Musicality - what it means to you...

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Postby jadis » Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:40 am

conspicuous,

Good point. Which is why the choice of loudspeakers for a recording studio is also critical. B&W always advertise that they are the speakers of choice of recording studios worldwide. I am not too familiar about the recording process so your suggestion to have Zach shed some light is a great ideal. My simple mind tells me that what must be heard by the recording engineers must also be what is heard if one were in front of the performing stage. If not, maybe that is where is need for mixing and equalizing comes in. In this respect, I can see how the engineers were trying to make the performance sound as 'accurately' as possible. And that is just the beginning. What we hear at home now depends on ALL of our choices of ancilliary equipment. And that is where our notion of accuracy/musicality (at home ) begins to unfold.
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Postby Hyperion » Sat Sep 24, 2005 9:37 am

Ideally I'd want something both accurate and musical. But since high level of accuracy is actually impossible given the limited resolution of recordings coupled with gross non-linear distortions from loudspeakers (studio monitors included!) and transducers in general, I'd settle with musical + relative accuracy.

What sounds musical to me is a modicum of warmth coupled with lively dynamic presence. Anything that sounds thin (especially in the midrange) does not sound musical to me regardless of whatever positive attribute. LIkewise, not even the lushest sweetest midrange can move me if it is coupled with weak dynamic expression and lack of midband energy and/or dynamic exaggeration. Harmonic decay and texture is also very important to me and I am easily annoyed by components / speakers that have truncated harmonic decays and either severely glossed out or grayed out textures.

Musical clarity (not to be confused with pinpoint imaging!) and coherence is very important to me because I want to hear the "mood" of the music be it a tragic aria or a pulsating beat from Ibiza.

My current formula for musicality is:

good software + analog front end / tubed cdp + tubes all the way + kondo cables + high sensitivity easy to drive speakers + wide speaker separation
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Postby vintage_dog » Sat Sep 24, 2005 9:52 am

and unless we also know what is there in the recording material and how the engineers "mastered" them, our concept of accuracy is likewise subjective, isn't it?

and since our musical experiences are always subjective, we always equate what we hear with a certain frame of "reference". if mine will tend to the lush mids, sweet highs, anything i hear which falls below that, i will describe as "bright or analytical". someone else, listening to the same music whose reference is very detailed mids and extended highs, and listens to something less than that, will describe it as "colored or mataba".

about 3-4 years ago, i had some non-audiophile colleagues at home. they were curious about my hobby -- tube amps and all. i recall playing the CDs of diana krall and leah salonga (yeah, i'm her fan and try to promote her CDs among my balikbayan friends). i had the lights dimmed, volume at normal speaking levels. when the music played everyone stopped talking, just listened. it was the first time for most to listen to a dedicated audio system using SETs and tubes. for them, they felt leah and diana, she was "here with us", i could "touch her". that was what they said. they have a "refreshing and soothing voice". 4 out of the 5 who were there are now tubeheads. one bought 3 of my vintage amps and 2 tube preamps. the others went into 300B SETs. they have the least notion of soundstage , transparency nor accuracy. they listen to music with their hearts, not only with their ears. sometimes i envy them. i bumped into one of them last night who has the Tono 300b. we were in a community meeting but he was whispering to me how he now likes opera and classical music. he even asked me if it was possible to set-up a HT system with same amps because he now listens to musical videos.

they are in their 50s. they remember vinyl, some still have them but no longer have TTs. they are busy folks, some own or manage businesses. not as computer savvy. they do not read stereophile nor join any forums. none of their systems cost more than p50k (except the one with 3 amps)
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Postby zetroce » Sat Sep 24, 2005 10:21 am

I'm currently listening to Laurindo Almeida - Virtuoso Guitar Album - 45 rpm , Direct-to-disc Recording.

My setup:

JVC QL-A75 - TT
Musical Fidelity - X-LPS
NAD C320 Integrated AMP
Kirksaeter Silverline SL-60

Cables - All DIY

Impression : Musical and Accurate. " Eh parang may Combo sa harap ko eh " :D :D :D

I guess i still prefer it to be Musical than accurrate. It really depends on the source and how it was recorded. You can actually have it Musical, at the same time Accurate.

Right now, i would rate my system to be a 10!!! :) ( My humble Opinion ) :D :D

Next on the list is Carmen McRae..... :)
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Postby ichabod » Sat Sep 24, 2005 10:26 am

There goes some no nonsense musicphiles. They love music and find their audio gear as a matter of course or necessity in the chain of some profound musical bliss. Nothing ridiculously expensive or sophisticated to start nit picking about sound. And for as long as they enjoy the music, that's all that really matters, doesn't it? We must all be like that I suppose to stay sane and keep enjoying this hobby. Enjoyed reading this post.

