places. How is that sound heard, described, and valued. Somehow, there was a shift brought about by the dissection of music and by the use of these terms and the value placed on them when reviewing gear in magazines.

 

[Cellcbern]

As promised, I will not comment on the video sound, but yes, the music is just awful and you don't hear this kind of stuff outside the audiophile world. Spot on, Ked.

A great reminder for a big reason why I don't like audio shows. I don't want to hear this kind of crap music all day. What on earth are are exhibitors thinking? Do they think their audience is all stupid?

Is it possible to really hear and assess the performance of the system in the video (to the extent that's possible from a video) if you hate the music that is playing?

I'm clear on what I like and don't like, but I try not to judge music or art too harshly - "there's no accounting for taste" as the saying goes. In this case the "awful" music has been widely heard outside of the audiophile world for years. I don't care for and wouldn't buy the artist's (Melanie Di Biasio) recordings, but she tours Europe and has a following. I am also unmoved by Schubert Lieder and wouldn't buy the Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recording.

My experience with audio shows has been entirely positive. Where else in one or several days can you listen to so many new and different components and systems in one place, talk to the designers, and discover new music? At the audio shows I've attended far too broad a range of music, very little of it "audiophile" recordings, has been played to warrant any generalizations about it, and I have been able to make requests and have discs/records I brought with me played. I find audio shows to be useful and fun.

 

[Al M.]

Is it possible to really hear and assess the performance of the system in the video (to the extent that's possible from a video) if you hate the music that is playing?

I'm clear on what I like and don't like, but I try not to judge music or art too harshly - "there's no accounting for taste" as the saying goes. In this case the "awful" music has been widely heard outside of the audiophile world for years. I don't care for and wouldn't buy the artist's (Melanie Di Biasio) recordings, but she tours Europe and has a following. I am also unmoved by Schubert Lieder and wouldn't buy the Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recording.

My experience with audio shows has been entirely positive. Where else in one or several days can you listen to so many new and different components and systems in one place, talk to the designers, and discover new music? At the audio shows I've attended far too broad a range of music, very little of it "audiophile" recordings, has been played to warrant any generalizations about it, and I have been able to make requests and have discs/records I brought with me played. I find audio shows to be useful and fun.

Thank you!

I stand corrected.

Here is the original:

NOW you can appreciate the music. It's not my favorite either, but it's good music.

Here is another one of her:

She is really good, and obviously not an 'audiophile' puppet:

Mélanie De Biasio - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And no, I did not comment on the performance of the system in the video, because I have promised some posters not to do that anymore. So I did not care to assess the system performance either.

All can draw the conclusions themselves, listening to the recording directly (see above link).

***

And yes, my criticism of audio shows still stands.

 

[Cellcbern]

Not all audio shows are created equal:

Capital Audiofest 2021: It's a Wrap

Capital Audiofest 2021 was a fantastic show. Everyone I spoke to—vendors, visitors, the helpful Hilton staff—was jazzed to be there. Everyone was in good spirits. While I didn’t see as many attendees in total as at the 2019 CAF show pre-Covid, every room I visited was full, and in many midday...

www.stereophile.com

Capital Audiofest | Rockville MD

Capital Audiofest, Rockville, Maryland. 3,997 likes · 9 talking about this · 217 were here. CAF is Washington DC/ Mid Atlantic region’s favorite high-end electronics and vinyl show. We present

www.facebook.com

Capital Audiofest (CAF) 2019 Show Report By Enjoy the Music.com

Capital Audiofest (CAF) 2019 Show Report By Enjoy the Music.com

www.enjoythemusic.com

 

[tima]

She is really good, and obviously not an 'audiophile' puppet:

Is it possible to really hear and assess the performance of the system in the video (to the extent that's possible from a video) if you hate the music that is playing?

Not all audio shows are created equal:

We're not talking about audio shows or female vocals in this thread.

Al - you have a reputation as a serial thread swerver. Telling us you're not talking about videos is talking about videos.

 

[tima]

No disagreement, just an addition; I'm fairly certain some composers DID intend to play with psycho-acoustics OR they managed unknowingly. For some I think I'm able to pick it up, for some it takes a while, and some that point may come later... or never at all;-)

Some random quick examples:
When I first heard Sibelius I 'saw' vast Scandinavian woodlands I knew from vacations long past, that was well before I knew he was a Fin...(Naively I assumed he was French until I did my homework)
Strauss 'Eine Alpensinfonie', yeah the name of the piece is a giveaway ;-) certainly paints the soundscape of the Alps to a point where I have begun to believe that conductors who understand that soundscape can create more involving (to me) performances of such pieces. Similar but not identical; non native speakers singing in a language mostly do not work for me.

For me that is also language of music, performers and reproduction systems can kill these often tiny cues pretty effectively.
Introduce too much whatever 'fave' of the year plating, wire, fuse, tube, you-name-it in your chain, and you likely end up with a one track pony...literally as judging from what I hear at audio gatherings, on various YT videos and at the shows (I tend to avoid shows as gear never has rested long enough, rooms are a drama, power is a nightmare etc...any such demo is like having to run the 100 yards with both hands tied behind your back -been there done that- not worth it)

I understand exactly what you're saying about Sibelius and Strauss' Alpine Symphony. In many of his works Sibelius' music leads me to thoughts of nature and my imagination of the beauty of Finnish forests and countryside. The start of the 2nd movement of his Second Symphony, which features runs of plucked bass and cello, that opening always causes me to think of a lone Finnish wolf in the pre-dawn, loping home at the edge of a snowy forest. I describe works that stimulate my imagination in that way as evocative.

