I suspect that decision may well have been taken as much due to manufacturing processes as it may have been one of materials used.
Natural Sound
- Thread starter PeterA
- Start date
Natural sound as an approach and goal was introduced to us here by ddk who learned the concept from Vladimir Lamm. He writes about it in his introduction and sub forum essays describing the Beyond Turntables. It is fundamental to David’s list of Beyond Speakers.
When first hearing the Lamm ML2 amplifiers, ddk asked Vladimir “what is that?” Vladimir responded: “that is natural sound”.
Natural, or naturalness as used by Jeff Day, is a word that has been used to describe sound for quite a while and by lots of people. “Natural sound“, on the other hand, is something more. It is one possible approach of many to system selection and set up. The fundamental question one asks when following this approach is “does it sound natural?” It is the guiding principle for every decision.
Like other approaches, natural sound uses live acoustic music as its reference. It recognizes the holistic quality of the live music listening experience and the gestalt of the sound of instruments and voices. It is different from approaches that seek specific sonic attributes, aesthetics, the State of the Art, or personal satisfaction. It is not about more slam, bigger soundstage, or more detail, better images, lower noise. It is more about how listening makes the body feel then it is about what the mind thinks.
Jeff day is talking about words and language to describe what we hear. Re-examining how we communicate is worthwhile and refreshing. For Vladimir Lamm, ddk, Karen Sumner, and some others, it is more than just language. It is something more comprehensive and fundamental. It is the foundation upon which everything is built. This thread is my clumsy attempt to understand it, name it as my goal, distinguish it from other approaches, and describe how I am trying to achieve it.
When first hearing the Lamm ML2 amplifiers, ddk asked Vladimir “what is that?” Vladimir responded: “that is natural sound”.
Natural, or naturalness as used by Jeff Day, is a word that has been used to describe sound for quite a while and by lots of people. “Natural sound“, on the other hand, is something more. It is one possible approach of many to system selection and set up. The fundamental question one asks when following this approach is “does it sound natural?” It is the guiding principle for every decision.
Like other approaches, natural sound uses live acoustic music as its reference. It recognizes the holistic quality of the live music listening experience and the gestalt of the sound of instruments and voices. It is different from approaches that seek specific sonic attributes, aesthetics, the State of the Art, or personal satisfaction. It is not about more slam, bigger soundstage, or more detail, better images, lower noise. It is more about how listening makes the body feel then it is about what the mind thinks.
Jeff day is talking about words and language to describe what we hear. Re-examining how we communicate is worthwhile and refreshing. For Vladimir Lamm, ddk, Karen Sumner, and some others, it is more than just language. It is something more comprehensive and fundamental. It is the foundation upon which everything is built. This thread is my clumsy attempt to understand it, name it as my goal, distinguish it from other approaches, and describe how I am trying to achieve it.
Peter , I am sorry to have to say that I find this comment to be somewhat disingenuous! Merely creating a * New* terminology for a corporeal methodology and approach toward evaluating the components within ones system , quite common to the majority of audiophiles and attributing this *New Way * to the individuals to which you attribute this phenomenon is simply misleading imho.
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I know someone who was/is so abused by this notion that he concluded that since instruments were handled by people with flesh, that his LPs should be too. So he was going to the local stock yard and buying raw pigskin, which he cut into platter pads. When not playing his system, the pad was kept in a mayonnaise jar in the 'fridge. In time, flesh eating bacteria would get after it so he would have to throw it out. ewwe.
Of course his LPs got really greasy and smelled like bacon. Eventually the workers asked what he was doing with the pigskin, and when he told them, they stopped selling them to him
...So much for 'natural materials'. Does a vacuum tube or transistor have natural materials in it? Anything we use has natural materials in it at some level- although it might be pretty processed. To me that quote is a point of humor and not really good for anything past that.
TheMoon, I never wrote anything about a “new” way. Nor have I written that it is the only way or the best way. It is simply one of many approaches to selecting and setting up a system. It is based on a type of sound and on a set of values. As far as I know Vladimir Lamm was the first to use it this way.
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Everyone has different ideas what natural sound is. Audio Tekne has been using this term as their main focus/approach for 40+ years. As a funny example, I told Imai last week I was using a 3012R and his response was that arm can never have a natural sound due to the bearing design.
He was right.
The arm bearings should be in the plane of the LP so that with bass modulation and warp, the tracking pressure remains constant. If the bearings are in the plane of the arm tube, the tracking pressure decreases with these two phenomena.
