|
Posts: 36118
Location: saginaw michigan
Joined: January 30, 2005
|
LOL
When I posted that about how I like honest,that's a little inside joke between Eli Duttman and myself we both like correctness in amps and I was hoping he read that and commented.We like some second order distortion as well but not to excess and I agree with what you say as well when it comes to perception of sonics for certain individuals.AAMOF,here is an excerpt from the article from the early 60s called,why hifi experts disagree by J Gordon Holt. It more or less sums up audiophiles.
Many writers of books and articles about high fidelity advise the prospective buyer merely to choose what sounds good to him. Certainly there is no sense in anybody's choosing a music system whose sound he doesn't like, but in a field where definite standards of quality exist, simply liking something does not necessarily mean that it is good, by those standards. A person who likes abstract art, for instance, may be judging it by any number of criteria, but resemblance to the original scene is not one of them. If it were evaluated on the basis of its "fidelity," or resemblance to the original scene, it would have to be judged a very poor copy. Similarly, the listener who prefers his sound shrill and brassy is perfectly entitled to his preference, but he is not choosing on the basis of fidelity, either.
This raises the question of whether high-fidelity can, or should be, better than the real thing. Certainly it can be made to sound richer, or bigger, or more highly detailed in a recording than it ever is in the concert hall, and the net result may actually be more exciting than anything heard at a live performance. The gimmicked recording may even, on occasion, serve the intent of the music better than a concert hall performance, but whether it sounds better or worse than the original, it is not true to the original, and thus cannot be considered a high-fidelity reproduction.
Sound recording may eventually become a creative art in its own right, producing musical sounds that bear no relation to any natural sounds. Indeed, some branches of it—pops and so-called electronic music—are already well on their way in that direction. This is not high fidelity, though, and there's no sense pretending that it is.
As long as we are concerned with the realistic reproduction of sound, the original sound must stand as the criterion by which the reproduction is judged, and most hi-fi experts agree that this is as it should be. The problem, however, lies in defining this original that is to be duplicated.
F'rinstance, take one symphony orchestra, place it on-stage in one concert hall, and then try listening to it from a) the front row, b) the twentieth row, and c) the fourth row of the second balcony (or peanut gallery). The orchestra will sound quite different from each location, so which of its sounds is the one that best represents the orchestra? Obviously, the sound that is heard from the best seat is the best representation of the orchestral sound, but who is going to claim that his preference for a seating location is the only valid preference, and that anyone who prefers to sit elsewhere has bad judgment? Nobody but a dyed-in-the-wool nut will take this attitude.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" H. L. Mencken
|
