Hi-Fi Aesthetics

Abstract

High-fidelity aesthetics, as I shall call it, is an intuitively plausible position.' It holds, in a nutshell, that a recording can capture what it records accurately, without distortion. This kind of claim, sometimes referred to by its visual moniker, the transparency thesis, has received some support with respect to some media, such as a photograph's ability to record an image.2 However, in the particular case of musical recordings, the ability to faithfully capture the original performance has been widely written off by philosophers. These critics tend to use promotional assertions made by musicians, recording engineers, record companies, and stereo equipment manufacturers to represent their adversaries in this debate, perhaps in part because it is hard to find philosophical literature that wholeheartedly defends the possibility of high-fidelity musical recordings. The task here is to mount just such a defense.