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I am listening to my eleven-year old son play the clarinet. It is practice hour at the Neill house. He doesn't care much for practice, just blows the horn for required time, packs it up, and goes off to video games 'til bedtime. He's not very good, but you know what? Just his blowing scales sounds better than any audio system I've ever heard. It is rich and round and clear and...clarinet-like. That's not news to many of you, I know, but I have to put it on the record, if only for my own sake.
Follow Ups:
If its not even close why try?
the clarinets just jump out at you. And the Schmengee Bro's play clarinet about as well as your son.
Yosh and Stan, wasn't it?
Due to my hearing loss, I have been moving more and more to headphones and to open headphones + speakers. If you get a really good headphone amp. - say one of the better Single Power models - and very accurate headphones (such as AKG K-701s) and if you voice the amp correctly with tubes, you can get closer to the sound you hear live than any other way I know.
Live music is almost always engaging, regardless of style. It catches your ears and you tap your toes. Audio systems will never sound like live music, but they can still be engaging.
I agree entirely. My favorite metaphor is still model railroads. As I've written here several times, every year we wander down to Springfield, MA to the huge model railroad show and look at spectacular layouts with trains and buildings and landscape that in some cases brilliantly imitates the real thing. We are totally engaged, as you say. It can be quite beautiful. It is a different kind of engagement than we have with real trains, which a mile away from our house still cause the foundation to vibrate. I think some of the engagement with model trains is fascination with imitation; while the engagement with the real trains late at night is somewhat more fundamental! But as you rightly say, engagement is engagement; and they are not unrelated. And I think, as an aside, that audio that prioritizes engagement is on the wiser track.I love audio at its best. It enables me to hear music I will never be able to hear live; the imitation is sometimes uncanny; and even when it is not, I find I am generally much engaged with the music, even from the shiney discs. But it is good for the brain to be reminded now and again by a half-decently played clarinet or train rumbling nearby of the Necessary Angel of Reality who hovers above us.
I once attended the Fall London audio show and spent many hours listening to some very fine systems. Taking a break, I went to a lounge to get a cup of coffee. There was a string quartet playing Dvorak's American Quartet (how appropriate for a visiting yank!). While they weren't superstar quality, they played with enthusiasm and energy. Just 10 seconds into listening I was struck by how far anything I had heard that day was from the sound of these live instruments. Everything paled in comparison. The players looked like students, and I'm sure their instruments were not very expensive, but my first thought was "how do I order a set of these?"The second instance was very different, a superstar violinist playing a great instrument. I was in about the 15th row when Pinchus Zuckerman played the Mendelsohn violin concerto. I will never forget the sound of that violin. Just a few notes into his playing and I realized I had never heard anything sound remotely like that on any audio system anywhere. He could have just been playing the scales, and I would have been stunned. I later bought both vinyl and CD versions of him playing the work, but they sound like a very poor imitation of what I heard live.
I have also heard random street muscians trying to make a buck (including one ambitious fellow who decided to play all the Bach unaccompanied cello suites during one afternoon- I couldn't pass up putting a large contribution in his tip jar) and many times was struck how much better instruments sounded better live than on audio systems, regardless of whether they were being played well and even though they were situated in storefronts.
Since for now it is not possible for an audio system to accurately reproduce the sound of live instruments, (though it is nice to come as close as you can), my goal is to re-create the experience, the impact of listening to live music as realistically as possible. That does require attention to accurate reproduction, but there is a certain almost undefinable sense of musicality, of "being there," that is crucially important and very ellusive.
I want to get as close as I can as well. You know the rest of the story. ;-)BTW, count me in with those that would hate to see you discharged from our little Asylum.
If you really want a shock, listen to someone practicing drums for a while. You'll never appreciate drums on your stereo again.
I have often thought the same thing, with the same attendant lukewarm thoughts about her playing, when my 12 yo girl practices the violin.
is a lot better than you think, or your system is a lot worst than you think, or both!
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher
Well he does seem to have good tone, I'll give him that. Rich, warm, and clear. It's what he does with it that's a little disappointing.It's the low end of the instrument that's such a knockout. Analogue gets a lot of that but not all. I'm not complaining about my systems, they're fine...when you're not doing an A/B. But it is humbling to realize how easy it is to get the real thing and how hard to imitate it!
It is capable of great things.
It's so farking delicious that we looked into getting him onto the bass clarinet, but then he'd be so far from the melody line that all we'd hear would be the clarinet equivalent of oom-pah-pah, so we backed off.
Bass clarinet....nothing sounds better than that instrument on my system. Now that you mentioned it, I am going to listen to Dolphy's the Illinois concert!
My 12 year old daughter started trumpet this year and I've noticed she has good tone as well, so much so I'd say I enjoy listening to her practice.Last year she was using a plastic body recorder that grated on my nerves like nothing else, pure annoyance. I'm not completely free of that horrible sounding recorder yet as her younger sister is on it now. Oddly the kids don't seem the least bothered by the sound of those recorders, in particular the younger practices enthusiastically with me, of course, encouraging and congratulating her on the many demonstrations she proudly displays for me.
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher
Bob,
How right you are! I think that's why experienced audiophiles, that care about music, try to assemble systems that sound musical, with the characteristics they prefer, as opposed to "life-like, just give me the truth" systems. That's my take anyway.
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"If it sounds good, it is good."
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