Recording as Artifact

@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

A question.  Could it be since you’re not going for the ultimate in detail you don’t have to spend quite as much on components?

@gkelly 

What a great video.  There’s some of it in all of us!

@rvpiano 

As a kid, my mother had a large collection of records.Most Symphonies and some Showtunes.  After she passed, I inherited the collection. it’s amazing how you can listen to the same music, the same symphony, but with a different conductor and it sounds so different.  Or the same conductor with a different orchestra or in a different venue.