In Reply to: RE: Let me get this out of my system... posted by Phelonious Ponk on February 28, 2010 at 05:45:57:
Sometimes when I listen to "Sunday At The Village Vanguard" late at night in my listening room, with a good glass of wine in my hand, I can feel the ambiance of the room and . . . wonder if the reproduction of a performance gets much better than that.Which is well put. However, it also serves to illustrate the fatuity of people with a background in "marketing" purporting to conduct "double blind" tests and claiming that their results are, in any sense of the term, "scientific".
I find the Straw Man argument irritating because it reflects intellectual sloppiness at best. Gordon Rankin's claim that there are audible differences between various file formats (despite identical content) has nothing to do with the fact that a good recording is perceived differently according to circumstance.
Other times, when I put on my headphones in the clear light of day, I understand that Scott LaFaro's bass is panned too to one side, that the microphones must have been too close to really record the ambiance of the room relative to that performance, that the room sounds may have even been captured by a separate mic, that the ambiance is an illusion and that it was my emotions, desire and expectations that translated that extra mic into the palpable space and contents of the Vanguard.
Any recording is fostering an illusion but one in which the listener is a willing participant - we spend serious money to persuade competent technicians, the best of whom have more than a touch of the artist themselves, to help us experience such illusions.
Perhaps one reason that the classic Evans recording sounds less than ideal on headphones is because the engineer (from memory, Rudy van Gelder) never intended it to be listened to in that way. In short, the illusion breaks down. That doesn't mean that it wasn't skillfully prepared, just that the conditions for fostering it are not adequate.
Do you not find, for example, that you perceive recordings of musicians you have heard live differently from those you are not directly familiar with? I know I do. I evoke a mental picture of their playing derived from my memory of their performance. Especially if the performance moved me, it enhances the "feel" of the recording.
I'm sure everyone else is much the same. Ditto for pieces of classical music I know from live performance. Listening to music is an active, not a passive, process - a complex mix of psycho-acoustics, memory, personality, cultural background etc etc. Music is perceived differently in company than on one’s own. And so on and so forth.
Simple, linear notions of what is going on when we listen to music do not (as here you correctly imply) work. Do not presume they be can used when it suits you in an argument (more correctly the argument as it's pretty well the only one you make) but discarded when they don't suit you.
Besides, regardless of what you think of Gordon Rankin's claim and noting in passing that he has done something you have not (designed well-regarded audio kit), I do not see what gives you the right to dismiss his points as "Voodoo Science".
Edits: 02/28/10 02/28/10
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Follow Ups
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Ryelands 07:17:34 02/28/10 (39)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Phelonious Ponk 17:12:33 02/28/10 (38)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Ryelands 02:33:26 03/01/10 (37)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Phelonious Ponk 03:49:43 03/01/10 (4)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Ryelands 04:46:01 03/01/10 (3)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Phelonious Ponk 06:17:16 03/01/10 (2)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Ryelands 07:57:42 03/01/10 (1)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Phelonious Ponk 16:12:04 03/01/10 (0)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Christine Tham 03:08:32 03/01/10 (31)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Mercman 06:33:55 03/01/10 (15)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Christine Tham 10:26:03 03/01/10 (11)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Ugly 23:39:10 03/03/10 (0)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Mercman 10:54:01 03/01/10 (9)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Christine Tham 01:13:47 03/02/10 (8)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Mercman 02:30:17 03/02/10 (7)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Christine Tham 15:43:45 03/02/10 (0)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Ryelands 03:04:17 03/02/10 (5)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Mercman 06:11:02 03/02/10 (4)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Ryelands 06:29:10 03/02/10 (3)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Christine Tham 15:05:44 03/02/10 (2)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Mercman 16:19:21 03/02/10 (1)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Christine Tham 20:09:26 03/02/10 (0)
- Opto-couplers provide that isolation, e.g. in the Ayre QB-9 - DaveK 08:06:38 03/01/10 (2)
- RE: Opto-couplers provide that isolation, e.g. in the Ayre QB-9 - Mercman 08:10:23 03/01/10 (1)
- RE: Opto-couplers provide that isolation, e.g. in the Ayre QB-9 - DaveK 06:10:29 03/02/10 (0)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Ryelands 04:12:48 03/01/10 (14)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Roseval 11:09:22 03/01/10 (11)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Ryelands 02:22:50 03/02/10 (2)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Phelonious Ponk 07:43:19 03/02/10 (1)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Ryelands 08:09:01 03/02/10 (0)
- Thanks - Christine Tham 01:33:21 03/02/10 (7)
- RE: Thanks - Ryelands 03:54:46 03/02/10 (6)
- RE: Thanks - Christine Tham 15:30:44 03/02/10 (5)
- RE: Thanks - Ryelands 04:14:22 03/03/10 (4)
- RE: Thanks - Christine Tham 10:16:33 03/03/10 (3)
- RE: Thanks - Tony Lauck 12:36:53 03/03/10 (2)
- Thanks Tony for the link to the paper (nt) - Christine Tham 14:26:50 03/03/10 (0)
- RE: Thanks - Ryelands 13:03:56 03/03/10 (0)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Phelonious Ponk 05:58:06 03/01/10 (0)
- RE: Let me get this out of my system... - Phelonious Ponk 04:35:48 03/01/10 (0)