[NOTE: this article is a repost of an e-mail thread started by a good friend of mine. It raised an interesting question, and I found the answers and comments fascinating and wanted to share with you. The original thread has been slightly edited for continuity and presentation here].
To begin, the original post that started this discussion:
Why do musicians have lousy hi-fis?
It’s one of life’s little mysteries, but most musicians have the crappiest stereo systems.
August 11, 2012 7:36 AM PDT
I know it doesn’t make sense, but it’s true: most musicians don’t have good hi-fis.
To be fair, most musicians don’t have hi-fis at all, because like most people musicians listen in their cars, on computers, or with cheap headphones. Musicians don’t have turntables, CD players, stereo amplifiers, and speakers. Granted, most musicians aren’t rich, so they’re more likely to invest whatever available cash they have in buying instruments. That’s understandable, but since they so rarely hear music over a decent system they’re pretty clueless about the sound of their recordings.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg/CNET)
Musicians who are also audiophiles are rare, though I’ve met quite a few. Trumpet player Jon Faddis was definitely into it, and I found he had a great set of ears when he came to my apartment years ago to listen to his favorite Dizzy Gillespie recordings. Most musicians I’ve met at recording sessions focus on the sound of their own instrument, and how it stands out in the mix. They don’t seem all that interested in the sound of the group.
I remember a bass player at a jazz recording session who grew impatient with the time the engineer was taking to get the best possible sound from his 200-year-old-acoustic bass. After ten minutes the bassist asked the engineer to plug into a pickup on his instrument, so he wouldn’t take up any more time setting up the microphone. The engineer wasn’t thrilled with the idea, because he would then just have the generic sound of a pickup rather than the gorgeous sound of the instrument. I was amazed: the man probably paid $100,000 for his bass, and he didn’t care if its true sound was recorded or not. His performance was what mattered.
From what I’ve seen, musicians listen differently from everyone else. They focus on how well the music is being played, the structure of the music, and the production. The quality of the sound? Not so much!
Some musicians have home studios, but very few of today’s home (or professional) studios sound good in the audiophile sense. Studios use big pro monitor speakers designed to be hyperanalytical, so you hear all of even the most subtle details in the sound. That’s the top requirement, but listening for pleasure is not the same as monitoring. That’s not just my opinion — very, very few audiophiles use studio monitors at home. It’s not their large size or four-figure price tags that stop them, as most high-end audiophile speakers are bigger and more expensive. No, studio monitor sound has little appeal for the cognoscenti because pro speakers don’t sound good.
I have seen the big Bowers & Wilkins, Energy, ProAc, and Wilson audiophile speakers used by mastering engineers, so it does work the other way around. Audiophile speakers can be used as monitors, but I can’t name one pro monitor that has found widespread acceptance in the audiophile world.
Like I said, musicians rarely listen over any sort of decent hi-fi, and that might be part of the reason they make so few great-sounding records. They don’t know what they’re missing.
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Now, in order, the original comment and replies: [due to the authors of these e-mails being located in USA, Sweden, UK, etc. not all of the timestamps line up, but the messages are in order]
From: Tom McMahon
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2012 6:09 PM
To: Mikael Reichel; ‘Per Sjofors’; John Watkinson
Subject: Why do musicians have lousy hi-fis?
I agree to some of this, have same observations.
But I don’t agree with the use broad use of “most musicians” as it may be interpreted that it is the majority. Neither of us can know this. Neil Young evidently cares a lot.
However, the statement “pro speakers do not sound good” is a subjective statement. It´s like saying distilled water (i.e 100% H20) doesn’t taste good. Possibly, many think so but distilled water is the purest form of water and by definition anything less pure is not pure water. Whether you like it or not.
The water is the messenger and shooting it for delivering the truth is not productive.
If Audiophiles don’t like to hear the truth is sort deflates them.
A friend, singer/songwriter with fifteen CD´s behind her in the rock/blues genre, on a rare occasion when I got her to listen to her own stuff over a pair of Earo speakers, commented on the detail and realism. I then suggested that her forthcoming CD should be mastered over these speakers, she replied “ I don’t dare”.
