[bgewaudio]

It has been said by many, that the purpose of high end audio, is to get as close or to replicate the original live performance.  Now are we talking plugged or unplugged?

Taking into consideration the gear being used for a live performance would also posses some performance limiting factors that affect our home audio systems as well, (i.e distortion, variations in frequency, etc).

Is the reason for this that they use better gear?or do they just have a way better source component? (i.e actual voice vs. CD Player or Transport)

Any thoughts

[PhilNYC]

It has been said by many, that the purpose of high end audio, is to get as close or to replicate the original live performance. 

I disagree with this.  With very few exceptions, most recordings do not capture a live event...they are either studio produced, taken off mixing boards during a live event, or some mixture of the two.  IMHO, the artist, recording engineer, and producer try to put something down in a recording that represents the performance, but tailored towards a listening experience at home (or in the car).

Sometimes people talk about a "truly great system won't hurt your ears".  Well, sometimes live performances hurt your ears (ever sat in the front row of a Dizzie Gillespie performance in a small jazz club, and you'll know!)...but a recording engineer may have taken some of the edge off the trumpet so that it is more "listenable" when played at home.

So...IMHO, "High End Audio" is about reproducing a recording in a way that most likely represents the intentions of the recording engineer.  Obviously, this varies from recording to recording, which is why I think most audiophiles are in endless pursuit of happiness.

[jqp]

Be careful with your premise...the "original live performance" was typically a symphony or maybe a big band with vocalist or a jazz ensemble, before the days of color TV!

The concept of deliberately producing distortion was foreign in the early days of hi fi.

[Mag]

As I drive around the city in my taxi I sometimes hear a busker playing a guitar. It is immediately apparent to me the difference of hearing the real instrument and a recorded one. The real one eminates a full range of harmonics of the instrument. A recording doesn't capture this especially a 16 bit cd. The better dvds with DTS, Dolby or Sacd cds are alot closer. Having said this though, I have also heard a small 2 piece amplified band play. The equipment wasn't adjusted properly for the room. In this case my system trounced what I heard coming from them. On another occasion with different band in same room with better PA setting the music sounded so much livelier. I knew right then and there that that is how my system sounds.
  So yes a system can mimic the live sound, but some resolution is lost in the recording playback of it.

[woodsyi]

Live performance is great only if you are in a good seat.  Ever get stuck out in the lawn where live and amplified sound from speakers hit you almost at the same time?  Or get stuck in front of a big speaker array for one channel?   Not as good as my sweet spot at home.  And you get no replays at the venue.

[Nick V]

I don't think there is much correlation at all with amplified music comparred to studio recorded albums played on a home audio system. I have had the opportunity to watch some of my favorite bands live during this past year. I had the great pleasure of seeing System of a Down x2, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stoneage, Audiosalve and most recently Tool play live from the floor pretty much dead centre in between the large columns of speakers usually 10 to 15 rows deep on the floor (my ideal spot for an amplified rock concert). These concerts always have absurd bass that cannot be replicated at home because the drums are simply never miked the same way on a recording as they are at a concert. I own all of the albums from all of these bands and it would be pretty much impossible to acheive the sound from the live venue at home regardless of the equipment that you may use.

My $0.02

Nick

[Russell Dawkins]

It has been said by many, that the purpose of high end audio, is to get as close or to replicate the original live performance. 

I disagree with this.  With very few exceptions, most recordings do not capture a live event...they are either studio produced, taken off mixing boards during a live event, or some mixture of the two.  IMHO, the artist, recording engineer, and producer try to put something down in a recording that represents the performance, but tailored towards a listening experience at home (or in the car).

Sometimes people talk about a "truly great system won't hurt your ears".  Well, sometimes live performances hurt your ears (ever sat in the front row of a Dizzie Gillespie performance in a small jazz club, and you'll know!)...but a recording engineer may have taken some of the edge off the trumpet so that it is more "listenable" when played at home.

