Re: Digital to Analog downloading Question ?

On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:47:16 -0700, Steven Sullivan wrote
(in article <ftom9406qn@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>):

> Harry Lavo <hlavo@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> "Arny Krueger" <arnyk@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
>> news:ftmc1701n96@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> "bob" <nabob33@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>>> news:ftk1vo02j85@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>> On Apr 9, 6:36 pm, Sonnova <sonn...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Except that it has never been proven that people with
>>>>> normal hearing hear music all that differently. Anyway,
>>>>> it doesn't really matter whether it sounds different to
>>>>> each of us. The point is that the sound of real, live
>>>>> music played in real space will always sound the same
>>>>> way to YOU.
>>>> 
>>>> No, it doesn't. Live music sounds different to me, every
>>>> time I hear it. I've heard the same instrument played by
>>>> the same musician in five different halls. It never
>>>> sounds quite the same. But perhaps my hearing perception
>>>> is just more refined than most. :)
>>> 
>>> This is so true. I get to hear the same groups singing and playing the

>>> same
>>> groups in different rooms, and its a vastly different experience. In
many
>>> cases I get to move around while the groups are rehearsing and in some

>>> cases
>>> even while they are performing. There are plenty of differences.
>>> 
>>> I've also measured the transfer function from the center of a
performance
>>> space to various locations in that space, and of course they are all
>>> different, and all highly non-flat.
> 
>> Isn't it marvelous, therefore, that with all the variety the human
brain is 
>> rarely fooled into mistaking reproduced sound from live music. 
> 
> Aside from the obvious bias-inducing factor -- oen already KNOWs that
the 
> music is not live -- 
> there's the fact that (2-channel) reproduced music does not accurately 
> reproduce the spatial 
> information of the live event... a long-known deficit of the medium.
> 
> However, it's also interesting that many recordings and systems
considered 
> 'excellent' by 
> audiophiles, actually render live music in much more minute detail and
with 
> more finely etched 
> 'imaging' , than one would be able to hear in a concert hall.

Good point but kind of irrelevant. Whatever technical wizardly allows a 
recording to have that marvelous soundstage or those minute details still 
can't make a recorded trumpet sound like a real one. That's the basic flaw
in 
audio technology. That barrier between recorded and real has never been 
breeched. I remember the Acoustic Research live vs recorded demonstrations

that they used to hold in their showroom on Broadway in NYC. I used to go 
every time I was in New York (which was often in those days).  I was
rarely 
fooled. Even though they used a small string ensemble (either a quartet or
a 
trio) and put a heavy scrim between the listeners and the players (and of 
course the speakers). I think that they believed that the scrim would be
the 
great equalizer, but my 16 year-old ears could tell every time the group
was 
actually playing, though many who were there couldn't tell.
> 
> Which raises the question of how 'real' people really want music to
sound at 
> home.

That's the supposed goal of High-Fidelity.