In a future thread, we will examine how to evaluate a hi fi system’s presentation of musical space, but before we go there, it is important to have a deeper discussion about the nature of individual music tones played by different instruments. If we are to talk about how a hi fi renders the sound of a musical instrument in space, we need to know what stimuli we need to trigger the level of musical believability that will result in at least temporarily suspending our notion that we are listening to a hi fi.
More than a few audiophiles are looking for listening experiences that don’t have much bearing on the actual sound of live acoustic music. If your objective is purely to have fun experimenting with sound and trying to achieve a sound that you personally like, you don’t need to continue to read this thread. If your objective is to create more musically engaging listening at home, I have a few more things to share. I have been reminded by some of you that hi fi is a very personal journey. It’s obvious from reading posts here that some of you never really arrive at a satisfying musical destination, and I have seen some audiophiles eventually giving up on the hobby because they are looking in all the wrong places for solutions. A few, for at least a time, are able to achieve a plateau of musically satisfying performance until at least they discover the flaws that stand in the way of taking their experience to the next level. Fewer than that ever reach their musical destination.
We’ve already talked at length about this meandering, and its basis lies within the nature of what many of us have come to expect from hi fi. The industry and press have given us very little to help steer us in the right direction. We are each more or less on our own, and while we are searching, many of us become more attuned to the industry’s hi fi standards where musical “seasoning” takes on more importance than the main course — the music itself. The hi fi standard is among other things focused on upper frequency harmonic details, 3-D imaging, tightly defined low frequencies, and ppp > fff dynamics. In hi fi circles, evaluating how a particular component or set up achieves these effects typically involves comparing how other components render the effects rather than using music as the reference. This process unfortunately most often leads to taking us further away from the musical truth.
Although present to one degree or another in these types of systems, the critical 100-1000 Hz region where 80% of the music resides takes a back seat to the quest to reproduce these hi fi effects. We often hear words like pure, clean, or holographic to describe these systems. Achieving a sense of “space between the notes” when listening to such a system has somehow become a desirable standard. Such a characteristic, however, does not actually exist when real instruments play together except in the rare instances when musical notation or technique specifically calls for it.
For example, when one listens to a string trio, such as Beethoven’s Opus 9 Trio, and the violin, viola, and cello play the same note, we should be able to hear 3 different instruments with 3 distinct tonal qualities. The differences in size, structure, and materials of the instrument bodies and the differences in the composition and length of their strings combine with the techniques employed by their musicians to determine the tonal quality of a particular instrument, or its timbre. Harmonic structure unfolds in a unique way in each instrument body and the way in which this harmonic information escapes the instrument and is broadcast through space is unique to that instrument and artist. Two violins do not sound the same. When 2 different artists play the same violin, the timbre is different because of differences in technique, and when 2 different instruments play the same note, the tonal quality is different. In addition, the sound of each note played by each instrument has its own attack-delay envelope that further helps to define an instrument’s timbre.
When listening to a string trio, one hears all 3 instruments at the same time and the combined timbre of the 3 instruments creates the overall texture of the music. The texture of a musical piece is the sum of all the timbres of all the instruments, and if it is musically pleasing, the texture of the musical fabric is dense. In real time, all this information mingles and sometimes augments one another (superposition).
There is no space between the notes, and actual music waves are not in and of themselves very often clean and pure.
Music is messy. When the critical mid frequencies have taken a backseat to hi fi effects, the effects, as we will explain in more detail below, obscure the timbre of instruments and the texture of the music performance. I want my hi fi to capture all the glory of that messiness. I don’t want a hi fi that sounds clean and pure no matter what I play on it. I want to hear each fundamental tone, and all the characteristics of the harmonic envelope that that instrument produces given its physical properties as a resonator, its artist’s technique, and its performance space.
I want to hear what’s on the source material, good or bad. I don’t want a golden age hi fi where enhanced euphony obscures the real details of music, and I do not want a hi fi that is stripped of its musical life so that it produces information in a way that hi fi effects get in the way of the actual music.
David Lapp, Fellow, Wright Center for Innovative Science Education at Tufts University writes in The Physics of Music and Musical Instruments:
At the smallest of perceptible sound intensities, the eardrum vibrates less distance than the diameter of a hydrogen atom! If the energy in a single 1-watt night-light were converted to acoustical energy and divided up into equal portions for every person in the world, it would still be audible to the person with normal hearing.
