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In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: My Audio Philosophy
Post Subject: Audio Event / Music EventPosted by rowuk on: 10/21/2019
Amir,
an audio event can be anything that our ears hear. It can be live music, a baby crying, a recording, playback in the car.
Playback is much different than live music - especially if we are familiar with the recording. First of all, stereo does not have enough information to „recreate“ a live event. It can create only a plausible proxy. This proxy does not need audiophile artifacts to work.
If we are familiar with a recording, we already know what is going to happen musically. That anticipation changes the way that we listen. No surprises.
The geometry of live music is mostly not present in playback. This is because early reflections are far more prominent in domestic spaces. It is especially distorted in audiophile setups that brag about „imaging“ as a thing and not a result.
In live music, we have intermodulation. Two trumpets or a trumpet and oboe playing together create sum and difference tones that change depending on pitch interval for instance. For music in major keys, this intermodulation is additive - for music in minor keys, it is destructive. Bruckner used this to great advantage for instance. This effect is never as present in playback as in live music. This is because the intermodulation requires LF response to 1 Hz as well as integration of the highest frequencies.
Low frequency response is hugely different between audio events in a „smaller“ fixed space and „larger“ spaces. In a typical living room with the doors or inside an automobile, we have a pressure chamber. Our bodies react differently to this LF - a pressure chamber is impossible to musically integrate!
Tone: live music has „Tone“. The various octaves have a sense of pitch and softness and articulation all at the same time. Audio playback very seldom can unite these factors.
There are hundreds of further differences. You seem to want to argue, but never provide details.
I will not talk about synthesized tone from electronic or heavily DSPed music. Here there is no „reference“ tone (well except compared to the live PA sound...) and more (LF/HF/transients) is simply only more - not better or worse.

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