What's Best? The Absolute Sound or today's High End Systems?

002_Harry.Excited.Maggies.jpg
Back in the day of Harry Pearson and the evolution of the High End Audio, Pearson, in the pages of The Absolute Sound, defined the "absolute sound" as unamplified acoustic instruments and/or vocals performed in a real space, usually a concert hall. The evaluation of reproduction systems (HiFi equipment) was a based on a subjective comparison to the "absolute sound." The best systems came the closest to the sound of a live performance in a real space.

Over the last several years I have been a regular attendee of live music in San Francisco at Davies Symphony Hall and The Metropolitan Opera House. I have come to the realization that, in my opinion, the best sound and musical enjoyment happens at home with my highly evolved system, and I question weather it's worth the expense and effort to attend, other than for the occasional performance of a favorite artist.

I've tried various seating choices, always seeking the best. But more and more I have come to the conclusion that the best seat in the house (at least sonically) is at home! Do other WBF members share this view?
 
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IMO, you are asking the wrong question. What is "absolute bestist one that you should frame your system after"? No one is suggesting such a thing. Some of us are simply suggesting that some standard should be used for evaluating the accuracy of a system. I don't happen to think that there is an "absolute sound", having been to many live venues. There is a range that instruments sound like in a range of real spaces, and we can hear that and understand that, and we can refer to our memories of that for guidance. That is all. You are free to use whatever standard you wish, and others are free to use acoustic instruments in real spaces. It's all good.

Peter, since others on this thread said "live instruments" are the only reference for a system I simply inquired how going forward this changes as classical and jazz aren't broadly listened to. I would agree with your statement - but some on this thread consider us "Bose Wave Radio fans" for using other amplified music genres. My, what heathens we are compared with the anointed ones.

You might also not know that most of my audiophile friends don't listen to classical music. The horror!
 
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Peter, since others on this thread said "live instruments" are the only reference for a system I simply inquired how going forward this changes as classical and jazz aren't broadly listened to. I would agree with your statement - but some on this thread consider us "Bose Wave Radio fans" for using other amplified music genres. My, what heathens we are compared with the anointed ones.

You might also not know that most of my audiophile friends don't listen to classical music. The horror!

Keith, I don't know, nor do I really care, what your audiophile friends listen to. That's up to them. I guess the question posed in the OP is: Do your audiophile friends prefer the seat in their listening room, or the seat at the concert venue? Someone suggested that is apples and oranges. I prefer oranges for breakfast, and apples for lunch. And I can't hear Ella Fitzgerald or Heifetz in a concert venue. But then, I can't hear the local sax player on my record player either.
 
Keith, I don't know, nor do I really care, what your audiophile friends listen to. That's up to them. I guess the question posed in the OP is: Do your audiophile friends prefer the seat in their listening room, or the seat at the concert venue? Someone suggested that is apples and oranges. I prefer oranges for breakfast, and apples for lunch. And I can't hear Ella Fitzgerald or Heifetz in a concert venue. But then, I can't hear the local sax player on my record player either.

I'm sorry Peter, but we are talking past each other. I"m tired and have unsubscribed.

I actually apologize for causing a stir, but I'm also tired of some who chastise people's taste in music or references. Even another poster referenced it mid-way through the thread and related it to the OP.

Sincerely,

MTV Generation
 
I'm sorry Peter, but we are talking past each other. I"m tired and have unsubscribed.

I actually apologize for causing a stir, but I'm also tired of some who chastise people's taste in music or references. Even another poster referenced it mid-way through the thread and related it to the OP.

Sincerely,

MTV Generation

Yes, it is bothersome and, IMHO, uncalled for. But some people do like to judge as if it is only their opinion that matters and is relevant. And if someone disagrees with their "subjective" perspective, they become condescending. Oh well.

Threads tend to diverge in directions not meant by the OP. In the world of audio forums, this is oftentimes normal.
 
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Column A: Live acoustic music
Column B: Reproduced acoustic music
Column C: music sent through wires, at home or abroad
 
OP seems to be advocating some sort of path of least resistance. Why would he even bother to ask this rhetorical question? What's his point?

Live music is LIVE.
Reproduced music at home is reproduced music.

The Photoshopped image of HP is tasteless, at best.
 
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I think you misread my post. Sorry for being unclear, I was trying to be ironic. I was not trying to insult. I think your premise is sound.

I never understood the term 'absolute sound' in the day. I eventually came to believe it was artificial in order to generate a subjective standard presided over by HP so that he could be the grand anointer and dethroner of audio gear. He was successful in that regard, but the standard is so illusory as to be meaningless.

