"Breathing" of the air

Well, a few random thoughts from the peanut gallery.........

Q 'Air' - Is it additive? That is does it come from the design or implementation of equipment/set up. Or subtractive? That is does it come from the source and does it pass through the system un-changed?

IMHO, being a pin-point imaging nut, with some emphasis on depth of image, I conclude that the only important 'air' I want to hear is in the recording. This information can be masked by the system/set up.

I conclude 'Air' and 'Depth of Image' can, and actually only do, exist, in relationship to the system's resolution/transparency. Dull system - no air. Bright system, maybe some 'air' but lots of long term fatigue. If you have a transparent system, including no 'noise', you might well hear something folks call air, I think.

I sort of agree with Ralph re speed - too much speed usually means fast rise times (good) combined with fast decay (bad) or slow decay (also bad). You have to put on your Goldilock's hat. Appropriate decay time can make a huge difference and IMHO isn't often discussed in relationship to its importance to the naturalness of the sound. But too me that is just one of the issues involved in 'resolution'.

FWIW.

"Air" is one of those audio terms that means different phenomena to different people. That's why I prefer S.H.'s term "breath of life" and even then, some think he's referring to the human voice which he isn't necessarily.

Steve's bottom line for system sonics is: if you don't have lifelike midrange, you've got nothing. If you think about it, that's why, for example, the Quad 57 ESL is still considered one of the great speakers of all time and a standard for perfect midrange. Though it lacks extension (in both directions!) that midrange just hooks you and you forget about its shortcomings.

Is dimensionality different than air? If so, how? Old mono recordings of limited frequency bandwidth can have good dimensionality, especially on vocals.

Onhwy61, Re old mono recordings/dimensionality/voice.

Perhaps it is because a single live voice is, in a sense perhaps, a mono source and mono reproduction is a more natural source for replication. Now a chorus or orchestra needs a more 'natural' replication of the space it takes up in an environment, i.e. at least a since of width (and depth of course) not available in mono reproduction. I have never heard, but would like to some day, hear a SOTA mono recording played back over a dedicated mono system. Be interesting whether or not one could hear 'air'. My guess is that the mono recording would probably have no real sense of depth, even with a mono voice.

Now in a more serious vein, -from the popcorn gallery- to paraphrase Newbee: I like what he had to say about this topic. I also think air is either in the recording or it is not. I don't like phase to be screwed around with, because that could give you lots of unnatural "air". A transparent system, with good handling of transients, which by the way took ages for me to build up, will give me an idea of the "aura" around instruments, which I will hear in a live concert in spades and try to implement at home with varying success. In actual fact, it is so difficult to achieve, that many experts here, who've never been to a live event, wouldn't even know what I was talking about. But if you begin to get that right, most of the rest, what our happy crew here thinks important, generally falls into place as well: stable images, pin-point placement of voices and instruments, depth and width of soundfield, not fatiguing rendering of music, PRAT and proper timbre.