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But I never said that. I said artists’ intentions and what the artists’ heard are unobtainium ….as a meaningful and useful reference. Big difference
The recordings themselves sure. We have them. They can serve as an objective reference for the audio signal. After that it gets dicey
The recordings are objective. The insight not so much. I will give you one example.
Years ago a friend of mine did a recording for Deutsche Grammaphone of a couple piano concertos down in Venezuela. The piano was in bad shape and sounded like crap. So much so that the whole project was nearly scrapped. The concert hall sounded like shit. The audiences were loud and disruptive and the woodwinds didn’t seem to grasp the idea of moderation. Brilliant performances that just sounded like crap in person.
The recording engineer was and still is a hard core audiophile. He did some extensive multimiking. The recording was monitored over head phones. I couldn’t tell you what was used to monitor the mix but I can tell you that the conductor used his “high end” foo foo system that would be scorned by most ASR members. My friend used her iPhone and ear buds to judge the final mix. They had notes and eventually signed off on the recording.
When I played it he CD it sounded great and it sounded nothing like the original live sound. Totally different in character. Piano sounded amazing. Orchestra sounded balance. Not a hint of the crap hall signature sound.
How would anyone, by listening to this CD gain that insight or any other insight into this recording?
Artists’ intentions? Do tell?
So when someone who wasn’t there plays this same recording using the BACCH and the sound stage goes from typical two channel stereo miniature with all the typical trappings to sounding amazingly life like in scale and specificity should they question the results based on insight that…that…..that we can find in the recording without knowing the back story?
The idea of “fidelity” is simple. Real life is messy and complicated. Of the tens of thousands of stereo recordings made since the mid 50s we mostly don’t even know what we don’t know.
Yes, we have the recordings. But we never have the whole story behind them and rarely much at all of their back stories. Each was a part of a unique journey
What matters is a personal choice. Objective facts are not. The recordings are objective. The artist’s’ intentions are unobtainium. Our ability to look at recordings and decipher their journeys based on the recordings themselves is vague and highly speculative.
What matters to each audiophile in their approach to their hobby is up to them.
But take my one example. If ASR members think they are getting any closer to what was heard in the concert hall or on the headphones by adhering to the Dr. Toole approach to stereo playback as opposed to a BACCH based system they are operating from somewhere in Wonderland.
Appreciate your response. Re artist's intention vs the recording, understood, and it appears we agree on that aspect.
The one issue I would take with this most recent comment of yours is the story of the Venezuelan orchestra. The recording, for the purposes of talking about the fidelity of an audio playback system, is the end product the consumer/listener gets. So in that example the CD is the recording. I'm not trying to force a definition of what a "recording" is; I'm merely trying to clarify what I - and I would most folks here - mean when they talk about an audio system enabling high fidelity playback of a recording.