Our ears are the most powerful instruments, and by design, we are naturally able to hear every nuance of timbre and texture that musical instruments are capable of producing. The good news is that today’s high resolution, powerful audio components have the capacity to render all that information. With a few exceptions, however, we haven’t yet managed to put all these powerful tools together to achieve musical success. The operating principle here is the word “yet”. I consider myself to be among the lucky few who have achieved a firm foundation of musical success in a hi fi. To get there, I have devoted my life to listening to live acoustic music and putting together a hi fi system that honors it. I never would have gotten there, however, if I had not been excited about learning about how instruments sound, why they sound the way they do, and the effect that different acoustic spaces have on the textural elements of the musical presentation. We are each left to explore our hi fi journeys on our own, and if the objective of our journey is to get closer to music, it takes work, listening, and studying to make your investments pay off. You can’t get there without really knowing what instruments sound like. It is not enough to say that you’ve heard a violin, so you know what a violin sounds like. You need to know what actually contributes to the sound of that instrument, and musical memory is short. I confessed in a previous thread that I had been seduced by hi fi sound during the pandemic because it was not possible to attend live music events. I believe one needs to listen to live acoustic music frequently to fend off hi fi as the new normal.
A violin is not just a string tone which is what typical hi fi systems emphasize. Many hi fi set ups do not deliver much, if any, of the violin’s rich and woody timbre that builds within the body of the instrument and provides support and foundation to the sound of its strings vibrating. That support and foundation not only triggers a “this feels real” listening response, but it is vital to how we perceive the instrument playing in space — the final frontier to achieving fully satisfying music listening at home.
David Lapp goes on to say:
However, our sensitivity varies tremendously over the audible range. For example, a 50 Hz sound must be 43 dB before it is perceived to be as loud as a 4,000 Hz sound at 2 dB. (4,000 Hz is the approximate frequency of greatest sensitivity for humans with no hearing loss.) In this case, we require the 50 Hz sound to have 13,000 times the actual intensity of the 4,000 Hz sound in order to have the same perceived intensity!
Let’s examine how this factoid applies to typical hi fi sound. The standard assortment of hi fi effects typically reside at the frequency extremes which according to Lapp require a greater level of intensity to hear at the same volume that our ears naturally hear mid-frequencies. By focusing on hi fi effects, the system set up and component choices tend to result in a greater intensity of frequency extreme information than is present in musically balanced sound. Because these details are at an unnatural level of intensity in these systems, the critical mid-band frequencies and all their intricately complex harmonics are suppressed. This type of stripped, disembodied sound does not resonate with our spirits over the long term because it is too far from the truth.
If our ears are naturally more sensitive to mid-frequencies, this greater sensitivity leads to greater auditory sensations. Our brains are hard wired to translate this greater stimulation into thoughts and feelings. If we are on the right path, emotions and memories well up in us on a more deeply personal and satisfying level when we listen to music at home than the pursuit of hi fi effects can ever provide.
More than a few audiophiles are looking for listening experiences that don’t have much bearing on the actual sound of live acoustic music. If your objective is purely to have fun experimenting with sound and trying to achieve a sound that you personally like, you don’t need to continue to read this thread. If your objective is to create more musically engaging listening at home, I have a few more things to share. I have been reminded by some of you that hi fi is a very personal journey. It’s obvious from reading posts here that some of you never really arrive at a satisfying musical destination, and I have seen some audiophiles eventually giving up on the hobby because they are looking in all the wrong places for solutions. A few, for at least a time, are able to achieve a plateau of musically satisfying performance until at least they discover the flaws that stand in the way of taking their experience to the next level. Fewer than that ever reach their musical destination.
We’ve already talked at length about this meandering, and its basis lies within the nature of what many of us have come to expect from hi fi. The industry and press have given us very little to help steer us in the right direction. We are each more or less on our own, and while we are searching, many of us become more attuned to the industry’s hi fi standards where musical “seasoning” takes on more importance than the main course — the music itself. The hi fi standard is among other things focused on upper frequency harmonic details, 3-D imaging, tightly defined low frequencies, and ppp > fff dynamics. In hi fi circles, evaluating how a particular component or set up achieves these effects typically involves comparing how other components render the effects rather than using music as the reference. This process unfortunately most often leads to taking us further away from the musical truth.
Although present to one degree or another in these types of systems, the critical 100-1000 Hz region where 80% of the music resides takes a back seat to the quest to reproduce these hi fi effects. We often hear words like pure, clean, or holographic to describe these systems. Achieving a sense of “space between the notes” when listening to such a system has somehow become a desirable standard. Such a characteristic, however, does not actually exist when real instruments play together except in the rare instances when musical notation or technique specifically calls for it.
For example, when one listens to a string trio, such as Beethoven’s Opus 9 Trio, and the violin, viola, and cello play the same note, we should be able to hear 3 different instruments with 3 distinct tonal qualities. The differences in size, structure, and materials of the instrument bodies and the differences in the composition and length of their strings combine with the techniques employed by their musicians to determine the tonal quality of a particular instrument, or its timbre. Harmonic structure unfolds in a unique way in each instrument body and the way in which this harmonic information escapes the instrument and is broadcast through space is unique to that instrument and artist. Two violins do not sound the same. When 2 different artists play the same violin, the timbre is different because of differences in technique, and when 2 different instruments play the same note, the tonal quality is different. In addition, the sound of each note played by each instrument has its own attack-delay envelope that further helps to define an instrument’s timbre.