Some composers and compositions indeed do this intentionally - it is sometimes referred to as "program music" - music intended to convey a scene or mood. Examples I can think of are Beethoven's 6th, his Pastorale Symphony and Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, known as 'Fingal's Cave'.

Given that nature and natural settings are strongly associated to Sibelius' works it is interesting that he explicity denied writing program music and claimed his compositions were strictly abstract.

I don't think of these evocations or imaginations as the same sorts of psycho-acoustic artifacts we find in home stereo listening rooms.

 

[tima]

EDIT: I am rethinking my aversion to the glossary of terms. DDK is correct, it is not the terms themselves that are the problem; they can be quite useful in describing what one hears from a system or gear. The more important thing is the direction one chooses to take with gear/system/set up choices. That seem more related to what the listener/system owner values, and that in turn depends in large part on how he or she prioritizes the actual sound of real instruments at real places. How is that sound heard, described, and valued. Somehow, there was a shift brought about by the dissection of music and by the use of these terms and the value placed on them when reviewing gear in magazines.

I applaud your rethinking. Not only are we re-emphasizing the role that live acoustic music plays in building a home audio system, we are realizing how the words and concepts related to the live music experience allow us to understand and express what we value from that experience and what values (not all but some) embeded in the current language of reproduction we reject.

Two conclusions this thread has reaffirmed for me are thoughts I expressed in your system thread, Natural Sound. Perhaps now we share them.

= Listening - the holistic, organic experience of enjoying live music or a stereo - is not diminished or compromised by having a language for describing that sound or the system component sound. Our ability to assess the degree to which a goal of naturally sounding reproduction is attained is not hindered by having a language for describing components.

- Where we have difficulty is knowing where to put our emphases and our values - these are the bases of our preference for choosing the sound we want. Vocabulary is not the problem - how we use it is and how we are influenced by it is what is important. What do we value?

In my mind none of this contradicts or confuses David's concept of natural sound.

 

[andromedaaudio]

The problem on audioforums is not what people want to listen to .
The problem in the audiophile community is a whole lot of people who want to tell other people what they should want.

Im far more interested in what people buy and why.

In the end its all about relaxation to me.
Iow what system /sound i like to listen to after a hard days work.
To me its no a competition about which system is more accurate or better.
What do you think recording engineers / mixers do to the sound .
To name a few :
reverb
panning
equalisation
compression

They place mikes against walls, ceilings , inside pianos , in corners .
All different mike types have different FR
If a producer makes the sound he wants , why shouldnt audiophiles

 

[Al M.]

We're not talking about audio shows or female vocals in this thread.

Al - you have a reputation as a serial thread swerver. Telling us you're not talking about videos is talking about videos.

It's called a conversation, Tim.

I was not the one who restarted this conversation, and even started this entire sub-segment, so it is unfair that you pick upon me (and by the way, putting your series of quotes out of order, as to make it seem that this started with me).

Frankly, Tim, I am sick about the incessant whining on WBF about derailing of topics (I am not the worst "offender" either, by the way). It's called the internet, and it's natural, get over it. But if you are so sensitive, maybe you should ask the moderators to move all these posts, starting with the one by Bonzo, to a new thread entitled "Melanie De Blasio", or have them deleted all together. I am certain the moderators will appreciate the extra work.

 

[bonzo75]

It's called a conversation, Tim.

I was not the one who restarted this conversation, and even started this entire sub-segment, so it is unfair that you pick upon me (and by the way, putting your series of quotes out of order, as to make it seem that this started with me).

Frankly, Tim, I am sick about the incessant whining on WBF about derailing of topics (I am not the worst "offender" either, by the way). It's called the internet, and it's natural, get over it. But if you are so sensitive, maybe you should ask the moderators to move all these posts, starting with the one by Bonzo, to a new thread entitled "Melanie De Blasio", or have them deleted all together. I am certain the moderators will appreciate the extra work.

While I largely agree with you I don't see how my post was not relevant. I highlighted a system that was producing a sound to which audiophile buzzwords can be applied, if they are misconstrued correctly. It does have soundstage, low noise, clean sound, bass and highs, for example. Someone who does not understand music and looks at a checklist, can listen to that system and say, ah ok, all there. and therefore, using a checklist to describe music can help.

Btw, if Tim had let your post go, this thread would have been back on track much faster. Now he has a sub thread going

 

[bonzo75]

Btw, if Tim had let your post go, this thread would have been back on track much faster. Now he has a sub thread going

Back on track for him, for me it was never off. This is a subjective hobby

 

[Gregm]

I highlighted a system that was producing a sound to which audiophile buzzwords can be applied, if they are misconstrued correctly. It does have soundstage, low noise, clean sound, bass and highs, for example.

In that respect, your example is a textbook case.

Someone who does not understand music and looks at a checklist, can listen to that system and say, ah ok, all there. and therefore, using a checklist to describe music can help.

Hmmm, I think using a checklist may help describe the reproduction of the original medium -- not the actual music.