Toward a Theory To Increase Mutual Understanding and Predictability

[PeterA]

I have a hard time believing that a small pair of KEF speakers played insanely loud in any way mimics live music unless your definition of live is aggressive overdriven amps and speakers with tons of distortion pouring out of them. I have been to live shows like that (oddly even a Jazz concert once) but this is not at all what I would use as a reference for live, even though it is technically live. I have also heard phenomenally good amplified live concerts...where I was dying to know exactly what sound systems they were using because it was really good sounding. Playing a pop band back through small speakers to show it gives the same overdriven sound is not a sensible demonstration either. Sillinesss really.

What was the brand of large Italian panel speakers btw.? Was it Relco? Those sound very good but I guess most on this forum haven't heard them.

" This latter system certainly allowed me to suspend my disbelief, as Bonzo writes, but so did that crappy digital system."

I don't get that at all....how does that crapy little digital system remind you of a big amplified live show?

Yes, that is precisely the point I was making, apparently not very well. The digital system and the "live" amplified concert sounded remarkably similar, quite surprising actually, but in a highly distorted, electronic and painful way. The show was in a conference room with about thirty people in the audience. We were served wine and cheese. The three or four band members were playing amplified instruments on a small stage in a corner of the room. It was not "a big amplified live show" like some rock concert at a huge venue.

It was very loud and distorted and was surprisingly similar sounding to the digital system I heard earlier that day in the same hotel during the same audio show, back in 2012. I did not have my SPL meter to compare the levels, but they were each loud enough for me to leave after about ten minutes. Sure one was "live" but highly distorted, aggressive and unpleasant, just like the demo of the system. In that sense only, that digital system sounded more similar to a "live" event than any other systems that I heard that day, except that analog/panel system. It's just an anecdote and one I often remember when people tell me that a system sounds like live music. It certainly did on that day, but not in a pleasant way. It was an effective demonstration. I'm sure some people actually liked the sound and KEF made their point.

I don't use such shows as my personal reference. I tend to prefer the BSO and small ensembles in chamber settings, and live jazz shows with minimal amplification.

 

[amirm]

Amir, Good recording engineers certainly have challenging and difficult work, and they often get great results from their efforts. But, I wonder if they would say the same thing about recording the BSO or other great symphony orchestra in a great hall. Do you really think they would say they "take the ordinary and make it great" through their recording process? The BSO sounds pretty great to me just listening in the seventh row without any of their editorializing. Many recordings actually take what was once great and make it ordinary. We are listening to their taste, and it is not always good. Perhaps your point is more applicable to mediocre pop music.

That great symphony would not sound great if you stuck your ear inside the piano as one of the examples of how that instrument is recorded. Here is a real example of microphone placement for a concert hall:

You see them dangling from the ceiling? Do you think they are capturing what an audience member is hearing? Of course not. You can never capture with one microphone what two ears+brain are hearing anyway putting aside the fact that they are not even in the audience. Due to closeness to the instruments (well below Critical Distance (Dc) of the hall), they are also ignoring much of the room reverberations which many people appreciate in such halls.

Here is the text that goes with that: https://sites.google.com/site/recordingmaninoz/recordingthegothic

"We used an omni pair of Neumann KM130 for the main mics. Placement was severely limited as the QPAC slings were above the conductors head due to the pit being raised to accomodate the extra musicians in the orchestra. Distance between the mics was about 0.75 metre. We were limited by the QPAC mic bar and the use of the KM130s so we used this distance as a compromise.

I normally use a distance of about 12 inches - imagine a NOS arrangement but using omni mics. I prefer this width as it gives little, if any, phase effects to the recording and pretty good stereo separation. Dave normally uses a larger distance as he prefers a wider image which he can fill with outriggers. Dave and I agree to disagree on this point."

On and on. Then we get to the editing:

"Obviously, the choir and vocal solo tracks needed some "hall reverb" added. I did this with the VST plugin called SIR - a wonderful tool. Care has to be taken to use only a small amount of "wet" in the mix, or else it does sound artificial."

