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Two Type of sound and listener preference are there more?

In our thirty years of professional audio system design and setup, we keep on running into two distinctly different types of sound and listeners.

Type One: Detail, clarity, soundstage, the high resolution/accuracy camp. People who fall into this camp are trying to reproduce the absolute sound and use live music as their guide.

Type Two: Musicality camp, who favors tone and listenability over the high resolution camp. Dynamics, spl capabilty, soundstaging are less important. The ability for a system to sound real is less important than the overall sound reproduced "sounds good."

Are there more then this as two distincly different camps?

We favor the real is good and not real is not good philosophy.

Some people who talk about Musicaility complain when a sytem sounds bright with bright music.

In our viewpoint if for example you go to a Wedding with a Live band full of brass instruments like horns, trumpts etc it hurts your ears, shouldn’t you want your system to sound like a mirror of what is really there? Isn’t the idea to bring you back to the recording itself?

Please discuss, you can cite examples of products or systems but keep to the topic of sound and nothing else.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
128x128audiotroy
royj's avatar
royj
151 posts
 
Thanks for your comments- I’ll keep this brief.

There are two types of listening:
  • Analytic-- looking for defects, tone balance, image, special effects, distortions, ... a very long list. This is the style of listening used by studio engineers, stereo store proprietors, reviewers, editors, designers, and most home enthusiasts to ’make better sound’. A left-brain process, with no doubt.

  • Subjective-- for enjoyment, for where the music takes you, what it makes you feel, think. Which is important for all of us listed above to be able to do.
After spending much time listening analytically, it can be difficult to switch that off, to kick back and enjoy whatever the music brings us, where it takes us. For listeners most impaired, the British remark, "They have ears of cloth."

I wrote my (and others) observation that a musical system makes its mark on a right-brained listener when playing any good music. From the top artists, we have:
Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is. Miles Davis

Beethoven tells you what it’s like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it’s like to be human. Bach tells you what it’s like to be the universe. Douglas Adams

There’s music in the sighing of a reed; there’s music in the gushing of a rill; there’s music in all things, if men had ears. Their earth is but an echo of the spheres. Lord Byron

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. Gustav Mahler

Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. Henry David Thoreau

Music does bring people together. It allows us to experience the same emotions. People everywhere are the same in heart and spirit. No matter what language we speak, what color we are, the form of our politics or the expression of our love and our faith, music proves: We are the same. John Denver

Music - The one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend. Ludwig van Beethoven

Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife. Kahil Gabran

Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul. Plato

Best regards,
Roy

ps
760 posts
 
The adjective "musical" is likely the most hackneyed and abused audiophile buzzword ever.
royj's avatar
royj
151 posts
 
You are completely right.
We are users of crazy machinery expected to generate any music on command over there, where we live. We don't want to hear any noise, nor any distortion or test tones. We want the sounds coming out to be musical sounds.

Those artists' views can be guides on what we should expect, to conceptualize where internally music might take us.  When the system can do it and when the listener can actually hear that. Two different subjects. Above, I proposed paths through these two difficult subjects.

Roy

wolf_garcia
6,722 posts
 
There actually are 2 types of listening…me and everybody else.
bstbomber's avatar
bstbomber
73 posts
 
LOL
I play in an 11 piece band.
i also have live sound and recording experience.
I know exactly what your saying.
As far as listening i tend to lean towards  Dialing in the  overall sound.
It varies with the type of Music and recording Era and process.
I like to dial my System into what i am listening to.
My favorite is the sound i grew up with.
Late 60s early 70s Rock.
All Hi Fi is The reproduction of Music so it varies with music style, your individual taste and the flexibility of your System.
John
www.thebstreetbombers.com




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