The myth of "The Absolute Sound"

[barrows]

59 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

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"?

Not at all, I would actually agree with the above statement, as long as it leads not to total alcoholism!

[crenca]

5 minutes ago, barrows said:

...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...

 

Yet objectively the music happened.  Not only that, a pressure wave (i.e. sound) "happened", no matter if you were there to "experience" it. You subjective evaluation of your inner experience (i.e. physical, physcological, social, spiritual) is to be honest quite besides the point because the sound happened quite apart from your "experience".  It is this sound that is what is captured and reproduced by electronics and transducers and it is this that they are judged by in any rational sense.

 

In other words, the "power" of music recording/playback is not "mysterious" and we in fact know quite well where it comes from...

 

 

[fas42]

34 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? 🙂

 

Obviously the "best" recording techniques do wonders - as an example, Alligator Records do current albums of houserockin' music which are bloody amazing in terms of the technical quality of the capture, as compared to dodgy old recordings of the same music done back in "the old days".

 

We have this vast archive of historical recordings, going back over a century ... sorta makes sense, to me, to get the most out of them, at least at one end of the equation ... 🙂.

[danadam]

20 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Bell Laboratories, in the 1930’s determined that perfect stereophony was attainable with only two channels.

 

I'm not sure I'd go as far as to use the word "perfect" to describe those conclusions:

Symposium on Auditory Perspective (PDF)

J. C. Steinberg and W. B. Snow, "Auditory Perspective - Physical Factors", Electrical Engineering, 1934 January, pp 12..17

Quote

Principal Conclusions
...
5. The 3-channel system proved definitely superior to the 2-channel
by eliminating the recession of the center-stage positions and in
reducing the differences in localization for various observing positions.
For musical reproduction, the center channel can be used for inde-
pendent control of soloist renditions. Although the bridged systems
did not duplicate the performance of the physical third channel, it is
.believed that with suitably developed technique their use will im-
prove 2-channel reproduction in many cases.

6. The application of acoustic perspective to orchestral reproduc-
tion in large auditoriums gives more satisfactory performance than
probably would be suggested by the foregoing discussions. The
instruments near the front are localized by every one near their cor-
rect positions. In the ordinary orchestral arrangement, the rear
instruments will be displaced in the reproduction depending upon the
listener’s position, but the important aspect is that every auditor
hears differing sounds from differing places on the stage and is not
particularly critical of the exact apparent positions of the sounds so
long as he receives a spatial impression. Consequently 2-channel
reproduction of orchestral music gives good satisfaction, and the
difference between it and 3-channel reproduction for music probably
is less than for speech reproduction or the reproduction of sounds
from moving sources.

 

[barrows]

26 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

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?

Yes, this is why most do not have any reference for the "Absolute"  My GF is a working musician, and I have the occasion to be in the studio with her, hear both the live in the room sound of her voice, and the mic feed, as well as the recording.  Live performances by her as well.  And sometimes i will use some of her work as a reference, but I want it to sound fantastic, not necessarily "accurate"!   

 Music recording is an art medium in itself, hence what you term "studio" (which is 95% or more of all recorded music) which really is a creative art form of its own, separate from, while being related to live music performance.  While some purists might suggest that such things are not "real" music (certainly they are not live music performances) this is such a narrow view, and leaves out so much very, very powerful and valuable music, that I would never live in such a deprived world.

[ssh]

"You can't miss what you can't measure."

George Clinton

 

[fas42]

32 minutes ago, barrows said:

 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. 

 

Are we perhaps talking about the Harveyness of the experience - http://www.rebeatmag.com/jukebox-harvey-and-other-killer-harmonies/? 😉 ... Personally, I get the Harvey thing happening when a system is in the zone - so I don't need to be where the mics happened to be to feel it. And of course if the music is completely synthesized then the speaker reproduction of it is the event - Jarre can take me to a very magical place, effortlessly - when it's working well enough ...

