[TheeeChosenOne]

Funny Stuff:  

http://www.audioasylum.com/scripts/t.pl?f=general&m=275333


Funny Banter Like This:
You're an audio snob if:

"Your girlfriend wants a threeway, and you run out and buy her a SPEAKER."

If my girlfriend wanted a threeway, I'd hit her over the head with a SPEAKER... (Most-likely a two-way.)

[randytsuch]

There were a few very good ones, decided this was my fav,

You attend a string quartette performance at Carnegie hall and smugly think: “Hah, they are ALMOST as good as my home system-just not as focused and revealing …”

     

Randy

[Captain Humble]

You haven’t kept a component for more than 90 days since 1989.

There are a few of these guys in our midst.  

[nathanm]

You attend a string quartette performance at Carnegie hall and smugly think: “Hah, they are ALMOST as good as my home system-just not as focused and revealing …”    

Well, most of the time that's true!  Of COURSE a polished studio recording is gonna sound more focused and revealing! That's the whole point, isn't it?

I notice that when people talk about the joy of live music it's always orchestral.  But anything with a PA, sonically speaking it is usually far worse than home playback on a nice system.  

Live sound sucks! It's everything else besides that which makes it a more exciting experience.  That's why I think if you really believe live rock\blues\jazz etc. music is the Reference\Goal, then don't waste your time with fancy hifi stuff, get actual PA gear.  Big plywood cabinets with 12" woofers and horn-loaded tweeters.  Power them with 1200 watt class D solid state amps.  Probably with some compressor\limiters in there so the speakers don't blow up when someone drops a microphone or whatever.

Now onto the source; First of all, studio recordings are OUT.  They sound too good!  Only the most raw recordings will suffice here.  Something taped off the FOH mix would be ideal.  Invite plenty of friends over for your listening session.  No cushy chairs, it's best to stand.  Okay, maybe if you're doing a jazz club you could sit.  Set up a lighting system.  Have lots of cigarette smoke.  Plenty of beer.  And play it LOUD!  I've never been to any show where you could talk to the person next to you without shouting directly in their ear. Police show up cause the guy next door has got a live band playing in his living room?  Well, you wanted to reporduce live music didn't you?

Unless you address these other issues the idea of replicating live performances is silly.  (Hell, we haven't even addressed the visual of band actually playing the instruments!)  If this whole exercise sounds over the top, well yes I would agree.  That's because hifi playback and live music have very little to do with one another.  They are two separate, albeit related art forms which both can provide musical satisfaction in their own ways.   The idea that live music is always better in every case I think is foolish.  If you enjoy it that much why even bother with recordings at all?

The most "realistic" recordings I've heard have usually been the worst sounding, fidelity-wise.  Kinda like how video camera footage looks more like real life than film does, even when playing back over the same TV set.   Filtering out all the extra stuff to present the art to the listener in its purest form is a different thing than capturing a specific moment in time.  Most of the recordings in our collections are made in the first manner, not the second.  That's why the string quartet on CD might be more enjoyable than the live gig.

[Dan Banquer]

Nathan: You sound like the rest of us who have been victims of badly applied sound reinforcement.
If the oppurtunity arises, and you have local music school in the area, drop in and see if you can listen to a chamber group in rehearsal. I think it will be a shocking experience for you.

[JLM]

Good discussion!

Nathanm is right.  Most of the music we listen to is always amplified.  In that case the question should be, "Do you want to accurately recreate a concert (or studio) sound?"

Dan is also right.  "Real" acoustical music is the only "true" standard.  But the room acoustics of any given venue and the multiple recording limitations/techniques still skew what we can playback.  

