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Re: Agreement and disagreement

Earl,

Comments noted.

I do think fidelity to the recording as it was mixed is a much more workable goal, but there are still issues.

Most studios work with a nearfield setup for mastering and most listeners seem to prefer far field. Both produce quite different experiences but I don't regard one as being intrinsically more right than the other. Some people are definitely more partisan than I.

And I'm quite content with my listening too, if that means something.

But I'm content with something less than total accuracy, as are you. None of us knows what total accuracy sounds like because it's currently unachievable, and small differences in reproductive quality can cause significant changes in our perceptions. I suspect that we all try to achieve accuracy by ensuring that our system's strengths lie in the areas that are most important to us while minimising weaknesses and ensuring that none of them are significant enough to cause us problems. Different people do like different presentations—I have a set of low sensitivity mini-monitors in a near field setup and one of my friends has high sensitivity vintage Altec Lansings in a far field setup. We both listen to live as well as recorded music and both find our respective systems accurate. My feeling is that we each get off on different characteristics of musical sound and we optimise playback for our respective preferences. In other words, we're selective about what we're accurate to.

I see no reason for believing that achieving total accuracy is going to change that. Total accuracy can be determined by measurement, but it may not reflect the 'mix' I hear when I listen to either live or recorded music.

And yes, I may be "making things cloudy" in your view but I do feel a need to withold judgement on how satisfying such a result would be. I totally agree that equipment should be accurate but people do derive pleasure from using things in differrent ways, and the goal of this hobby is pleasure. I'm prepared to bet that delivering totally accurate equipment would not result in all that much of a reduction in the range of equipment manufactured and sold, and some of today's gear is more accurate than others and there are people who buy at both ends of that range. I can't see that changing and I'm not sure that I would necessarily approve if everybody settled on the same thing, no matter how accurate it was. Contrast can be instructive and enjoyable also.

David Aiken

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