I have heard on a couple of occasions a session being recorded, then played back through an audio system. I could barely hear myself what the microphones heard, and the live vs. recorded was diametrically different. Those were simple sessions without the subsequent interventions of mastering gear to further confuse the process, much less the limitations of microphones, recording gear etc. A common complaint from musicians is that recordings never sound like their own instruments to their ears.

All stereo systems sound different. every piece of equipment sounds different, every phono cartridge sounds different, all the permutations sound different. Even if people were present at the recording venue, they would all be in different seating arrangements hearing different things at the same session. Things can’t be that different across the board and then be compared to an imperfectly perceived and remembered original.

There are also recordings that probably allow a better perception of the music played than actually being present at the performance. Maybe the standard should be reversed, and the question should be why don’t more live performances sound as good as the comparative home recordings played on high end equipment.

So I do blame HP for generating a persistent apocryphal standard. In an article of his that I read he was reviewing a record played in a hall he was familiar with, and he was actually reviewing the equipment based on how well it rendered the 3D image of the hall according to his aural memory. I thought he was either sincerely deluded or he was just spinning it. Differentially placed microphones and mastering anomalies would assure that there could be no meaningful comparison to begin with.

I like this post.

There have always been influential reviewers that set a standard. In the 80's it was the Linnites who created the church of Linn with the only lawful entrants being NAIM where it was all about PRAT - as such no other turntable got a look in within the UK until the late 80's when both Pink Triangle and Roksan challenged it - as such we never appreciated DD's from Japan and many others.

it's within the context of the cartridge I think the nail has truly been hammered on the head. If, on the one hand we strive for perceived neutrality, then why do we get so many cartridge flavours so to speak.

I started a thread on this forum about no longer caring a about neutrality and feeling all the better for it.

By way of analogy one can strive for the perfectly balanced diet of salads, lean protein and water, and never enjoy it one jot save to boast that 'nothing tastes as good as slim' - or maybe you should just enjoy food in moderation and not go neurotic. My point is that you can strive to a notional ideal and stress yourself over it and as such never enjoy what you are listening to.

Pearson may well have been totally correct about 'the absolute sound' as a reference but it is fundamentally flawed - nobody save the very wealthy can fit a whole orchestra into their lounge and play the real SPL's of an orchestra - therefore the system is trying to create an illusion/acoustic that is, in itself an aural trick - as such it can never really be the same.
 
If you don't stringently cater to the notion that live sound is the Grand Audio Goal, you have branded yourself a blithering audio Neanderthal without credibility or sensitivity. Good luck with that. Standards are standards.

.

Hahahaha, Loved that comment. Not sure why people are taking that personally :)
 
"For those of us who love all things musical—concerts, the smell of concert halls, rehearsals, programs, instruments, composers, and their biographies, sheet music, instrument makers, recordings, engineers, studios, tape recorders, microphones, amplifiers, speakers, pre-amps, cables, record-cleaning machines, and so on ad nauseum—the live concert is an essential experience. But it is certainly not the total music experience. It is foolish, and I dare say, intellectually Neanderthalic to spend one moment on arguing about whether or not the music system in our home can reproduce a live concert experience. It never could, nor is it intended to do so. It is a tautology to say that the only accurate reproduction of a live concert is a live. concert, and a vinyl disc is not a musical event.
I would rather posture to you, that the home music system is an art form, like a painting or a piece of sculpture. Its intention is not to imitate the ''real'', but rather to represent it, to symbolize it and, in the process, gain the great power that symbols and illusion possess. Music in our homes is the icon of live musical performance and, in many ways, more powerful than the real-life musical experience. Should I be judging a painting of a rose by asking the question, "Does it look real?" And languishing over a painting of a rose in no way diminishes the ecstasy of a rose garden.
For the music lover who needs more than live concerts, for those who have a need to study, for those whose passions liberate their intellectual energies, the home music system permits a level of musical experience that is one of the great aesthetic revolutions of the century. Audio technology has permitted me to "feel" music at I a level of intensity denied all previous generations. I have in my record collection the wealth of centuries and the wisdom of many cultures; I can dance to them, sing to them, all in my own private abandonment. Did Louis XIV have this treasure? I
How do you study the Goldberg variations? After reading Wanda Landowski's book on Bach, can you go to a concert to understand her phrasing? (Hardly, being she is in Heaven with Johann.) Have you an interest in music played on original I instruments? How many concerts offer such an experience? In a single evening, where can you go to listen to Tibetan chants, Turkish water-wheel music, Georgian chants, or Tchenko?"
Therefore, I would be clear about the audio designers intent. We cannot create a facsimile of a live musical event—just the appropriate illusion so our disbelief is transcended and our musical souls jump for joy."
Yours truly, H.R. from: Dr. Gizmo's ( Harvey Rosenberg ( RIP july 2001) , 1984 Classic " UNDERSTANDING TUBE ELECTRONICS" )...
 
