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There's no comparison. They're two completely different sounds.
I will come to your venue and prove it.
Loudspeakers will NEVER sound like real instruments.
:)
Follow Ups:
we're never going to make any progress when the engineers who create the recordings don't get it.
Witness the posts regarding the sixty track mixing board.
If instruments are not amplified i can see the point
But often also in a jazz club we listen to voices, instruments captured by mics and through a mixer and sent to amplified speakers
We are not listening to the real sounds i mean
I am pretty sure that if we record decently the signal out from the mixer and compare original sound with recorded one the result will be extremely similar
Instead for not amplified instruments i can see the challenge
For me it is important that the sound is still nice, moving, exciting
In this case i can live without the real thing quite easily
Kind regards,
bg
... aren't we always at least a few steps away from "live" when we listen to recordings at home? What we get is different, yet similar.I know a guy who listened through the keyhole of the jazz club door. Even then, the sound was somewhat degraded.
Edits: 08/24/14 08/24/14
Yes you are right
But my point is that we can actually have a better sound at home that at a real concert
If you get a very good recording of what the mixer feeds to the concert speakers you can have a better digital source, amp, speakers and acoustic at home
If instead we are comparing the real sound of a piano with its recording i think that the result can be still enjoyable but not at the same level
Of course
When i go to a jazz concert i see always mics to capture the sound
There is always an amplification, and not the best of what is available i guess
Pro amps and speakers, not audiophile
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 08/24/14 08/24/14
I agree that listening to recorded sound on a good system in the comfort and privacy of one's own home sounds and feels better than a poorly organized or poorly engineered live concert does. It's no fun sitting next to certain types of noisy and obnoxious people while listening to pro sound "squawker" speakers in a smelly venue with bad acoustics.But, when everything is "right" you can't beat the live performance. Even the most expensive playback systems pale in comparison to live sound, at least when the key aspects of live sound are the consideration.
There is, however, the aspect of listening that is sometimes called "listenability" to consider. For me, the word "listenable" alludes to how easy it is to forget about the source of the music in order to concentrate on the music itself. The better home playback systems (especially good headphone systems) sometimes surpass the listenability of the best live events, I think, if for no other reason than there might be fewer distractions in the proper home environment.
Edits: 08/24/14 08/24/14 08/24/14
Hi and thanks for the very interesting advice
I think that what you mention " when everything is "right" you can't beat the live performance " is also the key question
When everything is "right" at a live performance ?
I can guess that the best jazz clubs have a very good acoustic and playback systems
So in the end i agree that nothing can beat the real thing
But the interest around music reproduction means that reproduced music can be a very nice substitute
As you very well say, absolutely " It's no fun sitting next to certain types of noisy and obnoxious people while listening to pro sound "squawker" speakers in a smelly venue with bad acoustics "
Just think of the feeling to have a jazz group playing only for you in your home when you want
In my experience the very big issue is the listening room.
I am sure that the only way to get a good sound is a dedicated and treated room ...
And unfortunately i cannot afford it at the moment.
I bought a cheap and nice system some years ago.
The sound at home was only a very bad copy of the one in the shop listening room ... a very poor copy.
And the system was exactly the same up to the last cable.
What a difference ...
Thanks again.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 08/25/14 08/25/14 08/25/14
I fooled the bikers at my brothers summer party had some very large JBL horns in his system I played a bit of jazz at high volume as I tuned in the system folks started to head for the barn asking if the band started.
I've noticed it too, on occasion. Sometimes, the system sounds more convincing from outside of the main listening area.
Or the listeners in question are a bit deef?
looks like a six cylinder Valk. Smooth running sans potatoes.
Their pipes can't drown out the sound of our stereos, they know that now.
Music, not just Mozart's, has too many bits , not too many notes .
I play my instrument in my listening room every day and there is a "sensation" in my brain that just doesn't happen when I listen to my stereo, even of good recordings of myself and even at the same lease-breaking levels.
The same is true at concerts: no reproduction system I have heard can duplicate the "feeling" of a full orchestra. Play the Mahler Resurrection at 110 dB on your stereo then listen to it in a concert hall from the Dress Circle, no contest.
Sometimes they sound better, depending on the venue.
If the loudspeaker is in an electric guitar amp, it's "part" of a "real" instrument.........
The symphonic orchestra that's suddenly raucous and discordant, the folk group that hits a three part harmony just a bit out of tune but with enthusiasm, that rock group that doesn't have a lot of polish but can write a great tune and just need to give it a bit of polish, that old and tired band on the retro tour that hit that magical groove, pull out all the stops and take you on a ride that's so incredibly enjoyable and makes you feel so alive.
That's live music. There's no substitute.
Never is a very long time AND a large part of what you hear playing recordings has to do with how the recordings were made.
