REGISTER NEW USERLOST PASSWORD? WELCOME, Logout

Shouldn’t we be getting close to perfection?

Paul's Posts — 24 July 2012

By

Shouldn’t we be getting close to perfection?

We’ve got 60 years of experience designing vinyl reproducing equipment, 30 years for CD’s and approaching 10 for computer based audio.  Wouldn’t you think with all that experience we’d be getting close to perfect by now?

And the answer is no, not even close.  I know it surprises people when I ask them to close their eyes and imagine they are somewhere else than their living room when they listen to music – but when they do it over a period of time it becomes quite evident they haven’t been musically transported to a live venue – they are still at home.

Sure there are many instances where we are blissfully carried away by the music – so much so that we lose all cares about where we are and how we’re experiencing it – and sometimes it feels like we’re right there.  It’s a tease – but a good one.

Tomorrow I am going to give you another thought puzzle about the way we hear music in our rooms.  I hope you find it stimulating.

email Shouldnt we be getting close to perfection? Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers

Get new and fresh stories like this each morning by joining the folks reading Paul's Posts. Click here

Related Articles

Serving it up Rolling it off What’s all the fuss about? Young turks

Share

About Author

Paul McGowan

Paul McGowan is the CEO and co-founder of PS Audio Inc. a Boulder Colorado design and manufacturing company of high-end audio products and services. McGowan has been designing and building high-end products for nearly 40 years. Hobbies include skiing, music, hiking, artisan bread baking, kick boxing and cooking. He lives in Boulder Colorado with his wife Terri and his 4 sons.

(4) Readers Comments

  1. Soundminded

    July 24, 2012 at 4:21 am

    Live music especially heard in large spaces contains dimensions of time and space that are barely understood by our science, and not addressed by our technology of music recording and reproduction. Only the dimensions of Amplitude and frequency have been given much importance. Why is this omission critical? Because human hearing or more accurately listening meaning how our brains understand the outside world through sound utilizes these dimensions to understand the size and power of sources of sound not only by how loud they are and how much bass content they have but by how far away they seem, how large the space they fill up is, and for how long. It also makes critical judgments about our environment. Ignoring these dimensions and focusing exclusively on improving what has been done in the past is like trying to perfect a flat black and white television image when to produce a convincing image the goal must be to create one in three dimensions and in color. It’s a waste of time, effort, and money because no matter how well it’s perfected the flat black and white image gets, it will never come close to achieving its goal. To make matters even worse, the elements which contribute to the perception of spectrum and loudness are bound up in the missing dimensions as well. The ability to hear and make critical judgments of all of this is the result of refinement through billions of years of evolution and is one of the most important components in the strategy for survival. This is because when a new element is recognized in our environment we often hear it before we see it. Our instinct is to turn our heads towards it to look at it. That capability depends on our abilty to locate it accurately and quickly by listening alone. Not only is our listening ability far greater than we know, it can be developed further in some people to a degree unimagined by most audiophiles. Here’s a site to people who may have the keenest listening ability in the world. They’ve taught themselves to literally see through sound as auditory stimuli affect that part of their cerebral cortex normally associated with sight. This is not a hoax, it’s real.

    http://www.worldaccessfortheblind.org/

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYWpxmcHTOc

    Notice that in the demonstration with the tray at about 21:00 in the YouTube clip not only is echo location used to determine the environment but so is Dopplar shift. That may not be relevant to stationary sounds and listeners but it shows just how much we can make of what we hear. To be objective is to recognize just how primitive and inadequate our best technology really is relative to what we want to be able to do. People who research, manufacture, sell, and buy expensive consumer audio equipment don’t like to be told this. It often makes them angry hearing it.

  2. hahax

    July 24, 2012 at 6:41 am

    But as you said sometimes we can fool ourselves. And it’s not like the old live vs recorded demos of Edison cylinders with telephone bandwidth where for psychological reasons people thought they couldn’t hear a difference. We are far away from perfection but we’re close enough that sometimes it’s real with a little r.

    And I think the biggest flaw(not meaning the other flaws are small) is our software. The quality of the recording and the way it relates to the format we use to reproduce it(usually just 2 channels) makes a huge difference in whether we can fool ourselves when we want to.

    And there’s a plus to imperfection in our hobby if you enjoy the pursuit and the equipment is part of why one is involved(it’s wonderful adult toys). It will probably never end. If we had perfection the journey would be done. And one of our adult toys wouldn’t be there to play with any more.

  3. Ladderman

    July 24, 2012 at 9:40 pm

    If you really want to hear how far we have to go, listen to a big organ in a big cathedral. Space, ambience, scale and everything we strive for in our quest, takes on a whole new dimension.

Leave a Reply