Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences

Audio Federation High-Fidelity Audio Blog
 by Michael

CES 2018 and high-end audio

CES this year is even smaller than last year.

I count a very generous 66 rooms plus or minus, including rooms for earbuds, headphones and magazines. This is a far cry from just a few years ago when we had around 200 rooms in the Venetian and 60 to 100 rooms at T.H.E. Show held nearby.

But Neli wants to go, so…. [She’ll probably be found most of the time in the Lamm room. Me? I plan on taking photos, but think I’ll also be spending some time downstairs checking out the several 1000 booths in the Sands convention center]

Here are the floor plans:

Lamm  and Chord are the only people left on 34 and 35.

 

The rest of the rooms are on floor 29 [nothing is on 30 or 31 anymore except unrelated CES demo and meeting rooms].

 

 

CES has been declining for several years according to some statistics, not just the high-end audio portion. But it is big enough that it garners press attention, especially the main part of the convention. [“Google Assistant vs. Amazon Alexa”. OMG. As long as I can command either using my awful emulation of the Picard-esque “Computuh…”, I am good. :-)]

 

in CES 2018 0 comments
 by Michael

Music is THE Drug

We all know here that all music is drug-like, to a greater or lesser extent, but there is actually a technical paper where its effect has apparently has been scientifically measured.

TL;DR Now we just need a study that does this same test with four specific tests: with both consumer-grade and audiophile-grade equipment [readers of this blog know what we mean by that], as well as with audiophiles vs. non-audiophiles [do audiophiles get more than average levels of dopamine, and that is why we are audiophiles? Or are we just smarter, going for a safe, clean, harmless (albeit expensive) source of dopamine – kind of on the QT, everyone else thinking we are just ‘listening to music’ :-)].

And I would bet that casual listening produces less dopamine [but probably more than zero] than focused listening.

There was a paper published a few years ago in Nature, in 2011, that documented the response in self-chosen music lovers [they get ‘goosebumps’] which revealed rises in dopamine both in anticipation of enjoyable parts of their favorite music, as well as in response to hearing the favorite parts.

Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music

Wired has a nice article about these results [only the abstract is currently free, afaict]

“While [some] theories of music focused on the way a noise can refer to the real world of images and experiences (its “connotative” meaning), Meyer [musicologist Leonard Meyer, in his classic book Emotion and Meaning in Music (1956),]argued that the emotions we find in music come from the unfolding events of the music itself. This “embodied meaning” arises from the patterns the symphony invokes and then ignores, from the ambiguity it creates inside its own form. “For the human mind,” Meyer writes, “such states of doubt and confusion are abhorrent. When confronted with them, the mind attempts to resolve them into clarity and certainty.” And so we wait, expectantly, for the resolution…”

We have talked about the “connotative” meaning in some older posts, how music and its patterns anf fractal nature reflect back to us both nature as well the complicated forces and dynamics of our personal lives.

But anticipation, has sometimes been associated with PRaT, but overtime I, like probably many of you, have experienced [enjoyed!] many kinds of anticipations in music, not just the resolution [repeat] of a mathematical pattern [e.g. the Leonard Meyer idea. I would guess the whole idea of ‘refrain’ is another popular example], but anticipations caused by varying the timing of the beat slightly [jazz seems to do a lot with this], rises in frequency over several measures as we wait for the return to normalcy, or more blunt methods like the beginning of Dire Strait’s I Want My MTV. And no doubt many more.

 

[Love is also the drug – Roxy Music is right – but this blog is about music, so… :-)]

 

Another very informative and fun post on this subject:

 

The 18 Wonderful Ways Music Affects The Brain

in News 0 comments
 by Michael

Happier New Year 2018

Neli and I wish all of you a happier new year and many, many Ultimate Musical Experiences.

We wish you:

Better, tighter, more yummy organic bass.

Clearer, more airier inspirational highs that perfectly integrate and disappear into the rest of the frequency band.

Awesome realistic dynamics that are both scary and convincing.

Harmonics, more tasty than the world’s best chocolate, that make you weep [when no one is looking],

and lots and lots of Musicality, an underappreciated delicacy that, when we do get to hear it, reminds us why we spend so much time searching for these experiences – and it is SO worth it.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Mike & Neli

 

 

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

Neil Young – Live in Omemee, Ontario

Neil Young – Live in Omemee, Ontario.

Neil streamed live from his home town in Ontario [before he moved to Winnipeg] last night for an hour and a half

Very intimate. Played by himself in a small hall built by the same architect who built Massey Hall [where a somewhat recent live album was recorded]. He played mostly old standards with a few new songs, often politically relevant, thrown into the mix.

He played on a several acoustic guitars, two pianos, at least two harmonicas and an organ.

