At 12:20 PM 3/3/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>You chose your Advents on the basis of how a piece of studio equipment
>evaluated the output signals with respect to the input.
Actually I chose to audition the Advents based on Harry Pearson's strong
recommendation that _in his subjective opinion_ someone with my "ear taste"
and lean pocketbook could hardly do better. And as far as that goes,
Pearson at bottom is and always has been about how sound reproduced
actually sounds in the real world compared to _actual real-world sound_,
not how it reads in cypher on some freaking electronic scope!
>But that's only part of the "system" since it didn't include you.
Chuck, it included me just as soon as I went down to an Advent dealer (this
one happened to be in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin--at the time I lived in
Oshkosh) and conducted an extensive A-B test of the Advent in that store's
listening room with all sorts of higher-priced competition. Not wholly
satisfied with this demonstration, I then took two different speaker
systems home and lived with these for a couple-three weeks, along with a
pair of large Advents generously loaned to me by a college friend (he's the
one who turned me on to Pearson's review). Based on all that I bought a
pair of Advents.
>It leaves out a lot of ear drum elasticity, flexibility of cilia, shape and
>size of ear canal and possible selective attenuation and amplification
>of the signal by a brain and nervous system which is custom programmed
>by life experience and lord knows what else.
I've factored all that in, for what it's worth, and in any event I
otherwise made an effort to impart my awareness that much of what we
discuss with re image and sound and whatnot "quality" is primarily (if not
exclusively) subjective by nature and influenced by all sorts of stuff
along the way (in the case of sound all of the component gear in one's
audio chain, plus the sound source itself, not to mention any given room's
acoustics).
>There's not much mystery why we don't always agree.
>
>Chuck Norcutt
Why ought we _ever_ agree re subjective issues? IS that some requirement?
Speaking only for myself I frequently seek out opposite points of view, if
for no other reason than I've found this effort helps me to better clarify
for myself my own point of view, which in due course often enough changes
because of that effort--with the added bonus of providing me with a change
of "mental landscape" free of charge!
Regardless, my point was that no matter to what degree something as
indefinite as image quality should be considered in a subjective light,
nevertheless my photographic eye is indeed very practiced when it comes to
the issue of photorealism. It is practiced for the reason that I once
earned my living as a grabber of photorealistic images, and then repeatedly
(always, as far as I know) had that judgment of mine run through a second
practiced filter of "editorial judgment." Based on this real-world
experience I think I have come to understand and to appreciate at base what
is and is not a photorealistic image. And the images I've seen on the site
we discuss with re to a Zuiko wedded to an E-1 strike me as being just
that: photorealistic.
It put it to you that by _definition_ a camera system which can produce a
photorealistic image is a high-quality camera system. Ergo, Zuikos on E-1s
(based solely on the examples I've seen to date) seem to represent a happy
marriage within that context. Perhaps not perfect, but capable of rendering
good images in certain situations without a doubt. If and when I've seen a
thousand more examples of this marriage I'll probably then believe I know
more about it. But that's then and this is now.
For all intents and purposes the same principle applies with sound. I don't
know of a single sound engineer who uses (or used) JBLs as reference
speakers. If there are any God bless them, more power and all that. I _do_
know of one sound engineer who has used (and still uses to my knowledge)
Advents for his reference speakers, and another (a friend I met on the Net
years ago, never been to his studio, which is in Virginia) who does not use
Advents. As it happens this guy prefers some other brand of speaker, which
he claims is equally neutral in its qualities, but he is also warmly
disposed toward the idea of a similar Advent setup in his studio based on
_his_ listening experience with that speaker system. This, too, speaks to a
practiced ear as opposed to an unpracticed ear hearing something different
than, say, my brother, and is similar to my example of what can reasonably
be (and by implication I suppose ought not reasonably be) considered by a
practiced eye to be of photorealistic quality come images.
None of which is meant to say that Advents are "better" than anything else.
They are, however, still to this day one of the most "neutral" speaker
systems one could ever hook up at the end of his audio reproduction chain.
None of which implies that Zuikos wedded to an E-1 represent something
better in any respect necessarily (or even as good as, down the road) to
lenses specially designed for and dedicated to that DSLR body. None of
which implies that I think my opinion is better than yours when it comes to
concept of (the philosophy of?) photorealism.
The pictures I've seen to date, however, of a Zuiko mounted on an E-1 do
spark my interest., and if you want to know also cause me to ask: why
hasn't Olympus done this themselves? (And I think I might have a clue as to
the answer on that score as well.)
Tris
>Tris Schuler wrote:
> > This argument of taste in image "quality" is not much different than the
> > preference for the sound one hears out of speaker systems. Every sound we
> > hear is distorted to one extent or another, of course, but my preference
> > (and thus ultimate speaker choice years ago) was for a sound as
> "uncolored"
> > as I could find, and so, based on a review back in the 70s in _The
> Absolute
> > Sound_ I eventually purchased a couple of Advents.
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