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In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: High-end audio: Absolute Sound vs Naturality vs Expressivity
Post Subject: The expansion to observer versus creator perspectivePosted by Romy the Cat on: 12/29/2024
I think yesterday, replying to Peter I eventually got a proper association how to present my position of observer versus creator.
Pretend you have a piece of music on CD and pretend that you want it to play in your listening room.
You are an observer. You go out and you buy CD player, amplifier and loudspeaker and play your music. You might buy better or worse components, you might spend more or less effort to set up your playback you're listening room. One way or other that is all that you have is grandfathered in that capacity of your equipment or in the organization of your system. There is nothing wrong with that what can be changed is only your perception over the result. You might correlate the result against your absolute sounds BS, if you subscribe to this theory, or you might observe the result from the point of view of naturality, whatever you feel Naturality is, if you subscribe the theory of naturality of sound reproduction. In one way or another you are the protection and safeguard of complete expressions of audio design and your advancement in audio expressionism just polishes your perception.
Now, pretend another case and let me simplify it. You have everything as an example above but you do not have a loudspeaker. you have a selection of all imaginable drivers out there, and all imaginable topologists are there, and all imaginable woodworkers that can instantaneously do to you whatever you want. My main question is: where is naturality in this situation? If you do subscribe the concept of naturality then naturality will exist in assessments of your actions but ONLY after the actions have been performed.
The arguments that I provide is not an argument of buy vs DIY. The type of acquisition of other elements in fact is irrelevant. What is relevant, in my view, how perception of naturality changed in the hand of the system owner if the system owner achieves naturality using the first versus second approach above. In the first approach, the approach of buying a playback, naturality achieved or not automogically. The problem is that naturality in this case is a Boolean, it is here or not here, and if it's here not 100% but let's say 87% then there is no way for a system owner to deal with those non-existing 13% because the system owner is obliged to change an entire amplifier or an entire acoustic system. In the second case, when the playback owner act as a creator, that naturality is not a Boolean but a result of 1 million micro actions. In this case 100% naturality comes from 100s individual decisions.
Again, I very much do not advocate DIY. In fact, DIY (in my view) is a fundamentally false way to practice truly high-end audio. The reason why I bring this illustration is to demonstrate that when you are sitting in an empty room with a pile of resistors, capacitors, drivers, cartridges, wires and pieces of bronze that might be eventually converted into TTs you have no naturality as naturality of your playback is post factum of your or somebody else efforts.Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site