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In Reply to: RE: When to give audio advice, and when not to....LOL posted by slapshot on February 22, 2015 at 12:21:31
Reality check: Most people only want music as an accompaniment to other activities such as reading, socializing, or knitting.
If the only reason a person wants audio equipment is to have Michael Bublé bubléing in the background as she chats with her girlfriends, then Sonos' products are more than adequate.
Bullet point: Far fewer people really care about music than most audiophiles assume.
Most people really don't care about music; they just like the pretty noises it makes.
Bright Shiny Object! Bright Shiny Object! Pretty Polly!
JM
Follow Ups:
We're BIG FANS of Sonos. As a streamer.
We listen while we're cooking, or sleeping, or relaxing. The recent addition of Murfie, TIDAL and Deezer Elite allows the sound quality to approach CD level digital when we put it through the main system.
For enjoying a performance or two with less distraction, we spin vinyl or throw on a SACD. Haven't been doing the Hi Rez digital recently.
============================
As audiophiles, we take what's obsolete, make it beautiful, and keep it forever.
Hey! I have a blog now: http://mancave-stereo.blogspot.com or "like" us at https://www.facebook.com/mancave.stereo
when one is reading, working, taking a shower, or cleaning around the house, etc. what does that make one?
Is it a matter of what one listens to, what one is doing while they listen, one's equipment, what criteria?
And what is music, if it is does not consist of sounds that one likes, unless one is a Calvinist or a Lutheran.
Observe, before you think. Think before you open your yap. Act on the basis of experience.
... as I was unclogging the toilet.Somehow worked in that context.
============================
As audiophiles, we take what's obsolete, make it beautiful, and keep it forever.
Hey! I have a blog now: http://mancave-stereo.blogspot.com or "like" us at https://www.facebook.com/mancave.stereo
Edits: 02/23/15
We are all unique. Every last one of us. We are united in our uniqueness.
OK, I'll stop now.
Responses:
1. My cleaning music is Julie London, and an iMac's internal speakers are OK for that. When I am sitting down to listen to a string quartet, I want very good sound. Horses for courses.
2. The decisive criterion as far as I am concerned is (the inquiry being, is Person X an appropriate prospect for fine audio, and therefore someone the industry should be willing to spend money to locate and educate and persuade) is:
"Is music for its own sake sufficiently important to this person that he or she is willing to give up or cut back on something else in their lives in order to pay for better audio equipment, even if it is only decent headphones under $300?"
Almost anyone with an automobile can afford some good audio equipment by the simple expedient of keeping the car longer and trading cars in for new less frequently. But most people would rather be seen in a newer car rather than one with issues, than have better stereos, because for their purposes Sonos is good enough and very short money.
3. Music on one level consists of sounds one likes, but on the deeper level it conveys meaning--whether the meaning is Bach's reconciling God's ways to man, Mozart's reveling in sensuous melodic beauty, or Beethoven's Heaven-Storming Rage®. The sound is a matter of perception acting upon nerve impulses, but the meaning depends upon cognition and acculturation.
ATB,
JM
Why do you say that? I find that most audiophiles understand that very few folks indeed care about reproducing the live unamplified event - or have any notion of what that would actually be.
Most people really don't care about music; they just like the pretty noises it makes.
Exactly! Compressed iTunes rules, right?
I think nearly everyone likes music.People fill their lives with it (wallpaper) but also watch Idol and The Voice passionately - they sing on YouTube to each other. They can enjoy the music through the proverbial "clock radio" and don't need to spend the gobs of money to be satisfied.
WE are the odd ducks in this game, we tilt at windmills to try to produce a perfect sound. Nearly everyone who hears it is amazed, but their wallet is shut because they get enough satisfaction the way they do it today.
We can claim that we like music better than the other guys, but there is a little too much gear-talk, and it is far too male dominated for me to think it is just that.
I know for me, there is nothing like weaving the illusion of a live performance, but if my means were different and I couldn't justify it, I would still enjoy music on the equivalent of a clock radio if I had to.
============================
As audiophiles, we take what's obsolete, make it beautiful, and keep it forever.
Hey! I have a blog now: http://mancave-stereo.blogspot.com or "like" us at https://www.facebook.com/mancave.stereo
Edits: 02/23/15
What a great way to put it.
