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Convenience vs Fidelity


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:D

 

 

Maybe it's kind of a continuum that we are always kind of modulating.

 

I mean, ultimate fidelity is the identity - "be true to one'sself" - the actual event (infinite/undefined fidelity)...everything else is image

 

but yeah, sometimes I still like the convenience of recorded music

 

Then you've got "constructed music" (musique concrete and such) -- hmm, how does fidelity fit in there where the source material is more created than recreated?

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Then you've got "constructed music" (musique concrete and such) -- hmm, how does fidelity fit in there where the source material is more created than recreated?

 

It doesn't adhere to those standards. It has it's own standards for fidelity. ;)

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Convenience plays big with me. However, when it comes to a record I really want from an artist I admire, I always buy the CD. In the last year or so, I have purchased about $100 worth of songs from iTunes which is the most I have ever spent online. I see this number going up in the following year for myself.

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It doesn't adhere to those standards. It has it's own standards for fidelity.
;)

 

A law unto itself! like another sort of fidelity! :;

 

 

 

1116667538_castro-fidel.jpg

 

 

the own standards sure make the question easier - since we can answer to those standards

 

I go with both at the same time!

 

(all that other crap is just preemphasis to get out exactly what comes out!) :D

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As I get older I find that I have less time to sit in front of a nice stereo and just listen to music. Now I listen to music over the roar of traffice, or from my computer speakers in the office. Fidelity is not really a choice for me. Not that it really matters. After years of playing music on stage I think my ears have lost much of their fidelity.

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I'd have to say "it depends".

 

When recording, I'll choose fidelity just about every time (unless obviously going for an effect, specific sound, etc.).

 

But as I mentioned in previous threads, when I'm doing something like the radio show for the Tibet Connection (where we are gathering people's interviews from India and other places around the world), we could either wait 3-4 weeks for a CD-R to hopefully show up in the mail from India, or we can send high-res MP3s via email and get to work an hour after it's done. We choose MP3s, an instance in which we choose convenience over fidelity (especially since they are voice interviews and not recordings of a symphony).

 

It's my belief that flexibility and common sense are key, and that one should make a decision based on the situation at hand rather than being inflexibly dogmatic.

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Which best sums up your position?


1. I prefer the ideal of fidelity over convenience, but I usually opt for convenience.


2. I would suffer through an eternal torment of inconvenience for high fidelity.

 

 

Fidelity. I don't really see much room for convenience, or anything that saves time, or simplifies work. The workflows are optimized. The specs for the workpiece are given, and the way to the result is set and planned at the beginning. The tools and utensil, and their ease or discomfort are known. So it is fidelity, accuracy, exactness, adherence and concentration to detail. In music, the good feel has to be unbroken until the end, with some goosebumps in between. That's the way to the final product in the right quality when I work. Anything else is a cramp.

 

.

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Which best sums up your position?


1. I prefer the ideal of fidelity over convenience, but I usually opt for convenience.


2. I would suffer through an eternal torment of inconvenience for high fidelity.

 

 

Okay. You are asking an either/or choice, and I didn't answer that way before. But if forced - forced - to make a choice between these two, then I would choose #2. Um, although I would hope that I'm not suffering.

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I've always thought that a great song is a great song. It sounds good if it's a great song. It's not an issue of being able to hear it well enough to transcribe the music - - I started doing that at age 10 using an AM transistor radio with a 1 inch speaker. (Back in the olden days, when WLS played music).

 

Billie Holiday stills sounds great. So does Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Memphis Minnie and thousands of other artists to whom 'fidelity' was simply an unknown word, at least as regards sound.

 

Perhaps I'll get flamed for this; pardon my saying so, but if the music you hear doesn't sound good, maybe you're just listening to bad music. Maybe not, I can't say. Elephino....

 

I do critical listening during mixing and mastering... For everything else, I listen to what is there and connect the dots where the sound system has holes.

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Perhaps I'll get flamed for this;

 

 

I don't think it' particularly flame-worthy. I've heard a number of folks (including myself) hold that same though, depending on listening situation

 

listening situation may be important there, "what ears" we have on

 

If one is listening to "songform", then structural elements become more important. I guess an extreme example of this is when you look over a score and see/(mentally) hear some cool structures.

 

There, you have more of that

 

I've always thought that a great song is a great song. It sounds good if it's a great song.

 

 

 

 

 

Other times, it can be more I do critical listening during...

 

when one is listening to very specific performance - like in you mixing/mastering example.

or other times like one specific performance of a "given" piece (where the structure is "given" asnd isn't where the attention is)

 

or some non-"songform" oriented music (a lot of non-westrn music, western ambient music, etc) -- where the aural experience may be more the focus than "songform"

 

Or even non-musical programming : audiodrama comes to mind

(we have that same structure v aural experience thing there too -- I mean, X-1 rocks regardless of the fidelity, but some of the ZBS or SET stuff...esp the binaural)

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The more I think about this I realize that fidelity is overrated.

