[Sonnova]

On Mon, 4 May 2009 08:00:07 -0700, wrote
(in article ):

On May 3, 8:40*pm, Sonnova wrote:
On Sun, 3 May 2009 17:11:39 -0700, wrote
(in article ):





On May 3, 8:09*am, wrote:
On May 2, 2:08*pm, "Gary Eickmeier" wrote:

But it is an issue with reproduced music. The goal should be realism, not
"accuracy."

But "realism" isn't definable, whereas "accuracy" is easy to define
and gives us something concrete to work towards.

I don't see why ease of definability should in any way affect our
aesthetic goals.

Getting recordings to sound "real" on accurate speakers should be the
business of the recording engineer, not the loudspeaker system.

What exactly are "accurate" speakers? It seems you are building an
argument on a mythological creature that is probably not something
everyone would agree on.

I would think that an accurate loudspeaker would be one which faithfully
reproduces the waveform with which it is fed. The extent to which any
loudspeaker accomplishes that goal is a measure of its accuracy.


A loudspeaker is fed an electrical signal that has only one dimension
in time. You can define any electrical signal in audio by time and
amplitude. When a speaker converts that signal to a sound wave it does
so into a three dimensional sound space. so how does one determine
which speaker has the most "accurate four dimensional wavefrom when
using a two dimensional waveform as a reference? There simply is a
point at which one can't talk about transducer "accuracy" because of
this unavoidable basic difference in nature between sound waves and
electrical signals in audio.

I didn't say it was do-able. I said that this would be the definition of an
accurate loudspeaker.



the "thing" that was
recorded and compressed down into two or more audio channels. Running
them
through two point sources and aiming them at your face is not the answer.

If the event was worth recording and the recording is done right, then
it should sound "real" on accurate speakers. *If it wasn't, it
shouldn't.

Do tell us what exactly goes into a recording that was "done right."
and give us an example of an "accurate" speaker.

As to the former of the two questions, "done right" depends upon the
recording's intent.


There in lies the rub. Since there ultimately are aesthetic value
judgements that are entirely subjective involved in making recordings
it is impossible to break down recordings into two catagories, done
right and done wrong. That and the fact that stereo recording and
playback always involves some sort of compramise makes the notion of
recordings either being right or wrong absurd.

I certainly disagree there. I have thousands of commercial recordings (mostly
classical, some jazz, no pop), LPs and CDs and SACDs. Some of them sound
glorious. Very convincing illusion of real music playing. Depending on the
scale of the recording, they either convey me to the concert hall, or put the
musicians right in the room with me. I have other recordings which sound
terrible. Distorted, multi-miked, with no soundstage, no imaging, and
sounding no more like a real instruments playing is a real space than a kazoo
does! Those recordings are simply WRONG from my perspective.