Frantz-If we can agree on audio terms that are worthless, why can't we agree on a common vocabulary that is meaningful? I wish we could, but I predict we never will.
What does Musicality mean?
- Thread starter mep
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Frantz-If we can agree on audio terms that are worthless, why can't we agree on a common vocabulary that is meaningful? I wish we could, but I predict we never will.
Really Tim?? I thought neutral is the holy grail that every self-respecting audiophile was striving for. I thought neutral meant that your system was not adding or subtracting anything from the signal-just passing it through intact.
The common language is there, it's just that we often find ourselves disliking its implications. If we describe low-powered tube amps trying to drive moderately efficient speakers and we come up with "a thickness in the midrange, probably from the relatively high THD that, while not altogether unpleasant, congests instruments and voices in the critical frequencies and a slight compression of transient peaks, probably due to insufficient headroom to handle the most demanding passages," well, we'd have common language...English, I think it's called... but I doubt we'd have agreement.
Tim
So you didn't really mean what you said before when you defined neutral? Also, I agree that any super low-powered amp is going to have dynamic constriction. It takes lots of power to reproduce the sound of musical instruments and the human voice. Stand or sit anywhere next to a wind instrument, piano, drum kit, etc. and you know what I mean. Unamplified instruments are very powerful sounding when heard live. Unless you have speakers that are over 100dB effiecent, you need lots of power to come close to replicating their sound.
I was not quoting you but MEP as you can see from the attribution in my post.
OTOH, I do not agree with your statement. As a scientist, accuracy to me is neutral and, for a reproducing system, as opposed to a musical creation instrument, the accuracy fairly reveals the nature of the source, i.e., it is natural sounding. Analytical is generally misused by audiophiles when speaking of something that has a peak in the response which emphasizes some part of the spectrum. Analytical, per se, is transparent and revealing. Cold? I have no idea what that can mean in terms of sound, only in terms of a subjective perception.
It seems that a lot of the semantic confusion is due to the mangling of features/descriptions of the sound, itself, with those of the listener's subjective reactions to the sound. They require separate and distinct vocabularies.
OTOH, I do not agree with your statement. As a scientist, accuracy to me is neutral and, for a reproducing system, as opposed to a musical creation instrument, the accuracy fairly reveals the nature of the source, i.e., it is natural sounding. Analytical is generally misused by audiophiles when speaking of something that has a peak in the response which emphasizes some part of the spectrum. Analytical, per se, is transparent and revealing. Cold? I have no idea what that can mean in terms of sound, only in terms of a subjective perception.
It seems that a lot of the semantic confusion is due to the mangling of features/descriptions of the sound, itself, with those of the listener's subjective reactions to the sound. They require separate and distinct vocabularies.
Another, very simple, definition is: musical = "big" sound,with no harshness. It's easy to get one or the other, using different combinations of gear and techniques, the trick is to get both at once. I was just reminded of this, having had a quick listening session yesterday with the friend who's been encouraged to do some heavy duty tweaking. He's getting some excellent results with the "bigness", and getting very excited by where the sound's going: at the moment CD is pulling ahead a bit, but analogue is also very "big". The trouble at the moment is that the CD sound is still being pulled back too easily into harshness by one or two things, instantly losing musicality.
Of course live sound has no trouble with this balancing act: can be "big" -- just another word for dynamic, no constriction ever of the peaks -- almost without limit; harshness is purely a function of the instruments' intrinsic tone and reactions of the bits and pieces of the environment.
Frank
Of course live sound has no trouble with this balancing act: can be "big" -- just another word for dynamic, no constriction ever of the peaks -- almost without limit; harshness is purely a function of the instruments' intrinsic tone and reactions of the bits and pieces of the environment.
Frank
I was about ready to say that if you have to put a descriptor in quotes yourself, you know it is vague; it is time to define it. Then you did. But you still didn't quite get there, because surely you understand that there is no such thing as "without limit"
, that there is a common, well-understood term for this "bigness," ie: dynamic range, and that it is understood to mean the range between the quietest sound that can be heard above the noise floor to the loudest sound a system is capable of producing.We have our common language. I wonder why we keep deliberately obscuring it?
Tim
I was about ready to say that if you have to put a descriptor in quotes yourself, you know it is vague; it is time to define it. Then you did. But you still didn't quite get there, because surely you understand that there is no such thing as "without limit"
We have our common language. I wonder why we keep deliberately obscuring it?
Tim
Tim,
This is a very simple one - just because your common language definition of dynamic range can not describe what Frank wants to describe. What he calls "bigness" is due to a combination of many factors, not only dynamic range. I have referred to something similar it as "powerful sound" in other threads.
