Quote:
High Fidelity is characterized by minimal distortion in sound reproduction, the big reason why the HD800 sounds as clean and resolving as it does, if your electronic music sounds crap on them then its because it is crap to begin with. That's assuming you can even tell what its really supposed to sound like, the only person who'd know that would be producer who arranged those synthesized samples on the gear that he uses to play them back. With acoustic music, you have a real-life reference to the instruments and performers.
It's obvious from this post that you've probably never heard electronica and definitely don't know enough about it to be able to criticize it, because not all electronica necessarily consists of synthesized sound. And "synthesized" and "samples" can't be used together either, as a lot of electronica is a combo of synthesized sound and samples. In the production of electronica, "samples" usually refer to digital captures of an analog element - i.e., a vocal sample, an acoustic sample, etc, or even a snippet from some other source entirely. This process is usually called sampling. There are also sub-genres of electronica that use vocals as well, like ambient, trip-hop, techno, et al. There are also artists who combine acoustic instruments with synthesizers. So basically your argument is ignorant.
Plus, the argument against electronica that no one but the producer knows what it sounds like comes from complete ignorance of how electronica is produced. 303 and 909 analog synth sounds, for example, are extremely common throughout electronica and have a distinct sound that's impossible to mistake. A set of good headphones will let you hear that distinct sound.
The argument that acoustic music has a real-life reference is also completely moot for those who don't listen to live music. Because not everyone who listens to music on headphones necessarily goes to concerts as well, or knows a musician, or even is a musician. In order to have the real-life reference you have to know how the instrument sounds. And how do most people know the sound of a live instrument? Mostly through either inference (for exotic instruments, or ones that aren't very common) or via concerts, which are either of the amplified or non-amplified variety. In either of those cases, the audience barely gets a glimpse of the true sound of an instrument. At an amplified concert, some of the instruments are intentionally distorted, others not. Either way, the sound waves of the instruments and vocals are propagated by megawatt
speakers. Speakers that color the sound. And at non-amplified concerts, the sound waves lose intensity the more distance they propagate. Anyone who thinks they're truly hearing the instruments from even the first row is kidding themselves. A piano, for example, has an incredible range of musical dynamics. A lot of that can't be heard unless you're the one playing it or are standing really close to it.
I have a better real-life reference to classical-music instruments than most people, as I'm a violinist and have played in orchestras before. So I've heard all the sections from the point of view of being
in the orchestra - the celli, violas, violins, brass, woodwinds, & percussion. I've heard huge drums being impacted nearly directly behind me, and cymbals so close that I thought I'd get hearing loss. I'd say that the musicians in the orchestra have a great real-life reference. The people in the audience aren't hearing half of it!
What I'm getting at is that few people truly know how acoustic instruments sound either, except for those who
play an instrument, or have heard one really up-close.
Quote:
Well I mentioned Infected Mushroom earlier in this thread. They used the HD800's as their second reference source for mastering their last two (or maybe just the last) albums. There's a picture somewhere.
It's the most well recorded Electronic music artist that I know of... Granted that's really not my genre and don't listen to it much.
I keep seeing people say that Infected Mushroom is recorded well, but has anyone ever bothered to go past the check of how it sounds and actually looked at the waveform data of a track? I recently bought a copy of their CD
Vicious Delicious and suspected it wasn't recorded that well. It sounded a bit compressed and definitely limited too. So I ripped track 3 and here's the visual proof that shows the compression and clipping. Conclusion: if
Vicious Delicious is indicative of Infected Mushroom's recording quality, then it's not all that great.
(click for larger version)
I have other electronica CDs that are recorded way better than
Vicious Delicious, like those produced by Orbital for example. Massive Attack's albums are recorded better too.
![size]](http://files.head-fi.org/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif[size=13px][/size])
