Why colored music is preferred over neutral / natural sound

[Hari Iyer]

Coloration is preferred by any sense organ. Be it eyes, ears, skin, tongue, smell. Lets take some examples,
Eyes:
- We always prefer a more un-natural color on the TV with more of contrast and color added to the screen than a natural image which is dull and boring.
- We would always prefer if our photographs are added more contrast and better skin affects than our natural photograph with less make-up and will find them to be not presentable. A bit of jazz added to the photograph appeals us
Tongue:
- No one prefers a bland food. We like if there is more masala, a bit of extra spice, a bit of salt and sugar to the taste. We totally avoid bland food and say its not tasty.
- We do not like a coffee or tea if its natural. We wanted the addition of flavor and sweetness to be more acceptable to our tounge.
Smell:
- Our nose prefer it when there is a good aroma around even though its from some chemical. It will not prefer a pure 100% oxygenated environment. A bit of jizz added with artificial perfume will be more acceptable to our sense organs
Ears:
- Are ears the same? Do we prefer to hear more bass and treble than a flat freq response. Will a neutral sounding speaker be very boring and not appealing to most of us. Will that extra colored bass and shrill highs excite us more even though its not there in the original music?
The most accurate amplifier, player or speakers are the ones that is able to distinguish between various recordings and various sounds with the correct timber and are not the one which makes all of them sound similar. After hearing them you should be able to distinguish between the various musical instruments and recognize when a bass guitar was played and what string was plucked. It should not sound monotone with all the bass sounding the same and you should be able to differentiate them.
Some articles that discusses about colored sound for opening the discussion.

Who wants perfectly accurate sound? | The Audiophiliac - CNET News

In Ear Matters: Neutral vs. Natural: A Thought.

Is the highest fi always the best fi? | InnerFidelity

Audio Note

 

[reignofchaos]

Beg to disagree!

- My TV is calibrated exactly to Rec.709. I'm not able to do linear D65 greyscale because of the TV's limitations, but for me, video accuracy is as important as audio accuracy.
- I'm not a good photographer, so I'd not comment on this one.
- I like food that looks pretty, has great flavors and nice texture with multiple tastes that combine/gel well. Putting masala in food just to make it spicy is a simple no no for me.
- I drink tea purely for flavor - darjeeling tea with just a few ml of milk - enough to change color, thats about it, very little or no sugar.
- The nose is there to distinguish betweem smells - so your comment does not strictly apply here.

As for accurate sound, I do not know what it is - everyone has a different definition of what is accurate. So my definition is that if it sounds good to my ears, it probably must be doing something right and might be called accurate.

 

[aashish351]

Just to define accurate sound reproduction (in my opinion) is sound which sounds as close as possible to the actual instruments played in the same environment. For example, consider that there are a set of musicians available to you to play in your dedicated listening room. You sit in your listening position and enjoy the music. Now imagine that somehow the live music that they played was captured (recorded) using "perfect" recording instruments and transfered to a CD without any loss. Accurate sound is when you play this CD in your "accurate" system it gives you more or less the same experience as listening to the live band in the same environment. If you did not like the sound of the band's instruments then you should not like the sound of the "acccurate" system. And that is my ideal dream system. If I bring home a well recorded CD from a live concert in Albert Hall - then my system (Room, Electronics, Speakers, Cables etc. etc.) should not add or subtract anything from that experience. In that sense the accuracy of the system actually starts from the "accurate" recording. But like I said all this is in context of an "ideal" situation and even I don't know whether I will be able to achieve it.

 

[reignofchaos]

Just to define accurate sound reproduction (in my opinion) is sound which sounds as close as possible to the actual instruments played in the same environment. For example, consider that there are a set of musicians available to you to play in your dedicated listening room. You sit in your listening position and enjoy the music. Now imagine that somehow the live music that they played was captured (recorded) using "perfect" recording instruments and transfered to a CD without any loss. Accurate sound is when you play this CD in your "accurate" system it gives you more or less the same experience as listening to the live band in the same environment. If you did not like the sound of the band's instruments then you should not like the sound of the "acccurate" system. And that is my ideal dream system. If I bring home a well recorded CD from a live concert in Albert Hall - then my system (Room, Electronics, Speakers, Cables etc. etc.) should not add or subtract anything from that experience. In that sense the accuracy of the system actually starts from the "accurate" recording. But like I said all this is in context of an "ideal" situation and even I don't know whether I will be able to achieve it.

What you say is absolutely valid if the recording is direct to disc or a direct cut record with no amplification. However between the live recording and your system, there's a complicated mastering and equalization process that takes place. In many recordings, this is very well done but in the vast majority of music, this process makes sure that what you hear no matter whatever system you have is something completely different from what it would be like if it were a live performance. In this case, the argument of recreating the live sound simply does not apply because even if you were to play the cd on the most accurate reference system in the exact same location as the live performance, it'd sound different because of changes induced due to mastering.

