The myth of "The Absolute Sound"

[barrows]

While I appreciate the intent, the myth of "The Absolute Sound"  concept is terribly flawed on its own and should be discarded.  For those who do not know, "The Absolute Sound" is way of describing the performance of a home audio system to deliver: the sound of acoustic instruments playing in a real space.

 

Why is it a myth:

 

1.  A very few people are equipped to make such observations of sound quality, including most reviewers.  To judge a playback system based on this criteria would require the audient have been at the recording venue and hearing the exact piece of music being recorded, in the live room (hall, theater, church, whatever) (not the mic feed).  How many people actually have this experience with the music they use to evaluate gear?

 

2.  Even if #1 above is met, from what perspective do we consider the result "Absolute"?  Which row in the hall, for example?  Any live performance sounds very different from different seats in the house.

 

3.  Even without #1 and #2, why would only acoustic instruments be valid for determining sound playback quality?  Given that a much larger percentage of recorded music contains some instrumentation which is electrically enhanced, electric, or even electronic in nature, it is entirely arbitrary and unrepresentative to have this limitation in how we evaluate audio playback systems.

 

I would also posit for further discussion, that even the idea of attempting, for a playback system or a recording, to reproduce a live event is flawed in theory.  A live event has the power of immediacy, presence, and being fleeting and in the moment, and has much of its power rooted in the interaction between musician, audience, and Music.  The second that a moment has passed it will never BE again.  Any attempt to reproduce the live experience after the fact is flawed in its approach.  A recording will always be a recording, just that.  I would suggest that instead of trying to reproduce a live experience, a recording should instead attempt to be the best recording of music possible, a separate entity from a live experience of music, acknowledged as valuable in its own right, but understood to be a different thing from live music creation.

 

Our systems should be evaluated on the basis of how much they allow each of us to connect with the music that is important to us, individually, and not on the basis of some impossible tp evaluate "standard" which does not even really exist or relate to most music in the world.   

[PeterSt]

I don't seem to have problems with this.

[crenca]

TAS is not a "myth", but an ideal.  An ideal is never attained or reached, only approached.  It is a standard and measurement despite its paradoxical nature - it is in a sense "not real" because it is an ideal and not an actuality.

 

TAS is a realistic check on the radical subjectivism (in your arguement, almost entirely emotive) of:

 

"...Our systems should be evaluated on the basis of how much they allow each of us to connect with the music that is important to us, individually, and not on the basis of some impossible tp evaluate "standard" which does not even really exist or relate to most music in the world... "

 

 

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, barrows said:

While I appreciate the intent, the myth of "The Absolute Sound"  concept is terribly flawed on its own and should be discarded.  For those who do not know, "The Absolute Sound" is way of describing the performance of a home audio system to deliver: the sound of acoustic instruments playing in a real space.

 

Why is it a myth:

 

1.  A very few people are equipped to make such observations of sound quality, including most reviewers.  To judge a playback system based on this criteria would require the audient have been at the recording venue and hearing the exact piece of music being recorded, in the live room (hall, theater, church, whatever) (not the mic feed).  How many people actually have this experience with the music they use to evaluate gear?

 

2.  Even if #1 above is met, from what perspective do we consider the result "Absolute"?  Which row in the hall, for example?  Any live performance sounds very different from different seats in the house.

 

3.  Even without #1 and #2, why would only acoustic instruments be valid for determining sound playback quality?  Given that a much larger percentage of recorded music contains some instrumentation which is electrically enhanced, electric, or even electronic in nature, it is entirely arbitrary and unrepresentative to have this limitation in how we evaluate audio playback systems.

 

I would also posit for further discussion, that even the idea of attempting, for a playback system or a recording, to reproduce a live event is flawed in theory.  A live event has the power of immediacy, presence, and being fleeting and in the moment, and has much of its power rooted in the interaction between musician, audience, and Music.  The second that a moment has passed it will never BE again.  Any attempt to reproduce the live experience after the fact is flawed in its approach.  A recording will always be a recording, just that.  I would suggest that instead of trying to reproduce a live experience, a recording should instead attempt to be the best recording of music possible, a separate entity from a live experience of music, acknowledged as valuable in its own right, but understood to be a different thing from live music creation.

