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Plus and Minus

Got into a discussion with a few fellow musician audiophiles.  

Issue one:  The fidelity of home playback versus live music.  After much bantering about, it became, 'How can you tell?"  If you didn't hear it live or you don't listen to live music, how can you say your playback system is true to live?  Interesting question.  I put forward, if your monkey bone tells you it is live - then it is live.  After all, who's to say what you hear and what someone else hears is true to live or not.  If you like it - its live to you.

Second issue:  How can you tell if a tweak is positive or negative?  If put it in, did it bring you closer? When you take it out, did it make it worse?  I put forward the notion that if you put it in and listen to it for a bit and then take it out, the question becomes did it take you there or take you away?  After all, you listened to your system without it and you know how it sounded; putting something in changes it (presumably) and only after taking it out can you judge if you really like it or not or are you enamored with it.  On this, there was general agreement.

Lastly, does 'how much you paid' factor into the equation?  That was universally shot down.  There are incredible audio values in a specific piece that belay its cost.  You just gotta hunt them down.  There was agreement that there was a law of diminishing returns.  I put forth the notion that the chase for the best knows no boundary save the wallet.  The smiles and nods were universal on this point.  The law being:  If you can afford it ....

Funny hobby we have.  The monkey bone should guide us and the wallet supporting us; yet, we argue about what each other hears and neither side has the same bone n' wallet.  :-)
128x128keesue
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cleeds
5,764 posts
 

keesue
The fidelity of home playback versus live music. After much bantering about, it became, ’How can you tell?" If you didn’t hear it live or you don’t listen to live music, how can you say your playback system is true to live?
Trying to recreate "live sound" is elusive. The best you can hope for is to get close to the master tape. If you make your own recordings - and it amazes me how few audiophiles are willing to do that - you’ll know for yourself how close you are.
Funny hobby we have. The monkey bone should guide us ...
Huh? Is a "monkey bone" some sort of voodoo prop, such as eye of newt or wool of bat?

I’d suggest that for audiophiles, reason should prevail. That’s worked well for me for many years, and not just for audio matters.
erik_squires
15,996 posts
 
Both of the first issues have to do with the reason you buy stuff. For personal enjoyment. We can in fact compare live music to a system and try to recreate that experience, but... I usually don’t want to. I want it to sound good to me. Same with tweaks. We also run into the lack of visual experience in our systems. Lacking the eyesight of the performance we may seek to compensate for it with exaggerated imaging cues, Like Kurosawa adding smoke to a live volcano so the sense of heat transfers better off the film.

Personally, I do not care what your guiding light is, so long as it’s your taste and your wallet that are involved and no one else.

I’ve become universally disillusioned with the notion that high-end = exorbitant prices. I don’t buy gear to brag to my friends of the weight of my system or the multiple 8 gauge power lines I had drawn from a personal nuclear reactor to power my system. This is especially true with speakers. The list of speakers over $10K I have listened to which I felt were worth it are perhaps 3 brands.   Under this amount though, I've heard lots of speakers I could recommend.


Best,

Erik
oldhvymec
5,101 posts
 
Erik, if you could, would you. if you could and had all the means, would you buy the absolute best you could buy?

OR Does any of that play into it? I know you like quality sound, have you gotten where you won’t be changing things. Done that’s it?

I sure was for 16 plus years...Very close again, but I’m pretty happy with my selections... I kept the cost WAY down, except for a few blunders, a cable drop...for one..True "Monkey Bone" experience.

Regards
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jjss49
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Recreating live music is a fantasy. What we do instead is, everything has its own sound character. Its not necessary to match exactly the live sound to create the impression of the actual instruments. The system is merely the last link in the whole chain of recording, mastering, duplicating, and finally playing back. Its technically impossible for the last link in the chain to produce something that was never there to begin with. It was lost in the very beginning at the microphone.

i agree w miller completely on this one, as he says above

using live music as a standard for one’s hifi is utterly ridiculous, given where we are listening

do you have any idea what a live drum set, a trumpet , a tenor sax, a double bass or concert grand piano will sound like in your 17x22 living room played at performance level?  you would cover your ears, RUN OUT OF THE ROOM it would be so loud - if you stayed in the room and listened for long you would have hearing damage

get real boys and girls

what we are dealing is a massively scaled down, miniaturized characterization for homebound consumption

this NOT recreating reality - that notion should be given a rest, to put it kindly




erik_squires
15,996 posts
 
Hey @oldhvymec I've decided to start a new thread to answer your question so as to not derail the OP. :)
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