The main question is not the language - it is that Franck and many of us, me included, are most of the time describing things that you do not valuate enough or even believe they exist.
Maybe, but not this time. Frank was pretty specific:
Now, do I believe that exists in Frank's home theater in a box? That is another question.
FWIW, I think most of what subjectivists describe exists. I just think their descriptions are unnecessarily vague, and glamorized. Why? I think it suits what they want to believe. If you believe that "sound stage" is a function of the recording, the speakers and the room, and that all the signal chain in between can do to facilitate it is be as transparent as possible, it makes something like "now I can really hear the ambient space of the Village Vanguard; the slight increase in depth when the kitchen door opens..." upon upgrading DACs with almost exactly the same objective performance actually seem as silly as it is.
Tim
Well, not everybody speaks english and not everybody that speaks english speaks in techie english. If things seem glamorized or poetic I think it's okay. What's important to me is if the point gets across.
How I understand Art's use of the term musical is perhaps a tad simplistic. Like Art I've spent time in environments meant for working in sound and environments tuned purely for pleasure. Ha! Here's where it get's dicey. Sitting in front of a console for hours at a time, even if the chair is a darned Aeron, hearing every squeak is not everybody's cup of tea. Not even most engineers. The working and recreational listening mindset is totally different. The reason there are so few good mastering engineers is that these are the rare guys that have the ability to switch back and forth so as not to miss the forest for the trees. When Art says "musical" I'm thinking the guy means the forest. Like live, the imaging isn't razor sharp but it doesn't mean that there isn't ample separation or that the presentation is not coherent. The environment just allows for things like longer reverberant trails and some degree of masking. It sounds more natural because chances are past exposure to actual events and the expectations that follow were not ultra-clean and distortion free.
How I understand Art's use of the term musical is perhaps a tad simplistic. Like Art I've spent time in environments meant for working in sound and environments tuned purely for pleasure. Ha! Here's where it get's dicey. Sitting in front of a console for hours at a time, even if the chair is a darned Aeron, hearing every squeak is not everybody's cup of tea. Not even most engineers. The working and recreational listening mindset is totally different. The reason there are so few good mastering engineers is that these are the rare guys that have the ability to switch back and forth so as not to miss the forest for the trees. When Art says "musical" I'm thinking the guy means the forest. Like live, the imaging isn't razor sharp but it doesn't mean that there isn't ample separation or that the presentation is not coherent. The environment just allows for things like longer reverberant trails and some degree of masking. It sounds more natural because chances are past exposure to actual events and the expectations that follow were not ultra-clean and distortion free.
Jack
I get your point but I would have preferred a term less nebulous than musical... Speaking for myself i have hard tears coming from my eyes from crappy computer speakers! Oh yes from the lowly thing that came with a Copaq machine back in 2004! The music was ..musical.. not the components ... I think once the performance is good, a person who cares mostly about music, hear through the flaws, thus my mention of "PRAT" and "musical" as being worthless in term of describing anything especially when we can use terms you just did in your last post.
I would have preferred in evaluating my room through a recording to be able to go with simple things that leave no ambiguity... This is after all a scientific endeavor with a clear objective goal... trying to listen to something "musical" in this context seems inappropriate.
It is not a debate about what what audiophile philosophy one espouses, but rather of a term that is devoid of an objective meaning. I remember back then there was a story about a fellow in the 1960 who loved the "performance" before a live concert when people kept wondering what he was talking about someone finally realized that for this fellow, the tuning of instruments was ta piece of music. Something that was more to his liking that the actual (European Baroque) Music.. I doubt that for most of us the sound of an orchestra tunings its instrument would be termed as music ...
I get your point but I would have preferred a term less nebulous than musical... Speaking for myself i have hard tears coming from my eyes from crappy computer speakers! Oh yes from the lowly thing that came with a Copaq machine back in 2004! The music was ..musical.. not the components ... I think once the performance is good, a person who cares mostly about music, hear through the flaws, thus my mention of "PRAT" and "musical" as being worthless in term of describing anything especially when we can use terms you just did in your last post.
I would have preferred in evaluating my room through a recording to be able to go with simple things that leave no ambiguity... This is after all a scientific endeavor with a clear objective goal... trying to listen to something "musical" in this context seems inappropriate.
It is not a debate about what what audiophile philosophy one espouses, but rather of a term that is devoid of an objective meaning. I remember back then there was a story about a fellow in the 1960 who loved the "performance" before a live concert when people kept wondering what he was talking about someone finally realized that for this fellow, the tuning of instruments was ta piece of music. Something that was more to his liking that the actual (European Baroque) Music.. I doubt that for most of us the sound of an orchestra tunings its instrument would be termed as music ...
