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RE: "As far as I'm concerned audio is there to serve my aesthetics not the other way around."

"The sound of live music" is the total sum of experience (good and bad, accurate and inaccurate) that each of us has with live musicians in actual locales playing their instruments. (I'm tempted to add "their ACOUSTIC instruments" - but let's not go there for now!) As listeners, we distill this experience into ideas as to what the musical instruments should sound like in various acoustic environments. So. . .

I'm asserting that the "listening committees", who helped the earliest concert hall builders and acousticians develop an objective/accurate measurement system to improve the acoustics of the halls, were, just like today's listeners, guided by the same process of distilling their listening experiences into their ideas as to what most accurately represents the sound of live music. This distillation is NOT the average of their listening experiences, but is rather a knowledge of the possible range of these experiences - from bad to good. And it's their idea of the ACCURATE representation of the good that forms the basis of their judgements. That's why I said that Venezuelan Concert Hall that you brought up as an example was not relevant - because of the poor quality of the acoustics, etc. And actually, I was wrong about that - the experience of that hall would be one more blip on the continuum from bad to good (i.e., less accurate representations of the instruments to more accurate representations). BTW, I had never heard that story about the "listening committees" who helped the acousticians, but I do trust you on this.

I also agree with you about the unfortunate listeners who have never experienced a live performance that can give them a conception of the kind of ideal I just described. Although I've never been to Copley Hall, I accept your portrayal of its horrific acoustics. But it seems to me that you're hung up on the fact that an accurate sonic representation of that hall in Venezuela would be no one's idea of good sound. (And that would be right!) But the accuracy I'm describing is a kind of Platonic ideal in itself: the recorded representation of god-like instruments in god-like acoustic environments. (And, yes, I'm serious about this!)

When I talk about accuracy, I mean an accurate rendering of an ideal based on live experiences of real musicians in real halls. That some listeners' ideals are so warped because their live experiences are limited to bad halls is, as you say, a tragedy. You are also correct that the good seats at the good halls are the exception, not the rule. But I recall promotional literature for a number of recording companies which had as their selling point their ability to place their microphones in an ideal location - a spot where a listener could never actually sit, fifteen feet above the conductor's head or wherever. The accurate capture of sound from such "ideal" locations is, to me, a valid goal of music reproduction. To the extent that we don't hear that ideal faithfully (i.e., accurately) captured, preserved and regenerated, we become to the same extent disillusioned and disappointed.

You said it yourself: "Accuracy is IMO only valuable in so far as it serves our aesthetic values." But I say that our aesthetic values derive from our total experience with the absolute standard, which is real music in real space - even if it's a bad experience, it still still influences our aesthetic judgement. And it still influences our ideals. Think of it this way: how certain would you be that Mozart (for instance) was a great composer if you didn't have composers such as Dittersdorf to kick around? ;-)

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