Fidelity

Some thoughts

Webster's dictionary indicates that one of the definitions of "fidelity" is:

EXACTNESS
The degree to which an electronic device (as a record player, radio, or television) accurately reproduces its effect (as sound or picture).

The definition of "high" includes:

1. constituting the .... most fully developed
2 : rich in quality : LUXURIOUS
3 : of greater degree, amount, cost, value, or content than average, usual, or expected

High fidelity, then, seems to be ability to very accurately reproduce music to the highest degree, but it also suggests an element of quality and development.

Both of the lines of thought in this thread seem to be true; that is, high fidelity is accurate reproduction of sound and it has an element of enjoyment as well.

The questions that arise out of this include;

Does more accurate reproduction of music lead to greater enjoyment? (I'll put this question in as another thread)

Would Reubent enjoy music that is "low fidelity"?

Jax2,
I like your analogy of the telephone game. I understand that. The more posts I read the more I understand what I am questioning, and the more questions I have! Unfortunately, it also seems I am not very organized and my questions may not be related to each other! basically, Im the conumdrum! So, I will say that I really appreciate it that any of you took the time to approach the confusion. Your posts are all very intelligent and extremely readable and enjoyable. One of the things I most love about this forum is that there so many different points of view, and such articulate and wise voices to convey them. I am glad I asked.

Hi Rcprince,

You said: "Maybe the WAMM or the IRS V in a huge room can get close"

As it happens, I own a set of highly modified Infinity IRS speakers and I am powering them with over 8,000 watts of power (more than double the amount of power intended by the speakers' designers) and even in my 20' x 30' x 14' room they are not able to equal the dynamics heard in a live situation. Even so, they do produce a large wavelaunch (by virtue of the driver compliment) which does give a much more convincing dynamic representation than most speakers are able to achieve.

Best,

Barry Kohan

I'd hope that all of us, at one time or other, has had the experience of
pure enjoyment of music, whether from a transistor radio, or a Hi-Fi
which sold for more than a year at Yale. Accurate reproduction of
anything does not necessarily lead to one thing or another. It's really up
to you how much you allow yourself to enjoy anything in particular. If a
person is all hung up on qualifying their enjoyment of some experience
in terms of definitions, mind games, pigeon-holing, and comparisons to
some kind of 'norm' or standards set forth by "experts", or
the greeness of their neighbor's grass...well, it would surprise me if
someone like that could actually enjoy anything at all! They'd likely be
too stuck in their head to experience much outside themselves. And I'm
not just the hair-club president, I'm also a member!!!

Marco

I think we can all agree on the semantics: "fidelity" means
"true(r) to the original" (Viggen) or "accurate reproduction (of the original)" (Marco-Jax2). The original being what's on the RECORDED medium -- NOT the actual event that was recorded.

AS this is all about the listening enjoyment, at home, of an actual past event (musical or other) the ASSUMPTION is: the more accurate REPRODUCTION at home is, the better.
Many have already noted that that, ENJOYMENT, rather than ACCURACY or true to the original, is a better goal. Of course we'd like both -- but most systems fall short of this. What many are saying is that, (I'm putting it in other words) 'as long as I can "control/choose & match" the system's distortion (i.e. departure from the original) in a way that the OVERALL result is enjoyable (i.e. makes my ears happy) -- that's what I want/choose'. I "trust my ears", despite the possible compromises.
Quite rightly so: this implies that our ears choose homogeneity/acceptability of the overall sonic result OVER certain details, etc, that may be contained in the recorded medium but are slightly masked OR where the system introduces sounds that are NOT contained in the "original" OR where the systems slightly alters detail. As we have lots of experience with live performances, our ears are led to choose the sound that is more reminiscent of the "real thing ", than otherwise.

As to reproducing the actual event, esp. the dynamics -- FORGET it. To do this we'd need: signal, energy & an electrical-to-acoustic power converter commonly known as "speaker".
Assume we want the speaker to be capable of matching our ears' dynamic range, i.e. what we can hear: 120db SPL, with minimal distortion (I'm dreaming, but, hey, it's an example).

Think about this. Take a speaker rated 90db SPL/1W/8ohm (2,84V) offering a pure resistive load (how nice!). The extra 30db, (i.e. 90+30=120) in SPL terms, mean a bit over 30 times LOUDER. As we're talking about SPL (force/are), the relation between intensity (watts/area) & force/area (pascal) is I=Pressure^2/p (air impedance constant) which means when spl doubles, watts quadruple. So, we're talking about a minimum of 900 watts here. Which mean an electrical potential 84V and a current of 10,6 Amps. Not bad. Not to mention the "hi-fi" PS required for such amplification: surely over 2x the output rating, +4x if it's class A (i.e. ~4kW /+45amp trannies).

Now, let's find a midrange capable of sustaining that -- let alone not distorting. In fact, I doubt any driver will have the time to distort: it'll just go poof.
Even we opt for the highly efficient, ~100db/1w, cheapo Lowther / AER / Supravox etc drivers of this world ($1k each); +20db SPL means 10 times more, which means a good 100W... I don't know of any such driver capable of sustaining this power level (despite some manufacturers' claims).

OH, and I forgot: all these SPL's are taken at 1m away from the source! At each doubling of distance, we lose 6db (anechoic) -- but add a few db because of the two near-identical sources + some room help, say we lose 6db spl at 4 metres... so we really need 126db. Whew....

Let's just listen to music:) Cheers