I am guessing as a professional you must have to consider all aspects of production, determine where your priorities lie and what issues to worry about and what not to worry about to get 98-99% of the variables right 100% of the time.
Yes and no. Sure, we don’t have endless time to achieve some notion of perfection, there has to be a concept of good enough, of prioritisation and managing time effectively/productively, of reaching a point where worrying about an issue/s is just wasting time or even counterproductive. I have never been 100% happy with any recording I’ve ever been involved in, even the particularly acclaimed/successful ones. On the other side of the coin, we have years of listening skills training and professional experience, the top commercial studios have custom systems, even custom designed equipment, in custom constructions/environments designed by the best acousticians and costing millions. In addition, we have various tools to facilitate the process, for example, we can “solo” every channel and custom groups of channels. In other words, we can listen to any individual channel/instrument/sound or any combination of instruments in isolation from the rest of the mix, in whatever way and at whatever volume we want. For instance, we can listen to just the lead guitar on it’s own, with no interference or masking by other instruments or just say the lead vocal and lead guitar together, or just the snare drum or kick drum on their own and turn up the volume in the quiet bits. Obviously, this allows us to hear a level of fine detail way beyond what any consumer can, even ignoring the listening skills training and studio systems/environments, because a consumer obviously cannot deconstruct a mix down to it’s constituent channels or manipulate them.
Relying on settled theory and practice is a must, and everything else is unimportant. This is how the recording and production industry has operated for decades, and digital recording for more 40 years. I get it.
I don’t know where on Earth you got this from but it’s pretty much the exact opposite of the actual facts! The whole history of music recording, editing, mixing and mastering from at least the early 1950’s has been based on experimentation, on trying different ways of doing things, of pushing equipment to or beyond it’s intended operating range or even it’s limits and/or employing it in ways never intended or even imagined by it’s designers. This is all in defiance of “
settled theory and practice”, not relying on it! With the exception of client and distribution specs which must be met, “everything else” is MORE important than “settled theory and practice”!
Hobbyist is another term for obsession. HiFi hobbyists fall into several general camps, but all are obsessed to some degree.
Obsessed to what degree? Obsessed to the degree of dedicating one’s entire working life to it, to competing with thousands/tens of thousands of graduates for a relative handful of jobs? Hobbyist is another term for someone who is very interested in something or maybe even has some amount of obsession but not enough to put it all on the line, study and practice assiduously and make a living from doing it professionally.
Some want to own “the best”, and have the resources to pay for it.
No, very few want to own the best and almost none have the resources to pay for it. There maybe a few billionaires who employ top acoustic design companies to design and equip custom constructed listening environments but ironically they are almost never obsessed with it, they do it because they have a passing interest and a few million to them is just pocket change. Some/Many audiophiles might want to own the most luxury brand named equipment and some might have the resources to pay for it but very rarely are interested in “the best” or often, even in achieving the mediocre!
One thing all these groups have in common is a desire to get that last 2 or 3% of resolution, or soundstage separation, or bass definition and slam, and many find it with careful listening in their space with their gear by swapping out equipment, including sources.
Again, think about that for a moment … Where do you think that last 2 or 3% of resolution, soundstage, bass definition, etc., comes from? Do you think it’s all an act of god or numerous happy accidents, or do you think it’s been put there by the engineers who created the recordings, that it’s the result of microphone choices and positioning, along with the decisions they made while editing, mixing and mastering? And how do you think the engineers/producer made those decisions? If the engineers couldn’t hear that last 2 or 3% resolution or bass definition, how do you think they chose the right mics, right mic positions and exact processing in order for that last 2 or 3% to be captured in the first place and then exist in the finished master/recording you’re reproducing?
And people like that, people like me, come to a science thread hoping to understand why one DAC or one cable sounds different to us in our system. We think we are careful shoppers, tinkerers and listeners.
And there’s the problem, you think/believe you are careful listeners but you’re not, you cannot be, you do not have the environments, the formal training or the tools/facilities to be, you cannot deconstruct a mix and listen to all the constituent parts in isolation even once, let alone dozens or hundreds of times. Also, you cannot be careful shoppers or tinkerers if the information you are basing your shopping and tinkering choices on is mainly or entirely marketing materials, either directly or via incentivised reviews and cherry picked testimonials.
To be told our experiences and perceptions are nonsense is hard to process.
No one is telling you your experiences and perceptions are nonsense. They obviously are not nonsense, if they were then there would be no music, no stereophonic recordings and most commercial A/V content would not exist! What is nonsense is many of the assertions explaining them, based on the false assumption that they are an accurate representation of reality, of the actual properties of audio signals and sound.
Maybe the engineers at Chord Electronics or Furutech are under the thumbs of the marketing departments. Or maybe they’re onto something real, even if it only results in barely impeccable difference.
If it were something real that results in an audible difference, even just a barely audible difference, then it would be easy to identify that difference in an ABX test, yet no such reliable evidence exists. In addition to a lack of direct evidence for audibility, there is indirect evidence which indicates that the real differences are in fact outside the range of human hearing and therefore inaudible. And lastly, engineers not only at boutique manufacturers but huge multinationals like Sony and even some of the DAC chip manufacturers have been moaning for a couple of decades or more that design is driven by marketing departments rather than engineers. So, what do you think the balance of evidence tells us, is there even any balance of reliable evidence at all, what reliable evidence is on the balancing side of it being a real, audible difference? So rationally, which of your two options is true?
Here again is the problem, many audiophiles are incapable of such a rational conclusion because they don’t have a balance of reliable evidence. What they actually have is an overwhelming amount of unreliable evidence (marketing, incentivised reviews, cherry picked testimonials) and just the odd indirect fact/bit of science, which they dismiss on balance because they do not consider the unreliable evidence to be unreliable and do not understand the science.
As previously, you’re relying on fallacies and completely made-up falsehoods routinely trotted out by audiophiles for decades, to defend the false belief that your experience/perception is the reliable arbiter of fact.
G
