Was this aimed at ASR?

[ahofer]

Playing music is not the same as composing it. Each time somebody plays a composition they are reproducing it. Joni Mitchell commented on this. She said if someone paints a great piece of art, no one ever askes them, "Hey, paint me Starry Night again!" She liked painting because she only had to do a painting once. Now a copy of a painting made by a machine may have some constraints. Will it try to copy 3D effects, like thickness of paint in certain areas? Will it try to copy the canvas material properties so it feels the same? Will it try to scale to the exact same size, or blow it up bigger, or smaller? Will it use a reduced color set, maybe just black and white? Are these purely engineering decisions, or is it somewhat of a blend? Maybe there are engineering constraints that require some artful decisions to get a good looking result.

Just taking time out to appreciate that Joni's Miles of Aisles album, on which this comment appears, is great. It features Robben Ford, Tom Scott's band, and Joni's lover at the time John Guerin on drums. her solo performances are straight from the heart and the band rocks (check out Woodstock).

But I take issue with the assertions here. Each time somebody performs a composition it is an interpretation. Sheet music or lead sheets are not a complete instruction set for sound and require a ton of filling in from the performer. The sound signal created by the performers is complete (and desired as is by the listener), and can be reproduced. We want to hear Joni's interpretation, not Sony's interpretation.

Reproduction of sheet music or lead sheets can be done by Xerox, with reasonable fidelity.

 

[tmtomh]

Neither of you can manage to finish the sentence to read 'in a different medium or context'? . Surprising lack of comprehension. Or derailed by the first shiny cherry, perhaps.



That is where you come unstuck. Reproduction can be, but is not limited to that. And @Tim Link who you responded to, actually didn't say that in the first instance.

Yes - and it’s precisely in that “in a different medium or context” qualifier where you’re begging the question. @Jim Taylor ‘s point (and it’s a well-taken point) is that “reproduction in a different medium or context” is a phrase that covers over the very question being discussed: is it in fact a “reproduction” when sheet music is performed, and is it reproduction when a model is built from instructions? It’s an interesting question, and I’d say the answer depends in part on what exactly the topic is. But you can’t just use that “context/medium” qualifier and think you’ve settled the issue.

 

[Tim Link]

I understand what you're saying, but I see that as anthropomorphism.

I agree, I did make an anthropomorphic analogy when I said that speakers "interpret." That's again a term that's usually reserved for a conscious entity. Maybe filter is a better word. I think "perform" is not an anthropomorphic term. Losts devices are referred to as performers. Calculator used to be a term applied to persons, but now we have machines that do it so it's no longer an anthropmorhpic term.

 

[Jim Taylor]

[lots of] devices are referred to as performers.

I would call that poetic license.
I think part of the problem here ... at least for me ... is my age. I went to college in the '60s. In the '70s, I taught English to people who were foreign-born. The pain and confusion that they felt when dealing with communication that was expressed imprecisely pained me, too.

I may be old-fashioned and I may be pedantic, but for me, clarity of thought merits equal clarity of expression.

 

[Axo1989]

I believe it's not pedantic to point out that you guys are responding to posts that are more than four years old.

Haha, I have learned to check for dates to avoid thread necromancy, but I missed the near-four-and-a-half year gap on this very page. Still ...

.... and having lots of fun doing it!

I especially enjoy discussions with @Axo1989 . He's one of my favorite members here. His posts are always cogent and factual, with none of the emotional outbursts and sly insults more common to various other, more junior members.

I just love him to pieces.

I wasn't expecting that, so thank you. And yes I also enjoy these conversations (otherwise why do it?) and that we can have them while disagreeing (at times). But I also see your cunning plan. Now I won't be able to deploy any sly insults.

 

[Tim Link]

We want to hear Joni's interpretation, not Sony's interpretation.

I'd say we've never really heard Sony's interpretation of Joni's interpretation of the music. Up until recently it's been hard to really muck that up. We've just heard Sony's interpretation of the recording sound, which due to constraints may be rolled off around 100 Hz with a hump right before to help balance out the tonal perception from lack of lower bass. Audio playback may become increasingly "interpretive" with features to automatically detect noises in the recording and remove them, or even change instrument tones and balances, and even exactly what they are playing or singing. I played with pitch shifting once and delighted my girlfriend by changing one of her favorite female singer's voices to a very male sounding voice. She thought it sounded great.

 

[Axo1989]

... An orchestra performance is not "something very similar" to a piece of sheet music. ...

I have the usual problem of new posts from another side of the world piling up while I sleep, but this thought from yesterday (which I've already quoted) stayed with me. I immediately thought they are the same notes, it's the same thing in different media. But you (presumably) thought more that marks on a sheet of paper are not at all like an assembled orchestra in a concert hall (or some such). I don't know why the perspective is different but it's interesting that it is. Because of course I can see the differences too. But also in the case of the CD or music file—quite a different thing than sounds in a room.

