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What is the standard for judging a systems sound?

It is often said in these threads that this hobby is all about the music. That live music is the only meaningful standard for comparison when determining the quality of a stereo system. While these words sound good, are they really true?

A violin should sound like a violin, a flute should sound like a flute, and a guitar should sound like a guitar. Many purists will immediately say that amplified/electronic music cannot be used as a standard since a listener can never really know what the intention of the musician was when he/she recorded it, and what that sound should be.

Even something as simple as an electric guitar has multiple settings from which to choose. Electronic keyboards have hundreds of possible voices, so how does the poor audiophile know how the tone was supposed to sound?

These are valid concerns. Back to the purists!
“That’s why only unamplified classical music can be used as a standard!!!” On face value that looks like an acceptable statement. Consider some facts though. In my immediate family we a have several musicians who play a few different instruments. We have an electric piano (due to a distinct lack of room for a baby grand), acoustic guitar, Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, a nickel plated closed hole flute, a silver plated open hole flute, a viola, and a cello.

I have a fairly good idea how each of these instruments sound. One comment I must make immediately is that they sound a little different in different rooms. Another comment, which demands attention: when I bought my first flute I knew nothing about flutes. I began fooling around with it and enjoyed the sound. I liked it so much a bought a better, as mentioned silver open-hole flute. This flute sounded much better than the first flute. The tone was richer (the only words I can think of to describe the difference).

The reason for that background information is to show that the same instruments in different room’s sound different, AND different models of the same instrument have a much different sound!

If we audiophiles are using live unamplified music as a standard there are still several important issues, which must be addressed. How do we really know what we are hearing? What instrument is the musician playing? Was that a Gemeinhardt or Armstrong Flute. What are the sonic characteristics of the specific instrument. Stradivarius violins sound different than other violins, if they didn’t people would not be willing to pursue them so aggressively. Better instruments (theoretically anyway) sound better than lesser instruments. The point here is that different versions of the same instrument sound different.

I have seen the same music reproduced in different settings. I have heard string quartets play in a garden in Vienna. I have heard the Pipe Organ in Stephan’s Dom. I have heard Rock and Roll in arenas and Performing Arts Centers. I have heard jazz played in small one room clubs, not to mention the above listed instruments played in the house.

Each one of these venues sounds different from the other.

When I am listening to a selection of music at home, how do I know how it is supposed to sound? None of the LPs sounds like any of the particular places I have heard live music, while none of those places sounded like any other either.

There is no standard by which to judge the quality of live music since no two venues sound alike. If everyone were to go to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden and hear Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 would everyone hear the same thing? Even if they did, and that one concert became the standard by which all other recorded music was judged, would that be translatable to allow the judging of all other music?

I have never heard a cello reproduced as well as my sons playing in the living room. I have never heard better flute players sound better than my own terrible playing at home.

So what do we audiophiles really use as the standard by which recorded music can be judged?
128x128nrchy
bomarc
501 posts
 
You have nailed the paradox. There is no such thing as "the sound of a flute." There is only "the sound of this flute, played by this flutist, in this room." And, getting your listening room to sound even close to any other room on the planet is a physical impossibility.

So what to do? First, let's dispense with the "sounds like a flute" standard. What that's really about is timbre, and modern audio systems, even relatively cheap ones, get timbre right, or close to right. What they don't get is ambience.

And, since the ambience of one space cannot be reproduced in another space, what's really going on is something the literature biz calls "willing suspension of disbelief." In other words, it's not that we are recreating the sound of an orchestra playing in Carnegie Hall. We are creating an illusion that makes us feel like we are listening to an orchestra playing in Carnegie Hall. And that illusion may be a long way from "the real thing" or, for that matter, a long way from accurate in the technical sense of flat frequency response, etc.

I'll probably get some flames here, because I'm really arguing that an audiophile who says, "My standard is the sound of acoustic instruments in real space" is fooling himself. That standard is impossible. But it's ok, because "fooling yourself" is exactly what you are trying to do. If you get a sound you like, if it lets you close your eyes and visualize your favorite concert hall, then you've really achieved something.
newbee
4,767 posts
 
Good analysis! In the end there is not now, now will there ever be, a reproduced sound that sounds like the live sound in its original venue. While many claim to search for accurate reproduction of the the original, or more often the recorded, sound, they really have no idea what the recorded sound sounded like as they were not present at the event, or in the recording studio. All they can do is guess. And while they may know the sounds of the instruments and the venues, and even the engineer's recording practices, the best they can do in judging the reproduced sound is to make an educated guess. That is what we do, we use our experience in equipment, acoustics, and or knowledge of how music sounds live, to create a replication in which we can fantisize that we are hearing the actual performance. What it boils down to is we use our imagination as the standard by which recorded music is to be judged - that is, what sounds real to us, once we are done fiddling. But we know in our hearts that its not even close to real.
agaffer
256 posts
 
I agree with the above. A stereo system will never sound the same as the "real" thing.
Personally, my standard is, I judge a system by if it sounds good to me or not. That is why there is so much debate about what speaker is good and which isn't. We all have a different idea of what we want the music that comes into our room to sound like.
greh
134 posts
 
In a nutshell, my absolute first criteria is that the musical presentation sounds ...musical.
My system has gone through many variations(and still is) were I could hear the guitar pick pluck a string, were the vocals were right in my living room and the sax player sounded so real that I swore he was playing right in front of me.
But guess what?
The song I was listening to just didn't sound like the song.
It sounded like the guitar player plucking the string, the sax playing in front of me etc.
All great audiophile features, but it would be nice to hear..well, the song as it was meant to be heard.
So with all of that said, I look for a musical top to bottom coherence that still delivers on the audiophile stuff-high end air and bloom, transparency, presence etc.
Happy New Year!
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
Consider a speaker as a specific musical instrument(let's say for the ones that can't play any other instruments) that is someway pleasantly sounds in your room and let it be your judgement of a system's sound and recording.

Somehow I love the sound of electric instruments and they can sound real great to the listener. I like to listen to electronic instruments played by great musicians and composers. For electric instruments' judgement of the system's sound please refer to the previous paragraph.
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