[barrows]

6 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Are we perhaps talking about the Harveyness of the experience - http://www.rebeatmag.com/jukebox-harvey-and-other-killer-harmonies/? 😉 ... Personally, I get the Harvey thing happening when a system is in the zone - so I don't need to be where the mics happened to be to feel it. And of course if the music is completely synthesized then the speaker reproduction of it is the event - Jarre can take me to a very magical place, effortlessly - when it's working well enough ...

I do not doubt any of the above.  But I still believe that live performance has the potential to reach another level, which is not possible from a recording, because the creation is in the moment and the exchange and response between the performer(s), audience, and "third element" is possible.  This certainly does not exclude live performance of electronic music, as long as the that music it not just a pre-recorded thing being "played" (one can mix, and manipulate loops and pre-recorded sections as a live performance, in response and exchange with both the audience and the "third element" )

[fas42]

Where the effort to get the optimum in playback quality particularly makes sense is when one address historical efforts like the Robert Johnson tracks ... the transformation from being a slightly ridiculous caricature of an early blues song, to manifesting a sense of the real man in the room, plying his trade with gusto, presence and humour, is quite startling if one can get the system good enough... we're stuck with the recordings as they are, so to get "connection" with the energy of them is worth going the extra yards ...

[Soothsayerman]

It's not a myth. It is a benchmark or standard or an ideal, but it is not a myth.   The controversy is that it is subjective as all sound is. Hearing is a purely subjective experience but, you can listen to an acoustic guitar playing music (un-amplified) and establish your own standard for "The Absolute Sound."   This is meaningful because un-amplified music is the purist form of music and it gives you an benchmark to shoot for.

 

Even if you never listen to un-amplified music it is still a useful benchmark in establishing a systems fidelity.  Why is it relevant? because music uses musical instruments and voices. 

 

If you like to listen to the sound the wind makes when it rustles the leaves on trees through your stereo, then maybe it is not relevant to your personally.  It's not that complicated really.

[barrows]

1 hour ago, Soothsayerman said:

you can listen to an acoustic guitar playing music (un-amplified) and establish your own standard for "The Absolute Sound."   This is meaningful because un-amplified music is the purist form of music and it gives you an benchmark to shoot for.

One can only achieve above with access to (fairly good, especially the microphone) recording gear and the free time to record that acoustic guitar to then be able to compare the sound of the guitar live in the room and the recording.  A comparison of an acoustic guitar one owns at home with a different guitar on a recording is not a valid comparison.  Even two guitars of the same make and model will have different timbres.  This is my point, as stated in the first post I appreciate the intent of the concept, it is flawed in practice.

And, even with a recording of the same guitar for comparison, this will not tell one that much about how well the system will do with a trombone...

 

BTW: I listen to everything form Bach to TOOL and have no bias for or against acoustic instruments.  I just acknowledge that there is lots of great music which includes electric and electronic instruments as well. 

[Allan F]

11 hours ago, barrows said:

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 too disagree. According to you, there should be no "standard" for comparison other than a subjective "connection" with the music. That is meaningless insofar as it does take into consideration a system's accuracy of reproduction. While the live "experience" is unique, so are the sonic characteristics or timbre of acoustic instruments. One may not have been present for any particular recording and therefore cannot know how it sounded in the studio, but the assessment of a system is not based on any individual recording. Rather it is assessed by listening to a sample of many acoustic recordings. Anyone who listens to live music frequently or, for that matter, who plays an acoustic instrument knows what acoustic instruments sound like. With that knowledge, one can evaluate whether a system is capable of accurately reproducing those sounds. The same, of course, cannot be said of amplified music. 

 

As has often been repeated, the "absolute sound" is a goal. It is not intended to duplicate the live experience. But, it provides a far superior standard to some vague emotional response.

[Jud]

What we actually use to determine the "absolute' is, I think, precisely what barrows is describing - how much the music we play on our systems speaks to us. That can vary with hardware, software, room, mood, even whether you are right or left handed. This seems like anything but a uniform reference.