We are trying to create an imagined perfect event from physical evidence that is likely unrepresentative of anything near what we are imagining and is far from perfect and certainly not real.
"The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat" - Confucius
I think John's statement is accurate for recent time, but I thought a far greater percentage of people were into music (not necessarily audio) prior to the digital age.
I mean, prior to 1980, I often had conversations about how symphony orchestras, pianists, or violinists differ and why I preferred certain ones while others explained preferences of different ones.... (Some of these discussion became heated at times.) But over the past ten years, aside from occasional postings on Music Asylum, I've haven't discussed this at all. The subject matter just doesn't interest people anymore.
I think John's statement is accurate for recent time
The question is not that "fewer people care about music", but what we (as audiophiles) perceive reality to be.
As for me, I fully understand that precious few care about music today.
Next!
(Note the "album" of 78 rpms.)
I chat with industry folks all the time, and perhaps it is just that the only industry person I chat with regularly I think of as "young" is Stephen Mejias.
I think lots of industry people are stuck in the past--their college years or early career years--when listening to music was a shared experience and the variety of music was much wider than today, and so music was more important to more people than it is today. And I am not focusing on classical. Just look at the list of artists who released albums the same month Joni Mitchell released Court and Spark:
Elvis Presley, Graham Nash, Hot Tuna, Grace Slick, Rod Stewart / Faces, Bobby Womack, Bob Dylan, Blue Magic, Linda Ronstadt, Foghat, Gram Parsons, Carly Simon, Brian Eno, Harmonia, The Love Unlimited Orchestra, Leo Sayer, Gordon Lightfoot, Barbra Streisand... .
Whereas with a total lack of modesty I declare that when most people listen to the absurdly popular One Republic (671,000,000 YT hits??????? For ONE video?) or Mumford and Sons or Arcade Fire, neither the content nor the sound-world are likely to lead to a desire to hear deeper into the soundstage. Daft Punk, obviously some people think so.
So we have an industry (fine audio) run by baffled befuddled guys like me, who are fully qualified to join AARP, who still believe deep down that if we just run the right ads in The New Yorker and Architectural Digest, suddenly component audio will again become a near-indispensible part of the vision as to what constitutes the good life or the life well lived, just like great books (or even The Great Books) and fine art.
Society and technology has changed, and the industry has to embrace the suck.
Just because a guy owns a Rolex does not mean that you can sell him an expensive stereo, because Sonos really is good enough to meet his needs.
ATB,
John
"Society and technology has changed, and the industry has to embrace the suck. "You should add a "get off of my lawn you young whipper snappers" for effect! ;-)
The business of music has changed (no one churns out albums when you don't make money on them anymore). The talent hasn't stopped, and there are a lot of really good artists these days.
You mention "Daft Punk" as being good. They are good. Mumford and Son's ... they are OK ...
But really? Those are the ones that have chosen to throw us old guys a bone with well produced albums and a few files.
If you think you like Mumford and Sons ... try The Decemberists & The Civil Wars. I actually think they are better, and have a little more of the fire the defines good music. Most have some sort of access to their work (MP3, 24/44.1 or Vinyl), but like the days of our youth, the sound quality isn't job #1, but boy does it not matter when they get going.
But for other good bands: Fall Out Boy, Maroon 5, Grouplove, Meghan Trainor, The Ting Tings, Blur, Coldplay, Florence and the Machine, ... and I could go on.
A added a link of a bunch of new bands who did their first real work last year. Some is good, some won't make it (like they always do). But the fact you don't see new bands is that perhaps you haven't sought them out?
============================
As audiophiles, we take what's obsolete, make it beautiful, and keep it forever.
Hey! I have a blog now: http://mancave-stereo.blogspot.com or "like" us at https://www.facebook.com/mancave.stereo
Edits: 02/23/15 02/23/15
"a desire to hear deeper into the soundstage."
Do you attempt to do that when you attend concerts or do you just sit back and enjoy the music?
I have never heard a stereo reproduce what it sounded like to hear Sir Colin Davis conduct Gerontius and I was sitting in the third row. Not just the dynamics and bass but also the nearly 50-foot width and depth (depth counting pipe organ chambers) of the sound source.
And yes, when the motif that is played by the viola comes up, one does hear a specific image within the sound stage.
String quartets from mid-hall, not so much. More like blended mono.
