What is a high end stereo SUPPOSED to sound like?

07-05-12: Cdc
IMHO, the Holy Grail would be 100% CORRECT room interaction. So would an anechoic chamber which has NO room effects be the best room interaction?

IMO, the answer is no. The total lack of ambient cues in an anechoic chamber results in purely BIDIRECTIONAL sound. That is very unnatural, since in the real world, sound is always to some extent OMNIDIRECTIONAL, due to the simple fact that the real world always has surfaces that reflect, diffuse, and diffract sound.

Likewise, a purely bidirectional presentation of music in the playback space would be very unnatural, since in the recording space, the music was to some extent omnidirectional. Even when the omnidirectional ambient cues of the recording space are contained IN THE RECORDING ITSELF, a purely bidirectional presentation in the playback space will still not sound like the recording space.

IMO, the playback space must create an OMNIDIRECTIONAL PRESENTATION, because that’s what the recording space always sounds like (unless, of course, the recording space is an anechoic chamber!). I don't mean that sound arrives at the listening position EQUALLY from all directions. I just mean that the playback space must have an omnidirectional reverberant field that emulates the omnidirectional reverberant field of the recording space.

IMO, the only time a purely bidirectional presentation will sound like the recording space is in binaural recordings, which are specifically designed TO EMULATE THE OMNIDIRECTIONAL PRESENTATION of the recording space. And that brings me to Foster_9’s comment that…

07-05-12: Foster_9
For me, a high end stereo is supposed to sound like music is being played in the room by real musicians, not by a stereo.

While I agree with the spirit of this comment, which is to contrast real music with a stereo, I will quibble with the phrase “music is being played in the room.” I don’t mean to be argumentative, but there is a genuine point to be made, which is this: A high end system should sound like music is being played in your listening room only if the recording contains FEW ambient cues of the recording space. In that case, you have the experience that “They are here.”

But if the recording contains ROBUST ambient cues of the recording space, then a high end system should sound like “You are there.” In other words, the system should create the illusion that you have been transported to the musicians, instead of the illusion that they have been transported to you. IME, the former illusion is much more difficult to achieve than the latter, largely due to the fact that the illusion that "You are there" requires a neutral listening room, and most listening rooms are far from neutral. FWIW, I elaborated on these ideas at great length in another thread.

All this results in an alternative answer to the OP's question...

A high end system should sound either like "they are here" or like "you are there."

Again, IMO, IME, etc.

Bryon

A high end system should do its best to recreate the original recording event. Take any MA recording. Different venues from around the world with no two sounding the same. Tons of ambience, decay and air are common themes in all MA recordings yet they never sound the same since the sites are all different.

A great high end system will allow each such recording to have its own unique sound. A room does influence the sound but even an average room should be able to allow the different sounds that a high end system can reproduce. I am one who feels that room interaction is further down the list than most (that is for another thread).

If your system can recreate that "you are there" effect or "they are here" effect, then you are knocking on high ends door. Just don't expect this effect all the time since most recordings aren't made that well. A resolving, high end system will accurately reproduce a studio setting as well as an outdoor or esoteric setting but lots of those clues are limited or truncated by the studio, compromised, if you will.

Everyone here has had those "you are there/they are here" moments. We all scratch our heads as to why it doesn't do it all the time. It's the recording that's limiting your pleasure. Once you've experienced those feelings, stop messing around with your system and concentrate on better recordings.

You can't make a silk purse out of a pigs ear.

All the best,
Nonoise

"If your system can recreate that "you are there" effect or "they are here" effect, then you are knocking on high ends door. Just don't expect this effect all the time since most recordings aren't made that well."

"You are there" versus "they are here" is a tricky one but a topic worth some additional analysis and discussion in order to understand what is possible and what is not practically in this regard.

Bryon hit the key point when he mentioned that sound is inherently omnidirectional. As such it is also inherently a 3 dimensional (actually 4 including time) phenomenon.

The reality of home playback of recordings that capture the spatial queues of what was performed live is that the acoustics of the room we listen in is never the same as where the recording was made. One of the biggest difference is often that of scale, ie a musical event in a large venue, like a symphony orchestra now occurs in a smaller one, your room. The original scale of what occurred cannot be matched accordingly in this case, but what can happen is an accurate "scale model" of the original can be reproduced in room at the smaller scale required.

Often if the scale of the source and target listening venues match, like say a small club setting to a decent sized listening room, the best results are possible in terms of accurately reproducing the original at the same scale.

So this is just one prime example of how recorded music can still sound like teh original live event if everything is done well. Often though, the best one can hope for is an accurate scale model of what was captured in the recording.

The perspective of the music from your listening position then comes into play as well. Sitting closer to the speakers might result in a perspective of the scaled down performance that makes it relatively seem as large as original (Hollywood plays this kind of trick all the time using scale models or CGI equivalents viewed from proper close perspective to make them seem as large as life).

Great point Mapman. I listen in the nearfield, allowing the illusion of virtually any perspective, according to scale, to sound convincing. Smaller, recorded venues come off more convincingly but the larger ones satisfy as well.

It also helps to turn off the analytical part of my brain when the spatial cues are convincing enough to warrant pleasure for pleasures sake. Imagination takes over and abets the process (the crime being believing something that is not).

I've also heard a better system in a larger, treated room pull it off much more convincingly. I wish I had that bigger, dedicated room to try it. It's all a trick, of sorts, and the better ones are more adept at pulling it off.

Most times, the less tricks used in a recording are the easiest to reproduce in the listening area.

All the best,
Nonoise

"High-end" has become a euphemism for expensive but I do not necessarily associate that with musically satisfying. I have heard many over the top combinations of equipment that provide an exaggerated, 'hyped up' version of reality that are neither musical nor satisfying and ultimately, aren't really 'systems' in the sense that the parts are working together effectively to create a natural sounding illusion. It may be an illusion that is more attractive, at first, but i think-long term- it would be fatiguing or simply unsatisfying. I suppose some of that is subjective, but often, in showrooms, you are supposed to be 'taken' immediately with how splashy the high frequencies sound and how deep and 'impactful' the bass is and none of this is what you typically hear with real music. There are any number of 'defining' attributes, such as 'imaging,' 'soundstage,' 'dynamics' and 'bandwidth,' but all of these describe attributes, or discrete facets of the sound, not the whole. I'm at a point where everything counts, even though all of it is a trade-off, compared to real music. (I'm not using hard rock as a benchmark, although I like it and listen to it, simply because very little of it is 'real,' in the sense of acoustic instruments or more naturally amplified ones-even in concert- lot's of distortion and over-amped drums and bass; granted a les paul played through a cranked marshall has a certain reality- but it's not the stuff i'd use to listen critically if I were trying to evaluate a system).
At best, we create an illusion that gives a level of musical satisfaction on the widest range of source material and compares favorably to what real instruments of the acoustic variety sound like. An impossible goal but one worth striving for. There are any number of approaches to get there. And i agree, the room is usually the last thing people address, when it should be the first.