This is my favorite style of Neil Young concert. By far. Even though I love his electronic stuff and his, uh, more experimental stuff [and love that he does, in fact, experiment with different music genres]. But the intimate venue, with his ability to put so much emotion into his voice [and last night his instruments as well], with the emotional responses from the audience so readily audible, it is just such an honest and forthright and compassionate and human an experience. Hard to find these these days where the vibe is more, as he put it, “bringing out some old ideas – like marching criminals through the streets”.

We watched it streaming on Facebook. It was also shown live on a Canadian TV network.

He mentioned the live stream a few times. Neil seems to have a love hate relationship with technology. I remember him working many years ago with Sun Microsystems [now Oracle] to develop a fuel-less car [out of an old Chevy or something. Sorry, too lazy to look it up myself]. And of course more recently PONO [the technology of which is now branded as MQA… without, it appears to me, Neil’s okeedokee].

Anyway, at the end of the concert, he said something to the effect: “.. and these days, a lot of you were probably watching 12 other things at the same time. Keep on doing that. We still love you.”

Sonically, the sound was good. As good as these things ever get, I think, from listening to lots of YouTube music concerts over the years. The Facebook player kind of stopped working after about an hour, and we had to reload the page finally, missing the first half of Helpless. The bass on the at least one guitar didn’t decay as rapidly as one might expect, but this might have been the way that it really sounded.

And they sounded awesome. I was thinking that if I ever got another acoustic guitar, I wanted it sound like these. These, old, beat-up, obviously well-loved guitars. I do not think any of the soundboards [the area around the sound hole] had any color left on them, the finish and maybe even the veneer [if any] worn clear through. He spent sometime showing how a guitar from Steven Stills, who purportedly got it from a musician who got shot while playing a Neil Young song [kind of a wink at fake news], and showed how the front soundboard had a significant area of the wood replaced, where the bullet went in, and how he had finessed the place where it came out [if this was truly a bullet’s trajectory, my guess is that it would have missed the musician at the time]. Guitar sounded great by the way.

Similarly, he brought his very old pianos with him as well up here into the wilderness of Canada [and we complain about shipping speakers up there]. And an old tree stump that was given to him by the “First Nations” down in Nebraska many years ago when trying to bring attention to the problems caused when we try to run leaky oil pipelines long distances.

The concert was both a homecoming of sorts and an attempt to raise money for the school where his father went. It also helped publicize that the Neil Young Archives are now open [recommend logging in with Facebook or Google and NOT TYPING YOUR PASSWORD there – it is an unsecure page].

The songs of the new albums sounded great, can’t wait to add it to our collection [one of our largest].

Neil Young – always from the heart and still relevant after all these years.

 

 

 

 

in Music / News 0 comments
 by Michael

Google’s Music Genre Timeline

Google’s Music Genre Timeline is very interesting.

Note how the popularity of Jazz has grown lately.

Note how there is not a single mention (that I could find) of classical music.

I wonder if the problem we have with music today [i.e. little innovation] is reflected in that there is no massive new genre – everything is kind of balanced in popularity these days.

The iconic albums they feature for each genre could use work, IMO [but, alright Dean Martin! :-)].

Anyway, something to while away a few minutes during this rainy day…

 

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

CAS 2017: Best System Performance and Ultimate Cost No Object Design

CAS 2017: Best System Performance and Ultimate Cost No Object Design was just awarded to our California Audio Show 2017 room by Richard Austen on his final Dagogo show report.

I will say that CD sounded better here than anywhere else beating other rooms with vinyl or computer audio playback

I know, right? For many turntables and nearly all which are not setup perfectly [like at a show] this Audio Note U.K. digital is just better. Kind of awesome – convenience AND sounds good [less calories, more alcohol. Something like that]

Richard (aka RGA) got a chance to play his non-audiophile-approved CDs while the rest of us were not paying any attention, trying to figure out if Pink Floyd was the best rock-and-roll band ever and if so for which Albums and years [yes,  and from 66 [relics] to 73 [dsotm] or 77 [animals], depending on mood. Many people hate the animals LP but they are wrong-headed 🙂 as were the majority in the room who disagreed and voted no :-)], and other monumental decisions music-lovers have to debate whenever they first meet [ok, yeah, it only took 1 minute to debate this, but this set the tone for the rest of the 4 hours. you readers know what I mean].

So Richard got to hear the system well over the course of many hours, both Saturday [and Sunday, I might add, us not wanting to pack up for several hours – getting out of there, on our 3rd and final trip home that night, at 11:59 sharp before the ‘deadline’ at midnight].

