"Black Backgrounds" in Music Reproduction?
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
- Start date
Conversely, you can have a room that is *too* lively. In that case it will overlay, or even negate, the ambience of the recorded venue to be reproduced with its own "ambience".
I hope you are joking! This expression is used since long and was debated by know reviewers of Stereophile or TAS, for example - something that means it reaches tens of thousands of readers, manufacturers and many audiophiles and you suggest we ban it from WBF just because a few people disagree on its meaning?
Are you next suggesting we ban "natural sound"?
You claim it was used since long. How long exactly? To me it seems a rather newfangled term that originated not that long ago. I'd be surprised if it's more than 10, 15 years old.
Ok, back to basics...
When I listen to my brother-in law play his Steinway in his living room, It obviously makes no sense for me to describe the sound as having a "black background" or any of these other terms.
Now let's say I recorded him and listened to the recording on different systems. I think we could probably agree that an ideal system would offer good tonal balance, clarity, resolution, dynamics, presence with a spatial presentation close to what could be heard at the recording position.
So there you go. Was it so difficult?
What is the point addressing an ideal system that seems to be able to create something stereo can't create?
IMO this only moves us away from what we are discussing. Sound reproductions is not the real thing - it is an illusion created from a two channel information with a lot of recording and playback tricks.
We are addressing the success or failure of some of these tricks.
In fact it was used by Harry Pearson in the booklet format of The Absolute Sound - so probably in the 80s or 90s. He used the word "quietness" to help explaining it.
Courtesy of google (AI free) recent use - 01-14-2025 - Robert H. Levi, Positive Feedback, review of the Acoustical Systems Archon Improved MC Cartridge
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Are you sure? Do you have a print reference for it? "Quietness" seems more reasonable to me.
My old TAS collection is currently boxed, sorry. We went through these questions in WBF a few year ago with much more detail.
Unfortunately search engines are not able to dig in TAS issues.
Does he claim the new and improved version of the cartridge has even inkier liquid jet black backgrounds than the last version? Or was the last version simply a bit noisier?
If you insist on addressing sound reproduction as if it is real music you will always add confusion. Two very different things. Can I suggest you to read what the creators of the recordings aim to?
They are different things, but how different they are depends on many factors. And the listening experience one is trying to create in his room depends on his goals and those very from listener to listener. We choose our components, adjust the set up, and judge the results against our target.
That depends on the creator and what he is trying to do. Some claim realism.
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Read the review - or add a smile so that we will not loose our time answering!
I’m not interested and you missed the point. I also try to avoid emojis.
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Well, that's too bad. I don't remember the term "black background" being that old. I'd like to be proven wrong since that would somewhat settle the matter, but until then I'll stick with my assumption that it's a rather new term.
I distinctly remember Myles B. Astor, a reviewer himself, starting a thread (possibly on his own site) on the term a few years ago, and treating the term as a disconcerting new phenomenon that he did not approve of.
I suggest you focus on your the producers and recoding engineers of your favorite recordings for a start.
My audio system has for years had a black background, but when I blind tested my current DAC, which has an extremely low noise floor, it quite clearly revealed more musical information and in particular better imaging. The imaging was noticeable specifically in relation to a piece of music I’d heard only a few days earlier and which was unsatisfactory with my existing DAC at the time (Martinu’s Nonet no 2).
With regard to live performance, the venue I currently attend the most is the Royal Opera House. The audience is generally extraordinary respectful and you can usually hear pin drop. I can only recall two disturbances in recent years, once when someone booed a 12-year-old performer and the other when someone hit the deck after suffering a heart attack. The former occasion hit the national newspapers.
Other classical venues in London are equally good, nothing betters the Wigmore Hall, in 100s of performances I’ve barely heard a single cough. One exception was an American chap who fell asleep and started snoring.
I was once at the theatre and someone’s mobile phone went off. The lady then retrieved it and dropped it down the side of her chair, where it continued to ring for about 15 minutes. I remember the lead actress was Imelda Staunton and it kept going rather than complaining, because the guilty party was Dame Gail Ronson, a benefactor of the theatre who also happens to be honorary president of the Royal Opera House. I guarantee she would’ve switched her phone off at Covent Garden.
I’ve been at La Scala where people to the right were constantly chatting through the first act and the lady to the left of me was texting. Once at Palais Garnier in Paris the lady next to me was videoing the performance.
So I suspect the level of background noise depends where you live as much as anything. Acoustics are also relevant, the Wigmore Hall has a glass roof and in storms you can hear the rain, and the Albert Hall in Kensington has a terrible echo. One of the finest recording venues until it was knocked down, Kingsway Hall, used to rattle when trains passed underneath, and is audible on many Decca recordings.
Such are the joys of live performance. However, when you have the dynamic range offered by a symphony orchestra, in live performance you can always hear the quiet bits (for example the openings of Mahler 1 and Shostakovich 2), but these are extremely difficult to record and require significant compression. When I tried out DSD I chose a live recording of Shostakovich 2 and I just couldn’t hear the opening with my volume set at the normal level. So I turned it up and then got blasted.
So with digital, I’ve always focused on a low noise floor, which will reveal the most information available from the recording. However, in terms of actually being able to hear something approximating to what you would hear in the live concert hall, you really are at the mercy of the recording engineers and, in some cases, their near impossible job.
The term black background perhaps should not be banned, but hopefully should be redundant because these days there is no need for background noise given the quality of audio electronics even at a very modest price.
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My hope, no joke, is that we can find language to describe what we hear from both live music and reproduced music that adds clarity rather than confusion to the discussion.
Are you next suggesting we ban "natural sound"?
No. Ron has not started a thread asking us to discuss what natural sound means in reproduced sound.
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