Originally Posted by
montesquieu
This thread has me a bit bemused. I actually don't care that much about hifi. I've selected kit over many years with the goal of really enjoying the music I put on. Yes that does involve an element striving for accuracy (as in - it's hard to enjoy a viola da gamba that sounds like a badly-recorded cello). But it's not the be all and end all - enjoying the music is.
Peter Walker of Quad put tone controls on his preamps because he was well aware that all too often recording engineers / mastering engineers fail to produce something that sounds decent, enjoyable, listenable. Accuracy fails in my book if any recording can't be listened to with pleasure. Ten years ago I spent time chasing detail - only to find I was barking up the wrong tree altogether. I blew up my system, ever bit of it (Quad ESL, Whest phono stages, Lyra cartridges) and started again.
It's amazing the detail that suddenly appears on a recording if you sit down with the score of the work you are listening to - indeed, usually you find it's all on the record already, what's missing is your attention drawn to a particular element. But as a musician, and sometime conductor, I know (and should have known 10years ago) that not every detail cries out to come to the top screaming attention to itself - often the goal is to blend into the whole and create an overall effect. A system that draws your attention overly into how it reproduces tiny details or obsesses on pin perfect instrument placement, and not into the soul of the music - the harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, musical communication between the performers, micro-expression and articulation of phrasing, and most of all, the overall vibe - is a waste of time.
You know at the opticians where they make the image super sharp, it's almost painful, then they add a lens that doesn't make it blurry as such, but takes the edge off and makes it comfortable - that's what I aim at. Breed out hash, blurring, noise, strange tonal artefacts - yes of course, you need to get to a point where those aren't there, where the sound is clear and there's no rubbish getting in the way. But go too far, use too magnifying a lens, and you can take away soul of of the music.
If I put on a record and it makes my ears bleed, I don't just blame the recording engineer: he has failed, yes but also in some way so has my system. I have quite a few orchestral records that sound like they were recorded in a giant toilet, or have instruments far too closely miked, or some other glaring flaw. Often the performance is dross as well so there's no need ever to play it again. Occasionally though, that crap recording contains some excellent or rare performance - and my system ought to be able to make a decent fist of doing something with it. I can marvel at what my system drags out of 78s - not a hifi medium by any stretch - but enjoyable - yes indeed.
Accuracy - yes, up to a point, Lord Copper.
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