will
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I guess what we define as "real" is a lot semantics. Clearly what we listen to in our music rooms is recorded, most relatively "enhanced" by recording equipment and methods, and/or the rooms used for recording.... hopefully in positive ways on the whole. Some recordings attempt purer representation of a live venue, and most, studio recordings, are artist’s attempts to potentiate a great studio-produced experience of the music. I like both.
Recording tech, often relatively good at capturing aspects of real music...spectral balance, space, fine detail, harmonics, timing...then we audio people start to play with it. But it is fragile. All else good, I think harmonics and space can too easily be lost or defiled. And if so, even if we don’t consciously notice it, it seems our very fine-tuned innate perception “knows” and perceives it as “unreal.” Luckily, Steve, Bob, and other’s work hard to help us retain and subtly enhance natural musical qualities from recordings. With this support, and with care and diligence in setup, it seems to me that a recording is much easier to experience as close to the music musicians experience when recording.
If we can create system/rooms that can compliment well recorded music as completely as possible, retaining and enhancing the fragile structures and clarity of real music, it seems shortcomings of recordings can be nudged back toward natural musical qualities to various degrees. Well implemented tubes can clearly support this, as can the musical qualities of exceptional sources, cables, etc. But more commonly, audio devices and combinations can easily mess up harmonic structures, fine detail, space and timing, the most difficult things to preserve...making the music less “real.” And many rooms just make it all worse.
But if the gear conveys natural musical qualities, and the room supports and/or enhances these fragile qualities, with little harm to what makes music feel real, our chances for complex systems transforming recordings into authentic feeling music increase. The audiophile game presents….and with luck, on occasion we find ways into the precious beauty!
My setup is not perfect, but it is very authentic and captivating to me. I experience the sense of players, or more, instruments "in the room" all the time, purer recordings without embellishment feeling like the church or hall it was recorded in. And with nice studio recordings, with good soundstage representation, my room starts to feel like the studio mix is "in my room."
Here, synergy of my heavily modified (musically enhanced) system with my room, very much contributes to the experience of "a live" feel from recordings. Without truncation of things that make music sound and feel real, if a system/room can reveal and compliment the balance and complexities of music gracefully...and if the recording and room will allow a saturated soundstage with good layering of width and depth...room boundaries disappearing, the ambient information from instrument to infinity supports a greater sense of a "real" musical experience to our "subconscious." It seems that with natural and relatively complete musical values conveyed, we remove critical barriers to our body/mind accepting the music as "real."
Alternately, hiding from system/room flaws by "making a system forgiving," or hyping it up in some ways to mask deficiencies, can “sound good” but often removes natural musical qualities our body/mind need to more fully sympathize with. Feeling unnatural, recordings sound/feel more like they are separate and incompatible with our very subtle body/mind systems. On the other hand, seems the closer an audio system/room gets to being able to portray recordings with natural and balanced musical structure, the easier it is for our body/mind to harmonize with the music, to be "taken over" by it, the energy of the music sympathetic with the energies that make up our body/mind.
I like what really nice mics, gear and mixing can do with the music. Not always, but in many cases, for me, the enhancements of quality recording, mixing and mastering can be as intended, supportive toward an immersive listening experience.
In my room these days, if I can let go of the analytical aspects of "listening," my consciousness gives over to the experience of the music. When it works, consciousness expanded, not much awareness of body, I am aware of experiencing the music through "hearing," but I feel like I have become part of the waves of sound...interactive. Not disappearing, but without separation, experiencing self as self, but also as a part of the music. And it has become repeatable with the right balance of conditions, darkness an important contributor.
Recorded though it is, in terms of natural musical structure (and therefore experience) I suspect my room sounds better than many mixing rooms, and certainly better than most live performances where the rooms and gear are most often not exceptional...damaging the natural complexity of the music before our body/consciousness gets a chance to integrate with it. Sure, if it is a big enough sound, and not terribly off, it engulfs our body/mind with its vibrations, but the real test to me is in-home listening levels.
It seems more of us are "getting there” these days, and not surprising, the 25th amp and modifications making it easier. I guess this is why we are hearing more people on the forum talk about the immersive experience as feeling "real" and transformative.
I personally don't see this intimate integration with the music as an illusion. It is more allowing myself to fully participate in the very beautiful language of music, which is after all energetic, like we are.
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