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How to be a better listener....

Yes, I think that a common fault ‘critical’ listeners fall in to is that they concentrate so hard on trying to pick out the minutia of the sound that they miss the greater picture, the musics gestalt - in effect, they can’t hear (see) the wood for the trees.
 
Indeed! You just have to listen to those 1930s Western Electric horn speakers at Munich, that probably have no more than an 8kHz frequency range to realise they produce engaging music, probably more engaging than any other room at that show.
 
How to be a better listener?...
To paraphrase SG: "It's not possible with box speakers, you need OBs, horns or panels."


Strange logic IMO.
 
I guess what he means is the speaker plays such an important part in the reproduction of music in the home that if you want to get as near to the real thing as possible then in his opinion, those types of loudspeaker will get you there the closest.
 
I suppose, I personally aspire more to the ‘mixing desk’ type of presentation for my system (no surprise if one looks at the gear I use) but that largely reflects the kind of recordings I listen to. Part of the joy of my own system is that, as it has developed over the years, is that when I do listen to an acoustic, or ‘naturally’ recorded album is that it is able to represent it in a way that reflects the perspective of the recording rather than that of the artificially constructed nature of many recordings - so it can switch between different acoustic presentation styles, very front row or more mid hall.
 
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With regard to Steve Guttenberg’s YouTube comments, I guess I feel he is a bit of a ‘social butterfly’ when it comes to his own thoughts and preferences regarding speakers. On the one hand he espouses a long term yearning for Wilson Watts but, on the other hand, he clearly likes a more audiophile ‘PA’ style presentation because he has owned Zu speakers and is a keen proponent of classic Klipsch. I’m not saying therse speakers are poles apart but anyone who knows them will, I think, agree that whilst the Zu and Klipsch are cut from similar cloth the Wilson sound is another thing. Personally, leaving Wilson aside for now, I couldn’t live with the Klipsch or the Zu - whilst I love their dynamic and vibrancy I am too regularly drawn to their colourations and this spoils the effect, for me. It’s not that I seek a flat frequency response as such, it’s more that I don’t want to hear the speaker drawing attention to itself!
 
Listening to music and sound assessment are different things with distinct goals.

As long as one can hang the reviewer hat whenever we feel like listening to music then all is fine.
 
G T Audio said:
Indeed! You just have to listen to those 1930s Western Electric horn speakers at Munich, that probably have no more than an 8kHz frequency range to realise they produce engaging music, probably more engaging than any other room at that show.
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So you’re a proponent now of audio reproduction that misses 60% of human range?
 
As I understood what SG was saying, a large part of the realism that a hi-fi system is capable of conveying comes from the size of the auditory scene it creates.

If you accept that argument (some will and some won’t), then IME his preference for OB and panel speakers makes perfect sense.
 
i think mr gutenberg - like many or all of us is so attuned to listening to certain system/loudspeaker that he taken that for his 'reference' for 'reality' ... of course if you're in love with horns or electrostatic speakers and that's what you're normalised to - well of course all other types will come up flat. The same argument could be made for a small cone speaker or any other type i suppose. This is the brain's job.
 
I’m not generally one for Gutenberg’s mindless twaddle but I do agree a good OB takes some beating.
 
There is no discernible pitch information up above 10kHz, few of the very best microphones can capture stuff over about 14kHz, so really not much to worry about. At best it comes across as more ‘air’, though much of the time these days it is just hype and glare from over-bright metal dome tweeters. A speaker is good or terrible long before it gets to that region!

I watched the YouTube video and felt he was largely waffling to be honest. Which is fine, I have no issue with that. I can relate to the ‘real sound outside the room’ thing, I've felt that a lot over the years, but whilst I’m with him on considering the best horns and panels about as good as things get I’m also a huge fan of tiny mini-monitors and near-field listening. As such I can’t rule boxes out! My issue is actually with the ‘jack of no trades’ stuff between those poles, i.e. the majority of audio kit that has neither the dynamic realism, heft, ease and scale of the really good big stuff, nor the amazing clarity, space and soundstage of a really well setup mini-monitor. I think it just goes to show we are all different and there are many valid choices.
 
G T Audio said:
I guess what he means is the speaker plays such an important part in the reproduction of music in the home that if you want to get as near to the real thing as possible then in his opinion, those types of loudspeaker will get you there the closest.
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I guess so.
However in my experience the "realness" depends very much on the recording. E.g. I have a CD copy of a recording made by a friend of Gregson and Collister made (with permission) in a pub. This has added character (as SG puts it) due to the microphone, open reel, A/D process. However it has no deliberate compression.
It sounds very convincingly real on lots of systems!
It it also difficult to listen to for any period of time... because it sounds too real.

Thankfully 99.9% of my music collection has been processed and compressed to make it sound much nicer, albeit less real.

I can understand why some people like the sound of horns because they seem to "uncompress" the music and make it more real. A bit like my G&C recording though, I don't find this satisfying over the long term.
I can also understand why people think box speakers sound boxy. IMO this is because of the way they produce low frequencies. However, they don't all sound boxy e.g. some mini monitors, Kudos Titans.

So what should we listen for?
Actually I don't hink we need the ramblings of SG to tell us. Judging from the other replies we know what we like and what compromise we are aiming for.
For me, I want a sound that is relatively neutral and I can therefore listen to a wide range of music and at different SPLs depending on the time of day and my mood. The most important thing for me is for the music play in time and in tune and to communicate the interplay between musicians - that's what enables me to become immersed in the music.
Sounds simple, but it seems not to be. >90% of the systems at the Munich show were fairly hopeless in this respect. FWIW, the WE horns and the Vox Olympians fall into the >90% category for me.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
This is a good example of focussing on the numbers while missing the point. Actually, for most people it's just the top octave, that is missing. I'd hardly call that '60% of the human range' in any meaningful sense.
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Yep, my hearing tops out around 13kHz, so not missing very much at all. However, I remember hearing Rehdekos many years ago at Zen in Hull just couldn't live with the compromises of a speaker that limited in bandwidth, despite the dynamics which were way better than anything I've heard to this day.
 
pocketkitchen said:
Yep, my hearing tops out around 13kHz, so not missing very much at all. However, I remember hearing Rehdekos many years ago at Zen in Hull just couldn't live with the compromises of a speaker that limited in bandwidth, despite the dynamics which were way better than anything I've heard to this day.
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yes i think this is yet another example of 'specification rhetoric' driving expectation. since the 'spec warriors' (someone a few weeks ago took exception to that label - so - sorry again) have little to go on outside of the small handful of parameters we can actually measure, it's always a bit confounding for them to suggest that it's still possible to make coherent hearing judgements without access to 14 KHz even ...
 
S-Man said:
E.g. I have a CD copy of a recording made by a friend of Gregson and Collister made (with permission) in a pub. This has added character (as SG puts it) due to the microphone, open reel, A/D process. However it has no deliberate compression.
It sounds very convincingly real on lots of systems!
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Ahh, Gregson and Collister, wonderful artists. If you ever feel the need for an off site backup let me know <grin>.
 
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