Absolute Sound

The Absolute Sound is about music and the reproduction of music in the home. Our assumption is that the sound of music, unamplified, occurring in a real space is a philosophic absolute against which we may judge the performance of devices designed to reproduce music. In other words, there is a real thing out there, an absolute sound, that we are able to use as an ultimate and irrefutable reference. That sound may occur in a large room or concert hall (small or large). That music can be bluegrass, folk, jazz, big band, or classical. (Nor need instrumental music be our only reference: the human voice will serve as well.) Such is the real thing and in our descriptions of how a component s sound either honors or departs from music s truth, we are, given a common language, basing our findings upon observation, not upon a sliding scale of relative subjective reactions without antecedent in reality. Of course, our reactions to what we do observe are subjective and will ever be until that remote day when it is no longer possible to distinguish the illusion from the reality.