All the the most accomplished classical musicians I've ever known personally (including a clarinet player in the Boston Philharmonic who's a long-term friend of my girlfriend, a pianist who recently finished a doctorate in composition, a harpsichordist who is friend of my parents, my classical guitar instructor who attended Eastman as well as another virtuoso guitarist, Apostolos Paraskevas, who taught me for several years until I couldn't afford him), seem complacent with the worst low- to mid-fi sound systems. They must be interested in just the notes themselves or something. Likewise my girlfriend's brother-in-law and his two (now) adult children - classical trumpet, violin, and piano respectively - ALL heavily embrace the iPod and use the stock Earbuds! They don't even both to encode their music at higher than 192kbs, even though their large capacity iPods would accomodate it. The classical trumpet player is a talented amateur who regularly plays in a brass quintet in Wayland, MA, and his son especially is a talented (though not quite concert-level) pianist who plays challenging concertos very well at almost full tempo. All the above people have large collections of classical recordings, yet none of them own a system that even deserves to be called 'a system'. We're talking worse than Bose speakers, $200 CD changers made ten years ago by Kenwood and the like, $60 headphones in the best case scenario and usually worse.
I don't know what the point of my spiel here is, but intuitively I feel that whether or not classical music lovers (I'll assume that those performers do in fact love the music they listen to) embrace a medium or not is hardly the basis upon which the given medium can claimed to be sonically superior. I myself am an audiophile, but my technical skill as a musician is far below that of those mentioned above. However I will say that there was a time early in my life as a youngster when I even enjoyed listening to the reproduction of works such as the William Tell Overture on my 1983 IBM PC that had no soundcard and as such played only the tones themselves - nearly monophonic.
I'm not implying that digital sound reproduction only gets the notes - that would be utterly absurd - but in light of the above, I'm inclined to think that many classical music lovers have embraced the digital medium without regard for the types of sonic omissions which some accuse all but the high-end digital recordings and playback of exhibiting. It is true in classical music more than in any other genre that the essence of the music - what the composer had in mind so to speak - is largely conveyed by the printed score.to those who are trained to interpret it. So if printed musical scores sufficed for so long as an adequate recording medium, it's no surprise that classical music lovers would have lower audio standards RELATIVE to the reproductive demands placed by (especially richly orchestrated) classical music on a given recording medium and playback apparatus. Thus since clarity is above all the prime requisite for accessing classical works, I'm not surprised at all when lovers thereof embrace whichever is the clearest option relative to their financial means. In a sense, I'm accusing some classal music lovers of being 'clarity whores', though admittedly this claim is contradicted to some extent by the less than stellar clarity - with respect to the more understated or softly articulated symphonic phrases - offered by a pair of earbuds. Yes, there's so much more to a classical performance than the music per se, but unlike other genres, their notes themselves can provide long-term musical satisfaction to those who's brains happily decode them.
I hope didn't open a can of worms here.
On a different , the Fedex train carrying my new Scoutmaster has reportedly pulled into the station, so in a few hours - by the end of the day latest - I shall know whether all my love has been in vain (sorry, i had a high fidelity dream about that last night (those guitars!), and has been in my head ever since, albeit now on a vanishingly
Ted
I don't know what the point of my spiel here is, but intuitively I feel that whether or not classical music lovers (I'll assume that those performers do in fact love the music they listen to) embrace a medium or not is hardly the basis upon which the given medium can claimed to be sonically superior. I myself am an audiophile, but my technical skill as a musician is far below that of those mentioned above. However I will say that there was a time early in my life as a youngster when I even enjoyed listening to the reproduction of works such as the William Tell Overture on my 1983 IBM PC that had no soundcard and as such played only the tones themselves - nearly monophonic.
I'm not implying that digital sound reproduction only gets the notes - that would be utterly absurd - but in light of the above, I'm inclined to think that many classical music lovers have embraced the digital medium without regard for the types of sonic omissions which some accuse all but the high-end digital recordings and playback of exhibiting. It is true in classical music more than in any other genre that the essence of the music - what the composer had in mind so to speak - is largely conveyed by the printed score.to those who are trained to interpret it. So if printed musical scores sufficed for so long as an adequate recording medium, it's no surprise that classical music lovers would have lower audio standards RELATIVE to the reproductive demands placed by (especially richly orchestrated) classical music on a given recording medium and playback apparatus. Thus since clarity is above all the prime requisite for accessing classical works, I'm not surprised at all when lovers thereof embrace whichever is the clearest option relative to their financial means. In a sense, I'm accusing some classal music lovers of being 'clarity whores', though admittedly this claim is contradicted to some extent by the less than stellar clarity - with respect to the more understated or softly articulated symphonic phrases - offered by a pair of earbuds. Yes, there's so much more to a classical performance than the music per se, but unlike other genres, their notes themselves can provide long-term musical satisfaction to those who's brains happily decode them.
I hope didn't open a can of worms here.
On a different , the Fedex train carrying my new Scoutmaster has reportedly pulled into the station, so in a few hours - by the end of the day latest - I shall know whether all my love has been in vain (sorry, i had a high fidelity dream about that last night (those guitars!), and has been in my head ever since, albeit now on a vanishingly
Ted