How do you judge your system's neutrality?

Learsfool - I am aware of the extent to which recording, editing, and mixing techniques are employed in music recording, particularly popular music recording. I am also aware of the fact that many of these techniques are standard practice in classical and jazz recordings. But I do not see that these realities eliminate the possibility of evaluating a recording's truthfulness, i.e., its transparency to a real musical event, so long as transparency is understood as being an APPROXIMATION. The transparency of a recording is an approximation TO THE EXTENT THAT:

(1) The recording is incomplete or imperfect.
(2) The event is not real.

RE: (1). Of course, all recordings are incomplete and imperfect, but they are not all EQUALLY incomplete or imperfect. Some are much more incomplete or imperfect than others. Recordings delivered on low resolution formats like MP3, for example, are much more incomplete than recordings delivered on high resolution formats like SACD. Recordings that inadvertently encode gross distortions (e.g., overmodulation distortion, jitter, phase errors) into the signal during the recording process, for example, are much more imperfect than those that do not.

RE: (2). As you point out, very few (or perhaps no) recordings are FULLY real, since nearly all recordings involve at least some editing and mixing techniques. So nearly all (or possibly all) recordings are, to some extent, virtual. But they are not all EQUALLY virtual. Some are much more virtual than others. Recordings that make liberal use of recording, editing, and mixing techniques are more virtual than recordings that use those techniques sparingly. This is a common difference between popular music and some audiophile classical recordings, for example. I freely admit that even audiophile classical recordings are, to some extent, virtual. But they seem to me to be, on average, considerably less virtual than most popular music.

The point I am making is that, even if we agree that ALL recordings are to some extent virtual, it does not follow, and it is not true, that all recordings are EQUALLY virtual. In other words, some recordings are more real than others, even if no recording is COMPLETELY real. I made this point in a slightly different way in my post on 1/18:

Music recordings can be thought of on a continuum according to how REAL or VIRTUAL the event is that the recording represents...At one end of the continuum is a music recording that represents a musical event that is MAXIMALLY REAL...At the other end of the continuum is a music recording that represents a musical event that is MAXIMALLY VIRTUAL...In the middle of the continuum is where the vast majority of music lies...

By locating recordings on a CONTINUUM between the (admittedly idealized) extremes of representing fully real and fully virtual musical events, I tried to highlight the fact that important differences exist in the degree to which a recording can be evaluated in terms of its truthfulness, that is, its transparency to a real musical event. And if that is true, I believe, then the attitude of Objectivism is more warranted the more a recording represents a REAL-ISH event, while the attitude of Subjectivism is more warranted the more a recording represents a VIRTUAL-ISH event.

As soon as anyone else listens to it, it does technically become a performance.

Actually, technically, that's a playback of a performance unless the listening is in real time. In that case you have to make the distinction between recording the sound coming out of a speaker (a live event) and recording the data produced by the device (a virtual event). For an electronic device sending a signal directly to the recording medium, the Objectivist viewpoint is impossible because there is nothing to compare the playback to. There was never a "sound" that was recorded. It would be like running a random section of a computer's hard drive through a DAC and asking how it compared to the live event. What live event?

As for the rest of your post, I'll let Bryon respond, but he's talking about a continuum that runs from live and acoustic to virtual and electronic, not about placing every recording into one of two categories. As you move across that continuum the Objectivist approach is either more or less valid, not simply valid or invalid.

Cbw and Bryon - you both seem to be assuming that a "performance" must be a live event. Musicians consider all recordings to be performances. The difference between a live and a recorded performance is that the recorded performance is permanent, and a live performance is not. Even a recording made straight to a recording device would therefore be considered a performance, as I mentioned before, with Zappa as one of the more famous examples.

I also understand perfectly that you are speaking of a continuum. I still maintain that you have it backwards, however, IF you are speaking of truthfulness. Let me try a different take, with a live event as an example this time. The more virtual a recording is, by Bryon's definition, the more control the engineer has over the result. I don't think you are disputing this. What I am saying is that this makes it easier, not more difficult, to hear whether or not the engineer has been truthful to the live event. Therefore, applying an objectivist perspective is more warranted, not less, the more virtual the recording.