So that ambiance you hear in the Choir is completely synthesized.

Here is another example:

And the text that goes with it: https://www.exponentialaudio.com/pr...ro-tips-for-using-reverb-in-a-scoring-context

"If you've recorded an orchestra in a small room with acoustic problems, often there will be a shorter reverb than desired, and there might be some low-mid congestion. With judicious use of a reverb like Phoenixverb, you can tailor a nice sounding reverb, which will 'fill in the gaps' missing from the source. Try dialling down the early reflections (to avoid more congestion) and find a tail size that works. Once you've got a reverb that's fixing the problems, it should be indistinguishable from the original source, and perform a subtle enhancement

For 'featured' reverb, you have permission to completely reshape the sound – mix with 100% wet verb, use the early reflections only, use the gate and chorus of R2 for a really unique and ear popping production trick. A whole decade of 80's snare sounds were created from this very effect!

Once you get inside the the R2 and Phoenixverb plugins, there's a breath of effects, and detailed shaping tools, you can have a lot of fun"

I am reminded of a story an audiophile told me once. He attended a real recording session by Professor Keith Johnson of Reference Recording fame (a colleague of mine for whatever this name dropping is worth ). He was shocked, absolutely shocked when he heard the mix after Keith was done with it in that it had nothing to do with the live sound he heard! Keith explain to him that this is the way it works. That he knows the sound people want to hear and delivers that, rather than being a copy machine. Let's agree Keith knows what he is doing:

It is clear to me that the notions you mention are created in our minds with no validation whatsoever. We have this idealized notions that simply are not commercially viable. Yes there are some binaural recordings and such but they are a tiny in the bucket of music that is *produced*.

Let's not continue to believe in pink elephants. There is no notion of "live" anywhere here. We are sold so hard on this marketing notion that despite its illogical nature, we want to keep sticking to it. But it is time to let go. It really is as it otherwise keeps emphasizing how little we know about how music comes our way.

 

[amirm]

Since Peter mentioned BSO, here is the process of capturing that orchestral sound: http://www.classical-scene.com/2011/10/02/bso-recording/

"When we archive concerts over the course of a season, the most complicated musical program will require perhaps as many as 45 microphones, but we don’t just send all the channels to be archived without post-production. The only way to be 100% sure that you have chosen the right microphone and put it in the right place is to listen to it. If we can’t produce a very good mix for two channels then we haven’t done our job right. So we do pretty sophisticated and effective stereo mixing as part of the process of archiving."


As you can see they clearly record each element separately. There is no notion of recording what you hear:

"We’ve produced four or five rather good sounding and rather well received commercial recordings from the Levine archives. And I approached them the way I would approach any commercial recording. I don’t think of a commercial recording as being a substitute for a concert; I think of it as being a completely different product. People who buy and enjoy recordings don’t do so because they can’t or don’t want to go to a concert. They buy them because listening to music presented that way gives them a different kind of experience than going to a concert. And if you listen to the recordings that we make that we are rather well known for — the BSO recordings, the Mariansky recordings, or any of our other orchestral recordings, you’ll find a completely different experience than what you would have found had you gone to those concerts. You’ll hear a balance that is not necessarily from the conductor’s perspective or from seat A 12 or B 21 or C 93. You’ll hear a balance that you can’t hear from anywhere in the hall. It will be much better and more musically appropriate because we have that ability. We don’t arbitrarily do it alone, but rather in conjunction with the composer and the conductor. But certainly you can hear much more orchestral detail than you can from any given seat in any hall. We try to create a sonic envelope that is at least as exciting as what you would hear in the hall, thinking that is the kind of product a commercial release needs to be."

I mean this is right from horse's mouth. It can't be more clear yet folks keep insisting otherwise. And it took a two second search to find it. Why not do this Peter instead throwing this argument at me?

