[Audio_Empire[_2_]]

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!