 

Our systems should be evaluated on the basis of how much they allow each of us to connect with the music that is important to us, individually, and not on the basis of some impossible tp evaluate "standard" which does not even really exist or relate to most music in the world.   

I disagree. The idea of The Absolute Sound is certainly no myth. A stereo system is a music reproduction system. It is reproducing nothing if it does not sound like live, acoustical music playing in a real space. Starting with a live recording, any step along the way, from the microphone to the listener’s speakers (and, of course, the listener’s room) that changes the sound of an acoustic instrument, has broken the chain, and the “Absolute Sound” is lost. Implicit in the accepted definition of the term is the knowledge that as a goal, the Absolute Sound is an unattainable one. No matter how much money and technology is thrown at this goal, everyone knows that no recording, indeed, no playback system is capable of the perfect reproduction of music. However, just because a goal is unattainable, is no reason to abandon striving for that goal. All goals must be defined. Some are difficult to define completely. An example would be those people who aspire to be “Christ-like” in their lives when all anyone knows about the Christ figure is what the Christian New Testament tells us about Him and honestly that’s not a lot. 

But with music, we do have a pretty complete picture. Everybody knows live music when they hear it. We audio types hear live music and marvel at the sound. We hear things that we have never heard reproduced in our homes, things that we know that we will never be able to hear from our systems. But that doesn’t mean that we should stop trying to attain that level of playback accuracy. That’s what the idea of the Absolute Sound is all about. An unchanging standard against which our efforts to attain audio perfection are measured.

[Ralf11]

very few people are equipped to make such observations of "connectedness" - so your substitutional criterion fails, eh? 

[barrows]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

very few people are equipped to make such observations of "connectedness" - so your substitutional criterion fails, eh? 

Sorry, I think i must have not expressed myself well enough as you have seemed to misunderstand my point.

 

Very few people are equipped to make such observations of sound quality specifically because they have no such reference of having heard the live music which the recording derives from (meaning the exact take, live, in the room where the musicians played.

 

The point I make about being connected with the music is personal and individual, and inherently correct because of that:  If a change in my system allows me to come to a better connection with the Music, and develop a better understanding of the Music, then that is a change for the better-for me, in my system, which is of course all that really matters here.  And not some impossible to even define "Absolute".

[barrows]

@gmgraves:  So then, considering for example a symphony orchestra, exactly which seat would provide the so called "Absoute" reference then?  Do you see the problem?  There is no "Absolute".  Not to mention the additional problem of even many orchestras using sound reinforcement these days.

 

And also: 

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

. A stereo system is a music reproduction system. It is reproducing nothing if it does not sound like live, acoustical music playing in a real space

 

So then a system reproducing electric or electronic music is reproducing nothing?  That is too narrow a view as to the definition of music for me, but I suppose it could suffice for a very few.  I certainly do not want Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" to sound like "live, acoustical music playing in a real space".

[firedog]

27 minutes ago, barrows said:

@gmgraves:  So then, considering for example a symphony orchestra, exactly which seat would provide the so called "Absoute" reference then?  Do you see the problem?  There is no "Absolute".  Not to mention the additional problem of even many orchestras using sound reinforcement these days.

 

And also: 

 

So then a system reproducing electric or electronic music is reproducing nothing?  That is too narrow a view as to the definition of music for me, but I suppose it could suffice for a very few.  I certainly do not want Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" to sound like "live, acoustical music playing in a real space".

References to Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir don’t work with George....

[fas42]

4 hours ago, barrows said:

I would also posit for further discussion, that even the idea of attempting, for a playback system or a recording, to reproduce a live event is flawed in theory.  A live event has the power of immediacy, presence, and being fleeting and in the moment, and has much of its power rooted in the interaction between musician, audience, and Music.  The second that a moment has passed it will never BE again.  Any attempt to reproduce the live experience after the fact is flawed in its approach.  A recording will always be a recording, just that.  I would suggest that instead of trying to reproduce a live experience, a recording should instead attempt to be the best recording of music possible, a separate entity from a live experience of music, acknowledged as valuable in its own right, but understood to be a different thing from live music creation.

 

Our systems should be evaluated on the basis of how much they allow each of us to connect with the music that is important to us, individually, and not on the basis of some impossible tp evaluate "standard" which does not even really exist or relate to most music in the world.   

 

I would dispute that ... here I'm different from Peter, say, 😊.

