Do Members use Live Music as a Reference
- Thread starter PeterA
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That would only be possible if you were also in charge of the recording and then could AB the reproduced with what was heard live.
There is fear I think that if we give up on this "live" thing we have lost all that is in our religion. But that need not be the case. The verb we need to use is "realism." Not "real." With superb recordings, which may have nothing to do with live sound, and good reproduction, that realism jumps out at us, putting in a smile on our face. This is cool. It is a virtual concept that is valid. The one that reaches in the past, imparts imaginary memories of what it was is just wrong. It is and no amount of words will make it true.
For some like Peter, this argument is around "if you don't listen to live music as much as I do, you can't possibly know what a good system is." That is just wrong. Listening tests show that everyone is born with the ability to hear frequency response anomalies in reproduction systems. Same listening tests show that by training, one can be become far better than it. That training has nothing whatsoever with listening to live music. I am trained in hearing certain artifacts. I don't listen to a fraction of live music that Peter does. Yet, at the risk of appearing immodest, I can hear distortions in replay systems at far, far lower levels than Peter can. So listening to live music did not impart the benefit Peter likes to demonstrate.
I can show you data that demonstrates all of this. I can show you how every recording/mastering venue sounds different. Bruce has Revel Salon 2s. If you don't have those speakers, room, positioning, etc., how can you ever hear what he heard let alone what is on that 1960s master tape?
So sit back and enjoy the great experience that we can recreate. Don't celebrate that more people think like you than the other way around. That only shows how confused we are as a population about what is real, pun intended.
At the risk of sounding immodest, on some systems I turned around and asked do you go to live classical, the answer, as expected was no.
You are planting a red herring that you should know what was produced live at the time the recording was produced. This is incorrect. If you grow up eating Indian food, you will know when you have curry in London that it is fake. You can't eat it. There are different types of Indian food, cooked by different Aunts, but all of them are real. In 95% London restaurants, they are fake.
Not only do you not need to listen to live music, you need to sell of your system and listen to live music, so that your occasional live music reference does not get reset by your home system on a daily basis.
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LOL, and you are right of course! I remember going to a live concert (Argerich and Kremer playing Schumann sonatas) at the Tonhalle in Zurich a few years back together with an audiophile friend. We had good seats, 7th row in the middle, and this friend truly insisted, that his rig sounded better. Sancta simplicitas! ... and I had paid for the tickets.
There are sometimes seats in the concert hall which make me prefer the sound of my system to what I hear there. This never holds for the best seats though.
I always get a decent seat except at the Opera House. Even if tickets are not available for a great seat, during the concert some people do not turn up and I move over just before the conductor walks in, after the door closes.
Are you serious?!?! I always thought London has the BEST Indian food in the world! Especially the places that have "Bali" in them. I have worked with many people from India, and while the stuff they have cooked and brought to work for potlucks, etc., is quite good, it can't match what I have had in London.
That would only be possible if you were also in charge of the recording and then could AB the reproduced with what was heard live. With a touch of a mouse the recording artist/engineer can radically change the sound of what lands on the recording medium. How on earth can we say anything about relationship with what was there then? Which was more true? Before he changed the EQ, Reverb, Compression or after?
There is fear I think that if we give up on this "live" thing we have lost all that is in our religion. But that need not be the case. The verb we need to use is "realism." Not "real." With superb recordings, which may have nothing to do with live sound, and good reproduction, that realism jumps out at us, putting in a smile on our face. This is cool. It is a virtual concept that is valid. The one that reaches in the past, imparts imaginary memories of what it was is just wrong. It is and no amount of words will make it true.
For some like Peter, this argument is around "if you don't listen to live music as much as I do, you can't possibly know what a good system is." That is just wrong. Listening tests show that everyone is born with the ability to hear frequency response anomalies in reproduction systems. Same listening tests show that by training, one can be become far better than it. That training has nothing whatsoever with listening to live music. I am trained in hearing certain artifacts. I don't listen to a fraction of live music that Peter does. Yet, at the risk of appearing immodest, I can hear distortions in replay systems at far, far lower levels than Peter can. So listening to live music did not impart the benefit Peter likes to demonstrate.
I can show you data that demonstrates all of this. I can show you how every recording/mastering venue sounds different. Bruce has Revel Salon 2s. If you don't have those speakers, room, positioning, etc., how can you ever hear what he heard let alone what is on that 1960s master tape?
So sit back and enjoy the great experience that we can recreate. Don't celebrate that more people think like you than the other way around. That only shows how confused we are as a population about what is real, pun intended.