Frankly, these [Acapella Cellini High speakers] were rather easily the best sound at this show. It took a couple of tracks to begin to appreciate what these speakers are capable of doing. And unfortunately show-goers tend to try and cover as many rooms as possible over stopping to smell the roses

I know, right? And there were quite a few good speakers at this show.

We were so happy that we got to spend time listening after hours with many different people – it has been awhile since a show felt like ‘home’, and the people and the music were just awesome this year.

Thank you, Richard 🙂

in Acapella / Audio Note / HRS 0 comments
 by Michael

The Joy of “Different”

Image above of the sea, copyright CSG Ltd., cheapsurfgear.com

The Joy of “Different”. The absolute joy of hearing an often very, VERY familiar song with a different sound than what we are used to.

This drives so much of the commerce in our industry as well as providing so much of the pleasure [for me anyway] but it is not talked about much.

Yes, it is related to ‘upgrading’ and certainly ‘better quality sound’ is one of the ‘differences’ that are very enjoyable. And, of course, a different pressing, a remastering, a different technology, these also provide these wonderful experiences.

But there are also lots of differences that are just slight improvements and sometimes more just changes in ‘flavor’ – and these are also quite enjoyable and should not be ignored or disparaged. They are healthy and help us both understand music and our preferences as well as just plain fun. And many of them do not cost a lot of money. A change of cables or powercords. Using better isolation feet. Putting spikes under the speakers. Moving the speakers a little. Moving the rack from between the speakers. Cleaning the CDs or LPs better. Cleaning the ends of the cables. Etc.

And, of course,these changes in ‘flavor’ can cost some serious coin, like swapping one $11K powercord for another $11K powercord. Yikes. But, wow, whatever the price point, this can be soooo much fun. 😀

[And even downgrades can be enjoyable. For example listening to a lower-end system at a friends house, or changing out a speaker for a less-expensive but higher efficiency one, or less-expensive but higher resolution one, or whatever – these can be so much fun and invigorating.]

Some of these ideas are disparaged by some people as not being pure. “There is a right way something is supposed to sound”, and any variance from pursuing that precisely defined [in their minds] sound makes you a ‘lesser audiophile’ or something. Then again, just look at what system these people have and when we stop feeling sorry for them and the bad decisions they made we can go back to having fun. Yes, there is a Path, but as long as we stay near the Path, to the best of our pocketbooks capability and to some degree luck, then we are OK, in my opinion.

A long, long time ago, we talked about The Path. The path from whatever modest system we start with, near the bottom of the mountain, to the Ultimate System on top of whatever mountain peak we can afford which suits our basic preferences. The idea of that post was to talk about how some systems were close to the Path and others were not so much [that these others were sometimes found cul-de-sacs, which required backing out of quickly, or we risk getting disenchanted and leaving the hobby – or worse, pissing off our house partners :-)].

But once you reach your mountain peak, or even before then as we make our way up the Path, a fun way to pass the days, and years, is to try something different every so often and wake up our ears and our soul again – to shock it into listening deeply with the attentive mind and open heart again.

 

 

in Sounding Off 4 comments
 by Michael

Stupid Audiophile Troll Tricks and Why am I posting these?

Stupid Audiophile Troll Tricks and Why am I posting these? (you might ask. Well, Neli did 🙂 ).

Neli doesn’t read comments when she is out-and-about on the Internet. But I do. Sometimes. And on YouTube, Stereophile, and many other places, sometimes over half of the comments have some very aggressive troll-like anti-audiophile sentiment.

The average person, a member of the general public, reading these, must think WTF? These angry nuts are so passionate with their attacks – can they be right?

Considering how often people believe ridiculous things these days just because the messenger is outrageously aggressive, this is a real worry if one has hopes, like we do, that more of the general public should join our hobby.

Some people [for example Michael Fremer and Myles Astor], counter this by publicly responding to the trolls – replying to their comments using either common sense or the troll’s own expletive-laden language.

Their responses help but the energy required to do this, by me anyway, would be difficult to sustain over time.

I am trying to weaken the trolls in a different way here by helping dispel any doubts about whether these trolls have a clue [they do not], and make sure that the readers of these Stupid Audiophile Troll Tricks posts know exactly why what the trolls are saying is ridiculous and nothing but trolling.

Another purpose here is that when an audiophile reads these, it is upsetting. Here we are just grooving to the beat with as much fidelity we can afford, checking in what our friends are doing, seeing what’s new out there, and these angry haters show up?

One way to deal with this upset is to have seen these troll’s attacks before – and seen it dealt with in a calm, reasonable, logical, factual manner. Then, when we see these trolls, we can think “oh yeah, THAT one. Not just jerks but unimaginative ones at that”.

I am hoping these posts here on the Blog help do just that, but examining each of these class of troll attacks in the light of day and putting them to rest.

