[~misfit~[_3_]]

Somewhere on teh intarwebs Audio_Empire wrote:
Modern audio Journalism is really infuriating to me because the folks
who make up the bulk of all magazine writers reviewing in the field of
audio today try to assess the performance of audio components using
program material that is totally unsuited to the task at hand. I don't
know about the rest of you, but I'm getting damned tired of picking up
a magazine like 'Stereophile', 'The Absolute Sound', or even Britain's
great 'Hi-Fi News and Record Review' to read about some new piece of
equipment only to encounter something like this: "...the soundstage
and image specificity of these speakers was phenomenal. The kick drum
playing of the band "Terd's" drummer Peter Pothead, was solidly
located just behind the bass guitar and to the left of lead singer
Johnny Juice."

I'm sorry, folks, that's all stuff and nonsense. It doesn't matter
where Peter Pohthead's kick drum was located (hopefully it shows-up
where the rest of the drum set shows up, but it doesn't have to..)
physically. It was likely captured by a drum kit mike setup, with one
mike for the kick drum, another for the snare, still another for the
tom-tom, and yet a fourth mike for the cymbals. And each one of those
drum components appears in the speakers where they were electronically
PLACED using pan-pots, not where they physically appeared on the
recording "stage". And Johnny Juice's lead guitar? Well, he is likely
holding it, but if his Marshall guitar amp is setting kinda off to the
side, then that's where his guitar will SOUND like it is - assuming
you were there with the band in the studio when the session was
recorded. Otherwise, again, it will appear on playback wherever the
recording engineers put it. Johnny's booze and dope strained gravel
voice? Well that appears dead center, because again, it's where the
engineer put him (it's traditional). Any attempt by a reviewer to make
decisions about sound quality, imaging, even frequency response using
this kind of studio music is simply an exercise in abject futility.

First of all. If you don't ever listen to real, live, amplified music,
and listen often, you have no idea what real instruments are SUPPOSED
to sound like. People who listen to pop music almost exclusively have
likely NEVER attended a classical (or even a non-amplified jazz)
concert. If you don't know what real music is supposed to sound like,
how can you judge what a playback system is doing to the music? You
can't.

I know there are people who will tell you that they can tell the
difference between a Fender Stratocaster Guitar and a Gibson or a
Martin electric guitar. Perhaps they can, but what about the sound
imparted by the different brands and styles of amplifiers used with
these guitars? Can one tell the difference after the sound had gone
through a fuzz box? I don't claim to know. Here's another question
that comes to mind. In studio settings many instruments such as a
saxophone or a trumpet are captured using a contact microphone. These
mikes pick-up the actual vibrations of the body of the instrument
itself rather than the sound (I.E. differences in air pressure) heard
by a regular mike sitting in front of the instrument. I can tell you
from experience that an instrument captured by a contact mike sounds
almost nothing like the same instrument captured by a traditional
mike. And all of this manipulation is occurring before the mike
signals reach the control room and go through frequency shifters,
voice multipliers, sound-on-sound and sound-with-sound processors,
reverb generators, compressors, limiters, and a myriad of other
special effects boxes that I'm not familiar with! When recording
personnel record the instruments rather than the space these
instruments occupy, all bets for accuracy are off.

Now I make no apologies for, nor do I try to hide, my personal disdain
for what has passed for popular music over the last 50 years or so. I
also realize that mass taste has changed mightily in that time and I
will defend with my very being the right of each individual to listen
to the music he or she LIKES. But, this has nothing, whatsoever, to do
with a genre's suitability to the task at hand. In 1970, for instance,
an audio publication was about how classical music was reproduced on
the equipment of the day and they actually had something REAL to
compare the equipment against. Pop music was almost never mentioned
and jazz only rarely. Now it's completely reversed. Every review I
read tells me how The Who, or Cat Stevens, or Rod Stewart' latest
album (along with a myriad of more recent groups and soloists that I
have never heard of at all) sounds on this piece of equipment or that
(jazz is still, rarely mentioned). These kinds of comparisons are
totally meaningless! If the music doesn't exist in real space, then
the accuracy of the playback totally becomes a matter personal tastes
and as a means of communicating opinions from one group of people to
another, it's arbitrary, and clearly NOT useful.

I realize that the magazines like 'Stereophile' et al have to try to
cater to todays equipment buyers in order to remain "relevant" with
their readers, but what is going on in audio reviewing today is akin
to somebody testing an asphalt paving machine using using salt-water
taffy instead of asphalt. The results obtained from such a test have
absolutely no bearing on how the paving machine will perform when
paving roads with hot asphalt! Likewise a speaker review (for
instance) using studio recorded pop music bears little or no relation
to how that speaker system might perform with REAL, live acoustical
music and anybody who thinks that it does, is deluded.