Yes - and it’s precisely in that “in a different medium or context” qualifier where you’re begging the question. @Jim Taylor ‘s point (and it’s a well-taken point) is that “reproduction in a different medium or context” is a phrase that covers over the very question being discussed: is it in fact a “reproduction” when sheet music is performed, and is it reproduction when a model is built from instructions? It’s an interesting question, and I’d say the answer depends in part on what exactly the topic is. But you can’t just use that “context/medium” qualifier and think you’ve settled the issue.

No, it isn't begging the question to realise that 'reproduction' has two meanings (more than, but the biological meaning is more distantly related in terms of specifics) and apply them to the discussion. There is no circular logic. The second meaning I noted isn't a stretch at all, it's very much what happens when we perform sheet music. Also note that 'perform again' is a synonym (for reproduce) in the thesaurus. So let's consider a comparison ...

musical score > musicians > concert hall
music file > audio system > listening room

... in the first case (noted in several posts) we may have differences in timbre and timing (deliberate or accidental) according to the conductor and instrumentalists, plus the effect of the performance space. In the second we may have differences in timbre and certainly room effects, so frequency, phase, reverberation etc. The latter is more deterministic of course but it isn't inaccurate to regard this as an interpretation (of the music file via the reproduction system, which includes the room) even if the potential scope of variation is less by intent or design. And anyway, absolute fidelity or lack of same isn't a disqualifying criteria (otherwise a poster or postcard could not be a reproduction of a painting).

... But I take issue with the assertions here. Each time somebody performs a composition it is an interpretation. Sheet music or lead sheets are not a complete instruction set for sound and require a ton of filling in from the performer. The sound signal created by the performers is complete (and desired as is by the listener), and can be reproduced. We want to hear Joni's interpretation, not Sony's interpretation. ...

I'd say few kilos rather than a ton, I'm not sure how we weigh music. But neither is the CD or music file complete. There's no instruction on how to place loudspeakers or treat the room, or specification of reverberation times etc, or corrections for loudspeaker behaviour. All of these may result in a different performance or interpretation of the recorded signal.

Consider that interpretation may refer to synonyms like translation/transcription and rendering/execution/presentation. And can we say 'behaviour' there (of a loudspeaker) without anthropomorphism (rhetorical question)?

I agree, I did make an anthropomorphic analogy when I said that speakers "interpret." That's again a term that's usually reserved for a conscious entity. Maybe filter is a better word. I think "perform" is not an anthropomorphic term. Losts devices are referred to as performers. Calculator used to be a term applied to persons, but now we have machines that do it so it's no longer an anthropmorhpic term.

I'm fine with this. Linguistically the fact that we have synonyms and different shades of meaning doesn't imply that more or less conventional descriptors or wording (and these often vary by geographic region etc) are ipso facto inaccurate or out of bounds.

 

[JaMmy]

Isn’t the difference that an individual performer or orchestra would struggle to reproduce a work in the same way twice, even if that was their intent. Conversely even if it could ‘try’ to ‘interpret’ the work, any given audio equipment set up can only reproduce it in one, perfectly repeatable, way.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

Speakers don't do anything with music. They don't reproduce it or interpret it.

All they do is convert electrical audio signals into sound waves. They don't care or even know if those signals carry music or spoken word or ai-generated farts or anything else.

 

[pkane]

A CD contains a digital recording of music, just like sheet music does. Sheet music uses a lossy encoding, while the CD is a lot more precise. And while a DAC converts music from PCM on a CD, an orchestra converts it from musical notation on a piece of paper.

A CD is similar to sheet music, while an orchestra is similar to a DAC + speakers One could also note some similarity between a DAC clock and the conductor

 

[DMill]

Without reading 34 pages of comments due to having a life I’d say Jim Austin makes a valid point. It’s a thoughtful and smart take on speaker design especially. And has a really nice sentiment to it. BUT, don’t they also assign ratings to products? And what criteria are they judged? Can I be an A plus product that only appeals to 1% of listeners, but to the other 99 sounds boomy? It’s a slippery slope to not have objective measure be considered. And it lends to snake oil claims of hearing things we don’t. Well written. Thoughtful. It’s a nice take we should probably consider. I just want the music to sound like it’s supposed to sound.

 

[Axo1989]

Speakers don't do anything with music. They don't reproduce it or interpret it.

All they do is convert electrical audio signals into sound waves. They don't care or even know if those signals carry music or spoken word or ai-generated farts or anything else.

Reducing audio system to loudspeaker (without a source) is a strawman of course. And photocopiers aren’t sentient, but they produce copies.

 

[Tim Link]

Isn’t the difference that an individual performer or orchestra would struggle to reproduce a work in the same way twice, even if that was their intent. Conversely even if it could ‘try’ to ‘interpret’ the work, any given audio equipment set up can only reproduce it in one, perfectly repeatable, way.

