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01-17-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,414
Joined on 05-27-2004
Post #: 81
Post ID: 29515
Reply to: 29513
More about cable elevators..
 Paul S wrote:
Great answer, Romy, at least for me. I still like Camus the more for excluding Stalin (the person), even at the expense of Sartre, and of course I do not conflate Communism with... whatever. I like the way you are working with language here, like a young Peirce. Dialog may still be possible, to judge by that post.

Paul S
Mike, it’s interesting that you mentioned dialogue. Yesterday I had a conversation with my audio friend about how my thinking on audio has evolved over the last four years. I brought him up to date on where I am now and asked whether it makes sense to speak about this publicly. His reaction was that almost no one would be able to understand it. He is right about the difficulty of comprehension, and wrong about the significance of that difficulty.


I’m seriously considering recording a video and laying the whole thing out, not as advocacy, but as clarification. I’m no longer surprised by where I ended up; in retrospect, the trajectory is coherent and almost unavoidable. What has lost all mystery for me is how trivial, and often absurd, most of our so-called audio frustrations appear once you step back and examine the objectives that drive them. In audio, and in music more broadly, many of those objectives are poorly examined substitutes for meaning, transcendence, or control, and the frustration they generate is largely self-produced.

From a certain perspective, the consumption of musical or audio experience unfolds in a vacuum, detached from its own sonic, aesthetic, and ultimately even ethical context. At this point the act of composing and listening cease to be primarily sensational and become informational, a form of communication operating at the level of consciousness itself. When techniques emerge that allow communication directly at that level, much of what we produce as music—those shamanic, quasi-ritual gestures of shaking air with instruments or machines—begins to lose its centrality.

This is a delicate threshold. Music can serve as an initiator of a conscious stream, a structured sequence that catalyzes awareness, perhaps even guiding possibility into experience. But the conscious stream does not belong to music. There is a subtle and essential decoupling between musical intention—the attempt to evoke consciousness—and the consciousness that arises in response. Music may open the door, but what passes through it is no longer musical in nature.

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
01-17-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,414
Joined on 05-27-2004
Post #: 82
Post ID: 29517
Reply to: 29515
.... and I have answers...
I am a little afraid that Jarek, after reading the end of my last post, will reply, “Roman, what you are describing is just a sequential collapse of the wave function in quantum field” Jarek might be a thousand times wrong about cables elevators, but he would be right about that. There are millions of mysteries in this field, but missing the biggest one is inexcusable: how the fuck did Bach, three hundred years ago, without knowing any of this, operate flawlessly at that level?

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
01-18-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
rowuk


Germany
Posts 474
Joined on 07-05-2012
Post #: 83
Post ID: 29518
Reply to: 29517
Operating flawlessly
When the stars line up, magic can happen, regardless if it is DPOLS or Bach's oevre.
What lined up?First and foremost, his talent that in childhood was nurtured inside the family.
Then the "apprenticeship" programs of the day that focussed on the rules and regulations of church music composition (this is a HUGE deal).
Opportunities to get paid with the requirement to create functional music weekly
To have ensembles capable of performing this level of work
Then the requirements to train the choir, organise the soloists, get the orchestra musicians all on the same page
To have creative texters that provide him with the libretti for his works
To have Gottfried Silbermann making magnificent organs
To have public acceptance for new tuning strategies
To have wives fine tuned to give him the space that he needed
To have clergy in the church willing to cooperate
To have a baroque era that was full of cultural, technical discovery AND financing
To have prolific colleagues like Vivaldi, Telemann and Händel
There is a huge amount of additional factors


So we see that Bach was a child of his times. Never since have we had anyone cranking out that quantity of meaningful works. There is immense depth to any one of the things listed.

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
01-18-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,823
Joined on 10-12-2006
Post #: 84
Post ID: 29519
Reply to: 29518
Sharing the Wealth
Great Context, Robin. And from more or less the same time and place of origin, we have Handel. So much Music pouring from that area for so many years! Starting in my youth, I was agog at their familiarity with Music, including the way it seemed to pervade the area, to the extent that there seemed to be great musicians, ensembles, orchestras, singers and chorales in every berg and hamlet, and they immediately adopted and developed recording and radio as devices for sharing the wealth.

How does this connect with Accuracy vs. Musicality (and YMMV)? Like Romy's recent post declared, one does not gather what one doesn't know.