Best/Mike
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From: John Watkinson
Sent: Sun 8/12/2012 6:46 AM
To: Mikael Reichel; Per Sjofors; Tom McMahon; Ed Elliott
Subject: Why do musicians have lousy hi-fis?
Hello All,
If a pro loudspeaker reproduces the input waveform and an audiophool [ed.note: letting this possible mis-spelling stand, in case it’s intended…] speaker also does, then why do they sound different?
We know the reasons, which are that practically no loudspeakers are accurate enough. We have specialist speakers that fail in different ways.
The reason musicians are perceived to have lousy hi-fis may be that practically everyone does. The resultant imprinting means that my crap speaker is correct and your crap speaker is wrong, whereas in fact they are all crap.
Our author doesn’t seem to know any of this, so he is just wasting our time.
Furthermore I know plenty of musicians with good ears and good hi-fi.
Best,
John
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From: Mikael Reichel
Sent: Sun 8/12/2012 12:58 PM
To: John Watkinson; Per Sjofors; Tom McMahon; Ed Elliott
Subject: Why do musicians have lousy hi-fis?
Andrew is a really nice guy.
He has a talent in selecting demo material for his demos and his TAD speakers sound quite good. But they are passive and also use bass-reflex. This more or less puts the attainable quality level against a brick wall. Add the soft dome tweeter and I am a bit surprised at Mr. Jones choices, dome tweeters are fundamentally flawed designs.
One logical result of making “new” drivers is to skip ferrite magnets because they become a size and weight thief and also limits mechanical freedom for the design engineer. You almost automatically get higher sensitivity by using neodymium. But this is also a myth, as little is made to increase the fundamental mismatch of the driver to the air itself. I would guess Andrew has had the good sense to go with neodymium magnets.
To deliver affordable speakers is a matter of having a strong brand to begin with that allows for volumes so that you can have clients buy without listening first. This then allows for direct delivery thus avoiding importing and retail links in the chain to be removed. Typically out of the MSRP, only 25% reaches the manufacturer. Remove the manufacturing cost and you realize it’s a numbers game.
This is exactly what is going on in the “audio” business today. The classical sales structures are being torn down. A very large number or speaker manufacturers are going to disappear because they don’t have the brand and volumes to sell over the web. To survive new ways of reaching the clients have to be invented. A true paradigm shift.
TAD has been the motor to provide this brand recognition and consumers are marketed to believe that they can get almost $80 performance from a less than $1 speaker, which is naïve.
If the speakers can be made active with DSP, they can be made to sound unbelievably good. This is the real snapshot of the future.
/Mike
—-
From: John Watkinson
Sent: Sun 8/12/2012 11:13 PM
To: Mikael Reichel; Per Sjofors; Tom McMahon; Ed Elliott
Subject: Why do musicians have lousy hi-fis?
Hello All,
Mike is right. The combination of dome tweeter, bass reflex and passive crossover is a recipe for failure. But our journalist friend doesn’t know. I wonder what he does know?
Best,
John
——
From: Ed Elliott
Sent: Mon 8/13/2012 7:02 AM
To: Mikael Reichel; Per Sjofors; Tom McMahon; John Watkinson
Subject: Why do musicians have lousy hi-fis?
Hi Mike,
Well, this must be answered at several levels. Firstly the author has erred in two major, but unfortunately not at all uncommon ways: the linguistic construction of “most <fill_in_the_blank>” is inaccurate and unscientific at the best of times, and all too often a device for aligning some margin of factuality to a desired hypothesis; the other issue is the very basis of the premise raised is left undefined in the article – what is “a good hi-fi system”?