When listening to a string trio, one hears all 3 instruments at the same time and the combined timbre of the 3 instruments creates the overall texture of the music. The texture of a musical piece is the sum of all the timbres of all the instruments, and if it is musically pleasing, the texture of the musical fabric is dense. In real time, all this information mingles and sometimes augments one another (superposition).
There is no space between the notes, and actual music waves are not in and of themselves very often clean and pure.
Music is messy. When the critical mid frequencies have taken a backseat to hi fi effects, the effects, as we will explain in more detail below, obscure the timbre of instruments and the texture of the music performance. I want my hi fi to capture all the glory of that messiness. I don’t want a hi fi that sounds clean and pure no matter what I play on it. I want to hear each fundamental tone, and all the characteristics of the harmonic envelope that that instrument produces given its physical properties as a resonator, its artist’s technique, and its performance space.
I want to hear what’s on the source material, good or bad. I don’t want a golden age hi fi where enhanced euphony obscures the real details of music, and I do not want a hi fi that is stripped of its musical life so that it produces information in a way that hi fi effects get in the way of the actual music.
David Lapp, Fellow, Wright Center for Innovative Science Education at Tufts University writes in The Physics of Music and Musical Instruments:
At the smallest of perceptible sound intensities, the eardrum vibrates less distance than the diameter of a hydrogen atom! If the energy in a single 1-watt night-light were converted to acoustical energy and divided up into equal portions for every person in the world, it would still be audible to the person with normal hearing.
Our ears are the most powerful instruments, and by design, we are naturally able to hear every nuance of timbre and texture that musical instruments are capable of producing. The good news is that today’s high resolution, powerful audio components have the capacity to render all that information. With a few exceptions, however, we haven’t yet managed to put all these powerful tools together to achieve musical success. The operating principle here is the word “yet”. I consider myself to be among the lucky few who have achieved a firm foundation of musical success in a hi fi. To get there, I have devoted my life to listening to live acoustic music and putting together a hi fi system that honors it. I never would have gotten there, however, if I had not been excited about learning about how instruments sound, why they sound the way they do, and the effect that different acoustic spaces have on the textural elements of the musical presentation. We are each left to explore our hi fi journeys on our own, and if the objective of our journey is to get closer to music, it takes work, listening, and studying to make your investments pay off. You can’t get there without really knowing what instruments sound like. It is not enough to say that you’ve heard a violin, so you know what a violin sounds like. You need to know what actually contributes to the sound of that instrument, and musical memory is short. I confessed in a previous thread that I had been seduced by hi fi sound during the pandemic because it was not possible to attend live music events. I believe one needs to listen to live acoustic music frequently to fend off hi fi as the new normal.
A violin is not just a string tone which is what typical hi fi systems emphasize. Many hi fi set ups do not deliver much, if any, of the violin’s rich and woody timbre that builds within the body of the instrument and provides support and foundation to the sound of its strings vibrating. That support and foundation not only triggers a “this feels real” listening response, but it is vital to how we perceive the instrument playing in space — the final frontier to achieving fully satisfying music listening at home.
David Lapp goes on to say:
However, our sensitivity varies tremendously over the audible range. For example, a 50 Hz sound must be 43 dB before it is perceived to be as loud as a 4,000 Hz sound at 2 dB. (4,000 Hz is the approximate frequency of greatest sensitivity for humans with no hearing loss.) In this case, we require the 50 Hz sound to have 13,000 times the actual intensity of the 4,000 Hz sound in order to have the same perceived intensity!
Let’s examine how this factoid applies to typical hi fi sound. The standard assortment of hi fi effects typically reside at the frequency extremes which according to Lapp require a greater level of intensity to hear at the same volume that our ears naturally hear mid-frequencies. By focusing on hi fi effects, the system set up and component choices tend to result in a greater intensity of frequency extreme information than is present in musically balanced sound. Because these details are at an unnatural level of intensity in these systems, the critical mid-band frequencies and all their intricately complex harmonics are suppressed. This type of stripped, disembodied sound does not resonate with our spirits over the long term because it is too far from the truth.
If our ears are naturally more sensitive to mid-frequencies, this greater sensitivity leads to greater auditory sensations. Our brains are hard wired to translate this greater stimulation into thoughts and feelings. If we are on the right path, emotions and memories well up in us on a more deeply personal and satisfying level when we listen to music at home than the pursuit of hi fi effects can ever provide.
