The language of Reproduction and the language of Music.

[tima]

This discussion comes from @PeterA 's Natural Sound thread with relevance to @Karen Sumner 's essays. I thought it better to spin off than have it in Peter's system thread...

I have enjoyed reading Tim’s posts over the last few years where it seems to me he is searching for a different way to communicate about audio and what we hear. Karen Sumner also seems to recognize and is suggesting that we need a new way to communicate about audio and what we hear.

The audio press, however, has managed to create their own aura of expertise by inventing a language to describe hi fi phenomena: sound stage, depth, focus, detail, and slam. These are hi fi terms, not music terms. Consequently, many of the systems and the components which seem to be preferred by the review press embody these hi fi qualities while giving little or no attention to the essential quality that is fundamental to a satisfying music listening experience — natural musical tonal balance.

The language of reproduction is not the language of music or the music listening experience.

The language of reproduction - the audiophile vocabulary and audiophile concepts - the language of sound decomposes componentry and systems into various sound elements including psychoacoustics. It's typical review-speak used to describe a component's sound and to compare components with each other.

The question I'll toss to this group is this: Can we describe components and systems with the language of music or in some other way using the language of music that does justice to the holistic organic character of listening to music? Can we compare and contrast components and systems not with each other but to live acoustic music?

Is it possible?

 

[bonzo75]

So for example cart A plays the violin better than cart B due to higher nuance, better highs, and more realistic timbre?

 

[spiritofmusic]

This discussion comes from @PeterA 's Natural Sound thread with relevance to @Karen Sumner 's essays. I thought it better to spin off than have it in Peter's system thread...







The language of reproduction - the audiophile vocabulary and audiophile concepts - the language of sound decomposes componentry and systems into various sound elements including psychoacoustics. It's typical review-speak used to describe a component's sound and to compare components with each other.

The question I'll toss to this group is this: Can we describe components and systems with the language of music or in some other way using the language of music that does justice to the holistic organic character of listening to music? Can we compare and contrast components and systems not with each other but to live acoustic music?

Is it possible?

I don't believe it is.

 

[PeterA]

Yes, I think it is possible Tim. And it would be welcome. What did the engineers and designers of theater horns say to each other as they were experimenting with different designs? That was long before Harry Pearson and the audiophile glossary of terms.

I sat and watched some rehearsals in Vienna where the conductor stopped the action on stage and told the singers that they were in tune, the projection was right and the timing was right but they needed to add beauty to their voices. They did it again with more emotion and more soul.

One problem is going to be that quite a few accustomed to using the glossary resist or outright reject words like “natural”. They say it is too vague to have meaning. I think a distinction will need to be made between the experience of the listener describing how he feels and the words used to describe the sounds of the instruments. Perhaps that has always been the challenge.

I would like to hear more from the people who understand the language of music and describe what they hear with the language they use.

 

[zerostargeneral]

 

[zerostargeneral]

"Strangled at birth"

 

[zerostargeneral]

 

[zerostargeneral]

 

[Mike Lavigne]

recently i have used the term 'human' or 'humanity' (more human, has a degree of humanity) to reference when i hear the music relatively transcend sounding reproduced into a realm of suspension of disbelief. to me the term 'natural' can mean this too, but i tend to associate it more with tonal balance especially in the upper octaves. but we all tend to have our labels for what we like. or aspire to.

my lessons with the Wadax experience is pointing out that the contrast in degrees of hearing actual performers come alive as more whole persons, whole instruments, whole stages, is also a step up in palpability and believability just by changing a source, but using the same media. there is a school of thought that rejects this direction as some sort of parlor trick. something not about live music. we are all entitled to our own opinions. when i hear the music come alive with action and live-ness i don't think about being deceived. are all systems equally capable to rendering the same amount of recording nuance? i know my own system is far advanced in this ability than it was when i first listened in my room.

i do think that there is a big difference between hearing sounds, and listening to music. it was interesting with my recent visitors hearing the two dacs and servers, and trying to listen critically to discern differences. some started out with their own checklist of things they were listening for. maybe not the musical experience, but more parts of the music. the bass, or details, or stage size, or weight and heft. at a particular point they sat back and just took in the musical whole and the world shifted a bit and they were in a different head space, and then the musical magic delta was evident to them. after that they could not un-hear that. and that aspect of the music was now dominant in their viewpoint.

i can't describe musically what a performer is doing with his instrument, or the actual technical musical terms for parts of the music, but i can tell what sounds real, i've had 70 years of 24/7 training. i don't need constant live music experience to do that. and just because a live music experience has limitations for certain things, does not mean those things don't have value for me....when it makes my music listening more real to me.

YMMV.

 

[Audiophile Bill]

This discussion comes from @PeterA 's Natural Sound thread with relevance to @Karen Sumner 's essays. I thought it better to spin off than have it in Peter's system thread...







The language of reproduction - the audiophile vocabulary and audiophile concepts - the language of sound decomposes componentry and systems into various sound elements including psychoacoustics. It's typical review-speak used to describe a component's sound and to compare components with each other.