Forgoing for the moment the gaps in logic and ontological reasoning that may be applied to the world of aural perception, the author does raise a most interesting question – one that if had been pursued in a different manner would have made for a far more interesting article. Forgetting for the moment issues (that are a total red herring today – the affordability of quality components has never been more accessible) of cost or availability – WHY don’t ‘most’ musicians apparently care to have ‘better’ sound systems? There is no argument that many musicians DO have excellent systems, at all levels of affordability; and appreciate the aural experience provided. However – and I personally have spent many decades closely connected to both the professional audio industry, musicians in general, and the larger post-production community – I do agree that based purely on anecdotal observation, many talented musicians do in fact not attach a large importance to the expense or quality of their ‘retail playback equipment.’ The same of course is not valid for their instruments or any equipment they deem necessary to express their music.
The answer I believe is most interesting: I believe that good musicians simply don’t need a high quality audio system in order to hear music. The same synaptic wiring and neural fabric connectedness – the stuff that really is the “application layer” in the brain – means that this group of people actually ‘hears’ differently. Hearing, just like seeing, is almost 90% a neurological activity. Beyond the very basic mechanical issues of sound capture, focus, filtering and conversion from pressure waves to chemico-electical impulses (provided by the ears, ear canal, eardrum, cochlea) all the rest of ‘hearing’ is provided by the ‘brain software.’
To cut to the chase: this group of people already has a highly refined ‘sample set’ of musical notes, harmonies, melodies, rhythms, etc. in their brains, and needs very little external stimulation in order to ‘fire off’ those internalized ‘letters and words’ of musical sound. Just as an inexperienced reader may ‘read’ individual words – and a highly competent and experienced reader basically digests entire sentences as a single optic-with-meaning element, so a lay person may actually need a ‘better’ sound system in order to ‘hear’ the same things that a trained musician would hear.
That is not to say that musicians don’t hear – and appreciate – external acoustic reality: just try playing a bit out of tune, lag a few microseconds on a lead guitar riff, or not express the same voice as others in the brass sections and you will get a quick lesson in just how acute their hearing is. It’s just tuned to different things. Once a composed song is underway, the merest hint of a well-known chord progression ‘fires off’ that experience in the musician’s brain software – so they ‘hear’ it was it was intended – the harmonic distortion, the lack of coherent imaging, the flappy bass – all those ‘noise elements’ are filtered out by their brains – they already know what it’s supposed to sound like.
If you realize that someone like Anne-Sophie Mutter has most likely played over 100,000 hours of violin already in her life, and look at what this has done to her brain in terms of listening (forgoing for the moment the musculo-skeletal reprogramming that has turned her body into as much of a musical instrument as the Stradivarius) – you can see that there is not a single passage of classical stringed or piano music that is not already etched into her neural fabric at almost an atomic level.
With this level of ‘programming’ it just doesn’t take a lot of external stimulation in order for the brain to start ‘playing the music.’ Going at this issue from a different but orthogonal point of view: a study of how hearing impaired people ‘hear’ music is also revealing – as well as the other side of that equation: those that have damaged or uncommon neural software for hearing. People in this realm include autistics (who often have an extreme sensitivity to sound); stroke victims; head trauma victims, etc. A study here shows that the ‘brain software’ is far more of an issue in terms of quality of hearing than the mechanics or objective scientific ‘quality’ (perhaps an oxymoron) of the acoustic pressure waves provided to the human ear.
Evelyn Glennie – profoundly deaf – is a master percussionist (we just saw her play at the Opening Ceremonies) – and has adapted ‘hearing’ to an astounding level of physical sense in vibrations – including her feet (she mostly plays barefoot for this reason). I would strongly encourage the reading of three short and highly informative letters she published on hearing, disabilities and professional music. Evelyn does not need, nor can she appreciate, DACs with only .0001%THD and time-domain accuracies of sub-milliseconds – but there is no question whatsoever that this woman hears music!
