The Quest For Absolute Sound REVISED
Channel: DH
Date: 2021-07-08

This is a revised video (slower, some tweaks) of an earlier video made for the Society for the Philosophy of Technology conference, June 2021.

The video discusses various ways that philosophical issues can underlay three popular debates in audio: Objective measurement vs. subjective listening, Gear vs. Rooms/Environments, and Realism vs. Constructivism as an ideal for audio reproduction.

0:00  START of Video: The Quest for Absolute Sound
3:06  Introducing three audiophile debates and their philosophical dimensions
4:15  SECTION I: Objective Measurement vs. Subjective Listening 
7:12  Philosophical dimensions: (a)  What kind of "tool" is audio?
8:08  Philosophical dimensions (b) Audiophile phenomenology, (c) Taste as a matter of debate
9:22  Speculation: How might these issues be reframed? Is a mind/body or reason/feeling dualism at work? Work of Damasio, Pirsig, Dewey, and Johnson as helpful.
10:12  SECTION II: Objects vs. Environment or "gear lust" -- Hifi fetishism and the over-emphasis on gear.
12:53  Philosophical dimensions: What underpins this overemphasis on gear? (a) A "device paradigm" (Borgmann)? (b) A tendency to think in terms of individuals? (c) Gender roles?
14:30   SECTION III Realism vs. Constructivism in audio reproduction. Is "transparency" the goal?
15:48   Glasgow: Transparency can be a modest and limited goal for audio reproduction.
16:35  Hamilton: Constructivism is unavoidable, transparency cannot be obtained.
17:26  Philosophical dimensions: (a) Perception -- what is happening when we listen to audio? Music as reception or enactment, embodied (Johnson)? Art as experience. (b) Media and mediation. Sterne's account of mediation as "relational causality." Langer: expression's meaning cannot be disentangled from sensuous form.
20:41  CONCLUSION: Meaning-making tied up with aesthetics and technology; the habits of hobbyists indicate preferences at deep philosophical levels, though not always expressed or articulated.
21:30  REFERENCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY