Experiencing right timbre in sacred listening

I first read about Dr Paul James’ book Experiencing Gigli with Quality Audio: Exquisitely Beautiful Singing (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022) on Jeff Day’s Jeff’s Place website, and more recently Rafe Arnott’s interview with him on his Resistor Magazine website.

Dr James is a longtime audiophile, music lover, and philosophy scholar. I knew it was another book I must read to better understand what it takes to reproduce music recordings properly. It’s an unusual book in drawing on the author’s experience in listening to historic Opera singing records with carefully selected vintage and non-mainstream equipment.

My interest was in the likely depth of hi-fi wisdom, and less so the career and special qualities of the singer, and I’ve learned about timbral rightness, listening intention, reflective and sacred listening, and audio outliers, and much about how loudspeakers reproduce human voices. Whilst I don’t connect with the musical theatre of Opera, preferring songwriters singing their own songs, even so, I find the case for careful reproduction and transcendant listening compelling and inspiring. I’ve been persuaded and guided to reflect on reproductions of vocals in music more than I’ve previously done. I realise my tendency towards listening to female voices and acoustic and percussion instruments recorded simply without added effects reflects my preference for clean natural believable reproduction of timbre and dynamics, and less so stereo imaging spectacle.

The first and second chapters set up the author’s contention that Beniamino Gigli’s wealth of recordings presents an Opera singing voice that is particularly spiritually nourishing and worthy of thoughtful attention. The third chapter explores what it takes in an audio reproduction system to present it with timbral realism. As a detailed illustration, Dr. James then looks at the case of a unique ‘peak performance’ home audio system assembled by one such audio outlier, which is comprised of some examples of hi-fi equipment that stand out as exceptional reproducers. The final chapter outlines a philosophical reasoning for why it really matters for an enriched inner life to hear the true expression in music recordings in a prepared and reflective way. There is much more to experience in Gigli’s singing than his singing.

There is much to enjoy and learn in reading this scholarly book, and the philosophical mind and artistic heart of the author have created a revelatory examination of the home hi-fi hobby that is so much richer and considered than I’ve seen in the general audiophile morass propagated elsewhere. The insights, explanations, and expressions of personal experience and understanding are all the more valuable for being reasoned and erudite. Dr. James is currently working on a follow-up book that will answer some questions raised by this one, and I’m already looking forward to delving into its pages.