Amir, in 2012 Evelina Fedorenko, Josh H. McDermott, Sam Norman-Haignere and Nancy Kanwisher conducted a study to determine the brain’s sensitivity to musical structure that was a precursor to their 2016 study “Distinct Cortical Pathways for Music and Speech Revealed by Hypothesis-Free Voxel Decomposition” that verified the brain’s auditory cortex has distinct and specific pathways for the detection and processing of music that do not cross over with those that process non-musical sounds (speech, diegetic sound).
The specific neural clusters that respond to music and music only are not processing frequency and its artifacts. Why? Because that’s not what constitutes music. In order for the FMRI to reveal those clusters responding to sound that’s not speech/diegetic in nature, the sound needs another variable - rhythm/time. The takeaway? Music is not comprised solely from pitch/frequency. Sound is. Always will be. Music though, is the combination of pitch/frequency and rhythm defined by time. Always has been, always will be.
So the training that gave you ability to discern tiny distortions in frequency related sounds has no relevance to music. It’s missing the rhythmic/time-dependent variable that makes music music. Sorry.
What’s more, a 2015 study conducted by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt and of New York University showed that musicians (with six years of musical training who currently practised an instrument) were more able than non-musicians to detect oscillations slower than one-beat a second. That is, only those who were familiar with the practical aesthetics of music identified rhythmic anomalies. Live music imparted an advantage for detection for those who practised it over those who did not. Again, for all your training in detecting frequency artifacts, you likely would have been identified with the non-musicians in this study.
I’m sure I’ll regret posting this in about 10 minutes. But for the next 10 minutes I can console myself knowing I did what I could to put forward actual emperical data to refute your immodesty. For whatever that may be worth. Which is probably nothing.
Are you serious?!?! I always thought London has the BEST Indian food in the world! Especially the places that have "Bali" in them. I have worked with many people from India, and while the stuff they have cooked and brought to work for pot locks, etc., is quite good, it can't match what I have had in London.
Cooks who read measurements of the internet and colored them for the British palate?
London doesn't. In the Center there is one excellent restaurant called Hoppers, which is actually Sri Lankan, but a lot of overlap with South Indian cuisine. 2 hour queue, but they take your phone number and call you back when ready.
Thanks, I'll give it a try, if the stars align. But those mom and pop places in Clapham, Stockwell, and Brixton I have been to dozens of times had tasted fabulous to me, even when sober.
That would only be possible if you were also in charge of the recording and then could AB the reproduced with what was heard live. With a touch of a mouse the recording artist/engineer can radically change the sound of what lands on the recording medium. How on earth can we say anything about relationship with what was there then? Which was more true? Before he changed the EQ, Reverb, Compression or after?
There is fear I think that if we give up on this "live" thing we have lost all that is in our religion. But that need not be the case. The verb we need to use is "realism." Not "real." With superb recordings, which may have nothing to do with live sound, and good reproduction, that realism jumps out at us, putting in a smile on our face. This is cool. It is a virtual concept that is valid. The one that reaches in the past, imparts imaginary memories of what it was is just wrong. It is and no amount of words will make it true.
For some like Peter, this argument is around "if you don't listen to live music as much as I do, you can't possibly know what a good system is." That is just wrong. Listening tests show that everyone is born with the ability to hear frequency response anomalies in reproduction systems. Same listening tests show that by training, one can be become far better than it. That training has nothing whatsoever with listening to live music. I am trained in hearing certain artifacts. I don't listen to a fraction of live music that Peter does. Yet, at the risk of appearing immodest, I can hear distortions in replay systems at far, far lower levels than Peter can. So listening to live music did not impart the benefit Peter likes to demonstrate.
I can show you data that demonstrates all of this. I can show you how every recording/mastering venue sounds different. Bruce has Revel Salon 2s. If you don't have those speakers, room, positioning, etc., how can you ever hear what he heard let alone what is on that 1960s master tape?
So sit back and enjoy the great experience that we can recreate. Don't celebrate that more people think like you than the other way around. That only shows how confused we are as a population about what is real, pun intended.
Amir, I am pleased that my simple posting of a photograph, taken at a live music event the other night, has given this thread a second life after nine months. However, I do not understand why this seems so personal to you and why you feel the need for these attacks. I would like to address the above sentences in bold. I do not remember ever claiming that people's relative ability to judge system quality should be based on how much live music they listen to. I have made the point that I asses MY SYSTEM quality based on MY memories of the music that I have heard live. I use live music as "a" reference for me, but it is not "the" (only) reference. I also listen to other people's systems and read and try to understand some measurements. The combination of these helps me to make progress with my system.
