|
|
Romy the Cat
Boston, MA
Posts 10,443
Joined on 05-27-2004
|
Post #:
|
1
|
|
Post ID:
|
29614
|
|
Reply to:
|
29614
|
|
|
|
Why audio itself is wasted efforts
|
|
|
|
|
We take a noble
instrument — let us say the 2A3 — and we build an altar around it. We adjust
parameters, refine topology, polish transformers, and whisper to ourselves that
each refinement brings us closer to “better” sound. But what is this “better”?
It is the echo of our own will or projections. We do not hear purity; we hear
ourselves. We sanctify our labor and then kneel before its result. The sound is
not improved — we are justified.
Remove the builder and the illusion trembles. The ear does not assemble; it
receives. The music does not argue; it strikes. What we call fidelity is often
only the morality of effort — the belief that toil must produce truth.
And yet musicality is not merely the vibration of air against the drum of the
ear. To consume music is not to measure frequencies, but to be seized by
interpretation. Hearing is only the doorway; understanding is the event. It is
a psychological and cultural transformation — a becoming. The body resonates,
the memory awakens, culture speaks through us. What is heard is never merely
sound; it is meaning forged in the furnace of our instincts, our history, our
training of perception.
The machine does not create this meaning. It only provokes it.
Without awareness of the forces within us — without psychological courage and
cultural depth — one mistakes the refinement of equipment for the refinement of
perception. One polishes the instrument but neglects the listener. And thus one
misunderstands what audio truly is: not a compilation of tones, but an
encounter; not an object, but a relation; not a system, but an interpretation. It is an ultimate fugue of human life experiences
where the layers of complexity gradually introduced and processed by human psyche. One must learn to hear without care the altar one has built.
"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
|
|
|