Out of a phone booth? Luckily, you're not correct, since no recordings were ever done in this fashion - unless as a gimmick!What you always get is the impression of musicians' output, or pure synthesised sounds, created or fashioned in a space which is as large as that at the time of the music making, or matching what the effects units were set to. And it's always believable, what varies is the level of noise that comes along for the ride - a very 'primitive' recording has a large quotient of accompanying non-musical sound, but this sits in a different space from that of the performance, subjectively.
A real life analogy is listening to a live classical performance in a hall, which is perfectly silent - that's the good recording; the worst recording is the same performance with a huge array of noise makers besides you, and rain falling heavily on the roof. In both cases the integrity of the music is there, the contrast is the amount of unrelated sound that's also in the picture.
Yes, the level of correlation of distortions to the music is part of the picture - but much of these distortions are "sympathetic" or are not a hindrance to getting the musical message across - tube distortion is a classic example of this. I used to believe that many recordings would always sound awful, even after I got convincing sound happening for much of my collection; this progressed to a handful that were unrescuable after some years of experiment and effort; until finally, I accepted that every one of them could come good, if sufficient efforts were made to get the best out of the replay chain - hence my motto, there's no such thing as a bad recording. This forces me to acknowledge that the problem is on my side, not the recording's - as a result, I end up pushing the system to a point where I get satisfying replay of those bad'uns ...
Gross compression is one of the hardest, I do agree. What happens when the system is of sufficient competence is that the subjective impression is of the sound being extremely aggressive - not that it's distorted in any way, just that the musicians are trying to wear you down with a barrage of sound, it hammers at you with constant intensity - an analogy might be a symphonic work, which consisted of variations on an end of work climax throughout the piece. This is not distorted sound, but it's unrelenting in its driving energy - the result is exhausting to listen to, there is not enough light and shade to balance the impact, as an emotional journey.
)If the original musical event is 'awful', and is intentionally made so, then there is only so much that can be done - a child playing a recorder extremely badly, say ... (we have an election on, and a satirical comedy show "tested" candidates' patience at public gatherings, by having a "proud mother" have "her child" play an appalling drone, continuously - how long before the smile evaporated, the stopwatch was on ...
Work's being done on getting software to unmix recordings, eventually one will have smart algorithms to digest the mess, and restore some normality to what's been damaged ... which is a different exercise from recordings where they tried to capture as much of the event as possible, within the limitations of the technology used.
There are recordings which are bad because the artistic intent is faulty - what I speak of is that the intent can be fully revealed, so, they are not "bad" in that sense ...
The ones that cannot, in normal systems, are the ones to be concerned about - sometimes they enhance the playback, listen to a late 50's pop recording and wallow in the rich, golden glow imparted by the recording chain - this is distortion, but I like it! But other variants do disturb, injected by much more modern playback chains - these need to be reduced to inaudibility.
The exercise is always to reduce whatever artifacts are there to a level where they don't disturb the illusion - I can't speak for tube designs, because I have never dabbled in these; all my systems have always been 100% SS.
With all due respect, another absolute, gross generalization that is, from a practical perspective, meaningless.
I thought the forum had decided that these types of absolutists statements are insulting, in poor taste and invite conflict.
This guy is quite amazing. He appears to be the final arbiter of truth.
Long live the King.
PS: And morricab, please attach all your research that validates that "an illusion", which by nature is clearly subjective, can be quantified as an "objective", absolute truth.
