Have Music and Hi-Fi become two different things.

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Dr Bunsen Honeydew
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Re: Have Music and Hi-Fi become two different things.

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

Fretless wrote: Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:23 pm
Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote: Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:02 pm That seems daft to me Fretless, by doing # one the thoughts about the rest should emerge naturally with the right stimulation, not artificial programming the mind.
#1 is for me just relaxing into the music and enjoying an emotional response.
The other modes are mentally active, analytical mindsets where my attention is directed to the different facets of the recording and reproduction process.

It's how my brain works.
Then you should tell your brain to shut up as it is interfering with your pleasure. Then the rest become automatic. You *FEEL* it, you don't have to think it, but that can happen as a follow up, not the other way around.

The mind is the monkey. Until you learn it is not you, it is a corruption of your true self, your true self is how you feel not the inane chatter.

For thousands and thousands of years people have developed ways of stilling the mind - it is called meditation, and even that has been turned into a slurp. Shut the monkey up and a awful lot of truth and reality suddenly appears.

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Re: Have Music and Hi-Fi become two different things.

Unread post by savvypaul »

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote: Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:25 pm It is so simple, as a band are they together more, as a composition do you understand it more, are the musicians showing their skill as better or worse. I could go on and on and describe individual musicians their performance seen in comparison between systems or system item changes. You could write pages about every comparison with every piece of music, but MOSTLY it is those changes that hit you on the head that you shout about. There are many reviews in the NVA review section where you can see this in action.

The best equipment is the equipment that produces the best music not the best hi-fi. Listen to music and you will always be relatively happy listen to hi-fi and you will always be relatively unhappy or mind blocked.
Like at the last MCRU (turntable) bake-off when I remarked that Nils Lofgren must (to the great benefit of the music) have 'done a line of cocaine' in between switching from the Clearaudio to the Garrard. A guy stood next to me, who had just inherited an old Rega, and never been to a bake-off before, simultaneously exclaimed 'cor, fuckin' 'ell, that's it'!
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Dr Bunsen Honeydew
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Re: Have Music and Hi-Fi become two different things.

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

Ding!

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Re: Have Music and Hi-Fi become two different things.

Unread post by Fretless »

I have a deep passion for music that expresses itself in different ways.

As a hobby musician I play several instruments and perform regularly as Bass/baritone/tenor in a classical chamber choir.

Another hobby has been as a sound engineer doing live mixing for bands and engineering in studios.

As a lifelong HiFi fanatic I have been interested in audio equipment for more than 40 years.

These varied activities require a different mental approach and method of listening. There is a state of 'becoming One with the music' which I experience usually whilst performing and also when I can turn the critical listener in me to 'off' and just sink into the sounds.

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Re: Have Music and Hi-Fi become two different things.

Unread post by Toontrev »

Apologies if I missed the point of the post. Just listened to track from American guitarist Phil Keaggy. Couldn't care less about how HiFi it sounded but musically it was spellbinding. Totally immersed in the performance. Would be enjoyable on my car stereo but on my home stereo just more so.

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Re: Have Music and Hi-Fi become two different things.

Unread post by savvypaul »

Toontrev wrote: Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:55 pm Apologies if I missed the point of the post. Just listened to track from American guitarist Phil Keaggy. Couldn't care less about how HiFi it sounded but musically it was spellbinding. Totally immersed in the performance. Would be enjoyable on my car stereo but on my home stereo just more so.
You have an advantage...as a Newcastle fan, you are used to disengaging your brain, at will ;)
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Re: Have Music and Hi-Fi become two different things.

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

Some people spend all their lives trying to perfect it. It becomes different things in the philosophies or religions it is attached to. Becoming enlightened (Buddhism), immortal (Taoism), saintly (Christianity - yes prayer is meditation), but we can all do it to a degree, you just need a mantra (focal point) that occupies you completely. Listening to music as Fretless describes "There is a state of 'becoming One with the music' which I experience usually whilst performing and also when I can turn the critical listener in me to 'off' and just sink into the sounds" is certainly meditation so we can all do it. When your mind is churning, music can calm it, or if the mind warp is too bad it stops you listening. Drugs / alcohol can do the same but with dangerous side effects and you become reliant on it.

We obviously need our mind and our intellect, but we should not see it as *us* only as part of us, if you let it take over delusion and hubris is borne, many examples for us the most prominent is Marco. Reality disappears, there is only self.

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Re: Have Music and Hi-Fi become two different things.

Unread post by Mississippi Blind Child Assburn »

Fretless wrote: Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:49 pm
As a hobby musician I play several instruments and perform regularly as Bass/baritone/tenor in a classical chamber choir.

Oh alright then.
Were you perchance in the "Chorus" episode of Midsomer Murders, Series 9?

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Re: Have Music and Hi-Fi become two different things.

Unread post by karatestu »

For me the most obvious thing missing when listening to most "hifi" compared to good live music is dynamics - the band as a whole or individual musicians compared to the rest. I find jazz to be full of subtle information that is masked by some equipment.

The drum set is played by a lot of people, many doing it adequately but not brilliantly. The best drummers are those who are good at listening and feel the music rather than being robots. There is so many different levels of light and shade even from a drum kit. It takes the best players to extract it. Things like the make of drum (material used, manufacturing technique, thickness of shell, depth, lugs used etc etc etc), heads used, amount of muffling appled if any, type of sticks used all help to make the end result what it is. Even where abouts on the head the sticks are striking make a different sound - middle of the batter or the very edges).

When i can hear a truly great drummer talking to the rest of the band with all this vital information then i am happy. Unfortunately a lot of reproduction equipment does not allow this information through - it's like flat lining (dead) when it should be a wave (alive)

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Re: Have Music and Hi-Fi become two different things.

Unread post by Lurcher300b »

Like at the last MCRU (turntable) bake-off when I remarked that Nils Lofgren must (to the great benefit of the music) have 'done a line of cocaine' in between switching from the Clearaudio to the Garrard. A guy stood next to me, who had just inherited an old Rega, and never been to a bake-off before, simultaneously exclaimed 'cor, fuckin' 'ell, that's it'!
But that just sums up what I don't understand.

First, it may have been a good analogy that was understood at the time by someone listening to the same change in equipment. But as a way of describing the difference to a non present third party I don’t see what it gains over a hifi talk version of the same. Obviously the recording was the same so the players didn’t take a line of coke, so what does it mean? Does it mean the player became less aware of his fellow musicians, his timing became less precise, he started to develop an overconfidence in the limits of his playing ability and the overall performance suffered as a result? I doubt that’s what you mean but I think its a reasonable interpretation of a musician taking a line of coke.

Second, how is that using music to judge a system? AFAIK I have never seen a musical score that contained the instructions "take line of coke". I may have described the same change as "I became more aware of the use of a thin plectrum", but I don't see how that’s any better if you don’t play guitar.

If we agree that the sound was changed, and the only thing that changed was the turntable, arm and cartridge, then how can using a musical description help, as the thing that changed is not a musical instrument. But saying that "the resolution of edges, pitch stability on transients and retrieval of micro details was improved", which I assume would be described as hifi speak, is at least trying to explain what actually did change.

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