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Music Lover vs. Audiophile


Mallette

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Music lover only, and I can prove it.

 

I have not changed any settings,  electronics or speakers in years but have listened to plenty of music. My choice of speakers are the one's playing, not necessarily the best I have. 

 

 

 Yeah, no offence, you like music and a great sound system.  But that said, really what would be the point of a great stereo system or home theater if you didn't enjoy the media.  Having a system that produce "waves" or "tones" at precise frequencies mean nothing to me.

 

Its like talking about a great guitar player.  Sure they can move their fingers very fast but are they musical? 

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Music Lover .... but ... music, particularly orchestral or organ music, needs to be reproduced with adequate dynamic range (for instance), or it is not what the composer wrote, as filtered through the interpretation of the artists.  Since many sound systems and recordings don't have adequate dynamic range, adequate reproduction of texture, instrumental reproduction that sounds real, etc., etc., I have long had audiophile concerns.  More recently, now that it is possible to rum movies at home that sound like they do in a good theater, my audiophile concerns now extend to Home Theater.  

 

Some sound systems are capable of transporting me to the musical place I have experienced in concert halls.  I feel a bit cheated if a new recording fails to do that, or if a friend's sound system cannot.  For old 78s, car sound systems, etc. I lower my expectations (automatically), so it doesn't hurt so much, and I can enjoy what's left of the music.

Edited by garyrc
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wait...  did I drop my scum bag? 

 

garyc - nice post, well said.  Not sure I am on the same plain, as I guess I don't always expect the concert quality sound as if I was in the optimal seat in the Vienna State Opera hall.  I like music.  And before you criticize me for starting a sentence with a conjunction, I have been to Vienna.

Edited by jacksonbart
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no music can sound any better than the system it's played back on. 
 

 

I've been thinking about this comment all day and something about it just doesn't sit right. How do you determine the "betterness" of a system? I can think of some music that sounds "better" on a "worse" system. So does that mean our description of the betterness/worseness of a system is faulty, or is there actually an objective measure of system quality that doesn't correlate to musical enjoyment?

 

To offer a specific example, play Three Dog Night on the most killer khorn system in the world, and then compare to my dad's Bose 4.2 bookshelf speakers...one is completely unlistenable, the other is extremely enjoyable.

 

It was perfect when it was made and it still is.
 

 

I totally agree with this idea about the original source material - even regardless of the mastering technique.

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How do you determine the "betterness" of a system?

 

By it's sound as I hear it.  What you think is meaningless in that context, as is what I think about what you are hearing.  No inaccurate system can improve a POS recording, nor can an accurate system do anything but reproduce truth to the extent the state of the art allows it. 

 

Dave

Edited by Mallette
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No inaccurate system can improve a POS recording
 

 

I beg to differ.....and not being pedantic about it either.

 

A nonlinear representation of a signal fed into an equal and opposite nonlinear system will result in a better sound. That POS recording could very well sound better on a less accurate system - not saying it's always the case, but it's more often than you might imagine...

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What makes a POS recording a POS?

1. What's the criteria?

2. What's the instrument to measure it?

3. How do we even know what the engineers did? If he boosted some bass by 12dBs, is that automatically bad? Or only bad if it sounds bad on my speaker? What if he corrected performance mistakes and thereby created a performance which the artist never tendered? An artificial performance! Good or POS?

4. Wouldn't we have to know what the engineers did to judge POS? If not, and it is only up to reach " speaker + brain " then how meaningful is the judgment?

5. WHERE IS GROUND ZERO? WHAT IS THE REFERENCE?

Sent from my SM-T330NU using Tapatalk

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Music lover only, and I can prove it.

 

I have not changed any settings,  electronics or speakers in years but have listened to plenty of music. My choice of speakers are the one's playing, not necessarily the best I have. 

But you have to ask yourself if you sometimes listen to certain music or songs because they sound good on a good system. That is the only explanation I can come up with as to why you guys got busted in Hope last year while listening to a gawd awful song like Thriller at 5 am. I'm just saying......

 

Well what happens in Hope I can't possibly be responsible for, they tend to listen to a lot of heavy metal also, by far most of it is not my choice either.

 

I did squeeze in some good reggae very late one night after Rodney went home to sleep, cranked it up actually and would bet $ the cows out there never heard any reggae before that.

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Music lover only, and I can prove it.

 

I have not changed any settings,  electronics or speakers in years but have listened to plenty of music. My choice of speakers are the one's playing, not necessarily the best I have. 

 

OK, but can you explain what hobby drives you to have over 17,000 posts on this forum?

 

Not really :blink: I'm a slow learner :)

 

But really I was for a long time chasing a sound like many here are and finely got tired of it. I realized I had the best sound of any combination I have tried over the last 40 years.

 

I figure the only thing that could improve what I use now would be 2 things,1 get back into to vinyl and 2 get a mic and software to make adjustments to compensate for the room. I decided to do neither and just enjoy the music and be happy.

 

Truthfully in the long run I like the people here and have met many in person and it has always been good.

 

There is one other thing I am interested in but I am not quite ready to do anything about it, computers tied to audio. I love streaming music and the variety it provide. I am willing to give up a "little" quality for a ton of convenience and variety, I rarely sit and critically listen anyway.

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