12-03-2018, 11:12 AM
Unless one hears live music on stage, one does not know what good imaging is. Again, I notice that most of the new LPs of classical music are of pre-digital recordings that may offer better imaging in whatever format in which they are played back.
If I were to tell people how to buy a sound system I would tell people to first pay attention to speakers because there is no measurable way of discerning sound quality from specifications other than the depth of bass response. When I was looking for stereo equipment the last time (and that was over twenty years ago!) I bought some small bookshelf speakers... and I used music for string quartet to test the speakers for sonic merit. That is difficult music to bring to its fullest, but the typical work for full orchestra is for an ensemble in which most of the instruments are violins, violas, and cellos. Pipe organ? Unless one has a pipe organ, nobody can fully get the sound of a pipe organ in its fullest majesty -- even a small organ.
People are in tinier apartments than they used to be, so they obviously don't have the space for the gigantic speakers that recent college grads were buying. Electronics have been marketed much like toys -- regrettably even sound systems. What many of us considered awful compact stereos in the 1970s and 1980s are better than the schlock that fits the constrained space of apartments in places where there are jobs. (One cannot fully escape economic reality even if one hears Wagnerian bombast!) Economic reality is sweat-shop compensation and management, and that landlords can compel tenants to bid up apartment rents as if tenants were super-rich people bidding for Old Master paintings.
Still -- there was much shoddy recording when digital recording became the norm. It was superficially easier. The electronic section of playback and reproduction is much cheaper than it used to be (in the 1970s one could pay $300 for a receiver that gave 15 watts per channel and $500 for a receiver that offers 30 watts per channel, either of which is grossly inadequate today) -- but almost everything now has horrible speakers.
The problem may be with digital recording. I can find some early stereo recordings from the 1950s fully adequate as a sonic experience, but some more recent mass-market recordings utterly awful as sonic experiences. If I hear a fine 1950s recording on a crappy sound system, I know that I am missing something. If I hear it on a great sound system, I am satisfied. On the other hand if I hear a mediocre recording of a great orchestral performance on a great sound system, I am not excited. If I hear it on a bad sound system I am losing little.
Note well: that many of the sound systems on which people are playing back new vinyl LPs are awful. Most people have no idea of what high fidelity sounds like, having listened to highly-compressed formats on 'sound systems' best described as boom boxes in miniature -- or car stereo (the system might be good, but it comes with road and engine noise.
If I were to tell people how to buy a sound system I would tell people to first pay attention to speakers because there is no measurable way of discerning sound quality from specifications other than the depth of bass response. When I was looking for stereo equipment the last time (and that was over twenty years ago!) I bought some small bookshelf speakers... and I used music for string quartet to test the speakers for sonic merit. That is difficult music to bring to its fullest, but the typical work for full orchestra is for an ensemble in which most of the instruments are violins, violas, and cellos. Pipe organ? Unless one has a pipe organ, nobody can fully get the sound of a pipe organ in its fullest majesty -- even a small organ.
People are in tinier apartments than they used to be, so they obviously don't have the space for the gigantic speakers that recent college grads were buying. Electronics have been marketed much like toys -- regrettably even sound systems. What many of us considered awful compact stereos in the 1970s and 1980s are better than the schlock that fits the constrained space of apartments in places where there are jobs. (One cannot fully escape economic reality even if one hears Wagnerian bombast!) Economic reality is sweat-shop compensation and management, and that landlords can compel tenants to bid up apartment rents as if tenants were super-rich people bidding for Old Master paintings.
Still -- there was much shoddy recording when digital recording became the norm. It was superficially easier. The electronic section of playback and reproduction is much cheaper than it used to be (in the 1970s one could pay $300 for a receiver that gave 15 watts per channel and $500 for a receiver that offers 30 watts per channel, either of which is grossly inadequate today) -- but almost everything now has horrible speakers.
The problem may be with digital recording. I can find some early stereo recordings from the 1950s fully adequate as a sonic experience, but some more recent mass-market recordings utterly awful as sonic experiences. If I hear a fine 1950s recording on a crappy sound system, I know that I am missing something. If I hear it on a great sound system, I am satisfied. On the other hand if I hear a mediocre recording of a great orchestral performance on a great sound system, I am not excited. If I hear it on a bad sound system I am losing little.
Note well: that many of the sound systems on which people are playing back new vinyl LPs are awful. Most people have no idea of what high fidelity sounds like, having listened to highly-compressed formats on 'sound systems' best described as boom boxes in miniature -- or car stereo (the system might be good, but it comes with road and engine noise.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.