If Music Didn't Exist............. [Archive]

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walpurgis

24-10-2012, 23:18

If music didn't exist would you still want your Hi-Fi?

If so, why, and what would you be listening to?

Furthermore, would Hi-Fi ever have evolved above basic 'audio' in the first place? If it had, what would the high degree of resolution be wanted for? TV? Movies? Bet the quality of sound would never have crossed most people's minds. Mind you, that's true now anyway.

MartinT

25-10-2012, 05:06

Erm, well I think I would get bored with pink noise and frequency sweep tests. I'd be looking at it and thinking "there must be a greater purpose" and scratching my head.

Then I'd listen to choo choo trains on it.

nat8808

25-10-2012, 05:10

Certainly!

My ultimate goal for my hifi is for it to recreate a holographic, real-life sound image into my living room.. if not for music then for sound recordings of places, of nature etc etc. In my mind, that goal automatically means that music too is recreated as one would experience in real life in all its glory.

I remember someone on a forum saying that they'd encountered someone with stupidly expensive Audio Note Ongaku amps and other expensive kit - yet only plays steam train sound recording records to recreate that realistically within their home.

Not sure how music could not exist as it is just human interpretation upon some sound - there are people out there who have absolutely no ability to discern music over any other noise, some who became that way after head injury.

If you mean that we humans were no-longer able to discern between sound and what we now call music then, once I'd experienced what it was possible to recreate sonically within the home, I would certainly be hankering after such a system myself. I'm just not sure that I would ever come in to contact with anything like hifi equipment other than in some science museum, if it wasn't for a desire for music in the first place...

John

25-10-2012, 05:17

I spend more time in nature

nat8808

25-10-2012, 05:23

Than whom?

John

25-10-2012, 06:23

Than i do now

The Grand Wazoo

25-10-2012, 07:26

I've moved this thread to what I think is a more appropriate place

Stratmangler

25-10-2012, 08:12

I've moved this thread to what I think is a more appropriate place

I didn't know that we had a "home for the bewildered" place :eyebrows:

bobbasrah

25-10-2012, 08:38

I didn't know that we had a "home for the bewildered" place :eyebrows:

If music didn't exist, neither would this section, nor the question ? :mental:

walpurgis

25-10-2012, 09:09

If music didn't exist, neither would this section, nor the question ? :mental:

Why? I'm not sure you're right about that.

Rare Bird

25-10-2012, 09:18

If music didn't exist would you still want your Hi-Fi?

Well since more people are more intrested in the actual hifi & i honestly believe a lot just sit & look at it :lol: it wouldnt matter to them.

synsei

25-10-2012, 09:57

Dominic Harper

25-10-2012, 10:06

If music didn't exist, would you have a hifi?

Natalie;)

Marco

25-10-2012, 10:09

Well, if there were no music, what would you do: just sit and stroke it (I mean the hi-fi equipment)? :eyebrows:

Marco.

walpurgis

25-10-2012, 10:39

If music didn't exist, would you have a hifi?

Natalie;)

I think that was the basic gist of the thread. Anyway, give us an opinion.

bobbasrah

25-10-2012, 11:27

I think that was the basic gist of the thread. Anyway, give us an opinion.

No

nat8808

26-10-2012, 02:38

Really?

Am I the only person to enjoy all sound, not just one tiny aspect of it that is called music?

Music is a bunch of notes and rhythms, tunes and performances. You can get much of that from a cheap radio, definately from an ipod and dock.

Good hifi is surely about making something sound real in your home, the soundstage and impact of real, direct sound. That can apply to everything else that isn't music too, like hearing a radio play sound like it's happening all around you or taking you to an imaginary world (have people listened to the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? ).

Even just a trashy helecopter flying from one side of the room to another in a film is surely worth the effort of having hifi as a hobby? No?

nat8808

26-10-2012, 02:43

I've moved this thread to what I think is a more appropriate place

I think it does belong in the Blank Canvas area as it is about what you would use your hifi for if not for music.

It's nothing about music - it's actually about no music at all, literally.

Maybe it being in the 'talk about music' area is skewing the answers.. I bet in the AV room there'd be a lot more yes's.

nat8808

26-10-2012, 02:53

More appropriately, would domestic audio equipment exist if there was no such thing as music? I'd say no to that. Any system is only as good as the software that is available for it. Sorry Geoff, but it is a pointless question... :scratch:

I think it's quite enlightening TBH, how people can be into and very particular about all the different aspects of the sound of their music and spend thousands and thousands getting that right... yet they don't consider sound itself to be anything to take enjoyment in seperate from that music.

I think hifi in the home would exist but would have been much more of a fringe, eccentric thing up until home cinema would took off.

I probably wouldn't have come across the equipment if it wren't for music so would only not have a hifi through ignorance, but once that ignorance was broken by a demo somewhere I'd be hooked..

John

26-10-2012, 05:27

I think each to their own for me its about wanting to get close to the music and trying to experience the live event of music so I am more instrested in the collective whole than the analysis of sound

bobbasrah

26-10-2012, 06:18

Really?

