Listening: Act III

(…or on the right sound)

Listening Act 1 (...or on the perfection of the reproduction)

Listening Act 2 (...or on what to look for the domestic listen)

Listening Act 3 (...or on the right sound)

Listening Act 4 (...or on how to obtain the right sound)

The listening is subjective, the emotion is personal and the emotion is the only common element. That's not all, we can go further.

We can say that there is not a good sound and a bad ones. There is a right sound and wrong ones! This concept is very important. Keep in mind that there is not a negative of the previous concepts, on the opposite we must specify which one is the right sound. When one is listening to the system, one is not listening to the music. Surely, a system capturing the attention on its sound is not a right system because it does not reproduce the right sound. The right sound is a sound with the right tonality scale, where each single instrument is rich by it-self. The right sound is not creating tiredness or distortion or noises. Going to a concert helps to "balance" ourselves to the right sound. It can help also listen to a guitar at home or a little band in the street. The right sound is the one naturally present in nature, the one that each of us has inside. The reader has to understand that inside each of us there is the right sound that I am speaking about. That's inside us and it's innate. In the female, this sensation has larger presence and I assure you that each of us can determine if the sound is right. That's not difficult.

We feel "natural" the sound of each instrument or the human voice listened without any filter. That seems "normal". This is the right sound. A sound without any distortion, a balanced sound. This natural approach is inside us. We can recognise the right sound is just a matter of training. Clean up your mind from any pre-concept and from other ways. Listen to the emotion. We have to capture the emotional message from the music. The right sound is free of distortion or false colour, it is balanced and in one word: natural. It's never tiring. It is not annoying. It's not useful to catch a tone, a sound, a partial modification or a tonal equilibrium.

Frequently, I see audiophiles always changing their system components, or parts inside the components and they register some changes. Surely these changes has been made, but that's better or worst then before? None of these two alternatives. The right question is: the obtained sound is right or not? I think with vigour that when one is listening to music through a stereo system he can just understand if it's right or wrong and not good or bad. We have to change the point of view and then our judgement.

We have not to speak about a liking sound and not about a favourite one. It exists a favourite artist and a favourite disk. But the right sound do exist. Another mistake when we speak about good or bad is the … the comparison, Good or bad compared to what? To the live music? Surely! But not in the way it has always done. Based on what I wrote before on the recording, on the repeatability, etc.

The comparison has to be done on the emotion or on the balance, on the absence of annoyance, distortion, effort to listen. Again, on the natural part of it, as I said before. Finally, the sound can be just right or wrong and not bad or good.

 

The magazines and the live listening

Reading some specialised magazine can help to understand, but nobody and nothing can substitute the direct listening, the one made with our ears. Well, we can read all what we want in all the books of the world, we can take into consideration the opinion on everything and repeat everything we have heard. But, the direct personal experience is absolutely unchangeable and always it will be the same in order to live your life! We can discuss on the technique of painting of Michelangelo, the way used to paint the Sistina's Chapel. Can something substitute the emotion to see that Chapel with your nose up? What can substitute the smell in that room? Can something change what we feel in the while we watch at that masterpiece? How can we transmit that to the readers?

I repeat: how to make possible for a reader to smell that fragrance, or feel a sensation, why we have to transmit an emotion that is not of the reader but comes from the person who have lived it? I think that the magazines have just to inform and, giving news, to put the reader in the condition to understand if the described object is or is not in the searching direction of the reader. Listen directly to everything! This is the most important rule. That's very difficult to be applied and costs a lot of efforts. Just in dependence to what I wrote upper, the emotions come out from the intimacy, so they are personal and not a generalisation and can't be substituted by someone's one. The right sound is innate, it just needs to be revived and refreshed every time this is possible, for example by going to live concerts.

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