I enjoyed reading your response
@Blaspheme.
I agree with some posts above that the faithful transmission paradigm is a bit of a straw man. But it is often invoked—and invoked seriously/literally—so I guess a comprehensive discussion would need to address it.
I think so too. I doubt I'm the right person to explain but I think at root we have a category error.
No matter what you do, any acceptable statement of the goals of a playback system will be an assertion of an aesthetic truth. There is simply no way to derive or infer objective specifications of the performance of the playback systems from that. The methods of scientific objectivity are over here and discussion of the arts is over there.
For example, Newman stated above:
"The truth is fairly simple and is certainly achievable, and worth striving to attain. And that is, to reproduce with fidelity the actual recorded music production that was made by the musicians in concert with the sound engineering and recording team. The experience that they had in the mastering suite is a work of technical art wrapped around a piece of musical performance art, and they made that sonic experience and not any other sonic experience, and striving to hear what they heard, and reproduce what they produced, is worthwhile and worth doing."
This is an assertion of an aesthetic truth. It is entirely acceptable. But it wont work to elaborate the objective measures of performance from this one simple statement that exists in an entirely separate domain of thought.
And I think this category error explains why some debates go on and on without resolution.
An assertion like "
Whatever sounds better [to me/us] is better [for my/our purposes]" is unassailable. It might seem less useful in specifying and choosing equipment than Newman's but it's not really. They are both useful and limited in roughly the same way.
But the separation of the aesthetic from the objective works both ways. The defiantly anti-measurement aesthetic pleasure seeker makes the same category error if she or he claims that measurements don't matter.
I think there are perfectly good reasons for the kind of measurements and judgements that Amir, for example, uses. They are pragmatic reasons. (Engineering is pragmatic.) But they are not simply stated and they are debatable. (Engineering choices are debatable.) They are contingent on constraints. They are complicated by the statistical nature of psycho-acoustics and the commercial markets. Much as one might want to formally relate all these choices and trade-offs to a simple statement of an aesthetic goal, it won't work.
Put it another way. Imagine you were a professional consultant that knew everything there is to know about audio, acoustics, perception, and you know all the products on the market and can use all the most sophisticated measurement devices and signal-processors. It's your job is to build systems for people. You have skill in asking questions about what clients want and wisdom in understanding what will satisfy them in short and long terms. Different clients wanting different things is obviously permissible. Assume they express themselves in aesthetic, not engineering terms. What's it like to do that consulting work? There isn't an algorithm to take the client's words and produce equipment and config specs. It's a craft that involves engineering and a lot of knowledge on one hand and psychology, personal and language skills on the other and a lot of experience and/or magic to bring them together with successful results.
It seems equivalent to being a recording engineer, mediating between separates domains of truth, the aesthetic and the objective/technical.
Connecting these domains is complex. Also interesting.
But ontology is always fun. You are free to disagree with me here.
The only discussion of ontology I have found useful is
Marc Ribot's B-Flat Ontology.
Obsession with underlying moral dimensions appears to me to be a very US thing. I put it down to history/culture: the US was largely settled by fringe religions escaping the dominant churches. It's hard to have a discussion with many from the US while traversing terrain seeded with morality landmines. I was glad he didn't go there. But I agree it's a part of the ethos at ASR (which I don't share). He certainly could have addressed it, but it is somewhat orthogonal to his line of argument. I enjoy the fact that there are many Europeans here who don't obsess over that stuff (ie minor moral issues, not major).
I hadn't thought of the moralization w.r.t. overpriced p.o.s. audio gear in that larger context. I think you're right. America is in the grip of ever escalating moralization, judgements, deploring, denouncing, etc. It's interesting, quite worrying and very complicated. The historical reasons you mention are interesting and may be involved but I don't think they are sufficient to explain what's going on now. I think we need to understand the rewards of this behavior to those exhibiting it.