 

[PeterA]

That great symphony would not sound great if you stuck your ear inside the piano as one of the examples of how that instrument is recorded. Here is a real example of microphone placement for a concert hall:

You see them dangling from the ceiling? Do you think they are capturing what an audience member is hearing? Of course not. You can never capture with one microphone what two ears+brain are hearing anyway putting aside the fact that they are not even in the audience. Due to closeness to the instruments (well below Critical Distance (Dc) of the hall), they are also ignoring much of the room reverberations which many people appreciate in such halls.

Here is the text that goes with that: https://sites.google.com/site/recordingmaninoz/recordingthegothic

"We used an omni pair of Neumann KM130 for the main mics. Placement was severely limited as the QPAC slings were above the conductors head due to the pit being raised to accomodate the extra musicians in the orchestra. Distance between the mics was about 0.75 metre. We were limited by the QPAC mic bar and the use of the KM130s so we used this distance as a compromise.

I normally use a distance of about 12 inches - imagine a NOS arrangement but using omni mics. I prefer this width as it gives little, if any, phase effects to the recording and pretty good stereo separation. Dave normally uses a larger distance as he prefers a wider image which he can fill with outriggers. Dave and I agree to disagree on this point."

On and on. Then we get to the editing:

"Obviously, the choir and vocal solo tracks needed some "hall reverb" added. I did this with the VST plugin called SIR - a wonderful tool. Care has to be taken to use only a small amount of "wet" in the mix, or else it does sound artificial."

So that ambiance you hear in the Choir is completely synthesized.

Here is another example:

And the text that goes with it: https://www.exponentialaudio.com/pr...ro-tips-for-using-reverb-in-a-scoring-context

"If you've recorded an orchestra in a small room with acoustic problems, often there will be a shorter reverb than desired, and there might be some low-mid congestion. With judicious use of a reverb like Phoenixverb, you can tailor a nice sounding reverb, which will 'fill in the gaps' missing from the source. Try dialling down the early reflections (to avoid more congestion) and find a tail size that works. Once you've got a reverb that's fixing the problems, it should be indistinguishable from the original source, and perform a subtle enhancement

For 'featured' reverb, you have permission to completely reshape the sound – mix with 100% wet verb, use the early reflections only, use the gate and chorus of R2 for a really unique and ear popping production trick. A whole decade of 80's snare sounds were created from this very effect!

Once you get inside the the R2 and Phoenixverb plugins, there's a breath of effects, and detailed shaping tools, you can have a lot of fun"

I am reminded of a story an audiophile told me once. He attended a real recording session by Professor Keith Johnson of Reference Recording fame (a colleague of mine for whatever this name dropping is worth ). He was shocked, absolutely shocked when he heard the mix after Keith was done with it in that it had nothing to do with the live sound he heard! Keith explain to him that this is the way it works. That he knows the sound people want to hear and delivers that, rather than being a copy machine. Let's agree Keith knows what he is doing:

It is clear to me that the notions you mention are created in our minds with no validation whatsoever. We have this idealized notions that simply are not commercially viable. Yes there are some binaural recordings and such but they are a tiny in the bucket of music that is *produced*.

Let's not continue to believe in pink elephants. There is no notion of "live" anywhere here. We are sold so hard on this marketing notion that despite its illogical nature, we want to keep sticking to it. But it is time to let go. It really is as it otherwise keeps emphasizing how little we know about how music comes our way.

Amir, thank you for posting this very interesting and educational information. It's a fascinating subject and much has been learned about capturing sound and making it sound pleasing to the listener. I think you misunderstand what I was trying to convey. I apologize for being unclear. I have never claimed that what is being captured and later presented in the form of a recording is a copy of the original live performance. Yes, recording engineers go through much effort to try to best create a product which is both pleasing to them and is hopefully commercially viable. I simply disagree with the earlier comment that you posted that one engineer thinks "he starts with something ordinary and makes it great." I object to the notion that the BSO is ordinary and that the experience of hearing them perform live is ordinary. It that case it is great to start with. You never answered the question I asked you regarding this.

