glulpson,
Agreed on all counts.
The idea of "tuning" my system continually per song, or even per album, is a complete turn off to me. I don’t want listening to music to become that much work! To me, that isn’t to enhance the listening experience; it’s to detract from letting the music take over.
Earlier, I finished listening to Goblin’s Tenebrae soundtrack (followed by some Fever Ray) on vinyl and it was bloody GLORIOUS. Not only did it sound incredible - full, gutsy, organic, spacious, palpable, toe-tapping - but the music gave me a plastered on grin for the full album. It was heaven for a soundtrack fanatic like myself. (The Fever Ray LP also: incredible!)
I didn’t feel the need for a moment to tweak anything and I’m glad I didn’t! Everything sounded wonderful. Could I have made some of it sound different? Sure. But I wanted to listen to music, not continually think about how I can "tune" my system to make things sound different.
But...well...gee...since I wasn’t "tuning" I guess I don’t get to say, like MG does, that I was engaged "in the hobby of listening!"
Drat. Not in that rarified club.
Oh wait...maybe I am, because MG actually told everyone earlier that EVERYTHING we do with our system is performing a tweak, even choosing a component or turning it on.
Well then. I guess I AM in the club of listeners. I’m "walking the walk."
But then, wait, if EVERYONE is engaged in tweaking....who is it again who actually ISN’T engaged in "the hobby." If we take MG seriously that we are all tweaking when listening to our system....how can any of us not be "doing it" vs just "talking about it?" If we are all tweaking, then everyone on this forum is "walking the walk" of empirical experience. So...who are the fakes again?
Puzzling questions to be sure. But you have to wait until the Guru is in the right mood before being graced with the answers. And be sure not to be too uppity and question the answers. That gets The Guru mad - no more answers for you! ;-)
BTW, this idea of recordings have a "code" to unlock and tune for - aside from being what seems to be just semantic flourishes on the unremarkable idea that you can do things to make many recordings sound better (hell, mastering itself is predicated on this), it may be desirable to some audiophiles, but it’s also anethema to many aspects of music and sound production (I work in post production sound - and have my work mixed in many varied, millions-of-dollars mixing theaters).
In this case you really do have to have some concept of "accuracy" where you aren’t "tuning" your system to the defects of any track, or particular sound etc. You really NEED to control variables - that is have a consistent and unvarying sound in your playback system (hence most are professionally constructed for accuracy, rooms pinked by acousticians etc) because you NEED to hear the differences, and deficiencies that actually ARE characteristic of a recording. If dialogue for instance is thin - on the recording! - you WANT to know it, and have it sound thin on your reference system, so you can correct that problem. You won’t want to re-tune your system to make it sound better - leaving the recording itself unchanged - as if changing your system has "revealed" the code in the recording. That is a recipe for disaster! And the FACT it’s a recipe for disaster actually calls in to question the very claim of there being this "code" to unlock, as if every recording is potentially a good one, in the first place.
The other thing is that the Tuners continually depict themselves as "listeners" and just off listening to music all the time...you know..unlike those "audiophiles" who spend all their time thinking about their equipment.
Except...whoa...have you seen the systems of some of these tuners?
Components all taken apart, strewn around sitting on wood blocks between the speakers etc? And we think some of OUR systems are a wife’s nightmare! ;-) . And of course...they are tuning, tuning, tuning.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that ;)
Anyway, if people want to continuously "tune" their system via MG’s methods and find it gratifying I say MORE POWER TO YOU. I’m not about calling any other audiophile’s pleasure "not walking the walk" or "not doing the hobby" or whatever. No, that would be arrogant on my part. And I don’t go in for the common audiophile tit for tat "you aren’t really into the music, I’M just in it for the music!" Because you know what? Most of us have to admit we don’t just love music, but have an interest in sound quality and high fidelity equipment and getting the best sound we can manage. If some people tilt more towards tweaking and being really in to playing with the equipment side of things there’s nothing wrong with that! Whatever floats our boats. But it’s disingenuous for some people to try to pretend they are more "into the music listening" - as if it’s some audiophile version of being more pious - than other people, all the while clearly spending much time and thought on the hardware and set-up side of their hobby.
