neutrality vs. realism

Recording music is a highly skilled craft. A skilled recording engineer will take into account the performer, the instruments, the hall, the recording equipment and make assumptions about the playback equipment in order to make what she considers an accurate representation of the musical performance.

For instance, let's say an unaccompanied vocalist has trouble controlling his dynamics and is prone to a slight sibilance. The engineer might pick a microphone with a recessed upper midrange to combat the sibilance and "ride the fader" during the recordings to keep the dynamic range within the optimum area of the storage medium. Alternatively, the engineer could use a compressor/limiter (essentially an automated volume control) and dump the recording into a computer based editor (think of it as a word processing software for music) and repair individual instances where sibilance is an issue. Neither approach is inherently superior and either method can result in a natural sounding recording. The determining element is not the equipment, but the skill of the engineer.

As audiophiles improve their playback systems they may start to reach a point where their systems are capable of readily revealing the artifacts (edits, aggresive EQ, mismatched reverbs, sibilance, low frequency garbage, tape hiss, instrument bleed-thru, air conditioner noise, etc.) of the recording process. These artifacts are not part of the musical performance and as such can only distract from it. I suspect that a large element of how people react to specific pieces of high end equipment revolves around how the equipment deals with these artifacts. I'm over generalizing, but for unknown reasons some equipment heightens and draws attention to these artifacts, while others expose them, but at the same time don't seem to emphasize them. There's so much that we don't know about reproducing music.

BTW, have you ever noticed how in recording orchestras or other large ensembles that the microphones are never positioned where a listner would normally sit?

Agreed, Onhwy61. Also getting back to Rives' room acoustic post.
Once a stereo has reached "perfection" it's the recording which will make or break the reality. Until recordings are perfect, a perfect stereo will show off the recording's faults. Maybe a more musical stereo is better on bad recordings.
Also the perfect stereo needs the correct room to recreate the acoustics of the original event.
The most realistic playback is when a song is new to me and the ear is fooled - at first, for a little while.
Although once got the volume, reverb, and room acoustics just right and felt like Jimmy Hendrix was right in the room. Never could duplicate that again.

61, isn't that a compromise between recording the performance somewhat "as heard" by the audience, but as well with a higher s/n ratio than would be possible if the mics were lower? Also, in MANY halls the first balcony yields a better natural "mix" than the orchestra.
Also the mics CANNOT deal with the Haas Effect (re primary vs secondary arrivals. Even in a small room (mine) I had to get my Earthworks omnis right on my Steinway's strings in order to remove the room sufficiently to actually BETTER the sound than what is heard from my playing position. Sure, the piano is too wide, but spectrally and dynamically its HYPER-real! (There's one for ya, Asa.)

I honestly don't know why the mic placement issue works the way it does, I only know it usually doesn't sound right if you try it otherwise. BTW, what preamp are you using with the Earthworks? Have you heard their speaker?

You see, this how a thread can be reasonable and mature between two groups who just see things from different angles. Because you rely upon science and its accuracies in the first instance, but default ultimately to the product of your accuracies, the result of your science (namely, listening), does not make you an over-bearing materialist; similarly, if you believe scientific measurements are an important tool, but not determitive to the end result of the experiement and that an over-reliance on their veracity can itself be a limitation towards improvement, does not mean you are a regressive New Age romantic idealist. This dialogue, absent egos which identify with ideas as who they are, can occur.

Paulp, interestingly we come down slightly on different sides of the line in ideas on how to get there - not very far apart I would think if we could talk face to face - but still seem inseparable on what "musicality" we are searching for, and which is, I would submit, the dermining factor in why we are here; our love of the beauty of Music transcends our views on how to achieve it.

The difference between us in not in listening, but, again, in the varibles used to get there, our main difference being, again, the assumptions we make, or do not make. Science operates by comparative reductionism; that is the empiricism within its method. In other words, an assumption has developed in science that if you divide something far enough you will disclose all its truth, even though science has not, as yet, conducted this experiment (which is then, by definition of science's own rules, an unscientific assumption). When you say that all sound can be described by scientific terms of further reductionism, even though this has not ocuured with sound (much less music), you commit this fallacy. Perhaps one day science will reach that Grail, or sufficiently so to sufficiently catalyze the mind, but that day has not arrived; scientific measurements can not describe spatio-temporal nuance to a sufficient degree to enable adjustment of the component in that regard strictly based upon those measurements. Even ignoring a Zeno paradox-like problem inherent in such a position (you can divide 1 infinitely, ergo, you can divide sound-pieces infinitely, so you never approach the definitive Truth through that reduction because there is always a remainder), there is no rational basis to conclude that such a reduction will reveal the essense of Truth/Beauty/Music.

My position is that you will always have to listen to hear that beauty in its deepest symmetries (and the experiment of science over the last three hundred years confirms this continual regressing truth into the infinite, i.e. Popper's observation of method that science always disproves the truth which they just "proved" was the Truth). I don't think the "what is" that is suseptible to the imposition of measurement wants you to only use your measurements - or believe that they will eventually be sufficient in and of themselves - to hear the deepest beauty.

As I said, however, the true paradox is that regardless of assumptions in our thinking - and, because we don't need to impose our ideas on each other but share them regardless of their differing content and orientation - we still meet in the middle on what we are here for: to find the beauty in Music.

At its finest, science and its measurements are an integral part of that/the Search.

People who are attached to either pole, namely, of romanticism (denial or reduction of science as a means towards that search), or of materialism (denial of Truth beyond material manipulation) are really the same; in their denials of the truth that each holds forth like a weapon towards the other, their claim of false exclusivity to the Truth, they deny themselves, and ensure their stagnation. They are not searchers, but egos with ideas that they seek to use against others. Regardless of our differing ideas, we are both Searchers, and in that, we transcend our differences - which turn out not to be SUFFICIENT differences at all. This is how we go forwards, together.

I look for Searchers.