That is interesting. For the warp case to be an issue, it presupposes that the LP is warped. With the three turntables on which I used my 3012R, the SME 30/12, the Micro SX 8000II, and the AS2000, the clamping system, weight, and vacuum seemed to eliminate any trace of warps. All methods were quite effective at this. The cartridge appeared to be gliding on an always flat surface.
The vertical bearing is at or near the level of the armtube thus above the LP surface. The horizontal bearing is below the vertical bearing, more in line with the LP.
Regardless, this change in tracking pressure would need to be audible to sound non-natural. I do not hear it. By how much does the tracking pressure vary with a typical warp or bass modulation, and what is the sonic effect that one hears? The bass performance of my table/arm/cartridge is the most natural I have heard in any of my systems in all these years.
Good.
To know how it sounds you have to have a reference.
I have a recording I use, one that I made and produced on LP and CD. If you are talking about the sound of things, such a thing is handy for really knowing what's going on.
The effect of the bearing height is subtle, but is a bit of a diminution in bass impact. The principle is like that of two people carrying a couch upstairs, where the bottom person has most of the weight but on level ground they each carry the same.
I posted this elsewhere, but it belongs here because it is about the motor unit and controls of my AS2000 turntable.
The motor controller can be adjusted for frequency and voltage, as well as pitch. I use the frequency adjustment to control speed when playing with the thread tension between motor and platter to get back to correct speed. The looser the thread tension, the more the platter speeds up. The tighter the thread tension the more the platter slows down. It’s a bit counterintuitive because if I simply cut the thread and let the platter spin it will spin for over half an hour very gradually slowing down. I think what is going on is it when there is tighter thread tension, the motor and platter or coupled together more and the sheer mass of the platter is slowing down the motor which then slows down the speed according to the tachometer. The motor is turning faster with tighter thread tension so when you loosen the thread gradually the platter actually speeds up. I go back-and-forth loosening the thread and adjusting the frequency to maintain 33.333 while listening and then stopping when I reach the most natural sound.
The belt tension makes a clear audible difference. Playing with voltage affects the torque and drive which becomes more important when the belt is looser but it does not seem to affect speed. More torque creates slightly more noise in the motor but I don’t know if it’s audible through the thread and platter. I have separated the motor from the main turntable chassis and isolated each under the steel plates so the only contact and influence of one over the other is the loose thread. Transients can become slightly softer or harder which affects the sense of clarity The torque does affect the sense of drive and is heard when listening for nuance and micro dynamics and decays/harmonics, basically how natural it sounds.
These are subtle effects which I would likely not have noticed in my old system which did not have the resolution necessary to hear these changes. It all has to do with the relationship between the motor and the platter and the influence and control one has over the other. My platter has an extreme amount of inertia because of its 150 lbs mass plus extremely low friction bearing, so I am trying to reduce the influence of the motor on the platter for a more natural sound with less mechanical signature.
The motor controller can be adjusted for frequency and voltage, as well as pitch. I use the frequency adjustment to control speed when playing with the thread tension between motor and platter to get back to correct speed. The looser the thread tension, the more the platter speeds up. The tighter the thread tension the more the platter slows down. It’s a bit counterintuitive because if I simply cut the thread and let the platter spin it will spin for over half an hour very gradually slowing down. I think what is going on is it when there is tighter thread tension, the motor and platter or coupled together more and the sheer mass of the platter is slowing down the motor which then slows down the speed according to the tachometer. The motor is turning faster with tighter thread tension so when you loosen the thread gradually the platter actually speeds up. I go back-and-forth loosening the thread and adjusting the frequency to maintain 33.333 while listening and then stopping when I reach the most natural sound.
The belt tension makes a clear audible difference. Playing with voltage affects the torque and drive which becomes more important when the belt is looser but it does not seem to affect speed. More torque creates slightly more noise in the motor but I don’t know if it’s audible through the thread and platter. I have separated the motor from the main turntable chassis and isolated each under the steel plates so the only contact and influence of one over the other is the loose thread. Transients can become slightly softer or harder which affects the sense of clarity The torque does affect the sense of drive and is heard when listening for nuance and micro dynamics and decays/harmonics, basically how natural it sounds.
These are subtle effects which I would likely not have noticed in my old system which did not have the resolution necessary to hear these changes. It all has to do with the relationship between the motor and the platter and the influence and control one has over the other. My platter has an extreme amount of inertia because of its 150 lbs mass plus extremely low friction bearing, so I am trying to reduce the influence of the motor on the platter for a more natural sound with less mechanical signature.