Yes, audio systems are generally set up to have very few degrees of freedom to vary what they do when fed any given signal. That's been the goal. Now that I'm running my signal through a computer for processing I have inadvertently created more degrees of freedom for the system to vary in how it responds to a signal.The computer has a lot more going on that just audio signal processing, and that can lead to occasional strange effects, sometimes entertaining. One time it started adding massive amounts of distortion to my woofers. It sounded amazing! I was playing Dr. Mario with my friend and we both said "Whoa!" at the same time.

 

[wwenze]

The typical gain transistor in open-loop will output a voltage as high as possible

That's why we add feedback to slap it into place

A few thousand times worth of feedback in fact, just for the output to say "okay okay you win, this is the output you want okay?"

 

[Axo1989]

Isn’t the difference that an individual performer or orchestra would struggle to reproduce a work in the same way twice, even if that was their intent. Conversely even if it could ‘try’ to ‘interpret’ the work, any given audio equipment set up can only reproduce it in one, perfectly repeatable, way.

Struggle may be an overstatement, depending what your margin for ‘same’ is. But in any case, exact verisimilitude or lack of same isn’t a disqualifying criteria for ‘reproduction’.

 

[Jim Taylor]

Struggle may be an overstatement, depending what your margin for ‘same’ is. But in any case, exact verisimilitude or lack of same isn’t a disqualifying criteria for ‘reproduction’.

Karl Popper and newlyweds aside, I believe your statement depends on your margin for "exact".

 

[RexrothPigeon]

Reducing audio system to loudspeaker (without a source) is a strawman of course. And photocopiers aren’t sentient, but they produce copies.

This is immaterial to my point, which is that the job of the speaker has nothing to do with producing or reproducing music: its job is to transform signal into sound; it produces sound; it's a conversion stage, not a reproduction stage. The stages prior to the speaker are a solved problem. The speaker, of course, is not: it has a harder job and will never be solved the way, say, amps and DACs have been.

Thanks to the Klippel NFS we now have a good suite of measurements to assess how accurately a speaker speaker converts signal to sound. Some people may want their speakers to perform worse at that job. That's their prerogative, and it's nobody's business but their own (apologies to Blind Lemon Jefferson). Thankfully this site focuses on finding out which equipment is best at doing that job, because that's something whose use value extends beyond the confines of any individual listener's idiosyncratic personal preferences--in fact, it aligns with the best data we have about the listening preferences of people in general.

(I'll add that the quibbling about the analogy is endless: all analogies are imprecise, otherwise they'd be equations)

 

[Axo1989]

Karl Popper and newlyweds aside, I believe your statement depends on your margin for "exact".

As exact as a postcard reproduction is to the original painting, would work as a margin I think. But I’m also quite interested to hear about the newlyweds. Oh wait …

 

[Axo1989]

This is immaterial to my point, which is that the job of the speaker has nothing to do with producing or reproducing music: its job is to transform signal into sound; it produces sound; it's a conversion stage, not a reproduction stage. The stages prior to the speaker are a solved problem. The speaker, of course, is not: it has a harder job and will never be solved the way, say, amps and DACs have been.

Thanks to the Klippel NFS we now have a good suite of measurements to assess how accurately a speaker speaker converts signal to sound. Some people may want their speakers to perform worse at that job. That's their prerogative, and it's nobody's business but their own (apologies to Blind Lemon Jefferson). Thankfully this site focuses on finding out which equipment is best at doing that job, because that's something whose use value extends beyond the confines of any individual listener's idiosyncratic personal preferences--in fact, it aligns with the best data we have about the listening preferences of people in general.

(I'll add that the quibbling about the analogy is endless: all analogies are imprecise, otherwise they'd be equations).

This looks like elaborate semantic quibbling to me. But feel free to elaborate where sound reproduction occurs in an audio playback system, if loudspeakers are excluded?

 

[ahofer]

I'd say we've never really heard Sony's interpretation of Joni's interpretation of the music. Up until recently it's been hard to really muck that up. We've just heard Sony's interpretation of the recording sound, which due to constraints may be rolled off around 100 Hz with a hump right before to help balance out the tonal perception from lack of lower bass. Audio playback may become increasingly "interpretive" with features to automatically detect noises in the recording and remove them, or even change instrument tones and balances, and even exactly what they are playing or singing. I played with pitch shifting once and delighted my girlfriend by changing one of her favorite female singer's voices to a very male sounding voice. She thought it sounded great.

First, thank you for acknowledging that my Joni/Sony line was a banger. I was wondering why I didn’t get more love for that

So that’s the recording engineer you are speaking about, not the audio components. I agree that the engineer has a role in finalizing the artist’s interpretation for the recording. Joni famously worked with Henry Lewy almost exclusively for that reason from 1969-1982, and then Steve Katz for many albums after that.