Liveness, not purity, is essential to natural-sounding music

Evidence

This notion that reflections result in a corruption of “pure” music, and the apparent surprise in finding that musicians and ordinary listeners prefer “muddied-up” versions, reappears in audio, even today. We now have quite detailed explanations why this is so, but one can instinctively grasp the reality that, toward the rear of a concert hall, the direct sound (the “pure” music) is not the primary acoustic event. And yet, its subtle presence is strongly influential in what we perceive (Griesinger, 2009). Two ears and a brain comprise a powerful acoustical analysis tool, able to extract enormous resolution, detail and pleasure from circumstances that, when subject to mere technical measurements, seem to be disastrous. Something that in technical terms appears to be impossibly scrambled is perceived as a splendid musical performance (see Figure 5.16). — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 642

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that objective technical chaos can be perceived as excellence — that perception extracts beauty from what measurements call disaster — is a paradigm-shifting reframing of what fidelity means.
• XREF: connects to: Slightly inharmonic spectra are musically preferred over strictly harmonic ones

Broader Connections

• Slightly inharmonic spectra are musically preferred over strictly harmonic ones #complicates (0.75)