Hello Mike,

I believe that using any kind of current technology, that there is no
absolutely accurate reproduction of an audio event. The microphones
and speakers are potentially the weakest link in the signal chain,
closely followed by the phonograph cartridge/stylus.

There are also some underlying liabilities in the methods of recording,
mixing, mastering that would disqualify accuracy even if the obvious
electro-mechanical interfaces were "perfect".

The best source material that I have managed to muster is mainly my own
recordings of live, acoustic music, and various nature and other
outdoor sounds. How I manage this is by immediately auditioning the
recorded result with my reference listening rig. This is practical for
most of my recording, as it keeps everything under one roof. For the
outdoor and nature sounds, I use a set of Stax headphones that I am
very familiar with and I can mentally compensate for the differences
between the "cans" and my reference listening rig. Hundreds of hours
of comparison doesn't make it perfect, but surprisingly accurate most
of the time.

I believe that in a casual listening environment, when the mind is not
totally focused upon analysing the performance, that most humans can be
fooled by fairly inaccurate audio reproduction. And really, this is
how most of our listening to audio happens. I listen critically from 4
to 10 hours per week. The rest of the time I am listening, but not
without distractions and lack of focus. Mostly we listen for
entertainment, or recreation, and the premise is not demanding.

Getting back to the creation of most of the recordings that we listen
to... These are creations from a vision, or formula... a professional
or personal preference that is being compiled by the recording
engineers, producers, and artists. Not usually even close to reality
at all. These recordings are being formatted to fit whatever sonic
template that the technical and marketing people believe is "what
people want to hear", or "how people would like to hear". So there is
no basis in reality for the great majority of recorded music.
Attempting to figure whether something is accurate to whatever recipe
of levels, effects, multitracking, overdubbing, compression, expansion,
etc... is not worthy of much effort on my part. There is no motivation
for me to attempt higher fidelity in these cases because there is no
known reference to a real sonic event.

This doesn't mean that the results are not enjoyable. But now we get
into the level of personal preferences, flavours, and such. Nothing
wrong with that either, I love listening to processed performances at
times. The surreal qualities of sound can be very powerful. You can
colour and flavour this to whatever taste and hue you prefer... it's
all good. I maintain a "party rig" in our family room that consists of
the best, top quality PA reinforcement gear that I can afford. The
visceral power, dynamic range, and general clarity of this system makes
for a very entertaining evening of cocktails, beer, poker, hooting and
hollering, and of course, dancing. This is only a caricature of
reality... but it is good fun and an exhileratiing experience. Like
riding a roller coaster, it is simply good fun.

Now for the "piece de resistance" that may help understanding of
analogue audio reproduction. A totally analogue signal chain generally
will exhibit more measurable distortions and such. However, the type
of distortion, impurities, colourations are GENERALLY complementary to
recordings of acoustic music performances. (Not universally for all
sonic events, and some combinations do sound foul!)

Good quality cartridges can track with effortless smoothness, and
coupled with a sutable tonearm and precision turntable can reproduce
good transcriptions with clarity and musicality. There are impurities
of sorts, but not detrimental to the listening experience in MOST
cases. It could be argued that engineers of the analogue era may have
likely compensated their mixes for this type of playback in some cases.
But that would just be an arguement.

Tube electronics do have a sonic character that is usually
complementary to acoustic music reproduction as well. Especially when
driven close to clipping, there is a natural compression that tubes
exibit that sounds sweet and musical to me. These are types of
impurities, but desirable and complementary impurities from a "musical
enjoyment" point of view.

Ribbon-planer dipole speakers can carry this type of "musical
preference" to its subjective, enjoyable conclusion. These speakers
are a bit of a contradiction, partly truth, and partly fiction... but
again, they impart a spacious, open sounding, detailed, and engaging
acoustic music complement.

So... after over 30 years of searching for truly accurate sound
reproduction; it is still a long way out of reach. The lack of
measured distortions in a digital A/D signal chain is much less than
analogue can manage. Is this really important? I don't think so
because the bulk of recordings that we listen to are not even close to
being a reference to a real sonic event. The source is overwhelmingly
impure, and coloured to start with.

Unless one searches out the minority of rare recordings that can be
compared favourably with a live audio event. Or one goes about
carefully learning to create their own reference quality recordings, it
is rather meaningless to be attempting to split hairs with Occam's
razor, when you can see that we are working on Kojak's bald head.

Best regards,
Phil Simpson.