[Allan F]

32 minutes ago, Jud said:

What we actually use to determine the "absolute' is, I think, precisely what barrows is describing - how much the music we play on our systems speaks to us. That can vary with hardware, software, room, mood, even whether you are right or left handed. This seems like anything but a uniform reference.

 

How a system involves us in the music is, of course, important. But since we are, by definition, dealing with a music reproduction system. its relative ability to accurately reproduce what is on a recording is fundamentally important. One is not to be considered to the exclusion of the other. Proper PRAT (pace, rhythm and timing) combined with accurate timbre all contribute to that emotional connection to the music.

[marce]

You have to have a good recording and master before you can start playing the music through your high fidelity system!

[STC]

A loudspeaker is just like a musical instrument like everything else. It is an acoustic instrument which produces sound through vibration like a guitar, piano, vocal cord, or a violin, to name a few.

 

It is a myth to believe that a recorded sound is the exact sound of the original event. It is not. The recording captures the soundwaves hitting the microphone's diaphragm at a given point in space. This particular sound at the spot where the microphone captures the sound cannot be the exact sound where the listener hears them at a different location. 

Audiophiles already knew that even a few cms difference in the speakers or listeners position the sound changes. It is the same with microphones and recordings. You are hearing the sound that happened at a very different place where you nor the recording engineer would have heard. And we are by nature always try to decode sound to have a definition (accuracy and even placement) based on prior knowledge . They or the musicians may perceive it to be true to life sound but a person who wasn't there may perceive otherwise.

 

Treat the speakers as a musical instrument. Think along the line how you can make the sound of a musical instrument to sound as good as possible in your room.  That would give you a realistic sound like the actual music heard at the given place.

 

There is no rule where it says that the recording must sound exactly like how it sounded in the live performance.  It is impossible to capture the sound of an instrument from every angle of the sound radiating surface. It is a myth to claim that a recording could capture all of the sounds of the performance with microphones placed arbitrally during the recording stage. 

 

The only way for you the hear absolute sound to the original event is to capture them with microphones that placed close to your eardrums and record them. This sound the closest reference to the actual sound heard by you and only by you; provided you hear them with earphones. That too not 100 percent accurate but close enough for most.

 

 

[Allan F]

 

57 minutes ago, STC said:

A loudspeaker is just like a musical instrument like everything else. It is an acoustic instrument which produces sound through vibration like a guitar, piano, vocal cord, or a violin, to name a few.

 

No, a loudspeaker is a transducer that converts an electrical signal into sound. Unlike an acoustic musical instrument, It does not have a unique sonic characteristic or timbre that identifies it to the listener. It reproduces sound. It does not create music.

 

Those who look at the term "absolute sound" literally miss the point. It is merely an expression of an ideal. It is not used to suggest that the live experience can be duplicated by a home audio system. However, it can be used as a reference to assess how accurately a system can reproduce sound. 

 

Of course there is "no rule where it says that the recording must sound exactly like how it sounded in the live performance". Harry Pearson, who coined the term "the absolute sound" never suggested that there was. But the closer a system can come to approximate the "sound of actual acoustic instruments playing in a real space", the higher its fidelity. And isn't high fidelity the name of the game!

[STC]

19 minutes ago, Allan F said:

No, a loudspeaker is a transducer that converts an electrical signal into sound. Unlike an acoustic musical instrument, It does not have a unique sonic characteristic or timbre that identifies it to the listener. It reproduces sound. It does not create music.

Maybe I am wrong but I always thought speakers do have their own sonic signature. ESL sounds different from a box speaker and among the box speakers each of them have their own sonic signature. 
 

Electrical signal does not produce music. It produces kinetic energy to move the cone.  The music is reproduced by the vibration. Just like a guitar.