Thanks V_D!
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Postby jetm » Sat Sep 24, 2005 11:43 am

accuracy vs. musicality? an ultimately futile question, imho. much physical and digital ink has been spilled on this topic, without advancing our knowledge.

what i find more useful is the "sets-subsets" concept:
(a) let music represent the whole set (i.e. mathematical set)
(b) recognize that no system or component can reproduce that whole set
(c) then any component or system merely reproduces a subset (some are bigger subsets, but still subsets)
(d) a subset can represent a combination of certain aspects of music (timbre, dynamics, speed, imaging, etc.)
(e) it is the subset that overlaps with an individual's listening biases that sounds best to him/her

thus the key is to be familiar with, and confident in, one's own listening biases. and then to find the components that match those. in this thread, doc msm and hyperion have proved that they can articulate their listenting biases clearly, concisely, confidently. that's a skill that i need to further develop myself. (marami pa akong masyadong gusto mangyari; call it lack of focus, perhaps)
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Postby jo2 » Sat Sep 24, 2005 12:16 pm

Accuracy & Musicality??

My understanding of

Accuracy - No such thing I believe......

Musicality - Is how much your EARS can tolerate...

Don't care anymore!

Just LISTEN & ENJOY. :wink:
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Postby alizaso » Sat Sep 24, 2005 1:14 pm

Just to share...

Musicality is a complex human action as a result of many factors. The first pre-requisite is the feeling for rhytm and the ability to reproduce the preset rhythm. An exact ear or the understandings of acoustical sensations is absolutely necessary as the next pre-requisite as well again the ability to reproduce acoustical sensations in precise pitch. But this are pre-requisites only.
The other important requirements: an instantaneous understanding of written rhythm and written music including all different expression and dynamical marks. But not enough: instantaneous understanding of the given mood is also necessary, plus the ability to integrate one's own playing into the organism of the music and/or of the ensemble.

Again, this is not enough: one has to understand where to place the beat or more emphasis, one has to understand one's own importance or unimportance as part of the musical action. One has to know also which notes are more important than others, where to reduce the dynamics even for up to two steps or where to rise the dynamic level even for up to two or sometimes three steps.

And again, this is not enough, as one has to understand the musical forms & miniforms instantaneously.

Some of this abilities can be acquired by hard work or simple experience: rhythmical training, ear training, recognizing forms knowing the works very well. Exact memory for music is a good tool also, but requires some analytic memory. Feeling for forms & the interaction between forms can be developed by great experience in the arts, in all arts, which can be acquired by visiting museums, reading encyclopaedias, specially about the classical arts from Egyptian arts to Greece & Rome. So one gets a feeling about esthetic.

But most of it, musicality is depending on intelligence as it is part of the intelligence. Provocative ? Yes ! You should know, that shaking the body more or less within the rhythm or starting grinning while listening music or starting humming less out of tune than others, that's not musicality. Musicality is more. Playing a piece in tune, playing the right notes at the right place, is not enough. Musicality is more. Like intelligence it is a gift of nature, plus much work.

If you listen to certain chords, and it starts running down your back icecold, and your flesh begins to creep, that's where musicality starts. If you listen to music, and you feel like flying in outer space, that's where musicality starts. If you listen to music, and you become angry or sad, that's where musicality starts. And if you are able, to bring others into the moods said above by your playing, well, then you are a musical musician.

But I don't think it ends there.
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Postby ichabod » Sat Sep 24, 2005 1:47 pm

Might as well be a musician. A musician who is an audiophile is your best chance between musicality and accuracy! He knows best what's missing but may be helpless or limited to what speakers, amps, and recordist in their studios can do. But I think we are closer than before with DSD, and who knows what we haven't heard yet.

But still the dynamics of playing an instrument, the musical expression (emotional content) and interpretation of the artist is not so easy or the most difficult to capture on master tape or whatever recording gear is being used. Let alone when it comes to the material played in some playback audio.

Musicality is an attribute we derived from music itself. It cannot be the other way around. Our audio simply fleshes out the music that we hear from some recording; and whether that is true to form (accurate) and content (musically engrossing) will be a formidable task for an audio system. This explains why some audio will sound a bit better than the other.

