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Re: Lucio Cadeddu interviewing Dieter Ennemoser.

Dan as I cannot & will not attempt to speak for other audiophiles or music lovers. I am speaking only for myself. I personally equate the word "musical" with meaning a more accurate replication of musical instruments or vocals. But in truth even that doesn't quite sum it sufficiently. It's a gestalt type of thing and it's exactly what Dieter Ennemoser was refering to when he refered to "these sounds."

Yes, it's "these sounds" that seem to exist in voices, musical instruments & even in some technical devices, like speaker chassis and tube amps. Yet any time Dieter would try to measure "these sounds" they proved to be 100% elusive. It's "these sounds" & either their absence or presence that we need to associate with musicality and whether or not it's present. Of course it goes without saying that no audio components are 100% capable of replicating "these sounds" and thus the musicality associated with them, for if they could we'd believe we were hearing a live performance.

I have to admit I have a hard time describing it any better than that and I know this is not a very clear definition. The funny thing is I always know musicality it's present, even though I find such difficulty in describing it! Perhaps another here who believes in musicality could define it better? If so, please feel free to.

In my opinion What is more musical? The question the late Bud Fried used to ask you so many times is answered in part by asking Dieter's question of: What makes a full sound in a violin? Of course in reading the article we see that Dieter believed "...I found after some research showing that carbon is the decisive element in sound quality. Since sound is also coloured by body temperature, I chose to call this property the C37 structure where C = Carbon and 37 = temperature in centigrade." (One should read Dieter's complete article at the beginning of this thread for a through understanding of C37 -- thetubeguy1954)

Is that the real answer? In all honesty I don't know. I believe this: when an audio system replicates the "full sound" of a violin i.e. the violin seems to almost be hanging in the air in front of you, it will sound very musical indeed.

I believe these statements are why you and Bud Fried got led astray in terms of musicality:

1) "There have been numerous spectral plots of tube amplifiers producing not only audible amounts of 2nd order distortion but audible amounts of 4th order, & sixth order as well."

2) "(Bud Fried)stated quite bluntly that in his early days he played around with and designed a few tube amps but they were horribly non linear and preferred solid state."

3) "(Bud Fried) didn't find anything more "musical" about tube gear, and had absolutely no idea why anyone in their right mind would say that. Added audible distortion is just that. It is not part of the original performance."

In fact, Dieter even stated that it's a common fallac(y) that the musical sound of tubes is produced mainly by second order distortion. Bud Fried and I believe you, Dan are too hung up on the 2nd order (and other) distortions in tubed equipment and their apparent horrible non linearity. You want to use these as proof of a tubed amps horrible performance. In fact, when using todays standard method of measuring an amplifiers performance it "seems" to prove, at least to those who believe these are the measurements we should be using to define an amplifiers performance, that a solidstate amplifier is more accurate than say an SET amp is.

However todays tests are discredited when listening! When listening we discover the SET amp now excels in more accurately replicating the gestalt of musicality and we hear a more full sounding violin! It now becomes crystal clear that 2nd order distortions and the non linearity of tubed amps as opposed to solidstate amps, is less critical in judging an amps performance than is the amps ability to replicate "these sounds" that seem to exist in voices, musical instruments & even in some technical devices, like speaker chassis and tube amps!

Unfortunately using todays standard method for measuring performance in audio components is NOT what we should be using! We should be searching for a way the measure "these sounds!" Now we need to do what Soundmind challenged other audio designers to do! I'm paraphrasing Soundmind, My challenge to anyone who claims they can't correlate measurements they make with what they hear isn't to abandon measurements but to come up with better ones that do! So todays audio designers need to open their minds and look for the means to measure "these sounds" that are associated with what we refer to as musicality. When scientists and/or audio designers finally discover how to measure "these sounds" we will, or so I believe, have a much more accurate measurement of an audio components actual performance.

Until that day arrives and we finally discover how to measure "these sounds" we'll continue to have Subjectivists claiming how good their tubed amps replicate the musicality of a performance, while Objectivists point to today's standard measurements as "proof" that this cannot possibly be so!

Thetubeguy1954

PS: Soundmind whose words I paraphrased can be seen as he said them by clicking on the link below.





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