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It’s only the music I am interested in

Paul's Posts — 13 June 2012

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It’s only the music I am interested in

Really?  I hear that a lot and I am sure it’s true for some of us.  But my sense is most of us like the gear, the kit, just as much as we like the music.

When I attend a consumer audio show I see endless numbers of people wandering from room to room looking at equipment.  Most sit and listen to a sprinkle of music, some take their music with them and listen to the same piece in each room.  Are they judging the music or the kit?  I would suggest the latter.

I don’t know about you but I love the equipment in our industry.  The crazy designs, the wild industrial finishes and looks, the latest innovation trying to set the world on fire.  You just don’t see a lot of that spark in any other industry anywhere else in the world.  It’s part of what keeps me interested in our sport.

Yes, I love the music, but I love what makes the music as well.

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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.

(12) Readers Comments

  1. psycho

    June 13, 2012 at 4:28 am

    As an AUDIOphile, I’m into the music. I’m interested in the gear only in as far as any particular tweak or new component improves my appreciation or enjoyment of the music. I do know people who are TECHNOphiles. They seem more into the gear they have, the more expensive the better, and the music is almost secondary. From my experience at “Hi Fi” shows it’s very difficult to judge anything!

  2. Bassman23

    June 13, 2012 at 5:14 am

    Beautiful equipment that doesn’t deliver transcendent music annoys me. A great engineering theory that does not move me musically is irrelevant. I’m there for the music.
    But I appreciate brilliant engineering that accomplishes the task of putting the illusion of live musicians in front of me- regardless of the looks.

  3. Soundminded

    June 13, 2012 at 5:38 am

    People playing violins can make music. People playing pianos can make music. People playing guitars can make music. And of course people using only their own human voice can make music. But audio equipment can only make a facsimile of music. No matter how good it is, It’s always second best to what humans make and I think anyone who really enjoys music should never forget that. It’s true in the same sense that a photograph or a statue of a tree isn’t a tree.

  4. alan

    June 13, 2012 at 6:37 am

    OK, I admit it: even though I have over 4000 recordings on tapes, records, and cd’s, and even a few on my work computer, I pay more attention to the sound than to the recordings. I appreciate the gear, but I hate parting with old gear just to replace it with the latest and greatest. I do like bargains though, and much of my equipment was purchased because I thought it was a great bargain; as a result I have a lot of equipment duplication. I am a tinkerer though, and I have built and rebuilt more than 30 speakers, mainly to see how they sound; likewise with electronics and cables, and other tweaks. So as much as I listen to recordings, there is now a question as to whether or not it’s for the music.

  5. Ivan

    June 13, 2012 at 6:57 am

    When I’m shopping for, tinkering with, or writing about equipment, I listen to the sound. Otherwise, I listen to the music; I’d rather hear a great performance in an old recording than a great recording of a less-involving performance. As I wrote in an ad headline years ago, “They’ll Never Build a Better Toscanini” (only now I’d say Furtwangler).

    A reader once wrote to me that he was glad to realize I was an audiophile rather than the mere music lover he’d suspected I was. I still fail to see the conflict.

    A musician friend once told me that the sound didn’t matter much to him because, as a musician, he knew what the sound SHOULD be and could recreate that in his head. Still, I suspect that the better the sound, the less his brain would have to work at it.

  6. Gordon

    June 13, 2012 at 8:53 am

    Great subject.
    In fact, we have been discussing this a bit in the PSA forum.

    The word “accuracy” comes up a lot.

    I’m not sure we have come up with an acceptable definition yet given all the variables from performers to ears, but it sure seems to be a “sensitivity” sweetspot that we protect dearly as the “raison-d’être ” for our obsession with equipment.
    I like to think of it like supporting a moon mission.
    Do we really need to go there and how will it really affect our current life enjoyment?
    Perhaps because we feel it “might” be possible and we actually can feel part of the adventure as we support those who are designing the ” bus” that will bring us there.