So...IMHO, "High End Audio" is about reproducing a recording in a way that most likely represents the intentions of the recording engineer.  Obviously, this varies from recording to recording, which is why I think most audiophiles are in endless pursuit of happiness.

I entered recording about 18 years ago with the same presumption as bgewaudio. It took about two years of almost literally beating my head against a wall  to finally come to grips with the fact that my clients weren't interested in the recording sounding like the real thing. No, they wanted the recording to sound like a good recording!!

That is to say, with a little stage makeup.

Did you ever see a stage actor, who looks natural when seen from the audience perspective, backstage with all their makeup on? They look grotesquely exaggerated in reality, but it works onstage.

There is another aspect to this, too, and that is that even if you intent was to make the recording sound as natural and real as possible, you would still have to use a little dynamic compression to mimic what you would hear in the audience, given that you are hearing a different ratio of direct to relected sound than the (closer) microphone.

The microphone - even the main stereo pair, if that's the kind of recording it is (large scale acoustic; orchestra, choir, big band) is generally in the near field whereas the audience sits in the reverberent field.

The transition from near to reverberent field occurs when the acoustic energy comprises an equal amount of direct and reflected energy.

Finally, the close or spot mics need a little artificial reverb added, usually, and a little high frequency cut to provide the necessary impression of distance. Highs are lost in the air faster than lows. In addition, almost all mics provide a boost in the highs which must be compensated for, if realism is the goal.

[nathanm]

It's all a matter of choice.  If you subscribe to the "absolute sound" theory as defined by J. Gordon Holt (a spoken bit of this can be found on one of the Stereophile demo discs) then you have to have all your ducks in a row.  If that is what you want to do then you MUST only feed your system a purist recording of a performance in real time.  Anything else is going to interfere with the goal.  You can't have multiple microphones, you can't have mutli-tracking, you have to lock yourself into the single take, live performance model.  And really, you have to have prior knowledge too.  You would have to have been there when the recording took place and stuck your head in the same position as the microphone.

IMO this is a perfectly noble goal, but rather silly.  If you like live sound so much, why are you even bothering yourself with recordings?  I would also say that in order to suspend disbelief and really try to go for the "Holodeck" thing you could only listen to a recording made in a room analagous to your own.  Would a 4-member band fit inside your listening room?  Would an orchestra? Nah.  For me it would have to be a single vocalist.

The only way you can really get close to the absolute sound is by doing your own recordings in the same room.  Have a guy play a guitar sitting between your speakers and record it.  Play this back over the speakers.  If you cannot tell which is live and which is 'Memorex'  then you've got something special.  But it's not likely.  What you'll get will be an altered reality.  Microphones are weird things that color the sound more than anything.  The recording may even seem more exciting than the live person, or it may sound worse.  I think everybody comes to the realization at some point that fantasy is generally favorable to reality.  So the whole purist thing kind of gets pushed away in favor of creating a separate art form.  I thought it was amusing that Holt said something to the effect of "someday recording might be an art form unto itself'.  Well, DUH!  Of course it has, that's what everybody likes.  People don't really want to listen to performances, they want to listen to songs.  Something that takes shape inside your mind.  If you want performance you have to be there in the flesh, no exceptions.  I have heard recordings that have tell-tale aural clues that remind me of real world sound, but it's always a very obvious illusion.  Luckily theis

The mind can be fooled though.  I remember reading somewhere that a musician replied to a question in the real world which was asked on the playback tape!  I am not sure if he thought the person was in the room or if it was a talkback setup over speakers, but I found it interesting nevertheless.

I just picked up a Crown SASS microphone recently and am looking forward to seeing how "hi-fi" it actually sounds.  My experiments with PZMs (before the PS crapped out) gave a closer illusion of the ambient cues which occur in real life, but as I said, it's a way colored version of reality.  But that's part of the fun.  The recording art is fun because it doesn't sound exactly the same coming out.  Just like making movies I'd imagine.

[Steve]

The recording equipment I have seen is obviously one, and big weak link. Of course, engineers can also mess up things.