 

The sense of the music making moment is indeed preserved in the recording - part of the big shock I got when my rig first snapped into the mode of being subjectively competent was that "the power of immediacy, presence, and being fleeting and in the moment, and has much of its power rooted in the interaction between musician, audience, and Music" was there, in spades - from then on, listening to 'normal' rigs, no matter how expensive or pretentious, was nearly always, well, 'junk' ... as a subjective experience, 😉.

 

Our systems should be evaluated, IMO, as to how well they get out of the way, 'disappear' - and just allow what's on the recording to come through. If one has played around in this area as I have for 35 years then you get an excellent grasp for what is the true nature of the recording - which is something very, very special indeed ...

 

The real myth is, that one can measure by today's everyday methods the status of the playback's integrity, and present figures which "guarantee" that "it's good enough" - umm, that's 100% BS ...

[fas42]

2 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Everybody knows live music when they hear it. We audio types hear live music and marvel at the sound. We hear things that we have never heard reproduced in our homes, things that we know that we will never be able to hear from our systems. But that doesn’t mean that we should stop trying to attain that level of playback accuracy. That’s what the idea of the Absolute Sound is all about. An unchanging standard against which our efforts to attain audio perfection are measured.

 

Yep ... let me correct the above bit - "things that if enough effort and patience is expended that a very few know will allow us to hear from our systems" ... 😜.

[gmgraves]

54 minutes ago, barrows said:

In@gmgraves:  So then, considering for example a symphony orchestra, exactly which seat would provide the so called "Absoute" reference then?  Do you see the problem?  There is no "Absolute".  Not to mention the additional problem of even many orchestras using sound reinforcement these days.

What I see is that you are looking at the question in the wrong light. The seat is not important. 

Like most people, I suspect that you know what a live trumpet sounds like, and you know that when you hear a recording of a trumpet, that it never has the bite or the presence of the real thing. But recreating that sense of realism is the avowed goal of high-fidelity. I’m sure there are many instruments that we all know the live sound of, but few aspects of those instrument’s actual sound make it from our speakers. Now, enough of those sonic signatures exist, even on a cheap table radio, for us to recognize these instruments when we hear them, but they don’t sound real, even on megabuck systems. Whether it’s the microphones used in the recording, or the recording gear or process, most of the time, the realism is not captured. Add to that the distortions added on playback, and the “Fi” we get in our playback is still severely limited. There must be a standard by which to measure our progress, and it can’t be that it “sounds good”. It must be a comparison to the real thing or the entire construct is flawed.

Quote

 

And also: 

 

So then a system reproducing electric or electronic music is reproducing nothing?  That is too narrow a view as to the definition of music for me, but I suppose it could suffice for a very few.  I certainly do not want Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" to sound like "live, acoustical music playing in a real space".

Again, you are looking at this wrong. If the playback chain is accurate to the sound of real instruments, playing in a real space, then it will be accurate to the sound of electronic or electric music as well. It cannot help but be because it means that the playback system is adding nothing and taking away  nothing from the signal it’s fed. The type of music being listened to doesn’t matter. Get the acoustic stuff to sound REAL, and by real, I mean that reproduced is indistinguishable from the actual instrument being reproduced, and all music will be accurate to the original, or absolute sound.

Now, to be honest, here, with what I call “Studio Music” where it is all electronics and over-dubbing and different tracks laid down at different times and often in different venues, the reality is that if you weren’t there at the mix, listening through the same studio monitor speakers in the same room as those who made the mix, you will have no idea how the producers and artists wanted their music to sound. In that case there really is no “Absolute Sound”. That’s why I personally don’t think that this kind of music should be used to evaluate audio gear. If no one has ever heard this performance (because it doesn’t exist outside of the studio), how can one judge the “Fi” of the playback? But, then, that’s just my opinion.

[fas42]

23 minutes ago, firedog said:

References to Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir don’t work with George....

 

Hmmm ... the vastness of the sound spaces conjured up in this sort of recording, going way beyond the environment of a live concert hall, is something that people who mainly feel comfortable with "real" acoustics probably won't relate to ...

[fas42]

9 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 Whether it’s the microphones used in the recording, or the recording gear or process, most of the time, the realism is not captured. Add to that the distortions added on playback, and the “Fi” we get in our playback is still severely limited. There must be a standard by which to measure our progress, and it can’t be that it “sounds good”. It must be a comparison to the real thing or the entire construct is flawed.