I have also never heard a recording that sounds better to me than a live performance at the BSO. Yes, the mic may be inside the soundboard of a piano capturing all sorts of detail for the engineer's "art", but I like the sound from the seventh row. Others like it from the first row, first balcony. The recording and the original performance are not the same. But I do want the recording and my system to reproduce a sound which reminds me of the sound of the real thing.

I agree with you that Keith Johnson knows what he is doing, but I don't agree that the result is always great. I actually prefer many of my old Phillips recordings to the newer Reference Recordings. Unfortunately I can't find the thread in which members discussed that they don't necessarily like some of the Reference Recordings that Keith made. Others hold them up as a reference, pardon the pun.

I don't believe in pink elephants. That is pretty funny. But I do think that one can have as a goal the notion of trying to recreate the "live" sound of a performance through his audio system. It is only a goal, perhaps never to be achieved, but that does not make it invalid to try. So, I will not be "letting go" of live unamplified music as a reference by which I judge the success of my audio system. Perhaps you should try to "let go" of your attempts to change my mind.

 

[PeterA]

Since Peter mentioned BSO, here is the process of capturing that orchestral sound: http://www.classical-scene.com/2011/10/02/bso-recording/

"When we archive concerts over the course of a season, the most complicated musical program will require perhaps as many as 45 microphones, but we don’t just send all the channels to be archived without post-production. The only way to be 100% sure that you have chosen the right microphone and put it in the right place is to listen to it. If we can’t produce a very good mix for two channels then we haven’t done our job right. So we do pretty sophisticated and effective stereo mixing as part of the process of archiving."


As you can see they clearly record each element separately. There is no notion of recording what you hear:

"We’ve produced four or five rather good sounding and rather well received commercial recordings from the Levine archives. And I approached them the way I would approach any commercial recording. I don’t think of a commercial recording as being a substitute for a concert; I think of it as being a completely different product. People who buy and enjoy recordings don’t do so because they can’t or don’t want to go to a concert. They buy them because listening to music presented that way gives them a different kind of experience than going to a concert. And if you listen to the recordings that we make that we are rather well known for — the BSO recordings, the Mariansky recordings, or any of our other orchestral recordings, you’ll find a completely different experience than what you would have found had you gone to those concerts. You’ll hear a balance that is not necessarily from the conductor’s perspective or from seat A 12 or B 21 or C 93. You’ll hear a balance that you can’t hear from anywhere in the hall. It will be much better and more musically appropriate because we have that ability. We don’t arbitrarily do it alone, but rather in conjunction with the composer and the conductor. But certainly you can hear much more orchestral detail than you can from any given seat in any hall. We try to create a sonic envelope that is at least as exciting as what you would hear in the hall, thinking that is the kind of product a commercial release needs to be."

I mean this is right from horse's mouth. It can't be more clear yet folks keep insisting otherwise. And it took a two second search to find it. Why not do this Peter instead throwing this argument at me?

Amir, this too is a wonderful post. Thank you. I particularly like the sentences which I highlighted. It does not surprise me in the least that they actually listen to the result to know if it is successful. They must also refer back to what the actual live sound was to reach some conclusion. Some argue that measurements are all we need, but I have always thought that we must use our ears to assess quality, even though some have made many attempts to prove that our ears are unreliable and listening to live music is not necessary. I'm glad to read that this engineer also listens using his ears and does not base his results on something else. He does write that he is only 100% sure if he listens to it.

Again, I find interesting the mention of the need to produce a commercial release and the implication that it is pleasing to the customer and that there is not an attempt to reproduce the musical event. Perhaps the goal is to sell product and not to reproduce a semblance of the performance. Yes, this is from the horse's mouth, and that is great. Thank you again for spending the two seconds to find this information and for sharing it with us. I am not trying to convince you of anything, Amir, I'm just trying to explain better, my approach to the hobby. And I enjoy learning more from the perspective of the recording engineer. It will give me something more to think about when I listen to my system this evening. I'm sorry that you feel as though I am throwing arguments at you. That is certainly not my intention. I apologize.