Yet with that said, I have some recordings from descent places that sound so real it is almost scary. Makes one think they are in the recording session.

[bgewaudio]

Hi guy's

Thanks for the replies, just thought I would throw in this topic to spice things up a little and see what others thought about this statement.

I think with regards to a live performance is not that it sounds better, but more the environment.  Personally I find my 2 ch system at home to be far more sonically pleasing than that of a live concert.  I think the people who think live performances sound better has to do with higher SPL resulting in more energy and impact and of course there are visuals too in which they add to this exhilarating experience.

Now speaking in terms unplugged live performances on a smaller scale, this would be ideal, but a little harder to achieve.  No audio system on earth is near capable of reproducing such a level of sonic perfection, but to be honest I think we've done quite well in getting very close, and hopefull with more research and development, we will be able to get it that much closer!

Happy Listening!

Thanks again!

Barry

 

[Scotty]

I have to vote for fidelity in reproduction of the original recording. If minimal  distortion  is added by the the reproduction chain than some recordings can sound very realistic. I think Russel was allowed to do a pretty good job of capturing the original performance on the the Ukrainian Radio and Televsion Orchestra recording of Prokofiev,Tchaikovsky  Romeo and Juliet.
If one does not purposely introduce distortion producing equipment into the reproduction chain with the goal altering or improving upon the sound of the original recording a fairly real sounding recreation of the original performance can sometimes result. I have been very satisfied with the glimpses into reality that are the result of this approach but most people seem to want it to sound better than real or easier to listen to than real. I have yet to hear a live violin or string section of an orchestra sound sweet but they always sound real.
Amplified music with a few exceptions has been a dismal experience for me.
It is almost always loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss and usually has gross amounts of unecessary distortion from the equipment and speakers used for sound reinforcement.

Scotty

[nathanm]

One thing I don't think I've ever seen is an audiophile who has set up a system modeled after an actual club environment.  Theather enthusiasts recreate theaters in their homes, but not so with audiophiles.  They skip the whole visual thing.  You could have a stage that the speakers sat on, have tables and chairs on the floor and then the kicker is having stage lights, preferably programmed by MIDI to synchroize to the given song.  Sort of like a life-sized diorama of sorts.  Maybe like one of those weird rides at Disneyland with mechnical talking figures and whatnot ("Are these...auto-erotica?").  I dunno, maybe you could prop a stuffed Diana Krall doll against a cardboard piano prop for maximum realism.  Or maybe just have black cardboard figures with backlighting.  Sighted people don't usually go to live concerts and close their eyes through the whole show do they?

[chadh]

One thing I don't think I've ever seen is an audiophile who has set up a system modeled after an actual club environment.  Theather enthusiasts recreate theaters in their homes, but not so with audiophiles.  They skip the whole visual thing.  You could have a stage that the speakers sat on, have tables and chairs on the floor and then the kicker is having stage lights, preferably programmed by MIDI to synchroize to the given song.  Sort of like a life-sized diorama of sorts.  Maybe like one of those weird rides at Disneyland with mechnical talking figures and whatnot ("Are these...auto-erotica?").  I dunno, maybe you could prop a stuffed Diana Krall doll against a cardboard piano prop for maximum realism.  Or maybe just have black cardboard figures with backlighting.  Sighted people don't usually go to live concerts and close their eyes through the whole show do they?

Yeah, but you'd need a whole series of ancilliary systems to play back the sounds of bottles and glasses clinking, of the drunk guys in the corner hitting on the waitress, of people shouting their drink orders, and of the bartender jingling the tip money in his pocket.  Things could get worse, depending on the club after which the room was fashioned.  If you want the real Village Vanguard experience, you need to have the subway rattling the walls at least a couple of times each evening.

Chad

[warnerwh]

What Nathanm said about the Stereophile recording reminds me of one where J. Gordon Holt had been talking for a while. During this talk he used a number of different microphones. Most of these microphones making Mr. Holt's voice sounding significantly different from one another. It would be impossible to tell which voice you heard had been closest to his.

