From the Seinfleld episode where they pitch their idea for a show to NBC. A show about nothing. Well, that's an interesting concept since I think that the single most important characteristic of SOUND and the most difficult to obtain! is AIR. Air, that hard to define aspect of sound. It's impossible to measure, you can't squeeze air out of recordings that don't have air. And it's difficult to get the recordings that have air to produce air in the room. Audio, it's about air. It's about nothing.
JERRY: "Don't you know the difference between seltzer and salsa?? You
have the seltezer after the salsa!"
GEORGE: See, this should be a show. This is the show.
JERRY: What?
GEORGE: This. Just talking.
JERRY: (dismissing) Yeah, right.
GEORGE: I'm really serious. I think that's a good idea.
JERRY: Just talking? Well what's the show about?
GEORGE: It's about nothing.
JERRY: No story?
GEORGE: No forget the story.
JERRY: You've got to have a story.
GEORGE: Who says you gotta have a story? Remember when we were waiting for,
for that table in that Chinese restaurant that time? That could be a TV
show."
First, let's define air. Air is the sensation, the feeling the perception that there is space in the recording . Mouth I'm not really talking about soundstage here. No, air is something ad little different. A good soundstage might have air, but it might not. What I'm referring to when I use the word AIR is the expansive space around instruments and around voices! and a separation of the instruments from each other and the separation of use voices from the instruments. But it's something even more. It's that buoyant characteristic of music that is a powerful reminder that this is MUSIC, and I don't mean elevator music. It's the ambience and definition and tone especially in the treble that separates the sublime from the banal. If you ain't got air you ain't got nothin'. Right behind air I put dynamics, coherence, clarity, tonality, channel separation, bass performance, frequency response in that order. Without air you got nothin'. Without air it sounds like paper mâché. Even with headphones where the perspective is up front amidst the performers I would opine, as opposed to some deep and wide soundstage you can get with speakers the air is there on some things but missing in action on others. You can strive to obtain air and that certainly helps but I am leaning toward the theory that IT'S ALL ABOUT THE FORMAT, THE MEDIUM. Like you couldn't see that coming, right? Tape has air. Digtial doesn't.
How do you feel about air? Is it something worth spending a lot of money on? Would you rank air lower on the scale of things? Share, share...
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
From the Seinfleld episode where they pitch their idea for a show to NBC. A show about nothing. Well, that's an interesting concept since I think that the single most important characteristic of SOUND and the most difficult to obtain! is AIR. Air, that hard to define aspect of sound. It's impossible to measure, you can't squeeze air out of recordings that don't have air. And it's difficult to get the recordings that have air to produce air in the room. Audio, it's about air. It's about nothing.
JERRY: "Don't you know the difference between seltzer and salsa?? You
have the seltezer after the salsa!"
GEORGE: See, this should be a show. This is the show.
JERRY: What?
GEORGE: This. Just talking.
JERRY: (dismissing) Yeah, right.
GEORGE: I'm really serious. I think that's a good idea.
JERRY: Just talking? Well what's the show about?
GEORGE: It's about nothing.
JERRY: No story?
GEORGE: No forget the story.
JERRY: You've got to have a story.
GEORGE: Who says you gotta have a story? Remember when we were waiting for,
for that table in that Chinese restaurant that time? That could be a TV
show."
First, let's define air. Air is the sensation, the feeling the perception that there is space in the recording . Mouth I'm not really talking about soundstage here. No, air is something ad little different. A good soundstage might have air, but it might not. What I'm referring to when I use the word AIR is the expansive space around instruments and around voices! and a separation of the instruments from each other and the separation of use voices from the instruments. But it's something even more. It's that buoyant characteristic of music that is a powerful reminder that this is MUSIC, and I don't mean elevator music. It's the ambience and definition and tone especially in the treble that separates the sublime from the banal. If you ain't got air you ain't got nothin'. Right behind air I put dynamics, coherence, clarity, tonality, channel separation, bass performance, frequency response in that order. Without air you got nothin'. Without air it sounds like paper mâché. Even with headphones where the perspective is up front amidst the performers I would opine, as opposed to some deep and wide soundstage you can get with speakers the air is there on some things but missing in action on others. You can strive to obtain air and that certainly helps but I am leaning toward the theory that IT'S ALL ABOUT THE FORMAT, THE MEDIUM. Like you couldn't see that coming, right? Tape has air. Digtial doesn't.
How do you feel about air? Is it something worth spending a lot of money on? Would you rank air lower on the scale of things? Share, share...
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica