Imagine sitting in your favorite listening chair, a glass of wine in hand, as you fire up your high-end audio system. You press play and a single tone emerges from the speakers. A sine wave. Would all the time and effort you put into building your amazing system matter?
I think not.
A sine wave is the most basic sound wave, a single frequency with no harmonics or overtones. If you play this through your high-performance system, and then, using the same speakers but this time play it through a budget-friendly, less resolving electronic setup, you might find yourself underwhelmed by the difference. That’s because sine waves, in their simplicity, don’t demand much from your equipment. They don’t have the rich tapestry of sounds that music does, which is where high-end systems truly shine.
Music is a symphony of countless sine waves, harmonics, and phase relationships. It’s the interaction of these complex waveforms that creates the magic we hear. High-end audio systems are designed to unravel this complexity, revealing nuances and details that lesser systems cannot.
Think of a sine wave as a single brush stroke. In isolation, it’s hard to appreciate the mastery of the painter. Now, consider a complete painting, a masterpiece of intricate brush strokes layered upon each other. The complexity, the interplay of colors and textures, is what captivates us. Similarly, with music, it’s the richness of the soundscape that high-end systems can faithfully reproduce, making the difference between hearing and experiencing the music.
Audiophiles hear things that (today) cannot be measured. This is because most measurement based system are measuring single or dual sine waves. Just as we cannot hear the differences between them, so too the measuring of them is somewhat meaningless.
It’s the complexity of sound, not the simplicity, that we hear.
