Romy the Cat wrote:

Jordi wrote: Let us take the example of piano. When speaking of virtuosity, many classical-only listeners who listen to Sviatoslav Richter, Josef Hofman, Busoni or Paderewski for example, and who think that these classical pianists are the last word in pianistic virtuosity are SADLY MISTAKEN.  In fact nothing could be further from the truth.  Believe me when I say this as I graduated with honors in composition and performance from The Juillard School. If you are a limited only to classical listener who doesn’t just sit there drooling while following the notes with a stupid look on this face and instead decides to compare what he’s heard contextually with, to take a simple view, the contrapuntal coalescence of a great jazz pianist like Lenny Tristano or Thelonius Monk who understand meter and modal shift and tonal subtlety on a level that someone like Richter for example could only dream of, then you will have come to an understanding about music and its performance intricacies that few who listen ONLY to classical music will ever attain in his lifetime. Thank you. My question was not to check your hydration method but to make sure that you do not talk about Audio in context some kind of Deep Purple, Pink Florid or ACDC music. Rgs, the Cat

Manuel, I think you missed the whole point of my post.

I did not say that musicians being better than others just based on the music they play, although I might see rational for some people, including me, to advocate this point. However, in context of AUDIO applications I do insist that different type of music requires DIFFERENT AUDIO METHOD.

That said, it is my vocal in persistent position that classical music is the only interesting, righteous and worthy subject for AUDIO REPRODUCTION. It is not necessary because I personaly like or do not like one or other type of music but because non-classical music contains no level of CONTENT-LOADED COMPLEXITY that a serious playback might “deal with”.  I personally do listen sometime none-classical music, I do like and appreciate some of it but I would never consider that my AUDIO OBSERVATIONS from my none-classical listening sessions are worthy for my audio thinking.

Therefore where I see/hear audio people pontificate about the audio subjects and at the same time if I learned that their interests in pleaded back music is limited to the complexity of Jacky Terrasson  or Cassandra Wilson then I automatically degrade whatever they express, and treat them with to no other seriousness as your  would treat you 8-years old son who is explaining you the nature of  electromagnetic  emission from aged neutron stars.

Sure, the non-classical music listeners are nice people but they have no audio interest to me, no audio credentials and reasons to be experienced in High End Audio subjects. Once again, it is not about musical preferences but about Pure Audio Methods.

Romy,

I got your point
my answer was to Jordi´s post, I just used your answer to quote him and follow the line.

I just mean that it is not "true" that, as jordi wrote, a classical pianist is a "worst" performer just for playing classical, or that a jazz pianist is "better" just because jazz allows more improvisation.
or that a rock guitar hero has faster fingers just because hard rock guitars ask for speed.

I do agree that to optimize music reproduction, every kind of music requieres a different approach.
it´s hard to have relaxed "wood sounding" violins and sharp electric guitars at the same time.

I have found that if a system is directed to classical music reproduction, jazz will also be fine, but it will not be so good if you optimize to jazz and then go to classical.
so I choose the system based on classical, but also listen to jazz with it.

jazz can´t have the complexity of a large symphonic orchestra, however there´s also more jazz than Terrasson or Cassandra Wilson, for example it´s not easy to make the reproduction of an intense passage of a plain jazz piano trio sound like it should be.
In fact, it´s not easy for an audio system to make a single piano sound like a beaten string inside a resonance box, the fast attack on the string, the slooow resonance decay .....

Manuel wrote:

…. however there´s also more jazz than Terrasson or Cassandra Wilson, for example it´s not easy to make the reproduction of an intense passage of a plain jazz piano trio sound like it should be.

The problem is that “jazz sounds like it should be” in context of jazz is relatively simple category and this fact derives from two aspects: a relative simplicity of jazz as an expressive form and a relative mediocre performing ability of pop players. I know, you would disagree with me but I do have the Keith Jarrett recordings of Mozart’s concertos and I have seen what he was trying to do there….

However, I think you do have a point and pop (jazz) music is not only the Cassandras. Even in jazz, there was a period (probably up to the end of 50s-60s) where better musicians played music with different level of seriousness and those recordings might be conditionally use in audio applications.

Still, although a certain level of expressionism and intentions might be found in the better players from the jazz’s past but unfortunately even that music is very one-dimensional and very lightly content-loaded.

Rgs, Romy the Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

Still, although a certain level of expressionism and intentions might be found in the better players from the jazz’s past but unfortunately even that music is very one-dimensional and very lightly content-loaded.

yoshi wrote:

This, seems to me, is like comparing the work of Francisco de Goya to that of Jackson Pollock.