Best regards,
Paul S
01-18-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,414
Joined on 05-27-2004
Post #: 85
Post ID: 29520
Reply to: 29518
Post hoc non est propter hoc
 rowuk wrote:
When the stars line up, magic can happen, regardless if it is DPOLS or Bach's oevre.
What lined up?First and foremost, his talent that in childhood was nurtured inside the family.
Then the "apprenticeship" programs of the day that focussed on the rules and regulations of church music composition (this is a HUGE deal).
Opportunities to get paid with the requirement to create functional music weekly
To have ensembles capable of performing this level of work
Then the requirements to train the choir, organise the soloists, get the orchestra musicians all on the same page
To have creative texters that provide him with the libretti for his works
To have Gottfried Silbermann making magnificent organs
To have public acceptance for new tuning strategies
To have wives fine tuned to give him the space that he needed
To have clergy in the church willing to cooperate
To have a baroque era that was full of cultural, technical discovery AND financing
To have prolific colleagues like Vivaldi, Telemann and Händel
There is a huge amount of additional factors


So we see that Bach was a child of his times. Never since have we had anyone cranking out that quantity of meaningful works. There is immense depth to any one of the things listed.
Rowuk, your enumeration of multiple reasons for success is certainly accurate, but don’t you feel that they are exactly aligned with my own enumeration of reasons why electricity might be good or bad for sound? I can give many very valid reasons why electricity is bad, but I cannot give a single reason why it is good—despite the fact that electrical sound can be spectacular, even though all objective indicators show that it is not a “special” event. The same applies to Bach if one approaches him from the direction you took in your post.

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
01-20-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
rowuk


Germany
Posts 474
Joined on 07-05-2012
Post #: 86
Post ID: 29523
Reply to: 29520
Curiosity killed the cat, electricity brought him back...
Why things happen in my view, is a matter of from how many thousands of miles up you are looking at those things.

If we are too close to a subject, often we can not see beyond the tip of our noses. I believe this is where "love" and "hate" thrive and are closely related. 

As we move further out, we get to the "Wehret den Anfängen" stage where we want to intervene early against dangerous developments before they become too big and can no longer be stopped, derived from Ovid, but today particularly associated with the warning of right-wing radicalism, populism and extremist tendencies in the face of the history of National Socialism. It means acting decisively at the first signs of loss of freedom, misanthropy or threat to democracy in order to prevent worse by resisting in the beginning. I believe that a lot of audiophilism gets stuck here with bogus arguments about having to rescue "sound" from digititis (as well as many other things). A lot of the "problems" with electricity also show up here. This was also something that Jazz and 12 tone music suffered from in their early days.

Moving alot further out, we start to see context. In the case of Bach, we do see the extraordinary qualities that comes from having the stars line up. It requires a lot from the viewer in the way of understanding the vast context as well as sometimes accepting our own mortality and not having enough time on earth to figure the rest out. In the case of electricity, we do not have this issue. The problems are AFTER (not because of) the electrical event. The "because" is in our listening habits, maybe even in the audio gear or media. There is no "growth" or "life" intrinsic to electricity. We are not enslaved and can very well "learn" to deal with it (change listening habits, move to areas without electrical events, new gear, less stereo/more live concerts, learn to read scores, etc.). 

In the case of Bach, he wrote new rules for musical engagement and regardless of how much time and energy we spend, there is always more - for me anyway. I can not "learn" to live with it. Every encounter is something new. Every time that I read a score anew, I pick up something else. BECAUSE he had all the cards in his hand, his oevre is simply more complete and this basically is very much a tool that shows me how small I really am. Although similarly prolific, Händel and Telemann did not write new rules. That is a HUGE difference historically, musically and electrically. Their popularity did not wane like Bachs did.

Funny enough, after Bach's death his works were not played again until Mendelssohn dug some out (he did not have the musicians with the proficiency to perform many of the compositions). Then they disappeared again until the 1920s and have been expanding ever since as musicians developed the skills to reengage.

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
01-20-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
rowuk


Germany
Posts 474
Joined on 07-05-2012
Post #: 87
Post ID: 29524
Reply to: 29520
Curiosity killed the cat, electricity brought him back.....
Triple. The site was very slow and erratic. No post delete possible.

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
01-21-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
N-set
Warsaw, Poland
Posts 644
Joined on 01-07-2006
Post #: 88
Post ID: 29525
Reply to: 29517
It's not a collapse, it's the opposite
 Romy the Cat wrote:
 I never described at my site “those moments” and I do not think that the value of the moments could be understood from listening music. 

Your posts/videos is the only place, apart from the philosophical/spiritual literature, I've seen a precise description of those moments (or events), very close to how I feel them.  No, their value is in themselves only and in nothing else. Music can help igniting them, which is exactly what you are saying below:
 Romy the Cat wrote:
 Music can serve as an initiator of a conscious stream, a structured sequence that catalyzes awareness, perhaps even guiding possibility into experience. But the conscious stream does not belong to music. There is a subtle and essential decoupling between musical intention—the attempt to evoke consciousness—and the consciousness that arises in response. Music may open the door, but what passes through it is no longer musical in nature.  

