Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences

Reading an old post from 2006:

Where No Low Powered Amps Have Gone Before

Although being a little old-love-letter-embarrassed about some of my ecstatically enthusiastic exclamations… there was this:

But this is not about how the speaker or system sounds.

It is not.

This is about how the sounds affects the listener.

In the end why should I care about the sound, beyond a certain minimum standard, any more than I care about the minute construction details of the chair I sit in, or the the type of weaving and glue the carpet underneath my feat uses? What we CARE about REALLY is how comfortable the chair is; about how pleasant the carpet is to look at and feel underneath our feet.

What if all reviews and all show reports paid attention to nothing except how the sounds …made …them …feel.

I bet the Stereophile list of Class A components would look a lot different than they do now.

Ah, the old days of Stereophile recommended lists and innocent youth:-) [They are so far down into mid-fi these days that they just are not relevant from our perspective].

So, having this discussion, this argument, with both Peter Qvortrup, and on this blog with Joe Roberts, about their perspective that the ultimate is the ‘absolute sound’ and how anything else is, essentially, worthless candy that is just a passing fashion….

I see their points, and do not necessarily disagree with them if one is trying to make a LOGICAL choice about what their system should sound like… but I keep coming back to the above sentiment. I may not care, and my feet and toes do not care, if the carpet under my feet is a Persian carpet from one of the oldest families and a very valuable antique. Authenticity is not always the highest priority. Sometimes it is softness, and attractiveness, and smell and cost and numerous other things that are independent from authenticity.

Sure, if authenticity has all the features you are looking for, and you can afford it, then you are in the best of all worlds, and you just have to do some investigation and find the most authentic instance of whatever it is you are interested in, whether it be Persian carpets, Winterthur Queen Anne chairs, or home audio reproduction.

But if you are looking for that gestalt, that symbiosis with the Now, that unnameable something, then perhaps some more introspection is required and deeper evaluation of just what it is that our particular souls are looking for.

Which is, of course, the problem with using ‘how do you feel?’ methodology – it relies on us being introspective, and being introspective is difficult. It also relies on us being extremely honest with ourselves- and that is nearly impossible for any of us. It is easier to rely on one’s ‘betters’ to tell us what to buy and what to think. And then move on.

Facts… unfiltered and unprejudiced facts… are great and I am not suggesting anarchy [ala TAS].

But if you can understand ‘how you feel’ about something with minimum contamination from all the hordes telling you what you feel, then I believe THIS is the way to determine the true worth of something that is much art as science.

[This is a fun movie clip, but in truth, I find the newer Star Treks juvenile, shallow and self-indulgent, including much of what is at the end of this clip (after Spock’s mother appears). But I LOVE the original series, written by the who’s who of sci fi authors and inspiring several generations at NASA et. al. … and little ole me. ]

How.. do… we… feel?

Not an easy question. In fact quite difficult, for all of us.

Funny, I like PQ’s Audio Note gear precisely BECAUSE of the ways they can make me feel. 🙂 [to wit, it makes me feel good or ecstatic, and does not make me feel bored or irritated]. That some of this gear is as close to authentic we can get with current technology, approaching the ‘absolute sound’, well… that’s just great too. 🙂

[Remember, the goal of this blog is to try to optimize the pursuit of the Ultimate Music Experiences. One method to pursue these experiences is to spend $$$ and setting up the Best System Ever – and 1/2 of the posts here on the blog are about the not so easy task of configuring and setting up these kinds of systems. The other 1/2 is how we can find some other kinds of methods that maybe do not rely so much on spending so much time and $$$… i.e. how we can be a little smarter about all this]

This post will try to apply the model of the previous posts, where we treat music as a ‘key piece’ that allows us to perceive the world in a much clearer manner, to try to, hopefully come up with ways to both more predictably generate those ‘Right Song’ phenomena and drug-like music experiences.

Relief – Relieving Cognitive Disconnects

At any given time, we have a number of problems on our plate, several things which are irritating us, or making us feel tired, or feel stupid.

It is these things that the ‘Right Song’ addresses and relieves.

There are also a number of songs that are not the ‘Right Song’ but will have patterns, pieces of the puzzle, that will help alleviate the cognitive disconnects we are having with the World.

In fact, almost every song has *some* patterns we may be able to use, or perhaps patterns that reinforce what we already know, so its ALL good 🙂

Pleasure/Appreciation/Expansion – Connecting to The Good Stuff

There are deeper issues in life than the things we worry and fret about on a day to day basis – beyond the bad, evil and incompetent running amok out there [love that word, amok] . YMMV but there is also life, beauty, eternity, spirit, truth, etc.

For me, as an example, rich, rich tones evoke the bright purple of a tulip, or the perfume of a rose, or the velvety softness of a rose petal. Pure, PURE tones remind me of straight lines and wonderfully calming symmetries and brand new chrome plating.

What if some of the aspects of music, then, the qualities of the sound, that predispose us to let the puzzle pieces in the music represent the deeper issues in life, commonly experienced issues that we are ALL more or less hard-wired to want to understand more fully.

These qualities [let’s call them AWESOMENESS, because they invoke a sense of awe which is important to get beyond the mundane interpretations of the patterns in the music. Well, YOU think of a better name then :-)] could be anything from excellent musicianship to high quality harmonics, to wonderful decay, to perfect micro-dynamics to… [macro dynamics?] These qualities just open to door to us appreciating the way the patterns and internal relationships of the music to itself represent similar things we see when we seek deeper truths in the world out there.

We still need the patterns in the music along with the quality[s], we still need the music to be complex enough, and rendered well enough, to have this ‘meat’ on the ‘bones’ – the bones being something like great harmonics, or great dynamics, or great detail, etc. The ‘meat’ [patterns/puzzle pieces] cannot have too much distortion, or be so fuzzy, or be so atonal, or bright, or all the other things that most hifi systems do incorrectly – because if they are their ‘message’ will be lost in the noise..

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If this model is accurate [and it does match experience, where sometimes just one excellent component in a system of otherwise just ordinary but competent components can sound quite drug-like], then, we could expect to be able to build drug-like systems by having the system:

1) render AT LEAST ONE high-quality aspect to add some Awesomeness; micro-dynamics or tone for example [micro-dynamics is great, as is harmonic resolution (beyond just excellent tone), because they serve both as Awesomeness AND they can also contain complex patterns in and of themselves] to communicate to the brain that this is something awesome, something on the order of the beauty of a rose, and

2) be able to render music with a some amount of complexity. Complexity is somewhat difficult to define here. Being able to render classical music is the obvious prime example, but an excellent singer, on a system that can render the complexities in their voice [so many emotions!] i.e. its ability to render extreme harmonic resolution, can also do just fine.

Bet we can all think of systems that have 1) and not 2), or vis-a-versa. How about systems that have neither? I frequently waver between preferring systems dominated by 1) or 2) or having 1) and 2) completely balanced. How does one define ‘completely balanced’? Ultimate systems will have both, of course, and have MANY aspects providing lots of Awesomeness and the challenges become trying to get the system, which can render any amount of complexity, to reveal more and more of the deep inner complexities/patterns in the source music [i.e. lower and lower noise floors and better and better source media].