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RE: Subjective opinions of DACs

Posted by flood2 (A) on April 16, 2014 at 18:57:53

In Reply to: RE: Subjective opinions of DACs posted by knewton on April 16, 2014 at 17:52:43:

I was of course being deliberately provocative in my opening post which I'm glad has been taken in the right spirit.
I understand your definition of "air" etc.

I agree with you - what we are saying is that when listening to a recording, (technical) Fidelity and Musical Enjoyment are actually two different things.

When we listen to a recording, we are after an emotionally satisfying "illusion" of sound. Technical accuracy is actually quite secondary to this.

My problem comes when people attribute an emotionally satisfying result to be (by definition) to be more accurate/faithful to the original recording and THAT is the bit I struggle with.

I know as a clarinettist that if you are not in the correct frame of mind EVERYTHING about what you are doing seems "awful" all the way from the reed to the tone quality etc. I have spent countless hours shaving my reeds, reprofiling the mouthpiece etc. I think the same applies to hifi.

It wasn't until I started doing my own recordings that I realised that technical fidelity is actually reasonably easy to achieve (with a bit of technical knowhow and money). At that point I realised that I was wasting my time Tilting at Windmills for a perceived flaw in the TECHNICAL reproduction when in fact much of the time the flaws are either in the recording, or in the case of vinyl, actually due to flaws in the cutting process and so I realised that the journey (for sonic perfection) had largely ended since we have largely arrived there with hi-res recordings. Any other discussions around digital filters, DACs (as in the conversion principle) seems rather petty in comparison to what we used to have to put up with in the past!

I love Modern Jazz and classical music - my father left me a legacy of original pressings from the 50s and 60s. My mother is a retired music teacher with a huge collection of classical records all the way from the 50s to the 80s. Many older recordings are rather distorted, lack the bandwidth of a modern recording, but it doesn't detract from my enjoyment of the music and I know my equipment is faithfully reproducing every single distortion, tape flutter or fake "enhanced stereo" from those records that used that awful technique to enhance mono recordings from the 60s!

Regards
Anthony

Regards Anthony

"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats

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