Am I the only person to enjoy all sound, not just one tiny aspect of it that is called music?

Music is a bunch of notes and rhythms, tunes and performances. You can get much of that from a cheap radio, definately from an ipod and dock.

Might I bring you back to the point from the OP Nat, the concept of no music existing, not it's quality or construct.
Music is about perception, interpretation and appreciation of sound, whether that be a symphony or a steam train, banging two rocks together or hearing droplets of water fall into a pool as our ancestors probably considered music. Hifi is about reproduction of recorded sound, but why would you develop a means of storing what you neither perceive nor appreciate as music in the first place? :scratch:

If there were no music it would be because we were unable to interpret sound, perhaps even deaf. In either instance, we would be unable to discern attack by predators, and have long since ceased to exist, so hifi would never enter the equation. ;)

Tim

26-10-2012, 17:07

Dominic Harper

26-10-2012, 17:30

walpurgis

26-10-2012, 17:52

Well said hear hear !!!!!!!!!!

This is my point exactly.

Natalie;)

Seemed a straightforward question to me Tim & Dominic. I thought I'd laid it out in simple terms and was not expecting confusion to arise.

The comments from both of you are basically what I'd asked to start with.

Now you've got me baffled.

Barry

26-10-2012, 18:47

Who's to say that music is the only thing I listen to on my system?

There are radio plays, poetry reading, audio books and recordings of birdsong (as well as trains! :eyebrows:).

I'm sure someone like Jeremy Clarkson would listen to nothing but the sound of Bugattis and Ferraris revving up.

Dominic Harper

26-10-2012, 18:51

Seemed a straightforward question to me Tim & Dominic. I thought I'd laid it out in simple terms and was not expecting confusion to arise.

The comments from both of you are basically what I'd asked to start with.

Now you've got me baffled.

Hi, it wasn't Dominic that answered, it was me Natalie. Sorry if I have offended you, I was just being facetious:D.

Natalie;)

Tim

26-10-2012, 19:00

Isn't it rather a moot point though and a chicken and egg scenario? I very much doubt there would be anything to discuss without music, as would we actually have HiFi manufacturers without music? Its a daft question by the way my logic works.

Anyway chirp away and don't mind me I'm going to listen to some music.

Rare Bird

26-10-2012, 19:04

:sucks:

:eyebrows:

walpurgis

26-10-2012, 19:18

Hi, it wasn't Dominic that answered, it was me Natalie. Sorry if I have offended you, I was just being facetious:D.

Natalie;)

Don't worry Natalie, it would take more than that to offend me.

If you post here you should be willing to take a bit of stick. As you're likely to get it! All part of the fun.

And I was just waiting for Andre to throw his tuppence worth in too...........

nat8808

26-10-2012, 22:23

If music didn't exist would you still want your Hi-Fi?

This has got to be the most confusing post I have ever seen on a music/Hi-Fi related forum and I had to check that I had understood it?

If music didn't exist what the feck would you need a stereo for :scratch:

The phonograph wasn't invented for music.

Recording music was a fun thing to do AFTER the phonograph was invented.

Without music, people would still be inventing ways to record and replay sound. It just wouldn't be mainstream like music reproduction equipment is.

This is a hifi forum I'd say, the Art of Sound is supposed to be about tweaking hifi isn't it to get the best sound, the Art of Hifi? The music part is lower down on the forum and is an inevitable part of hifi hobby but not the reason for the forum surely (else it would be a music forum and a small little equipment section at the bottom).

Tim

26-10-2012, 22:27

The phonograph wasn't invented for music.

Recording music was a fun thing to do AFTER the phonograph was invented.

Ah sorry, silly me I didn't realise we were talking about the 1870's

nat8808

26-10-2012, 22:35

If there was equipment that could make realistic, hologrpahic 3D images appear in front of and around you, moving ones perhaps, then would you buy that equipment? Think of the Star-Trek Next Generation holographic room thing.

Hifi can almost do that, sonically. Equipment that can recreate 3-dimensional sonic landscapes that, as soon as you close your eyes, transports you to some other place, a fantasy land. When it happens on a good sound recording (not talking music) on a good system, it can give you goose bumps.

Hmm... I'm detecting a distinct lack of imagination and perhaps even interest in the world around us and our connection with it. Perhaps it's quite normal to be more blinkered, focused on the job at hand of human culture and human way of life and I'm unusual?

nat8808

26-10-2012, 22:40

Ah sorry, silly me I didn't realise we were talking about the 1870's

:scratch:

Audio reproduction equipment was invented for non-music purposes.

There will always be people in the world of science and engineering who will want to improve audio reproduction equipment as technology progresses, for non-musical purposes.

Therefore hifi equipment WOULD exist IMO, contrary to your take. It simply wouldn't be of interest to so many people, so wouldn't be widespread or such an industry built up around it. It would be specialist (and probably devoid of all foo! Now, there's a thought..). But it would definitely exist.