Perhaps we should go one step beyond and list copy-and-paste audiophile-approved pre-written responses that, if enough of us automatically post these as comments to the troll’s attack comments, might actually tire them out and make them go away.

Who are they? I think half of the trolls are just envious[who isn’t? we all want all the goodies, right? :-)] and the other half are dysfunctional men (or boys) who see another group they can bully.

[Personally, I also consider extremely negative anti-cable, anti-tube, anti-solidstate, anti-analog, anti-digital etc. comments as evidence that there is a troll about. There is overwhelming evidence that each of these technologies have a great deal to offer, albeit each with their drawbacks, that a reasonable person with adequate funds might indeed be making the exact right decision purchasing them. enuf said].

in Audiophile 101 / Sounding Off 0 comments
 by Michael

Stupid Audiophile Troll Tricks #2 – “You have no business being an audiophile if you do not have perfect ears”

Stupid Audiophile Troll Tricks #2 – “You have no business being an audiophile if you do not have perfect ears”

This troll takes several forms:

“Since people start losing their ability to hear high frequencies as they age, they have no business listening to fine audiophile gear they can’t appreciate (i.e. if they can’t hear to 20K Hz)”

With this logic males have no business having sex after the age of 18 and no one over 30 can appreciate a sports car [their reflexes not being what they used to be].

So, bad logic, obviously, but a more important point is how this does not take into account how being better educated / skilled / experienced adds to the level of appreciation of many things in life compared to experiences when one is ignorant of the subtleties and nuances.

What a true audiophile is able to hear, whatever the range of frequencies, whether it be limited by their ears or by the playback equipment, far surpasses what the unskilled listener can hear.

If you spend years and years and years studying and practicing something, whether it be listening carefully or yoga or mathematics or a popular sport, whatever, you get much, much better at it than someone who hasn’t.

Some people are experts at, say, sports statistics and trivia. Just because they are old and their memory has been declining for decades do we tell them that they have no business being an expert? No we do not 🙂

[I use this ‘sports trivia’ expert quite often in my hypothesis when I try to place people in context. Everyone is a genius at something, but often people do not realize this about themselves. One of the first examples of this I encountered in my life was someone who thought themselves stupid by was a whiz at sports trivia, statistics, sports psychology and other related skills. At this this person was pure genius]

An ongoing series of posts where we debunk common comments made by trolls. Because trolls are quite unimaginative, this will not be a very long series of posts. I use the world ‘stupid’ to be charitable – these trolls are bullies seeking attention through their aggressiveness and they just so happen to choose audiophiles to pick on.

in Audiophile 101 0 comments
 by Michael

Stupid Audiophile Troll Tricks #1 – “All cables sound the same”

Stupid Audiophile Troll Tricks #1 – “All cables sound the same” (or “Cables Have No Sound”)

An ongoing series of posts where we debunk common comments made by trolls. Because trolls are quite unimaginative, this will not be a very long series of posts. I use the world ‘stupid’ to be charitable – these trolls are bullies seeking attention through their aggressiveness and they just so happen to choose audiophiles to pick on.

This particular stupid comment is often used to insinuate that, because, if true, our industry would then be lying about cables having a sound [which they are not], so they must be lying about most everything else as well and much if not all of high-end audio is therefore ‘snake oil’.

This is easy to disprove.

We start  by assuming they are right, that cables really do have no sound [or all sound the same]. Then no matter what the electrical properties (capacitance, inductance or resistance) of the cable, there is no affect on the sound.

But the cable is just another [albeit important] part [extension] of the electrical circuit consisting of the source, preamplifier, amplifier and speaker – so if the cable has no sound, regardless of its electrical properties, then nothing else in the circuit has a sound either no matter its electrical properties. All those capacitors, resistors, transformers, they have no sound. That, because cables do not have a sound, no matter how low or high its resistance is, for example, that we can just put resistors in any circuit, no matter how low or high the number of ohms, and it will sound the same.

Hopefully this is obviously untrue to most of you, and so it is obvious cables do indeed have a sound. And if cables do have a sound, there will be those that sound better and those that sound worse. And the ones that sound better will cost more if their manufacturer has any kind of understanding about how capitalism works [which most do].

Of course, most of us just need to use our ears to hear the difference in how one cable sounds versus another

One can also get a cheap sound meter, or sound frequency analyser, and see a visual report on the differences in SPL or sound frequencies if one cannot trust one’s ears.

[you do need a hifi system that is resolving enough to reveal the differences in sound. If you have a very inexpensive system, then cables may not make a measurable of a difference to you and you should spend your money on getting a better system, not cables].

*sigh* Feels good to write this but don’t expect the trolls to go away anytime soon :-/

 

 

 

in Audiophile 101 / Sounding Off 3 comments