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

Can’t find the previous post on this topic, several years ago, but I did find our ‘coming out’ story on our experiences with the Marten Coltrane Supreme speakers at CES 2006…

A funny thing happened on planet Abraxas

and a description of a related more ephemeral experience:

More on Number 4 Setup of the Powercord Shootout

The background idea is that our brain organizes things using relationships between these things and that all these billions of relationships form lots of patterns. The music we listen to also has lots of patterns, and when these two patterns resemble each other enough, the patterns in the brain are ‘excited’. We perceive the excitation of these brain patterns in various ways, and some of these are what I think is the ‘drug-like’ experience we get from music.

A visual pattern for the months of the year.

I think we all organize the world into patterns; patterns in 2D [heights of family members in an atomic family] and 3D space [mountains are larger than molehills], of color, texture, sound, … moving things,… using various values of attributes that we are familiar with through our 5 senses [bright versus dim, red versus orange,. sharp versus dull….]. Studies of extreme debilitating versions of this is apparently called Synesthesia.

[For myself, the colors of the calendar here are pretty close – but colors do not play a large part in my mental patterns for months (but my patterns for various people does use colors). However, for me, the months are rectangular, like a sidewalk; my head is also close to the current month, facing slightly ahead of the current week, and I think there is a characteristic note (of a specific frequency and duration) associated with each month, I just haven’t worked out quite what it is yet since I never really thought about it until now].

The point here is that the patterns in the brain do NOT have to be sonic patterns in order to resonate with the patterns in music, they just have to be related in some structural way. Our brains are good at matching patterns that are similar but not exact matches for each other, as in ‘you look just like this other bloke I know’ [but of course he does not look exactly like the bloke you know, he only ‘reminds’ you of him, otherwise you would ask him what the hell is he doing here at this Justin Bieber concert too?].

[There was another fire about a mile south of us again today. The wind, blowing East, caused evacuations and, I imagine, difficulty breathing as it swept toward Boulder this time and not us. It appears to be out as I write this]

In order to make progress here, I will go out on a limb and just start listing things *I* think are present when I have experienced large does of Drug-like sound in the past:

* Decent to excellent Micro-dynamics
* Very High resolution
* Good, often vivid harmonics
* Good continuousness, sometimes even good PRaT

SUSCEPTIBILITY

Personally [and all of this is personal, but hopefully there will be consensus as you all reflect upon your experiences], I am often ‘lulled’ by the music [sometimes assisted by being tired from overwork on my part] into a dream-like state before ‘waking up’ and experiencing some really cool mind-blowing experiences.

So let us assume that there is an extreme comfort with the sound [and the situation] required as a prerequisite for us to even appreciate a drug-like sound.

It is this lulling into a susceptible, dream-like state that I think requires a sound that the listener is very comfortable with, a sound that matches their preferences quite well. I think tiredness can help us ignore some harshness and sound that is NOT exactly to our tastes [but being this tired is not all that much fun, let me tell you :-)].

I think, also, that no matter what your preferences, a decent, perhaps vivid harmonic content is of value to assist the lulling… it’s guarantee of approachable sweetness is comforting.

INGREDIENTS

For me, it seems to be the swirling change of the mathematical relationships between various melodies [which appear to evoke corresponding patterns in the thinking side of the brain. We talked about this several years ago] which kind of occupy and lead my thinking brain places …COMBINED with extreme harmonic color and/or purity [which often sounds extra-vivid during the experience, perhaps because the thinking (distracting) part of the brain is occupied elsewhere] that kind of satiates the emotional ‘heart’ part of the brain.

So…. 🙂 …. *if* we use this as a template for what is required/ happens for / during drug-like music experiences, then we need:

* Decent to excellent Micro-dynamics [and separation, to be able to hear and differentiate the melodies and their relationships to each other]

* Very High resolution [increases the number of melodies – there are beautiful, evocative relationships between the transitions between various harmonics in every tiny note. You can hear this on very big notes like, say, Roy Buchanan “The Messiah will come again”]

* Good, often vivid harmonics [To lull us into a susceptible state and to please and entertain our emotional side during the drug like music experience. In some sense this is the ‘engine’ that keeps us from burning out on too much detail and complexity in the micro-dynamics and high resolution. Note that this does NOT necessarily require tubes, that very good solid-state has a natural purity that tubes must work hard to achieve (but they CAN achieve it!)]

* Good continuousness, sometimes even good PRaT [the melodies are sequences of notes in time, if there are no flowing marching sequences – then there is no melody and one just has a hodgepodge of distinct notes appearing all over the place in the soundstage]