Assuming that competent engineers and a wise producer made the recording, if there is informational content in a recording of a great performance I want to hear more of it.
jm
"I have never heard a stereo reproduce what it sounded like to hear Sir Colin Davis conduct Gerontius and I was sitting in the third row. Not just the dynamics and bass but also the nearly 50-foot width and depth (depth counting pipe organ chambers) of the sound source."
And I assume you've heard some cost-no-object systems. Is it safe to conclude that audio gear will never bring us the realism of a live concert, regardless of how much money one invests? Or are you of the mind that one should "never say never" regarding this matter? Is there any technology on the horizon that makes you sanguine or do the laws of physics prevent you from duplicating your third row experience in your home?
The problem with homes is that in general the rooms are too small and one rarely has a situation where the ceiling is so high that the ear registers all the horizontal room reflections (for spatial localization) before the ceiling reflections interfere. That obviously is an issue with the room at The University of the South that now has Alexandria XLFs.
And the normal home has about 30 dB of background noise (refrigerator compressors, traffic noise, airplanes) anyway.
Believe it or not Bose was doing some research a few years back about "virtual reality" testing of room acoustics but IIRC to hear the effect your head had to be clamped in one place in a device that could remind one of something from an eye exam and the speakers were very close--as close as computer speakers.
I have NOT heard the technology JA did at CES that used ear-canal measurements to adjust the speakers' sound to the room's quirks. SP-BACCH?
All that said, at the end of the day the object of the game is first to fool the brain and then to win over the heart. Exhibit 1 being a bootleg recording of The Eric Whitacre Singers that is up on YT. The young lady thought she was taking a photograph but she started taking a movie, and so when she put the iPad back in her bag, its lens was blocked but the microphones heard enough.
I had a friend over and I played some DSD files for him and then some hi-res PCM and then some Red Book and just as a gas I played the YouTube off the internet, and when it was over, he looked at me and said that of everything I had played, the crappy YouTube of a bootleg made with the mics in a handbag had had the biggest impact on him.
So, at the end, the equipment is always a tool, and the slenderest knowledge of divine things trumps certainty about mundane things.
ATB,
JM
I'll put this right out there:
Half of the battle is in your head. If you are in the right mood, then your enjoyment, even on "crummy" gear with "crummy" sonics can be transcendent.
I think we spend time fussing about the sound, and the layout of the room, and everything just-so to stack the deck to more reliably get one of those transcendent experiences. But sometimes the stuff isn't needed and you get there in spite of it all.
============================
As audiophiles, we take what's obsolete, make it beautiful, and keep it forever.
Hey! I have a blog now: http://mancave-stereo.blogspot.com or "like" us at https://www.facebook.com/mancave.stereo
Thanks, John. Always a pleasure.
I think lots of industry people are stuck in the past--their college years or early career years--when listening to music was a shared experience and the variety of music was much wider than today...
Since I'm nearing 60, I can relate to that era and sentiment but am not oblivious to the changing winds in way music is delivered and thought of today. As a teenager, I used to visit and hang out at the many audio stores in the Atlanta area. It was through that experience that I met quite a few influential folks and found valuable mentors. Audio stores today? Wazzat? Even those who are passionate about the musical experience don't have a convenient way to learn the way we did and I suspect quite a few have never been exposed to fine audio.
On the other hand, I don't think all of the change is necessarily bad either. Choice and ease of access are improved to levels I couldn't have imagined in the 70s. You mean I could hear a song anywhere, have my phone "listen" and identify it and within minutes own a copy myself? How cool is that?
So we have an industry (fine audio) run by baffled befuddled guys like me, who are fully qualified to join AARP...
Hey, I represent that last remark!
...if we just run the right ads in The New Yorker and Architectural Digest, suddenly component audio will again become a near-indispensible part of the vision as to what constitutes the good life or the life well lived, just like great books (or even The Great Books) and fine art.
I guess the first thing we need to do as members of AA is to recognize that our passion is not shared by all. Hi, my name is E-Stat and I'm a musicaholic. I must get a daily fix or else I'm grumpy and depressed.
I don't have any close friends (other than audio reviewers) or family members who really enjoy sitting down and listening to music. My wife does on occasion along with playing her piano, but she prefers reading and is the videophile in our household. She always has the DVR crawlers busy at work storing away content for her later viewing pleasure. It seems the drive is always 60-70% full. :)
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