 

[the sound of Tao]

I have worked with plenty of audio engineers, audio directors and sound recordists and sat in on hundreds of mixing sessions when I was working in film and television production early in my working life and never did I feel that any of these people were aiming for anything other than capturing essentially what was there in either spirit or in context. If there was sweetening it was more about projecting the glass half full side of things but in the end the truth is the most powerful tool we have. Approaches with mic type and placement and how to mix things down varied but still the essential aim was the same. I believe the people that are drawn to sound and music are so because they have some innate sensitivity to not just the nature of sound but also what it can express and in that meaning for us.

I was showed how to lace up a nagra reel to reel recorder and then how to use a shotgun mike when I was 8 and spent plenty of years in my school holidays recording sound for one of my uncles who had a small film production unit... and even back then I knew that getting things to sound essentially as they were was the only logical benchmark and the measure of success. We used to film the Southern Cross rally on the north coast of Australia and I'd be out in the middle of a state forest using a sennheiser shotgun mike to capture bird noises and atmos and then swing across for the approaching screaming sound of Stig Blomquist's sliding Audi as it swung past doing some half crazy Scandinavian flick and the sound of rocks and earth splaying across the soundscape.

Capturing a sense of liveness or realness and the inner expressed correlated meaning of sounds and music surely aren't about any one literal or absolute truth... but certainly about a shared framework of recalled experience that seems in ways cross cultural and perhaps timeless. Ultimately I believe rightness can be heard and felt just as in art and design where it can be both seen and realised.

 

[stehno]

Just to point that this a subjective statement, and your opinion on it is also subjective. "remarkably close" is a relative statement that can have very different meanings according to people preferences and weighting of the factors that approach reality.

Surely our perception of relatively close is evolutionary - every time we listen to a better system we come closer to the live performance. IMHO it can be an objective, but not used as an absolute scale for system comparison. The participation of the listener in the creation of the illusion in the sound reproduction process is so large that only understanding and tolerance can help towards in a healthy and interesting debate. I must say that IMHO considering other people views as myths does not help.

Increase Mutual Understanding is a desirable point in WBF, predictability is still a dream in the high-end, as the high-end is too individualist. The only way to achieve predictability is narrowing or denying the individual preferences, something that, fortunately, most audiophiles are not prepared to accept.

FWIW, your entire post is completely subjective. Particularly the part about a "better" system. But then again every post in every forum is subjective to one degree or another. Even those who think they're posting facts only.

Morricab used the word myth when I used the word dogma. It's no myth that some-to-many think it common for a given playback system sound remarkably close to the live performance. But it is quite dogmatic for those who think so.

But you do reign things in with your 2nd last sentence above. It is far too individualistic. The only way to greatly minimize the individualism aspect is for all of us to do what we reasonably can to polish up on our listening skills first and foremost. Right now it's a complete box of chocolates and as a result very few can agree on anything much less develop a reasonable sense of right and wrong or good and bad. Developing our ability to interpret what we hear can do wonders to minimize this overwhelming level of individualism / subjectivism. For some-to-many anyway. But that takes time and effort.

 

[stehno]

Playback systems are not supposed to sound like live, just supposed to help you sufficiently suspend disbelief so that it appeals to the senses conditioned to live music (this is for those whom reproducing live is the goal). The more it helps you suspend the better the system

If pb systems are not supposed to sound like a (or the) live performance, then why do so many advertise, review, and otherwise speak as though they should, can, and/or do? Nice try.

And if everything is shored up quite well from the recording studio to the mastering to the pressing to the pb system, etc, why shouldn't a live performance sound be a reasonable goal - even if (and it may not be so) the goal is lofty and not yet attainable? At least that could more easily be understood as a common goal and hence, put a common target on the wall for everybody to shoot at.

