2. misc-audio
  3. 1255910528

Detailed sound? Real?

I have read about many audiophiles wanting more detail and air around the instruments to improve realism. usually, when i hear a system with these qualities, the sound is almost always thin and fatiguing. When I hear live music, it never sounds like air around the instruments and detailed. Most detailed systems sound way too detailed. When i hear live music, there is a sense of air, but not around the instruments. Actually, many times it sounds natural and mono. It seems to me that detailed systems are probably the most unrealistic in audio. Yesterday I heard a live performance of a piano and sax. The piano was so muffled sounding, much more so than on any system I have recently heard. The sax sounded more detailed, but still not like the stereos portray it. I think the secret to listening is to find something that sounds good and that you can listen to without fatigue. Natural Timbre, color and good bass, not overblown but good, gets you closer to the real thing IMHO
tzh21y

Showing 4 responses by mapman

mapman's avatar
mapman
21,853 posts
 
Regardless of live, recorded, close, far, detailed or not, the key to enjoyment is to be able to listen without fatigue.

Regardless, I won't be getting rid of my HD TV anytime soon even though what I see is not always pretty.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,853 posts
 
Electronic amplified music is undoubtedly just as real as acoustic music.

It is different though. Detail will vary but is a less prominent feature of amplified music in general compared to acoustic in general, that's all.

To be accurate, any discussion of what live music sounds like has to include the venue and listening location, which provides the context for how things sound. The same live music will sound different in different contexts. It will sound different still within the context of your listening room at home depending on how the recording was produced, how system is set up and where you listen from.

I think one has to acccept these facts first before any pursuit of the absolute sound can have any real meaning.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,853 posts
 
If by "Absolute SOund" we mean a single kind of optimal sound that can always be achieved, then I agree that this is an unrealistic goal.

A realistic "absolute sound" to achieve is one where the basic nature of most any kind of recorded music of interest is delivered in a particular listening room in a manner that the listener almost always finds satisfying.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,853 posts
 
I have a shirt I picked up at a technical training session that says something like:

"Insanity: Doing the same thing that didn't work before over and over again and expecting different results"

We audio kooks wouldn't ever be guilty of anything like that, would we?
More to discover