What's more important: Good sound or Accurate sound??

My goal is the most accurate hardware and the best sounding software.

 

See - for me the great equalizer (pun intended) are my ears. Whenever I have purchased speakers or headphones I closed my eyes and asked the salesperson to play a bit of each of them (within my price range) two at a time (using a CD I had brought in with me). I eliminated one each go-round until I was done. That last pair was my purchase.

The very first time I did this I picked speakers with only two horns (as opposed to towers with multiple speakers). My choice LOOKED so unimpressive. But I was sure happy with the sound. And they turned out not being the most expensive ones - not nearly.

Did I end up with accurate reproduction? I could care less. It sounded good to me. And I was going to be the one listening.

So, my answer: software I would like to be as accurate as possible. But the hardware needs to sound as "good" as I can afford.

-BZync

 

Dripping from a dead dog's eye?

 

As a listener, I want good sound. If that means having an accurate playback chain, great. If that means having an inaccurate chain, great.

In other words, what I want is an "Auto Hoffmanize" button for when I get a disc that sounds bad (which is often!) I'd then tweak my otherwise accurate playback chain to be inaccurate but sound good.

If the sound on the actual disc is superb, then I leave the "Hoffmanize" button off.

See?

 

Now, if we could only capture "Steve in a Bottle", err.. "in a circuit", we'd make millions (well, Steve would).

 

That sounds like a fun way to choose gear. Fill in your profile, will ya?? I'd like to check out your system and see what you are listening on. Which speakers and headphones did you pick blindly??

 

For crying out loud......that's a great idea! Steve, how come you've not gotten together with Grover or some high end manufacturer to do a Steve Hoffman signature series or something? That would be an audiophile's wet dream!

 

When I saw the title of this thread, I immediately thought of several mono Motown single mixes.

But you gotta ask yourself a question: what is accurate? What's on the tape? What they heard in the studio as they were laying down tracks?

We don't know. But, my definition of accuracy in this case is what's on the tape, and I don't mean in an audiophile sense. Think of Stevie Wonder's "Uptight (Everything's Alright)". That is one of the most distorted mono mixes I've ever heard, with all those overdubs on there. Any mastering is not going to improve the sound. It's still going to be distorted, like it or not. That's the way it was mixed. Although it sounds the most "untweaked" on the Hitsville USA box, the overload, distortion, and compression, it's still all there. That's why I'm particularly more accepting of the Motown Ultimate Collection series. I have the Four Tops CD of that series, and in all honesty, even though it's LOUD and sometimes distorted in places, that's how the mix is. Trust me, I've ripped tracks off of that CD and looked at their waveforms. Believe it or not, for a Kevin Reeves mastering job, it actually has dynamics!! The waveform is NOT a square as I thought it might be. It's just been normalized or limited, that's all, and tweaked in the EQ. But who cares? Those Motown mixes weren't exactly engineered by Roger Nichols, now, were they? Nope. But it's accurate in the sense that it's unfutzed with in it's actual mix (I think by now I've gone off on a tangent, as I'm writing this all stream of conscience. My main point, I suppose, then, is, accurate sound is better)

But what if we define "accurate sound" as that first time nostalgia? Like Grant has mentioned several times, the Ultimate Collection CD's come closest to what he acheived back in the day when listening to those 45's on his system at the time. I, myself (and I'm sure many others, too), would fall into this category. "Accurate" is the way we first heard it and remember it. Like listening to a classical recording of, let's say, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto as performed by Szell/Cleveland with Robert Marcellus taking the solo. That's the first version I ever heard of that piece, and any other CD performance I've heard sounds "unaccurate" from the way I got used to hearing it.

So how do we define accuracy?

Discuss...

In the meantime, it's time for a root beer float

Au revoir, mes amis.

 

Years ago I was listening on a cruddy little portable headphone radio some of Frank Sinatra's later Columbia recordings and noticed, even then, that the sound was superior to his earlier Columbia recordings. It's been said since that these later recordings are indeed better sounding than his records of just months earlier (introduction of tape, new engineers and more). I feel you could hear good mastering over a transistor radio. That may be pushing it, but...

 

Read far enough into the thread (top of second page, I think) and you'll have my answer. Steve's words explain one reason why I feel this way:

I also agree with Taurus:

Euphonics belong at the recording/mixing/mastering end, not at the playback end. IMO.

On a side note: did you know that it's nearly impossible to buy a consumer TV set that reproduces color accurately, even though the industry has specific and easily workable standards to make that happen? It's because folks want the picture to look "good" on one type of program material, usually sports. They want that picture to pop out at them, with vivid greens and deep reds and so forth. To sell those sets, manufacturers push the contrast and brightness way up (thus decreasing the resolution and shortening the life of the picture tube by several years), pump the blue end of the spectrum up to make everything look brighter, then pump up the reds to keep the Caucasian flesh tones from looking too pallid. As a result, if you watch a well-mastered movie (or even a well-produced broadcast) you can't see anything like what the director, cinematographer, and transfer engineer put on the DVD. That's what happens when the principle of accuracy is abandoned for "what I like."

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

 

I still say that the difference could be heard over a cheap playback system.

 

Great comparison Gardo, that really helped me a lot!

 

Hate to burst your bubble, but that particular CD has been really "futzed with". It is not representative of what the original mono mixes sound like. Compare it to any mono versions done in the 1980s (which aren't the greatest, but are the least screwed with), and you'll hear a tremendous difference. The Ultimate tracks weren't remixed, but don't believe that they're anything close to "accurate".

 

That may be true, but that Four Tops CD comes closest to matching that inaccurate sound I heard in the 60s on our stereo.

BTW, the only mono Motown CD made in the 80s that I know of is a Supremes comp. All the rest were done in the 90s, starting with Bill Inglot.

 

That may be true, but that Four Tops CD comes closest to matching that inaccurate sound I heard in the 60s on our stereo.

BTW, the only mono Motown CD made in the 80s that I know of is a Supremes comp. All the rest were done in the 90s, starting with Bill Inglot.

 

Sooo, is this a good thing?

 

Sure, if it brings all the memories flooding back.

 

So, I guess I probably don't want accuracy in mastering. But I do desire an accurate playback system.

 

Sometimes you do - if the original master tape sounds wonderful as is. Sometimes you don't - and Steve can work his magic.

Sometimes you do - when you have great sounding source material, or if you are mastering things at home. Sometimes you don't - if you have sub-par source material and you want euphonic distortion that warms it up (or what have you). Heck, isn't that why so many of us love tubes? They're anything but clinically accurate.

 

Okay, well that begs the question, how accurate was your stereo in the 60s? If it wasn't entirely accurate then (and you seem judge modern mastering quality by what you remember hearing), you surely don't want an accurate system now. You'll never get today what you got back then, unless a crappy CD like Four Tops Ultimate comes along.

Audible memory is highly unreliable in general. We often remember things sounding better than they may actually have been, as I'm sure you know.

My only point here is that this particular Four Tops CD should not be used for any standard of "accurate" or "good" sound.

 

I personally want the most accurate (neutral, revealing) playback system I can afford (realizing that accuracy is limited my highly subjective ears). The reason being that it will take me directly to the actual music. On a bad recording that may be a problem, but on a good recording that is audio nirvana.

All that said, I prefer recordings to be made to sound good even if that means giving up on accuracy.