[ev13wt]

Early in my career I was setting up a blind listening test, and I listed it as "Jazz at the Porn Shop*. Probably a very different jazz solo...

Me = Interested in the master recording

 

[bigshot]

Early in my career I was setting up a blind listening test, and I listed it as "Jazz at the Porn Shop*.

How did you resist the temptation to peek?

 

[Kammerat Rebekka]

1. I'm not sure it would because "detail" and "clarity" can mean quite different things. For example, it's common to be able to discern fine details near the noise floor, particularly when significant compression and make-up gain has been applied, in which case we could have detail without clarity. Likewise, it's possible to have clarity without detail.

2. This raises an important point: How much detail are we supposed to hear? In the audiophile world, more detail (and certain other attributes) is always better and therefore gear that lets you hear more detail is better than gear which doesn't. However, there are many situations where artistically we don't want more detail. An obvious example would be say a violin section, where we typically want to hear a homogenous whole, rather than the actual detail of say 20 individual violins. Another example would be that most instruments produce some amount of mechanical noise, the sounds of the keys or valves on wind and brass instruments or creaks and rattles with many percussion instruments. This is typically undesirable detail because it's a consequence of the common need to closely mic an instrument/s but in a real life performance the audience will never (and are not intended to) hear those "details" due to their distance from the instruments. For this reason it's common and in some cases almost routine, to reduce these sounds during editing, most typically the breath sounds of singers and the fret (finger slides on strings) noise on acoustic guitar.

G

Very nice post G, thanks for that.

Reminds me of the thoughts I had when I lived a while with the HD800 in the house, a headphone that let me hear EVERYTHING in a very in-your-face-manner. With certain albums that sounded like they’d been recorded inside a crystal clear glacier it was otherworldly, beautiful...yet when I then threw on some Stooges afterwards I felt my brain instantly trying to flee out the backdoor.
With some headphones/speakers it can quickly become an exercise in finding the perfectly produced album - almost letting the gear decide what you listen to - instead of listening to music you love...without any preservations.

Maybe it’s just me but I’ve always loved “flaws”. I think most of the wonders of our world stem from “mistakes” - stuff that just happened - the stuff you can’t account for or program.
It’s also the human element to music. It’s Jimi Hendrix playing all the wrong notes yet still managing to give you goosebumps. It’s X band scrambling down to the studio and hitting it out of the park...with less than stellar skills manning the productional cockpit.
If my gear ends up rendering half my record collection unlistenable because of added detailretrieval...then I’d probably buy a tubeamp hah!! Nahh, better just keep it simple

 

[gregorio]

[1] With some headphones/speakers it can quickly become an exercise in finding the perfectly produced album - almost letting the gear decide what you listen to - instead of listening to music you love...without any preservations.
[2] Maybe it’s just me but I’ve always loved “flaws”. I think most of the wonders of our world stem from “mistakes” - stuff that just happened - the stuff you can’t account for or program.

1. There's so many variables at play when producing (and virtually all of them are subjective decisions), it's difficult to respond without writing a book or keeping it short and over-simplifying to the point of being misleading. Some song compositions and their orchestrations just seem to fall into place with little effort, while with others you have to jump through hoops, create EQ holes and all sorts of other manipulations to get the mix to both "sit together" and have separation/detail. There's a few songs/productions that are so well composed, orchestrated, recorded, mixed and mastered that they work well pretty much regardless of what you play them back on, but the vast majority are necessarily compromised to some degree, work better on either headphones or speakers and intended details can be missed depending on the quality of the playback equipment. The danger with audiophiles is that they're often coming from the point of view of their playback equipment rather than the actual production. The more detail/separation which shows off their equipment, the better they will often define the production, even with details/separation that are not intended to be heard and are undesirable artistically. While hearing such unintended/undesirable details can be interesting, no one other than an audiophile would define a higher production quality by that metric.

2. With the exception of some classical music recordings, I don't think I've ever done a recording/mix where there wasn't a "mistake" or some accidental occurrence that was kept because it was preferred. On a few occasions, a main element of the production or composition stemmed from a mistake.

G

 

[jagwap]

Very nice post G, thanks for that.

Reminds me of the thoughts I had when I lived a while with the HD800 in the house, a headphone that let me hear EVERYTHING in a very in-your-face-manner. With certain albums that sounded like they’d been recorded inside a crystal clear glacier it was otherworldly, beautiful...yet when I then threw on some Stooges afterwards I felt my brain instantly trying to flee out the backdoor.
With some headphones/speakers it can quickly become an exercise in finding the perfectly produced album - almost letting the gear decide what you listen to - instead of listening to music you love...without any preservations.