  7. oliver T. Finch

    June 13, 2012 at 9:46 pm

    I would beg to disagree. At least in many cases.Most people spend time and money on equipment so that they can hear music reproduced in a way that reminds them of the real thing and once they have a setup this good they make change few and far in between. Hours on end are spent listening to the setup not looking at things. People go to audio shows to find out what is new which would help them achieve that elusive goal called realism in reproduced music. Looks are secondary at best. Imagine listening to a very beautiful but not good sounding system for hours on end. Impossible. And talking about those wild looks and colours well most are quite ugly.Remember when as children we were wide eyed with wonder at the fairs we went to. Most of it was forgotten in a few days. That is what happens with new equipment after the initial excitement wears off. I have a beautiful, gleaming P10 sitting in front of me performing wonders but I hardly look at it. Regards.

  8. Tom Devey

    June 14, 2012 at 4:34 am

    Aen’t we increasingly moving away from the physical world, with recordings stored as bits located in some nebulous location known as the cloud, or through programs streamed from the internet, while we interact with them through a ubiquitous device such as a smartphone or tablet.

  9. June 14, 2012 at 6:57 am

    Yes we are, but that still doesn’t change the need for kit to make it all work. This just removes the storage medium.

  10. Soundminded

    June 14, 2012 at 8:20 am

    Last Sunday three of us at a violin coaching session discussed for a time the spiritual dimension of music.Now I’m not one who has any spiritual feelings so that had little impact on me. However, when someone sits down to play a piano, picks up a violin, sings for me, I get the feeling they are giving me something of themselves that will become a part of me, something I’ll carry around even if only in my subconscious memory for the rest of my life. We’ve agreed music cannot be written down, the notes on the sheet of paper are merely a guideline to the performer of what the composer had in mind. The human element in performing music is critical to its essence. Each performance is different and each one who hears the same performance will experience something different from everyone else who hears it. Each is a unique experience. I don’t get any of this from listening to a recording. The lack of the human element, the filtering of the mechanical contrivance between me and the musician breaks that connection. So at best all I can experience is an audible facsimile. Since each musical experience is unique for each person each time (music unlike a painting or sculpture is experienced in time), the term “accuracy” applied to a facsimile of music seems inappropriate to me. The term “convincing” or “unconvincing” seems more suitable. I think the more experience you have hearing the real thing, the more difficult it will be to convince someone of a facsimile but even those with limited experience hearing music may find it easy to distinguish a facsimile.

    To produce a convincing facsimile, an effective illusion, the one engineering it must understand both the physics of what constitutes the original experience and what of it can be perceived by humans. Experience merely creates memories of details that might otherwise be overlooked. However some aspects of hearing sound is I think hard wired into our brains. Clearly the sound of music has critical audible dimension to it that are not captured or recreated by our technology.This is why the best facsimiles fail to be convincing especially to experienced listeners. Musicians who hear past the recording are using their imaginations to supplement what is missing as they hear it. But generally performing musicians hear sound from a different perspective on a performing stage than the audiece hears it and what’s missing there can be much less than what’s missing to the audience. The locations of the microphones at a recording explains why. It was clear from an interview with Floyd Toole that he understood this but not only had no answers, he asserted that the problem couldn ‘t be solved. Less insightful was an interview with John Atkinson who failing to convince an audience in a live versus recorded demo of a piano where the equipment was installed in the same acoustic space as the piano seemed uncomprehending of what the audience told him about what they peceived as the difference in the facsimile that caused it to fall short. Both of these interviews can be seen on Home Theater Geeks web site. One is selection 14 and the other is 84.

    Nobody woiuld spend time on this blog or those like it if they weren’t more than casually interested in the technology for creating these facsimiles from recordings. But it seems that for the time being we’re stuck in an era where there is confusion between two different things, the facsimile being taken by audiophiles for the real thing. This may be a result of frustration at the lack of significant technical advance during the last few decades. As a substitute, the existing technology is being pushed to its absolute limit with no holds barred on cost or impracticality of how it is implimented. At its extreme it has become absurd IMO.

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