Tim-I "get" your point, but I don't agree with your summation unless you can tell me that Scott Lefaro was actually standing on the left side of the stage when the recording was made. I would hope that any live recording of whatever genre gives you a snapshot of the musicians on the stage in the positions they were actually occupying irrespective of how many tracks and microphones were used in the recording.
You could hope that, Mark, but if the Evans/LaFaro recording is any example, you're going to be disappointed. I don't know if LaFaro was all the way to stage left or not. What I
do know is that even if I were sitting at the front table, it wouldn't sound the way it does on the record, ie: hard panned to one side. The portrayal of the musicians as they were set up on stage, in that classic ambient recording, influenced by the fashion in those early days of stereo, is a false construct, as any reasonably close-mic'ed recording can be. The engineer can put the musicians wherever he wants to, and may not even know where they were when he sits down to do his work.
Also, I never get the feeling that the room ambience I hear (conversations, applause, glasses tinkeling, etc) sounds contrived unlike canned laughter on a television show. It sounds "right" to me in the sense I don't feel the need to dissect it when I hear it. Regardless of how these sounds were captured and added in to the final mix, I thnk they did a very good job.
I agree. But it sounds right to me as well. It is a function of the mix, not some unmeasurable quality of an analog media.
I really don't think I am setting the bar for quality based on something that was not recorded in the first place. I think it happened all the time. If anyone can point to a live recording and tell me that all of the instruments captured on the recording are actually not even close to where they were in real life on the stage during the time the recording was made, please let me know.
I just did. At The Village Vanguard, LeFaro was not playing directly to the right of any audience member.
Tim, are you trying to say that we can't capture the set up of the musicians on the stage in recordings?
Nope. I'm saying that we
don't. We typically capture instruments and voices up close, where we have less interference from the room and the other instruments, and from which we can get maximum control in the mix.
All that I'm asking for is that the recording I'm listening to represents an accurate portrayal of where the musicans were set-up on the stage during the time the recording was made. Is that too much to ask for Tim?
Perhaps not. But if you get it, it will be because they mixed it that way, not because the unmeasurable quality that separates vinyl from digital will present it that way. Maybe I misunderstood you somewhere along the line, but that's what I thought you were saying, that one of those unmeasurable qualities was the re-creation of the venue ambience. And while I can't look at a scope and tell where the guitar player was standing, while that quality is "unmeasurable," if I hear it, I owe that to the skill of the engineer, and the ability of my electronics to present an accurate representation of what he put on the master to my speakers which will image well in my room.
And all of that
is measurable.
Tim