 

 

[Allan F]

10 minutes ago, STC said:

Maybe I am wrong but I always thought speakers do have their own sonic signature. ESL sounds different from a box speaker and among the box speakers each of them have their own sonic signature.

 

Loudspeakers have different sonic signatures because they are not perfect transducers. But they do not have a unique characteristic or timbre that identifies them to the ordinary listener. For example, most people can readily identify the sound of a piano or an acoustic guitar. They cannot, however, readily identify a Wilson Sasha or a Revel Ultima Studio 2.

[semente]

"High fidelity" as many of us see it was aptly described by EMI in a paper called "The Pursuit of High Fidelity" as "the creation, in the listener's normal surroundings, of the ILLUSION of the actual performance as it would have been heard under the most favourable conditions."

 

They are of course referring to classical music recorded in a documental fashion.

 

If one is to consider the live unamplified event as The Absolute Sound then it seems quite logical to use it as a benchmark or reference when evaluating the performance of a piece of equipment or a system as it reproduces recordings of such music, with the caveat that there are different ways to capture and produce classical music and probably not a single one is perfect (though some are a lot more perfect than others).

 

18 hours ago, barrows said:

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 don't agree. In my view, if one has listened often enough to live unamplified it is possible to use these experiences as references for judging realism.

I've sat at different distances from the stage, in different halls and venues, listened to different voices, pianos, violins, etc.

 

Other types of music can be used to judge other aspects of sound but not realism, not in most cases, because of the way that they were recorded: mono close-mic'ing, EQ'd and an pan-potted instruments and vocals don't sound real.

 

Whilst classical music is often captured in a documental fashion, so as to recreate the sonic illusion of the original event from the perspective of an audience seat, studio produced music is a fabrication that's completely made up in the mixing console, a collage that only exists as it exits the studio monitors. And you can't really use a collage as reference for realism:

 

[STC]

15 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

Loudspeakers have different sonic signatures because they are not perfect transducers. But they do not have a unique characteristic or timbre that identifies them to the ordinary listener. For example, most people can readily identify the sound of a piano or an acoustic guitar. They cannot, however, readily identify a Wilson Sasha or a Revel Ultima Studio 2.

Ok. I agree unless people like Alan Shaw who could tell if a transducer is a Radial by tapping and listening to its sound. I actually tried it and I have to say that when I tapped the Radial cone they indeed sounded very much different than others but mostly were the cheap speakers. No one would let me tap their Wilson, KEF ....   will that qualify as their own sonic signature? 

[Confused]

13 hours 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.

 

 

 

Try this 😊 

 

 

[lucretius]

56 minutes ago, Confused said:

 

Try this 😊 

 

 

 

That was truly horrible!  Nothing like the version found on the Nevermind CD/album.

[semente]

3 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

Loudspeakers have different sonic signatures because they are not perfect transducers. But they do not have a unique characteristic or timbre that identifies them to the ordinary listener. For example, most people can readily identify the sound of a piano or an acoustic guitar. They cannot, however, readily identify a Wilson Sasha or a Revel Ultima Studio 2.

 

Instruments produce sounds / music, loudspeakers reproduce recordings of music. Different goals.

 

Each and every loudspeaker model has its particular limitations regarding how accurately it can reproduce the recorded signal, its own distortion pattern.

 

There are no perfect speakers, they're actually all quite flawled (some more than others), even the best, but calling this a "sonic signature" is misleading.

I understand that magazine reviewers may want to use it though as tones down the seriousness of the problem... Subjectiveness can be a good excuse for mediocrity.

[Confused]

2 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

That was truly horrible!  Nothing like the version found on the Nevermind CD/album.

The recording is fine.  If it sounds horrible it is your over ambitions rig that needs sorting.  Get your rig sorted and you will be able to get to the essence of music.

 

Or...  maybe terrible recordings sound bad, terrible systems sound bad, terrible recordings sound bad on decent systems, decent recordings sound good on decent systems.  You decide....