by Michael

Responses to music: drug-like versus spacing out

While at RMAF 2012 I noticed I had 3 possible responses to the sound in a room:

1. Got to be some way out of here
2. Piles of troubles – Major Tom spacing-out until the song is over
3. Not so bad, interesting in its own way. Then more Major Tom spacing-out

In case #2, I was spacing out because I did not want to listen to the sound anymore.

In case #3 I was spacing out because I found the music nice and relaxing. Kind of a lot different than finding the music ‘engaging’ – but I found nothing engaging at RMAF but I will be, was, very happy with just ‘relaxing’ in those circumstances.

But one of the things I was spacing out about, if you can stand the recursion, is how ‘spacing out’ is related to responses to drug-like sound.

I think that pure drug-like sound pushes us around like a hurricane blows dead leaves around – that we have almost no conscious choice in the matter whether we are spacing out, sometimes to the point of hallucinating, or forced to focus on the subtleties of the music like our lives depended on it.

If this is so, then spacing out to a relaxing sound is just a response to a very, very mild drug-like sound, and that we are all kind of sailing the waters between this and an ultimate music experience every time we listen to music that sounds good enough to be in the range of ‘relaxing’ to ‘drug-like’.

This is great news for people who have built a decent sounding system – that decent and relaxing is on the path the drug-like.

But the sad thing is that 90% of the people we correspond with or visit – their systems are by composition and construction abrasive and obnoxious. They kind of know this about their system – but they think that all systems are like this, and that the rest of us are just making stuff up about drug-likeness and engagement and relaxation.

To the point that, from my observations of both audiophiles and reviewers, they refuse to believe what they hear when they walk into a room with non-abrasive sound. That they think something is ‘wrong’ when the sound is NOT atonal, sharp, uneven and emphasizing random frequencies and dynamics while completely obliterating others, collapsing all frequencies around various frequencies into one slap-in-the-face spike in hardness, etc. etc. etc.

To me, this is like wearing a watch that periodically pokes you with something sharp to the point of almost drawing blood from your wrist, or a bicycle that has a seat so ill designed that you can only ride it for 10 minutes without getting sore, or a car that has several things that start to rattle when you go over 30 mph.

People, you can do better than this. Music can, at a minimum, sound relaxing. Seriously. This is important. 🙂 [ I think this inability to grasp the relative quality of things is a real problem with people being able to fathom and enjoy our hobby… and our world]

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy / RMAF 2012 / Show Reports 0 comments
 by Michael

Analytical listening and short-term memory

Some background:

I have spent much of my life working by myself on technical projects. Over time more and more thoughts were in the form of pictures rather than words.

Now, after all this time, I have a have a rather harder time understanding what people are saying as they are talking. Instead, I ‘replay’ what they said, what was recorded in my short term memory, going over and over it and analyzing it [hopefully quickly! :-)] several times before I am sure what they meant, as well as getting some kind of handle on the subtle subtexts of what they said.

I presume most of us do this to some degree.

Listening closely to music:

A similar thing happens when I am listening to music – consuming both the music in real-time as well as going over it several times in short term memory.

Yes, one can miss a small snippet of music while one is doing this. But this repetitive analysis can result in moving some of what one has heard to long term memory, which can be useful if one is seriously evaluating equipment or systems and one wants to compare them later ‘offline’ as it were.

Methods:

This list is by no means exhaustive, but is instead an attempt to try and start talking about how people can analyze sound quality using their short-term memory.

1. comparative analysis. Comparing the sound: harmonics, dynamics, resolution etc. to what we have heard before – both with similar music and the exact same music

2. emotional analysis. Determining how we feel when we hear the music and, in fact, individual passages and notes in the music. Does it make us feel happy, sad, angry, involved…?

3. rightness analysis. Does it sound right? or does it sound wrong? Some of this can be as easy as determining whether guitars sound like guitars, for example. Some is more subtle, for example is one being fooled into think there is actually a real person standing there in the room playing this instrument. Finally, there is this sense of just plain ‘rightness’; something CD players did not have for a decade or two – something that is still somewhat elusive even today, but only noticeable when you actually something that is significantly more ‘right sounding than what we are used to’. [and by this we DO NOT mean accuracy or ‘realness’ – this is more about how the human mind hears things and is more related to ‘believably’].

