Opposing musical to analytical comes from the focus put on the gear design by audiophiles not from acoustics in general ... "Musical" means in acoustics experience as just said atmosphere : "accurate and engaging at the same time" ... A system/room is musical or less musical ... If it is analytical too much it comes from a piece of gear not synergetical or badly designed , it does not come from the system/room/ears as an experienced whole ...
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I thought when people used the term "musical" it was to make a value judgment about the sound being produced by the amplifier (and speakers), not state a fact which would apply to all perception. Here’s how I see it. Some people eat hot peppers and call them spicy. Others say they’re mild. Does chemistry tell us who’s right? Hardly. Peppers do have a chemical component, Capsicum, that causes them to interact with taste buds and then the brain. But what can one claim as "objectively true" about this sequence? Some people need only a small amount of capiscum to cause them to call the food "spicy." Others need a lot. Who is right here? The chemical explanation cannot sort it out, because perception always comes to us as interpreted, never raw. The same situation exists, pari passu, to "musicality." Some people’s taste will hear certain harmonics as pleasing; some not. It depends on taste, preference, circumstance, habituation. No way to disentangle it. Clearly, you and others have discovered there is a widespread predilection for 2nd and 3rd order harmonics, and there is a predilection for sugar, fat, and salt, too. But all of those preferences could be changed by changes in taste -- and the underlying physics would have no impact at all. |
@hilde45 How we see things, and how reality really is are usually two different things. Emphasis added, to the part that is a false conclusion. The only way for it to be true would be to somehow modify how your ear/brain system detects sound, and we're not there yet- give it a hundred years and we'll see 😉 In the meantime we are stuck with human hearing perceptual rules which are surprisingly consistent from person to person unlike taste buds. That is why, for example, we can use a dB scale on VU meters. Also for example why mp3s were even possible (they rely on the masking principle of the ear). Masking, BTW, is an essential bit of what I mentioned about distortion above. Its easy to prove with very simple test equipment that the ear uses higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure, and that they are assigned 'harsh and bright' by the ear. This isn't something for debate, its something you learn about in school. The musical nature of the 2nd harmonic has been known longer than electronics. That higher harmonics are not acceptable in the audio presentation has also been known for a very long time: I refer you to the Radiotron Designer's Guide, 3rd edition, published in the 1930s. Human ears have seen no significant evolution since then, although taste has certainly changed. Getting what the difference is between hearing and taste is what this is about. Designing something to be musical is all about understanding how the ear perceives sound and not at all about the taste people express. If you want to talk about the taste people express and relate it to audio design, you'll be participating in one of the larger myths in audio- that of a certain audio product being better at one genre of music than another (the absolute classic example of that being a JBL L-100 being better at rock than anything else, which is simply silly). In reality, there's no known way of designing any audio product to favor a certain genre. If there were, there'd be classes on that topic in colleges and universities. |
