Harsh Music
Music is harsh - depending on your level of exposure to live music you will know this to a greater or lesser degree. Im really lucky - I live 600m from an open air opera theater so for 6 months of the year i get to hear o hell of a lot of it. Even at 600m with the muffling effect of the atmosphere and trees etc it is noticeable how compared to recorded music it is often towards the teeth jarring end of the spectrum. Live music has an edge to it - and to be honest its not one I especially like; its just a bit to demanding of my attention in some way. I was thinking this in respect of just HOW CLOSELY DO I WANT MY HI FI TO REPLICATE THE LIVE PERFORMANCE?
Music is harsh - depending on your level of exposure to live music you will know this to a greater or lesser degree. Im really lucky - I live 600m from an open air opera theater so for 6 months of the year i get to hear o hell of a lot of it. Even at 600m with the muffling effect of the atmosphere and trees etc it is noticeable how compared to recorded music it is often towards the teeth jarring end of the spectrum. Live music has an edge to it - and to be honest its not one I especially like; its just a bit to demanding of my attention in some way. I was thinking this in respect of just HOW CLOSELY DO I WANT MY HI FI TO REPLICATE THE LIVE PERFORMANCE?
Go and see a string quartet, or piano recital, or better still pick up an acoustic guitar - then you will see just how far we are away from 'real music'. There is absolutely nothing harsh about it at all. The only way we can get close is to use a trick - stereo. What we listen to on a CD/LP is not the instrument, it is the response of the air to that instrument, and if it was recorded in a room where the acoustics match your listening area, it will sound ok. If our systems were really high fidelity, you could record an instrument in an anaechoic chamber (in mono), play it back (in mono), then the listening room will provide the RT. It doesn't, it sounds dreadful. We have such a long way to go.
I was rather referring to the "harsher" instruments - i get to listen to string quartets and similar regularly; my friend happens to be one of the best violin players in the country. But on the rest I agree.
Sorry - I didn't mean to demean. The key is that what we are talking about is the difference between acoustic instruments and ones played through a PA. According to all the experts on here we appear to know all the answers about how to reproduce sound - I tend to disagree.
This is something i have been thinking about for some time. A couple of nights ago i attended a gig at my son's college . Although things have much improved in comparison to last year with regard to the actual performance's , there was one song that drove me nuts.
The song involved male/female vocals , two guitars , bass, piano and for this particular song no drums . The drummer left the stage leaving his sticks resting on the snare.
At certain points notes from both the piano and bass set off a resonance that in turn created a loud buzz/ vibration through the dormant drum kit.
For me this " distortion " completely ruined the song and if i had been listening through my Hi -Fi would have had me thinking my tweeters were damaged .
Which in turn brings me to the question How closely do i want my hi fi to replicate a live performance ?
Well after 30 odd years of chasing that " perfect " sound from my home audio for me the answer is i don't.
I have always considered myself an audiophile but i'm not. The term is generally used to describe someone whose goal is to replicate a live performance ( or as closely as possible ) via their home audio with the system neither adding or removing anything .
Over the years i put together several systems that met the neutral / flat FR etc etc criteria spending a great deal of cash in doing so , good recordings sounded great and poor recordings poor.
Thing is those systems weren't satisfying me simply because i now know there's a certain sound signature i prefer , a sound i can achieve without spending the huge amounts i did in the past and a sound i can enjoy regardless of recording standards ( thanks Tripath 🙂 ) so musc enthusiast most definitely but audiophile ? i think not .
Btw this isn't intended to be a " tripath is amazing " post i just mentioned it because the design allows me to enjoy the sound i spent years searching for but is irrelevant to the question .
Nothing is irrelevant. I can quite happily listen to a favourite song on a cheap radio, or the timbre of a saxophone on an expensive stereo. That is why this is not an exact science, there are many factors at play...but if we can more accurately reproduce live sound, then isn't that something to aim for? I think the major culprits in non-realistic sound has to lie at the extremities, the transducers. The bits in between, the electronics, are pretty accurate, but speakers (in particular) introduce so many distortions and anomalies. I have been working on a design that more accurately replicates the ideal transducer - a point source- maybe one day.
Number7 I will concede (based on gov posted research) that milk has morphine in it, in minute quantities, but as has been already stated it is so small an amount as to be ineffective.
