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How much reality do you really need?

The real question to the audiophile  is, “how much reality do you need” to enjoy your system? Does it have to be close to an exact match?  How close before your satisfied?  Pursuing that ideal seems to be the ultimate goal of the audiophile.
The element of your imagination has to come into the equation, or you’ll drive yourself mad.  You have to fill in part of the experience with your mind.
But this explains the phenomenon of “upgraditis.”
128x128rvpiano
ebm
9,311 posts
 
Wow I didn't know that.Thanks.
oldears
386 posts
 
I like it, I love it, I want some more of it.
hilde45's avatar
hilde45
5,202 posts
 
Only issue I have with the question is the lack of clarity around the word reality. After all, if my room goes from being a silent chamber to being filled with sound, that’s about as real as could be hoped for. Real in the most basic sense of "something" rather than "nothing."

So...reality is.... simulation? Or miniature? Or cameo? Or animation? Or claymation? And once we get the genre of representation settled, we still need the translation formula. Stieglitz did one kind of translation and Monet did another. Which translation is "real"? They all are. Which are best? The million dollar question.

Here are some philosophical options on the "real" and some possible ways they would play out in audio. 
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/#BeiSucFirCauUncThi
  • “Being is; not-being is not” [Parmenides];
  • That which fills silence is "real."
  • “Essence precedes existence” [Avicenna, paraphrased];
  • What is real is in the source. Everything else takes away from it. Do no harm, is the audiophile prescription.
  • “Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone” [St Anselm, paraphrased];
  • Subjectively enjoying perfect sound is not as good as subjectively enjoying sound that really is perfect.
  • “Being is the most barren and abstract of all categories” [Hegel, paraphrased];
  • Anything can be; to be something particular (even beautiful) is the proper aspiration.
  • “To be is to be the value of a bound variable” [Quine].
  • Nothing exists outside of some bounded (limited, particularized) instantiation of it. There is no general real, only plural reals.
petg60
1,486 posts
 
i like the icing and until it's there.
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,320 posts
 
I have one requirement: If it’s on the recording, I want to hear it. Without exaggeration or distortion. Simple.

If a recording needs a playback system in order for you to hear it, and every system is different, how do you *really* ever known what’s on the recording?

I know it's not strictly analogous, but this kind of reminds me of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

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