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Playback Listening
Topic: How we "think" about audio

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 01-26-2008

 op.9 wrote:
…. I had to throw out all sorts of preconceived ideas about how music actually works. Since then I've gradually tried to re-rationalise some of it... not always very successfully. To me, Janacek is like a compilation of all those 'special Mozart phrases' where he sums up the universe with a moment of genius. Nothing is unimportant - everything is chocked with meaning.



I find when I discover a new 'it' - I then find/feel it all over the place. And as a complete Haydn nut, I think I've seen new meanings for some of his 'folksy' ways too - after immersing myself in Janacek's 'on an overgrown path' (a huge great towering masterpeice!) Great music works on us backward and forwards….

What is important to note that “it” also exists in the realm of pure Audio as a sole awareness of audio language – the language by which our playback systems talk with our listening experiences? The 99.999999999999% of audio participants do not know about it or have no developed skills to practice “it” in a deliberate or audio-meaningful fashion.

The Cat

Posted by op.9 on 01-30-2008
The problem I encounter is that a by its very nature, a pure audio 'it' renders itself invisable. i.e. as soon as my system can do something better - more musical - then this just gets absorbed into the listenbility and is not really an issue any more, however big a jump it is.

The Janacek analogy is apt here too. Its very easy to experiance a Janacek 'it', but its very hard indeed - and might take many years of false rationalisations - to be able to work our what this 'it' is and how it works. Particularly for Janacek - because he works on the boundaries of our musical logic.

So while I agree 'it' does exist in the relm of pure audio, I'm not sure what help this is. There does seem to be a big gap between easily recognising frequency response problems, nasty resonances, etc etc  - and being able to quantify those amazing affects that good audio can have on us. 'Hats off' to those who have developed this skill!

james

Posted by Romy the Cat on 01-30-2008

James,

forget about music, music and audio are separate entities in they should be treated separately. I have written a lot about it before.

In the realm of pure audio “it” exists as a moment of realization. The entire truth however about the “it” is that “it” is not specific to composer, type of music, type of artistic direction or even the type of human actively. The “it”, as the moment of realization might expose itself via many different “instructions” in many types of human activities. The cross-viewing the manifestations of the “it” is a devilish fun itself, but it is another subject…. So, how the “it” expose itself in audio?

Well, de do have already built up with ourselves all necessary element of our reaction’s adequacy to audio sensations, we just need use proper listening techniques to found the way of our awareness to reach the “pre-answered questions”. I have developed quite a few of them (SLT, PSLT  and a few others) and they do work wonderfully.  It is not about the “quantification those amazing affects” but rather to learn how to assess the “effects” … without quantification.

Let me to give you an illustration. When you hear that an instrument, let say a violin, is out of tune then you do not instantaneously quantify that the G string is too high. Your first reaction is that “something is wrong” and then, when your mind is activated you judge the pitch of the G string. That initial rejection I call Raw Rejection. It is very far from the “moments of realization” but pretend that there are ways to extend the period and the most important the depth of the Raw Rejection, proposing the time when mind-bases assessment kicks in. if to do so, then the perception of audio happens at the level of Raw Consciousness and it is a VERY powerful tool.

How far it is from the realization of the “audio it”? This is VERY freaky question as by removing the Cooked Consciousness out of audio we discover that there is no difference between live and recorded musical events. So, simplifying everything, the “it” in audio might be vied as a realization of own perception, discovering how to naturally filter the entire audio component out of sound reproduction. After that, the audio component becomes a tradable  and a manageable commodity that is easy to control.

The Cat

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