How can you claim that you "don't listen to a fraction of live music that Peter does"? Do you know how much live music I listen to? Sadly, it is not as much as I would like. I did hear a great recital the other night with two fellow members. It was in a private living room, solo instruments played by very accomplished musicians. The music was excellent and we had a great time. It helped me to better realize the limits of my speakers in terms of their ability to portray the sheer energy created by the cello, especially in the lower frequencies.
Furthermore, you have no basis for your last claim that "listening to live music did not impart the benefit Peter likes to demonstrate". What have I demonstrated, and to whom have I demonstrated it? You don't know what that benefit is. The benefit that I have gained by listening to live music is my own and used for my personal enjoyment and reference. You presume to know something about my listening skills, though we have never met and you have not seen the results of my hearing tests. Nor have I participated in measured listening tests with published results that you can reference. Are you referring to a comment fellow member Ack made in his system thread: "Thanks Peter and Ian, very thoughtful and honest! Peter has a very keen ear, and I find his comments - past and present - very much in line with what I think of the sound of this system, otherwise I wouldn't be working on it all this time. I value honest opinion and not the typical pat in the back you see on AudioShark - it's what sets sophisticated, critical listeners apart from bullshitters."
I have much reason to celebrate, but it is certainly not "that more people think like [me] than the other way around." I have discussed adjectives with fellow audiophiles, and prefer the word "believable" or "convincing". I know that my system, and most others do not sound "real". At moments, some recordings come close to sounding somewhat "realistic", though, and that is what motivates me to make improvements.
I respectfully suggest that you are jumping to conclusions about me, my claims, and my abilities. I do not appreciate your characterizations which seem more based on supposition than on evidence.
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Ah - yes, those places will have better. Sorry, I was referring more to the center. Things get better when you further out, though not matching the original. Not close. And I don't mean new Mumbai restaurants, I mean house cooked or the old cheap places. New Mumbai restaurants are a lot like modern hifi.
Pardon my ignorance, but how is "Bali Indian" different than "regular Indian"? My Brit friends and I always wound up in Bali places.
853guy, Thanks for posting this. Have no regrets, I enjoy your writing and always learn something.
Indian in Bali (the place). When I said "those places will have better food", I meant Brixton, Clapham etc could possible be better than Central London. I have had some decent Indian food whenever I traveled a bit out. Actual Indian food could be any of genuine south Indian, Gujarati, Goan (have to get home cooked, even restaurants in India don;t do it), the muslim cooked food in India (actually the Pakistani restaurants in London make better and more genuine food than the Indian ones), and so on.
Thanks. I really like Pakistani food. In my experience, Pakistani places are more creative at cooking meat than Indian places. The spices they use are fabulous.
However, I have never had vegetarian food as good as Indian. I certainly had a bias against vegetarian food until I tried Indian vegetarian: take a few bites of the rich curry and whatever else they put in it, and I go to la-la land, my brain swooning with pleasure...
You are right about the meat, especially lamb, in Pakistani places. Goan cuisine is the best for fish. South Indian is very unique in vegetarian, not the usual curry etc. Completely different style of dishes. There are some good veggie restaurants propping up in London - try Tidbits in Piccadilly.
I think the lefty activists who practice vegetarianism and veganism do not realize that these are capitalist constructs created so that a completely different category of products with high margins can be sold to customers.
The purpose of this post, written quite a time after you had written yours, the 20 minutes long past, should, so I am hoping, help you not to regret it!
If I am not mistaken, it was the great conductor Sergiu Celidibache who in his writings about music stressed those very points you mention as essential, where of course the whole of a performance was more important than those very parts which constitute it. I must read it up again. I think he used the term tempo for the time factor. Once I have refreshed my memory I will get back on this.
In the meantime: Thanks!
It's reminding me of this:
______
I'm reading every post and I'm learning some. When Peter first started this thread back in February, and up till recently, I did not vote in the poll because it was just too vague. But yesterday I put aside my stance from the past and took life from a much simpler approach, and I voted. :b
I have zero regret. Life's fun and should be fun, in real life as in music reproduction.
I'm reading every post and I'm learning some. When Peter first started this thread back in February, and up till recently, I did not vote in the poll because it was just too vague. But yesterday I put aside my stance from the past and took life from a much simpler approach, and I voted. :b
I have zero regret. Life's fun and should be fun, in real life as in music reproduction.
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