Comparing High-end Audio to Photography

I think we can see some of the problems with defining the Absolute Sound by comparing Music Reproduction with Photography.

Both have something real they are trying to reproduce by technical means. Both involve some aspects of art and aspects of science.

I think it makes sense for this metaphor [or is it an analogy?] to compare a digital image file with a CD [essentially a digital music file].

Now lets consider Photoshop 🙂

You bring the image in and correct for any color issues that your camera has. You correct for inadequate lighting. You correct for lens aberrations because you were too close to, or at an angle to, your subject.

Then you can do some fancy layering filters to make the subject look more 3D. To make the colors more evident. To hide some of the grain in the original image….

You do all this because you KNOW what the subject [say it is a face] looks like. You know about flesh colors and that the head is a 3D thing. You want to bring out the [Einsteinian] sparkle in their eyes that you know is there. The affect their laugh lines have on people in real life, etc.

The point is two fold:

1. All this touching up is to make this technical artifact look more like the Real Thing. It flies in the face of ideological pundants that say “You MUST NOT Tinker With the Flaws in the Material”. Or “digital images just are going to look bad so don’t you do anything to make it look more real / better”.

Those pundants are silly, right? And so I think that the things people do to their high-end audio system are likewise OK if they bring out more of what reality is all about: 3D, rhythm, harmonics, etc.

2. The Real Thing is hard to define. Just how 3D is that face you saw last [imaging] ? Just how evident WERE those crinkles [dynamics] ? and those color blotches [harmonic color] ? And could you really see each hair on their head if you had the desire [and temerity to be OK with looking a little wacky while peering intently at someone’s hear follicles] to actually look at it and focus your attention trying to see each hair [detail and resolution].

So deciding whether something is the Absolute Sound or not is difficult if not impossible [another recent post on this topic posted about how all the room issues at any real Absolute Sound recitals making sure that no one has ever heard the Absolute Sound in all of history ;-)] .

* Often, the Absolute Sound these days has become an ideological pursuit and has more to do with the technology and brands used and the means [looking at things like THD and progeny] by which sound is reproduced, whereas the Real Thing is a musical event, where being ‘like the Real Thing’ means that you create a musical event that is both musical(!) and in several important [to humans, not to some clunky measuring device] ways very closely resembles the Real Thing.