Horseshoes, Hand Grenades and Audio

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"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well." - Mahatma Ghandi

"Rare is the union of beauty and purity" - Juvenal

"I used to be Snow White, but I drifted." - Mae West
The ultimate in purity - it is 100% mechanical, and
never goes through a single one of those degrading
mechanical to electrical conversions ....
Analog reproduction is a beautiful thing.  You put a small needle attached to a tiny transducer into a groove that's been scratched in a vinyl disk, and then the small signal comes off of it and gets equalized and amplified and then the resultant sound is converted into sound through some more loudspeaker transducers.  Any little thing can wreck the signal on the way, make it unconvincing in it's realism and dispell the illusion of the performance you are trying weave.

So rightly so, people who care about that sort of thing can get fussy.  And many quickly focus in on purity.  Is the chain of reproduction pure enough?  And given that enjoyment of music (or really anything else) is a subjective experience, it is a relevant question.

Egads!  A giant equalization curve used on all records.
How can this be pure?  Or is it all about spinning
that illusion with the realities of the medium?  The CD
folks will tell you that this medium is horribly flawed...
If someone were to, say, do some digital room correction, the sound might be technically more realistic, if it introduces cognitive dissonance since an analog chain was digitized, then adjusted before becoming analog again ... that illusion, and important frame of mind might just be wrecked.  The illusion is gone since your mind will be constantly reminding you of your transgressions.  Or ... if you feel this is awesome, will be assuring you that this is the best darn sound you have ever heard, and re-enforcing that illusion.  We're thinking that until you "get used to it" you won't actually get to truly hear what you did, and if it served that illusion well enough.

Here in the Mancave, being practical sorts, we have had to deal with all kinds of mind-busting things that improved our sound, and our enjoyment, that we feel the path of purity is a dead end, and will have you falling short of what you could have.  But the path of "everything might be worthy" is pretty rocky, too (Hello, pennies under the speakers!)
DSP room correction.  Have you wrecked your sound
or improved it?  Your attitude towards purity is the answer ...

After all, if you were just going for perfect purity, you'd sell your stereo and learn to play a musical instrument, and go to live performances and never play even the radio for music.  (Hey, that doesn't sound too bad, hmmm ....)

So our advice is that since we're trying to spin an illusion to fool ourselves, and increase our enjoyment of music, really anything in service of that goal should be "fair game."  I guarantee that if you get rid of notions of purity, and pour that energy into spinning that illusion, you will be far happier!

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