Micro-dynamics – is it all we need?

Does Love == Micro-dynamics?

No.

Well, maybe I should not speak for the rest of you on that point…

I think micro-dynamics is one of the more obvious things you hear on a system that is able to render the fine details of individual notes.

Uh Oh. I feel a couple of Photoshop picture graphs coming on…

But before we have to go there…

Is the ability to render fine details of individual notes REQUIRED for a drug-like sound? I.E. we should ask ourselves whether they are truly Necessary, and whether they are Sufficient.

The answer to whether it is sufficient is, I think no, not entirely, based on the idea in previous comments that there must be some amount of ‘truth’ in at least some part of the music that sounds real enough to get the rational part of the mind to shut up about how stupid all of this is. Like Jim says “Something that takes your attention away from what is wrong and to focus on what is right”.

We see this all the time: people HAVE to have lots of realistic dynamics, or soundstaging, or imaging, or harmonics. That is THEIR particular thing that their brain demands [assuming they are being truly introspective and not just parroting something they read in a forum]

The idea is to give the rational part of our brain something to chew so it will allow us to then tailor the rest of the music for our more imaginative part of the brain – stuff that the brain can start free-associating with [and generate interesting and transformative ‘experiences’]

I think micro-dynamics are just slightly more well-defined inner-details. I think that these fine details ARE necessary for transformative experiences because I think it is in the complex patterns and messages of music that all the magic lies.

First, fine details of a note are found in its harmonic transitions, frequency transitions and dynamic transitions – and it is these complex transitions that communicate Information, and of course, we then can add all the information created by the interplays between these things within the note – and all the interplays with all the other notes….

For example, think of a word in a song sung by Neil Young, or Sinead O’Conner, or any expressive singer. Or any child. The fine details of the word, as it is spoken, transmit TONS of information to us [we learn to hide this as we grow older, not wanting to publicly broadcast what we are really thinking this way.]

If our systems cannot reproduce a sufficient level of fine detail, then all singers sound like politicians… fake. [and some singers always will anyway, they are just not all that good at this].

Second: A lurker on this blog [hi F! :-)] talked to Neli today about how quiet backgrounds were synonymous, necessary, or at least related to micro-dynamics [Hey, she’s my wife. You can never get a clear concise message from your spouse. It’s a law ;-)]. I thought about F’s speakers and realized that lower noise floors do help on those, and, looking at the extreme cases of lots of noise and no noise, a lower noise floor helps on all speakers.

Given any system then, a lower noise floor will help us to better hear any micro-dynamics that the system is capable of. For some systems this might be all that is required. Their design is sufficiently adequate that it may only take a slightly better cable to lower the noise floor enough to bring out quite a bit of fine details. However, other systems may never have appreciable micro-dynamics because there are just too many design decisions in that system that are going in the other direction – mostly amp designs that try to hide detail because they think some people will see it as ‘bright’ because detail on solid state is often bright, or because they just suck at their job [I Love the ’50 First Dates’ movie :-)] and speakers designs that are way too hard to drive with cones that just can’t respond to such subtle changes within notes, they can barely respond to the massive ones without requiring a billion watts to do it.

So.

The greater the ability to render fine details of notes, the greater the number complex patterns that our mind can use to our benefit. The lower the noise floor the better we will be able to hear those fine details.

Next… pictures?

Next… the various kinds of ‘messages’ found in the complex patterns of music