This brings me to "truthfulness" vs. "transparency." Bryon, you seem to equate these two things, and this is where the confusion lies. I think your continuum IS correct IF you are speaking of transparency, not truthfulness. In my view, a recording can be very transparent yet not truthful (in fact, this is exactly how many musicians describe digital recording in general). This difference in perspective has come up earlier in this thread, when Kijanki brought up sitars, I believe it was, and asked you how you could tell whether the recording was true to it (I am paraphrasing, I did not go back and search the thread for an exact quote). Your response was basically "because I have heard one." To me, this is a subjective, not an objective judgement. Another example - I know you know what a French horn sounds like. However, you have absolutely no idea what MY horn sounds like. If I mailed you two different recordings made of the exact same live performance of mine, you could judge which one was more transparent, but you could not judge which one was more truthful without being familiar with my specific sound (and the same of course goes for the performance space). Only if one has familiarity with the performers and the venue can one accurately judge the truthfulness of a recording. I have much experience with this distinction, having the good fortune to be a professional performer, and to be familiar with a great many different performers and venues through personal experience, both performing and as an audience member. I also regularly listen to all of the archival recordings made by various engineers of my orchestra's classical subscription concerts (I am in fact on the committee which decides what goes over the radio broadcast). Every engineer's recordings sound different, as they place mikes differently, and mix them differently, and edit differently (in fact, each recording each engineer makes sounds different). I can assure you that the more mikes used, and the more mixing done (in other words the more virtual the recording), the easier it is to hear where the recording falls short of the live event as far as truthfulness is concerned. I am able to apply this objectivist perspective in this way because I am VERY familiar with the hall and my colleagues. If one is not familiar with these things, then all one can do is guess at the truthfulness of the recording - you can only know approximately (as you put it when you were speaking of transparency). Therefore you would really be applying a subjectivist, not an objectivist perspective, because you don't really know what the live event sounded like. You would have to use your own personal reference point for how you think it is supposed to sound. You can, however, judge a recording's transparency in the way you suggest, and this application of an objectivist perspective would work how you described.

I know I do not express myself particularly well with words, but I hope this clears up some confusion.

Musicians consider all recordings to be performances. The difference between a live and a recorded performance is that the recorded performance is permanent, and a live performance is not.

The idea that all recordings should be considered performances is strange to me. It is not merely the fact that some electronic music involves no real instruments. It is the fact that much electronic music is never PLAYED IN REAL TIME. It is ASSEMBLED OVER MANY HOURS OR DAYS in a computer software program. I have personally worked with electronic composers who create recordings this way. To call their work a “performance” seems to stretch the limits of any ordinary use of the term. However, since you are a professional musician and I am not, I will defer to you that musicians consider all recordings to be performances. Having said that, this disagreement is quite tangential to the main issue of my post on 1/18, which is the source of our current disagreement. So, to return to that…

This brings me to "truthfulness" vs. "transparency." Bryon, you seem to equate these two things, and this is where the confusion lies.

This is almost correct. In my post on 1/18, I did not EQUATE transparency and truthfulness, but I did propose that we think of transparency as a KIND of truthfulness. Specifically, I proposed that we think of transparency as...

…how much the information presented at the ear during playback resembles the information that was presented at the microphone during the actual performance.

It does not matter whether we disagree about this conceptualization of transparency. “Transparency” is simply the term I chose, following Almarg’s suggestion, to refer to the CORRESPONDENCE between…

(1) The information presented at the ear during playback, and
(2) The information presented at the microphone during the performance.

I have called the correspondence between (1) and (2) "transparency." But you can call it anything you like. The important thing is not the term, but what I have used the term to mean, namely, the correspondence between (1) and (2). That correspondence is a KIND OF TRUTHFULNESS, which I will now try to show again...

Since (1) refers to a REPRESENTATION of an event and (2) refers to the REAL EVENT that it represents, then “transparency,” as I am using the term, refers to the CORRESPONDENCE of a REPRESENTATION to a REAL EVENT. And the correspondence between a representation and a real event is the MEANING of truthfulness. Hence transparency, in the sense of the correspondence between (1) and (2) above, is a KIND OF truthfulness (but not the only kind, since music recordings are not the only kind of representations).

I think your continuum IS correct IF you are speaking of transparency, not truthfulness. In my view, a recording can be very transparent yet not truthful…

You are either using a different meaning of “transparent” or a different meaning of “truthful” than the meanings I used in my post on 1/18, and in all my posts since, including this one. I suspect that you are using the term “transparent” differently. I do not want to squabble over the use of the term. If you object to my usage, you can substitute whatever word you like whenever I use the term, so long as you understand your substitute as referring to the correspondence between (1) and (2) above.

Only if one has familiarity with the performers and the venue can one accurately judge the truthfulness of a recording…I am able to apply this objectivist perspective in this way because I am VERY familiar with the hall and my colleagues. If one is not familiar with these things, then all one can do is guess at the truthfulness of the recording - you can only know approximately…

I completely agree with this. What you are describing here, however, is not WHAT MAKES a representation/recording truthful, but rather HOW YOU JUDGE whether a representation/recording is truthful. In my post on 1/18, I was proposing ideas about WHAT MAKES a representation/recording truthful, namely, its correspondence to the real event. I was not proposing ideas about HOW YOU JUDGE whether a representation/recording is truthful.

If one is not familiar with these things, then all one can do is guess at the truthfulness of the recording - you can only know approximately…Therefore you would really be applying a subjectivist, not an objectivist perspective, because you don't really know what the live event sounded like. You would have to use your own personal reference point for how you think it is supposed to sound.

I agree with this as well. If you do not know what real performance sounded like, then you are far less well equipped to evaluate a recording of it in terms of its objective correspondence to the real event, simply because you don’t know what the real event sounded like. In that case, you would be left to evaluate the recording in terms of preference, which is most certainly subjective.

But none of this seems to me to be inconsistent with my proposals on 1/18 or my defense of them since. Here are the proposals you objected to:

(5a) The more a music recording represents a REAL musical event, the MORE it can be judged as to its truthfulness.