Bingo! 
 Romy the Cat wrote:
I am a little afraid that Jarek, after reading the end of my last post, will reply, “Roman, what you are describing is just a sequential collapse of the wave function in quantum field” Jarek might be a thousand times wrong about cables elevators, but he would be right about that. There are millions of mysteries in this field, but missing the biggest one is inexcusable: how the fuck did Bach, three hundred years ago, without knowing any of this, operate flawlessly at that level?

Collapse, however mysterious the process is (I've spent past 10+ yrs on that and counting),  is in a sense boring - the coherence is lost inevitably. I see those moments as the opposite - there is a large scale coherence built, coherence with your own self, with your past, with the universe. This is closer to entanglement - quantum coherence of many parts making them inseparable, coherence that seems to exist beyond the space and time.
You can hate me for that, but I don't think Bach operated at any higher spiritual level, more like he operated in local Kneipen. " But this doesn't matter. If his music elevates the listener, all the rest are details. For me it doesn't work. "Too intellectual" did not have the tone I wanted in light of Rowuk's comment. More like "too little heart". 
And Bach and math, or in general music and math - I'm not directly in the subject but close to it thanks to two colleagues from work, with one I share the office, concerts, and music discussions.  Recently heard a lecture of apparently a renown mathematician in the field, Lane Hughston, and it was rather pathetic. I think the whole field suffers from the same sickness that Romy has identified and been exposing in audio for two decades now: lack of correlation between mathematical structures that people try to see in music and our perceptions. Assigning e.g. group theory structures to chord combinations tells as much about how we perceive those chords as cable elevators tell about the sound. I've heard about someone who recently ran machine algorithm through all Bach's work looking for those group-theory related chords and found only about 2-3% of them in total. But my office colleague did make some interesting small discovery, connecting math and known facts about our tone perception, I'll share it when it's published.



Cheers,
Jarek
01-21-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,823
Joined on 10-12-2006
Post #: 89
Post ID: 29526
Reply to: 29525
Recognitions
As though "the event existed ahead of time", or "it came to pass as I recognized it". We already accept that Time is variable.

Paul S
01-22-2026 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
rowuk


Germany
Posts 474
Joined on 07-05-2012
Post #: 90
Post ID: 29527
Reply to: 29519
My mileage does vary
 Paul S wrote:
Great Context, Robin. And from more or less the same time and place of origin, we have Handel. So much Music pouring from that area for so many years! Starting in my youth, I was agog at their familiarity with Music, including the way it seemed to pervade the area, to the extent that there seemed to be great musicians, ensembles, orchestras, singers and chorales in every berg and hamlet, and they immediately adopted and developed recording and radio as devices for sharing the wealth.

How does this connect with Accuracy vs. Musicality (and YMMV)? Like Romy's recent post declared, one does not gather what one doesn't know.


Best regards,
Paul S

To claim accuracy, we must understand what it is that we are talking about. In the case of audio playback, there is no "accuracy", no replication of the original by any stretch of the imagination.  If we are talking about the playback of Bach organ works, we can however get accurate content in the realms of rhythm, pitch, proportion, articulation which can lead to a plausible and satisfying "musical" experience. There are many recordings so transparent, that I can close my eyes and "see" the score - if the playback is adequate. If we lose pitch accuracy, the transparency suffers. Less articulate systems can be transparent, but the rhythm can suffer. The musical experience needs additional brainwork to fill in the holes.

This brings me back to Romys mention of granite - and seeing not the block, rather the sculpture possible. Accuracy or musicality are personally defined and the object to sculpt is very dependent on the fantasy and capability of the person picking and using the tools to model our systems. This is related to my post on Bach being a child of his time. Without all of the factors listed, Bach could have just been another composer, brilliant but lost to the future or mediocre and well supported. Because his time was well trained, documented, well financed, with great public interest, he thrived in ways that others did not. We can say that Händel, Telemann, Purcell, Boyce, Torelli, Corelli also were brilliant and prolific but we can not claim that they were a REVOLUTION, a turning point in musical history. What we can say however, is that even today, Bach is often considered way too intellectual for casual listening but is casual listening a subject for the GoodSoundClub?

Sculpting intellectuality, accuracy and musicality in a sound system could also be something where we need a "Bach" to create new rules of engagement. They also would have to be a child of their time. If I think back through audio history, there are certainly "pioneers" in their own rights but the holistic genius that created a "complete" work is still missing. The rules of engagement have not really changed since the beginning of playback. Frequency response and dynamics have improved, but there still is so much missing - in fact so much that there are arguments about Accuracy vs. Musicality!

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
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