Hello gents (and ladies, if you’re here),
To me, the live thing and the home audio thing are not and never can be directly comparable because of the nature of the event, but are nevertheless related in the way we as humans perceive them.
My perspective is that live music requires an ear/brain mechanism in order for the subject to perceive whether whatever’s happening to be “music” or not. There’s no need for any intermediary mechanism.
Home audio requires an ear/brain mechanism in order for the subject to perceive whether whatever’s happening to be “music” or not, but cannot be perceived without an inter-dependent chain of electro-acoustic and/or electro-mechanical intermediaries, that at the very least must comprise a microphone/mic-pre (1), an analogue or digital recorder, a storage/playback medium, an analogue or digital player, an amplifier, a speaker and a bunch on cables (for a minimally miked, minimally processed recording excluding any mixing or mastering).
As a point of further distinction, in the case of a live event, the subject perceives the event in real (linear) time. In the case of that same event being recorded and then played back, the subject still perceives the event in real time (since the subject cannot exist outside of time) but relative to non-linear time. That is, despite the live performance and the recording of that same performance being similar in content, nevertheless the final recording is its own event, in which whatever pitches were given amplitude in real time and captured during the live event are then transformed via a primary electro-acoustical process and slaved to a medium operating in non-linear time that must then be played back via a secondary electro-acoustical process also operating in non-linear time (2). That is, the audio recording/playback chain is always a time-variant (and non-linear) system by definition.
On any recording we’re playing back - irrespective of the level of gear involved in both the recording, mixing, mastering and playback chain - we’re never not listening to that chain and it’s never not operating in non-linear time.
Nevertheless, that I perceive what I hear at home to be “music”, and not mistake what I hear for a collection of non-musical sounds, suggests not that any home hi-fi system and recording/mixing/mastering chain is or can be “truly transparent (linear)”, but rather, that my brain - and by extension, your brain - has evolved to discern music from all other combinations of time, pitch and amplitude such that I not only recognise a collection of sounds made, say, in a concert hall from before I was born to be “music” (despite having never heard the original live event), but find it to be wholly analogous to the experience of listening to that same work when performed live without the need for any intermediary mechanism save my ear/brain one, and vice-versa.
Therefore, it’s my perception that defines not only what is and is not music, but is also defining what is and is not musical when I listen to the live event captured and transformed from acoustical waveforms to electricity to zeros and ones to electricity and back to acoustical waveforms again. That is, the two events - the live one and the recorded one played back - are related in that they are both the event experienced, one in real time, and one in non-linear time relative to a series of rotations or samples per second, but are not and never can be the same event.
So given the number of non-linear intermediary mechanisms that are completely essential for pre-recorded music playback to be achievable - if only at a most basic and, perhaps, low-fi level - I personally never conceive of what I hear at home to be directly comparable with what I hear live, no matter how “linear” the gear used may claim to be, especially given the ear/brain mechanism is in-and-of-itself non-linear and we can only ever perceive, and never move beyond perception relative to time.
Do I know when listening at home that I’m subject to an inter-dependent and sometimes extremely complex electro-acoustic and/or electro-mechanical chain of an event that no longer exists in real time? Almost always, yes.
Does that prevent me from experiencing similar, if not the same type of emotional, intellectual and visceral engagement I have in the presence of the live event despite the fact that same event has been subjugated to the inter-dependent and sometimes extremely complex electro-acoustic and/or electro-mechanical chain and is not and never can be the original event? Not at all. That I can and regularly do experience similar if not the same type of emotional, intellectual and visceral engagement from prerecorded music is again, testament to the brain’s ability to confer meaning to dissimilar events, in the same way we cry at the death of an actor during a movie, despite the acknowledged artifice of the event. What is art if not an attempt to provoke response in the subject?
But I never consider those two events are the same thing - they never are, nor ever can be, and I very seldom if ever conflate the two events. It’s simply that I allow myself to engage in such a way as to experience the same types of emotional, intellectual and visceral engagement, irrespective of whether I am listening to the music live, or via a collection of intermediary devices at home. (3) And no, multi-channel confers no benefit to me in the ability to enter into the aforementioned state, though I accept it may do for others.
Best,
853guy
(1) Though I know it’s obvious, perhaps it’s worth stating no mic/mic-pre combo is the equivalent of the ear/brain mechanism. All mics will have a polar pattern (in some cases able to be modified) that will vary between hyper-cardioid, cardioid, figure-of-eight and omni-directional (or some further variation), able to be arranged in multiple (stereo and multi-channel) configurations. The selection of polar pattern alone will massively influence the amount of direct-to-reflected sound captured at the location of the mic’s diaphragm, and often with much less sensitivity than the ear/brain mechanism is capable of (the amount of gain each mic requires also influencing the way in which it captures sound). What’s more, the mic’s frequency response relative to polar response can also vary by up to 5 to 15 dB (even in mics considered “flat”), as well as varying response relative to proximity meaning all frequencies can never be captured equivalently. That the choice of polar pattern will inherently be a decision made by the producer/engineer relative to preference is again, probably obvious, but can’t be overlooked when discussing ambience retrieval.
(2) Forgive me for the use of the phrase “non-linear time” but given the speed the lacquer, tape or digital sample rate are always operating at is relative to a measure of accuracy per parts per X at sea level and all aspects of both the recording and playback mechanism are wholly dependent on time, it can be said all audio systems are (non-linear) time-variant. While tape and vinyl both suffer from wow-and-flutter, itself influenced by other variables not limited to tape stretch and stylus drag perhaps it’s worth asking how “accurate” can digital be in the time domain? The Antelope 10M atomic clock is accurate to 0.03 parts per billion, the equivalent of a deviation of one second per 1000 years. However, that’s still less accurate than the aluminium quantum logic clock used in the NIST time dilation experiment that’s accurate to less than one second per 3.7 billion years. Or in other words, the Antelope is 3.7 million times less accurate than the NIST clock. Would implementation of clocks of the sort of accuracy used in the NIST experiment be audibly superior in stated-preference tests when applied to the audio chain? I have no idea, but digital, no matter its accuracy is never not time-variant.
(3) I really tried to have this make sense. It contains words I have difficulty spelling, and concepts I have even more difficulty articulating, let alone fully understanding. That this post may be way off base and laughably problematic should be of no surprise to anyone, least of all those whose grasp of time-variant and time-invariant systems dwarfs my own.
