The Difficulty of Communicating About Sound

The ability to talk about, to write about, how something sounds, to someone not in the same room, is so ridiculously difficult that it bears little resemblance to talking about anything else except, perhaps, emotions (like Love).

For example, take the visual arts. Take ‘paintings’.

CASUAL DESCRIPTIONS

Your friend bought a new piece of art. They like it a lot and tells you it is kind of a cross between a Gauguin and Matisse.

OK. Your mind starts churning up images of their paintings… I think most people would try and think of paintings that would be something nice to look at, rather than some kind of monsterous offspring.

So, already we are trying to interpret what is meant by Gauguin and Matisse: WHICH works of theirs? In what WAY are they combined (color palette? brush strokes? atmosphere? thickness of paint? )? What, is it a scene with blue 2D dancers with orange grass and yellow sky?

DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS

They go further, telling you that there is a lot of good detail, microscopic changes in color, along with great macroscopic-sweeps of changes throughout the piece. The colors are a little ‘hot’ in the middle palette colors, and they are counter-balancing this by choosing a dark matt for their framing of the piece.

So, now we all know exactly what they piece sounds, I mean looks, like, right?

It gets even worse….

COMPARISONS TO THE KNOWN

Let’s say they sent you a photo of the Gauguin and Matisse paintings they think their new painting is an offspring of. So that there is a common frame of reference, kind of like you and your best friend sharing a deep knowledge of how two sound systems sound.

Here are the two paintings:

So, now we all know what our friend’s new painting looks like, right?

A PHOTOGRAPH

Finally they send you a photo. Ah, finally we get a sense of what they bought – not quite the same, but at least we can see that it looks like they have wasted their money. Again.

A SOUNDOGRAPH

Eventually we will have cheap systems that reproduce sound very accurately, as well as a photograph does the visible spectrum today. As we talked about in a previous post, at this future date the hifi system designer as artist will come into their own. When a SOUNDOGRAPH is sent to you, it will likely be, if you are a dilettante , an unreal but very evocative and moving sound that you are receiving – or perhaps your friend is still wasting their money on this futuristic day, yet again.

IN THE MEANTIME

Before digital photography, one often had trusted friends and art dealers whose recommendation they could trust. These friends and dealers were experienced, shared a common approach and similar tastes, and had recommended good things in the past. Yes, they could send a photograph – but this would take several days, and perhaps the painting will not be around that long.

It took a large amount of trust on the part of the purchaser, trust in the person doing the recommending, especially if it was expensive.

It was bought ‘blind’ so to speak.

Just like we buy things ‘deaf’.

In the high-end audio world, we aren’t quite where the art world was back then, yet. Perfect strangers just met on the net are entrusted to make recommendations and bad reviews helter-skelter. Who are these people? Has anyone besides themselves heard THEIR system?

And dealers. Dealers are not tested to see if a common taste is shared, or whether their recommendations are truly well-thought out or are just a way to make a quick buck.

A sad state of affairs.

But, as another previous post said, the way out lies in the hobby centering around people who live up to their good reputations and are willing to put them to the test: dealers, netizens, reviewers, manufacturers… Not everyone will agree with everyone else, but at least they can be trusted to say what they think, and have some consistecy in their approach. And that their approach has something to do with sound, something at least, and not completely to do with dollars or getting home in time for supper or just taking pleasure from the attention gained by shouting fire! or gold!.

Yep, consistency and honesty. That is all we need.

And you might note that the best reviewers have this going for them already. Mike Fremer, J.A., Srajan, Roy Gregory, Art Dudley, etc…. [Not that we have to AGREE with them. Not even most of the time :-)]