Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Should I Turn Up the Volume - Is Louder Better???

My definition of accurate, in this case, is to reproduce the waveform that's represented on the CD (or file) at the transducer (speaker cone) as closely as possible. If I feed my 861v6 a pure / clean (call it what you will) waveform - that's what I want my system to attempt to produce. Even better if that waveform's what finally hits my ears after room-effects & potential induced corrections (e.g. MRC) - but then of course there's the (sometimes coloured) filter that sits between my ears !
What happens before that - before the file / waveform reaches my processor - is of course a whole other can of worms....

Yeah thanks for that!

Problem is I have not had The Temper Trap, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Einaudi, Karl Jenkins or Diana Krall, which are the last albums I have listened to, come round to my place and play in my front room.

And that is my point, as soon as you record something you are colouring it, You may have the most accurate system to play it back, but has it been mastered accurately.

Hifi in general, I do not believe, is very accurate, well not even the hifi, the whole process of getting the sound from the artist to your ears is not very 'accurate'.

Exactly my point.

What is accurate in one room will sound comepletely different in the next.

So if accuracy is not to reproduce the instrument (+ room), but rather to reproduce the recording, then accuracy is a function of the recording engineers personal preference, which means its totally subjective.

For example engineer 1 may like to amplify the guitar more than the bass and engineer 2 may like the opposite. Which one is accurate?

I think I like what gIzzE said... "I don't know what accurate is"

Maybe only live music is accurate and recording are just interpretations.

At the end of the day you could say it's all subjective - and we could get totally bogged-down in semantics....

When you're at a live performance - what is "accurate" in those terms - or is that term really applicable even in those circumstances ? The near-field measured waveform at the instrument is not what you actually hear - it's not the same once it's been affected by the "environment" of the performance & it doesn't take into account the filters your body physically applies, and then of course your brain (and current state of mind / inebriation etc !) has a further influence to finally colour what we call "sound". And of course the person next to you or elsewhere at the same venue is hearing something slightly different....

In a studio recording, there are of course further caveats - the recording engineer applies their knowledge & sound-bias to the process - and hears / tunes what comes out of the studio monitors to their / the artist's liking - which is also affected by many other factors.

This is why my idea of accurate is the "delta" between the "software" - which I would specifically define as the CD / DVD / FLAC file etc - and what comes out of the speaker. In my opinion, the equipment chain between the CD data (for example) and the speaker cone should not add or subtract anything at all. And of course if you can apply some correction to negate the affect of the room / environment on this process before the waves get to your ears, then all the better.

I know others have different ideas of what accuracy might mean, but that's how I'd define it. I go to enough concerts to know that reliving a live performance in your own home is a bit of a dream - but you're not giving yourself a chance if the kit on your rack is distorting the signal it's reading....

All this is the reason I run two completely different systems in the same tiny room. If all goes well, it might even be about to become three systems. Overkill ? Perhaps - the room is compromised and, in it's own way, each system is compromised. However, I can always find a sound I like and that's all I care about.

Louder sounds give you more dynamic range but also change the shape of your auditory filters, effectively making them wider and giving you less frequency discrimination.
Tim