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AARON COPLAND
"An imaginative mind is essential to the creation of art in any medium, but it is even more essential in music precisely because music provides the broadest possible vista for the imagination since it is the freest, the most abstract, the least fettered of all the arts; no story content, no pictorial representation, no regularity of meter, no strict limitation of frame need hamper the intuitive functioning of the imaginative mind. In saying this I am not forgetting that music has its disciplines: its strict forms and regular rhythms, and even in some cases its programmatic content . . .​
Listening is a talent, and like any other talent or gift, we possess it in varying degrees. I have found among music-lovers a marked tendency to underestimate and mistrust this talent, rather than to overestimate it. The reason for these feelings of inferiority are difficult to determine. Since there is no reliable way of measuring the gift for listening, there is no reliable way of reassuring those who misjudge themselves. I should say that there are two principal requisites for talented listening: first, the ability to open oneself up to musical experiences; and secondly, the ability to evaluate critically that experience. Neither of these is possible without a certain native gift. Listening implies an inborn talent of some degree, which again like any other talent, can be trained and developed. This talent has a certain 'purity' about it. We exercise it, so to speak, for ourselves alone; there is nothing to be gained from it in a material sense. Listening is its own reward; there are no prizes to be won, no contests of creative listening. But I hold that person fortunate who has the gift, for there are few pleasures in art greater than the secure sense that one can recognize beauty when one comes upon it. When I speak of the gifted listener I am thinking of the non musician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me. I know, or I think I know how the professional musician will react to music. But with the amateur it is different; one never can be sure how he will react. Nothing really tells him what he should be hearing, no treatize or chart or guide can ever sufficiently pull together the various strands of a complex piece of music, only the inrushing floodlight of one's own imagination can do that . . .​
The amateur may be too reverent or too carried away; too much in love with the separate section or too limited in his enthusiasm for a single school or composer. Mere professionalism, however, is not at all a guarantee of intelligent listening. Executant ability, even of the highest order, is no guarantee of instinct in judgment. The sensitive amateur, just because he lacks the prejudices and preconceptions of the professional musician, is sometimes a surer guide to the true quality of a piece of music. The ideal listener, it seems to me, would combine the preparation of the trained professional with the innocence of the intuitive amateur. All musicians, creators and performers alike, think of the gifted listener as a key figure in the musical universe. . .
The ideal listener, above all else, possesses the ability to lend himself the power of music. The power of music to move us is something quite special as an artistic phenomenon. My intention is not to delve into its basis in physics—my scientific equipment is much too rudimentary—but rather to concentrate on its emotional overtones . . .​
All this is of minor concern to the gifted listener—primarily intent, as he should be, on the enjoyment of music. Without theories and without preconceived notions of what music ought to be, he lends himself as a sentient human being to the power of music. What often surprises me is the basically primitive nature of this relationship. From self-observation and from observing audience reaction, I would be inclined to say that we all listen on an elementary plane of musical consciousness. I was startled to find this curious phrase in Santayana concerning music: "the most abstract of arts," he remarks, "serves the dumbest emotions." Yes, I like this idea that we respond to music from a primal and almost brutish level—dumbly, as it were, for on that level we are grounded.​
That is fundamentally the way we all hear music—gifted and ungifted alike—and all the analytical, historical, textual material on or about the music heard, interesting though it may be, cannot—and I venture to say if not—alter that fundamental relationship. . .​
I stress this point, not so much because the layman is likely to forget it, but because the professional musician tends to lose sight of it. This does not signify, by any means, that I do not believe in the possibility of the refinement of musical taste. Quite the contrary. I am convinced that the higher forms of music imply a listener whose musical taste has been cultivated either through listening or through training or both. On a more modest level, refinement in most musical taste begins with the ability to distinguish subtle nuances of feeling. Anyone can tell the difference between a sad piece and a joyous one. The talented listener recognizes not merely the joyous quality of a piece, but also the specific shade of joyousness—whether it be troubled joy, delicate joy, carefree joy, hysterical joy, and so forth. I add "and so forth'' advisedly, for it covers an infinitude of shadings that cannot be named, as I have named these few, because of music's incommensurability with language . .​
What happens is that a masterwork awakens in us reactions of a spiritual order that are already in us, only waiting to be aroused. When Beethoven's music exhorts us to "be noble," ''be compassionate,'' "be strong," he awakens moral ideas that are already within us. His music cannot persuade: it makes evident. It does not shape conduct: it is itself the exemplification of a particular way of looking at life. A concert is not a sermon. It is a performance—a reincarnation of a series of ideas implicit in the work of art.
The dream of every musician who loves his art is to involve gifted listeners everywhere as an active force in the musical community. The attitude of each individual listener, especially the gifted listener, is the principal resource we have in bringing to fruition the immense musical potentialities of our own time . . .​
Music and Imagination, Aaron Copland​
 
