[~misfit~[_3_]]

Somewhere on teh intarwebs Audio_Empire wrote:
In article ,
"~misfit~" wrote:

Somewhere on teh intarwebs Audio_Empire wrote:

snip


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.

Having read more of the thread now I see that I wasn't the only one to raise
this sort of subject. Apologies for ressurecting a thread that had already
covered quite a lot of what I wanted 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.

How can they be familiar with a recording, if as music, it doesn't
exist outside of a studio?

In the same way that I'm *intimately* familiar with Rickie Lee Jones'
eponymous album. I have heard it hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds) of
times over the last three and a bit decades on everything from systems that
cost as much as a small house (at the time) to a portable Sony CD player -
even in the form of a self-ripped 320bit mp3 on various computer-based
systems and mp3 players through headphones / ear buds.

It exists outside of the studio - it exists in great detail in my memory.

Even when these bands play concerts, they
take their studios with them so that their concert performances sound
just like the recordings they made of these same songs! I'll grant
that one can be so familiar with a performance that one can
anticipate each note with great accuracy, and can tell instantly, if
the performance that they are listening to at any given time is NOT
the performance that they are used to hearing. But I don't think that
familiarity can help with sonic judgements. Nobody has heard 'The
Who', for instance, without their whole studio behind them, nor have
they heard the band through other than speakers; either their own, or
the sound-reinforcement systems at a concert.

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.

I understand, and I agree. I am not complaining here about the music
as a listening experience (with all that involves), I'm criticizing
the use of these types of music and performances as REVIEWING TOOLS
to gauge the accuracy of audio equipment.


I hear you and understand what you're saying. However these magazines need
to stay relevant to the buying public if they want to continue to hang on to
what's left of their readership. By far the largest percentage of buyers of
audio equipment listen to music as I do. I'm sorry but it's a fact that if
these reviewers aimed their reviews to appeal to you and your standards then
they would be out of their jobs within a month. It's just a fact of life.

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.

Again, I understand that, but it's irrelevant to my point, which is
that you can't use music that has no real soundstage to gauge
soundstage, nor can you use music recorded in such a way that the
instruments don't sound like that instrument would sound in an
un-amplified listening situation (as in the case of instruments that
are recorded using contact microphones). I've heard these arguments
before, and I remain adamant that this kind of music is simply
irrelevant to the goal of high-fidelity reproduction, and as much as
the modern audiophile community might revere it, it's wishful
thinking to believe that any meaningful conclusions about the Fi of
equipment can be gathered by using it as a reviewing tool.

Then do we need to euthanise the term 'high-fidelity' as it is applied to
audio equipment once and for all? After all the number of people who buy
audio systems using the standards that you espouse must be miniscule. No
offence intended, I'm honestly curious about this and interested. As I use
the term hi-fi fairly frequently I feel I should understand what it means -
and if it means the same thing to everyone and, if not, what percentages use
it how.

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.

I still maintain that if your final comment in the above paragraph is
true, it's happenstance, because the conclusions drawn using pop
music as a source simply have no relationship to the reality of music
reproduction.

I didn't mention it in my first reply but I'm having trouble with the
definition of the term you're using; 'Pop music'. From reading your post it
seems that you apply it to everything except non-amplified music?

The Rickie Lee Jones album I've referenced several times - the album that is
my own personal 'gold standard' for evaluating audio equipment (and probably
my favourite album of all time) - is more jazz than anything. It was
recorded in 1978 using the best jazz session musicians available at the
time. The bass is mostly acoustic played by Red Callander, not a bass guitar
(except for where the liner notes refer to a 'Fender bass' played by Willie
Weeks - arguably the most in-demand session musician of all time) and, while
there is a small amount of electric guitar and an even smaller amount of
synthesizer (Randy Newman) it features a lot of saxophone (played by Tom
Scott), awesome trumpet by Chuck Findlay as well as 'horns' in general. The
recording also strongly features 'orchestral arrangements' by Johnny Mandel
(who worked with Count Bassie, Frank Sinatra et al) and Nick DeCaro (who
also plays the accordian on a track or two). Heck, it's even got a mandolin!

In short it's not what I think of when the term 'pop music' is used.

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.

Perhaps so, but I don't see what that has to do with a system's
performance on live music played in a real space. What it shows is
that these performances sound GOOD to the listener through THAT
equipment, and that's down to individual taste, not accuracy. I.E., I
know what a real bowed bass viol sounds like and when a system's bass
is accurate, that's what I hear in the listening room. Whatever
differs from that is NOT the sound of a bass viol. What some
rock-band's bass guitar sounds like through their on-stage
amplifier/speaker, I have no idea (and neither does any other
listener). So when the bass line comes across as being tubby or wooly
with poor low frequency transient response, what does it tell us? Is
it the playback system? Is it the bass player's on-stage
amp/speaker?, is it the way the bass player has his guitar set-up, or
is it something that the producer/engineers have done to the bass in
production to "punch it up"? There's no way to know.

Except in the case where you're listening to a recording as described
above - pretty much the best 'pop music' ever recorded. In fact I'd humbly
go to far as to say that my 30+ years of familiararity with that recording
(and taking into account it's sheer quality) - not to mention my familiarity
with real acoustic instruments - mean that when I listen to it on a system I
*can* make informed comments on it's Fi.

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.

I understand. I just don't buy that using this music to test audio
equipment can give a complete or accurate picture of how a piece of
equipment actually sounds beyond the "It sounds good to me and my
tastes" level of criticism.

There were a few years in the 80s when my involvement in, and appreciation
of high quality audio gear lead me to seek out highly-regarded, 'audiophile'
quality recordings so that I could marvel at the quality of my stereo
system, use them as a reference when I made changes to it and play them when
an audiophile friend visited. However after a while I had an epiphany; In my
pursuit of fidelity with my audio system I'd ended up at a place where
recordings that I spent a lot of time listening to weren't actually the
music that I enjoyed most - or even at all in some cases. I was listening to
my *stereo* rather than music which I enjoyed, music which had lead me to my
search for the best reproduction I could attain (with my budget).

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.

That's very true. The "road" sound and the studio sound must be the
same on a band's popular works, or the fans will be disappointed with
the live performance (and vice versa).


Yes, if not the same then at least very similar - unless a band gets to the
stage where their fans don't care so much, they go to see them for the
experience rather than the sound.

[snipped]
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).

But without real music with which to judge said equipment, the
evaluations are meaningless
because they come down to someone's personal taste rather than
accuracy. IOW, without a
reference, there's no way to know where you are. I feel that is where
the art and science of
reviewing is today.

As I've said all along - I do see your point. However I feel that there's a
valid facet of 'accuracy' that you might be dismissing - perhaps because of
where you're coming from. My point is that this other side of reviewing *is*
in fact valid - and is in fact the only side that 98% of the readers care
(or even know) about.

After all's said and done, if you don't cater to your readership then you
won't have one for long.

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.]