 

As I've said many times, the recording process has always worked well enough - the real shortcomings are in the integrity of the playback chain ... in simple terms, the the system must be able to go "loud" without 'collapsing' - if one knows what is possible, then it's very easy to hear the sound quality being compromised by the flaws in nominally capable rigs.

 

9 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Again, you are looking at this wrong. If the playback chain is accurate to the sound of real instruments, playing in a real space, then it will be accurate to the sound of electronic or electric music as well. It cannot help but be because it means that the playback system is adding nothing and taking away nothing from the signal it’s fed.

 

100% agree.

[Ralf11]

The way I see it...  If a change in my brand of single malt allows me to come to a better connection with the Music, and develop a better understanding of the Music, then that is a change for the better-for me, in my system, which is of course all that really matters here. 

 

See the problem with "connection"?

[Ralf11]

Now, about "real space"...  how many channels does it take?

 

Hint: the answer is > 2

[gmgraves]

37 minutes ago, firedog said:

References to Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir don’t work with George....

Doesn’t matter. If a system can reproduce all acoustic instruments perfectly, then all music, no matter it’s origin, will be reproduced without adding or subtracting anything from the recording/transmission. Of course, not being privy to the actual recording session, even perfect playback of the finished work’s signal will not guarantee that the playback will be what the artists and producers heard on playback, but it will sound like the signal that represents the performance. In “Studio Music” there are simply too many layers of separation between the performance by the musicians and the final production.

[fas42]

12 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Now, about "real space"...  how many channels does it take?

 

Hint: the answer is > 2

 

A simple formula applies, if wanting a sense of "real space" ...

 

If the rig has less than the necessary integrity, then as many channels as one can engineer, by whatever means, will be necessary; if the rig has at least the necessary integrity then 2 channels will be perfectly adequate.

 

😉 ...

[gmgraves]

21 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

As I've said many times, the recording process has always worked well enough - the real shortcomings are in the integrity of the playback chain ... in simple terms, the the system must be able to go "loud" without 'collapsing' - if one knows what is possible, then it's very easy to hear the sound quality being compromised by the flaws in nominally capable rigs.

The flaw in this thinking is that fas42 is assuming that things like microphones are perfect transducers. They are not. He is also assuming that mic preamps, mixing boards and audio recorders, both digital and analog are likewise perfect, distortion-free devices. This too is a falsehood. Both ends of the system are seriously flawed because the arts and science of electronics and acoustics are nowhere near perfect, and the must be to perfectly reproduce the sound of live, acoustic instruments realistically!

21 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

 

100% agree.

 

[gmgraves]

5 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

A simple formula applies, if wanting a sense of "real space" ...

 

If the rig has less than the necessary integrity, then as many channels as one can engineer, by whatever means, will be necessary; if the rig has at least the necessary integrity then 2 channels will be perfectly adequate.

 

😉 ...

Bell Laboratories, in the 1930’s determined that perfect stereophony was attainable with only two channels. They started with one microphone and one speaker for each instrument in the orchestra. The speakers were placed in exactly the same place on stage that the instruments that they represent occupied in the pick-up venue some distance away. Then they started to consolidate larger and larger groups of instruments into sharing one channel, until at last, there were just two microphones in front of the orchestra, and two speakers in the listening venue.

[danadam]

3 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Starting with a live recording, any step along the way, from the microphone to the listener’s speakers (and, of course, the listener’s room) that changes the sound of an acoustic instrument, has broken the chain, and the “Absolute Sound” is lost.

That begs the question, how can one tell what to change next in order to come closer to the "Absolute Sound", the recording or the playback system? 🙂

[gmgraves]

3 minutes ago, danadam said:

That begs the question, how can one tell what to change next in order to come closer to the "Absolute Sound", the recording or the playback system? 🙂

Both. I started doing my own recording many years ago because I figured that unless I knew what the original performance sounded like, and made that recording myself, Then I had no control over what my system sounded like because I had no reference. How can I know whether or not my system is neutral and accurate, if I didn’t know what The music I was playing was supposed to sound like?

