In Reply to: RE: "Objectivity is a subjective construction" posted by Tre' on September 4, 2012 at 11:15:10:
>> We have to use subjective means to determine if the objective goal is being meet but the goal, as I see it, is not subjective.
I like that! It perfectly illustrates the internal contradictions in the subjective/objective model and embraces it at the same time.
It makes one think about it...always good.
Our evaluative systems for sound reproduction, however are learned, cultural and somewhat arbitrary.
Sound reproduction is only 100 or so years old and look how elaborate we have gotten already! We are actually very good at this sort of thing. Before that there was no need to judge reproduction...by the 1930s, ads were already proclaiming reproduction virtually indistinguishable from the original.
I think about the story where an anthropologists took a polaroid camera to a remote area of New Guinea. That is WAY remote. They took pics of locals and showed them. They couldn't recognize the images in the pictures. They never learned how to look at a picture.
I think a recording of them speaking played back might evoke the same response...or get you an arrow in the neck. It is really scary stuff when you think about it. Totally unnatural and weir to capture sounds from the flow of time..
I used to record professionally, mostly location recording of classical in Philly for WFLN, the old classical station---Phila Orchestra, Concerto Soloists, Opera company of Philly, various chamber music events.
I agree that in some small scale recordings or takes of individual instruments, I could get what I would consider very close reproduction...even with the shitty electronics were were using early 80s Neotek board with a zillion op amps, MCI and Studer decks. Junk nearfield monitors including NS-10s and Dyna A-60s.I actually got some of my most convincing orchestra recordings with an AKG stereo condenser mic plugged straight into a Revox A77.
What I never got...and what I hardly if ever hear in hifi, is realistic sense of SCALE. Tonality, dynamics....yeah we can sorta get that. Realistic scale is tough.
Why is it that scale misrepresentation is not heard as what we like to call "distortion?"
The amazing presence of the orchestra in the Academy of Music or even the huge multidimensional presence of a solo violin just never shows up in the playback. At best it is a shrunken miniature that otherwise sounds a lot like the original.
Certain big horns get closer but still not perfect.
Somehow "scale" did not make the cultural inventory for judging reproduction.
Where's the "objectivity" in that?
This is another example of the somewhat arbitrary nature of the sociocultural construction of objectivity.
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Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent -- Wittgenstein
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
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Follow Ups
- RE: "Objectivity is a subjective construction" - Joe Roberts 14:13:29 09/04/12 (3)
- RE: "Objectivity is a subjective construction" - Tre' 15:39:39 09/04/12 (0)
- "Why is it that scale misrepresentation is not heard as what we like to call "distortion?" - GSH 14:22:49 09/04/12 (1)
- Big PSU's don't hurt, and neither does fast enough and matching rise and decay times - Timbo in Oz 15:29:58 09/04/12 (0)