Sounding like the artist intended?

I know a can of worms when I see it????

I'm no expert. But from a small handful of "Artists" I know who have released material - when I asked them about the Absolute sound - they kind of responded that it is out of their hands ; the correct way they would wish the material to be listened to is a non real reality.

Perhaps not as the artist intended, more how YOU interpret.

The Strat (Fender) posted:

I know a can of worms when I see it????

Once you've opened a can of worms, the only way to re-can the worms is to use a bigger can.

solwisesteve posted:

I mean shouldn't the aim be to reproduce the music to sound exactly as the artist intended?

Interesting question(s): a), the guy who sat at a table with a pen and paper 2 or 3 centuries ago and produced a score of a Symphony or a Quartet can be considered an artist or are we talking of Emmylou Harris here, or Oasis? And, b), shall we start with the guy with the pen and the paper?

M

This is really the biggest can of worms until now in 2019.

This is my take and it is based on my music theory lessons in a far past. There are many pieces in a chain. A composer has an idea and writes a piece of music based on this original idea. Some conductor or mucisian performs this piece before an audience (or not) and is sometimes recorded. This recording can be reproduced on certain hifi gear in the individual context of a listener. As you can see, there are really a lot of sections in this chain and to me it is mostly the quality of the composition what matters.

Having a background as organist, I have been thoroughly educated in the art of improvisation. Improvisation means not randomly making noise what originates in the musician, but a direct communication between the musician and the audience. In this circumstance, a recording is quite pointless - however there are very good recordings of improvisations available by eg. Keith Jarrett.

What matters most importantly is the direct communication between the artist and the audience, only that is the highest form of art.

F'ck recordings & let's make Music!

The only person who can say if the music as you replay it at homecsounds like the artist intended is the artist! However ar least as interesting, and certainly significant, is whether the recording as marketed is a faithfull representation - which may be the case where thecartist has been allowed full approval of the mixing/mastering - if played back on amps and speakers that have similar character to those in the mastering suite,

Of course, the most important is that it sounds good, and satisfying, to the listener (However, not all recordings will, no matter how good and satisfying the artist might be live...)

Ardbeg10y posted:

This is really the biggest can of worms until now in 2019.

This is my take and it is based on my music theory lessons in a far past. There are many pieces in a chain. A composer has an idea and writes a piece of music based on this original idea. Some conductor or mucisian performs this piece before an audience (or not) and is sometimes recorded. This recording can be reproduced on certain hifi gear in the individual context of a listener. /

What matters most importantly is the direct communication between the artist and the audience, only that is the highest form of art.

 

Communication can happen through a recorded medium, if communication is the intent (and I think it is for nearly all parties involved) than the aim should be to maximise communication. When it works well it tends to draw you into the music, try a reissue of Schnabel playing Beethoven and you can hear it was recorded on early equipment with limited frequency range and a lot of background noise but if system will let it the performance can shine through. I’ve long been of the opinion that I don’t need a system that tells me how crap my recordings are, I’d rather one that tells me how good the music is on them. Art is communication at an emotional level and I take that to be the intent of the artist, even ones that never knew of recording in any form beyond a quill and paper.

Some artists (many actually) are a bit hard of hearing from decades of blasting themselves with studio monitors or drum kits. Not sure I trust most artists' intended sound anyway (even if there is such a thing).

Firstly I'd argue that not all vinyl sounds warm, I have just bought a record that was cut straight to disc, played recorded and cut in one take no mixing and at the request of the artist because he felt that got as close to his music as was possible and it sounds far from warm but it was recorded in 1978.

I read something recently where the guy from Mumford and Sons said that their main concern is how their music will sound on vinyl so we are generalising here a bit and as was stated above the main aim should be that it sounds good to the person hearing it, car stereo, record deck, CD player or whatever enjoyment is the key to music reproduction.

You can continue with which pianist or violinist and of course  conductor version is according to the composer intention.This is going nowhere.

solwisesteve posted:

... shouldn't the aim be to reproduce the music to sound exactly as the artist intended? 

... how would you ever know (what the artist intended)?

I doubt a poet has the expectation that each reader will employ the same cadence and enunciation with which his/her verse was originally written. Where recording SQ and "intent" is concerned, I suspect most artists accept there are several links in the replay chain beyond the initial recording before their message is heard. 

