Knowing when it's right

A few days ago I was upstairs in the home of Octave Records listening to a new recording Gus Skinas had made. It was a beautiful piano piece by local musician Chris Jones on his freshly tuned Bösendorfer, recorded with a one-of-a-kind single point stereo AKG microphone (on loan from musician Dan Schwartz) on the Sonoma DSD system. I am certain I have never heard anything even remotely close to the perfection of that sound. Instantly, the room was the piano, the massive Bosendorfer's rich strings and trademark voicing just right. The whole presentation was right. Just plain, right. How did I know that? What did I have to compare it to? These are the questions that bubble up to the surface after the fact, but the answers are tough to justify my claims. We know something's right almost instantly, and without a lot of debate, because our ear/brain mechanisms are so highly developed. Knowing the difference between sounds was critical to our survival. We had to develop keen senses of identification without a lot of questioning or examination to avoid becoming another creature's dinner. Today, those skills are not so critical, but they continue to serve us. If you trust your senses, you'll know when it's right.