Yoshi, I think you are mistaken, let me explain why. When we enter the realm of conversations about “comparing” Goya and Pollock then we touch a very lucrative ground of actually comparing thier artistic methods, their expressionism and many other their things….

However, when we talk about the hypothetical Goya vs. Pollock from AUDIO PROSPECTIVE then the artistic, historic or social subjects are not in the aim of out attention. From AUDIO prospective we could only view those painters as a set of tools and techniques that Goya and Pollock used in order to be able to paint what they intended to paint.

Audio is not the Goya’s or Pollock’s painting but the methods they used to wash their brushes, the techniques that their vendors used to manufacture paints, the methodologies that Goya and Pollock used to prepare their canvas, the way in witch they mixed color and how they accented contrasts, the techniques of using small stroke vs. large strokes and the way in which then moved their hands with brushes (Sorry if it sounds too uninformed – I do not do painting). Audio is not the painting themselves (and not the music that is played) but the methods that enable to do it. In case of Goya vs. Pollock, I am sure; it requires very different skills and techniques to be able to paint what Goya vs. Pollock painted

The very same in audio – different musicality requires different methods of handling of sound reproduction. Simple or primitive music requires very little to be played well and the methods that define “success” in reproduction of simple music are very simplistic, non-limited, and non-refined.

What is important to understand is that I do not use some abstract audio statements to justify my personal musical preferences. A was attracted a few years ago to research this subject, making available to me experiments (primary in speakers) and observed how different micro-solutions, or pure audio methods, inflicted the musical materials of different complexity differently. Then I become a believer…

The more simplistic and the more primitive music is the fewer efforts it requires from audio to be perceived as “good sound”. So, how complex Jazz from audio perspective? Well, I have witnessed situation what people were listing in my room Jazz recording without realization that it was played 45rpm instead of 33rpm…  :-)

Romy the Cat wrote:

I have witnessed situation what people were listing in my room Jazz recording without realization that it was played 45rpm instead of 33rpm…  :-)

some chaotic ideas here:

- emho there´s not an absolute reference for what a "perfect sound of music" should be:
every concert hall has its own sound, its own reverberant environment
every seat in the hall has its own sound
the instruments also sound different depending of our position. think of a grand piano, sit lower than the open tap and the sound will be dead, stand higher close to the strings and it will loose some resonance or body
and also instruments sound different, it´s not the same a stradivarius than a plain good violin
it´s a matter of personal taste

- there´s not the absolute neutral recording, all of them are manipulated by recording engineers
recordings need some amount of compression to be heard at home, or we would be jumping in our seats with crescendos, or we would not hear thesoft passages
or we would not hear the soloists, for example, a concert for guitar and orchestra, how could we hear an acoustic (not amplified) guitar against a full symphonic orchestra? recording engineers solve that raising the volume of the guitar

- then there´s not the perfect audio system, all of them are faulty, we accept compromises, and we take them also depending of our personal taste

- when a composer thinks of music, emho he does not think of halls, recordings or audio systems, he thinks in terms of his own idea of how it should sound, something like Plato´s theory of ideas? he has an idea of perfect notes played in a perfect environment, that does not really exists, and I don´t think it has any importance

- and every performer makes its own performance of the same theme (I think I´d always prefer Lorraine Hunt over Cecilia Bartolli, the later has impressive technique, but no meat on the bones)

about the superiority of classical music, because of its complexity, it may be true if you think of instrument layers and the use of large orchestras, but I also think that jazz is "superior" (this is not the exact word) in terms of time-rhythm and harmony freedom.
time: an african primitive rhythm can be very musically elaborated for a occidental listener, yet simple to reproduce in an audio system
harmony: a John Coltrane theme from the 60s can be impossible to follow "harmonically" the first time you listen to it, it is unpredictable, you don´t know where he will go, which note will have sense, but when you listen the note you see the meaning of the whole. I remember an interview to an old Elvin Jones (classic John Coltrane quartet drummer) crying when saying that he had to leave Coltrane because at a given moment he could not follow Coltrane´s music evolution anymore.

sorry for the chaos ...

Manuel wrote:

…  when a composer thinks of music, emho he does not think of halls, recordings or audio systems, he thinks in terms of his own idea of how it should sound, something like Plato´s theory of ideas?

And why do you thin we should feel differently what we deal with audio?

Manuel wrote:

about the superiority of classical music, because of its complexity, it may be true if you think of instrument layers and the use of large orchestras, but I also think that jazz is "superior" … in terms of time-rhythm and harmony freedom.