Originally Posted by
Pharos
From Jez;
"I'm quite the opposite on that one! It must be accurate above all else. I'd pack this in immediately if I ever had thoughts of making stuff sound "nice". The "niceness" should come from the accurate reproduction of the original sound, allowing an open window into the performance. One should therefore be enjoying the performance itself and not the "version of the performance" delivered by a coloured system. "
I completely agree, the replay system should replicate the recorded waveform, but as a correlate in air pressure variation in the replay room.
Making a recording sound nice, perhaps by euphonic coloration, whatever its source, may provide the comfort of a familiar sound, but it will ultimately serve to obscure the reality of the recording, and thus inevitably the reality of the art itself to some extent.
Comfort zones are readily seen in all of life, but ultimately they limit the ability to address realities, and so limit personal perception and development. Perceiving reality is a vital factor in any achievement or endeavour.
I am still battling with new speakers which are daily giving me shocks with insight into music I thought I knew well, and it is discomforting, but after years of improving my system, I have found increasingly as it gets better, that I find more audible faults on well known recordings; with each improvement more appear.
The DSOTM repetition is an artistic choice, and that is beyond the scope of a Hi-Fi reproduction quality critique.
I enjoy good photography, and I never expect from it to present me with a faithful representation of what can be seen with a naked eye. The art of photography lies exactly in avoiding the accuracy that is part and parcel of our sensory perception, as evolved over hundreds of millions of years in this crazy game of survival and adaptation.
Same goes for sound reproduction. I expect my stereo system to editorialize on the raw signal recorded during performance. If I record myself playing, the recorded playback is always a major sonic disappointment. It never sounds even close to how I hear it while I'm playing (or how I hear other people play their instruments).
It is for that reason that we hire trained sound engineers/mastering engineers -- we want them to embellish the raw recorded sound, to make it more seductive to the listeners. A good turntable is yet another step in editorializing the performance, in making it even more seductive. This is similar to applying various filters and other effects to photos being edited in Photoshop, or in Instagram etc.
Don't you just hate it when you cannot detect where the post ends and a signature line begins?
Alex.