Sorry. Something on or something off doesn't describe anything. That's the point. Clarity is a very vague term, most halls are clear enough, and yes, while all seats are not equal, that's less important. Again, the above doesn't describe anything. So in your message, we should just say if it's right or not. While that is what it eventually is, it makes the discussion damn dull
Sublime Sound
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Tim, here is the earlier post I mentioned in which I define what I mean by the term "natural". There is no reference to "diffuse" sound. There is little mention of what it is NOT. Some might find my post unclear, or not specific enough. I can't help them. To me, it is a pretty simply concept that does not need a lot of explanation. Here is that post again:
Tim, I do not think I answered your question very well, certainly not completely. Referencing live music and comparing it to reproduced music is certainly my process, but having thought about it a bit more now, I can be more specific.
Natural Sound:
I agree with David that everyone knows natural sound when he hears it. However, as he also states, there is more to it. I think about his comment that "music is not bits and pieces". We collectively as audiophiles have been taught to think of bits and pieces - the breaking down of music into sound into sonic attributes. We have a glossary of audiophile sonic terms. We have books that keep being referenced. We have reviews that go into much detail about aspects of the sound. There is so much "flowery prose" as Fransisco, Kedar and others mention. I know I am just as prone to this as others.
Years ago, after I began to attend Friday afternoon concerts at the BSO with my father, and on occasion Madfloyd and Al M., I remember always returning to one strong impression of the sonic experience of such an event: The sound is so clear. I always return to that one impression. It overrides all other impressions. Some might find it vague. Having talked to David over this last year, simplifying my system, understanding natural sound, I realize that David is right: music is not bits and pieces.
When I say the sound at the BSO is so clear, what I am also saying by omission, is that I don't think of the sound in that great hall in terms of sonic attributes, the audiophile glossary of terms, or broken down into bits and pieces. I think of the whole, the holistic experience, the gestalt. This is what natural sound means to me.
I never think about frequency response, tonal balance, "tight" bass, poles of articulation, grain, etch, fatigue, brightness, slam. When sitting in my seventh row center seat, I take in the sound, the music, and its overwhelming clarity. Clarity because this is energy at its source in a well designed real space, not some semblance of that energy after manipulation through the recording and reproduction chains.
David also talks about listening to a system or a component and hearing if anything draws attention to itself. As soon as his mind goes to some aspect of the sound rather than the gestalt of the music, he gets concerned. This is an indication that there may be something now quite natural. If the listener pay attention to a frequency range, or some specific detail, and keeps returning to that, it is not natural sound.
When I told David that I was now hearing "more" of what is on the recording and is sounded more convincing, he told me that was "natural resolution". A. J. van den Hul writes about getting more information from the grooves from his latest designs. Natural sound is the embodiment of energy being set free in the listening room, and of extracting the information from the recording. There are degrees of this. A modest system can do it as long as this energy and information is not corrupted. This goes back to the idea of doing no harm to the music. It it just that better components, a better system, better set up and a better room, all contribute to a better, more complete and more natural listening experience.
I knew I was getting closer and closer to natural sound during my period of experimentation when I thought less and less about sonic attributes, and more about the music. When Al and I sit in my room and he requests some violin concerto or choral piece, and we just sit and listen and talk about how brilliant Bach or Holst was, that is an indication of natural sound. When Al could no longer hear a high frequency accent from my vdh Grand Cru or Magico tweeter, that was an indication of a more natural sound. When we discuss Art Blakey's drum solo and the rhythm and impact of his sticks on the skin or metal rims rather than the tight bass or sparkly cymbals, that is natural sound. When we listen to Holst's chamber opera and marvel at how Death moves forward on the stage, and we are moved by Savitri's love for Satyavan and her fear of the forest creatures, that is natural sound.
This was made super clear to me the other night when I visited Al to hear his isolation transformers. With the transformers in place, I heard "tight" bass, a focused organ and voices, a slightly harsh triangle, a sharp trumpet, a restricted soundstage, and focused images. Without the transformers, I heard an expansion of energy in the room, a more convincing presentation of musicians on a stage, and the music, not the sonic attributes. This is how I knew that his system sounded more natural without the transformers.
The overwhelming impression for me at the BSO is one of clarity and the sheer energy from the instruments. When I can hear some of that in my listening room with much of the information intact and uncorrupted, I know the system is getting out of the way, my mind is not focusing on specific sonic attributes and the glossary of audiophile terms is the last thing I am thinking about. That is when I know the sound is approaching a sound that I perceive as natural.
Tim, I do not think I answered your question very well, certainly not completely. Referencing live music and comparing it to reproduced music is certainly my process, but having thought about it a bit more now, I can be more specific.