This may have been a bit of a round-about answer to the issues of why ‘most musicians’ may have what the author perceives to be ‘sub-optimal’ hi-fi systems – but I believe it more fully answers the larger question of aural perception. I for instance completely appreciate (to the limits of my ability as a listener – which are professional but not ‘golden ears’) the accuracy, imaging and clarity of high end sound systems (most of which are way beyond my budget for personal consumption); but the lack of such does not get in the way of my personal enjoyment of many musicians’ work – even if played back from my iPod. Maybe I have trained my own brain software just a little bit…
In closing, I would like to take an analogy from the still photographer’s world: this group of amateurs and professional alike put an almost unbelievable level of importance on their kit – with various bits of hardware (and now software) taking either the blame or the glory for the quality (or lack thereof) of their images. My personal observation is that the eye/brain behind the viewfinder is responsible for about 93% of both the successes and failures of a given image to match the desired state. I think a very similar situation exists today in both ‘audiophile’ as well as ‘professional audio’ – it would be a welcome change to discuss facts, not fancy.
Warmest regards,
Ed
——-
From: John Watkinson
Sent: Mon 8/13/2012 12:50 AM
To: Mikael Reichel; Per Sjofors; Tom McMahon; Ed Elliott
Subject: Why do musicians have lousy hi-fis?
Hello All,
I think Ed has hit the nail on he head. It is generally true that people hear what they ought to hear and see what they ought to see, not what is actually there. It is not restricted to musicians, but they have refined it for music.
The consequences are that transistor radios and portable cassette recorders, which sound like strangled cats, were popular, as iPods with their MP3 distortion are today. But in photography, the Brownie and the Instamatic were popular, yet the realism or quality of the snaps was in the viewer’s mind. Most people are content to watch television sets that are grossly misadjusted and they don’t see spelling mistakes.
I would go a little further than Ed’s erudite analysis and say that most people not only see and hear what they ought to, but they also think what they ought to, even if it defies logic. People in groups reach consensus, even if it is wrong, because the person who is right suffers peer pressure to conform else risk being ejected from the group. This is where urban myths that have no basis in physics come from. The result is that most decisions are emotive and science or physics will be ignored. Why else do 40 percent of Americans believe in Creation? I look forward to having problems with groups because it confirms that my ability to use logic is undiminished. Was it Wittgenstein who said what most people think doesn’t amount to much?
Marketing, that modern cancer, leaps into this human failing, by playing on emotions to sell things. It follows that cars do not need advanced technology if they can be sold by draping them with scantily-clad women. Modern cars are still primitive because the technical requirements are distorted downwards by emotion. In contrast Ed’s accurate observation that photographers obsess about their kit, as do audiophiles illustrates that technical requirements can also be distorted upwards by emotion.
Marketing also preys on people to convince them that success depends on having all the right accessories and clothing for the endeavour. Look at all the stuff that sportsmen wear.
Whilst it would be nice for hi-fi magazines to discuss facts instead of fancy, I don’t see it happening as it gets in the way of the marketing.
Best,
John
——
From: Ed Elliott
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2012 8:11 PM
To: Mikael Reichel; Per Sjofors; Tom McMahon; John Watkinson
Subject: Why do musicians have lousy hi-fis?
Hi John, Mike, et al
Love your further comments, but I’m afraid that “marketing, that modern cancer” is a bit older that we would all like to think.. one example that comes to mind is about 400-odd years old now – and actually represents one of the most powerful and enduring ‘brands’ ever to be promoted in Western culture: Shakespeare. Never mind that allusions to and adaptations of his plays have permeated our culture for hundreds of years – even ‘in the time’ Shakespeare created, bonded with and nurtured his customer base. Now this was admittedly marketing in a more pure sense (you actually got something for your money) – but nonetheless repeat business was just as much of an issue then as now. Understanding his audience, knowing that both tragedy and comedy was required to build the dramatic tension that would bring crowds back for more; recognizing the capabilities and understanding of his audience so that they were stimulated but not puzzled, entertained but not insulted – there was a mastery of marketing there beyond just the tights, skulls and iambic pentameter.