If you're suggesting that one home replay system can represent the truth for each/every artist's intentions, you are misguided. Recent recordings often originate from different (sometimes basement) studios with large-scale digital manipulations to equalize the SQ. One artist may be in New York, the other in London, never actually playing together in real time. The notion of artistic intention in the realm of such digital recordings becomes a bit meaningless.

Ultimately, musicians want to survive as 'artists' selling songs. I suspect they'll accept an amount of 'commercial license' to their precious 'artistic intent' in exchange for money in their pockets.

TOBYJUG posted:

I'm no expert. But from a small handful of "Artists" I know who have released material - when I asked them about the Absolute sound - they kind of responded that it is out of their hands ; the correct way they would wish the material to be listened to is a non real reality.

Perhaps not as the artist intended, more how YOU interpret.

Well the key person that creates the feel of the sound is the mastering engineer, perhaps often overlooked on this forum.. they absolutely create the sound profile and feel of the recorded track, and often in collaboration with the musicians/artists. 

There is so much to mastering, it is a fascinating area, and in my opinion is as equal in contribution to the artists themselves. That feel, pace, groove, emotion etc often come from how the track is mastered or mix mastered On key albums you often hear the signature of certain renown mastering engineers.

The mastering engineer is also prominent in gigs and concerts to get that feel as well.. same principles really. I guess if the concert is purely acoustic and unplugged (ie no amplification at all) then it will fall down to solely the musicians, Instruments, and importantly acoustics of the venue.

I only know that a few friends who make their own music and often master it, have all commented that my system sounds "bloody marvellous".
That's good enough for me!

blythe posted:

I only know that a few friends who make their own music and often master it, have all commented that my system sounds "bloody marvellous".
That's good enough for me!

Yeah, well would you expect them to come to your home, listen to your music, then tell you your system sounds like shit? I'm not sure you can ever expect objective feedback in that situation. I'm more concerned with my own ears' feedback, but good to hear your friends think it's "marvellous".

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

TOBYJUG posted:

I'm no expert. But from a small handful of "Artists" I know who have released material - when I asked them about the Absolute sound - they kind of responded that it is out of their hands ; the correct way they would wish the material to be listened to is a non real reality.

Perhaps not as the artist intended, more how YOU interpret.

Well the key person that creates the sound is the mastering engineer, perhaps often overlooked on this forum.. they absolutely create the sound profile and feel of the recorded track, and often in collaboration with the musicians/artists. 

There is so much to mastering, it is a fascinating area, and in my opinion is as equal in contribution to the artists themselves. That feel, pace, groove, emotion etc often come from how the track is mastered or mix mastered On key albums you often hear the signature of certain renown mastering engineers.

The mastering engineer is also prominent in gigs and concerts to get that feel as well.. same principles really. I guess if the concert is purely acoustic and unplugged then it will fall down to solely the musicians, Instruments, and importantly acoustics of the venue.

I would second Simon’s comments - one of our sons is a sound engineer and also owns a couple of record labels. When asked, (some time ago), “what do you actually do?”, he recommended this book to me and, for anybody interested in the subject, it certainly is a worthwhile read.

Greg Milner - “Perfecting Sound Forever”

It is a similar discussion to the merits and vision of a film director versus a producer versus a cinematographer. A lot of the artistic credit has, since [that egotistical overrated ponce] Truffaut, been credited to just the director. But this is utter nonsense really. 

The producer selects and essentially hires a team (including the director) based on their artistic sensibilities within their discipline. If film has a cook in the kitchen, it is the producer more than anything. The producer has an immense creative impact on the work (not least because they chose the script they wanted to bring to reality). Similarly, a lot of what is attributed to a directorial style is in fact confused with a cinematographic style. Easier done in the US where the director takes more of a hand in that. Less so with films made in the uK (even Hollywood ones) where if a director attempts to overly encroach on the cinematographer's realm too much, they'll get short shrift and two fingers flashed at them.

If you want to talk about "how the artist intended" then, like film you really need to stick to those few artists who are the equivalent of a combined writer/director/producer/cinematographer. Maybe Kate Bush springs to mind from Hounds of Love onward and a few others who build their own studios and self produce (Prince MHRIP).

Surely the question implies that the listener at the end of the long chain of variables is merely a passive recipient? Musical experience is constructed between the musician(s) and the audience and in a concert there will be multiple experiences across different listeners. There are no absolutes in any of this. Think for example of the whole issue of authenticity in relation to the use of early music instruments. And of course in music reproduction there will always be compromises and flaws (even for digital!) - in the end it's about what we bring as individuals to our listening. 

