Overall what I personally care about most is not fidelity or realism but a kind of transparency. Not the technical transparency we apply to amps and such, but the quality of not being aware of the recording, its production, or the playback equipment. I don't have a word for it. Do you?
Sort of, but before I get to it…
I’ve had experiences that I would expect our familiar to others here: sitting in front of some high end system in which the speakers do a terrific job of “ disappearing” as a parent sound sources, and so you presented with a wide open highly detailed acoustic bubble representing the recording in great detail.
But of course, recordings can contain all sorts of cues to how they are not real or natural, so are you talking about specific recordings that would also not betray their artificiality?
Or is the sense of transparency you’re thinking about achievable even when the recording themselves have some artificial qualities?
In my case, what I find most pleasing generally across-the-board is what I would term a “ natural” or “ unmechanical” presentation.
In many sound systems, I’m very aware of the artificial, electronic, mechanical nature of the sound like everything is being squeezed through woofers and tweeters, and very often the balance of the sound, whether it’s an individual voice, a trumpet or saxophone or acoustic guitar or whatever, seems unnaturally skewed - very often towards favouring the transient versus the body of the sound. And that helps give it that thinner more spiky artificial flavour. Plus there’s various types of distortions that can add up.
Some systems sound to me less mechanical and more natural.
For instance I remember when I played some tracks, I know on a friends system, and the system at that time used some Vivid Audio speakers and big solid-state amplifiers.
I listened to some Joni Mitchell tracks, and I think it was kind of blue.
The system presented an incredibly vivid hologram of Joni Mitchell’s voice, but it sounded mechanical and artificial nonetheless. Not “ made of flesh and blood.”
When I played the same tracks on my system when I got home, John‘s voice sounded so much more natural, without artificial edges, the balance much more like a human being… she sounded more human.
The same went for the sounds of the saxophones which were extremely clear and vivid on my friends system. They were less vivid on my system, but the balance of the sound seemed so much more natural and real, the saxophones sounding bigger and richer, and to me much more like the real thing.
Speaking of sonic realism, to this day, the most realistic reproduced sound I’ve heard where my personal recordings of my son playing saxophone and me playing acoustic guitar, played through some MBL omni speakers I used to own. it sounded amazing sitting in the room, but even more so from outside the room in the hallway. Once I was outside the room, it sounded almost indistinguishable from somebody playing a real saxophone in the room. It was quite remarkable. And in fact, later on, I fooled some guests with that recording. When they were sitting in a room down the hall and I put on that recording unknown to them, they wondered who was practising saxophone in the front room. (The sound was actually of my son, struggling somewhat to play the sax as he was still learning when I did the recording, and that aspect also helped with fooling the people).
As for desiring sonic realism, I do want my system to be able to reproduce or at least mimic certain qualities I hear in real sounds.
One of those is the sense of “ real acoustic sources playing in real space.” I find the super tight presentation in many systems, especially with certain speakers toed in heavily, on an overly constricted quality, and that includes the recording of the reverb or ambiance around the object as well. so even the acoustic presented unnaturally squeezed or hardened.
Properly dialled in, to me things sound like they are just happening in the space around the speaker, and the accompanying reverb or acoustics also have a natural quality that gives me the sense of entering that acoustic.
And I want the general timber of voices and instruments to have some of the beauty of the real thing even if it’s totally out of reach.
But I have no need to be able to reproduce the dynamics of a drum solo in my small room, more than I want the real dynamics of a fighter, jet missile or tank rolling by when I’m watching a movie in my Home Theatre. A sort of tamed mimicking of reality is fine with me… just enough elements to make me sink into the illusion.