Unfortunately I do agree that with time, marketing hype has diverged substantially from the underlying product to the point that often they don’t share the same solar system… And what’s worse is that now in many cases the marketing department actually runs product development in many large corporations… and I love your comments on ‘stuff sportsmen wear’ – to copy my earlier analogy on photography, if I was to pack up all the things that the latest photo consumer magazine and camera shop said I needed to have to take a picture I would need a band of Sherpas…
Now there is a bit of light ahead potentially: the almost certain demise of most printed magazines (along with newspapers, etc.) is creating a tumultuous landscape that won’t stabilize right away. This means that what entities do remain and survive to publish information no longer have to conform to selling X amount of pages of ads to keep the magazine alive (and hence pander to marketing, etc.) There are two very interesting facts about digital publishing that to date have mostly been ignored (and IMHO are the root cause of digital mags being so poorly constructed and read – those that want to think that they can convert all their print reader to e-zine subscriptions need to check out multi-year retention stats – they are abysmal.)
#1 is people read digital material in a very different way than paper. (The details must wait for another thread – too much now). Bottom line is that real information (aka CONTENT) is what keeps readership. Splash and video might get some hits, but the fickle-factor is astronomical in online reading – if you don’t give your reader useful facts or real entertainment they won’t stay.
#2 is that, if done correctly, digital publishing can be very effective, beautiful, evocative and compelling at a very low cost. There simply isn’t the need for massive ad dollars any more. So the type of information that you all are sharing here can be distributed much more widely than ever before. I do believe there is a window of opportunity for getting real info out in front of a large audience, to start chipping away at this Himalayan pile of stink that defines so much of (fill in the blank: audio, tv, cars, vitamins, anti-aging creams, etc.)
Ok, off to answer some e-mails for that dwindling supply of really importance: paying clients!
Many thanks
Ed
——–
From: John Watkinson
Sent: Tue 8/14/2012 12:57 AM
To: Mikael Reichel; Per Sjofors; Tom McMahon; Ed Elliott
Subject: Why do musicians have lousy hi-fis?
Dear Ed,
This is starting to be interesting. I take your point about Shakespeare being marketed, but if we want to go back even further, we have to look at religion as the oldest use of marketing. It’s actually remarkable that the religions managed to prosper to the point of being degenerate when they had no tangible product at all. Invent a problem, namely evil, and then sell a solution, namely a god. It’s a protection racket. Give us money so we can build cathedrals and you go to heaven. It makes oxygen free speaker cables seem fairly innocuous. At least the hi-fi industry doesn’t threaten you with torture. If you read anything about the evolution of self-replicating viruses, suddenly you see why the Pope is opposed to contraception.
I read an interesting book about Chartres cathedral, in which it was pointed out that the engineering skills and the underlying science needed to make the place stand up (it’s more air than stone) had stemmed from a curiosity about the laws of nature that would ultimately lead to the conclusion that there was no Creation and no evidence for a god, that the earth goes round the sun and that virgin birth is due to people living in poverty sharing bathwater.
If you look at the achievements of hi-fi and religion in comparison to the achievements of science and engineering, the results are glaring. The first two have made no progress in decades, because they are based on marketing and have nothing to offer. Prayer didn’t defeat Hitler, but radar, supercharging and decryption may have played a small part.
Your comments about printed magazines and newspapers are pertinent. These are marketing tools and as a result the copy is seldom of any great merit, as Steve Gutenberg continues to demonstrate in his own way. Actually the same is true for television. People think the screensaver was a computer invention. Actually it’s not, it’s what television broadcasts between commercial breaks.
So yes, you are right that digital/internet publishing is in the process of pulling the rug on traditional media. Television is over. I don’t have one and I don’t miss the dumbed-down crap and the waste of time. Himalayan pile of stink is a wonderful and evocative term!
Actually services like eBay are changing the world as well. I hardly ever buy anything new if I can get one someone doesn’t want on eBay. It’s good for the vendor, for me and the environment.
In a sense the present slump/recession has been good in some ways. Certainly it has eroded peoples’ faith in politicians and bankers and the shortage of ready cash has led many to question consumerism.
Once you stop being a consumer, reverse the spiral and decide to tread lightly on the earth, the need to earn lots of money goes away. My carbon neutral house has zero energy bills and my policy of buying old things and repairing them means I have all the gadgets I need, but without the cost. The time liberated by not needing to earn lots of money allows me to make things I can’t buy, like decent loudspeakers. It means I never buy pre-prepared food because I’m not short of time. Instead I can buy decent ingredients and know what I’m eating.