This is complete insanity. We often buy music because we’ve heard it played on a radio or poor sound system and like it.

How we then listen to it is entirely up to the receiver. I have a reasonable system and enjoy the sound it makes which is surely the whole point of Hi Fi.

If the artist heard my system and told me it was not the way he intended me to hear it he would quickly get a lesson in customer care.

As this situation is never going to arise to validate the artists intention it’s pointless wasting time, life is too short!

The film comparison is an interesting one: with art films rather than mainstream it is the director who is the main artist. Perhaps mainstream films are equivalent to mainstream pop music where the primary purpose is to make money. There are musicians whose primary desire is to make music, and make very little money out of it, so maybe more akin to art films.

solwisesteve posted:

In the world of hifi I often hear people talking about how xyz music sounds when played with such-n-such kit but are we missing the point here? I mean shouldn't the aim be to reproduce the music to sound exactly as the artist intended? I think this is particularly relevant when playing vinyl where I hear comments like people like the warmth of the vinyl sound where the "warmth" of the sound really means a bass sound that is less accurate to the source. So the aim, IMO, should be to reproduce the music as close and as accurate as intended by the artist i.e. as it sounded in the mixing booth or studio (or stage if live). To that end surely the only hope of achieving this nirvana is using a digital source where the recording is taken as close as possible from the digital mixing?

So talk of this system or equipment sounding better than another should really come down to which sounds the closest to the original. Not which has the best bass extension, or sweeter treble, or better sound stage but which is the closest to the source. If the source has rubbish bass then the reproduction should sound the same even if it sounds rubbish!

If you get what I'm saying :-)

Lots of merit in what you say. What I would add is that some (lots!) of music have electronic elements, synthesisers, guitar amplifiers and speakers etc that may sound different on your system to the system the artist uses in a performance, note that I say performance and not studio recording. An exact playback may require you to have an exact duplicate of the artists equipment and a ludicrously large listening room with lots of people. Just a thought. Another thought, maybe we should have a British Standard on how how recordings should be made so that manufacturers and artists are talking from the same sheet. OK, so I'm poking fun now. Rich 

As the artist intended. who knows.... so many variable, so many factors.... What the artist heard in the studio was on their own studio monitors. I know that ATC studio monitors sound different than PMC and different from Dynaudio studio monitors.

Maybe hi-fi  companies like Naim aspire to remove as many distortions as possible from the recording to the speakers... 

It is interesting the Naim also includes the Naim music label (and Linn also) so they do have an idea what recordings sounded like at the point of live performance all the way to the performance through their own systems.

Adam Meredith posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Well the key person that creates the feel of the sound is the mastering engineer, perhaps often overlooked on this forum.. they absolutely create the sound profile and feel of the recorded track, and often in collaboration with the musicians/artists. 

I wouldn't be able to specify his role but I could be pretty happy if all my collected music was lost at sea - apart from those discs associated with Chris Blackwell.

Too late mate - you just missed a great opportunity:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46746312

analogmusic posted:

As the artist intended. who knows.... so many variable, so many factors.... What the artist heard in the studio was on their own studio monitors. I know that ATC studio monitors sound different than PMC and different from Dynaudio studio monitors.

Maybe hi-fi  companies like Naim aspire to remove as many distortions as possible from the recording to the speakers... 

 

 

Do they?

In my book ‘distortions’ in this wide context is anything deviating from the original signal as held in the recording. I thought NAim focussed above all on timing, and accepted other aspects not being so accurate, except perhaps (and this is a guess) as you near the very top of the Naim tree, below which some of the other distortions (deviations iv you prefer) may be more pronounced, hence the references to a “Naim Sound” which it is said not everyone likes. And a preference for the altered sound could be a reason for some people’s preference for earlier or lower models.

Maybe I am wrong, but that is the impression I have gleaned from this forum! Of course that doesn’t mean Naim doesn’t aspire to remove as many distortions as possible, but rather a matter of prioritising the removal of some before others, as opposed to a possibly more balanced approach across the board.

Open for shooting down!

I listen to and enjoy more a wider range of music than I used to but it's a long time since I was able to stay engaged by Dark side of the Moon for the whole album, the 4th album I bought, though I did this with Relics recently which was the 1st.