"Live" vs Recorded - Thursday June 14th
- Thread starter garylkoh
- Start date
Mark, if you like Argentinian music, here's also Buenos Aires Madrigals that I highly recommend. It's got a black and white flower on the cover. I can't remember the title off hand as the CD is in the office.
What do you recommend? Todd did the downsampling on Thursday, and I didn't note the settings. I was thinking TPFD and no dither.
TPDF is dither.
If I were to use Audiogate for SRC, I'd use:
1. Sharp rolloff filter at (-3dB @ 42kHz)
2. Aqua dither
3. Normalize "Off"
This event was great. I don't have any recording experience but the sound in the recording space was good and I thought Todd did a good job of capturing it.
The club system did a good job of reproducing the recording also. From where I was sitting when they played it back it sounded a little less warm and transparent than the live performance upstairs. Also less ambiance. I think if I was seated in the sweet spot without a bunch of people in front of me during playback my perception may have been a little different. I think the reason it sounded warmer live is because I was sitting about 12 ft farther away from the preformer than the mics were.
At the end of the meeting Gary handed out a CDR of the recording. I don't have a disc spinner in my system so I decided to burn it to my music server the next day. I have played it back a few times and I am pretty happy with what I am hearing. I wish all of my digital material sounded this good. This disc tells me that the tonality of my system is very good and I am happy with the transparency of my system. I plan to use this as one of my demo discs in the future at shows.
I want to thank the performers for taking the time to come out, Todd for recording it, and the organizers as well for putting it all together. Great job.
Cheers,
Sean
The club system did a good job of reproducing the recording also. From where I was sitting when they played it back it sounded a little less warm and transparent than the live performance upstairs. Also less ambiance. I think if I was seated in the sweet spot without a bunch of people in front of me during playback my perception may have been a little different. I think the reason it sounded warmer live is because I was sitting about 12 ft farther away from the preformer than the mics were.
At the end of the meeting Gary handed out a CDR of the recording. I don't have a disc spinner in my system so I decided to burn it to my music server the next day. I have played it back a few times and I am pretty happy with what I am hearing. I wish all of my digital material sounded this good. This disc tells me that the tonality of my system is very good and I am happy with the transparency of my system. I plan to use this as one of my demo discs in the future at shows.
I want to thank the performers for taking the time to come out, Todd for recording it, and the organizers as well for putting it all together. Great job.
Cheers,
Sean
Thanks, Bruce. I'll use your settings.
I was going to try TPDF and no dither and have a listen to choose between the two. Aqua is Korg's proprietary dither which I didn't initially consider. I just loaded the software on Friday in my office computer, and scanned the settings intending to do some online research over the weekend.
First off, thank you Gary and the rest of the PNWAS for organizing and hosting this event.
I guess I'll be the first to comment regarding the difference between live and recorded. Everyone should be aware the club system is very, very good. The meeting room is not an ideal acoustic space, but most of us have to deal with less than ideal acoustic spaces. The recording was excellent and Todd Garfinkle was terrific. I'm sure he could have squeezed out even more given time to do a meticulous set up.
That said, I thought the differences were pretty significant. Shaina's voice lost it's 'sparkle' and her guitar sounded detatched rather than closely held. The recording did a great job of capturing the breathiness of Shaina's voice and Benjamin's embouchure but wan't able to capture how the sound of the saxophone projected into and filled the recording space. The argument could be made that if we were blinded to the performer's and reproduction system, our visual cues would have less to do with differentiating between live and recorded and I will concede that may, in part be true. But I don't doubt the anyone would have that much trouble telling the difference.
I'll be interested to see what others thought...
I guess I'll be the first to comment regarding the difference between live and recorded. Everyone should be aware the club system is very, very good. The meeting room is not an ideal acoustic space, but most of us have to deal with less than ideal acoustic spaces. The recording was excellent and Todd Garfinkle was terrific. I'm sure he could have squeezed out even more given time to do a meticulous set up.
That said, I thought the differences were pretty significant. Shaina's voice lost it's 'sparkle' and her guitar sounded detatched rather than closely held. The recording did a great job of capturing the breathiness of Shaina's voice and Benjamin's embouchure but wan't able to capture how the sound of the saxophone projected into and filled the recording space. The argument could be made that if we were blinded to the performer's and reproduction system, our visual cues would have less to do with differentiating between live and recorded and I will concede that may, in part be true. But I don't doubt the anyone would have that much trouble telling the difference.
I'll be interested to see what others thought...
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Thanks, Mark. I'll keep my notes to myself - hoping for more members to chime in.
In the meantime....... here are the raw recordings from that evening. No processing done - just down-sampled to 16/44.1 for burning to a CD.
Expired...... PNWAS members can get a copy of the CD, and/or a DVD-ROM with the high-rez files.
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Another thing I noticed about the recording was that the clapping of the audience sounded strange. Now I know the object of the recording was to record the performance and not the crowd but I wonder why that is the case? The clapping sounds kind of thick and slow from what I remember. This was quite noticeable on the club system and slightly less so on my system.
I have the ability to adjust the bass responce via remote with my speakers. I found that if I lowered the bass level centered 100 hz and under a couple db's I could make that thickness go away and the clapping sounded much more natural. Did the performance sound more natural after that? Well possibly, it did sound a little clearer. Not sure what this suggests.
Another thought about the recording is unless you are seated right where the mics are how can you expect the same result when you play it back? I was seated about 12 to 15 feet behind the mics. I know if I was sitting right by the mics it would have sounded much different live.
Sean
I have the ability to adjust the bass responce via remote with my speakers. I found that if I lowered the bass level centered 100 hz and under a couple db's I could make that thickness go away and the clapping sounded much more natural. Did the performance sound more natural after that? Well possibly, it did sound a little clearer. Not sure what this suggests.
Another thought about the recording is unless you are seated right where the mics are how can you expect the same result when you play it back? I was seated about 12 to 15 feet behind the mics. I know if I was sitting right by the mics it would have sounded much different live.
Sean
sorry that is quite usual depending on the mics positioning, there is really no reason clapping should sound normal, except if you actually record it how the musician would hear it from the stage (its been known..
sorry that is quite usual depending on the mics positioning, there is really no reason clapping should sound normal, except if you actually record it how the musician would hear it from the stage (its been known..
Fair enough. As I have no recording experience I did not know that.
To give a little more context the two mics were omni directional and pointing straight at the preformer. There was no stage but everyone was seated behind the mics. I guess it makes sense that the mics would not pick up a flat frequency responce from sounds that eminate from directly behind them. That being the case wouldn't it be impossible to reproduce the reverb behind the mics accurately?
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Video of the event
Cal Lewin of Opticus Media made a short video documentary of the evening. I thought that it perfectly captured the events.
Cal Lewin of Opticus Media made a short video documentary of the evening. I thought that it perfectly captured the events.
sorry that is quite usual depending on the mics positioning, there is really no reason clapping should sound normal, except if you actually record it how the musician would hear it from the stage (its been known..
Yep. Yet you see people who don't understand this, and have no knowledge of the mics used or the mic placement in a recording using unnatural-sounding applause as a point in judging recordings and equipment all the time.
Tim
You're right.
The comments ranged the gamut from "my system at home sounds better" to "recorded had more detail as the mics were 18-inches away and the distance I was sitting at during the live session blurred the details and transients". So, the evening IMHO was a useful exercise.
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