As listeners who wish to get some accurate and at the same time musically satisfying rendition of music, one has to train his ears constantly (like a photog trains his eyes to see his world better in pictures) and expose it to typically the same musical performances "live" to get a feel and better grasp what his audio is trying to mimic. Of course we remind ourselves that this what the term HiFi is all about. Not just some personal view how sound or music might be to one's ears. It's music as we normally hear with our ears, and how well might that sit with our aural capacity to remember the same sound experience "live," as accurately as our brains will allow. Of course it would be scientifically more prudent to hear both "live" and the recorded music of the same event for us to be able to say anything "accurately." That's what BBC engineers actually do. One must be able to tell or connect the actual natural sound with what's recorded. Then and only then can we be able to say "at least" that we are dead on! That this amp or that speaker is "musical" and "accurate" and I believe both virtues are achievable just as smoothness and detail, hard to mix things, can go hand in hand. A good example of this virtue is the Quad II amp, the Stromberg 220 6V6, and I guess many more out there that are deservingly called music-like!
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Postby JackD201 » Sat Sep 24, 2005 3:22 pm

jadis wrote:conspicuous,

Good point. Which is why the choice of loudspeakers for a recording studio is also critical. B&W always advertise that they are the speakers of choice of recording studios worldwide. I am not too familiar about the recording process so your suggestion to have Zach shed some light is a great ideal. My simple mind tells me that what must be heard by the recording engineers must also be what is heard if one were in front of the performing stage. If not, maybe that is where is need for mixing and equalizing comes in. In this respect, I can see how the engineers were trying to make the performance sound as 'accurately' as possible. And that is just the beginning. What we hear at home now depends on ALL of our choices of ancilliary equipment. And that is where our notion of accuracy/musicality (at home ) begins to unfold.


There are multiple monitoring rigs employed during mixing. When recording a close mic'd multi-track session monitors are typical quality mid sized nearfields from Genelec, KRK, and the like. Attention is generally on the mic placements and levels. In analog factors like how hard to hit the tape come to mind. In mixing. Tatlo yan. First to match levels again into a whole using the same mid-sized, second to prepare the track for the least common denominator using the likes of Yamaha NS-10s or Auratones (aka Horror Tones) and third the giant monitors used only for impressing the clients :lol: Many engineers have a fourth. They burn a dub on CD and go driving around in their cars.

The point is in this modern age what is heard at the console is by no means "hi-fi". So yes VD is spot on when he says it is all subjective. The engineer has only two main requirements to fullfill. First is to put on tape what the producer and artists intend. The second is to make sure that the finished product can be used by the most number of consumers as opposed to the most discerning of consumers.

Buddy Zach is a mastering engineer, in other words a "professional audiophile". It is his job to best patch up the individual tracks and lastly to fashion the collection of tracks into sonically consistent album so as not to appear "chop-chop" given that in any given album as many as six different studios and engineers might have been employed.

Perhaps Jadis' quote from a US speaker designer brings the point home best. It is accurate if it conforms at the very least with the common conception of what each instrument voice included must sound like. Hey, has anybody heard Frank Sinatra singing live without a mic? Didn't think so. Maybe this is something that shouldn't be over thought. The parameters should just be widened.
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Postby ichabod » Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:32 pm

Jack just a side comment if you'll allow. Everytime I hear Sinatra on those old mono recordings, it seems like his voice is more like in the room than in a studio, meaning he's almost as intimate as being in the room singing without a microphone. Of course, one can likewise discern some sound fall-off from the instruments themselves playing due to the distance of the microphones to them. But Sinatra? He comes through almost like it's his "real" voice in the room. Frankie D Voice, big and robust. If only for this kind of natural quality, I'd go set-up a mono system again. There's an RCA mono 6V6 on ebay the SP10. Take a chance on it.

Anyway, I admire the recording engineers who painstakingly keep Sinatra's voice as natural as God allows.

Nice post there.
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Postby ihatejazz » Sat Sep 24, 2005 8:08 pm

jo2 wrote:Accuracy & Musicality??

My understanding of

Accuracy - No such thing I believe......

Musicality - Is how much your EARS can tolerate...

Don't care anymore!

Just LISTEN & ENJOY. :wink:


Amen 8)
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Postby dogears » Sat Sep 24, 2005 8:12 pm

JackD201 wrote:Hey, has anybody heard Frank Sinatra singing live without a mic? Didn't think so. Maybe this is something that shouldn't be over thought. The parameters should just be widened.


