If Warmth Is a Distortion, Why Do So Many Audiophiles Still Defend It?

@rauliruegas  Very well expressed.  He and I are perhaps the only posters on this thread who value high fidelity to the real thing.  The others are in the preference anything goes camp.  What is live music?  Sure, it can be heard from the 20th row.  But objective measurements and educated listeners confirm that there is much loss of musical info at that distance.  HF in particular are dramatically lost via absorption of small wavelengths and many ambient reflections  so the 20th row and even the 5th row is warm.  Everything is mush compared to the 1st row.  As a musician, I am privileged to experience even greater musical detail from the stage.  Listening to my stand partner, I am amazed at the raw clarity I hear from him/her, precision of bow attacks, nuances, etc.  When I bring my friends to hear live musicians from a few feet away, the honest ones say their audio systems are dull by comparison.

Only a few years ago, I heard what a golf club hitting the ball really sounds like.  It is bright, aggressive, hard, not at all sweet, unlike the muffled sound I heard from TV.  I doubt if anyone with even a SOTA home theater system hears this clarity when he watches golf matches.  Understand that musicians produce sound by scraping the string, hitting the taut string of the piano mechanism with a hammer, or creating turbulence blasting the air from brass.  From the 20th row, you hear almost none of this.  You are missing most of the subtleties of real music.

As a child, I heard all these real sounds of nature and musical instruments close up.  I wasn't corrupted by the dead sound of most audio systems.  As an adult with rudimentary audio, I felt I could never experience this natural excitement.  I have come quite close to true high fidelity by these experiences and selection of electrostatic speakers, accurate SS electronics, etc.  I encourage the preference crowd to take a break from audio, go out into nature and find reality.  Listen to the crisp leaves as you step on them, various bird calls, car tires on a dirt road, the raw-scary bark of a big dog close to you, the delicate sounds of deer running thru the grass.  In the kitchen, listen to running water, utensils and pots.  On the driveway, note the harsh sounds of power tools.  None of these sounds are sweet, but they are coherent and smooth.

Some posters seem to be confusing the noises performers can make with the music they make.  Audience members are not the conductor.  The conductor is actually supposed to hear everything, but the audience is not.  The audience is supposed to hear the music of an ensemble played in an acoustic space.  That sound can be warm or not be warm.

A question to all -- do you want a recording to capture all the sounds of a live performance, say an orchestra.  The sounds coming from the lobby when the doors are opened/closed, audience member coughing/sneezing, score pages turning, chairs squeaking, someone snoring, HVAC noise, etc.

As always there are exceptions.  Cage's 4'33 is all about the sounds you hear.

Dear @viber6   : Recording microphones are at near field position. Yes about that losted HF.

Gentlemans we have to consider that in a live even of MUSIC between you and the stage are only airrrrr and same with the nearfield recording micros that's the immediacy MUSIC live characteristic that we can't mimic at home systems.

r

Dear @viber6    " but they are coherent and smooth  "

Yes live MUSIC always has that coherence and smooth ( not the audiophile sweetness word. ).

You are way fortunate to be a musician that I don't but a Orchestra Director that's my fiens ( here in my place ) gave me several times the opportunity to be in the stage ( during Orchestra week pratice sessions ).

WHAT INCREDIBLES EXPERIENCES  and from there everytime I can listen MUSIC in different live events at the nearest seat position I can.

Enjoyment is all about listen MUSIC sessions not only Live sessions but in our each one room/system reproduction.

R.

@rauliruegas, Once again, you are very smart.  It is easy for me to utilize my experience as a musician to note my observations.  But it is remarkable that you come to the same conclusion I do.  We could ask a good listener who has had no indoctrination from audio forums, what he hears.  Such a listener will say that all audio systems lack the clarity, snap, sparkle of the real thing.  When I travel and hear street musicians and singers from 10 to even 100 feet away, I know that live unamplified music has the snap and excitement that is lacking in most audio systems.  I could hear a large gong bell from a town square and wish that I could say to audiophiles hearing this that the gong bell doesn't sound warm at all.  Same goes for the bus trolley with its HF sparkling bell.  Get aboard, all you preference types, don't miss the bus!!  Don't miss the boat.  You are throwing away the baby with the bathwater.