Natural Sound:
I agree with David that everyone knows natural sound when he hears it. However, as he also states, there is more to it. I think about his comment that "music is not bits and pieces". We collectively as audiophiles have been taught to think of bits and pieces - the breaking down of music into sound into sonic attributes. We have a glossary of audiophile sonic terms. We have books that keep being referenced. We have reviews that go into much detail about aspects of the sound. There is so much "flowery prose" as Fransisco, Kedar and others mention. I know I am just as prone to this as others.
Years ago, after I began to attend Friday afternoon concerts at the BSO with my father, and on occasion Madfloyd and Al M., I remember always returning to one strong impression of the sonic experience of such an event: The sound is so clear. I always return to that one impression. It overrides all other impressions. Some might find it vague. Having talked to David over this last year, simplifying my system, understanding natural sound, I realize that David is right: music is not bits and pieces.
When I say the sound at the BSO is so clear, what I am also saying by omission, is that I don't think of the sound in that great hall in terms of sonic attributes, the audiophile glossary of terms, or broken down into bits and pieces. I think of the whole, the holistic experience, the gestalt. This is what natural sound means to me.
I never think about frequency response, tonal balance, "tight" bass, poles of articulation, grain, etch, fatigue, brightness, slam. When sitting in my seventh row center seat, I take in the sound, the music, and its overwhelming clarity. Clarity because this is energy at its source in a well designed real space, not some semblance of that energy after manipulation through the recording and reproduction chains.
David also talks about listening to a system or a component and hearing if anything draws attention to itself. As soon as his mind goes to some aspect of the sound rather than the gestalt of the music, he gets concerned. This is an indication that there may be something now quite natural. If the listener pay attention to a frequency range, or some specific detail, and keeps returning to that, it is not natural sound.
When I told David that I was now hearing "more" of what is on the recording and is sounded more convincing, he told me that was "natural resolution". A. J. van den Hul writes about getting more information from the grooves from his latest designs. Natural sound is the embodiment of energy being set free in the listening room, and of extracting the information from the recording. There are degrees of this. A modest system can do it as long as this energy and information is not corrupted. This goes back to the idea of doing no harm to the music. It it just that better components, a better system, better set up and a better room, all contribute to a better, more complete and more natural listening experience.
I knew I was getting closer and closer to natural sound during my period of experimentation when I thought less and less about sonic attributes, and more about the music. When Al and I sit in my room and he requests some violin concerto or choral piece, and we just sit and listen and talk about how brilliant Bach or Holst was, that is an indication of natural sound. When Al could no longer hear a high frequency accent from my vdh Grand Cru or Magico tweeter, that was an indication of a more natural sound. When we discuss Art Blakey's drum solo and the rhythm and impact of his sticks on the skin or metal rims rather than the tight bass or sparkly cymbals, that is natural sound. When we listen to Holst's chamber opera and marvel at how Death moves forward on the stage, and we are moved by Savitri's love for Satyavan and her fear of the forest creatures, that is natural sound.
This was made super clear to me the other night when I visited Al to hear his isolation transformers. With the transformers in place, I heard "tight" bass, a focused organ and voices, a slightly harsh triangle, a sharp trumpet, a restricted soundstage, and focused images. Without the transformers, I heard an expansion of energy in the room, a more convincing presentation of musicians on a stage, and the music, not the sonic attributes. This is how I knew that his system sounded more natural without the transformers.
The overwhelming impression for me at the BSO is one of clarity and the sheer energy from the instruments. When I can hear some of that in my listening room with much of the information intact and uncorrupted, I know the system is getting out of the way, my mind is not focusing on specific sonic attributes and the glossary of audiophile terms is the last thing I am thinking about. That is when I know the sound is approaching a sound that I perceive as natural.
Sorry to be boring Bonzo. You can make you own attempt to respond to Tim.
You may find the term "clarity" to be very vague. When it is the first and strongest impression I have when I hear live music at the BSO as opposed to reproduced music, it has meaning to me. When I have used the term in conversations with my local audiophile friends, or others, they seem to understand the term and why I am using it. It has meaning in the context I use it. In Vienna, the term was energy because I heard it from the edge of the pit in the morning when the hall was empty, and I heard it from the very back of the hall in the evening when the hall had a full audience.
I never think in terms of glare, grain, "tight" bass, articulation, or noise reduction, when listening to live music. I experience clarity and the expansion of energy into the hall. I think of the musical message, the story being told. As my system moves more toward natural sound, I find myself thinking in the same terms.
I think Tim is onto something when he writes that we should perhaps describe reproduced sound in similar ways we describe live sound. I am already moving in that direction. It may be vague and borrowing to some, and it may not fill review pages, but there I am. We seem to struggle to find meaningful ways to communicate, in my opinion in large part because the audiophile glossary of terms has lead us to think about reproduced sound in ways that we don't when we hear it live.
