Tomcat
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2001
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Hi all,
the recent poll by Eagle driver about types of listeners kind of brought the topic up again, and I think jude was especially astonished that the attribute of "audiophile" is not favourably regarded by all of us. Having visited the "High End" exhibit near Frankfurt/Germany again this year (it's the biggest exhibit of top-audio gear in Europe), one might be even tempted to use "audiophile" as some kind of swear-word. Most of this equipment is simply horrible: bright, dissecting, analytical, instead of musical, warm and coherent. Most of this gear is more concerned with sounding like hifi than sounding like music. There are exceptions of course. Peter Qvortrup played his record collection in the "Audio Note" room. Boy was this gorgeous - there was nothing but music oozing out of this chain. The music just grabbed you, foot-tapping and all. Oh yes: he had three CDs laying around on the floor somewhere. Three. Those Audio Note folks just aren't into digital, I guess.
The big paradox inherent in the audiophile's point of view is, that he is very much concerned with how his components "sound". Frankly: I am too, probably most of us are. There is just one problem: as anyone will readily admit, the perfect component would not make its presence felt at all, it would simply disappear - the result: all one could hear would be the music itself and nothing else. But judging a component in regard to its sound is always an analytic endeavour. If we do this we tend to listen for the amount of "detail" or different frequency bands, secondary virtues in general, more or less related to recreating the musical event, when what we ought to do is to listen for the music. Listening to music is - to me, at least - a very emotional experience, I want to be moved by it, elated or saddened, I want the same emotional involvement that a live performance is capable of creating. And the degree of emotional involvement and joy seems to be a quality that just cannot be measured or perceived with typical audiophile criteria. Music is not about the details of reproduction (or reproducing details), music is about music.
In this other forum (what was its name again? Thanks, jude) I had mentioned an article from Stereophile from January 2000 once (and had found it mentioned in the archives once before), but it didn't exactly spawn a discussion. Another try:
God is in the Nuances by Mark Sauer. Sauer reports about the experiment of a German psychologist that he conducted as part of his doctoral thesis. He had people compare their reactions to two different systems: one with a turntable as a source and valve amplification and another one with a CDP and solid state-amplifiers (additionally there was a third system with CD source and valve amplifiers, as well). All those knowledgeable and educated audiophiles picked the CDP/solid state system as the better and more accurate one of course, but the subconscious results were exactly the opposite: they - as all the other listeners, by the way - derived more emotional satisfaction and enjoyment from the TT/valve system. The "better" CDP/SS system even heightened stress levels. The psychologist had a female student as his assistant, who knew nothing about the test set-up. At the end of the experiments she had suffered through the same pieces hundreds of times, and she stated that, by now, she felt "physically attacked by the sound of one of those systems". Have a guess which one.
Any comments?
the recent poll by Eagle driver about types of listeners kind of brought the topic up again, and I think jude was especially astonished that the attribute of "audiophile" is not favourably regarded by all of us. Having visited the "High End" exhibit near Frankfurt/Germany again this year (it's the biggest exhibit of top-audio gear in Europe), one might be even tempted to use "audiophile" as some kind of swear-word. Most of this equipment is simply horrible: bright, dissecting, analytical, instead of musical, warm and coherent. Most of this gear is more concerned with sounding like hifi than sounding like music. There are exceptions of course. Peter Qvortrup played his record collection in the "Audio Note" room. Boy was this gorgeous - there was nothing but music oozing out of this chain. The music just grabbed you, foot-tapping and all. Oh yes: he had three CDs laying around on the floor somewhere. Three. Those Audio Note folks just aren't into digital, I guess.
The big paradox inherent in the audiophile's point of view is, that he is very much concerned with how his components "sound". Frankly: I am too, probably most of us are. There is just one problem: as anyone will readily admit, the perfect component would not make its presence felt at all, it would simply disappear - the result: all one could hear would be the music itself and nothing else. But judging a component in regard to its sound is always an analytic endeavour. If we do this we tend to listen for the amount of "detail" or different frequency bands, secondary virtues in general, more or less related to recreating the musical event, when what we ought to do is to listen for the music. Listening to music is - to me, at least - a very emotional experience, I want to be moved by it, elated or saddened, I want the same emotional involvement that a live performance is capable of creating. And the degree of emotional involvement and joy seems to be a quality that just cannot be measured or perceived with typical audiophile criteria. Music is not about the details of reproduction (or reproducing details), music is about music.
In this other forum (what was its name again? Thanks, jude) I had mentioned an article from Stereophile from January 2000 once (and had found it mentioned in the archives once before), but it didn't exactly spawn a discussion. Another try:
God is in the Nuances by Mark Sauer. Sauer reports about the experiment of a German psychologist that he conducted as part of his doctoral thesis. He had people compare their reactions to two different systems: one with a turntable as a source and valve amplification and another one with a CDP and solid state-amplifiers (additionally there was a third system with CD source and valve amplifiers, as well). All those knowledgeable and educated audiophiles picked the CDP/solid state system as the better and more accurate one of course, but the subconscious results were exactly the opposite: they - as all the other listeners, by the way - derived more emotional satisfaction and enjoyment from the TT/valve system. The "better" CDP/SS system even heightened stress levels. The psychologist had a female student as his assistant, who knew nothing about the test set-up. At the end of the experiments she had suffered through the same pieces hundreds of times, and she stated that, by now, she felt "physically attacked by the sound of one of those systems". Have a guess which one.
Any comments?
