[ubs28]

  You're missing the point here.
 
The recording equipment ALWAYS modifies the sound.
 
Our equipment should recover the sound as recorded to be high fidelity.
 
Otherwise you would have the odious task of having to alter the sound as recorded for every single CD whether it was well recorded or manufactured in someone's basement, attic, garage, etc, etc, ad hoc, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

That is indeed a problem. If you have the equipment that recovers the sound from the CD as accurately as possible, the final sound might not be actually accurate. The guitar for example might actually sound different. 

 

[Argo Duck]

And...we don't know what "the original sound off the 'CD'" sounds like. We presumably have to use a headphone or speaker with an amplifier and a DAC. Unless we are sure we have 'perfection' from all parts of the chain, we can't know we're hearing the original (CD) sound.

I suppose we could record and digitise the playback then compare to CD but...we're back to imperfections of recording equipment and microphone signatures as pointed out by wink and ubs28 above.

 

[wink]

Correctamundo........

 

[4N6]

An accurate sound is how it sounds true to life. Hence the recording shouldn't alter the original sound, nor the should the chain and equipement  of the listener shouldn't alter the recording.

And...we don't know what "the original sound off the 'CD'" sounds like. We presumably have to use a headphone or speaker with an amplifier and a DAC. Unless we are sure we have 'perfection' from all parts of the chain, we can't know we're hearing the original (CD) sound.

I suppose we could record and digitise the playback then compare to CD but...we're back to imperfections of recording equipment and microphone signatures as pointed out by wink and ubs28 above.

And that is only half of the battle. The other half is personal perception.

Harry Pearson of the absolute sound magazine thought that the sound of live, unamplified music should be benchmark to which all music reproduction is judged. This sounds good in theory, but even one's perception of what "live, unamplified" music sounds like is skewed to their personal experience. If one heard all concerts at Carnegie Hall and a different person heard the same orchestra outdoors at their community park, both people would have a different perception of what the instruments sound like. If you then asked both of these people to judge the same audio component, my guess is that both would have completely different takes on that components accuracy.

So, with all the vagarities in recording quality, equipment truthfulness to the source (or lack thereof), and human perception, true "accuracy" in music reproduction is elusive at best.

The best solution to this complex problem? Trust your own ears and take everyone else's opinion on how a headphone, amplifier, or source sounds with a grain of salt.

 

[wink]

That's why we have "YMMV".
 
It saves our skins often.

 

[shabta]

That's why a few of us got together and tried an experiment. There were several parts and I won't reproduce the whole thing. But the house has a large living/dining room in an old french chateau with a Steinway baby grand in it. After a lot of tweaking, we compared the live sound to the recorded on different rigs. The HD800 rig ended up one of the systems that came closest to sounding like the real thing. SR009s did well too. As did a system with Focal 1027 BEs... The speaker rigs had to be tested more from memory, since I can play the piano in the room and then put headphones on and listen. But if you do that with speakers in the same room, you get the recorded ambiance of the room plus the actual ambiance of the room...

 

[4N6]

That's why a few of us got together and tried an experiment. There were several parts and I won't reproduce the whole thing. But the house has a large living/dining room in an old french chateau with a Steinway baby grand in it. After a lot of tweaking, we compared the live sound to the recorded on different rigs. The HD800 rig ended up one of the systems that came closest to sounding like the real thing. SR009s did well too. As did a system with Focal 1027 BEs... The speaker rigs had to be tested more from memory, since I can play the piano in the room and then put headphones on and listen. But if you do that with speakers in the same room, you get the recorded ambiance of the room plus the actual ambiance of the room...

Awesome experiment. I wish I could have heard it.

It also says a lot about the quality of the HD800.

 

[wink]

Quote:shabta

 But if you do that with speakers in the same room, you get the recorded ambiance of the room plus the actual ambiance of the room...

Sonic cross pollination.
 
The trick would be to try and distinguish the sound coming from the piano from the sound coming from the speakers.
 
I'll leave that to others...

 

[Taowolf51]

   
I would get another pair of headphones 

 

 
I have my doubts that's something you can ever find. I can't name a single headphone that's perfectly balanced without a little help.
 
Plus, the technicalities are so much more important than FR.

 

[preproman]

   
I have my doubts that's something you can ever find. I can't name a single headphone that's perfectly balanced without a little help.
 
Plus, the technicalities are so much more important than FR.

 
Well for this particular conversaion I won't skip the HD800s  -  I would prefer the HD800s 

 

[wink]

The search for perfection should not disturb your enjoyment of your less-than-perfect gear.

 

[shabta]

  The search for perfection should not disturb your enjoyment of your less-than-perfect gear.

Amen!

 

[Sorrodje]

What I personally appreciate is a headphone that can let me hear the differences between recordings. If all recordings sound like the headphone itself, IMO this is an issue.

The hd800 is maybe the headphone I experienced that sounds the most significantly different with each recording. That's what I call transparency.

 

[Taowolf51]

Well for this particular conversaion I won't skip the HD800s  -  I would prefer the HD800s 

Agreed, the HD800's are my favorite headphones (especially the technicalities), but the frequency response isn't quite ideal. The fact that everyone's ears have a different frequency sensitivity curve makes it basically impossible to create a ideally balanced headphone for everyone, it's why we try to correct for this using amps/DACs/tube rolling/EQ, etc.

 

[Zoom25]

Drivers are still playing catch up with transducers.