Steve Guttenberg: Are you truth seeker or pleasure seeker?

[Enkay25]

I find this a very cleverly twisted way to ask....to favour his cohort

Now I wonder why he didn't ask : Are the audio industry truthful enough to bring pleasure of music to consumers? (Instead of creating rabbit holes)

What are your views, dear respected members?

 

[thomasjast]

The truth is always beautiful when it comes down to it, if it's something you actually like. Distortion and noise is stage makeup and not an indication of reality.

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

ummmmmmmm, since when is this an either/or proposition? I want both.

 

[BDWoody]

I find this a very cleverly twisted way to ask....to favour his cohort

Now I wonder why he didn't ask : Are the audio industry truthful enough to bring pleasure of music to consumers? (Instead of creating rabbit holes)

What are your views, dear respected members?

False premise.

 

[Enkay25]

ummmmmmmm, since when is this an either/or proposition? I want both.

Exactly. Deep inside we all want it.

Agree with @BDWoody

 

[Ron Texas]

I want a satisfying musical experience. No aspect of the system's performance should call attention to itself. Remember, with studio produced music the sound is what the recording engineer under the direction of the artists want it to be. It's pretty much the same for live music dominated by electric instruments.

 

[Midwest Blade]

Steve is an opinion writer, I neither like nor dislike his opinions and find he tries to contribute by creating discussion. Adds a bit of color to the audio world but at the same time I really do not follow any of his hardware recomendations along with many of the other online reviewers.

 

[Cahudson42]

Watching his YouTube framing the question, it's another way of asking: Objectivist or Subjectivist?

And to paraphrase Mother Ann Lee, who would clearly be an Objectivist today - "That which has the highest accuracy has the greatest beauty"..

 

[ernestcarl]

This is the narrative by which he chooses to live by... "truth" is secondary to his experience of "beauty". A lot of people are like that. But it also makes easy fools out of those people -- the better to manipulate one another -- sometimes ultimately leading to ill effects (psychologically, financially, medically, socially, environmentally etc). Even if you accept this type of premise, it's still beneficial for one to step out of the matrix every so often to get a momentary reality check -- else we might find ourselves (albeit, but already too late) destitute and drowning in the filth of one's own making. Like something out of an avant garde movie.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

This is the narrative by which he chooses to live by... "truth" is secondary to his experience of "beauty". A lot of people are like that. But it also makes easy fools out of those people -- the better to manipulate one another -- sometimes ultimately leading to ill effects (psychologically, financially, medically, socially, environmentally etc). Even if you accept this type of premise, it's still beneficial for one to step out of the matrix every so often to get a momentary reality check -- else we might find ourselves (albeit, but already too late) destitute and drowning in the filth of one's own making. Like something out of an avant garde movie.

Yes. His is a diversionary ploy that (1) implies that the two approaches are mutually exclusive and (2) ignores the fact that whatever a system does to one source of music applies equally to what it does to all other sources.

 

[MRC01]

Some seek truth in beauty, others seek beauty in truth. Ideally, these are just different paths to the same goal.

 

[CDMC]

There is something about that guy that just bother's me. I think it is his voice.

How about I want reasonably accurate, but on the warm side of accurate? I listen mostly to rock, and a lot of it is less than ideally recorded, so I prefer speakers that are the warm side. I accept that it isn't objectively as accurate as possible, but it the way I enjoy the music the most.

 

[Fluffy]

I would say that I prefer beauty over truth, but in the same time to be aware and in control of the "lies".

For example, when choosing headphones, I don't want those that are accurate and flat as much as possible, I want the ones with the tilted response, that emphasize the pleasant sounding parts of the spectrum, and de-emphasize the less pleasant ones. But I don't want to go in blind, I want to choose exactly what lie I hear. It's achieved either by measuring the phones and seeing where exactly do they deviate from neutrality, or by EQ'ing them to my liking – or both.

And also, I believe that there are components that should be completely truth-oriented, simply because it is possible for them to be that. DACs can be built to be completely transparent, so why not do that? Why insert ambiguity where it's not needed? And there are also amps that can be almost totally transparent and even not cost that much, so this is also a part of the chain that can be made unambiguous.