[Ralf11]

11 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Bell Laboratories, in the 1930’s determined that perfect stereophony was attainable with only two channels. They started with one microphone and one speaker for each instrument in the orchestra. The speakers were placed in exactly the same place on stage that the instruments that they represent occupied in the pick-up venue some distance away. Then they started to consolidate larger and larger groups of instruments into sharing one channel, until at last, there were just two microphones in front of the orchestra, and two speakers in the listening venue.

 

better tell Kal...

[fas42]

7 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

The flaw in this thinking is that fas42 is assuming that things like microphones are perfect transducers. They are not. He is also assuming that mic preamps, mixing boards and audio recorders, both digital and analog are likewise perfect, distortion-free devices. This too is a falsehood. Both ends of the system are seriously flawed because the arts and science of electronics and acoustics are nowhere near perfect, and the must be to perfectly reproduce the sound of live, acoustic instruments realistically!

 

 

The recording chain is not "perfect" - and never will be ... however, the sins that are committed there are not the ones that 'sabotage' the quality of "realness" that most aspire to hearing. This is clearly so when one listens to a succession of different recordings, that come from different eras, using various techniques and all sorts of qualities of gear - each recording causes you to enter a different "listening world"; it's almost a shock at times at how much it changes with each new album you put on ... but what happens is that one's hearing very rapidly adapts, and it still "sounds like the real thing". An analogy might be meeting someone you know, who has changed by the passage of years, or is wearing completely unfamiliar clothes, or makeup - the underlying person is still exactly as before, and never comes across "as fake" - the person is always a real person, not an android ...

 

This is what a system capable of convincing playback presents - all the technical issues of the recording 'vanish' - and this is because human hearing is remarkably adaptive, given the 'right' qualities in the SQ.

 

Every audiophile who has had a shock hearing a recording they thought they knew well sound dramatically more impressive on a 'magic' rig is experiencing this - the system is not distorting the recording to make it "sound better"; rather, it's adding less disturbing artifacts, allowing you to be subjectively more aware of the intrinsic qualities of what was captured.

[barrows]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

The sense of the music making moment is indeed preserved in the recording

Well, we will just have to disagree on this and leave it at that.  I will try to make my position on this perfectly clear though, I respect that others may have opinions different from mine, the below refers to my experience of music (and the experience of some others who appear to share the same types of experiences of music which I do).

 

Live musical performance is an event which takes place in real time, it exists only for the moment of its creation.  Its very nature is ephemeral.  Certainly, a recording can be made and played back (and can hold a sense of the event, but not its true power), but it can never be the same as it was at the moment of creation REGARDLESS of recording/playback quality.  Now this may seem a bit too metaphysical for some here, so please feel free to just dismiss my experience of music if you are one of those.  The power of music in its essence is mysterious, as is where it comes from.  In the experience of a live music performance (and this is not always the case) there can be a relationship between the performers, the audience, and the third element which is unknown, likely unknowable (except in the moment of experiencing it).  We KNOW this experience in the moment when it appears, but when the experience ends, we do not know it.  This is the beauty and ultimate experience which music brings to my life.  It is NOT reproducible by playing a recording, specifically because a recording does not allow for the interaction (exchange) between the three elements to occur.

 

Now none of this means that a capable playback system cannot deliver sublime musical experiences, indeed it can, otherwise, why bother...  But it cannot produce what I consider the ultimate expression  of which the act of music is capable. 

[barrows]

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

I suspect that you know what a live trumpet sounds like

Sure, but at what distance?  In what room?  Played how?  Which trumpet?  These all can sound very different.  This is my point, that there is no absolute.

 

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

Now, to be honest, here, with what I call “Studio Music” where it is all electronics and over-dubbing and different tracks laid down at different times and often in different venues, the reality is that if you weren’t there at the mix, listening through the same studio monitor speakers in the same room as those who made the mix, you will have no idea how the producers and artists wanted their music to sound

Agreed.  This again supports the idea of no real absolute.  Since the vast majority of all recordings are made this way, including most classical music and jazz.  Only a very few, so called "audiophile" recordings are made differently, and even many of those are not so "pure".  Even Jared Sack's work with Channel Classics is mixed through a console (albeit in analog) and recorded using many mikes.  Consider Allison Krauss' "Paper Airplane", certainly an audiophile favorite, and then go look on the Internet at the recording details, especially on her voice, the amount of processing applied was quite shocking to me, punching in and out different plug ins multiple times even just on single syllables.