You'll find no disagreement from me Frantz, I also hate the term PRAT and also do not subscribe to calling any piece of equipment as musical. They're all just tools anyway. In my mind, just as a musical instrument needs a musician (he doesn't have to be good) to be musical, a piece of equipment needs the music that instrument plays
While being "musical" really doesn't mean much when describing the origin of the sound, I still think it can be a descriptor passable from the perspective of being the recipient of the information. While I would love to smack a dealer on the upside of his head if he said I should buy something because it is musical, it would be more out of his being presumptuous rather than vague. Okay make that 60/40. Hahahaha. The thing is I think vague as it is, like PRAT and it's accompanying staccato like implications, musicality carries that association with a presentation that while perhaps not ultimately realistic is "easy" to enjoy because mainly it errs on the side of omission rather than commission. Transients are softened, tones allowed to be enhanced with added harmonics, decays don't trail off very neatly sometimes running longer because of the longer reverberant trails. It's like the teddy bear of the audio world. Soft, warm, cuddly, makes you feel good. That is until you feel like blowing of steam and you realize Kurt Cobain sounds like he's wearing Courtney's underwear or you want to groove and you realize you can hardly hear Shelly Manne's high hat and it sounds like paper. Still, it's a choice. Not mine, not yours and not Tim's but for a guy who just wants to unwind after a hard day's work listening to comfort music, I can't really say I blame 'em for making that choice.
While being "musical" really doesn't mean much when describing the origin of the sound, I still think it can be a descriptor passable from the perspective of being the recipient of the information. While I would love to smack a dealer on the upside of his head if he said I should buy something because it is musical, it would be more out of his being presumptuous rather than vague. Okay make that 60/40. Hahahaha. The thing is I think vague as it is, like PRAT and it's accompanying staccato like implications, musicality carries that association with a presentation that while perhaps not ultimately realistic is "easy" to enjoy because mainly it errs on the side of omission rather than commission. Transients are softened, tones allowed to be enhanced with added harmonics, decays don't trail off very neatly sometimes running longer because of the longer reverberant trails. It's like the teddy bear of the audio world. Soft, warm, cuddly, makes you feel good. That is until you feel like blowing of steam and you realize Kurt Cobain sounds like he's wearing Courtney's underwear or you want to groove and you realize you can hardly hear Shelly Manne's high hat and it sounds like paper. Still, it's a choice. Not mine, not yours and not Tim's but for a guy who just wants to unwind after a hard day's work listening to comfort music, I can't really say I blame 'em for making that choice.
Fair enough. Everybody here writes in English.
I'm not very techie. And neither is any of the language I've used in this thread. I'm not looking for techie descriptions.
The point is that the point doesn't get across. "Musical" can be Naim or SET, and they couldn't be more different.
Excellent. If more audiophiles would admit to the above they wouldn't have to make up new words for their gear's performance. We would be able to choose between the precision of reproducing the recording as accurately as possible and a less precise image, an extension of reverb trail that does not exist on the recording, a little more distortion/less channel separation because it makes us feel a little bit more like we're listening to a live performance. The problem is that few audiophiles will admit to that. They will believe that measurements are wrong, blind listening tests are invalid and vinyl resolves more detail than digital in spite of the data, to protect their belief in the superiority of their preference. I understand that, sitting here listening to what is essentially a digital studio monitoring system, I'm getting a level of quiet, distortion and precision that does not exist in a live performance. Some call it analytical, I call it beautiful. But the audiophile sitting there listening to a turntable, an SET amp and a pair of horns seldom seems to be able to embrace the equal and opposite reality. You're the exception, Jack. Thanks.
Tim
In the end it is what it is and you either like it or you don't. My bedroom system is of the teddy bear variety by design. It does what it's supposed to do so I'm happy. Nobody should have to make excuses for what they like or have to justify it IMO. One guy was in my listening room and said the cymbals sounded harsh. Hmmmm. Cymbals ARE harsh at 110 friggin' dB I said. We had a good laugh.
Some audiophiles will not admit it because they feel the above was not true. The act of recording changes the reality – pin point, multimic, added ambience, etc, either by technical limitations or because the sound engineers want to recreate a more plausible image of the real event. Some systems show that they fulfilled their ambitions, and recreate a more pleasurable recreation (yes, pleasure can have a good sense, if you like life music). It is difficult to describe it objectively. Should we forget it or ban suspicious words for fear of corrupting the innocent minds of young or non-endured audiophiles?
We should feel happy for that!
I can not understand what you mean by this comment.
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