What goal would you prefer to strive for instead?

 

[jkeny]

If pb systems are not supposed to sound like a (or the) live performance, then why do so many advertise, review, and otherwise speak as though they should, can, and/or do? Nice try.

And if everything is shored up quite well from the recording studio to the mastering to the pressing to the pb system, etc, why shouldn't a live performance sound be a reasonable goal - even if (and it may not be so) the goal is lofty and not yet attainable? At least that could more easily be understood as a common goal and hence, put a common target on the wall for everybody to shoot at.

What goal would you prefer to strive for instead?

I believe there is a very large difference in meaning between the phrases "to sound like A live performance" or "to sound like THE live performance - the first is what Bonzo & most are talking about & the second is unattainable for most people unless they have the live performance in front of them playing concurrently with the recording (an impossibility, I would suggest).

That one article of speech "a" or "the" are significantly different in meaning which change the whole meaning of your sentence & not interchangeable as you seem to imply.

 

[amirm]

What goal would you prefer to strive for instead?

Transparency to the recorded content. That is the only attainable goal. And the only thing you have control on. To the extent this sounds "live" is a huge credit to the recording engineer, mixing and mastering to create such an illusion from the highly limited 2-channel stereo.

The next step up from that is actually not live but what the talent heard and approved in the post production studio. Video nails this by forcing both the capture and playback to match the same standard but in audio, we don't. Different speakers and rooms are used in post production with wildly differing tonal performance than ours. So what they hear is not what we hear. This can be fixed if there is a will in the industry but currently there is not.

The step back from that is the live production with a massive chasm between it and where we are in our systems. No way can we duplicate the sound one hears in a large concert hall. Volume is our enemy in that the largest home listening spaces are considered to be acoustically "small." This means they have wild frequency response variations below 200 to 300 Hz whereas a concert hall doesn't have those issue until you get as low as 20 Hz or even lower.

Furthermore, unless you sit right by the stage and perhaps rows 1 and 2, you are past Critical distance. This is the point at which what you hear direct from the source equals to what you hear from room reflections. By the time you go further back in the hall, reflections dominate and they come diffused from many, many directions. Two speakers in your room has no prayer of remotely approximating this. And if you are making a padded cell with absorption everywhere in your room, you are moving further and further away from this goal. Multi-channel is a good solution here and it can create a sense of realism that makes even the best 2-channel system look like a joke. The latencies you need to create true envelopment can only be created in the multi-channel mix (again, home listening spaces are too small for nature reflection delay).

 

[RogerD]

I have always had the goal to produce a reasonable facsimile of the recorded event to produce the power,weight,and energy in the recording. The energy is a heck of a lot harder to achieve,because everything has to be @ a optimum level,and the room size has to match the system. The energy in the room has provided me with a state of nirvana many times. When the energy is right,the bass is very powerful,controlled and integrated well. Musical instruments have tonal purity and power. Voices are clear,powerful and detailed. Sound projects,but the decay and sparkle,shimmer are there also. If I have that, and I'm sure I left out many others,what more can I ask for. Everyday I hear sounds in the real world. In audio there are many thresholds and when you break them,you get closer to the music....which I think is the goal of this hobby.

 

[cjfrbw]

Most people who have heard speakers playing flat in an anechoic chamber say it sounds pretty bad as far as music appreciation is concerned. That means by deduction that their room is the contributor to their system sounding "good" or "real" with its reverb. That has nothing to do with the original recording, venue or performance. It also makes one question the motive to make a listening room as "dead" as possible.

When the occasional person comments that surround sound is "false", I can't see that it is any more "false" than the room ambience, which is more limited and inflexible.

I have gotten the impression that recording engineers regard recordings generated by performances as just a palette, and that they consider the final, processed, canned product the work of art. I have also read comments by recording artists about the fights they have with engineers, because they don't think what they "played" sounds like them or their instruments and doesn't reflect the artist's "vision". What winds up in the final cut is usually the process of a battle when the parties become exhausted and raise the white flag to get something out.