After three years with COVID restrictions, I finally returned to the BSO the other night to recalibrate my ears with live unamplified music. I was looking very forward to this event because it was the first time I would be able to hear live orchestral music since I got this Natural Sound system, and I was curious how the system would hold up. One reads and thinks and analyzes, but making a comparison and then judgement based on the real thing is what matter for me. It is my reference and that on which I base all of my audio decisions.
I heard Stravinsky's Persephone Melodrama in Three Tableaux followed by Thomas Ades' Inferno suite from Dante, for orchestra and finally his Paradiso from Dante for orchestra and female choir. James Burton conducted.
It was a delightful evening with a good friend starting with a nice dinner at Symphony Hall followed by the performance. We were seated in the middle of the orchestra section, center aisle, right across the aisle from a newly installed console system for recordings. My guess is that we were about twenty + rows back from the stage. I usually sit in about the seventh row, center, for a much more direct perspective. Sitting further back, I heard a bit more of the reverberant sound of the hall, and less direct sound.
I really enjoyed the music. Stravinsky's Persephone was a wonderful back and forth exchange between the tenor and 100 person chorus and the reciter who did the narration. It was all in French with subtitles. There was great foundation supplied by ten cellos and eight double basses. The music was grand with sweeping, rolling overtures punctuated by delicate accents from various woodwinds and percussive moments. I was lost in the drama of it all and experience the music as it filled the front of the hall and washed over the audience.
Dante's Inferno suite was much more spectacular with crashing timpany and tubular bells and other sound makers. There was a wonderful solo cello, clear and full of energy, but for the most part, it seemed as though Ades was inspired by television and movie scores. I kept imagining the Lone Ranger and Sinbad's Adventures. The sheer energy filling that hall was incredible and yet the tone and timbres of the individual instruments came through very clearly. I have written before how the sense of clarity and sheer amount of information is what distinguishes for me the difference between live music like this and what I hear from audio systems. After clarity and information, it is probably dynamics and weight/body, and scale. My old system just seemed kind of small, thin, and soft compared to this. It is the same with jazz performances and chamber music.
Well, that was then, and this is now. I have a new system and a new understanding of what is possible. My new system just sounds more like what I heard the other night. Of course there are differences, but the gap has narrowed. Clarity comes through from the whole chain, from the improved power delivery and set up, to the information retrieval from the front end, to the electronics matching the speakers and speakers filling the space. The high efficiency horns and SET present clarity and dynamics that are much more lifelike now. The scale and weight have also improved significantly.
Like many of us, I had been living in a kind of bubble for these last few years, not really being exposed to my reference and making audio decisions based on my memory of the real thing. Memory can be tricky. Hearing live music and voices of various scales and intensity again confirms for me that I have been moving in the right direction with my system. To confirm this at home, I have played Stravinsky's Firebird and Holst's Planets, as well as some larger scale choral music and compared what I heard with what I remember from the other night.
My analytical brain did on occasion sneak through while sitting there at the BSO. I found myself thinking of some of the terms about which I have been critical lately: black backgrounds, pinpoint images, outlines. These were a characteristic of my old system as a whole, but also of specific components and accessories. I worked to remove these attributes, and they are now absent from my new system. I wanted to make sure I was not mistaken sitting there listening live to a full orchestra and chorus. I heard none of it. These things do not exist in live music. And I noticed one more attribute that has been discussed lately and one about whose absence I became keenly aware the other night: "separation of instruments".
I am adding "separation of instruments" to my list of audiophile terms and phrases that I do not understand, and which seem to me to have no relation to what I hear when listening to unamplified live music.
to be continued...
I heard Stravinsky's Persephone Melodrama in Three Tableaux followed by Thomas Ades' Inferno suite from Dante, for orchestra and finally his Paradiso from Dante for orchestra and female choir. James Burton conducted.
It was a delightful evening with a good friend starting with a nice dinner at Symphony Hall followed by the performance. We were seated in the middle of the orchestra section, center aisle, right across the aisle from a newly installed console system for recordings. My guess is that we were about twenty + rows back from the stage. I usually sit in about the seventh row, center, for a much more direct perspective. Sitting further back, I heard a bit more of the reverberant sound of the hall, and less direct sound.
I really enjoyed the music. Stravinsky's Persephone was a wonderful back and forth exchange between the tenor and 100 person chorus and the reciter who did the narration. It was all in French with subtitles. There was great foundation supplied by ten cellos and eight double basses. The music was grand with sweeping, rolling overtures punctuated by delicate accents from various woodwinds and percussive moments. I was lost in the drama of it all and experience the music as it filled the front of the hall and washed over the audience.
