How close to the real thing?

In his recent work (unpublished so far) he has shown that if music is delivered intact to the brain, it is processed in the limbic system. He has also shown that as a stereo system violates human perceptual rules, the processing is moved to the cerebral cortex."

If I understand you correctly, this validates my rationalization that their is no rationalizing music. I have no idea why I find music pleasurable or why, when a chord is played on a musical instrument, it seems to strike a corresponding cord in me. When that happens, it has nothing to do with my cerebral cortex. But the cerebral cortex is precisely what many of us rely on when we listen to our systems and try to validate our decisions.

Phaelon,
I agree with you that the thread is going in an interesting direction. KIrkus and others have broadened my understanding of the topic tremendously. It was not my intent to peg a specific percentage to the question of how close are we to the real thing beyond that I think 5% is too low in the context of today's very "best" systems.

Has Edseas heard a really great recording on one of today's great systems? He told me he hadn't. Can we agree that we are at least getting closer to the real thing? From reading many of the posts, I think the answer for many of us is YES. Sorry for your head, Mapman.

Sitting here listening, as I type this, to Michel Camilo's Solo album (Telarc Jazz) at something like a realistic volume level... if this is 5% of live, I'll take it as-is and be happy for a long while.

Here's a thought and why my friend, the trained concert violist, said that 5%, nay1% is MUCH too high a percentage:

From the posts that claim that the music sounded real (albeit from memory as I will not be rereading all of the posts!) I recall that the listeners who claimed that their systems sounded real always said that it was an occasional note that sounded real, never an entire piece.

If we simply ask, what number of NOTES soun(ed) real (remember, NO-ONE said that an entire piece, song, etc. sounded real) then we quickly realize that of ALL THE NOTES PLAYED that many fewer than 1% sound (ed) real.

At the Chopin concert which I attended the conductor said that in the 20 years that they'd been playing that he calculated that they played over ONE billion notes!

Just a thought.

Ed

Actually, Ed, I don't think anyone said an occasional note sounded live, but only an occasional recording. Most of my recordings contain more than one note. ;)

FWIW, I don't think the Camilo sounds live on my system. Very nice, but not live. Too syrupy. Not enough edge. I think it's those Sennheiser mikes I bitched at Jack Renner about many years ago ('80s), when he started using them for Telarc classical recording. And they really don't work for Jazz, IMHO.

As for the one billion notes, well, maybe. Assuming 100 musicians playing 40 hours per week, all quarter notes :), for 20 years, that's about 1.1 billion notes or so. But that's 40 continuous hours per week, every second of every minute, of every hour. Maybe he rounded up.