What is the “absolute sound”?

Part-Time Audiophile

The question of how we measure success in hi-fi is a tricky one. Many years ago, The Absolute Sound magus Harry Pearson made a lot of hay about the idea of reality being the only valid metric when evaluating sound or systems that produce sound. Specifically, the point of your hi-fi was to recreate, as faithfully as possible, the sound of “the live event”. The best hi-fi systems would freely cross the uncanny valley; playback would be indistinguishable from the original. Real instruments, played by real people, in real spaces — that was ever the barometer, the referent, and the aim. That was “the absolute sound” — and our hi-fi systems succeeded or failed solely by their ability to create this illusion, to erase time and distance, to bring the performance into your listening room. Fascinating, right? I think so. I think many of us still think so. But what if it’s a load of crap? Many years ago, I wrote an article called: “Chasing the Absolute Sound“. This was an evolution of an article I wrote years before that, called “Your hi-fi sounds like crap“. Sadly, neither article has achieved “common wisdom” status, because I keep seeing/reading discussions online about how there is […]

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