Hi Buddha,

Right off I have to protest or should I say lament, albeit quite mildly, that I should have copyrighted I original statement regarding some female quasi-jazz vocalists and the placement of the microphone during the recording session and the resulting effect on the grey haired male audiophile. Seems to have made quite an impression with several of you folks around here.

As to your very good question, why yes, I think you can have too much detail. But too much detail is the fault of the recording engineer and not the playback system. While I don't tend to find too many audio only recordings with this "too much detail" problem I have noticed it on quite a few movie soundtracks.

Here's what I'm talking about. In a movie two people are sitting at table having a conversation over a couple of cups of coffee. One of them puts some sugar in the cup and stirs, normally no big deal and in normal everyday conversation not all that intrusive sounding. However on some soundtracks these small little sounds are magnified to such an extent that one would think one is in the damn coffee cup. I think that's too much detail. Of course these sounds are completely artificial and not quite the same as an audio recording but I'm just using them as an example, so please forgive me.

In audio only recordings the "too much detail" is must likely the result of bad mixing of the tracks or some other oversight. One example is Bob Dylan's infamous "Blood On Tracks" New York sessions where the buttons on his jacket were scraping the body of the guitar during some of the songs and he chose to rerecord several of the tunes. Hence the "Blood On The Tapes" bootleg. A few of the original NY recordings are officially available on "The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991". Listen for yourself to what "too much detail" can sound like.

In a way, I think we're talking apples and oranges here. With a film, too much resolution can destroy the illusion of reality more easily (seeing things that reveal sets to be fake, for example, will take you out of your suspension of disbelief.) To my ears, more resolution in music implies that smearing and masking has been reduced to allow for nuances and subtleties to come through. I agree with jazzfan here, and believe that the things you're pointing out about standing out too much are issues of balance and mixing, or choices in recording techniques (gates on Diana Krall vocals.)

Sure, many recordings are not about capturing a real event, but, even those things can be balanced in a way to make them convincingly real. There's a somewhat stilted, but, well recorded version of "Spanish Harlem" by Mrs. David Mamet that I'm reasonably sure that you're familiar with, that I've used over the years to see how revealing my system is. When my system first came together 11 years ago, the shaker in the rear right was just a series of chht chht chhts in the background. As I fine tuned my rig and got better components and cables, I was able to hear the individual beads shake in the shaker gourd and what direction the shakes take place. I love that!

Jef,are talking about artificially enchanced resolution or just well...plain resolution ?Like for instance,Jazz at the Pawnshop (guys,son't start,i can't think of anything else) where you constantly hear glasses and knives ringing etc ?

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...There's a somewhat stilted, but, well recorded version of "Spanish Harlem" by Mrs. David Mamet that I'm reasonably sure that you're familiar with, that I've used over the years to see how revealing my system is. When my system first came together 11 years ago, the shaker in the rear right was just a series of chht chht chhts in the background. As I fine tuned my rig and got better components and cables, I was able to hear the individual beads shake in the shaker gourd and what direction the shakes take place. I love that!

And here I was thinking that this guy Jeff was okay. Now he's sounding just like that golden eared guru over at TAS. "what direction the shakes take place" WTF is that supposed to mean? Up & down or side to side? Like it makes a big difference. Gimme a break. You've lost it, my friend. Or as our good friend DUP might say, if the shakes go up and down does that mean that the electrons go side to side and vice versa?

Yiangos - I don't own JATPS. But, I suspect things like the clinking of the glasses you're talking about usually have to do with the way that recording was made and mixed or balanced. Buddha mentioned etched sound, which implies an exaggeration of a particular frequency, and doesn't necessarily have to mean too much detail.

jazzfan - Being able to hear when those beads are going up and down or side to side or in a counterclockwise swirl tells me many things about transparency, spatial presentation, inner detail, PRaT, and absolute polarity... getting this right on "Spanish Harlem" (like it or not) lets me enjoy jazzfan approved recordings

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jazzfan - Being able to hear when those beads are going up and down or side to side or in a counterclockwise swirl tells me many things about transparency, spatial presentation, inner detail, PRaT, and absolute polarity... getting this right on "Spanish Harlem" (like it or not) lets me enjoy jazzfan approved recordings

You got me curious now. I'm gonna dig out my copy of The Third Decade and go spin it now. I haven't listened to it in ages.

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You got me curious now. I'm gonna dig out my copy of The Third Decade and go spin it now. I haven't listened to it in ages.

Good choice, however "Urban Bushmen" would be preferred since it's a live recording.

Anyway when can we expect to see the chart? And I hope it's in color, please, pretty please. And don't forget to include who's playing exactly what "little instrument" (as the AEC liked to call their percussion toys) at any given moment also give, in case of "Urban Bushman", the exact location on the stage of the person playing said instrument, otherwise, you might as well be listeing to Blose.

I don't think you can have too much resolution, but when superior resolution is presented at such loud levels as to be unnatural, the music loses realism.

This correlates with Stereophile's long lamented appeal for the music companies to bring back dynamics to the compact disc. I agree and have become increasingly annoyed with the loudness of subtle passages on many new CDs. When you reach the point that your tuner provides more satisfaction with sound quality than your digital front end, either it's way past time for an upgrade or digital is going to lose its appeal rather quickly. And, my tuner ain't all that much!

Okay,let me put it this way and i hope you'll understand what i am trying to say (don't say no because i'll repeat everything in Greek lol) When a normal "natural" recording of a venue has certain "moises" other than music,i quess it is okay,provited they are recorder as they are.When the sound engineer artificially enchanced those noises,ie boost them to make them more ummm say obvious,well,this is very irritating !

I doubt that video at 1920 x 1080 is too detailed. There are computer monitors today with a 3840 x 2400 resolution, which are used for movie/video processing. And I don't think that, even though overwhelming at times, an IMAX movie (using frames @ 38720 x 24120 resolution) cannot be enjoyed because of too much detail.
In the audio realm, high-resolution is not characterized by enhanced or amplified sounds. To use a visual analogy, sound waves combine in an interference pattern, which, depending on their properties (e.g. coherence), could be blurry or sharp, spaced-out or dense. These details give the sonic image & soundstage, and are caused by all the methods employed during the recording process (including sampling resolution) and by the sound reproduction gear (i.e. speaker technology: planar (ESL & ribbon)).
Accenting / emphasizing sound details could be sometimes irritating (if there is no reason for it), but a higher resolution can only increase clarity & accuracy.