Audio reproduction is a matter of taste?

[mfsoa]

Just thinking out loud - not directed at anyone-

 

Ooooh I hate the term "Accurately" or "Accuracy" in these discussions.

 

Accurate to what?  The sound on the recording medium?  Sorry, it has no sound, it is grooves or bits. No sound there. You have no way to know what those pits are "supposed" to sound like.

Accurate to what was heard by the recording or mastering engineer?  Unless you have the same speakers and room (not to mention ear/brain) etc. that's out the window.

Accurate to what the musicians heard in playback? In the studio? In their head? Which musician? The drummer? The bass player?  No source of accuracy there either.

Accurate to what the real instruments sound like in real space?  After sitting behind drum sets for 50 years believe me the last thing you want is to reproduce the sound of a real drum set in your living room. You would be running for the treble knob and volume too. What people think of as a "well recorded drum set" bears only a passing relationship to what the instrument sounds like in real space, if that. The thought of an accurate drum sound - you don't want it - you would run for cover. To see people discussing the accuracy of a recorded drum set when the recorded sound is sooo different from the true sound of the instrument, well I just don't get.

 

 

Years ago The Absolute Sound held an event for all the industry big-wigs and they had a solo violinist walking around. They couldn't believe the amount of HF energy coming out of the violin and said that if they made their systems to reproduce it exactly they'd be out of business - No one would ever want a system that sounded like that.

 

The accuracy chain is broken the instant sound hits the recording microphone far more than it is in your playback system.

 

Where does this leave me?  IMO we search to reduce persistent coloration - "Everything sounds wet-blankety" "there is sibilance everywhere" and that is what is really meant by accuracy - Lack of persistent coloration.

 

And then we have the physical differences in the listener to account for, and their individual preferences, none of which can be based on a search for Accuracy because there is no such thing unless defined in very specific terms ("I want to hear exactly what the control room sounded like"  "I want to hear it from the drummer's chair"  "I want to hear it from the trumpet section which puts the level of the sax section way low in the mix"

 

Sure, at some level, there needs to some accuracy. My brick and mortar-owning brother goes to a site survey and the guy's home theater is made up of all different speakers, many wired out of phase, and the guy doesn't realize he is not using Dolby Digital but instead is using some fake surround mode. But the guy is convinced that this is the best system he has ever heard. OK this guys needs some learnin' about accuracy.

 

Blah Blah word salad for breakfast...

 

 

 

 

[mfsoa]

Glasses. Do we listen with glasses on or off. Makes a big difference.

 

Which is accurate?

[mfsoa]

25 minutes ago, MarkusBarkus said:

I *think* my system sounds pretty good

I love it! Perfectly captures what we want out of our systems.

 

To those who are trying to accurately replay the sound on the disc -The disc has no sound. You are trying to replay what you think is the sound on the disc. Very different...

 

Since no two people think that a disc should sound the same way, it then comes down to personal preference and boom - it's all subjective ultimately.

[mfsoa]

32 minutes ago, Rexp said:

So all speakers, for example, are equally good at imaging? There is no better, its all subjective?

Not really sure what this has to do with what I said but if I had to guess, I'd answer that minimonitors present the soundstage in one way. Planar speakers present the image in another. Please tell me which is better so I can make sure I don't make the wrong choice as subjective preference for a one or the other is apparently the wrong way to go about this. 

 

 

[mfsoa]

The most underwhelming, disappointing, worst-bang-for-the-buck-and-effort system I ever heard was at Ralph Glaskal(?)'s mansion, in an Ambiophonic setup with, I forget, dozens(?) of SoundLab(?) speakers arranged around the listener (It was a while ago...). A system set up with soundstaging as the number one priority and I thought the overall SQ it was terrible. Surely not helped by having at least some of the panel speakers simply buzzing with electrical noise...

 

My subjective taste in imaging was clearly different from Ralph's (who was a very kind and gracious host). Please let me know which of us was right.

[mfsoa]

IMO there is a sliding scale. Crappy systems, sure we can talk about accuracy to a general concept of what a decent system can do, or how faithful it is to the general idea of what a violin or bass drum sounds like.

 

But the better the systems get, these gross anomalies are reduced and personal preference rears it ugly head.

 

There, everyone in this thread is now labelled as being correct. Kumbaya.