Dante's Inferno suite was much more spectacular with crashing timpany and tubular bells and other sound makers. There was a wonderful solo cello, clear and full of energy, but for the most part, it seemed as though Ades was inspired by television and movie scores. I kept imagining the Lone Ranger and Sinbad's Adventures. The sheer energy filling that hall was incredible and yet the tone and timbres of the individual instruments came through very clearly. I have written before how the sense of clarity and sheer amount of information is what distinguishes for me the difference between live music like this and what I hear from audio systems. After clarity and information, it is probably dynamics and weight/body, and scale. My old system just seemed kind of small, thin, and soft compared to this. It is the same with jazz performances and chamber music.
Well, that was then, and this is now. I have a new system and a new understanding of what is possible. My new system just sounds more like what I heard the other night. Of course there are differences, but the gap has narrowed. Clarity comes through from the whole chain, from the improved power delivery and set up, to the information retrieval from the front end, to the electronics matching the speakers and speakers filling the space. The high efficiency horns and SET present clarity and dynamics that are much more lifelike now. The scale and weight have also improved significantly.
Like many of us, I had been living in a kind of bubble for these last few years, not really being exposed to my reference and making audio decisions based on my memory of the real thing. Memory can be tricky. Hearing live music and voices of various scales and intensity again confirms for me that I have been moving in the right direction with my system. To confirm this at home, I have played Stravinsky's Firebird and Holst's Planets, as well as some larger scale choral music and compared what I heard with what I remember from the other night.
My analytical brain did on occasion sneak through while sitting there at the BSO. I found myself thinking of some of the terms about which I have been critical lately: black backgrounds, pinpoint images, outlines. These were a characteristic of my old system as a whole, but also of specific components and accessories. I worked to remove these attributes, and they are now absent from my new system. I wanted to make sure I was not mistaken sitting there listening live to a full orchestra and chorus. I heard none of it. These things do not exist in live music. And I noticed one more attribute that has been discussed lately and one about whose absence I became keenly aware the other night: "separation of instruments".
I am adding "separation of instruments" to my list of audiophile terms and phrases that I do not understand, and which seem to me to have no relation to what I hear when listening to unamplified live music.
to be continued...
continued...
I am trying to understand what people mean when they talk about "separation of instruments". I first heard this phrase a few years ago when a friend introduced me to, coincidentally enough, Stravinsky's Chamber Music, played by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players (Deutsche Grammaphon 2530 551). It is a wonderful recording which I play regularly at home. In my friend's system, I was astonished at how the various wind instruments, in particular, but also some of the strings and brass, stood out starkly in contrast to both each other and to the rest of the assembled musicians on stage. This was both in timbre and volume, but quite impressively, also in virtual space.
This was a strange experience. Different system presentations are so interesting. My friend, another guest, and I all sat there discussing the effect. Everyone seemed quite impressed. The soundstage was large and black, and the imagery was very clear and precise. These bursts of sounds emerged from dark space and dazzled me. Their isolation was what impressed, but it also distracted me. It reminded me of the fireworks I remember watching in the midwestern dark sky as a child. My friends described what I heard as a good example of "separation of instruments". I ordered the LP, cleaned it, and played it on my system. That was in December of 2021.
I had my new system by then with the Micro Seiki. When I played the record, I was disappointed not to hear that same spotlit effect of the individual instruments playing very cleanly, separate and isolated from each other. I did not "see" the same separate virtual images. As my mind wandered a bit during parts of the live performance the other night away from the music listening experience to trying to analyze the actual sound I was hearing, I began to notice that indeed, there were no black backgrounds, no pinpoint images, no stark outlines, and surprisingly, no separation of instruments, at least as I had experienced them earlier for the first time on that system. This live experience was very different.
What I heard instead was a massive amount of energy in waves being projected outward from the stage to fill the hall. The massed strings and chorus provided the foundation, the wave on which the accents played and were carried. A drum strike, bell hit, oboe burst or any such sound could be heard piercing through the rest, but its location was only localized in a particular section of the orchestra on stage. And only briefly. The origin of the sound, that initial burst of energy was clear, and then it immediately expanded to fill the space and intermix with the rest of the energy being produced and moving around the space. There was no separation. Instead, there was a blending, a mixing, a gestalt. The only thing that was separate was the initial burst of sound distinct from the rest. It quickly faded and got swept up in the rest of the energy circulating around. Even during the quietest moments, the bow on a string, the stick hitting skin, the air blowing through the pipes, these were all clear and existed in a space on stage, but it was only for an instant. There was no lasting image of it. I did not notice it as a spatial characteristic the way I did when those same instruments were reproduced in that system.
