July 2025

It's All About The Music
Thoughts about the state of our hobby as the 1900s are now long behind us.
Article By Roger Skoff

  I was invited to my daughter's home for Father's Day. It had been a while since I'd been there, and though we were planning to go to dinner, neither of us was particularly hungry, so we sat around and talked, and eventually watched a movie before leaving for the restaurant. The movie was the more recent version of Mortal Kombat, a kung-fu fantasy action film that was, for whatever it's worth, completely different from the original, but quite thoroughly enjoyable, and blessed with lots of special effects both visual and sonic. And that's where the surprise came in. Her TV set was a 75" monster, which was the biggest that would fit on her wall. Its sound was provided by a four-foot-long soundbar and its associated woofer.

Frankly, being unfamiliar with modern soundbars, I had never actually listened to that kind of setup before. Seven decades of Hi-Fi Crazy snobbishness had kept me from ever considering a soundbar for my own home. My home TV system uses a Yamaha receiver, Vandersteen2 main speakers, and Totem bookshelf monitors for surround. The simple fact of soundbars' size and nature had kept me from ever auditioning one at a store.

What A Surprise!
The sound was nothing like the tinny squeaking I had expected to hear from an array of what can't possibly have been more than two or three-inch drivers and an unknown (I couldn't see it) but probably no more than (just for space and cost considerations) single 8" woofer. Modern DSP and the like showcase the possibilities.

Instead of tinny, it was rich and full, and seemed to go far deeper than I would have expected. In short, the sound was thoroughly enjoyable... for watching a movie. There was no imaging, depth, or soundstaging, but that may very well have been in the movie's soundtrack. (Movie soundtracks have to be audible and enjoyable to anyone seated anywhere in what might be a huge theater, not just concentrated at or near a "sweet spot", so they tend to be recorded accordingly.) And the bass, though certainly great fun, didn't have—regardless of its apparent depth—the punch and definition of a good high-end subwoofer. Even so, it was there in force and could be felt when necessary.

In short, the sound was thoroughly enjoyable, probably (although my daughter does very well), affordable to a normal person, and fully as good as it needed to be.

And That Got Me Thinking
Maybe the perceivable decline of our hobby and industry isn't just because high-end audio hi-fi has gotten so expensive that only the privileged can afford it. Maybe it's also because, even at its best, it doesn't offer enough of the kinds of things that most people want to buy to justify the extra price they would have to pay to get them. With television, I can understand that. When you've got a picture, you don't really need imaging or soundstaging to let you feel like you're there, enjoying the performance. The sound and the picture are mutually explanatory, and when a specific space or location is necessary, or even helpful, they can be added electronically or in the surround channels—at least at a movie theater.

With music, though, it ought to be different. To me, it's not the clarity, the volume, the dynamics, or even the extended frequency response of a high-end audiophile system that makes it thrilling. It's the feeling of actually being in the same space with the performers – the almost-visual-even-without-a-picture witnessing of the performance and its venue that makes high-end audio magical and so much to be desired.

Imaging and soundstaging are the real tricks that a high-end audiophile sound system can do that, at least for me, make it special. Having two speakers produce three dimensions and let you know not just what instruments or performers are present, but their exact position on the stage and the size of the space they're in is something nothing else can do, and that makes all the effort, commitment, and expense worthwhile.

There's a problem, though; in fact, a couple of them: One is that (other than classical music and possibly jazz) fewer and fewer of the recordings we can buy are recorded in a way that makes hi-fi's greatest trick possible. Instead of two channels (or even three channels, with the center channel mixed in at the end, as early Warner Brothers records were done) the standard, today, is multi-channel immersive recordings where there may never have been any single original recording session but all of the performers, instruments, or orchestral sections are recorded separately, at different times, and possibly even different locations, and all are mixed together at the end to produce a final recording. Basically, this is how ~99% of pop music has been produced over the past 10 to 20 years.

This can have all kinds of advantages. For example, by recording everything separately, the engineer, producer, or artist can add or subtract things at will, can edit out mistakes in a single track without affecting any other, and can even save studio and musician time by not having to do multiple re-takes to finally get a "perfect" usable performance—the engineer can "fix it in the mix", away from the studio, a whole lot more cheaply.

Besides convenience and economic advantages, multi-track recording also allows for any number of special sound and recording effects not possible any other way, and even some of my favorite recordings (think Pink Floyd and The Beatles) have benefited from them. Unfortunately, while even the use of multiple microphones for a two-channel recording can result in phase problems and corruption of the recorded image and soundstage, multi-track recording can make true imaging and soundstaging—to me, the real lure of high-end audio—simply impossible.

And, if what a great high-fidelity home audio stereo system does best can't, since it isn't there on modern recordings. So why buy a system capable of doing it? And if the general public can never hear the magic because it's not there, how are they ever going to come to want it? Is the music business failing music lovers?

The other problem is that typical circa 1900s classical and jazz, the two kinds of music most likely to be recorded in a way that will allow for realistic imaging and soundstaging—seem, at least in recent years, to be the two kinds of music least likely for the general public to want to buy and hear.  Proof of this, at least as regards classical music, is the fact that dealers across the country and exhibitors at recent high-fidelity home audio shows have almost uniformly reported that the very best way to drive people out of their demonstration room is to put on a classical recording to show off their system. Times they are a-changing. Immersive music is said to be the future, but who within the music industry is capable of doing it at scale?

If they can't hear it and won't listen, how are we ever going to get people to ditch their soundbars? How are we to make music lovers aware that high-end audio even exists? In the future, let us hope they buy a real hi-fi system and

Enjoy the music!

 

Roger Skoff