Recording as Artifact

@gkelly 

https://youtu.be/Us6hQLwG1S8?si=2UcSnfuA0PnGXQWz

Thank you so much for posting that expose of British HiFi from 1959!

I would have been about 14, but we did not have TV so missed it.  I would note that the MONITOR program went on to spawn one of Britain's best and most controversial filmmakers, Ken Russell.  His MONITOR documentary on Elgar was the most popular TV program of the decade and is still available on DVD.  I watch it at least once a year.

My dad certainly fitted the mold, and I remember the thrill he got from pointing out the various valve factories around Cambridge, and getting exotic timbers to hand make cabinets.  Hand-make because he had no power tools, not even an electric drill.  The amount of physical exertion required to dress hardwood with hand planes is easily forgotten, but he made a corner reflex cabinet for 12" Tannoy dual concentric drivers just like the ones in the program. He even got me to design a console to house his Garrard 301 deck (as seen in the program). I now own and use the deck.

So thanks for the memories

Contrary to popular opinion regarding the ambiguity of accuracy in music reproduction, I have found a compelling way forward; one which underlines the fundamental importance of reproduction that is accurate to the live performance, the only cornerstone and datum one has in building an audio system.

There will be many live performances we each will have attended, and more than a few of which would have found recorded production. These form the beginning of any kind of calibration regarding one’s system build; the more recordings of live performances one has attended that is discovered, the better. Large scale orchestral/symphonic pieces are the best, as massed strings, piano and the cacophony of grouped instruments in on a true live stage present the most nuanced and simultaneously powerful delivery of dynamics, timbre and subtlety of soundfield, and subsequently, the completeness of musical performance. This obviously does not preclude any other kind of live performance, as the greater the variety and number of attended live performances we are able to find recordings of, the better our ability to gauge those which correspond best to how we experienced them.

Not many recorded tracks will sound accurate to those performances one has attended and remembered. A precious few will be outstanding and so very realistic, they will be remarkably close to our memory of what we had experienced in scale, timbre and dynamics, due to a number of factors; being one’s seated location; venue acoustics, spread of recording microphones; and skill of sound engineering; all in relation to each other.

These few recordings form the basis of what one turns to whenever evaluating a fresh addition to one’s system, after which the invitation to other audiophiles is extended for their appraisal of the recorded tracks they have had privilege of having attended the live performance of, for further evaluation of our closest approximation to accuracy. This is not and has never been about a comparison to tracks we are familiar with, how banal and misleading that would be? It is about a critical test to those few live performances we have attended that have been recorded as closely as possible to what we remember. It may not be absolutely definitive, but it’s the closest to truth we have. 

Of course accuracy in audio reproduction exists. 

Finding the most accurate datum for that fundamental comparison is a vital part of what being an audiophile is all about, regardless of cost or what one is able to spend.

Preference is the term given by those who are either too lazy to make the effort, too superficial to care for deeper understanding, cannot or do not want to afford more while claiming what they have is all they need, or are unable or too unfussed to want to hear a difference. 

In friendship - kevin

@whart 

 https://www.inner-magazines.com/audiophilia/musical-value-and-its-reproduction/

Good to see even lawyers can enjoy a Garrard 301!

One of my picks for outstanding modern recording engineer is Morten Lindberg who founded the Norwegian label 2L.no, and has been nominated for many Grammy awards.

Rather like Mercury's simple microphone layout before him, he uses a single microphone tree with multiple microphones, typically with the musicians arranged in a large circle around the tree.  Most of his recordings deliver immersive sound, including height channels, and in my opinion are stunningly good.

Morten notes that every recording is an illusion. 

I have just bought Deutsche Grammophon records of Mahler's Second Symphony recorded at the re-opening of the Sydney Opera House's main Concert Hall after its A$100-m refit, done mainly to improve the acoustics!  Have not had a chance to play them yet, but I was there for the performance.

The conductor Simone Young is very aware that what she hears from the podium is quite different from the overall sound delivered to the auditorium.  She often gets the orchestra to play while she walks around the venue, in order to balance the instrumental sections.

Morten's technique ensures that the recording captures approximately what the conductor hears, at least for chamber-sized ensembles.

@kevn 

I agree with you. After decades of wandering around through the solution space... optimizing for "what sounded good" to "what made a kick drum have the highest impact," to the "maximum amount of detail". I realized optimizing one thing would sub optimize other instruments or types of music. So I went looking for and empirical ruler... live music. I had season tickets to the symphony  for a decade (and bought many CDs of which I was in the concert hall when recorded),  attended many acoustic jazz and rock concerts. I found the ruler. It had a profound effect on what I went looking for. 

It also had a profound effect on my system, First the closer I got the more all music was optimized simultaneously and more importantly the emotional connection became more direct and intense with each step. 

What happened to my system was the hyperdetail moved into the background... the dryness went away. The gestalt became correct. The relationship between the details, warmth, and  scale all fell into place. I increasingly no longer was drawn to listen to the system... but the music. 

It is easy to be drawn to analytically and sonically spectacular presentations... like Bermeister, Wilson, Roland. Powerful, detailed with huge amounts of space introduced into the soundstage. Images thusly enlarged so one may easily scrutinize the edges and transitions. But that is not real. They sound amazing... one is drawn to listen to the system and not the music. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with sonically spectacular sound systems unless you got there by accident. It is easy to get there by accident.... by having your analytical side pulling you towards ever increasingly detailed sound... ever larger sound fields. Somewhere along the way you loose track of what it was that you were after. I think the epiphany came to me when I noticed I would get bored after listening to my incredible system (I called it my Reference System... because every nuance of the recording process and venue jumped out at you) after 45 minutes and I would go do something else. I spent something like 35 years working on and $80K developing something that would only hold my attention for 45 minutes! My TV only cost $1k and it can hold my attention for much longer. So I knew something was very wrong. I went to figure it out. 

For me, my current system reproduces the gestalt and the details, but in proportion to how it sounds live. The emotional connection. I have an incredibly hard time listening to my system... the music is so distracting that I get sucked into it. After three hours of listening I still have to drag myself away it is so enthralling. So  my minds eye is pulled away from the weight of the kick drum and pulled toward the emotional connection it evokes in my subconscious.

But I enjoy listening to sonic spectacular sound systems for an hour now and again. 

So, yeah... we agree. Although I don't think it is laziness on the part of many folks, some may not have figured it out yet, or simply don't want that... their analytical side needs the detailed instrument with the highest sensitivity. It is a hobby and whatever makes you happy is the point. 

@ghdprentice - thank you for your observations : ) - I’m so glad and fortunate to have found the same path as you, being as recent an audiophile as anyone could be. 

In truth, I did not mean the use of the term lazy to belittle - I am myself lazy in so many things! There are human traits we all have, perhaps especially as men - a certain laziness; superficiality; impatience for the immediate spectacular; the need to persuade others we have already tried everything else or that anything else will not matter; ultra high definition TVs…..the list goes on.

Like you, I’ve discovered the realism to musical reproduction that can only be gauged in relation to those few attended live recordings which best capture the experience. Like you, I’ve found that accuracy in the playback does not bloat, or cause anything in the soundfield to be larger than life, but true to live. And like you, I’ve learned that every other recording we have no datum for comparison with will find its place, once those few that we do have been used as the measure for the systems we build.

However, I have not found Burmester or Wilson speakers to have had problems with image bloat the way you have. That could possibly have been issue with amplification or preamplification or perhaps cabling upstream? The problem I’ve had with Wilson and Burmester had to do with the specific colour introduced by the mere fact of them being traditionally boxed speakers - their enclosures introduce a tiny character to music reproduction that very subtly homogenises all played tracks, rather than accurately distinguishing them apart, aside from the quality of openness being somewhat lost. I do know you have Sonus Faber Amati’s, and these do well in limiting cabinet colour. Regarding image or detail bloat specifically, the Kharma Enigma Veyron, Avantegarde trio, Cessaro Liszt, are three of those that qualify. That diamond tweeter of the enigma veyron especially, tends to drill tiny wood screws into one’s already high frequency challenged ear.

I like very much the way you put it, about your system being impossible to listen to, as the music just sucks you in. I spend between two to five hours listening to familiar and unfamiliar music every night - we are very very lucky people.

And yes finally, you are right about whatever driving one to perceived happiness mattering most - it is the reason why preference and accuracy are used simultaneously and almost interchangeably in our hobby: who in their right minds would want their preferences to be inaccurate? : )

In friendship - kevin