Beside the quick initial transient, what I did notice as being separate and distinct was the instruments' various timbres and loudness levels - their levels of energy. These are sounds, not images. The oboe was distinct from the clarinet, the violin from the viola, the cello from the bass, and the trumpet from the trombone. The sounds of all of these are familiar and their timbre and how they produce and project energy is what separates them and makes them unique. This is what rises above the wave of energy filling the space when everyone is playing until it mixes and joins the rest.
I have read and talked to some people about this notion of separation of instruments. Someone described it as a great thing, like blinking ornaments on a christmas tree. Another described it as instruments playing and existing in their own bubbles, an artifact. He told me that some gear and audiophile wires are designed to create this effect. I have heard it with some footers in systems.
I think we have a tendency to describe audio in visual terms: black backgrounds, pinpoint imaging, outlines, separation of instruments. I am increasingly thinking about audio only in sonic terms based on what I actually hear when experiencing live music and when describing the sound of a component or whole system.
Perhaps my host who introduced me to that record and demonstrated the separation of instruments was describing it in terms of timbre and energy terms, but what I heard was separation of the instruments in space behind his speakers, in distinct bubbles. It was cool and unusual so I bought the record. I still listen to it regularly because the music is great, but that effect is not on the recording, at least when played on my system. I did not hear this effect the other night at the BSO listening to Burton conducting Stravinsky, and I do not hear it in my new system presenting Stravinsky played by the Boston Chamber Players .
I am trying to understand what people mean when they talk about "separation of instruments". I first heard this phrase a few years ago when a friend introduced me to, coincidentally enough, Stravinsky's Chamber Music, played by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players (Deutsche Grammaphon 2530 551). It is a wonderful recording which I play regularly at home. In my friend's system, I was astonished at how the various wind instruments, in particular, but also some of the strings and brass, stood out starkly in contrast to both each other and to the rest of the assembled musicians on stage. This was both in timbre and volume, but quite impressively, also in virtual space.
This was a strange experience. Different system presentations are so interesting. My friend, another guest, and I all sat there discussing the effect. Everyone seemed quite impressed. The soundstage was large and black, and the imagery was very clear and precise. These bursts of sounds emerged from dark space and dazzled me. Their isolation was what impressed, but it also distracted me. It reminded me of the fireworks I remember watching in the midwestern dark sky as a child. My friends described what I heard as a good example of "separation of instruments". I ordered the LP, cleaned it, and played it on my system. That was in December of 2021.
I had my new system by then with the Micro Seiki. When I played the record, I was disappointed not to hear that same spotlit effect of the individual instruments playing very cleanly, separate and isolated from each other. I did not "see" the same separate virtual images. As my mind wandered a bit during parts of the live performance the other night away from the music listening experience to trying to analyze the actual sound I was hearing, I began to notice that indeed, there were no black backgrounds, no pinpoint images, no stark outlines, and surprisingly, no separation of instruments, at least as I had experienced them earlier for the first time on that system. This live experience was very different.
What I heard instead was a massive amount of energy in waves being projected outward from the stage to fill the hall. The massed strings and chorus provided the foundation, the wave on which the accents played and were carried. A drum strike, bell hit, oboe burst or any such sound could be heard piercing through the rest, but its location was only localized in a particular section of the orchestra on stage. And only briefly. The origin of the sound, that initial burst of energy was clear, and then it immediately expanded to fill the space and intermix with the rest of the energy being produced and moving around the space. There was no separation. Instead, there was a blending, a mixing, a gestalt. The only thing that was separate was the initial burst of sound distinct from the rest. It quickly faded and got swept up in the rest of the energy circulating around. Even during the quietest moments, the bow on a string, the stick hitting skin, the air blowing through the pipes, these were all clear and existed in a space on stage, but it was only for an instant. There was no lasting image of it. I did not notice it as a spatial characteristic the way I did when those same instruments were reproduced in that system.
Beside the quick initial transient, what I did notice as being separate and distinct was the instruments' various timbres and loudness levels - their levels of energy. These are sounds, not images. The oboe was distinct from the clarinet, the violin from the viola, the cello from the bass, and the trumpet from the trombone. The sounds of all of these are familiar and their timbre and how they produce and project energy is what separates them and makes them unique. This is what rises above the wave of energy filling the space when everyone is playing until it mixes and joins the rest.
I have read and talked to some people about this notion of separation of instruments. Someone described it as a great thing, like blinking ornaments on a christmas tree. Another described it as instruments playing and existing in their own bubbles, an artifact. He told me that some gear and audiophile wires are designed to create this effect. I have heard it with some footers in systems.
