Audio reproduction is a matter of taste?

[opus101]

So I am not the only delusional one out there.

 

I don't believe @hopkins is saying you're delusional.

[opus101]

Just now, JoeWhip said:

Sure he is, only politely. I am ok with that as I hear with my ears and brain and no one else’s.

 

If he is, then I've misunderstood his argument. To me he's saying 'How can all these comments be only about taste when the vocabulary used includes words like 'real' ?'

[opus101]

Just now, JoeWhip said:

 Same with food and wine reviews. 

 

I used to be quite into wine, many years ago. Read plenty of reviews - I don't recall any saying 'Wow, this wine tastes like its really made from grapes' or 'I have never tasted grapes closer to real than in this'. Rather the reviews tended to talk about notes of musk or chocolate or blackcurrant leaves. So descriptive of the taste sensations, no talk of being 'real' flavours.

[opus101]

5 minutes ago, Iving said:

 

If "real" is read as "convincing", there's no case to answer.

 

That's how I read it. Perception is reality.

[opus101]

Just now, JoeWhip said:

Musk, chocolate , black current leaves are not flavors? 

 

Sure they are, I used 'taste sensations' in my post. 

[opus101]

1 minute ago, JoeWhip said:

So I guess we should use the term aural sensations then? OK.

 

If it suits your taste, go right ahead  I'm not claiming its more accurate though.

[opus101]

1 minute ago, John Dyson said:

I don't think that there will ever be 100% agreement about any single thing in audio.

 

 

But I find that I agree with that. Spooky.

[opus101]

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

If people claim they can judge accuracy in a recording, then that's impossible without understanding what is supposed to be represented in that recording.

 

Yes, but if we compare two components in the signal chain its reasonable to say which is the more accurate. For example if I'm listening on YT to Schubert's Octet and one DAC gives me distinct images of the first and second violins and allows me to follow their contributions at will but a second tends to blur those together then I'd say its reasonable to claim the first is more accurate (or more convincing).

[opus101]

Just now, Jud said:

What if the producer's intent was to meld the two, but your speaker's crossover happens to separate the frequencies at which they're playing?

 

How could the producer meld the two? I'm curious. What does 'separate the frequencies' mean and how could that impact the way perception decodes the components of the recording?

[opus101]

9 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

By "meld the two," I mean emphasize the point/counterpoint interplay and harmonies so the two instruments are heard almost as one.

 

It seems to me that the harmonies are determined by the composer not the producer. As for "point/counterpoint interplay" I am not clear what it can mean in practice. Care to elucidate more?

 

11 minutes ago, Jud said:

Separate the frequencies simply means the instruments are playing very near a crossover point so that depending on what frequency each instrument is playing at, it jumps to one driver or another.

 

Both are violins so will occupy the same frequency band. I see no way for a crossover to be sensitive to the 1st violin's frequencies in some way without responding to the 2nd's in the same way. Sounds like it could be a job for Maxwell's demon.

[opus101]

To drift off into the realms of speculation, there might even be an objective measure of a system's accuracy judged within the framework of Information Theory.

 

Wikipedia says in its article on Entropy (Information Theory) :

 

The basic idea of information theory is that the "informational value" of a communicated message depends on the degree to which the content of the message is surprising. If an event is very probable, it is no surprise (and generally uninteresting) when that event happens as expected; hence transmission of such a message carries very little new information.

 

The above correlates rather well with my subjective experience of what I might term 'more accurate/transparent' DACs - they render the recording more interesting to listen to, have better 'jump factor' (surprise element).

 

 

[opus101]

1 minute ago, Jud said:

 

In my little town we have quite a good chamber concert series. (We've had a Van Cliburn winner and other award winning artists.) I've been lucky enough to have very good seats. If you close your eyes you often cannot pinpoint the locations of the violins in a quartet. So if that were presented to me from a recording, it would be a good representation of what I have heard in live performance.

 

I have visited concerts too and my experience concurs with yours. The 'instrumental separation' beloved of some reviewers isn't primarily about physical separation in the image, rather its about cognitive separation in our mind. The ability to follow the different musical strands (in ASA I think they're called 'streams') and switch focus from one to the other effortlessly. 

 

BTW - is there a missing negative in your last sentence - 'it wouldn't' ?

[opus101]

2 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Sorry if I was unclear, I meant the sense that the physical locations of the instruments weren't separate pinpoints would match my live experience.

 

The way I parsed your sentence was different from your intent it seems. I took 'that' in your last sentence to mean 'the locations of the violins' whereas you intended it to refer to 'you cannot pinpoint'. No worries.