On 13-Jun-09, at 9:33 AM, Damian Stewart wrote:
> this makes the interesting assumption that better sound system ==
> better
> music.
I have made no such assumption. My previous post responded to Greg's
assertion that he'd "rather just listen to it at home," a statement
that implies the music is good enough to WANT to hear it, but that the
home listening experience is somehow better than public presentation.
Given the assumption that a piece of music is good, I offered a set of
reasons why hearing this piece in a concert venue might be preferable
to a home listening situation.
True, a good listening environment cannot make up for bad music
(though on occasion I have been emotionally moved by the quality of
sound at a good venue regardless of my feelings about the music
itself). And yes, the sound quality of the playback system really
doesn't matter for certain kinds of music. For example, a piece of
pop music designed for mp3 distribution won't benefit much from a
sound system with excellent frequency response above 16K because these
frequencies simply aren't there in the original piece. On the other
hand, to play a piece of music with lots of high frequency detail on a
system with poor response in this area will actually take away from
the composition itself.
In the end the question of playback equipment/venue comes down to
respecting compositional intent. You'd be hard pressed to convince a
composer of symphonic music that the playback sound quality of their
composition isn't important. If the relationship between all the
different parts of a symphony's violin section are an important part
of compositional form, a playback system that can't properly
differentiate between these various parts actually REMOVES part of the
composition, thus affecting its form. This is why symphonic music is
best heard live in a concert hall. A proper live concert hall
situation doesn't ensure that the composition will be good, but it
does give the audience their best chance of hearing the piece as it
was intended to be heard. The same can be true for a piece of
computer music designed for playback on equipment that doesn't exist
in most home listening situations. The ideal concert situation allows
the piece to be presented according the composer's intentions.
If the music is bad, then it's bad. But how can you properly judge
the music if you haven't heard ALL of it? Hearing all of a piece of
music is what a proper concert environment is supposed to allow, in
turn allowing the audience to judge the music effectively. I agree
wholeheartedly with Damian's point is about the perils of emphasizing
equipment over compositional skill; I'll take the latter over the
former any day. But when compositional skill is intertwined with
particular presentation requirements, the relationship between the two
needs to be respected. This respect is the benefit that a good
concert presentation has over the vast majority of home listening
situations.
Randolph.
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