(5b) The more a music recording represents a VIRTUAL musical event, the LESS it can be judged as to its truthfulness.

(6a) Music recordings of REAL events can be evaluated as to their truthfulness. And to evaluate a recording’s truthfulness is to adopt the point of view of Objectivism.

(6b) Music recordings of VIRTUAL events cannot be evaluated as to their truthfulness, though they can be evaluated in terms of preference. And to evaluate a recording in terms of preference is to adopt the point of view of Subjectivism.

(5a) is intended to describe a NECESSARY condition for judging the truthfulness of a recording, namely the recording must represent a “real-ish” event. (5a) is NOT intended to describe SUFFICIENT conditions for judging the truthfulness of a recording. As you point out, (5a) is not a sufficient condition for judging the truthfulness of a recording, since there is at least one other necessary condition: familiarity with the real event the recording represents.

(5b) is simply the converse of (5a)

(6a) is partly a restatement of (5a), and partly intended to point out that Objectivism – the view that a representation can be evaluated as to its truthfulness – is more warranted when recordings represent real events, simply because the truthfulness of a representation REQUIRES that there be a real event for the representation to correspond to. That is the MEANING of truth. And this is not an idiosyncratic definition of truth. If I defer to you, as a professional musician, about the meaning of “performance” as used by musicians, please believe me, as a professionally trained philosopher, that truth is used by philosophers and scientists alike to mean “correspondence to reality.” And if you will grant me that, then it is a short step to the conclusion that a necessary condition for judging the truthfulness of a representation (whether it is a recording, or any representation) is that there is or was a real event that the representation represents. In light of this, judging the truthfulness of a recording is an act of Objectivism BY DEFINITION, since Objectivism is the view that representations can be evaluated as to their truthfulness.

(6b) is simply the converse of (6a).

I can assure you that the more mikes used, and the more mixing done (in other words the more virtual the recording), the easier it is to hear where the recording falls short of the live event as far as truthfulness is concerned. I am able to apply this objectivist perspective in this way because I am VERY familiar with the hall and my colleagues.

Once again, you are providing ideas (good ones, I think) about HOW TO JUDGE the truthfulness of a recording. I agree with these ideas, but they do not mean I’ve gotten things backwards in (5a) and (5b), or in (6a) and (6b). It only means that the perception of the “virtuality” of a recording make it possible to JUDGE the truthfulness of the recording. In other words, one way to judge the truthfulness of a recording is when it DEVIATES FROM truthfulness. The perception of virtuality in a recording is, in effect, the perception of CONTRAST between the recording and the real event. But for some recordings, there is no real event. When recordings are altered liberally during editing and mixing, they can become so virtual that there is no longer any real event for the recording to correspond to. And if there is no real event for the recording to correspond to, then the recording cannot be judged in terms of its truthfulness, since truthfulness MEANS correspondence to a real event. And if a recording cannot be judged in terms of its truthfulness, then we are left with evaluating it subjectively. Hence the more virtual a recording, the more the attitude of Subjectivism is warranted.

Hi Bryon - first, the performance discussion. All music MUST be performed, otherwise it has no function or purpose (some would even argue that it has no existence without performance, though I am not sure if I would go that far). Even a completely electronic composition of the type you describe (and which I have hands on experience with myself), despite being composed and entered into the computer over a long period of time, IS eventually played back in real time in it's entirety, and this act does constitute a performance of the work. Otherwise, what is the point of creating the work in the first place, if no one is ever going to hear it? The main difference is that there are no human "performers," only a computer. Another big difference is that all performances of the work are exactly the same, unless the composer edits the work. Some composers are very attracted to the idea of having no human error messing up their performance, and the idea of being the sole interpreter of the work as well. There is no third party between them and their audience. But most certainly they are considering an audience listening to a performance when they create the work.

As for the truthfulness/transparency thing, I think we were indeed using the terms differently. I could state a bit more about how I would use some of these terms differently from you, but this is your thread, and it will keep things much simpler to use your terms. After reading your last post a few times, I think I understand what you mean by all of your terms. I think before I was also confused sometimes about whether your real/virtual discussion referred to the recording or to the live event, though I should hasten to add that this confusion was mine, not yours. My remaining confusion still lies in exactly what you mean by truthfulness, as you say that your transparency definition is only a part of it (which, if I have understood correctly, I certainly agree with). Again, if you are speaking only about transparency as the correspondence between your 1) and 2), and not overall truthfulness, then I think your 5a is correct, and we are in agreement there.

My confusion lies in what you mean by truthfulness overall, then, especially with regard to 6a. Are you saying that a Subjectivist cannot evaluate the truthfulness of a recording?? If you mean by this that a Subjectivist believes a recording can never be completely truthful, then I agree. It seems quite clear that there certainly is not now and never will be a recording made that anyone would mistake for a live event, for many different reasons. I would disagree strongly, however, that a Subjectivist would be unable to judge how close a recording comes to the live, real event it is a representation of. In fact, this would also ultimately be a subjective judgement, I believe, despite some objectivist measures being needed. For example, two different sets of microphones in different set-ups recording the same live event. Which one is closer to the truth? Perspective would matter greatly here.