I like music. It's far more rewarding than counting the number of angels on a pinhead.
 
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View attachment 59606
Back in the day of Harry Pearson and the evolution of the High End Audio, Pearson, in the pages of The Absolute Sound, defined the "absolute sound" as unamplified acoustic instruments and/or vocals performed in a real space, usually a concert hall. The evaluation of reproduction systems (HiFi equipment) was a based on a subjective comparison to the "absolute sound." The best systems came the closest to the sound of a live performance in a real space.

Over the last several years I have been a regular attendee of live music in San Francisco at Davies Symphony Hall and The Metropolitan Opera House. I have come to the realization that, in my opinion, the best sound and musical enjoyment happens at home with my highly evolved system, and I question weather it's worth the expense and effort to attend, other than for the occasional performance of a favorite artist.

I've tried various seating choices, always seeking the best. But more and more I have come to the conclusion that the best seat in the house (at least sonically) is at home! Do other WBF members share this view?
I think it might come down to how "Highly Evolved" your preference for the Immediacy of "Live Tonal Production"is as opposed to the amount of Recorded Sound Sculpting that was done to this same Tonal Production of the same "Live Performance" might be.

An incomplete reply to your question ,at best, but Harry P might have oversimplified his definition of "The Absolute Sound" a bit too much for myself.
 
I would rather posture to you, that the home music system is an art form, like a painting or a piece of sculpture. Its intention is not to imitate the ''real'', but rather to represent it, to symbolize it and, in the process, gain the great power that symbols and illusion possess. Music in our homes is the icon of live musical performance and, in many ways, more powerful than the real-life musical experience. Should I be judging a painting of a rose by asking the question, "Does it look real?" And languishing over a painting of a rose in no way diminishes the ecstasy of a rose garden.

Interesting notion this. The home stereo as performance art. I suppose youtube videos are its gallery. Seems then to lead to the somewhat romantic, somewhat fanciful, notion of the audiophile as artiste creating the illusion on the palette of his home.

But no one (?) believes the illusion is the reality - that would be what Rosenberg's straw dog argument chides as neanderthalish. But neither does R's case quite lead one to life in the cave amongst the forms, living ia vida icon, preferring it to the real thing.