 

[DaveC]

Transparency to the recorded content. That is the only attainable goal. And the only thing you have control on. To the extent this sounds "live" is a huge credit to the recording engineer, mixing and mastering to create such an illusion from the highly limited 2-channel stereo.

The next step up from that is actually not live but what the talent heard and approved in the post production studio. Video nails this by forcing both the capture and playback to match the same standard but in audio, we don't. Different speakers and rooms are used in post production with wildly differing tonal performance than ours. So what they hear is not what we hear. This can be fixed if there is a will in the industry but currently there is not.

The step back from that is the live production with a massive chasm between it and where we are in our systems. No way can we duplicate the sound one hears in a large concert hall. Volume is our enemy in that the largest home listening spaces are considered to be acoustically "small." This means they have wild frequency response variations below 200 to 300 Hz whereas a concert hall doesn't have those issue until you get as low as 20 Hz or even lower.

Furthermore, unless you sit right by the stage and perhaps rows 1 and 2, you are past Critical distance. This is the point at which what you hear direct from the source equals to what you hear from room reflections. By the time you go further back in the hall, reflections dominate and they come diffused from many, many directions. Two speakers in your room has no prayer of remotely approximating this. And if you are making a padded cell with absorption everywhere in your room, you are moving further and further away from this goal. Multi-channel is a good solution here and it can create a sense of realism that makes even the best 2-channel system look like a joke. The latencies you need to create true envelopment can only be created in the multi-channel mix (again, home listening spaces are too small for nature reflection delay).

I agree with your first sentence, but the rest of it is the tired old comparison between the live event and the reproduction, of course they aren't the same thing. If the room is setup to reproduce the venue's acoustics it's much more possible to get close to the live experience, if you have a room with lots of short reflections you've already lost the battle and your room contributes too much.

On past posts about the intent of the recording engineers, that's good info but different recording engineers have different techniques and different goals. A stereo system is fairly capable of reproducing a simple binaural recording, especially if the event is amplified. Close-mic'ed recordings using lots of mics are great too, a different perspective that is quite different from a live experience. So like most things it depends on the recording and the intent of the producers.

 

[stehno]

I believe there is a very large difference in meaning between the phrases "to sound like A live performance" or "to sound like THE live performance - the first is what Bonzo & most are talking about & the second is unattainable for most people unless they have the live performance in front of them playing concurrently with the recording (an impossibility, I would suggest).

That one article of speech "a" or "the" are significantly different in meaning which change the whole meaning of your sentence & not interchangeable as you seem to imply.

Absolutely. I did not write this intending to be an either-or condition but rather a both-and condition as I was attempting to provide a more all-encompassing target of "a" superior performance level. Both are reasonable targets but one obviously being superior to the other as my intention was to cover both potentials.

 

[jkeny]

Absolutely. I did not write this intending to be an either-or condition but rather a both-and condition as I was attempting to provide a more all-encompassing target of "a" superior performance level. Both are reasonable targets but one obviously being superior to the other as my intention was to cover both potentials.

As I said one target is impossible - you can't have the live performance running concurrently with it's recording in order to judge the "sound like" attribute - we can rely on memory of the live event to judge if something of the essence of the live event is captured in the recording but I doubt we can achieve much more than this. So what is left is a judgement to how much the playback sounds believable. As I said before, its like judging a portrait - some capture or convey a certain essence of the model but we don't know if it is a realistic likeness unless we can see the original sitter at the time that they posed for the portrait.

 

[stehno]

Transparency to the recorded content. That is the only attainable goal. And the only thing you have control on.

Amir, I agree that transparency to the music embedded in the recording is the only attainable goal within my scope and said as much in a much earlier post.

To the extent this sounds "live" is a huge credit to the recording engineer, mixing and mastering to create such an illusion from the highly limited 2-channel stereo.
......

