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Some weeks ago I lectured at the Faculty about certain amplifier topologies I've been working.
To put the subject in perspective, I started the presentation with some reflections regarding what means "perfect reproduction", given the context both of technology constraints and psicoacoustical realities.
In a nutshell, one could say audio Nirvana in essence is in the eye of the beholder.
We may agree an objective and indisputable reference, should be the perfect reconstruction of a target acoustic field. That is, a pressure field indistiguishable from the original performance could hardly be challenged. At the same time we must recognize audio holography is far from being a practical reality and it may be speculated to be an unreachable objective, though history has proven wrong these kind of sweeping statements before.
Neither is this condition necessary, in the sense individuals attending a performance from different locations are subject to notoriously different pressure fields yet attain similar emotional experiences. In fact may prefer different locations and this hints to the nature of the problem.
Certainly the matter gets more complicated when the program material is not fully or even partially made from actual sound pickup but of artificial construction. Studio production further blurs what faithful "original" program material could have been, to the point of being the sound engineer part of the final product sthetics.
We are also ordinarily removed from the direct possibility of comparing "original" vs. "reproduced" sound for the same source, witness how different we hear public characters like politicians or media figures through radio and TV as compared with an actual face to face conversation when the possibility comes about. The same holds for other sound sources.
We are in fact quite used to how "reproduced" sound sounds, and use to be surprised whenever we have the infrequent possibility of a direct comparison of original against reproduced.
Couple now the infinitely many ways we have available to tweak the reproduced sound, from selection or lack thereof of a listening environment, type of drivers, electronics etc., plus tone controls - graphic equalizers and so forth.
We can almost always find a way to adjust the listening experience to our liking, but then it must be recognized it is **our** liking, hardly a standard prone to widespread acceptance.
So back to the beginning, there are probably as many "perfect" systems as people listening, for the underlying emotional experience responds to a personal sthetics not readily transferable.
I for one, tend to find the best sounding systems are the ones made by me, hardly a surprise for sure.
Rodolfo
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Audio Nirvana - Where Is It? How Do We Get There?