Still a nice bit of flourish, to be told (again) that music brings us joy. ;->
 
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AARON COPLAND
"An imaginative mind is essential to the creation of art in any medium, but it is even more essential in music precisely because music provides the broadest possible vista for the imagination since it is the freest, the most abstract, the least fettered of all the arts; no story content, no pictorial representation, no regularity of meter, no strict limitation of frame need hamper the intuitive functioning of the imaginative mind. In saying this I am not forgetting that music has its disciplines: its strict forms and regular rhythms, and even in some cases its programmatic content . . .​
Listening is a talent, and like any other talent or gift, we possess it in varying degrees. I have found among music-lovers a marked tendency to underestimate and mistrust this talent, rather than to overestimate it. The reason for these feelings of inferiority are difficult to determine. Since there is no reliable way of measuring the gift for listening, there is no reliable way of reassuring those who misjudge themselves. I should say that there are two principal requisites for talented listening: first, the ability to open oneself up to musical experiences; and secondly, the ability to evaluate critically that experience. Neither of these is possible without a certain native gift. Listening implies an inborn talent of some degree, which again like any other talent, can be trained and developed. This talent has a certain 'purity' about it. We exercise it, so to speak, for ourselves alone; there is nothing to be gained from it in a material sense. Listening is its own reward; there are no prizes to be won, no contests of creative listening. But I hold that person fortunate who has the gift, for there are few pleasures in art greater than the secure sense that one can recognize beauty when one comes upon it. When I speak of the gifted listener I am thinking of the non musician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me. I know, or I think I know how the professional musician will react to music. But with the amateur it is different; one never can be sure how he will react. Nothing really tells him what he should be hearing, no treatize or chart or guide can ever sufficiently pull together the various strands of a complex piece of music, only the inrushing floodlight of one's own imagination can do that . . .​
The amateur may be too reverent or too carried away; too much in love with the separate section or too limited in his enthusiasm for a single school or composer. Mere professionalism, however, is not at all a guarantee of intelligent listening. Executant ability, even of the highest order, is no guarantee of instinct in judgment. The sensitive amateur, just because he lacks the prejudices and preconceptions of the professional musician, is sometimes a surer guide to the true quality of a piece of music. The ideal listener, it seems to me, would combine the preparation of the trained professional with the innocence of the intuitive amateur. All musicians, creators and performers alike, think of the gifted listener as a key figure in the musical universe. . .
The ideal listener, above all else, possesses the ability to lend himself the power of music. The power of music to move us is something quite special as an artistic phenomenon. My intention is not to delve into its basis in physics—my scientific equipment is much too rudimentary—but rather to concentrate on its emotional overtones . . .​
All this is of minor concern to the gifted listener—primarily intent, as he should be, on the enjoyment of music. Without theories and without preconceived notions of what music ought to be, he lends himself as a sentient human being to the power of music. What often surprises me is the basically primitive nature of this relationship. From self-observation and from observing audience reaction, I would be inclined to say that we all listen on an elementary plane of musical consciousness. I was startled to find this curious phrase in Santayana concerning music: "the most abstract of arts," he remarks, "serves the dumbest emotions." Yes, I like this idea that we respond to music from a primal and almost brutish level—dumbly, as it were, for on that level we are grounded.​
That is fundamentally the way we all hear music—gifted and ungifted alike—and all the analytical, historical, textual material on or about the music heard, interesting though it may be, cannot—and I venture to say if not—alter that fundamental relationship. . .​
I stress this point, not so much because the layman is likely to forget it, but because the professional musician tends to lose sight of it. This does not signify, by any means, that I do not believe in the possibility of the refinement of musical taste. Quite the contrary. I am convinced that the higher forms of music imply a listener whose musical taste has been cultivated either through listening or through training or both. On a more modest level, refinement in most musical taste begins with the ability to distinguish subtle nuances of feeling. Anyone can tell the difference between a sad piece and a joyous one. The talented listener recognizes not merely the joyous quality of a piece, but also the specific shade of joyousness—whether it be troubled joy, delicate joy, carefree joy, hysterical joy, and so forth. I add "and so forth'' advisedly, for it covers an infinitude of shadings that cannot be named, as I have named these few, because of music's incommensurability with language . .​
What happens is that a masterwork awakens in us reactions of a spiritual order that are already in us, only waiting to be aroused. When Beethoven's music exhorts us to "be noble," ''be compassionate,'' "be strong," he awakens moral ideas that are already within us. His music cannot persuade: it makes evident. It does not shape conduct: it is itself the exemplification of a particular way of looking at life. A concert is not a sermon. It is a performance—a reincarnation of a series of ideas implicit in the work of art.
The dream of every musician who loves his art is to involve gifted listeners everywhere as an active force in the musical community. The attitude of each individual listener, especially the gifted listener, is the principal resource we have in bringing to fruition the immense musical potentialities of our own time . . .​
Music and Imagination, Aaron Copland​
Sometimes I think that our only true gift as listeners is our ability to let go of our boundaries and just be in their music.

I believe music IS the art and we are at best humble alchemists with Shosty and Beethoven as our true and dark matter. We share in their gift.
 
Sometimes I think that our only true gift as listeners is our ability to let go of our boundaries and just be in their music.

I believe music IS the art and we are at best humble alchemists with Shosty and Beethoven as our true and dark matter. We share in their gift.

Appropriate to your referencing the Copland passage and talking about 'letting go' ...

In his book "What to Listen for in Music", composer Copland describes how a fundamental aspect of enjoying music takes place on a “sensuous plane,” “a kind of brainless but attractive state of mind [that] is engendered by the mere sound appeal of music.” This is the "innocence of the intuituve amateur." I'd say we may be alchemists in terms of creating systems, but not in terms of listening - the innocence comes from not making or causing the "attractive state" - but allowing it to happen. Surely quality reproduction helps. Having "the preparation of the trained professional" helps us appreciate the creations of of Bach and Stravinsky on a different less transitory plane.
 

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