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In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: Lecture on history of architectural acoustics

Post Subject: We, juts the humans….Posted by Romy the Cat on: 4/15/2010

Well, Nicanor, I very much disagree that room acoustic being basically invisible to us. People who deal with sound more or less intelligent always not only pay attention to room acoustic but recognize sound ONLY in context of room acoustics. Take for instance musicians. Talk to them or read what they say: whatever they do is very strongly bind to acoustic of performing environments.

The change of our perception with time in respect of the acoustic environments we build is a whole another story and I do have an attitude about it – I am not sure if this might be observable in pure and methodologically uncontaminated manner. We are talking about a relatively long time frame, right. I think that over a long period of time our perception of acoustic changes but our perception of music changes as well. I feel that to think about Beethoven we can think only about “what” but not about “how”. I do not think that performances by Beethoven in the beginning of 19 century were something that would “impress” us, the contemporary listeners. I think that in past music was played way less articulate then it is playing nowadays. The expressivity in the past, I think, was not via articulation and phrases verbalization but via other means. If so, then how to assess our change in acoustic perception but in the same time to subtract out of it your change in musical perception?

Then the 20 century brought audio and the majority of music we hear via recordings. The performing manners were greatly modified by the fact the sound was recorded and nowadays many musicians (of cause I am taking about only classical repertoire) have performing techniques that are more suitable for recording but not for live events. If so, then how to fish in this dark pool of alternations with time the changes that are solely responsible for acoustics?

So, even though I do feel that behavioral acoustics is an interesting subject but I would not put it as a keystone of anything. Yes, rooms and Halls change, so the people change. If you are feeling let say nostalgic about some events that took place 30 years back then you longing about the events or about yourself in past? I do not think that we, the humans can differentiate it clearly.

The Cat

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