I disagree here. I'm confident that even mediocre-engineered recordings (we all have plenty them) can sound convincingly "live" when played back from even a humble but extremely well-thought-out playback system. OTOH, even the best well-engineered recording (hopefully we all have a few) will sound like crap when played back on anything less than an extremely well-thought-out system. The distortions inherent in every last playback system are immense and unless they are sufficiently addressed, there's no such hope. That's my dogma.

 

[microstrip]

(...) I'm confident that even mediocre-engineered recordings (we all have plenty them) can sound convincingly "live" when played back from even a humble but extremely well-thought-out playback system. OTOH, even the best well-engineered recording (hopefully we all have a few) will sound like crap when played back on anything less than an extremely well-thought-out system. The distortions inherent in every last playback system are immense and unless they are sufficiently addressed, there's no such hope. That's my dogma.

Excellent point. Although some exceptional quality recordings sound better than most in good systems, an adequately matched system will enhance the "natural" sounds of most recordings, making them sound probably much better than the recording engineers could expect. It is why I have no problem assuming that the high-end designers and manufacturers can be part of the artistic process.

 

[stehno]

Since Peter mentioned BSO, here is the process of capturing that orchestral sound: http://www.classical-scene.com/2011/10/02/bso-recording/

"When we archive concerts over the course of a season, the most complicated musical program will require perhaps as many as 45 microphones, but we don’t just send all the channels to be archived without post-production. The only way to be 100% sure that you have chosen the right microphone and put it in the right place is to listen to it. If we can’t produce a very good mix for two channels then we haven’t done our job right. So we do pretty sophisticated and effective stereo mixing as part of the process of archiving."


As you can see they clearly record each element separately. There is no notion of recording what you hear:

"We’ve produced four or five rather good sounding and rather well received commercial recordings from the Levine archives. And I approached them the way I would approach any commercial recording. I don’t think of a commercial recording as being a substitute for a concert; I think of it as being a completely different product. People who buy and enjoy recordings don’t do so because they can’t or don’t want to go to a concert. They buy them because listening to music presented that way gives them a different kind of experience than going to a concert. And if you listen to the recordings that we make that we are rather well known for — the BSO recordings, the Mariansky recordings, or any of our other orchestral recordings, you’ll find a completely different experience than what you would have found had you gone to those concerts. You’ll hear a balance that is not necessarily from the conductor’s perspective or from seat A 12 or B 21 or C 93. You’ll hear a balance that you can’t hear from anywhere in the hall. It will be much better and more musically appropriate because we have that ability. We don’t arbitrarily do it alone, but rather in conjunction with the composer and the conductor. But certainly you can hear much more orchestral detail than you can from any given seat in any hall. We try to create a sonic envelope that is at least as exciting as what you would hear in the hall, thinking that is the kind of product a commercial release needs to be."

I mean this is right from horse's mouth. It can't be more clear yet folks keep insisting otherwise. And it took a two second search to find it. Why not do this Peter instead throwing this argument at me?

Amir, this collection of posts was your most informative posts IMO I've yet read from you and found them to be rather thought provoking but even disappointing to read in some ways.

Nevertheless, I lashed out at you a few posts ago for some of the preconceived notions of you I'd been harboring for quite some time and I'm sorry. Not to say that I'll be mounting your statue on my dashboard anytime soon but I thoroughly enjoyed the read and the meaningful and thought-provoking dialogue that you and Peter engaged in. I hope you'll accept my apology.

 

[LL21]

The just one night album is my favorite album fantastic live stuff you probably have it.

Great album...listening the 2nd CD now...thanks for the recommendation...will get to your recommended tune (Cocaine) shortly.

 

[bonzo75]

Great album...listening the 2nd CD now...thanks for the recommendation...will get to your recommended tune (Cocaine) shortly.

Cocaine, Blues Power, and Setting me up are my favs in that.