The other thing to remember is that for the genre of rock, what you hear in a concert sounds very very different from what you hear at home. I can say with conviction that whatever amplification they use in outdoor concert sounds poor at best no matter what band and whatever their equipment. I recently heard Dream Theater (one of my favorite rock bands) live at Warfield Theater in SFO which acoustically is as good a venue as you can get for a rock concert. However when I hear the same songs on a record or cd at home, it sounds significantly better - barring the lack of the crazy dynamics and sound pressure from an ultra massive speaker system. I've come to realize what hear and expect at home is very very different from what is heard live.

The only time what you hear live is what is accurate makes sense is for unamplified performances in a small intimate setting with good recording equipment and no digital mangling further down the chain.

 

[nshankar]

...If I bring home a well recorded CD from a live concert in Albert Hall - then my system (Room, Electronics, Speakers, Cables etc. etc.) should not add or subtract anything from that experience. ...

Is the above possible? Can our room replicate the acoustics of Royal Albert Hall? IMHO, even the best recording of a live performance played again in the same venue through the same system will NOT sound the same.

 

[moktan]

- I drink tea purely for flavor - darjeeling tea with just a few ml of milk - enough to change color, thats about it, very little or no sugar.
-

i enjoy my darjeeling without ANY milk or sugar and prepare it as an infusion...the flavour is so subtle that many would consider the addition of milk and sugar very drastic ...of course one cant make any rigid rules here....

 

[avidyarthy]

^ Me too ... after getting home a Calcuttan! No additions to the light brew ... just the flavours. Addition to this is plain 'colouration' or contamination's a better word.

 

[Audio_Freek]

I will like the colored sound coz of below reasons.

1. I love all the instruments by basic, but when we pick some track(fav track) we would be more concern in hearing the dept of any instrument which attracts us even vocal too added in the list.

In other words, when a Full South indian means is served to me, then i would try to get more of curd and pickle combination from what i am eating

But the same curd and pickle will be be a good combo while eating a North indian food

What i believe is Music is a taste and every one have unique taste.Some like Onion added with curd and some one Sugar added to Curd

I love loud music with low freq(Sub dominating) and my brother like only the vocal of same track and try to be away from low freq, the uniqueness is we both like same track but in diff color.

As moktan,reign shared , the Tea is same for all and we can milk or sugar or lemon to prefer taste and enjoy the same, hence we need colored Sound\Music

 

[corElement]

Everything is coloured. No matter how much something is said to be accurate, even that accuracy is a type of colour.

We just have to find which colour we like

 

[Shivam]

I like balanced colors in movies and not enhanced.
My photographs range from enhanced to subdued colors but most of them are without enhancing any colors.
I like foods with natural flavours and I love salads. However mild spices are better than badly cooked food.
I have my tea without any milk or sugar and prefer natural tastes.
Fresh air without any odors is the best for me followed by natural smells of fresh cut grass, soil after first rain, early morning smell of flowers, smells from pine forests and from coffee plantation flowers. Perfumes just spoil everything though they are better than stinking smells.

In other words -
I like live music and recorded music without equuipment induced colorations.
However if the music is really badly recorded sometimes colorations can be useful.

 

[koushik]

@Hari Iyer:
How about Ravi Shankar playing Sitar sitting infront of you?? Will you still want to add some colour to that?

Photographs that need colouration is from cheap camera incapable of capturing proper colour. Or the environment is so dusty (read polluted) that true colour couldn't be captured. Take a Canon 5D to scarcely populated hilly area and take some snaps, those photos never need added colourations.

 

[avidyarthy]

]@Hari Iyer[/B]:
How about Ravi Shankar playing Sitar sitting infront of you?? Will you still want to add some colour to that?
QUOTE]

Well, I have Ravi Shankar always sitting right in front of me ... whenever I feed in his discs to my CDp!

 

[koushik]

Well, I have Ravi Shankar always sitting right in front of me ... whenever I feed in his discs to my CDp!

Yup, thats what we strive for, but don't really want to add colour to that sound. Plain uncoloured, natural is good enough. Isn't it?

 

[arj]

i would concur with the post by reignofchaos here..

The problem here is definition of "Neutral". if the Mastering is direct to disc and one is hearing the performance the way it was thru the best recording devices, then yes Neutral is exactly what we would all like better.

Unfortunately most recordings we hear today are spliced together from several cooked recordings..hence the base itself is not neutral..and we are just trying to make it palatable to our ears ie our own personal definition of "Neutral". The funny part is if you try to listen to all the neutral systems one after the other..each will anyway sound different (Thats my assumption though)

Apologies on going OT but to give an analogy with food..when cooked from fresh ingredients by the chefs, we like the food as it is. but in most places we have the gravy/peices brought together and served just before eating (or reheating t home after taking it home packed)..hence the need for Pickles/sauce etc to make it more palatable

 

[prem]

Hi Avidyarthy


I have never heard any system, regardless of price, get the overtones of a sitar like it is in a live recording. Nor for that matter any instrument. I am not even sure if the old recordings have captured it in the first place.

