GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: The Sound and How We Hear It

Post Subject: What is the Sound?Posted by drdna on: 11/8/2008

Complicating this issue is the idea of differentiating sounds from the Sound. My way of thinking about this is that the sounds are the products of the stereo reproduction system. Ideas like bass, treble, transient response, and soundstage are common components. The SOUND, by comparison, is the expression of the original idea of the musical piece. It is not, by my definition, the score to the music or the idea in the composer's head; it is the way in which that piece is expressed by the musicians on that particular day in that particular performance.

It is attractive to fixate on the sounds. They are easy to hear and somewhat of a novelty. Many audiophiles get stuck at this level and very much enjoy a stereo which magnifies all these aspects. The think to remember is: what does this have to do with the original performance? We do not focus on attack, decay, or soundstage when we are sitting in a concert hall listening to a string quartet.

Likewise, it is easy to fall into the trap of the other extreme, seeking out the idea behind the musical piece as the ultimate goal. But, if this were the case, we would be talking about how well a particular performance achieved those goals, as we do when we discuss real live performances.

Instead, the goal of the Sound, is to achieve a connection to the expression of the musical performance -- to understand what the musicians were thinking when they were playing, to revel every time they succeeded in getting the crescendo right, and to sigh when they didn't quite get the composer's intent. The goal of seeking the Sound is to connect with that experience, mistakes and all, to know if the soloist almost got a bit lost on that last run, to feel the ennui of the cellist thinking about her next cigarette break.

How does this connect with audio? In my opinion, listeners who prefer additive error more often than not tend to seek the Sound (and this may be because they have difficulty connecting with the Sound in the first place due to the way their brains are wired), because the essential aspects of a recording that express the Sound are preserved, and they are able to ignore any added distrotions so long as their connection to the Sound is optimized.

On the other hand, listeners who prefer subtractive error (assuming they are not caught up with sounds) may have a much easier time connecting with the Sound intrinsically or they may be unable to ignore artifacts or added distortions, so they are thus drawn to more so-called "neutral" systems.

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