An Interesting Read

Nobody read this? http://www.gspaudio.co.uk/blog/pictures-in-sound_post31.html

Just reading the "Nothing Is Real" bit...

I could be way out in left field here and completely missing what you are all talking about, that would not surprise me, nor would it be a first.

My remembrance of that section of his exposition was not that he was denying the validity of that illusion, nor of its importance as a method of evaluating the relative merits of reproduction equipment.

In fact, his Harry Potter quote, to me indicated quite the opposite.

What he seemed to me to be attempting, was to make the point that this is solely our mental construct, created from the information fed to and interpreted by, our senses or more particularly, our hearing.  Further, he is making the point that this construct is our only reality (in this particular case).

This understanding, to me, makes sense of the issue known as "listening fatigue" and also of another condition that I have personally observed which is almost the opposite.

I particularly observed listening fatigue with one setup where the speakers were spaced very wide apart on the long wall of an approximately 20' x 10' room, after a period of listening I noticed myself becoming tired and realised it was from the mental effort of drawing the speakers closer together to make sense of the sound stage.  Another issue of cognitive dissonance that I commonly have is when situated too close to multidriver speakers (I have only used single drivers for some years), where I find the sound confused and confusing until I move sufficiently far away to allow the different sources to coalesce.

I suspect the more common type of listening fatigue to be caused when there are too many dissonances arriving at the ear and subliminal adjustment to filter them out and maintain the musical construct becomes exhausting.

The corollary I have experienced, being when the representation of the musical event is so encompassing as to allow complete immersion in the music, with the result of feeling emotionally drained at the end of a piece and completely satiated, not wanting to listen to anything else immediately, but just to savour the afterglow of the recent event.  Much as one might at a live performance.

In order to achieve this state, it seems to me that there must be sufficiently little  in the reproduction process/chain,  to impinge on the subconscious and damage the illusion being created, thereby allowing one to relax into the music and for the emotions to fully engage with the content of the work.

I found his discussion intellectually stimulating and felt others might too, I shared the link for that reason, certainly not to make any particular point or to make any claim to authority on any particular issue raised or discussed therein.

Edited by tg - 30 Dec 2012 at 7:19am

A wonderful paradox, isn't it, that considerable knowledge of and interest in the equipment is necessary to reach the ultimate goal which is to cause it to disappear so as to leave just the music and the listener and an emotional connection.

For me it's analogous to the challenge facing a musician who must make the huge technical difficulties of playing their instrument disappear in the ears of the listener. Not because putting together a good sounding hi-fi system is somehow equivalent in difficulty to learning to be a concert pianist (it isn't) but because in each case the music flows freely once the technical difficulties are completely nailed down.

We will one day go right up to perhaps 128 bit and then 256 and probably 512...

Great investment and large scale integration will require the miniaturization of the iPhone to put it onto a 50 pin 0.6" wide DIP package, with lots of ancillary circuitry.

And we'll at last do analogue audio - audio without steps. And realise we had it all along... vinyl.

Reminds me of the ending of the Wizard of Oz. We go on a long journey only to find it was always there "in our own backyard".

Just musing.