This could be OT but I can vividly remember when while watching The Highwaymen in concert and Johnny Cash was singing and playing the guitar for a solo, the electronics[?] went dead :!: For a moment there I thought there would be 'chaos'... but what looked like a 'blooper' became a very memorable event - Johnny just kept playing and singing and his powerful voice sort of filled Singapore 's Suntec Concert hall :!: :o I really can't recall how long the speakers were out but everyone stood up clapping when that performance was done and I could still remember Willie Nelson's smile as he and Kris and Waylon[?] clapped along :D BTW, that concert was held on 26nov95 and I got seat#26 on some row and that day happened to be my bday :D

Para di ma-OT :lol: musicality for me are those notes and spaces-between-notes and those words and pause-between-lyrics [Sinatra's awesome timing :D] ... it may never be accurate in my setup but I can still enjoy the MUSIC... I don't have to get in the nude though :lol:
Accuracy on the other hand can add fun and excitement to the enjoyment of the hobby :D ... now, I'm talking about playing Harry Connick Jr's We are in Love in my room :D BTW, you should see him and his gang in concert as well :D

Peace!
>8o<
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Postby vintage_dog » Sat Sep 24, 2005 8:24 pm

this pm, mandy and i were at sinar's hideout...mandy installed the TonaL on her TT. i was there to listen :-) to her system.

i brought along a few LPs and tried the original prestige recording of sonny rollins' saxophone colossus. the cut, st thomas is my favorite. this track challenges the best of systems with its sheer energy. i wasn't disappointed. well, sonny's sax was so articulate and so very real, max roach's drum piece was a dynamic showcase, flanagan's piano came through with a style i had not noticed before - less forceful and a bit on the background as if giving way to the star - sonny. what a nice recording of what seemed like a live performance (or maybe it is). all this in glorious mono! bravo! we had the the quartet perform live for us!

Image

i thought jeanne was pleased as well with what she heard ;-)

ohhh, enjoy the TonaL! your analog life will never be the same again...
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Postby sinar » Sat Sep 24, 2005 8:53 pm

thanks for coming, francis. you were a big help :)
and yes, that was a very good album. i'll be contented even with just a reissue.

musicality for me is when my toes and fingers start tapping with the flow of the music and accuracy is when i start cursing and kept saying hanep. that is the simplest way i can describe them.
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Postby JackD201 » Sat Sep 24, 2005 11:31 pm

Ichabod, the engineers of yore in my opinion were the REAL DEAL. No processing, no fly-ins, no cheese. Just honest to goodness attention to detail. I wish the economics of the recording industry as a whole could accomodate the old practices of recording performers performing together in one space and go back to the days when musicians would practice and practice, rehearse and rehearse, knowing that once they started there would be no edits to save them. This was the case in the golden age and it pushed musicianship to standards we rarely see today. So yes the older recordings were more life like. It can and still is done today by the likes of Sheffeild, Pope, Reprise, Chesky and others but I think except for very rare exceptions the cost of studio time has doomed popular music to mediocrity. :(

So Amen to subjectivity and doing all we can to be part of the musical process by bringing our music to life by the only venue left to us, our patience and perserverance in matching our listening environments and our equipment to give us what to our souls is both subjectively accurate AND musical.
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Postby dogears » Sun Sep 25, 2005 1:27 am

jack, don't forget about our IMAGINATION :lol: :D
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Postby JackD201 » Sun Sep 25, 2005 1:33 am

Yeah!!!!!! :D
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Postby ichabod » Sun Sep 25, 2005 8:49 am

Thanks Jack. That's quite reassuring indeed.
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Postby jadis » Sun Sep 25, 2005 9:09 am

Jack,

Thanks for sharing the steps in the recording process. The process has always intrigued me. I have come to consider the recording chain almost as intregal as the playback chain. Obviously due to the adage 'garbage in - garbage out'. I got a few 45rpm 7 inch singles from DX before, 2 titles from Lionel Ritchie - Hello, and Truly. The 'Truly' sounds ok, but the 'Hello' sounds bad - compressed, and almost distorted. I lasted only one minute of it, pilit na yan. A couple of weeks ago, a friend brought his 45rpm single of a duet of Luther Vandross and Gregory Hines. Upon hitting the first note, he said it sounds horrible. The sound was like that of the Ritchie 'Hello'. Virtually unlistenable. I believe the fault is in the recording process, because the 2 Ritchie 45s were made by the same company, maybe two different recording engineers with different process? Unfortunately, the only way to know is to play it, or to have another person tell you a certain LP sounds good, recording-wise. My favorite artist + bad recording....that does not add up to me.
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