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Agreement and disagreement

Posted by David Aiken (A) on March 3, 2006 at 14:14:28

In Reply to: Measurements & perception & reproduced sound posted by Duke on March 2, 2006 at 19:24:13:

I agree with you entirely about needing to understand what we should measure and how we relate measurements of one component to another.

I start to have problems with your quote from Earl Geddes. Reproducing the wave form at the ear and reproducing the perception are quite different concepts and I'm not certain that either is what will satisfy us.

To deal with reproducing the wave form first. I think we're all familiar with how mood affects our response to a recording. On a bad day our favourite recording can seem dull and uninvolving and on a good day quite the opposite yet we're listening to the same recording on the same gear in the same room while sitting in the same chair in both cases and the waveform reaching our ears is as identical as we can hope for in both cases, yet our experience is wildly different. Our experience at a live concert only depends in part on what falls on our ears—the emotional aspects of being present and the sense of interaction with a live artist in real time all influence our experience as well. Just reproducing the waveform won't reproduce the experience and may leave us very unsatisfied—after all we can enjoy a live concert quite a lot even when the sound quality has noticeable problems, but the same sound quality without the 'extras' of actual presence may be quite a deal less enjoyable or even unenjoyable.

Don't get me wrong. I think it would be a great advance to be able to reproduce the waveform perfectly and I think it would help a lot, but I don't think that on its own is enough to guarantee satisfaction.

Reproducing the perception is even more problematic. Are we talking about the raw sensory data perception before it is mediated by other psychological factors such as those present at a live performance, or are we talking about perception after those other factors have their influence? The second choice there amounts to reproduction of our experience rather simply of our sensory perception yet I think that is the meaning that most of us would prefer, and we have no real way of measuring or quantifying that experience. That means that we have to rely on our own judgement of when accurate reproduction has occurred and I don't think that sits well with Earl's strongly avowed rejection of subjective judgement as a reliable tool.

Still, any talk about reproducing the perception/experience seems to assume that listening to live music vs a recording provides a similar experience and I don't think it does. We never have the opportunity to listen to the same live performance twice. At best we can only listen to different performances of the same music by the same artist and there will be innumerable small differences because no-one ever performs anything exactly the same way as they did in a previous performance but that is precisely what recordings allow us to do. We do listen to exactly the same performance over and over again, and we listen slighlty differently each time and notice different things each time, and our perceptions of the music and the performance change over time and repeated listening. We even look forward to the ability to do that with new recordings that impress us. When we listen to a recording a second or third or whatever time, we very often aren't hoping to have the same experience again, but rather to deepen and extend our experience. Reproduction of an earlier experience isn't going to satisfy.

Finally, imperfect as they are, many systems do satisfy their owners. Why is that the case if the goal is either reproduction of the waveform or reproduction of the perception/experience? I think the answer is that we are satisfied because none of those things are our real goal. After all, they aren't our goal for movie playback. We don't want to reproduce what happened on the set and lose the illusion of reality, and we don't want to experience what is being portrayed, especially if it includes pain and suffering. We know the movie presents an illusion, and we know that a recording also presents an illusion, as does a novel or short story. I think we want to suspend disbelief and enter into the illusion, and to take something from the illusion. I don't think we want to replicate the original reality as an absolute, though replication of some aspects of that reality does help.

And I think there are going to be individual differences to what kind of illusion we want to create and what we want to take from it. That's why I think there is a level of 'art' in assembling a satisfying system. We need to pay attention and learn what aspects of reproduced sound are important to us, whether those aspects are realistic or not, and assemble a system with it's strengths in those areas. The enjoyment and satisfaction we experience when we are moved by listening to a recording are subjective, and it is a matter of satisfying our tastes and preferences. Plus accuracy is a variable—what row seat provides 'accurate' sound in your favourite concert hall, and is it even the same seat if one concert is a small trio playing quiet music and the next is a symphony orchestra and chorus performing a blockbuster?

I do think getting a more accurate reproduction of the waveform reaching the ear is a desirable goal but I think the real goal is satisfying whatever is required to float our personal preferred illusion while recognising that listening to records is a different experience to listening to a live performance, and it's those differences that really do count when it comes to achieving satisfaction. I'm not certain that we're ever going to be able to come up with a recipe that satisfies everyone, just as I don't think accurate reproduction of the waveform will suffice. I think we're stuck with a level of art in the process and I also think that's just great considering this is a hobby with personal enjoyment as the end goal.

And the continued presence of that level of art in the equation just happens to guarantee me a lot more happy times listening to systems other than mine, systems that do things differently to mine and produce different experiences of the music and insights into it. I really think it would be boring if we could satisfy Earl's goal because if we all had systems that did that, no-one's system would produce a different experience and that would result in a loss of enjoyment to me.

David Aiken

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