The current technology doesn't allow us to create completely transparent and linear acoustic transducers, so if there is a place for ambiguity out of necessity, that's where it is. If you want truth, get transparent electronics and the most truth-bound transducer you can find. And if you want beauty, keep the same electronics and just replace the transducer with the one that gives the most beauty. And if there isn't one that archives exactly the beauty you are after, get the closest one and complete the final step with EQ.

 

[Ron Texas]

Yes. His is a diversionary ploy that (1) implies that the two approaches are mutually exclusive and (2) ignores the fact that whatever a system does to one source of music applies equally to what it does to all other sources.

Steve needs a haircut. I find his commentary to be mainly entertainment rather than useful advice. Youtube videos waste too much time. I could read the entire script in less than a quarter of the time it takes to watch the video. Besides, your reviews in Stereophile make a lot more sense.

I guess CNET dropped him for "ratings" reasons.

 

[flowjm]

As others have said, starting with an accurate system, you can then add colouration to meet your tastes or mitigate the effects of an imperfect environment. So even the beauty seeker benefits from the truth. The real question is do you prefer knowledge and understanding to romanticised mysticism.

 

[MRC01]

Sage advice says, marry someone who with whom you really connect spiritually and intellectually regardless of how (s)he looks, because as you share your lives you will find that (s)he looks more beautiful every year, no matter what (s)he looks like to others. Roughly speaking, this is valuing truth first, then finding beauty in truth.

For me, the analog of this to audio is find the most transparent system possible, the flattest FR, the lowest distortion, etc. This gets you as close as possible to the sound of the live mic feed, and if the recording engineers did their jobs well, to the live performance. Over time you will find this to be the most beautiful sound, since it is the most transparent, neutral across a variety of different kinds of recordings, and reveals the greatest amount of fine detail and insight to the artistic subtleties that differentiate musical performances.

Pragmatically this advice works well for me because I listen to a wide variety of music, from chamber music to jazz to medieval to heavy metal, so any system that is less than transparent but optimized to sound better on one kind of music, will inevitably sound worse on others.

 

[Percheron]

Something tells me that Mr. Guttenberg doesn’t listen to anything other than NPR.

 

[Fluffy]

Pragmatically this advice works well for me because I listen to a wide variety of music, from chamber music to jazz to medieval to heavy metal, so any system that is less than transparent but optimized to sound better on one kind of music, will inevitably sound worse on others.

On the other hand, if I listen to primarily certain types of music, why not optimize for those types?

 

[Enkay25]

Sage advice says, marry someone who with whom you really connect spiritually and intellectually regardless of how (s)he looks, because as you share your lives you will find that (s)he looks more beautiful every year, no matter what (s)he looks like to others. Roughly speaking, this is valuing truth first, then finding beauty in truth.

For me, the analog of this to audio is find the most transparent system possible, the flattest FR, the lowest distortion, etc. This gets you as close as possible to the sound of the live mic feed, and if the recording engineers did their jobs well, to the live performance. Over time you will find this to be the most beautiful sound, since it is the most transparent, neutral across a variety of different kinds of recordings, and reveals the greatest amount of fine detail and insight to the artistic subtleties that differentiate musical performances.

Pragmatically this advice works well for me because I listen to a wide variety of music, from chamber music to jazz to medieval to heavy metal, so any system that is less than transparent but optimized to sound better on one kind of music, will inevitably sound worse on others.

Cannot say it better.

 

[ernestcarl]

Some of my favourite music or most cherished records isn't stellarly recorded e.g. early The Lucksmiths albums. Bootleg recordings/tracks from various shows/performances... e.g. Jeff Buckley's "latest" album: You and I

Not knowing the truth and context behind these recordings can sometimes lead one to make bad, uninformed reviews (read the 1 star reviews!) Failing to appreciate what little music left of it there is... Of course, a lot of people have already bought a copy of Grace. "You and I" not being intended by Jeff for public consumption is not the reaon why people would want to listen to a record like this in the first place.