This of course makes perfect sense since microphones are transducers like speakers or cartridges. In the end any recording that has to go through a microphone is significantly colored right there, long before the recording engineer starts dinking with his multitude of processing. Fortunately we can have a very good rendition of music with a good playback system. It's nothing like a live performance however. Everytime I go to a live performance my stereo seems like a lady finger compared to a cherry bomb. I do like the sound of my system more than the sound I've heard at many live performances however.

[MaxCast]

A bunch of good points.  I thought about this many times.  What do I want, a recreation of a live event or superb engineered recordings.

That sp recording of the mics was an eye opener.  I've talked about this before.  Add in all the other variables and the guy in the control booth can make it or break it.
BTW,  by the looks of most mixing rooms/studios, you know the dudes behind the glass, I'm not sure i want to hear what they are hearing in there in that room.  They should be in a living room or a car.   I'm sure our ears are different as well as the speakers being used.  Do they take into account what Joe six-pack has at home or what people like us have at home.

Not all music is best suited for live events.  These are best done in the highly controlled studio.  A well recorded (audiophile approved ) CD sounds great.  However, most recordings (I believe) would be better served with the unplugged type environment.  You get the best of all worlds.  LIve, no pa systems (unless needed), no mics recording speakers, no artificial reverb, etc.  Much like Mapleshade.  The extra bumps of the guitar, whispers, the band tuning their instruments inbetween songs does not bother me.  The size of the band has to be taken into consideration too.

Nathan, I think your idea is best served with a 100" screen and 7.1 speakers.

[avahifi]

I once heard a live vs: equipment demo at a trade show years ago.  A small jazz combo played and then the system played back the same thing.  There were lots of ooohs and aaahs at how close the two sounded.

When all was done, I managed to tiptoe up close and hit a cymbal hard with a drumstick.  That took care of that.

The system was not playing up to the standards of live, the group was playing down to the standards of the system.

Oh well.

Frank Van Alstine

[nathanm]

If you are really bored (or hardcore?) and want a genuine hi-fi exercise pick up the CDs from 3D Audio.  There's two of them in particular which reinforce my view that transducers are a much larger variable than electronics.  One CD has people singing and playing the same thing over and over into multitudes of different mics and the other with one mic into multitudes of different mic preamps.  To my ears there are far coarser distinctions on the microphone CD than are on the preamp CD.  It's very similar to what they did with Holt's dialogue on the Stereophile disc.  The biggest jump in tonal difference is when they throw a ribbon microphone in there.  It's also cool because you can hear what a $20,000 mic sounds like compared to a $100 one!  It's not a be-all-end-all thing, but interesting discs nevertheless.

[jqp]

The system was not playing up to the standards of live, the group was playing down to the standards of the system.

Isn't this a sad fact of life?

This is what happens in recording studios when they produce for low-fi systems and car stereo (thats where the money leads)

I also saw this many years ago when I sold computers for a while. IBM was marketing their dot matrix printers to us at some conference.

They were not at the time selling laser printers like Apple and HP and a few others.

So the marketing and talking-point sheets we received during the talks were printed with an ugly dot matrix font. Even though the sheets were printed on a laser printer. They "played down to the standards" of the technology they were selling us (to sell). And the funny thing was that one of their dot matrix printers could have made fonts of excellent quality.

I remember thinking to myself, what an idiotic thing to do, a marketing goof. To me it just showed even more how dead the dot matrix printer was for business use.

[jqp]

pick up the CDs from 3D Audio

I would love to check those out. Can you provide more details?

[Steve]

Try Stereophile's number 3 demo disk which uses different mics and/or techniques with the same mic. Find out how good a Mic can sound.

A couple of years ago, a recording event during CES/The SHOW, at a private company's venue, seven, $10,000 neuman mics were used while the rest of the recording equipment was 30 foot of .10 high capacitance cable between the mics and the 4 foot wide junky console trying to record a quartet. Then back to the pre/amp and $100k speakers.

You decide.