Background:
This 'guest editorial' is Valin's rehash of his earlier categorization of listeners that is similar to
@Ron Resnick 's "A group here developed in 2016 four alternative, but not mutually exclusive, objectives of high-end audio: ..." (cf. for example
here and
here.) IIrc Valin's original was part of a review - if you can find that, please post a link.
Discussion:
I submit that Valin's take on what he refers to as
the “absolute sound” bunch is something of a straw dog characterization, or at least misguided. He argues that
"the idea of the absolute sound is not unproblematic." Aside from a cheap double negative (which tells us nothing) Valin plays off the word "absolute" to make his case
"The trouble is that the absolute sound ...isn’t absolute."
V writes: "
What you hear in a concert hall is fundamentally dependent on all kinds of variables (e.g., the hall’s acoustics, where you’re seated in the hall, how the players themselves are spaced on the stage floor, what kind of instruments they are playing, how “warmed up” or not those instruments are, etc.). The result of all this relativity is that what sounds “absolute” to you in your orchestra section seat ... will be ... different than what sounds “absolute” to another listener who sits in the center of the orchestra section or nearer to the strings, or in a loge or a balcony seat."
So goes Valin's case: there is no absolute sound that every listener experiences because no listener has an experience identical to any other listener; therefore the notion of an or the absolute sound is ... err, uh, ... not unproblematic. (Thanks Jonathan.) Okay, so what - that no two people can simultaneously occupy the same space and time does not change the fact that both or many hear the same instruments in the same hall during the same concert.
Valin, imo, steers assessment of "the absolute sound" in the wrong direction. He seems to construe the notion of 'absolute' as meaning 'identical for all' or perhaps 'universally shared'. That's silly. There's the straw dog.
Ron comments in his account of the 2016 WBF effort:
Trying to answer “what is the absolute sound” actually seems to me to confuse the issue." And that seems correct although I'm not sure if any of that effort's four objectives quite hit the mark.
The notion of "the absolute sound" has been around since Pearson started his magazine. It is fine for a magazine name, but as Valin's misconstrual and discussion here have shown it ultimately is not helpful for use as an objective or as a reference and ultimately lacks explanatory or expository power. (If you like it or want to use it, fine go ahead - I reject cancelling words.)
If this leaves a hole in Valin's list or the WBF objectives I suggest filling it with the notion of the sound of real music. It does not require a specific concert seat to know the sound of a piano or a bassoon or a celesta playing. I cannot hear what you hear but we both can point and say I'm hearing that. We can go from one concert hall to the next or to a recital or practice room and agree, yes, that is the sound of a violin and not the the sound of a viola or an accordian. Having had the experience maybe a few times we can say "I know what a violin sounds like" without having to experience one when you say that.
I suggest we say things like: "I want my stereo to sound like real music" or "I want a believable sound" or "I want a natural sound". That doesn't mean it has to sound like any specific instrument (Jascha's) or orchestra (Chicago Symphony) or hall (Carnegie), but if it is violin music, for example, it needs to
sound like a real violin.