I think we have a tendency to describe audio in visual terms: black backgrounds, pinpoint imaging, outlines, separation of instruments. I am increasingly thinking about audio only in sonic terms based on what I actually hear when experiencing live music and when describing the sound of a component or whole system.
Perhaps my host who introduced me to that record and demonstrated the separation of instruments was describing it in terms of timbre and energy terms, but what I heard was separation of the instruments in space behind his speakers, in distinct bubbles. It was cool and unusual so I bought the record. I still listen to it regularly because the music is great, but that effect is not on the recording, at least when played on my system. I did not hear this effect the other night at the BSO listening to Burton conducting Stravinsky, and I do not hear it in my new system presenting Stravinsky played by the Boston Chamber Players .
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separation of instruments? how about understanding the musical intent? or reducing the congealing of musical parts?
in 2019 i attended a local symphony concert which included a composition by my local friend and tone arm designer, Joel Durand. i enjoyed it, but honestly later enjoyed the piece more after hearing the recording on my system from that performance. it was much easier to hear the details and musical events in the recording. and i return to this recording often.
sure; the event was an event, the energy in the hall was considerable, and the feeling and power of the live event surpassed my home experience, but not by a huge amount.
the recording will never measure up to the live event, but the live event might not relate the musical essence as well as the recording either, sometimes.
i was personally there, but overall for the listening, i am more there in my room.
i'm sure this goes both ways, based on all sorts of variables. and there are issues of personal priorities too.
YMMV
in 2019 i attended a local symphony concert which included a composition by my local friend and tone arm designer, Joel Durand. i enjoyed it, but honestly later enjoyed the piece more after hearing the recording on my system from that performance. it was much easier to hear the details and musical events in the recording. and i return to this recording often.
sure; the event was an event, the energy in the hall was considerable, and the feeling and power of the live event surpassed my home experience, but not by a huge amount.
the recording will never measure up to the live event, but the live event might not relate the musical essence as well as the recording either, sometimes.
i was personally there, but overall for the listening, i am more there in my room.
i'm sure this goes both ways, based on all sorts of variables. and there are issues of personal priorities too.
YMMV
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Peter,
The influence of visual stimulation in sound reproduction is a well known subject, as well as the enormous difference between real sound and the sound of stereo. Nice to know that you want to create something different from what most people enjoy and aim in sound reproduction, including most of the producers of recordings - it is in part why we love this hobby.
But please do not misuse the well known, accepted and usual audiophile words to create confusion and artificial discussion. Separation of instruments and localization were deeply studied and discussed in stereo - I remember reading the results of listening tests where participants were asked to draw a map of the instruments of the orchestra to analyze the effect of separation.
Feel free to describe your individual experience with stereo - but please do not misrepresent the typical audiophile experience with Christmas tree analogies. If your friend system creates distinct bulbes with instruments, it is simply a poor system or a poorly tuned system - you should look for other systems to understand what is good alternative high-end stereo sound reproduction.
The influence of visual stimulation in sound reproduction is a well known subject, as well as the enormous difference between real sound and the sound of stereo. Nice to know that you want to create something different from what most people enjoy and aim in sound reproduction, including most of the producers of recordings - it is in part why we love this hobby.
But please do not misuse the well known, accepted and usual audiophile words to create confusion and artificial discussion. Separation of instruments and localization were deeply studied and discussed in stereo - I remember reading the results of listening tests where participants were asked to draw a map of the instruments of the orchestra to analyze the effect of separation.
Feel free to describe your individual experience with stereo - but please do not misrepresent the typical audiophile experience with Christmas tree analogies. If your friend system creates distinct bulbes with instruments, it is simply a poor system or a poorly tuned system - you should look for other systems to understand what is good alternative high-end stereo sound reproduction.
I don't see this as being complicated at all. I think this is a case where we should "think inside the box" rather than concoct a complication which does not exist.
This is separation of instruments. You notice "such sound" separate from the tubas and tympani on the opposite side of the stage.
Why would there ever be a "lasting [sonic] image" of a transitory event? If you're walking on the street and you hear a car backfire, your head swivels to the source of the sound. Why would there be a lasting sound of a car backfiring after its momentary backfire?
Why would there be a "lasting image" of a drum whack?
When I listen on my stereo to a recording of a three-piece jazz band, and I have a sense of the bass guitar player in the middle, and the piano player on the right side, and the drum kit on the left side, I am hearing "separation of instruments."
"Separation of instruments" is not the problematic "clearly delineated sonic images" which I agree with you are hi-fi artifacts which I do not hear in real life in the concert hall.