Maybe it’s just me but I’ve always loved “flaws”. I think most of the wonders of our world stem from “mistakes” - stuff that just happened - the stuff you can’t account for or program.
It’s also the human element to music. It’s Jimi Hendrix playing all the wrong notes yet still managing to give you goosebumps. It’s X band scrambling down to the studio and hitting it out of the park...with less than stellar skills manning the productional cockpit.
If my gear ends up rendering half my record collection unlistenable because of added detailretrieval...then I’d probably buy a tubeamp hah!! Nahh, better just keep it simple

I have found that if the system is non-fatiguing and musical, the master quality fades in importance as you get swept up in the performance. This is only when doing recreational listening. Professionals and audiophiles analyzing the recording or kit will not have this effect as easily. But then they are less likely to enjoy the music for its own sake. Of course this means the performance also need to be musical, so if you continue to lose half your collection because they can't play, then that may not be a bad thing.

Now that leads to a new thread: What is "musical"?

 

[gregorio]

Now that leads to a new thread: What is "musical"?

Indeed, and not only "what is musical" but when is it desirable? Many sections of pieces/songs, whole pieces or even entire genres/sub-genres are not intended to sound "musical", they're intended to sound "mechanical", to sound computer generated and be devoid of "musicality" (of say a human performance). The very last thing I would want in these cases is a system that is "musical", that adds some aspect/s of "musicality". Even if "musicality" is intended in a section/whole piece, the amount of musicality has been created by the artists/engineers/producer on the recording itself and that's personally what I want to hear, not some system's arbitrary amount of additional musicality.

The same can be broadly said of "fatiguing". All pieces of music contain the frequencies which are fatiguing and some sections, whole pieces and entire genres intentionally contain an over-abundance of "fatiguing" material. And again, the very last thing I would want is a system which changes/reduces the actual intent of the music production.

G

 

[jagwap]

Indeed, and not only "what is musical" but when is it desirable? Many sections of pieces/songs, whole pieces or even entire genres/sub-genres are not intended to sound "musical", they're intended to sound "mechanical", to sound computer generated and be devoid of "musicality" (of say a human performance). The very last thing I would want in these cases is a system that is "musical", that adds some aspect/s of "musicality". Even if "musicality" is intended in a section/whole piece, the amount of musicality has been created by the artists/engineers/producer on the recording itself and that's personally what I want to hear, not some system's arbitrary amount of additional musicality.

The same can be broadly said of "fatiguing". All pieces of music contain the frequencies which are fatiguing and some sections, whole pieces and entire genres intentionally contain an over-abundance of "fatiguing" material. And again, the very last thing I would want is a system which changes/reduces the actual intent of the music production.

G

I was not, nor will ever, propose colouration or distortion of any kind to "increase" musicality. I am talking about musical transparency. The kind of system that shows you why certain artists are so well respected, and why others should never have been given studio time (*cough* Oasis *cough*) even though the are photogenic or charismatic.

Many of my favourite artists are ugly ars@hol@s.

 

[gregorio]

[1] I was not, nor will ever, propose colouration or distortion of any kind to "increase" musicality. I am talking about musical transparency.
[2] The kind of system that shows you why certain artists are so well respected, and why others should never have been given studio time (*cough* Oasis *cough*) even though the are photogenic or charismatic.

1. Ah, in which case my bad, I'm misunderstanding the terminology. I'm not understanding the difference between "transparency" and "musical", "non-fatiguing" or "musical transparency"? I often see the term "musical" used (by both end users and in marketing) to describe certain pieces of equipment and meaning that it has more "musicality" than other pieces of equipment. For example, more "musicality" than equipment which is audibly flat/transparent and is described as "analytical", some/many DACs for instance.

2. Oasis is a good illustration of what I was trying to explain in my last response to Kammerat. Ignoring the rabid fans who'd love almost anything, within the industry Oasis were extremely well respected and hugely influential and generally regarded as one of the best, if not THE best pop band of the last 10-15 years of C20th. But. by what metric/s do we arrive at this judgement? In comparison with other pop bands, they were certainly at least very competent musicians, well rehearsed and polished, "tight" intonation and timing for example. Their compositions/songs were so good that they transcended their genre, their songs had such a wide appeal that many who were into other genres/sub-genres still liked them. They were one of the few pop bands that even my mother liked, along with The Beatles, The Carpenters and ABBA! The production quality of Oasis while not revolutionary, was again very competent and polished. They had an individual/distinguishable "sound", which can be difficult to achieve without being too experimental and potentially alienating significant sections of their wide target audience. However, there was one aspect that was somewhat revolutionary (or rather, evolutionary) and while this resulted in a good/enhanced listening experience for many, it could potentially alienate a tiny (effectively inconsequential) few. Cramming all the relevant "detail" into a small dynamic range enhanced the listening experience for the vast majority but achieved the exact opposite for those very few with especially large dynamic range systems/listening environments. So, by the metric of an audiophile system/listening environment, Oasis "should never have been given studio time" but by pretty much every single other pop music metric, there was hardly any other band in the world at the time more deserving of studio time!