The question I'll toss to this group is this: Can we describe components and systems with the language of music or in some other way using the language of music that does justice to the holistic organic character of listening to music? Can we compare and contrast components and systems not with each other but to live acoustic music?

Is it possible?

It is possible but it depends to what level you are expecting the audiofool conversation to represent the language of music because the latter itself requires a good deal of understanding and education to describe it. Yes there are audiofools who are also well versed in describing music itself indeed some are trained and professional in that area - alas it is a minority.
So yes the community, en masse, can evolve to use a bastardised musical language albeit largely to the same degree the uneducated would comment on poetry, art or literature - in a somewhat crude way.

Best.

 

[Gregm]

The question I'll toss to this group is this: Can we describe components and systems with the language of music or in some other way using the language of music that does justice to the holistic organic character of listening to music? Can we compare and contrast components and systems not with each other but to live acoustic music?

Is it possible?

Are asking if we could appreciate / evaluate a device only in ref to how the resulting sound (cor)relates to live music and, thereby, contrast that sound with how another device does the same thing?
Being one of those who judge equipment listening to classical for obvious reasons (timbre, dynamics, musical coherence, energy, interpretation nuances, etc etc): I end up using standard vocabulary (thus revealing my limited vocabulary ).

Forgive my confusion, but in what way would the vocabulary be different ?
Should we perhaps coin a small vocabulary here & now ? (A great help in getting our message across precisely!)

 

[Cellcbern]

Srajan Ebaen at 6Moons.com does a masterful job of using language to describe the sound of audio components and how they compare with live music, including using the language of music to do so. Don't share his taste in music or components, but no other audio journalist/reviewer's work that I've encountered comes close. Highly recommend reading some of his reviews and editorials if you haven't already.

 

[tima]

So for example cart A plays the violin better than cart B due to higher nuance, better highs, and more realistic timbre?

If the "higher nuance, better highs", etc. Is drawn from the concert hall experience, then yes, though further characterization of the live music would be helpful to flesh this out. Component to component to live acoustic music, with the latter being the value against which the two are assessed relative to each other - that is where my own thinking is at ... for now.

 

[tima]

Srajan Ebaen at 6Moons.com does a masterful job of using language to describe the sound of audio components and how they compare with live music, including using the language of music to do so. Don't share his taste in music or components, but no other audio journalist/reviewer's work that I've encountered comes close. Highly recommend reading some of his reviews and editorials if you haven't already.

Will you link to one you believe representative of his using the language of music?

 

[the sound of Tao]

Will you link to one you believe representative of his using the language of music?

Or even just an example perhaps of when Srajen is just not talking in tongues… unfortunately possibly the most unintelligible reviewer ever. Tim I’ve always appreciated you as a champion of intelligibility and not just in comparison (or contrast) with the 6moons man… he hurts my brain… not that I suppose it takes that much lol

 

[bazelio]

In the Well Tempered Clavier Book I, JS Bach in bar 20 goes to a G major 7#5 chord out of the melodic minor scale. Can anyone name when, in any composer's work, we next hear this sound?

 

[tima]

In the Well Tempered Clavier Book I, JS Bach in bar 20 goes to a G major 7#5 chord out of the melodic minor scale. Can anyone name when, in any composer's work, we next hear this sound?

I don't know but will guess in a jazz work.

 

[cmarin]

Lots of great ideas on this thread. I’m not sure I can make much of a contribution in terms of the OPs specific question about language yet.

For me I would need to first distinguish whether we are talking about the physical characteristics of the audio we hear? Or the emotions we experience from what we hear?

In my personal preference, it’s about the latter. As I’ve heard it said before: “It’s not how it sounds, it’s how it makes you feel.”

So how do you measure the personal emotional energy experienced during a live (or reproduced performance), or develop a vocabulary to describe it? Especially when we all hear, and react emotionally to what we hear, differently?

Or are there universal commonalities amongst us in how experience the emotional energy of music, that lend themselves to measurement or description? As when Mike Lavigne referred to his listening experience as “human” or “humanistic” when the system allows the “suspension of disbelief”.

It’s not yet clear to me. But I do know that if I start thinking about what I hear (e.g., soundstage, or clarity or timbre, etc.) versus experiencing how the music makes me feel, then I’ve lost the emotional connection and I need to go in a different direction

 

[tima]

Or even just an example perhaps of when Srajen is just not talking in tongues… unfortunately possibly the most unintelligible reviewer ever. Tim I’ve always appreciated you as a champion of intelligibility and not just in comparison (or contrast) with the 6moons man… he hurts my brain… not that I suppose it takes that much lol

Thanks Graham. If I expect you to read me I owe it to your time to be clear.

Last time I looked at 6 Moons I found the layout of articles made it difficult to follow their text.

But let's keep this about how we talk about our stereos and how we talk about music.

 

[BlueFox]

But let's keep this about how we talk about our stereos and how we talk about music.

I suspect for the vast majority of the population those two subjects are one and the same. Granted, we can spend years tweaking our stereos to make the music sound best, and hopefully at some point we reach that point. I know I have. At least for now.