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For several years now I have talked about the use of visual language and analogies in audio and audiophile descriptions, because we are strongly visually oriented and our vocabulary has evolved to being more sophisticated and extended for what and how we see. This is one reason I say sound is difficult to describe.
"As I've said before, there are no psycho-acoustics in the score - they are a consequence of a live performance but they are not the goal of a performance. Don't misunderstand - there is no doubting that psycho-acoustics are a genuine part of the live music listening experience - music always occurs in a context and that context brings meaning to the performance. But, imo too often do psycho-acoustics take the focus for the modern audiophile in reproduction - I believe that happens because people can use and grasp more visual oriented language to describe what they hear and our language is stronger for visual stuff. Describing sound is harder - sharing sound verbally is harder. But it can be done. Yes, sometimes visual language is helpful - think of tone color - but a pure music experience is not visual. Read my first sentence again. If we want to build better systems we need to do better at not just experiencing, but learning." (ref)
"However, in my audio room while listening, having my eyes open does nothing to enhance or encourage the listening experience -- in fact it can detract from that experience as it invokes visual function in my brain and is a sense I do not need to enjoy the music." (ref)
"We are, imo, vision-centric creatures - witness the posting of pictures above as explanatory devices. Our vocabulary is better suited to describing what we see than what we hear. The whole soundstage and imaging topics are done in visually oriented words along with notions such as tonal color and sound coloration." (ref)
"But first we have to have some idea of what we want. It seems to me it is easier in the visual realm. Architects can draw up plans, even quick sketches which give some idea of what is possible, though it may still be difficult to grasp at the 'walking around' perspective. Sound is effervescent, less tangible, almost impossible to imagine." (ref)
And similar.
Consider this... The experience of limbic level listening - of being 'taken' by the music, experiencing it in a non-cognitive way - finds few corollaries in visual experience beyond hallucination.
Don't get me wrong, sight is a blessed part of being alive and I enjoy watching musicians play their instruments and perform -- it is part of the human experience. Visual accounts of music may help some people attempting to describe what they hear.
In a way, "separation of instruments" harkens back to the Platonic problem of the one and the many. It was a big topic in Greek philosophy and metaphysics. Here, it is not metaphysics we dealing with but rather it relates to describing what we hear and the language we use to do that.
Listening to an orchestra or the reproduction of orchestral music involves hearing multiple instruments played simultaneously. Across sections and instruments each has its own score, its instructions on how to play its part. But we don't hear thirty different symphonies, we hear one because each part is united in time under the controll of the orchestra's clock - the conductor.
Different instruments have different timbre and capable of varying loudness, transients, and dynamic impact. We easily distinguish notes played at the exact same pitch by a trombone and a horn and a timpani. Human listeners have sophisticated ears (and bodies.). We are capable of experiencing these sonic differences when all three instruments play at the same time. Our ears and brain are also pretty good geo-locators. We can tell when sound orginates to the left or right, ahead or back to varying degrees of sophistication even when sound comes from multiple directions.
From a purely sonic perspective we hear tones of varying loudness, etc. Talking about separation of instruments is a cognitive attribution of how a sound is made.
My sense of what Peter describes is two-fold. One is the notion of perceiving each instrument/musician as an entity distinct from each other. Sometimes this desciption talks about image outlines with the claim that in reproduction certain equipment emphasize the phenomena with those outlines being clearer or more dimensional than other equipment produces. Visual talk. He (and I) do not find this experience in the concert hall with eyes closed or blurred. The other notion I think Peter is getting at is that talk of separation of instruments kinda destroys the gestalt of multiple different sounds occuring together in time. Waves of varying air pressures, ie. energy, continuously arriving at our ears together -- hearing is analog. We are not recording enginers putting together multiple microphone tracks.
I suggest that describing separation of instruments in reproduction is not wrong. Some may enjoy and the description represents their experience. Ok, fine. However it is not among the characteristics of natural sound.
I don't think things are quite as black and white as Peter and Tim suggest when it comes to hearing or not hearing the separation of instruments in a concert hall. To say it is not a characteristic of natural sounds seems rather inaccurate and misguided to me.
