Thanks for having the balls to write that. You should not be fearful for having done so. But I respect that you are and I am inviting the same no doubt. I’ve been reluctant to weigh in here and will probably regret it. But you triggered me.
I like your video resolution analogy. (or is it a metaphor, simile? I always mix those up). Recently my wife saw a real high resolution TV showing a program we have binged on together on our dated TV. She asked me why it looked fake. And it did. It was so crystal clear, but somehow the movement felt manufactured.
I often associate what I am hearing with the visual. I was a photographer before digital capture was even a wet dream. I spent many hours in my dark room. I looked at film grain with a loupe to the aroma of developers and fixers and single malt in a cramped red lit room (and Led Zeppelin blaring through a mono speaker). Now I use 100% digital cameras. Can’t say I enjoy it. It is now possible, and often done, to over sharpen an image. There is an etched quality to such an image. This is to say nothing of saturation, fake skies, added contrast. AI has arrived for sure. Besides, photography transitioned a looooong time ago to realism being perceived as better. This is despite the fact that it was originally an art form, not a journalistic endeavor designed to record reality. I posit here that our hobby has fallen to the same false god, that hyper realism is some how better than art and that our measurements show us what is more godly.
All of these headphones we are discussing are just portable concert halls. One takes you closer to the stage, another is more expansive. One gives more bass, another gives over sharpened treble. Is one better than the other if it allows you to wince at every sung s or t in a vocal? We like to discuss details that have nothing to do with a headphone’s ability to put us into a space that feels like the real space.
But if we also allow for the kind of tactility I am referencing and tying to your video analogy, accuracy becomes an irrelevant chase for a sharp image. Isn’t what we really want an image of the sound that transports us? Does it matter at all if there is distortion if it serves the image well? Are we trying to remove distortion from original content that is chock full of it anyway? Is there any benefit to “doing no harm”, or “as the artist intended”? Or can we all just simply be excused to enjoy music with some acoustic romanticism sprinkled in? I’ll take my music with a little Gaussian blur, thank you very much.
Here’s a scan of an analog (paper) print of a 4x5 format negative. As I hold it in my hand, there is nothing more analog than what it is. It has never been pixelated until I share it with you. It is a pure product of chemistry.
Photo removed due to, well, you can imagine.
That is my wife, in a stairwell at the Met Opera as she was running onto stage (full disclosure, it is a friends capture, not mine). Ironic, yes, because I can only share a digital scan of a film negative. There is no way to pass this around. Does it contradict my point? Maybe. But in this case the digital version of the image is resolute enough to show how NOT RESOLUTE the original negative is. Its a fucking blurry image taken with late 19th century technology. Does it matter if you view it on an 8K screen? You should see it in print! Tactility. On paper, printed in a dark room, it feels like the basement of the Village Vanguard sounds. Real.
My point is, I could go into to Photoshop and try to “correct” this image to modern standards. But it would show it. There would be artifacts from that attempt. They would be ugly. They would distract from over all impact of a dated, antique, greyscale image. Blurry as it is.
I’d rather see it as it is. It’s not just that it is my wife, the image has value in its imperfections, its blurriness, its distortions. This is an artistic image that would be incomplete without its imperfections. I am preferring at the moment to hear music through what is probably a poorly measuring tube amplifier. For the same reasons I am fine to look at my film images as film, I am ok to accept some distortion in my chain if it feels good. And, yes, I am saying we can feel these things. Gasp.
I guess that may put me firmly in the subjective camp?