If you have a measurement microphone, record a mono track of you and your instrument and of familiar sounds and voices around your house, then play it back through decent headphones.
It is very possible to reproduce voices etc such that if played behind a curtain, it sounds like a person is standing there.
What it takes is something like a measurement microphone in reverse, flat response and acoustic phase and radiating from a single point in time and space as Dick Heyser described more than 25 years ago.
Those are not qualities present in many hifi loudspeakers however.
Ha! That's good! :)
Yeah, as I've said before, I'm a big fan of Richard Heyser. He quantified and explained things in such a way as to make it obvious and understandable. I'm also a big fan of Michael Gerzon. He really "got" the whole 3D recording thingy, and knew what the limitations of recording are. I'm sad that he passed away so young, and didn't get to achieve his full potential and vision.
With regard to recording, using a measurement mic and going to a mono track, etc., yup, been there, done that. 1974 was my first time. B&K 4133 or 4135 or such, going into a modified Studer A80 at 30 ips. Those were the days - experiment 'til the cows come home! :)
And certainly, we can be fooled into believing a recording is "just like" the real thing, right up until we hear the real thing. Remember the old AR drumset demo back in the 70s, where they had a drummer ostensibly playing, but what we were hearing was actually a recording? That was cool, and it played with our hearing and sight senses! As a specially produced sound track, it was very convincing, especially with the visual aspect. I've always wondered if we'd have been as convinced if they didn't have the drummer. (And, yes, I've seen the videos which you often link to.)
Nevertheless, given that a microphone picks up an instrument's sound at only one point, and the loudspeaker reproduces only the sound from that point, we don't get a true reproduction of the instrument in a room, even if great efforts were made to make it sound real. The illusion is shattered as soon as the real instrument is played live in the room.
:)
To be clear, the problem(s) are several fold. You mention drums, well the peak levels one finds from a drum set are WAY beyond home loudspeakers and the dynamic range beyond analogue tape for that matter.
The reason I suggest recording in mono is that our hearing via two ears creates the image of one point in space while one can’t capture a live stereo image realistically using spaced microphones.
Binaural recordings may be the closest and reminds one of a real space but can’t capture space realistically.
A pair of conventional hifi loudspeakers generally do not reproduce that “image” even when captured and this can be heard by playing a mono (same to both channels) signal. Ideally one only hears the center phantom but most / nearly all hifi speakers produce a phantom and an obvious right and left source as well which is spatial contamination.
If you have headphones on your computer, try a couple short recordings made with a microphone invention that samples in a different way. This is a product that isn’t ready for market yet but shows promise.
See if these don’t sound more like ‘real” than usual. They are not compressed so you may have to raise the level some.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8208qvei00qxzxz/parade%20section3.wav
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jq5n4gj4mpptjpn/TrainStart.wav
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c3c0si0r7giud2w/Johns%20bbqTrack%2004.wav
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs
Don't even get me started about drums!!!
Here's my "family room".
I LOVE my kids!
:)
~!
The Mind has No Firewall~ U.S. Army War College.
It probably helps that we are naturally sensitive to the frequency range of the human voice and that the human voice mechanism does not radiate sound as a piano does - essentially being a "forward-firing" monopole mechanism.A few people might be considered "bipolar" because they radiate sound from the back as well as the front, but they are a true minority.
Edits: 08/21/14
Thanks to all of you for your replies! A special thanks to genungo for your lengthy, thoughtful and well-written reply. Andyr - I get what you wrote. :) No offense intended to other posters whom I didn't note!The impetus for my initial post was that I had been listening to some jazz on the stereo, and then had to do some practicing. Turned off the stereo, picked up my trumpet, and within a few minutes, I just HAD to post my thoughts!
This isn't news to me, I just needed to say it, largely because there seems to be so much mis-information and lack of understanding on this topic. Having gotten the sound virus way back in 1968 as a Junior in high school, I've been living and breathing this stuff for a long time. In my early years, I read Stereo Review, Audio, and the occasional TAS. During that time, I kept thinking about and looking for sound equipment which would "accurately" reproduce real musical instruments. Mind you, I was a music major after high school, so live/real instrument sound was around me every day.
It wasn't until I actually got some formal education in audio and acoustics that I realized the folly of my pursuit. This, of course, sent me off on an excursion into the science of microphone choice and placement and the use of multiple (> 4) playback channels. This led to my downfall, officially becoming a sound geek. lol Also during that time, I can't tell you how many recitals and concerts I recorded. In Montreux, at the Institute for Advanced Musical Studies (IHEM), I recorded at least five performances a week. During that time, through the dogged efforts of a very smart and talented guy, Bob Minor, to whom I am eternally grateful, I was introduced to the physics of sound, and the works of Harry Olson, Leo Beranek, Howard Tremaine, Cyril Harris, and others. Prior to then, I had no idea that there was such a mature understanding of the science in those fields, but I guess that's part of why we go to college (other than to meet hot girls). So...