There are many great records that don`t come close to the audio quality we can get today in a personal studio. There are thousands of songs that sound great but just aren`t good songs. So which would you pick?

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I don't think it' particularly flame-worthy. I've heard a number of folks (including myself) hold that same though, depending on listening situation


listening situation
may be important there, "what ears" we have on


If one is listening to "songform", then structural elements become more important. I guess an extreme example of this is when you look over a score and see/(mentally) hear some cool structures.


There, you have more of that



I've always thought that a great song is a great song. It sounds good if it's a great song.






Other times, it can be more
I do critical listening during...


when one is listening to very specific performance - like in you mixing/mastering example.

or other times like one specific performance of a "given" piece (where the structure is "given" asnd isn't where the attention is)


or some non-"songform" oriented music (a lot of non-westrn music, western ambient music, etc) -- where the aural experience may be more the focus than "songform"


Or even non-musical programming : audiodrama comes to mind

(we have that same structure v aural experience thing there too -- I mean, X-1 rocks regardless of the fidelity, but some of the ZBS or SET stuff...esp the binaural)

 

 

 

Thanks for your well thought out reply. There are many times when I want the absolute best fidelity I can have - - where I'll really want to dig down into the sound itself and try to figure out (engineering-wise) how something was done. Or when the music is just so very well performed and recorded that it gives me eargasms to hear it.

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I just wish it were better typed (the wife just gave me her old laptop and I'm getting used to the keys and pointer. I'm married - you know how it goes, she gets the good toys - well, in this case t was work. But yeah, I used to do abt 10-12K miles/year on my bike and she's the one with the carbon, dura-ace machine :( -- go figure)

 

Good songs. But, why take a good song and mangle it with some binary voodoo?
;)

 

I guess there you're talking mainly about compression artifacts?

 

That's one type of infidelity for sure. There are a whole bunch of others

I suppose we have 3 basic kinds???

 

LOSSES : such as, frequency range, dynamics, stereo imaging

 

ARTIFACTS (additions) : like, compression/decompression glitching, phonograph "pops", hiss

(could class that last as thermal/thermodynamic? 'brownian' energy leaks)

 

DISTORTIONS : for instance, wow&flutter, non-linear fequency response, record/playback speed misalignment

 

Kind of neat : on NPR last week they replayed the "Oh the Humanity" Hindenburg account and at the end they noted "Time corrected"

 

 

hmm, as I think about it, I guess that goes back to SYN's comment that we don't have an adequate definition

 

Odd thing is, while we might be able to easily more clearly define "fidelity" it may be the "infidelity" that is a trickier beastie

 

what kind of infidelity are we talking? -- a question really about "how graceful is the failure mode?"

A vinyl "pop", or a "digital chatter" from agro compression could be way more annoying than, say, some loss of presence or stereo imaging from compromised speaker configuration for instance.

 

 

maybe "convenience" needs to be looked at as well (I'm getting pretty wordy here so I leave that - but as I hik about it, I can think of a whole microcosm in that)

 

 

 

I suppose then we've got the question of degree as you work convenience against fidelity.

 

I mean, if we are talking ultimate fidelity...we might often be talking about cutting out the middle-man and going to see the performer (how we handle constructed music, we never really addressed - I can see how that could be problematic - I suppose we'd have to choose a virtual "performance" at mix-down)

 

on the gripping hand (Mote in God's Eye ;) ), If we are talking about ultimate convenience (zero effort) or ultimate sacrifice of fidelity (ie zero fidelity - no information xfer at all) -- we are talking doing without or more accuately, not doing

So I'd think maybe a continuum approach, at the least, or at least a threshold definition at the barebones least, would help us wrangle that under control.

 

It's neat, as I look back at my thinking on that (forgive me if it's unstructure, just shooting from the hip) -- it's really the issues of application/product development. Where do you make your concessions? and how much in what areas? can the concessions be modulated for use model/context?

 

For that matter, I guess you could look at Western musical temperament as that sort of product development!

 

 

Sorry if that got a bit verbose - my day off so I thought I'd have an extra cup o joe and muse with y'all

 

I don't do SW development anymore...and, though I thought I never would, I miss it

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That it may. But, does it relay energy more accurately?

 

 

hmm, well we don't have the fidelity parameters in place -- so the measurement might be a little difficult

 

but I'd think we could do the energy calc as Sigma [t = o...d] (ABS(O-(t)R(t)))

 

 

where

d is total time duration

t is time

O is the "original" signal (still maybe need more definition) level at T

and R is the "replay" signal at T

 

 

I guess that'd be a power (energy over time) measurement, so, we could collapse that, I suppose back into a mean (by dividing by t)

 

 

but I'm not sure how useful the energy calcs would be - esp since we have a lot of our basic definitions just plain undefined

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