"Ian Iveson" wrote in message
...
Don Pearce wrote:

Well, listening is different to recording, and the requirements of the
room are not the same. When I listen, I do actually want my room to
get involved to a reasonable extent - depending on what I'm listening
to, of course. And when I'm listening I can tune out the room errors
psychologically. This doesn't happen in recording, so a recording room
needs to be a load better than a listening room.

As a rule, if you want to record, you should probably spend 95% of
your money and effort on the room. The gear comes a very distant
second - but it is only the gear people ever seem to talk about. If
you are just listening, the figure probably drops to 90%

I was surprised when Stewart admitted that he liked colourful speakers. A
recent discussion here about headphones reminded me that other champions
of the reproductionist school share his taste for paradox.

Seems to me that you've teased out the contradiction quite well here, and
because I believe that it's a key issue, I would welcome some discussion.

Why do you want your room to get involved?
Why does this preference depend on what you're listening to?
Why do you at the same time note that you're ears can tune out the room
errors?
Why do you consider them to be errors?
Does it follow that you have a preference for some errors?

To me, an error would be a departure from fidelity, rather than from
reproduction. I like to think I'm staging a live performance.

A neat hypothesis occurs to me, that a performance requires a single time
and place, and that must be your room. It follows that the source medium
should be timeless and spaceless. The band's playing for me, now, not for
a studio, some time ago.

That's why 'live' recordings...of a band playing for some other audience
at a different time and place...are so compromised. The idea of 'being
there' simply doesn't make sense because I know I'm here sat in my chair.

While I'm at it, why don't hi-fi headphones have gyroscopes?


Bearing noise....