GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: The Sound and How We Hear It

Post Subject: Music's ingredientsPosted by tuga on: 11/9/2008

Paul S wrote:
Very interesting way to frame it, Adrian.  I always unthinkingly thought of "neutrality" as "faithful to what's on the record", with a Grand Assumption that if there's music on the record, then a +/- "neutral" system will let it out "unscathed".  Here, "neutrality' is not to be confused with "bland", nor does it allow for much "distortion".  In other words, "neutrality" is for me an ideal based on my own Sense of the Sound, and, obviously, I never thought of it in the terms you're proposing.  In any case, I also tend to think of the average "musical" system as sounding +/- the same regardless of what it's trying to play, if you know what I mean. I can say that I enjoy fine Burgundy very much, speculate and make money on wine and wine futures, and I also like spicy food.  I love all the "realistic" tonal color and "natural" ambience I can get, but I am also pretty sensitive to and intolerant of distortion in my playback, and I think I tune it accordingly.

Hello Paul,

At the moment I am trying to figure out how distortion and tone relate to clarity.
For me it's very important that a system can produce contrast between piannissimi and forti as dynamics are one of (symphonic) music's main ingredients, something that a composer will always add to the pot. This somehow seems to be, in my limited experience I should stress, related to clarity and also to the ability of a system to play loud without distorting.
Dynamics, as most other sound characteristics, are of course recording dependent.
This fact does raise an interesting question: if all recordings sound different, how do we get a good tone? Since a system with "good" (or bad) tone would mask the sound of the recording, what I wish for is a system to portray a broad range of tonal colours. How to get there from here? I have no idea (limited time and budget, and very little technical knowledge don't help either).

Cheers,
Tuga

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