High Fidelity (Haute Fidélité in French) Audio

[Feanor]

I agree that "high fidelity" implies faithfulness to source. And generally I only care a lot about that with classical music and (sort of) Jazz, (ie where I have a solid live reference as a concert-goer).

Where things can get mixed up is how much of the original performance space are you supposed to hear in your listening room - what is accurate in that trade-off? There are close-mic'd, dead room recordings, and there are recordings in huge churches. I guess that's more of a recording issue than a reproduction issue, although ambience reproduction strikes me as an additional complication in your home setup.

As far as I'm concerned, recording and mastering choices and quality are 90% of sound quality; equipment is just the rest, (assuming it's basically good quality and suitable to the listening room).

I like mostly Classic and a big beef with me is the perspective in case of chamber music in particular. Some sound engineers seem to be aiming for an "seat among the performers" position whereas I'm much happier with a 4th row audience perspective.

 

[ahofer]

As far as I'm concerned, recording and mastering choices and quality are 90% of sound quality; equipment is just the rest, (assuming it's basically good quality and suitable to the listening room).

I like mostly Classic and a big beef with me is the perspective in case of chamber music in particular. Some sound engineers seem to be aiming for an "seat among the performers" position whereas I'm much happier with a 4th row audience perspective.

Have you tried this recording? You can find it on Tidal or Qobuz.

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=129674

miked so close the first violin is taking over the right channel. But otherwise a lovely-sounding recording.

 

[Hipper]

How far do you go with this loyalty to the original recording?

Media limitations including noise? Room and speaker interaction?

One strange phenomenon is recording studios ADDING noise - here's an example:

 

[North_Sky]

Can lower fidelity sound more pleasant than high fidelity?

 

[sergeauckland]

Can lower fidelity sound more pleasant than high fidelity?

I'm sure it does to those who prefer vinyl, valves and/or low feedback amplifiers with high distortion and high output impedance. There are also many loudspeakers with very rough frequency responses, so presumably those are chosen over better measuring rivals.

There's no accounting for taste.

S

 

[Harmonie]

You not have to care about tubes or transistors. They have to do the same job. You just have to care about the input and outputsignal.

For me High Fidelity would rather start from HOW you put the signal in, so many bad recordings that it's sometimes a real joy to hear good recordings.
Reason I started to like classical music, Chamber, Jazz and acoustic instruments which sound you know and can compare.