Well, we must rely on memory because we can not simultaneously listen to both an original live event and a recording of that event. As far as references go, how would we even know what a piano sounds like if we have not heard a live piano? And for recordings, can we not listen to that same recording in a number of different systems, familiar or not, and get some sense of its quality? People demonstrate systems and judge their quality by playing reference recordings.
Of course we must rely on memory, my point is this isn't photography where we can compare side by side and our auditory memory is fickle. I'm not saying it's useless though, so don't get me wrong, it is valuable. But in teasing out nuances and more subtle aspects of comparing live to a recording, it's not quite as reliable as we might think, which is demonstrated by most people's inability to remember what they heard literally minutes ago when doing a/b comparisons. Other aspects like judging if a piano sounds realistic may be more reliable. But I think there is still a major issue with depending exclusively on live comparisons as memory isn't perfect and we all have different experiences of live music depending on experience.
I fail to see how a live music reference is not based in reality. I hold that listening to live music is reality. Yes, it is often difficult to hear differences in A/B testing. Sometimes that is because the differences are extremely subtle. It is much easier to tell the difference between live and reproduced music, even if separated by time. I recording of a piano does not sound exactly like a real piano, but we have a sense of what a piano should sound like if we have heard a few in a variety of settings. If we are A/B testing two speaker cables or power boxes, how could we possibly know which sounds more realistic (if that is one's goal) if we did not have our memories of what real music sounds like. Of course real music is a reference, though it seems not for everyone.
It's not based in reality because the recording is not intended to be a duplicate of live with rare exceptions. And those exceptions don't matter all that much unless you were actually there so you have some frame of reference.
Again, no argument that there are some aspects of hearing vocals and instruments live that allow you to better judge if they sound real to you, but that is a different thing than if the recording itself sounds live. Those are 2 different aspects of the reproduction. That's also why recordings aren't usually just 2-mic recordings placed in the audience, often close-mic'ed information is added so the instrument sounds more realistic. But again, if you weren't actually there you don't know if the instrument sounds like it did at that recording, just if in some general way it sounds live.
Again, how can we judge any of that without referring back to our memory of the timbre of complex instruments like strings and vocals? How do we know that a violin sounds different from a viola unless we have heard them live and can remember their differences?
How do we know what the recording should sound like, or how neutral a system is to the recording? What do we use as a basis for judgement if not the sound of actual instruments? We can listen to sounds and have a preference based on their effect on us.
I agree with you that a good system will clearly distinguish one recording from another and that it will allow a live recording to sound more live. But again, we can't know what live means unless we have heard live. It is our reference and we rely on our memory. Are you suggesting we rely on something else, like our imaginations?
I agree that neutral is good. A truly revealing system will present much of the rich tone of instruments if captured on a good recording. Neutrality, transparency, lack of coloration are some of the important qualities of a good system.
1. I agree that great recordings are rare, but there certainly are many, many wonderful sounding recordings that one can collect and that provide much enjoyment. The recording is one aspect, the system is the other for natural sound. Certain recordings are acknowledged as references specifically because of how they can sound on systems. Reviewers describe the very qualities of various recordings that make them special and worthy of attention. Whole labels have certain reputations, as do engineers. There is some standard by which they are judged. And that standard is often the sound of actual music.
2. Of course we have a reference to judge what we are listening to. We have our experience based on living in the real world and listening to real voices and instruments in real rooms. Together, these form a basis by which we can judge performance. I heard a live performance of a string trio the other night. I have recordings of string trios. I can certainly judge how convincing they sound, in my system and in other systems. And I am sure that I am not alone. We do not listen to music on our systems in isolation, devoid of past experiences.
As I had suggested, a discussion about "separation of instruments" might well be controversial. These last few pages show that. I hear more separation of instruments from some playback systems, often much more, than I hear this quality from live music. Many of the recent posts do not really address that point but rather attempt to explain why recordings or systems might enhance this effect. Some of us do indeed compare live music to reproduced music as I did here with my recent experience listening to a live string trio in a nice hall. It seems others do not value such comparisons and seem to prefer enjoying each experience for its own merits and qualities. That is fine too. They are different experiences. Some of us attempt to make them more similar than different.
I'm not saying you should discount your experiences listening to live music, just that it's relation to recordings is tenuous and an attempt to make your system sound like your memory of live music should be tempered with actual objective performance as I described in my previous post. That will ensure your system is actually a high fidelity system as well as sounding what you'd consider "natural". Or not, if you want to go by fully subjective impressions that's just fine, but that's not the route to achieving the best possible results for my own tastes.
Since I build all my own gear, I can say that when I make objective improvements in my gear, I end up subjectively preferring the change. And since I've offered demo cables for over a decade now, I can also say that when people tell me their personal subjective preferences and then try different cables and components, a vast majority of the time they end up preferring the objectively superior choices as well. Of course YMMV on that, but I think, for most people, they should take a "middle road" and consider both subjective as well as objective aspects as they are very often one and the same.
I do think auditory memory of what real instruments and vocals sound like is probably the most valuable part of live listening experiences, but I think a lot of other aspects are likely to be confounded by the fact live and recorded music is simply different. Even the 2-mic recording is going to be dynamically compressed to some degree.