One of the experiences I treasure due to reversing the spiral was turning up at a gas station in Luxembourg. There must have a been a couple of million dollars worth of pretentious cars filling up. BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, the lot. And they all turned to stare at my old Jaguar when I turned up. It was something they couldn’t have because they were too busy running on the treadmill to run a car that needs some fixing.
Best,
John
——
From: Ed Elliott
Sent: Wed 8/15/2012 1:01 PM
To: Mikael Reichel; Per Sjofors; Tom McMahon; John Watkinson
Subject: Why do musicians have lousy hi-fis?
Hi John,
Yes, I’m finding this part of my inbox so much more interesting than the chatterings of well-intentioned (but boring) missives; and of course the ubiquitous efforts of (who else!) the current transformation of tele-marketers into spam producers… I never knew that so many of my body parts needed either extending, flattening, bulking up, slimming down, etc. etc!
Ahh! Religion… yes, got that one right the first time. I actually find that there’s a more nefarious aspect to organized religion: to act as a proxy for nation-states that couldn’t get away with the murder, land grabs, misogyny, physical torture and mutilation if these practices were “state sponsored” as opposed to “expressions of religious freedom.” Always makes me think of that Bob Dylan song, “With God on Our Side…”
On to marketing in television.. and tv in general… I actually turned mine on the other day (well, since I don’t have a ‘real’ tv – but I do have the cable box as I use that for high speed internet – I turned on the little tuner in my laptop so I could watch Olympics in HD (the bandwidth of the NBC streaming left something to be desired) – and as usual found the production quality and techniques used in the adverts mostly exceed the filler… The message, well that went the way of all adverts: straight back out my head into the ether… What I want to know – this is a better trick than almost anything – how did the advertisers ever get convinced that watching this drivel actually effects what people buy?? Or I am just an odd-bod that is not swayed by hype, mesmerizing disinformation [if I buy those sunglasses I’ll get Giselle to come home with me…], or downright charlatantry.
And yeah for fixing things and older cars… I bought my last car in 1991 and have found no reason [or desire] to replace it. And since (thank g-d) it was “pre-computer” it is still ‘fixable’ with things like screwdrivers and spanners… I think another issue in general is that our cultures have lost the understanding of ‘preventative maintenance’ – a lot of what ends up in the rubbish bin is due to lack of care while it was alive..
Which brings me back to a final point: I do like quality, high tech equipment, when it does something useful and fulfills a purpose. But I see a disappointing tendency with one of the prime vendors in this sector: Apple. I am currently (in my blog) writing about the use of iPhones as a practical camera system for HD cinemaphotography – with all of the issues and compromises well understood! Turns out that two of the fundamental design decisions by Apple are at the core of limiting the broader adoption of this platform (I describe how to work around this, but it’s challenging): the lack of a removable battery and removable storage.
While there are obvious advantages to those decisions, in terms of reliability and industrial design, it can’t be ignored that the lack of both of those features certainly mitigate towards a user ‘upgrading’ at regular intervals (since they can’t swap out a battery or add more storage). And now they have migrated this ‘sealed design’ to the laptops… the new Mac Air is for all practical purposes unrepairable (again, no removable battery, the screen is glued into the aluminium case, and all sub-assemblies are wave-soldered to the main board). The construction of even the Mac Pro is moving in that direction.
So my trusty Dell laptop, with all of its warts, is still appreciated for its many little screws and flaps… when a bit breaks, I can take it apart and actually change out just a Bluetooth receiver, or upgrade memory, or even swap the cpu. Makes me feel a little less redundant in this throw-away world.
I’ll leave you with this:
Jay Leno driving down Olive Ave. last Sunday in his recently restored 1909 Doble & White steam car. At 103 years old, this car would qualify for all current California “low emissions” and “fuel efficiency” standards…
(snapped from my iPhone)
Here is the link to Jay’s videos on the restoration process.
Enjoy!
Ed
Tagged: branding, earo, hearing, hi-fi, marketing, music, speakers
Parasam 