Yesterday I was looking through “The Absolute Sound” off the stand. There was one moment  in there that made me to pay attention and to comment about the read. In the very beginning of the magazine, in the reader letters section, there was somebody who had issue with the validity of the expression “Absolute Sound”. I was attracted to this as I myself frequently use the term “Absolute Tone” and I would not have problem to use the term “Absolute Sound” if it not was blemished by the name of the habitually dummy publication. I had no problem with the TAS reader questioned the validity of the phrase “Absolute Sound”, after all, most of the readers of my site also have no understanding of my use of the phrase “Absolute Tone”. So, I was wondering what the TAS folks would reply. They did reply and I call the reply idiotic. (Who would expect it from me!?)

I did not buy that TAS issue, so it will not be a quote but rather an abstract of what I remember. I think it was Robert Harley who replied, or HP or one of their matriarchs….Anyhow he said that instead of reviewing audio elements based upon their comparative performances, one of the magazine’s founders came up with a “shining” idea to review audio in relation to sound of unamplified acoustic instruments. This sound they described as the “Absolute Sound”.

Well, it is certainly a creative play upon the feeble minds of the TAS’s reader. If the sound of unamplified acoustic instruments is the Absolute Sound then what is has to do with the tasks of audio reproduction? If the goal of audio (according to TAS) is to reach the Absolute Sound by artificial ways then I presume audio shell be mimicking the unamplified acoustic instruments, right?  The problem is that live sound of “unamplified acoustic instruments” is one thing and any sound of audio reproduction is very different thing. They have the same external sonic manifestations but generally they are as much similar as smell of ocean similar to the smell of fish department in “Bread and Circus” (for foreigners - believe me or not but it is the name for a popular US food retailer). It is not that that I say that Audio sound is not good – it is different and has own expressive means and own effectual values. The worst thing a person can do is to “externally compare” the live sound with audio sound. This is EXECTLY what the TAS’s people propose: they invented the concept of Absolute Sound, the concept that understood ONLY in weighing of live against reproduced sounds but at the same time the concept that is completely incompatible with the comparing premises. In the muddy wetter of the endless and even theoretically not accomplishable comparing between live sound of “unamplified acoustic instruments” and the audio sound surrogate TAS magazine right along with the entire stupid high-end industry throw the fishing net, the net constructed with artificial and faulty audio requirements and with gullible fished-out consumers completely misguided in this their peruse to the faulty mirage-like goals 

The ambiguity and confusion that TAS flaks created with the deployed of their marketing bogusness is not too accidental and it has two layers.  First layer is the primitivism of the people who run the TAS. Yep, folks, you will be surprised to know that behind the all pompous blubbing, their funny “40 years in the business experience” and patronizing attitude most of those people are very limited in understanding of what is important and what is going on. They are in a way the victims of own invention where the metastases of “audio comparing” that they injected into audio industry have concurred, enslaved and spoiled this own frail minds. The second layer is that only in the environment of comparing live sound with audio sound trios people and their idiotic industry can actually sale something. Do not forget that anything those people do has the only one motivation - to maintain audio saleable. Those people cannot afford to think about audio and the ways for an individual using the means of audio to address own interest in sound (which is THE Absolute Sound). They cannot afford it because it would be nothing for them to sell. You can’t build an industry based upon expansion of listening awareness and simulation of interpretive-listening consciousness. Those TAS people need to have a brown UPS track monthly to deliver some kind of new crap to the cretin who subscribes the industry’s rules of the game. It is very much like health. How good a pharmaceutical company would do if people live healthy and in clean environment? Probably let people to eat previously eaten food, to drink gasoline and to breathe gas is something that helps to the pharmaceuticals to peddle their medications…

To “eat previously eaten food, to drink gasoline and to breathe gas” - was it the sonic equivalency of the TAS’s late recommended audio components, wasn’t it? Sure, it was what I call the TAS’s Absolute Sound of Audio Idiocy.

Antonio J. wrote:

If you face audio as the means to get everything that was recorded, then you need no high-end devices, get some professional gear and you're done.

