I’m confused. Please explain.


Hello everyone. There are quite a lot of posts of people wanting their system to sound like real instruments like you would hear at the symphony. I don’t see the importance of it. I’ve been to the symphony one time recently and it was nice but until then I’ve basically only listened to music  made in a studio, amplified and then mixed. I have been to concerts but even that music was at least  amplified. 
Surely you listen to more than just classical music. Are you saying studio music can somehow be made to sound like symphony instruments? I  want my music to sound like it did when it was recorded if possible. I enjoy many genres of music so I don’t see why I would desire it to sound like I’m at the symphony. I consider my system neutral so it is true to the recording. Thank you for your thoughts. 
 

Regards 

Ron 

 

ronboco

If one chooses audio equipment by what sounds good at the moment you can end up on a wild goose chase. I know, I’ve been there. Wow, that flashy presentation of my test disks sounds great! But, as you choose components that way, your system can start sounding flashy and soulless… and / or makes one genre of music sound great at the expense of others, and / or highly detailed but without the sounding natural like music. So training your ear to the real thing can give you an unchanging standard to shoot for. It can’t be electronically reproduced music, since that adds a whole new set of arbitrary layers between the instrument, other electronics and speakers. So acoustic music is the way to tie your judgement to reality.

I typically bring up the symphony orchestra because it produces sounds from the very edge of perception to overloading the hearing… very high db… unamplified. It also has single instruments as well as massed and covers the audio spectrum. But during the twenty years I got serious about training my ears to what the real thing sounds like, I also listened to lots of pianos, unamplified jazz, etc. all these help you create internal ruler with which to judge audio systems. There are lots of simple mostly two microphone recordings of symphony orchestras are available that naturally capture the venue… and all the subtitles.

When you start out, you know how to identify few of the dozens of attributes of music… so, if you learn what the real thing sounds like, you are more likely to get a system that reproduces variables you don’t know about yet.

When I started to listen seriously to un-amplified music to learn what it sounded like, my audio choices got much better. All genera of music improved at once, and the attributes I couldn’t put my finger on like rhythm and pace got better… it got more involving.

For me, the benefit of listening to live acoustic music is to familiarize yourself with what natural unmiked acoustic instruments sound like. Piano, guitar, voice, violin, cello, trumpet, sax, clarinet, etc. That can help you recognize the subtle nuance of a recorded acoustic instrument when it sounds right. Symphonic music can also help you pick up on the subtle ambient sounds of a concert hall, and natural dynamics.

Electronic and miked instruments can sound like whatever electronics they’re being played through, which makes for a less natural and less reliable reference.  It's pretty common, and frankly fairly easy to get a system to sound like a dance club, but much harder to get one to sound like natural music.

In the end, to each his own and we should setup our systems to our own liking, but I definitely find it useful to know what a natural instrument sounds like when evaluating a system.

@ghdprentice, @ knotscott. 
Thank you for the great responses ! It’s great to get the perspectives of the more experienced members here to expand my knowledge.