To heck with whether or not this is damn dull. It is my attempt to understand what is really going on.
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Both actually, Bonzo. Most of the halls I've been in have been pretty good. In my experience, the better the hall, the more clear is the sound. The music still comes through in mediocre halls, but perhaps not as powerfully or as enjoyable. One knows when he has been in a great hall. Some of the halls in New York have been notoriously disappointing and have needed modifications. People can hear it. What "it" is, is a bit more difficult to put into words.
The clarity I hear at the BSO is one of the things, perhaps the main thing besides the energy, that distinguishes that live sound, that natural sound, from what I hear from stereo systems.
I like the German word Gestalt. Forget the details of warm, dry, whatever halls or live ...live sounds live and that wholeness of character is what is so difficult to get right. Details be damned because when the Gestalt of a played back recording sounds more like live you will sense this and take note of it. That lack of the synthetic and layers that seem to be between are reduced to almost imperceptible levels.
Now, on a technical level it is the challenge to know what speakers, gear, cables, power, setup etc. push on closer to the Gestalt of feeling on is hearing the real thing.
AND it doesn’t matter if it is in a fine hall or just down an alleyway...you can nearly always distinguish live from replay even from a long way off...when your system can START to do that, sometimes, then you are going the right direction.
Some recordings will never let you get there, so cognizance of this variable is important and I have found it is easier to find out the truth with simpler music and not orchestras, which are rarely recorded well enough to tell much of anything and never sound live when played back no matter how ambitious the system.
I would not, for example, use Scherazade or Beethoven’s 9th to try to tune a system to sound real or even truly natural. Too large, too compromised in the recording and impossible to duplicate scale wise. Heck my ex could overload my old listening room with a single violin to where my ears pulsated from the pressurization.
A better choice, and chance of some degree of success, are small ensembles like violin sonatas with piano, trios or maybe quartets...something that might actually fit scale wise in your room. Try to imagine live players in your room and what that might sound like. Have you been to home concerts? I heard Schuberts famous string quintet live in a home in London and it was one of standout Musical experiences in my life. It is that scale I think can be more realistically strived for and to some degree obtained. Try that kind of music and see how close you are to an aural memory of something like that you have heard live...if you have heard something like that live.
I used to go to a very small jazz club in Zurich called The Gig (now gone sadly). You say literally a few feet from the performers and no amplification other than a bit for the bass. The presence and impact of that sound will be remembered until I die. A small jazz ensemble needs to sound THAT present and dynamic when a good recording is played at home. It can evoke those memories.
That is correct David. Diffuse was the wrong word when I described Vlad’s voice but what I tried to convey is that the image of the sound of his voice when my eyes were closed was not one of pinpoint precision. And that is when I realized something about the quality of natural sound.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but live music is still colored by the room it's played in.
Yes, that’s why I don’t think there’s an absolute sound. But natural sound falls within a range and we know it when we hear it Based on our memory and experience of hearing live music in different settings: Different halls, different instruments, different bows. Is the hall full or empty, is that violin on the subway or in a living room or on a great stage?
That's because they lack the refined awareness of your average audiophile.
.But you will still be able to tell...even without seeing...that it is live ...there will be little doubt. Therefore, it is still absolute sound.
It’s not about restrictions (you can still enjoy an orchestra even if your system can’t make it sound remotely close to live), it’s about realizing the limitations that nearly all systems have in achieving a semblance of realism with big classical works...and also realizing that most of the recordings of such works are not remotely good enough to convey with fidelity the signal. Smaller scale music recordings are far more likely to capture the full envelope of dynamics, micro and macro. They can be relatively easily made with little to no compression...a big work nearly always needs it.
I would refer to that as live sound versus reproduced sound, but that’s just semantics.
The absolute sound is all about gear and reproduced music as laid out in the glossary of terms and the magazines. It implies one sound and we know that a live violin can sound very different in different contexts. But if that is the convention that audiophiles want to keep referring to that’s fine.
Good thing you're not a scientist or engineer... because no it does not! That's philosophy. Sometimes when something works one way it's a good indicator it'll work another way. In this case? Actually somewhat likely, natural sound doesn't go away because you went from Chamber to Orchestra.
HP founded The Absolute Sound on the premise that we should strive in our systems to get closer to the absolute sound, which he defined as live unamplified instruments (or voices) in real space. The magazine has since been corrupted from that message by RH and JV.
I however, think this is the right goal to strive for even if unobtainable in reality...
Since getting large scale music sounding real is nearly impossible (the recordings alone make virtually so), the small scale approach is a better way forward, IMO, as you can get to within shouting distance and it usually works well on the bigger stuff.
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