Honey & Clover II | audio fidelity

Patience really is a virtue… one that at times I don’t have, and the consequences are dramatic to say the least. See, I just can’t stand having an episode of Honey & Clover II just sitting there unwatched… so of-course I watched it.
As Eddie Izzard says… Oh dear, stupid man…
He of-course was talking about Hitler, but in regards to my actions, I really shouldn’t tortue myself like this. Two entries ago I mentioned that people you love are worth tearing yourself up over… a good anime series probably isn’t. So I’m well and truly an addict now, so much so that I care greatly for totally ficticious characters.

That’s slightly over-dramatised – it doesn’t bother me that much, but I really do love Honey & Clover. It creates an atmosphere that is unmatched by any other series and the characters are painfully real. Never before have I seen the vibrance of youth and young-adulthood captured so well.

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Recently I spent some time with one of my best friends Jack. He just purchased a Creative X-Fi (I think they’re called…) for his PC, and a good set of Sennheiser HD595 cans (headphones). Six months or so ago I got myself some HD555s which are awesome, and Jack thought he’d get the 595s as his hearing is great from 16k up, whereas I’m slightly deaf there with a bit of a roll-off starting at 16K, probably declining a bit more from 18K and above. Jack’s pretty amazing though, I estimate he can hear at least to 22KHz and above, maybe 22.5 before he starts to roll-off as is natural in human hearing, which usually happens sharply around 20K.
In any case, we both broke out our best music to test the soundcard and headphones with, and as it always does, it made me reflect over pieces of music that are both phonically brilliant, and also mixed and engineered extremely well. My reference tracks included:

Where is the max? – Planet Funk, from the album Non Zero Sumness.
Until the end of the world – U2 – from Achtung Baby.
Little light of love – Eric Serra – from the soundtrack, The Fifth Element.
Hot Cakes – Directions In Groove – from Speakeasy.
Strange Meadow Lark – the Dave Brubeck Quartet – from Take Five.
Opening titles – John Williams – from the soundtrack, Hook.
Opening titles – Kenji Kawaii – from the soundtrack, Innocence: Ghost in the Shell 2.

While I’m proud of all of the music I listen to, exceptional mixing and engineering is rare, even in pieces that feature a high level of musicianship. The tracks listed above are a hand-full of those I use to reference speakers and equipment configurations that truly test the fidelity of the components. Between them (and others not listed), they test every frequency and dynamic range, transient response, and transparency of translation. It’s amazing that in the many daily applications we generally listen to music that so much of it is lost due to the quality of the hardware it is played on. Good D/As (Digital to Analogue converters), amplifiers and voice-coils/speakers reveal so many things that usually get muddied up by poor gear, predominantly high frequencies, reverb tails, softer transients and in particular, sounds in the mid-high range that are mixed quieter than everything else. Poor hardware configurations will also often make a mix feel crowded, with layers fighting with each-other for space where they usually wouldn’t. This is most easily identified in the bottom-end and low-mid frequencies – kicks and toms, electric and upright bass, timpani, cello and double bass in orchestral music, can all make the bottom-end sound quite uncontained if amplifiers and voice-coils can’t respond to a full dynamic range, especially with signifficant mid-frequencies present as is generally the case with orchestral music in particular.

Most don’t hear the effects of good or bad mixing, and indeed sometimes hardware can make it difficult to decypher, but listening to well mixed music on high-end gear in comparison to standard consumer-audio equipment can make the same piece of music almost sound like it’s an entirely different recording.

All of this though is just technical jargon.
While Jack and I freely discuss the underlying reasons why such gear and music is good, the truth of the matter is that mixing and engineering are like two other instruments in the music. They contribute to the pleasing and enjoyable sound that we hear, and they are as important a part of the sound as the music itself in reaching us emotionally and connecting with the music. Not all music is created equally, nor are all pieces of gear. Sure Jack and I both make our compromises – we both have mp3 players that we use fairly standard headphones and car-audio systems with, all of which are fairly compromising configurations. Even with those limitations though, music that’s been mixed well still stands out from the norm.