 

[mpw]

prem - i agree completely.

One will never know what the recording engineer or the aritist wanted to put out in the first place. We are assuming that whatever is in the CD is how is was in the studio.

Music is like maya ( an illusion ) .. like how sanjay dutt ( and only he ) sees the respected Sh MKG in Munnabhai 2..

as long you believe ( or i for that matter ) that ravi shankar is sitting in front of you and playing the sitar.. thats all that matters doesnt it.. we have attained nirvana ( for us )
( Maya again.. )

why all this talk about color ?

mpw

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[koushik]

@mpw
Absolutely bang on. Its all about being happy and if you are happy with philips boom box I don't see anything wrong in it. His passion, his way.

 

[Staxxx]

I also do not feel your observations are universal Mr Hari Iyer. I have striven to put together as neutral a system as I can given my real life experience. I also actually hate saturated colours on my projector (Sim2), which does a good job of being fairly neutral....and I even LIKE bland food

 

[asliarun]

i enjoy my darjeeling without ANY milk or sugar and prepare it as an infusion...the flavour is so subtle that many would consider the addition of milk and sugar very drastic ...of course one cant make any rigid rules here....

Just out of curiosity, how does sugar (and perhaps even milk) "color" the tea? Milk only adds creaminess and sugar only adds sweetness, neither of which have the capability of taking over the aroma or flavor of tea. If anything, they enhance the flavor. Its not like you are adding cardomom to the tea which is taking over the flavor of the orange pekoe.

An analogy would be food - let's even take a food item that is pretty much cooked as-is without anything else. Examples - steak, barbeque or tandoor items, grilled/panfried fish or eggplant. While I agree that adding masalas and aromatics detract from the original flavor, salt actually enhances the flavor. We are not "sensory recording devices" - i.e processing signals from multiple sources (ears, tongue, eyes etc). Instead, what we consider an "experience" is actually a complex interplay between the senses, especially when there harmony in the sensory interplay.

This is why you will see that dishes that taste really good, ranging from simple to complex, will have multiple layers of flavor and aroma, that *complement* each other. For example, a karela dish will have some sweet and some sour in it - those elements actually accentuate or highlight the original taste, not mask or drown it.

Anyway, I was trying to make an elaborate analogy (and almost lost myself) - I suspect music is similar in nature. There has to be coloration for music to sound good to *your* ears - it is like your personal preference in food. Now you can argue that you can get used to something if you have an open mind and/or if you experience it long enough.

I even question the very definition of coloration. Let's take a simple solo flute performance by the great Hariprasad Chaurasiya. I'm quite certain that even the live performance would sound dramatically different if Panditji performed in the banks of a lake vs in a large hall vs in a small hall vs unamplified in a room. So what exactly is the benchmark to which coloration is compared? That particular instance of recording in that exact setting? Even if so, the point is moot - you will still be able to say that you prefer unamplified music in open air to say studio recorded - you are still saying that you prefer one type of coloration to another. All you are doing is pushing the onus of the coloration to the source/venue/artist instead of your music system. Everything - the instrument, the player, playing style, venue, the air, background noise, our senses - add coloration.

It is a bit like saying "what is the actual color of the color blue". The question and the answer are both meaningless as they stand.

Footnote: An interesting question - even with the environment perfectly in control, are we listening to what the artist originally intended?

 

[Santy]

Nice topic. It looks like 100 pages are guaranteed

So what do you guys want to listen to, today. Accurate Sound or Enjoyable Sound??

If you had powered up your system recently, loaded some music and enjoyed it, knowing that the sound is not perfectly accurate, then colored sound might be what you are liking, atleast for now. You may be wishing to have that close-to-accurate system in the future. You may be even saving for it now. But you still spend hours listening to your current gear. You did not stop listening to music because its not accurate; neither you sold them off because its not just sounding natural? You upgrade your system, one component at a time, knowing that it still may not take you to that accurate sound. What does it indicate? Accuracy is not the only factor in enjoying music. Its about what you 'like' to hear. Better sound is what you expect, may not be the truest sound. When you get a better sound by an upgrade or tweak, you feel immensely satisfied, eventhough it may be short lived. You play all your favourite tracks on the upgraded system. You know its still not accurate but why play all those tracks again? Because you love music. Not just accuracy. 99.9% of music listeners do not listen to music as it was when recorded (accurate), a fact which the musicians also know. Whats the point then. Just get close as much as you can afford and enjoy music.

In short, enjoy what our heart likes not what our brain prefers.