13-05-2020, 05:59 AM
Thanks kallee for trying to get at the nub of the thread, though it's fragmented as all discussions do, though in essence it seems to be "what is good hifi" I'd say that in a nutshell a good hifi is one that brings enjoyment, that reproduces music in a way that's pleasing. We've seen from Marks excellent informative posts how the sound a band records gets manipulated, the result is completely different to a live sound, which with Classical music is what they're trying to capture, both are trying to capture an event, an emotional interplay between musicians and audience if there is one and then mix it so it sounds nice on the various devices it's played back on.
Originally sound engineers and electrical engineers designed mixing desks, microphones etc to capture a performance without adding distortion or other artifacts but then the waters got muddied, The Beatles upsetting recording engineers by shoving the faders up, increasing gain so a track was distorted, Ray Davies slashing his speaker cone on his amp to get distortion on You Really Got Me and Phil Spector building his wall of sound so singles sounded good on tinny transistor radio's.
So already we have a divided approach to sound recording & reproduction, the audience or listeners are further divided into purists who want to listen to that recording as it came out of the studio without any added artifacts, the hifi camp and those who couldn't give a toss. The hifi camp is further divided as they can't agree what the best way is to achieve this, which is complicated further by us all living in different sized boxes, having less than optimal and non standard transducers on the outside of our heads, non standard interfaces between said ears and whoever/whatever it is that is us/I. Then all this is complicated further still by folk who believe the shinny bits of metal and coloured pieces of paper that reside in other folks pockets should be theirs, who then think of clever & dubious ways to part said aformentioned folks from it.
After writing all that I'm not sure it makes anything any clearer and I can't remember what my original point was, perhaps a better title for the thread would be "Hifi is complicated : ) Not really, as long as it brings pleasure that's all that matters, a chef can work assiduously to prepare a meal, to design it to have the optimal taste, only to have the eater put Daddies sauce all over it. Perhaps like the chef a designer of an amplifier or speaker we can engineer it to have low distortion, the best taste as far as we are concerned but include a bottle of Daddies or Tomato Sauce as part of the package.
Andy.
Originally sound engineers and electrical engineers designed mixing desks, microphones etc to capture a performance without adding distortion or other artifacts but then the waters got muddied, The Beatles upsetting recording engineers by shoving the faders up, increasing gain so a track was distorted, Ray Davies slashing his speaker cone on his amp to get distortion on You Really Got Me and Phil Spector building his wall of sound so singles sounded good on tinny transistor radio's.
So already we have a divided approach to sound recording & reproduction, the audience or listeners are further divided into purists who want to listen to that recording as it came out of the studio without any added artifacts, the hifi camp and those who couldn't give a toss. The hifi camp is further divided as they can't agree what the best way is to achieve this, which is complicated further by us all living in different sized boxes, having less than optimal and non standard transducers on the outside of our heads, non standard interfaces between said ears and whoever/whatever it is that is us/I. Then all this is complicated further still by folk who believe the shinny bits of metal and coloured pieces of paper that reside in other folks pockets should be theirs, who then think of clever & dubious ways to part said aformentioned folks from it.
After writing all that I'm not sure it makes anything any clearer and I can't remember what my original point was, perhaps a better title for the thread would be "Hifi is complicated : ) Not really, as long as it brings pleasure that's all that matters, a chef can work assiduously to prepare a meal, to design it to have the optimal taste, only to have the eater put Daddies sauce all over it. Perhaps like the chef a designer of an amplifier or speaker we can engineer it to have low distortion, the best taste as far as we are concerned but include a bottle of Daddies or Tomato Sauce as part of the package.
Andy.