Rather, I think to a large degree it depends on which hall you are referring to and more importantly, exactly where in the hall you sit. I've discussed this specifically with regard to seating at Carnegie https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/the-sound-at-carnegie-hall.20911/. At Carnegie, many consider the best sound to be at the upper balcony, but the ability to point to specific instrument locations is very difficult to near impossible from those seats. However this is rather easy to do in say, the First Blavatnik Tier (my regular seats). At Chicago, the ability to identify instrument location with your eyes closed is uncanny from the center boxes and particularly from seats in the front the Lower Fadim balcony. From there, you can point a blind finger and identify the sound of any instrument almost to the inch. Recall how it is said bass is "non-directional"? (Biggest fallacy in audio). You can point to the skin of an individual tympani or bass drum or a single upright double bass from among 8 with uncanny accuracy from those seats in Chicago. The reason those Chicago seats allow this localization even better than Carnegie is that the front Fadim and Box seats at Chicago are about 15 rows back from the stage where in Blavatnik/Carnegie they're about 25 rows back from the stage. (Thus the soundfield in Chicago subtends a larger angle which seemingly allows more precise instrument localization within the orchestra than comparative first tier seats in Carnegie). Same from the Grand Tier seats at Powell Hall in St. Louis, but like Carnegie. the higher you go, the individual instrument locations becomes more blurred. Similar examples can be found at Myerson Hall in DFW, St. Petersburg, La Scala, Concertgebouw, and Barbican to name a few.
I don't dispute the experience Peter and Tim have at the BSO (one of the greatest halls in the world) but I suggest their experience is based mainly on seat location in a specific hall, not whether what they are hearing is an inherent quality of "natural sound".
It's also important to remember that when you listen at home, you don't necessarily listen to the sound of instruments in the hall from any seat, but rather, the sound captured by the recording microphones, but that's another kettle of fish entirely.
Rather, I think to a large degree it depends on which hall you are referring to and more importantly, exactly where in the hall you sit. I've discussed this specifically with regard to seating at Carnegie https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/the-sound-at-carnegie-hall.20911/. At Carnegie, many consider the best sound to be at the upper balcony, but the ability to point to specific instrument locations is very difficult to near impossible from those seats. However this is rather easy to do in say, the First Blavatnik Tier (my regular seats). At Chicago, the ability to identify instrument location with your eyes closed is uncanny from the center boxes and particularly from seats in the front the Lower Fadim balcony. From there, you can point a blind finger and identify the sound of any instrument almost to the inch. Recall how it is said bass is "non-directional"? (Biggest fallacy in audio). You can point to the skin of an individual tympani or bass drum or a single upright double bass from among 8 with uncanny accuracy from those seats in Chicago. The reason those Chicago seats allow this localization even better than Carnegie is that the front Fadim and Box seats at Chicago are about 15 rows back from the stage where in Blavatnik/Carnegie they're about 25 rows back from the stage. (Thus the soundfield in Chicago subtends a larger angle which seemingly allows more precise instrument localization within the orchestra than comparative first tier seats in Carnegie). Same from the Grand Tier seats at Powell Hall in St. Louis, but like Carnegie. the higher you go, the individual instrument locations becomes more blurred. Similar examples can be found at Myerson Hall in DFW, St. Petersburg, La Scala, Concertgebouw, and Barbican to name a few.
I don't dispute the experience Peter and Tim have at the BSO (one of the greatest halls in the world) but I suggest their experience is based mainly on seat location in a specific hall, not whether what they are hearing is an inherent quality of "natural sound".
It's also important to remember that when you listen at home, you don't necessarily listen to the sound of instruments in the hall from any seat, but rather, the sound captured by the recording microphones, but that's another kettle of fish entirely.
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In addition, it has to be kept in mind that most recordings are not made to sound like mid-hall or back-hall distance listening. They are usually pretty much up close even for classical recordings. If you sit in a hall towards the front the localization improves significantly. I have only one classical recording where I know the exact distance of the microphone (a single stereo ribbon mic was used) and that one has more of a mid-hall character where localization of instruments on the recording is not so precise as many others I have. The overall sound though is very lifelike as I have heard the same piece of music performed live where I sat dead center in mid-hall at Zurich Tonhalle. I was struck by how similar it sounded to the recording by a different orchestra in a different hall but in about the same mid-hall location. I have also sat in the 3rd row at Tonhalle for a performance of Tchaikovsky piano concerto by Evgeniy Kissin. There you could hear clearly all the piano action (pedals, hammer strikes etc.) as well as picking out individual instruments in the orchestra. That was more like a DG recording, where most instruments are close miked and then space and overall blend is done by a Tonmeister.
Fwiw, I was not with Peter when he heard the Boston Symphony thus I was not drawing on that in my comment on characteristics of natural sound which were made in the context of reproduction and the language we use to describe it. Thanks for your account of the sonics of various concert halls. You are fortunate to visit so many. I marvel at your ability to distinquish the third bassist in a line of eight or the leftmost timpani in a group of four, all with your eyes closed.
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