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The eternal quandary

Is it the sound or is it the music?

A recent experience. Started to listen to a baroque trio on the main system, harpsichord, bass viol and violin. The harpsichord seems to be positioned to the left of centre, the bass viol to the right, and the violin probably somewhere in the middle. The sound of the two continuo instruments is "larger"/more diffuse than I would expect in "real life". The acoustic is slightly "swimmy". Worse still, impossible to tell if the violinist is standing in front of the continuo instruments, on the same plane as them, or even slightly behind them (in a kind of concave semi-circle). Then that tiny little doubt creeps in: although you want to blame the recording, the acoustic, the recording engineer, the digital recorder, could it be the system that's not quite doing the trick? Could its soundstaging abilities be somehow deficient? After about six shortish tracks I have stop.

Later, I finish listening to the CD on the secondary system. No, the timbral textures are not as fleshed out, no, the sheer presence of the instruments is not as intense, and no, the soundstaging is certainly no better, but I listen through to the end, in main part I think because my expectations are not as high now, and I'm listening to what's being played, not how it's being reproduced.

So are we listening to the sound or the music? Is this why car radios, table-top radios, even secondary systems have a certain, curious advantage over the "big rig"? By having so many expectations for the big rig, are we setting it up for failure? Is that one reason why lots of enthusiasts are on an unending upgrade spiral? Does this experience strike a chord (no pun intended) with anyone else out there?
twoleftears
shadorne's avatar
shadorne
7,477 posts
 
Violins have loads of harmonics. Many different sounds are possible from pleasant to screeching. Like a trumpet it can sound soft or very harsh and ear splitting - an extremely versatile instrument.

How are you so sure that the recording was not intentionally strident?

Also consider the impedance plot of Proac 2.5's - one might expect a bit of extra upper harmonic emphasis at 1Khz with a small de-emphasis at the deeper fundamental resonant frequencies of the violin around 200 Hz (remember a tube amp with high output impedance will mimic the speaker impedance curve in its "emphasis").

Just a thought...

Here is some info on violin response

Just a few thought as blaming the recording engineer might be a tad unfair.
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Hi Newbee,
What a beaut!! LOL. "audiophile analist approved" --AAA-- for short, I would suggest, but since AAA is already taken, I believe, by the motoring crowd, what would you think of "AA"-short for "anankast approved"?

Shadorne you make - as usual - an excellent point. Violins should be intentionally screeching at times. I am thinking of passages in string quartets by say Schnittke or Shostakovitch. Hilary Hahn can be quite strident in her splendid rendering of Bach's solo-sonatas and partitas. But the thought of an entire piece strident or screeching makes my ears close up even as I write this. At the moment I cannot even think of one. Generally music, like our speaking voice by the way, changes in pitch and modulation in many various ways of course.
Besides, an experienced listener, I think, will be able to differentiate between harshness, which is part of the interpretation and harshness which somehow is "wrong" and hence blamed either on the system or the software. Just a thought.
shadorne's avatar
shadorne
7,477 posts
 
I am thinking of passages in string quartets by say Schnittke or Shostakovitch.

Indeed!! Russian composers are some of my very favorites - it is different from Bach, Vivaldi or Handel (dishwashing music to me - of course that is personal taste as I tend to like music to be challenging and exhilerating rather than just warm rich pleasant sounds)

If you like Shostakovich done "BIG" (the American way) then I highly recommend Lorin Maazel and the Cleveland Orhcestra on Telarc - not at all as emotional as some versions but hellish fun and grandiose!
goldeneraguy
442 posts
 
Detlof , I believe AA is also taken.Possibly by some of the patrons of the bar you found when looking to sooth the savage breast.
Enjoy
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears OP
5,320 posts
 
From an epistemological point of view, the whole field of audio reproduction is fraught with a myriad of problems. Actually, it's a miracle that we can agree about anything! From the recording venue, the position of the microphones in the hall, the brand, model, number and mix of microphones, the different arrays, the cables, the recording medium, the engineer, all the way on through to the manufacturing of the CD that you're going to feed into your machine, there are just so many variables involved!

So what to do? Obviously, as many people remark, returning to the concert hall to refresh one's auditory memory as to what live sound actually sounds like (to you, on that date, in that hall--more subjectivity and variability) is important, as it is also to establish a kind of benchmark for what one hears at home.

But I think consensus is important too. Bertrand Russell might have you wondering if that coffee table sitting there on the carpet in front of you is "really" real, if it's really even there at all, but we get around this epistemological stumbling block by agreeing to accept that it probably is there, and therefore also we tend to walk around it (even if it isn't "really" there) so we don't get knocked on the shins.

If three or four like-minded friends agree that your system sounds good, then it probably does. (Reluctantly, I had to put that "like-minded" in because there is such subjectivity and variability out there too as to what "good" sounds like. Different ears; different criteria.) But here we have a minimum of consensus.

Likewise, if six or seven recordings of small classical chamber groups sound good on a given system, and one other recording doesn't, then I'm prepared to believe that there's some kind of problem with the recording somewhere in the recording chain, and that it's not the system's fault. (I'm talking about a level playing field here: for the purposes of argument let's stick with 17C sonatas with continuo and not drag Shostakovich into the mix...)

How does that, er, sound?
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