UNLESS, the speaker is the same acoustic size and shape as the target instrument and fed a finely tuned close mic signal. A microphone in front of a speaker does not pick up remotely the same signal as a microphone in front of a musical instrument. If live, un-amplified music is the reference sound, how do you embed that sound in ears to make a determination? There is no way for a machine to compare live, acoustic music to the recording – or maybe that discrepancy should be a clue. Those who usually use the phrase “more musical” confront problems of semantics, because it is musical, or it is not, since musical, it refers to a phrase or a musical point. Nor can it be used to compare two audio components, because neither of them are capable of playing music in the sense of the word. When it is said that a speaker is “more musical” this does not make sense for the reasons given, hence it follows that such statement is tricky and tendentious, it will never sound like music. When they use this term, they are admitting that this or that piece of audio does not reproduce the music in the sense indicated in the second paragraph.īy saying “more musical” they are declaring that what is being reproduced resembles music, but that it is not music. How can “more musical” be more, than music? So far so good, the problem arises when the audio “reviewers” use the musical word preceded by “more”. The interpretation of a non-amplified work, by a symphony orchestra in a concert hall, is a musical event, since music is performed there, I think everyone agrees with this.įrom here it is inferred that, musical is strictly consubstantial to music in its pure state, and not to anything else For some reason, there is an unfairly scrutinous need to scientifically prove out one’s hearing abilities instead of accepting it exists. There is science involved in wine making, just like there is science in making good sounding equipment. What’s sweet to one person is not sweet to another. It becomes readily apparent and accepted that some taste differently. It’s also not questioned by outsiders that those differences exist, nor do they question the limits of people’s tasting abilities. It’s universally accepted that we don’t need to break wine levels down to aspects that can be measured to determine that it tastes different. If that delicate balance of ingredients gets “out of whack” too much, it’s generally agreed to be “worse”. For those into wine, small differences become more profound over time, and you learn you have personal preferences. For those “new to” or “not into” wine, they seem more the same. Slight variations lead to equally pleasing wines with slightly different character. It takes skill and experience for the winemaker to balance them into a pleasing taste. They all mean musical.Īudio systems are much like wine. I, for one, will continue to use musical as a term to describe the sound of unamplified instruments and/or voices as heard in a natural, acoustic performance space. If we, as a group, decide it’s acceptable to use a word to describe a concept, then that works. Would it make more sense to pick something fresh to convey the TAS charter? How about bolive symbolive lacoustic racoustic? These are simply made up words we assign meaning to, just like musical. They are all we have in language: placeholders for describing concepts. So why all the hubbub about referring to a system as musical when it is simply shorthand for describing what TAS founder HP considered the holy grail? My guess is overuse. When a hifi system achieves this lofty goal it is said to be musical. The pat answer, of course, comes from the original charter describing The Absolute Sound: “the sound of unamplified instruments and/or voices as heard in a natural, acoustic performance space”. There’s a seemingly growing opposition to the use of the term musical as it applies to sound. “It sounds more musical!” Ahh, those are words we all long to hear when they describe the sound of our system.
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