Antonio, you did nailed it but with a minor correction. If you need a factual, a materialistic, an accurate representation of everything that was recorded then you might use any audio devise and the result will be only upon you (or somebody else) sell to you the definition of reproduction success. However, the “everything that was recorded” is NOT musical representation of performing event. The “everything that was recorded” is just a projection of the original event into a language of physical, mathematical or acoustic approximations.  The approximations describe Really but it is not Really itself and pointing attention to description of Really we unavoidably take out aim out of the Really itself. It is like an infant is crying because it experiences hanger for instance and you recognize the sound of the baby’s voice without recognizing the needs to feed it. The TAS does with this vision of “Absolute Sound” exactly that – they eliminated the commodity that they can’t trade - the human consciousness - and they use the “Absolute Sound” as a set of external approximations that compare Really and the clone of Really. The “Absolute Sound” doe not exist in this situation, what exists is ONLY the “Relative Sound”. The true “Absolute Sound” is a perception and it could not exist without awareness of listener.  The TAS version of “Absolute Sound” is in fact “Relative Sound” spiced with ever-changing industry literature to wrap the “Relative Sound” into the glossy paper of “Absolute Sound”.

Antonio J. wrote:

But if you assume audio as a means to get from the recorded music the essence that better comunicates with yourself, not trying to mimic a reality which is unattainable, then you're into a completely different practice.

Yes, I would not be able to express it better myself. Actually, Guy did express it better than me in his post above. What Lucien Freud does is in my view is the highest form of artistic expressiveness imaginable and I am very glad that someone sees some similarity between what Lucien Freud does with painting and what I am trying to do with audio. Lucien Freud paintings are like the Gabriel Márquez’s Melquiades - the gypsy who poses the “another knowledge” and that saw other side of the sings – the essential core side – the side the made everything else derivative. Can the Lucien Freud’s paintings be considered as “Relative Depicturing” or “Absolute Depicturing” (read Sound)? The answers would wary depending of what you are doing. If you are a little whore who made own objective to sell audio devises then what Lucien Freud does is very far from “Absolute Depicturing”. You would probably stick with the painters who practice Realistic Painting techniques and would be abscessed how a painting is differ from the same photograph. That is where the “Relative Depicturing” rules and it where TAS’s awareness operates. However if one have interest into the eccentric character of the things then we are in the “completely different practice” and in completely different set of demands. Here is the realm where “Absolute Depicturing” aka “Absolute Sound” might be possible.

Freud creates his own reality with the aide of sadistic and tenious demands of his victims/diciples/models and tries to make an aproximation of his inner vision on a canvas.

An audio guy can try to become his own composer/conducter/musician through the technical mastery of his stereos colorations, idiosyncrasies and neologisms by letting these filter or enhance a reproduction of a piece of art, forexample a CD.

This can be compared with taking a reproduction of a Freud painting and putting pieces of coloured glass and other objects in front of it and maybe adding an ornementation with a pen here and there or even covering parts of the painting with paper .  Further one could choose to illuminate it with ultraviolet light and maybe observe the result with a night vission with attached fish eye lenses. 

To try to recreate as much as possible of an unamplified instruments sounds, or other mechano-acoustic noices, is not necessarily less noble, easier or more primitive than the ”artistic” goals above and to get anywhere actually requires self awareness from a different (arguably higher) perspective .

What path to take, depends not only on your inclinations, creative drive, level of narcissism etc., but also on how much of the reality is represented in the reproduction, if not much there might not be a point in trying to be objective in a psycho acoustical context.

Cheers be

It is funny but for many years I had been intrigued by the different approach to audio by Japanese vs "the West".
"The west" here refers to Absolute Sound type (not everyone in the West is this of course) criteria of live performance.

Confession time - having been a reader of TAS as a school kid in the 80's, I thought the Japanese were crazy to aim for "my own individual sound".
Audio magazines in Japan would never really criticize a reviewed product, but merely descibe its sound characteristics. If it has a unique sound, that was seen as good and of value.

As I grew older, I thought this was cynical business motivation; do not piss off any advertizers, in other words. (and could be true to great extent)
Until recently I put it down to religious differences; Japanese can and do worship many Gods in a superficial manner (pagan idolatry?), as compared to religions like Christianity and Islam that is more absolute in the sense that they demand to be the only religion subscribed to. (I was young)
More recently, I think the Japanese are just kind of more correct about audio in the Romy sense (his comments just above). Sometimes they are lucky I guess :-)

tokyo john wrote:

It is funny but for many years I had been intrigued by the different approach to audio by Japanese vs "the West". "The west" here refers to Absolute Sound type (not everyone in the West is this of course) criteria of live performance... [while] the Japanese ...aim for "my own individual sound".