SQ and computer-generated music

What do audiophiles who are primarily fans of computer generated music (EDM, hip hop, pop, etc) use as their point of reference in evaluating gear? With acoustic music its easy - we've all heard guitars, pianos, percussion, the human voice, etc. in real life and gear should obviously sound like that. How do we know what sounds should sound like that have never been heard except through other gear?

 

Bump. Genuinely curious on the reference point or baseline for evaluating equipment using computer-generated music.

 

Kraftwerk (not that I really listen to it) and some ripped Daft Punk vinyls is all I got in that department. Everything else I've listened to is brickwalled.

 

Same points count as with music with acoustic or analog origin. All the technical literature can be applied.
To my ears purely digitally born music (made entirely in daw with vi-s) never reaches the goodness of good analog in electronic music. The digitally made stuff never quite has the liveliness, inner warmth, fluidity and dynamics.

Daft Punk's latest album (RAM) is probably best I have for this. Extrawelt is also pretty good. Nicolas Jaar is great as well, but it's not pure electronic, I think he uses lots of acoustic stuff.

With EDM there is no real reference.
Even for pure acoustic it's no easy task to make out how it did actually sounds in real life in some particular concert hall. Even recorded acoustic material doesn't sound the same as a heard in real life. Mics are not our ears, and in the end some dude mixed the recorded tracks together how he heard through his questionable studio monitors .
Still, it's something and I value my gear and non-acoustic music according to better acoustic tracks I have that have been recorded in the same concert hall I went to listen to those.

On the other hand most of the time I don't care about how it should sound. If I believe it then it's fine.
After all music should be engaging, fun and trigger positive emotions. No matter what kind it is.

 

Some of my reference points are The Knife, Mr. Carmack, Caribou, Lorn, Emika, Flako, SOHN, Forest Swords, and Hundred Waters. But yeah it's annoying how so much electronic music has that wall of sound compressed quality.

 

The variance on how acoustic instruments sound in different settings - especially if you play them - I suspect is much smaller than the variance between how an EDM artist wants the sound to sound and how the listener thinks it should sound.

I agree that music should be engaging, fun and trigger positive emotions. But that's not why we're in this hobby, spending thousands for marginal SQ upgrades. We're chasing something. For fans of acoustic music its a fixed, non abstract target - what those instruments sound like in real life.

 

It's not marginal upgrades I'm personally after. Equipment wise where I was 2 years ago I would not like to be there now. It is severe difference to me.
High quality mastering and orchestral music started to make sense to me after I got into hi-fi that is considered hi-fi here in SBAF.
The previous chain that I have no longer produces positive emotions to me and I have hard time enjoying it. Maybe long time without music might change this.
Rather than living without music for a year I see myself owning even better equipment, I have heard speakers that are not jsut marginally better. I want to get into some of that or better.

Another thing I have thought back is the brain advances with time, with more complex music (I don't mean super fast synth pop here) and better equipment. This is where people who have played instruments themselves from young age have great advantage, unlike myself. I am still improving, still hearing new things in solo violin that my younger sister plays.

There are universal traits to both electronic and acoustic music that make it high quality or low quality. One can hear where each instrument is located in well recorded orchestra. How the fine graduations in volume of instruments, esp solo ones make them become lifelike. How orchestra hitting full scale makes you feel like stuff, esp your head is going to explode. And it feels awesome. These same features can be heard in some electronic music as well, though these occasions are rare.

With experience and enough trial n' error I think most long time members here have good idea what sounds neutral. It means even if their own chain is not exactly transparent, which it never will be, they still have good sense of tonal correctness, dynamic range and other obvious traits. No matter if acoustic or electronic music.
Other traits like how much attention some instrument or sample draws to itself in the mix is how the creator of that track saw fit and is subject to taste and hard to judge from listeners end.

 

I listen to a lot of electronic music, and treat it much as I treat other recorded music in terms of evaluating sound quality. All recorded music is a confection, shaped in a large part by engineers who are aiming to make it sound as good as possible relative to a neutral playback system. In making it sound as good as possible, "accuracy to source material" is only one possible standard of judgement, and may not be the overriding one even for non-electronic music. Eg, well-upholstered 70s music like Steely Dan or Joni Mitchell sounds great because of great performances but also highly coloured equipment, particular micing techniques and engineering practices.

I agree there is lots of shitty sounding electronic music out there, mainly because there is no reason at all why someone who is good at creating electronic music should also be an accomplished mixing engineer. But there is also lots which is extremely well engineered (mainly German). Top of the pile for me are the Basic Channel and Maurizio records, absolutely outstanding, true landmarks in audio engineering across all kinds of music (https://www.discogs.com/artist/13117-Basic-Channel and https://www.discogs.com/artist/979-Maurizio).

Other great sounding, well-engineered electronic stuff:
Bernard Parmegiani "De Natura sonorum"
Coil "Musick to Play in the Dark", "Time Machines"
Porter Ricks "Biokinetics"
Surgeon "Basictonalvocabulary", "Breaking the Frame" (and lots more)
Jeff Mills Purpose Maker records
Mouse on Mars
Cluster
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Ambient stuff: Heavenly Music Corporation, Oneohtrix Point Never, Gas

Autechre have incredible engineering, but it's so far out that it essentially only tests the ability of equipment to make Autechre sound good. The other stuff mentioned can give you a good idea what a piece of equipment sounds like on regular everyday music.