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02-25-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,446
Joined on 05-28-2004
Post #: 1
Post ID: 29614
Reply to: 29614
Why audio itself is wasted efforts
We take a noble instrument — let us say the 2A3 — and we build an altar around it. We adjust parameters, refine topology, polish transformers, and whisper to ourselves that each refinement brings us closer to “better” sound. But what is this “better”? It is the echo of our own will or projections. We do not hear purity; we hear ourselves. We sanctify our labor and then kneel before its result. The sound is not improved — we are justified.

Remove the builder and the illusion trembles. The ear does not assemble; it receives. The music does not argue; it strikes. What we call fidelity is often only the morality of effort — the belief that toil must produce truth.

And yet musicality is not merely the vibration of air against the drum of the ear. To consume music is not to measure frequencies, but to be seized by interpretation. Hearing is only the doorway; understanding is the event. It is a psychological and cultural transformation — a becoming. The body resonates, the memory awakens, culture speaks through us. What is heard is never merely sound; it is meaning forged in the furnace of our instincts, our history, our training of perception.

The machine does not create this meaning. It only provokes it.

Without awareness of the forces within us — without psychological courage and cultural depth — one mistakes the refinement of equipment for the refinement of perception. One polishes the instrument but neglects the listener. And thus one misunderstands what audio truly is: not a compilation of tones, but an encounter; not an object, but a relation; not a system, but an interpretation.  It is an ultimate fugue of human life experiences where the layers of complexity gradually introduced and processed by human psyche. One must learn to hear without care the altar one has built.

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
02-25-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,849
Joined on 10-12-2006
Post #: 2
Post ID: 29615
Reply to: 29614
Stradivarius
Just so. Quite a while ago I went to hear a group of musicians playing Stradivarius instruments provided by a Trust that owned them. Let's just say I've heard more engaging music, and I've also heard better sound. I recall talking about it with a nextdoor neighbor who was a concert violinist at the time. She said that some otherwise-special instruments required players who could "get the best from that particular instrument and play something wonderful with it", and then it might be great, indeed. Not getting into the audience...

Paul S
02-26-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
rowuk


Germany
Posts 489
Joined on 07-05-2012
Post #: 3
Post ID: 29617
Reply to: 29615
We are creatures of habit!
It is true that there is a period of acclimation when combining the most special instruments and musicians. This period can be from weeks to years depending on how close the instrument is to previous musical habits. Some instruments also need to be constantly played to keep the player well tuned in. Sometimes we have to give up because the demands made by the instrument simply cannot be followed.

I know of no cases where like with HiFi gear, some people try something new and claim to be immediately "blown away". I do not believe that this is possible if we already have a well tuned system and just change something. Different yes, but better? Whatever changes must withstand the test of time to enter our perception, be accepted and then become "better". This does raise the question if the "best" of anything is the right challenge for our perception. Perhaps we get a "better reaction" if everything is not "perfectly matched". My trumpet students mature MUCH faster when they get student instruments in the beginning and professional instruments when they have developed the necessary skills/habits later on. Maybe we need to consider audio systems with training wheels?

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
02-26-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,849
Joined on 10-12-2006
Post #: 4
Post ID: 29618
Reply to: 29617
Wasting Away With Pass Bands, Filters and Fillers

If we start with the idea that a given hi-fi and a given recording have “own sound” and practical limits, and a given listener “knows something about Music”, then what do we have when we introduce recorded music via hi-fi to the listener in question? On the face of it, it appears we have a situation where the listener must somehow adapt in order to hear and experience Music via sound issuing from a hi-fi. In terms of adaptation, what could be involved with the system, practically speaking, and what might be involved with regards to the listener’s personal adaptation to the circumstances? Is the process the same for any hi-fi presenting any Music to any listener at any time and placeif and ? Are there also “gaps” to fill, and if so, what and how? Can we stipulate that certain adjustments are made to both systems and listeners, including but not limited to “dealing with” the limits and shape of the pass band the system is capable of, also system “dynamics”, also the “abilities” of the listener to hear, likely including some “mental filtration” along with physical limits, also “relevant imagination” to “fill in any blanks” or “resolve conflicting information”. I am thinking, if the listener is just reacting to sound, that might be different from actually listening to and for Music, especially when the listener is “musically challenged”.>>


Paul S
02-27-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
rowuk


Germany
Posts 489
Joined on 07-05-2012
Post #: 5
Post ID: 29619
Reply to: 29618
The language of hifi, the language of music, the language of perception
When we talk about reactions, language in my view comes into the picture. If we have spent any time with hifi, we learn about things like "punch", imaging, "wide frequency response". These parameters are insignificant to hear and appreciate the music although when severely lacking, we could be distracting. In many cases, mass availability of media and a typical use for background noise in the home, elevator or supermarket causes engineers to design playback that does NOT draw attention to itself.

