How do you negotiate a cure for wrong audio view


It is a shame when our art degenerates into 'hobby'. To let the mind stray from the wonderous pregnancies of the composer or performer's works into mere material quest for sonic reproduction is sad indeed. Now mind you, I love the pursuit of sonic excellence same as the next audiophile, but when my mind looses the 'big picture' of the art I become reduced to a mere 'hobbyist', which for me is a sad feeling indeed. My remedy is a total shift in view: from the deaf equipment to the animate speaking beauty conveyed by the mere devices. When I recognize that I am spending my time thinking about the 'machines' I hopefully remember to LISTEN, THINK, APPRECIATE, and disappear into the magic of sound. What do you do with this inevitable problem?
chashmal

Showing 2 responses by reylon

Hi Chashmal,Take a look at the Anstendig Institute website.
Interesting stuff.
I am a classical musician.My interest in stereo was initially to listen to recordings of my concerts.
Then,20 years ago,I lost the ability to play,and because I do not go out much,most of my listening is done at home.
Without going into the finer points of the issues that you touch on,it would probably be useful to ask which aspects of recreating sound are most important for the suspension of disbelief.
And there,most probably,different people have discovered that their priorities are different.
My guess is that color,or harmonic complexity,would tend to be high on most peoples' lists for the simple reason that our brain can not synthesize this quality to fill in for what is missing on the recording/system.
Hence,the popularity of SET triode amps.
My solution is to have different sounding systems at home.
Tobias,I first heard this approach about 20 years ago from a physicist/inventor who performed an interesting mod to my Thorens TD-124,and from whom I bought a pair of QUAD ESL57s.
He said that if there was one thing that our brains could not synthesize during the listening experience-it was color.
The reduce in dynamic diversity owing to the shortcomings in amplifier power,acoustics,etc.could be dealt with,as other things,but a system would have to get close to reality color wise,or disbelief would not be suspended.
My experience bears out what he said.Not that I mind a system being able to approach reality in other ways,but usually ,progress is made with a set of priorities in mind.Enjoy!