Accuracy and Pleasantness
gene said:
Accuracy and Pleasantness: these two things seem to be the main goals of a system for reproducing music. I find this rather less confusing than a division between cerebral and emotional. How does one identify whether someone is listening cerebrally or emotionally? Why does Mr. Cornwall identify certain parameters with cerebral listening and others with emotional?
What, for example is particularly "cerebral" about the following:
"Tonal truthfulness, clarity in detail and realism in micro-dynamic contrast are all key parameters for a satisfying music reproduction system. What is unique here is the focus on recreating an historical event. The classic audiophile places great importance on hearing details such as breath patterns, valve clacks, or the echo and decay of the sound reflected from the back of the performance venue."
Nothing, as far as I can see. For the most part, in live performances, we don't hear all those valve clacks and guitar fingering noises. So, this is a particular kind of taste, but has nothing much to do with accuracy or recreating an event.
And why are the following any less cerebral?
"A “musicophile”, in contrast, listens at an emotional level. Think here of someone enamored with pop music, a listener who likes to play it loud. The music is physical, often accompanied by spontaneous dancing, bobbing and singing. Physical impact, clean frequency extension and macro-dynamic control are likely to be critical. The “musicophile” listener is likely to be attracted to multi-channel music recordings, recordings that are often re-releases of music originally composed, recorded and released in two-channel. Why? Because there is more to hear!"
This describes someone's taste, in part. However, if one is really interested in recreating an event, then it seems multi-channel is needed, so multi-channel should belong to the cerebral category! Really, the article doesn't make much rational sense.
But then, the following is actually an admission that the categories the author has set up are nonsense since it contradicts the schema he has just tried to set up.
"Naturally one should not assume that rock fans are not concerned with sound staging and micro-dynamics, or that jazz fans don’t listen loud and dance around."
I won't go into the meaningless jargon!
Accuracy and pleasantness, on the other hand, can be identified. At least, it one can find some measurable parameters as to what accuracy is, including applying psychoacoustic parameters to it (in other words, what people can hear). As well, is possible to ask people what they prefer in sound, as has been done for years at the NRC. One can even correlate what is found pleasant by many people with measurements.
What comes out of a system depends, of course, on the recording as well as the system itself. Assuming accurate electronics (which should be obtainable without too much difficulty), what we hear is influenced by the speakers, the room acoustics, and the set up, and by the recordings themselves. I expect my system to sound good with most recordings, and it does. Of course, I try to avoid bad recordings and have for the most part, succeeded, but then most of my recordings are classical and I often do a little research in the reviews. If the Penguin Guide says the recording is bad, it probably is--I often don't rate either the performances or the sound the same way as they do, but we usually agree on bad sound.
One is likely to rate recording quality somewhat differently with different speakers, even very good speakers. Just which recordings sound best will vary with different speakers. I know some try to tell you that a good recording will sound good on ANY speaker, but this simply cannot be true. Whatever a speaker does to the sound, it will do it to every recording played over it.
As well, I have to disagree with Mr. Cornwall's conclusions. A good speaker should be a good speaker, whether for classical, jazz, rock, or videos.
What Mr. Cornwall's article does do is present various things a person might think about, just as ambiguous and contradictory astrological advice does. If one picks out what applies to them and ignores the contradictory information, they feel they can identify. This may be useful and comforting as long as one does not really take it seriously.