Music appreciation is also something that we can learn. What makes for good readings of any particular piece of music for instance. What genre of music do we like, what can we learn from the reading

Above hifi and music comes perception which is the language of what "hifi", music, listening habits and listening hygiene actually awaken in us (and if certain stimuli could actually cause a repeat reaction). As we are creatures of habit, one could argue that hearing stimuli for the second time would cause a different reaction because we may have learned something consciously or subconsciously. This is hard wired into our "fight or flight" mechanism.

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
02-27-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,446
Joined on 05-28-2004
Post #: 6
Post ID: 29621
Reply to: 29619
There is a language and there is the language
The questions that preoccupied me throughout 2025 emerged from a convergence of psychology and critical listening. Once I became consciously aware of the pervasive role of projection in everyday psychological life, it became impossible not to recognize the same mechanism operating within the discourse of audio evaluation. The language we habitually use to describe sound reproduction is, to a striking degree, projective. What masquerades as technical assessment often reveals itself as unexamined psychological attribution. One finds almost no evidence of second-order metacognition — no sustained inquiry into how the listener’s own psychic structures participate in what is being “heard.”

Language is retroactively fastened onto experience, yet the bond between linguistic description and sonic event is neither natural nor self-evident. It is constructed. The high-end audio industry, in particular, frequently capitalizes on a subtle logical fallacy — post hoc ergo propter hoc — encouraging the belief that because a technical modification precedes a perceived improvement, it must have caused it. Last summer, I systematically reviewed numerous publications through the lens of projection theory. The pattern was unmistakable: narrative, not evidence, was doing the explanatory work. In this respect, audio rhetoric resembles ideological polarization in politics — persuasive, emotionally charged, and often detached from phenomenological reality.

The central problem, then, is not one of technology but of consciousness. If we are to speak meaningfully about sound, the task is not to accumulate descriptive adjectives for audible phenomena. It is to cultivate second-order awareness — the capacity to observe not only the experience of listening but the structure of experiencing itself. The essence of musical perception does not reside in circuitry or topology; it resides in the encounter between sonic event and psyche. Objectivity in audio performance becomes conceivable only when the listener can accurately differentiate between the intrinsic properties of a sonic stimulus and the qualities psychologically attributed to it. This demands disciplined introspection. We must learn to attribute specific experiential qualities — tension, expansiveness, intimacy, coherence — to identifiable acoustic events rather than to the symbolic aura surrounding equipment or effort.

Yet mapping experience onto sound is not a mechanical operation. It occurs exclusively within the consciousness of the listener. Such mapping requires an unusual integration: psychological depth, cultural literacy, and musical understanding. Cultural competence here does not merely mean familiarity with repertoire; it refers to the cultivated ability to interpret symbolic form, to translate auditory metaphors into conscious meaning, and to situate musical perception within the broader architecture of human experience. Without this integration, there can be no stable reference between audible event and subjective consequence. One is left with preference masquerading as principle, projection masquerading as analysis. Only when psychological awareness and musical literacy develop in tandem can discourse about audio transcend rhetoric and approach genuine phenomenological clarity.

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
02-27-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,446
Joined on 05-28-2004
Post #: 7
Post ID: 29622
Reply to: 29621
Everything else is a rejection.

I must admit that my mind is slightly unsettled at the moment—Bach’s BWV 548, particularly the Prelude, has done that to me. Yet I want to think alongside Bach, and this is the question that seems to arise: If I am listening to a musical work that moves me profoundly—let us, for the sake of simplicity, treat it as an “audio event”—what would be the methodologically appropriate way to determine how much of that emotional movement originates from the raw acoustic pressure itself, and how much from the cultural and psychological framework through which I interpret it?

PS: Am I certifiable?

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
02-27-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,849
Joined on 10-12-2006
Post #: 8
Post ID: 29623
Reply to: 29622
The Collective Unconscious To The Rescue!
No telling exactly what factors are at play here, but one is allowed to think and feel outside the box; it's just that it can be hard to "recapitulate". I probably have company in cases of "seeing sound" or "hearing smells", etc. It can take some real work to put together a conceptual framework that "explains" stuff like this. Depending on how sensitized one is at the time, it might not take much in the way of stimulus to provoke a big response. It might be easier to rule something out. My inner Max Weber wants to believe that I have earned something; but both the spontaneity and the weirdness suggest gifts from ???

Paul S
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