Is something wrong when we like it better recorded than live (other than for pure convenience sake or cost)?

jeff

[Tonto Yoder]

No real disagreement with Nathan, but................
I think you can judge how realistic your stereo sounds even by comparing it to really, really bad examples of live, acoustic instruments.
Say it's even your niece Betty banging out notes on a rent-to-own piano, terrrible to listen to 'cause she's so new to the instrument, but still having the piano attack & decay that CD's have such a hard time replicating. Obviously,
something grand in scale like a live, unamplified orchestra is going to be a better standard against which to compare certain aspects of one's stereo but mini-standards might be available. I recently saw "Lord of the Dance"  live but amplified (terrible sound); while I don't really know what 45 people clomping around on a wood floor sounds like, I know what my own footsteps sound like (I'm a cat burglar by trade) and can make the mental extrapolation.

Anyone remember which company did the comparison with Arturo Delmoni recently??? He was on-site with his fiddle while audio gear alternated with his live playing.

[cyounkman]

Sonus Faber? They would do that. (I'm just guessing, though)

I heard that NHT did a live / speaker comparison at CES or some other show a while back with their 3.3's.

[nathanm]

I've been to plenty of unamplified concerts before,  it's just that type of music isn't my main thing.  Years ago I went to see a Big Band type jazz thing which was done without PA in a fairly large hall.  Sounded great.  A jazz guitarist came on after them and he played through a tiny little amp at the center of the stage.  This too was very pure sounding.  

That's all well and fine, but I like metal, I like distorted guitar music, and I think the PA is overdone.  I wish more bands would play in halls with no reinforcement instead of dingy, reverberant clubs.

The musicians' amplifiers to me are the "reference" for rock music, just as acoustic instruments are.  Unfortunately the PA pollutes the tone.  In a small club, (if people would shut the fuck up for a change), a drummer without reinforcement can produce plenty of volume to balance with the guitar and bass amps.  The singer most likely will not have quite enough natural volume to mix well with this, so put his voice through an amp.  The guitar, bass and drums don't need any, or just a little bit perhaps.  If you've ever heard a Marshall on "11" the thought of sticking a mic 3" away from the speaker and pumping it through the PA to make it even LOUDER seems absurd.  Now take this to the extreme, where you might have a band with a WALL of Marshalls on stage - and they STILL send that through the PA!  Insane!

I distinctly remember being at the Milwaukee Metalfest one year and they had one stage setup in a theater type room, which was great.  The room was far more damped than the other three stages and it did sound pretty good.  I really felt like I was sitting in a giant living room!  One band came on, don't remember who, and got the amp going.  The guitar crunch coming off that cab was beautiful!  Then all of a sudden the guy at the board turned up the mic on the cabinet and sent the sound through the PA speakers.  RUINED THE TONE UTTERLY!  It was a night and day difference!  I was so bummed!  I was getting frustrated because the room was not that big, and there seemed no need for such blasting loud PA.  The best seat at a metal show is dead nuts center against the stage if you can manage it.  The PA noise is off axis enough and you can hear more of the stage sound, which is much better.  At a Primus show once I was lucky enough to be inline with Les' bass cab and it was 10x more pure than the cacophony coming from the PA wall!

I do agree with the reality\speaker comparision, which is very telling.  However, you're not really critiquing a speaker and amp combo for it's portryal of acoustic reality, you're critiqing a recording of what a microphone heard played through speakers.  Microphones usually add a layer of coloration to the sound, often one that is subjectively favorable.

The right recording WILL sound more realistic, even if you have cheap playback equipment.  I've recorded my cousin playing acosutic guitar in a bedroom and except for the coloration provided by the microphone, the sound is extremely true to life.  If the recordings' aural cues of the space are somewhat in line with your own listening room the illusion of reality will be much effortlessly achieved.

Here's an idea:  what if we took all this hifi knowledge and used it for making better PA systems?  Find something that will make a guy singing into an SM57 through a speaker sound like a guy NOT singing into anything!  Like, what would it sound like if instead of a stack of JBL PA cabs they used Avantgarde Trios or some other fancy pants hifi speaker?  If our high dollar hifi speakers are so damn great why aren't they being used in sound reinforcement?