G

 

[jagwap]

1. Ah, in which case my bad, I'm misunderstanding the terminology. I'm not understanding the difference between "transparency" and "musical", "non-fatiguing" or "musical transparency"? I often see the term "musical" used (by both end users and in marketing) to describe certain pieces of equipment and meaning that it has more "musicality" than other pieces of equipment. For example, more "musicality" than equipment which is audibly flat/transparent and is described as "analytical", some/many DACs for instance.

2. Oasis is a good illustration of what I was trying to explain in my last response to Kammerat. Ignoring the rabid fans who'd love almost anything, within the industry Oasis were extremely well respected and hugely influential and generally regarded as one of the best, if not THE best pop band of the last 10-15 years of C20th. But. by what metric/s do we arrive at this judgement? In comparison with other pop bands, they were certainly at least very competent musicians, well rehearsed and polished, "tight" intonation and timing for example. Their compositions/songs were so good that they transcended their genre, their songs had such a wide appeal that many who were into other genres/sub-genres still liked them. They were one of the few pop bands that even my mother liked, along with The Beatles, The Carpenters and ABBA! The production quality of Oasis while not revolutionary, was again very competent and polished. They had an individual/distinguishable "sound", which can be difficult to achieve without being too experimental and potentially alienating significant sections of their wide target audience. However, there was one aspect that was somewhat revolutionary (or rather, evolutionary) and while this resulted in a good/enhanced listening experience for many, it could potentially alienate a tiny (effectively inconsequential) few. Cramming all the relevant "detail" into a small dynamic range enhanced the listening experience for the vast majority but achieved the exact opposite for those very few with especially large dynamic range systems/listening environments. So, by the metric of an audiophile system/listening environment, Oasis "should never have been given studio time" but by pretty much every single other pop music metric, there was hardly any other band in the world at the time more deserving of studio time!

G

I singled out Oasis as I have seen them twice, both before and after they sacked their band, and they were incapable both times of playing in time with each other at a professional level. Perhaps I was unlucky, but I've seen over 350 bands that are "known" (published, managed and touring) and I think I have a level of experience where I can judge if someone is competant. Of course there is some subjectives aspect to this. But in this case they were jest bad. Really bad. The opposite of tight in a professional context.

Bands don't have to be metronomicaly tight. Bands like Little Feat have a slack timing that excels at showing a laissez faire feel with real skill. Oasis were just poor.

 

[tansand]

ouch oasis? How about some Husker Du?

 

[tansand]

Helmet?

 

[tansand]

I just love this, it's live.

 

[Glmoneydawg]

I have found that if the system is non-fatiguing and musical, the master quality fades in importance as you get swept up in the performance. This is only when doing recreational listening. Professionals and audiophiles analyzing the recording or kit will not have this effect as easily. But then they are less likely to enjoy the music for its own sake. Of course this means the performance also need to be musical, so if you continue to lose half your collection because they can't play, then that may not be a bad thing.

Now that leads to a new thread: What is "musical"?

Right....great music sounds enjoyable on pretty much anything with a speaker on the business end of it......no amount of detail retrieval or resolution can save music you don't like....give me a singer/band where i believe what they're saying or sound like they're enjoying themselves and it transcends sound quality.

 

[bigshot]

Musicality is created by musicians. Sound quality is the domain of equipment and engineers. I can listen to early Stokowski or Furtwangler and be swept away by the musicality, but the sound quality isn't great. Likewise, I can listen to Mannheim Steamroller and admire the sound quality, but the music still sucks. Musicality and sound fidelity are apples and oranges.

 

[Glmoneydawg]

Musicality is created by musicians. Sound quality is the domain of equipment and engineers. I can listen to early Stokowski or Furtwangler and be swept away by the musicality, but the sound quality isn't great. Likewise, I can listen to Mannheim Steamroller and admire the sound quality, but the music still sucks. Musicality and sound fidelity are apples and oranges.

Have to admit to a grudging respect for technically superior recordings of music that sucks lol....but play it on a clock radio and it quickly loses it's appeal....hmm haven't pulled out my Manhiem Steamroller lp for a while....thanks Bigshot