The Secret

[analag]

What is the secret of sound quality...anybody found it yet?

[dmp]

A great performance?

[Rochey]

expensive cables.

[pucho812]

good musicians?

[Rochey]

good musicians?

Now THOSE are hard to find.

[Dr_J]

good musicians?

Now THOSE are hard to find.

Yes, and they always need a lot of beer... 

[pucho812]

good musicians?

Now THOSE are hard to find.

Yes, and they always need a lot of beer... 

well their natural habitat is slowly being destroyed, so it is rare to find one.

[tmuikku]

State of mind

[warpie]

an mp3 player... 

[JohnRoberts]

It's not a secret in the objective realm, but not much agreement over which simple metrics matter and how.

I believe the typical playback system is critically flawed so routinely incapable of perfectly reproducing a different (more) dimensional event in a different (size/acoustics/whatever) space.

Different mechanisms (like stereophony) reinforce useful psychoacoustic illusions of spatial orientation suggesting realism but the evaluation of this is subjective and personal so trying to make objective sense of squishy subjective mechanisms is difficult.

Double blind tests are crude pass/fail and help objectify this only a little, but brings little relief to the almost religious pursuit of single hardware solutions to an inordinately complex systemic problem.

While i doubt this is a popular answer but maybe there is no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. We can do an arbitrarily good job the more strictly and finely we define the task. For example I suspect we could do a decent job of recreating a string quartet in our living room with a handful of specialized playback transducers positioned appropriately. This synthesized players metaphor might cover small jazz and rock groups. Larger more complex tasks, would be proportionately more difficult.

or not...  I can't even be certain concise !:! realism is exactly what people want... and some genre of music and/or recordings do not really exist as an acoustic event outside the control room, so playback, is literally creating the acoustic event from electrical squiggles in media, or perhaps recreating the control room-monitor acoustic environment.
=====

Or we could just relax and listen to the music, instead of the hardware.

JR

 

[ruffrecords]

What is the secret of sound quality...anybody found it yet?

Yes, but I can't tell you because then it would no longer be a secret.

Cheers

Ian

[kante1603]

good musicians?

Now THOSE are hard to find.

Yes, and they always need a lot of beer... 

No,this guy is too young to drink alcohol I bet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=8kGzQav6FJo

Udo

[tv]

TL 072

[zebra50]

A cat!

Everything sounds better with a cat on it.*



Black cat for bass, tabby for treble, tortie for a bit of lower mid oomph.

*Do NOT cover your cat in C37 lacquer....

[desol]

The secret of sound quality...musicians, musical instruments, microphones.

[warpie]

 

A cat!

wow! that's a really beautiful cat

[etheory]

Dedication, and humility.

IMO every person who says they've just finished the perfect mix, or is "as good as they are ever going to get" is wrong.

To be better than everyone else, you have to realize that you aren't, and never will be, but pursue that ideal regardless.

Attention to detail, actually caring about what you are doing etc. are all not scientifically measurable quantities, however, I would argue that, along with talent, even though you might not be able to measure these things with numbers, I'd argue that you can hear them.

[lassoharp]

Yes, but I can't tell you because then it would no longer be a secret.

Best Answer.   

[BR]

Talent.. Just plain ol' talent. 

[analag]

I am preparing myself for a journey into distortion from which I fear I will not return.