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Romy the Cat wrote:

rowuk wrote: I maintain that audiophoolery tries to convince us that there are hardware solutions for sound quality. I disagree. Hardware solutions only feed our egos.  This is very complicated question, rowuk, at least in my estimation. I do not argue that solutions feed our egos, there is plenty of it but it does not exhaust the whole picture. I have been in hear a strong supporter of a view that music and audio have distinctly different objectives and means, probably it is better to say not “means” but inner-mechanism for declaring itself. It is not that music and audio do not have arrays of inner-penetration, for sure they do. Still, they are different animals. It is would be similar to design treadmills and health, they for sure are connected and one can be used to evaluate other but essentially they are very different sectors of humans endeavor.    Now the complex thing: the relationship between are hardware solutions for sound quality. I very much insist that quality of hardware solutions are very directly impact sound quality and very directly impact music consequences of that sound quality. I know that you expressed skepticism but I think you incorrect.  The problem is not in the supposition that I am expressing but with the definition sound quality that might be interrupted very wide. The “audiophoolery tries to convince us that there are hardware solutions [do something] for sound quality”, and they are absolutely correct. The key is their definition of “sound quality”. The sound quality that industry is patronizing for many year is a direct consequence of hardware solutions, some of them positive, some of them negative. Did you ask yourself why for over 100 year of audio industry, in one form or another, the industry never formulated more or less standard methodology for sound quality evaluation and assessment? My point is that when “sound quality” has a proper formulation in the ears (and the most important in the minds) of sound consumers then the relationship between hardware solutions for sound quality is very direct and very unambiguous. Unfortunately, the definition of “sound quality” as it been sponsored by audio industry is not the sound that has any relation to musicality or to any other human benefits … besides the “feeding our egos”.    So, are the hardware solutions and sound quality related, yes they do. Does “sound quality” is a known ingredient or even to say commodity in the industry he produced the hardware solutions? Absolutely not and therefore in most of the cased the hardware solutions indeed are just to feed our egos. It might not ned to be this way…

rowuk wrote:

Amir, an audio event can be anything that our ears hear. It can be live music, a baby crying, a recording, playback in the car. Playback is much different than live music - especially if we are familiar with the recording. First of all, stereo does not have enough information to „recreate“ a live event. It can create only a plausible proxy. This proxy does not need audiophile artifacts to work. If we are familiar with a recording, we already know what is going to happen musically. That anticipation changes the way that we listen. No surprises. The geometry of live music is mostly not present in playback. This is because early reflections are far more prominent in domestic spaces. It is especially distorted in audiophile setups that brag about „imaging“ as a thing and not a result. In live music, we have intermodulation. Two trumpets or a trumpet and oboe playing together create sum and difference tones that change depending on pitch interval for instance. For music in major keys, this intermodulation is additive - for music in minor keys, it is destructive. Bruckner used this to great advantage for instance. This effect is never as present in playback as in live music. This is because the intermodulation requires LF response to 1 Hz as well as integration of the highest frequencies. Low frequency response is hugely different between audio events in a „smaller“ fixed space and „larger“ spaces. In a typical living room with the doors or inside an automobile, we have a pressure chamber. Our bodies react differently to this LF - a pressure chamber is impossible to musically integrate! Tone: live music has „Tone“. The various octaves have a sense of pitch and softness and articulation all at the same time. Audio playback very seldom can unite these factors. There are hundreds of further differences. You seem to want to argue, but never provide details. I will not talk about synthesized tone from electronic or heavily DSPed music. Here there is no „reference“ tone (well except compared to the live PA sound...) and more (LF/HF/transients) is simply only more - not better or worse.

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