What I mentioned is something completely different, ie in some people the milk proteins are not properly digested, and are broken down into a form that is similar to opiates. In these cases the broken down milk proteins are in sufficient quantities to cause an effect. Unfortunately due to the number of google results on why cheese is addictive I can no longer find the scientific papers where this has been discussed.
Tony.
What I mentioned is something completely different, ie in some people the milk proteins are not properly digested, and are broken down into a form that is similar to opiates. In these cases the broken down milk proteins are in sufficient quantities to cause an effect. Unfortunately due to the number of google results on why cheese is addictive I can no longer find the scientific papers where this has been discussed.
Tony.
Concede? Don't be silly, we are all here to learn, you teach me stuff and hopefully it can be reciprocated.
There are many people intolerant to diary based products . When you think about it milk is produced by mammals as the first source of nutrition for their offspring and human children have to be gradually introduced to cow milk as it's " unnatural " and a tolerance has to be reached first so i guess that forced
" tolerance " is the thing that creates health problems later on and humans should only consume milk that comes from humans as that's what nature intended 🙂
" tolerance " is the thing that creates health problems later on and humans should only consume milk that comes from humans as that's what nature intended 🙂
Usually in mammals the production of the enzyme(s) used to digest milk stops at a certain age since after weening it makes no sense to produce enzymes which digest an unavailable food source.
However a single, simple mutation allows the life-long production. It is relatively common and arose independently in numerous human populations. Usually those which kept cattle for a while.
However a single, simple mutation allows the life-long production. It is relatively common and arose independently in numerous human populations. Usually those which kept cattle for a while.
Very true. People perceive me as 'weird' for drinking milk, whilst they are suckling on a cow! The negative effects of milk consumption are starting to surface, wrt cancers. For me personally, hand on heart, my girlfriend and I have been vegan for nearly 2 years, and neither of us has suffered any cold / flu illnesses since. (we both lecture and constantly come into contact with viruses - we were always ill). It may be psychosomatic. Anyways, goose and gander etc. Life is a best fit, at best.
Keep our forum clean and clutter free! Please do NOT quote the entire post just above yours. I have removed the over-quotes.
Nonsense. An instrument sends out different acoustic signals in different directions, which the room then sends back to the listener, so a single microphone cannot capture the full sound. You need more than one mike. It turns out that two mikes (when properly used) can adequately sample the sound in a space to allow a convincing and pleasant reproduction of that sound to take place. This may be related to the fact that we have two ears, so we are used to hearing sound via two sampling channels.number7 said:
Some instruments sound harsh, especially certain wind instruments. Hi-fi enthusiasts have to put up with this. Audiophiles can modify the sound in ways which they find pleasant.
As you will see above, I now use the term 'audiophile' with the opposite meaning. An audiophile is someone who loves audio. A hi-fi enthusiast is someone who loves music.Konzentr8 said:
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You do not understand (again). The INSTRUMENT is mono, ie a single sound source.
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I've been dairy free for over 30 years. Another of the things that can go wrong is that your immune system can attack certain food proteins. For me it is milk protein. If you have it your immune system is too busy fighting something that does not matter which weakens it leaving you open to catching other diseases.
Again this only happens to some people. If you have a dairy intolerance or allergy then yes get off the dairy! But not everyone does, and those that don't can enjoy the things that have dairy in them! 🙂
Tony.
Again this only happens to some people. If you have a dairy intolerance or allergy then yes get off the dairy! But not everyone does, and those that don't can enjoy the things that have dairy in them! 🙂
Tony.
Indeed. Often music that is not designed for live performance (like orchestral, etc) does not sound as good live as it does recorded; there can be many reasons for that - one being that a decent mix seems to be hard to find in more recent years - but the pleasure of live music can be rather different to the music itself, there's the shared experience, crowd dynamics etc. Also some of what I listen to cannot be realistically performed live or has never been performed live. The two experiences, live and hifi are different, and have different goals, different criteria for "goodness" for me.
In my experience it is like this:
Audiophile/phool: Someone who uses music to listen to his gear;
HiFi enthusiast/nut: Someone who uses gear to listen to music.
Audiophile/phool: Someone who uses music to listen to his gear;
HiFi enthusiast/nut: Someone who uses gear to listen to music.
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