Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Ear Pornography: Do Audiophiles Know it When They Hear It?

May have started as a Quixotic quest to make our hi-fi rig sound like live music, but does tweaking our hi-fi rigs to make them sound better than the real thing nothing more than ear pornography?


By: Ringo Bones


The concept may have started when some audiophiles and hi-fi enthusiasts who can’t take some of the dark and brooding aspects of Vladimir Horowitz’s piano playing resorted to tweaking to make the famed piano player sound like the bright and breezy Liberace. From then on, audiophiles have used judicious choice of analog and digital interconnects and speaker cables and tube / valve substitution and Rubycon Black Gate capacitors – with varying success – to make their favorite artists sound like the way their respective egos intend them to sound on their hi-fi rig. But is it still keeping up with the spirit of owning a hi-fi in the first place – that is the life-like reproduction of music in the home? I mean is the concept of ear pornography nothing more than the really Quixotic quest to make your hi-fi’s sound reproduction abilities better than the real thing / real life?

The hi-fi inconvenient truth is that we don’t actually listen with our ears, we actually listen with our minds and our emotions (or egos?). In short, how much we hear depends very much on how much we want to hear. Subconsciously, our mind can block out everything but the music or scrutinize the most subtle nuances of the musician’s rendition of a certain piece of music or the recording engineer’s production techniques. Every hi-fi enthusiast has a preference somewhere between these two extremes of auditory scrutiny.

To the uninitiated, the clean and clinical sound of contemporary digital-based hi-fi can be a pain in the ear to anyone weaned on the mellow and mellifluous sound of yesteryear. Choosing the right interconnect cables to make the audiophile recordings - if they have one - of your favorite artist. Like Taylor Swift, Nina Gordon and Louise Post of Veruca Salt, Anneke van Giersbergen of the Gathering or Liz Phair sound like a Central Asian Bardic Diva may seem like mere ear pornography to the unsympathetic audiophile. Strange, given that people who are generally offended by conventional pornography are more often than not suffers from poor body image. Does this mean that people who are offended by ear pornography are either tone deaf or is not blessed with a decent singing ability? Still, there’s a good chance that worthy audiophiles will probably know ear pornography when they hear it.

8 comments:

Letiche said...

Ear Pornography? Like former US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart used to say: "I know it when I hear it. Is it related to audiophilia nervosa?

Kat said...

Making Taylor Swift sound like a Central Asian Bardic Diva might not be all that bad given that she already looks like a Uyghur anyway. Does Taylor Swift have Uyghur roots?

Ringo said...

The concept of "Ear Pornography" modeled after the Ronald Reagan pornography report of July 1986 seems too subjective to be of ontological significance in the world of high fidelity. While Taylor Swift may coincidentally look like some of the Uyghur women that I know, only a genomic test would confirm for sure if she really has Uyghur roots.

VaneSSa said...

Just because she looks like me doesn't mean Taylor Swift has Uyghur roots. I wonder what kind of audiophile analog and / or digital interconnects are needed to "temper" her Orange County accent - really monstrous Monster cables? . Taylor Swift an American Uyghur? Yeah, right.

Heidi Gail said...

There might be some truth to her obviously much diluted Uyghur roots because look-wise Taylor Swift might pass muster as the Northern Alliance leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum's daughter.

Lilith Fair said...

I don't know about ear pornography and its relation to hi-fi but would the term ear erotica be more apt?

Michelle said...

Would Ear Erotica be more apt?

Ringo said...

Over the years, I've started to view that music can be a non-gender-specific form of ear pornography - but I also think that the term ear erotica might also be more apt in describing hi-fi given that during my younger years I tend to misspell Beethoven's Eroica as "Beethoven's Erotica". Unless, someone suggest "Ear Candy" as a more apt G-Rated term when it comes to describing hi-fi.