Frustrating!

I'm sorry, I haven't read through the whole thread including replies yet. I
don't have time right now (it's a rare dry day and my lawns are so very
long) but I have something that I'd like to try to say.

I understand completely your frustration - you have a way of explaining
things that works well.

However I'd like to posit that there *is* a modern standard of reference (if
you will) and that is whatever recording the listener (and reader) is
familiar with. After all, it's the reproduction of the *recording* that the
reviewers are reviewing, not a group of instruments in a certain space.

Please, bare with me for a few moments and allow me to present another
scenario. Early electric music, when recorded was mono and simple
(relatively). Then, with the advent of stereo and 'studio recording' the
recording engineer was faced with the problem of making all of the
seperately recorded tracks into one whole that sounds pleasing. This
recording is in no way intended to be an accurate representation of the
space in which the artists were playing at the time/s. Instead it has become
/virtual reality/, an idealised sound - abstract.

This mixing and engineering has become an art in itself - the 'staging' of
the band in a created reality. That's why music sounded much better when
'artists' like Phil Spector, Alan Parsons and Butch Vig took control of the
knobs. These were men of vision for their time and were able to imagine the
space in which they wanted the band to be playing - then create it. It's not
meant to be the reproduction of a physical reality, it's an artificial
construct and, as such is reproducible - accurately or not.

This artificial construct will sound very similar on high-end audio systems
(although they all will colour it to some degree). It is the playback of
this manipulated recording that the reviewers are reviewing, comparing it to
how they've heard it on 'great' systems. It has nothing to do with how the
band sounds when they're playing in a space. That's the fundamental
difference between what you are familiar with and what the readership of
these magazines are familiar with. In my opinion it in no way invalidates
these contemporary reviews and a system that can accurately reproduce what
you refer to as 'pop music' will, in all likelihood also be good at
reproducing a symphony in a hall - or a string quartet in a large room.

When I was more mobile (and affluent) I'd take a few 'reference CDs' with me
to listen to on a system. (Rickie Lee Jones in particular, also Peter
Gabriels 'So' and a few others) I know these 'recordings' (if you'll allow
the use of the word - they're really constructs) so very well, having
listened to them many, many times on diverse systems (yet I've never heard
either performer live). I know how they /can/ image, I know the parts where
Rickie very quietly 'breathes' along with the bass line - and I know that it
takes a formidable speaker (as an example) to not only reproduce those two
diverse sounds, one very soft, one deep and powerful, concurrently. On a
mass-produced lo-fi system you could listen for decades and never hear it.
On the system I'm listening to now with it's tri-amped quasi-ribbon tweeter
top end, lower-midrange section and 10" deep bass drivers (it's a small
room) it's unmissable.

Once again, I'm not arguing with you - I agree with all that you say. I'm
simply putting forward a different viewpoint based on a different musical
genre and a different 'standard' and trying to do so as eloquently as you
put forth your opinions. Forgive me if I fail.

For a time, four years or so spanning the turn of the decade, late 1970s and
early 1980s, I travelled with a band and was responsible for their live
soundmixing. When the time came for them to lay down some recordings I
'consulted' with the sound engineer, giving input into the band's live
sound, telling him when his mix drifted too far from how the band sounds
live (so that people who were faniliar with the band live - my mix -
wouldn't buy a recording and hear something completely different.

Back then it was rare for a band to sound even similar live to how they
sounded on their recordings. You didn't go to a concert to hear the band -
you were best to do that at home on your hi-fi (if you owned one). You'd go
to a concert for the experience. In fact the only band I've ever heard live
after listening to their albums repeatedly that sounded almost the same was
Dire Straights - that was spooky - going to a concert and hearing almost
exactly what you'd hear coming from your hi-fi. Normally, then, the
experiences only had a few things in common w/r/t the way they sounded. (It
may be common-place now for all I know as I no longer go to concerts.)

So, not being intimately familar with live, unamplified music from a
location close enough to the performers (as in where a conductor might
stand) where I can get a sense of the spatial diversity I'd be a poor judge
of a stereo system listening to such a recording. However, give me my
original copy of Rickie Lee Jones' first album and I think that I'd be able
to give a fair judgement of the fidelity of the system.

After all's said and done it's not generally the source material that we
discuss here it's the equipment that reproduces it (and in this thread the
legitimacy of magazine reviews of that equipment).

Regards,
--
/Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)
[Sent from my OrbitalT ocular implant interface.]