4. separation analysis. During complex passages, did every instrument stay in place and sound like it would all by itself? Or did it blend in a mushy wall-of-sound? This is easiest if one just plays the complex passage over and over again – indeed – but a lot CAN be done by analyzing one’s short term memory recollection of the passage.

5, 6, 7… ?

Although short-term memory vanishes after about 90 seconds, at least mine does – getting more and more severe as I age – the immediate term memory of just a second or two, used for analyzing the sound of music, seems to still be working OK. Here’s hoping it continues to do so! 🙂

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy 0 comments
 by Michael

Questions for Distributors to ask Manufacturers

We came up with a list. Trying to be exhaustive here, so please let us know of we missed something.

Some of these questions are a little delicate – but it is better to know the answers before hand, before misconceptions and unwarranted assumptions eventually get everyone’s knickers in a twist, isn’t it?

1. Does the manufacturer (M) sell directly to customers in this country?
2. If so, will they agree to pay the distributor (D) the amount over best export that they sell the products for?
3. How important do they see shows being?
4. How many shows per year do they want to show at ?
5. What type of systems do they want to show [percentages each for statement level systems, midline, and entry level]
6. Who staffs shows? [just the D, or does the M send staff / themselves]
7. Do they expect to sell things at shows?
8. If so, who gets the profits: how are they divided up between the exhibitor, the D, the M, and the local dealer[if any]?
9. Who pays for shows: Shipping? Fees?
10. Does the M plan to advertise: online? print? To what extent / frequency?
11 If so, who pays?
12. Is there a repair center in this country?
13. Who pays for repairs? Warranty? Off-warranty? Shipping? Parts? Labor?
14. How are prices determined? Does the D set them? Are they set by the M? Are they the same world-wide?
15. How was the line previously represented in this country?
a. Did they sell direct at discounts? Did they raise the price more than 10% above the price elsewhere in the world? [i.e. does the dealer population now hate this brand?]
b. Did they setup dealers? How many? What quality?
c. What did the M like about the previous D? Not like? Why did they let them go? How long were they distributor? What quality of distributor are they?
16. Does the M expect the dealer network to be expanded? How important is this? What quality of dealers do they want – does it matter? How many / year?
17. What are the targets for the top line revenue growth? YoY? In 5 years?
18. How long is the lead time for products? entry level? midlevel? statement level?
19. Is there a M rep here in the country we are supposed to work with?
20. Numbers: what were sales like last year? The previous year? Both worldwide and here.
21. What has been the best selling products? What does M want to be the best selling?
22. What kind of marketing has the M been doing? The previous D? Are any changes foreseen?

Suitability of Products

1. Does the general appearance of the products appeal to the typical buyer in this country. If not, will they appeal to any buyers at all in this country?
2. Is the performance competitive at the price?
3. How is the packaging? Will each product sold need to be re-boxed by the distributor to withstand the slings and arrows of our reportedly worse-in-world shippers?
4. How is the reliability?
a. Will each product need to be opened and tested before shipping to customer to prevent an above average rate of DOA sales?
b. Are there spurious failures in the field?
c. Are the products small enough to be shipped when the fail? Or will there have to be on-site repairs?
d. Is there at least one repair center in the country?
e. If so, do the people at the repair center know their stuff? Do they respond in reasonable time? Are they suitable pleasant to customers? Do they keep the product clean – or leave it a filthy mess?
5. How heavy/large are the products? Will they be a pain to warehouse? To send to and setup at shows?
6. Are the products UL / CE inspected?
7. Does the product ‘work well with others’ in actual systems that people may have? If an amp, can it drive real speakers? If a speaker, can it be driven by real amps?
8.

Hmmmm.. not all of these appear to be in the English language, but hopefully you get the gist.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / How-to / Philosophy 0 comments