I learned about overtone structure, instrument sound dispersion/radiation patterns, room reflections, microphone characteristics, etc. And John Curl was kind enough to try to pound some basic understanding of circuitry into my thick head. That is when I had "the epiphany", and realized that no current loudspeaker or system could reproduce, "mimic", the live sound. And that still holds true today.
I started this thread partly for that reason, and partly because the general topic of "realism" has come up in a couple of other threads recently, so I thought it would be useful to address it head on.
Genungo makes an excellent point about recordings often (usually?!) not attempting to reproduce the actual original sound, but rather to create a new sound which paints a picture that the producer thinks we will like to hear. This is very true. It is very much analogous to painting.
:)
Edits: 08/21/14
when I'm playing it from when I sit listening to someone else playing in a room, a church or a performance venue. In fact it sound different in all of those.
Beatnik's stuff http://web.me.com/jnr1/Site/Beatniks_Pictures.html
Bada-bing!This is what I'm talking about when I say that a microphone only picks up the direct sound at single point, and the sound is different at different positions around the instrument. Loudspeakers cannot reproduce the instrument's 3D dispersion pattern, since the mic was at a single location.
:)
Edits: 08/21/14
The answer is incredibly easy - take a very simple case, A single Cello playing in a room for you. (My Niece was just in a recital this past weekend.) The sounds produced by the cello emanate form all over instrument - the front, the back, the bridge, & strings, of course.
The acoustics radiate outward into the room - are reflected by the various surfaces and combine in a completely non phase coherent way at your ears. Then the fun stuff happens. Your ears convert the waveform into a arbitrarily sampled god-zillion different neural impulses - that combined with visual clues - assuming your eyes are open - that the brain processes into an event that moves us with the emotion in the music and the real time experience of the performance.
In stereo (or multi-channel) reproduction the waveforms from pressure variations in the room are recorded mostly with directional microphones (omni's would be better perhaps - another discussion) at discrete positions in the room. In the production - those signals are blended into the two or more signals making up the recording. Heyser called this process "Apodization" - literally "Removing the Foot" - or foundation of the live event.
In playback, we take those two somewhat correlated voltage signals, amplify them without too much alteration, directed then to some kind of loudspeaker that further distorts the signal - in space, time and frequency. By the time it begins producing its pressure variations into a room with a completely different characterization (visually and acoustically), there is absolutely very little resemblance to any of the recorded tracks - let alone the waveform of pressure variations that occurred at your ears.
We sit in out listening chair - perhaps to a Klipschorn or WATT or Quad, or 35 year old twice re-coned Advent - and our brain works the magic, trying, and often succeeding to fool us into imagining a live performance.
It is a miracle it works at all...
Three most important things in Audio reproduction: Keep the noise levels low, the power high and the room diffuse.
One of the barriers to getting the real thing are removed. I did several recordings of solo violin with the violinist standing between my 8 foot tall Acoustats and the microphone at the listening position. Other than the overly dry room acoustic (you get the same room twice) I was able to get a very convincing reproduction when played back through the Acoustats (recording was made on a TEAC R2R analog recorder). Naturally, the Acoustats, being a full range electrostat, were time coherent.
Spaced omni microphones in a decent recording studio - supplemented by some near field M-S oriented mics near piano and other percussion that can be spaced and time aligned with the omni-mains. Gives you the best ability to decode a relevant waveform reference, and maintain the ability to steer (somewhat rationally) signals and ambiance into the production.
Then a time coherent loudspeaker at least in the 250-3000 Hz range - provided 1st reflection energy is down 10dB or so - can give you a somewhat decent wave form on the reproduction side.
What is really interesting though is all that seems to not really be necessary for the illusion to congeal in our minds. Since the majority of recordings are not made with that in mind, and even some of the most recommended audiophile recordings are engineers creations of events and performances recorded in various times and places, we can throw out that requirement. And likewise the need for time aligned loudspeakers. Yes they are magic, my first listen to ESL57, Vandersteen 2C, DQ10 all threw the "image" easily - but so do my MMG's and my old Advents.
Although, there is one aspect of sound reproduction systems that is critical AND required: You have to have confidence that the system will do it! That is why I think we fall into a bit of "snobishness" here in the Asylum. If you've invested time and more time into your own system - critically listening, and you move to a lesser system, for example - a MP3 data stream, bluetoothed into a sound bar. You probably won't hear the magic. But another listener just might!
Over the years I've sold and/or set up 100's of systems for folks - and I can pretty much guaranty with the right recording it will be perceived as "real" by the owners - with just a few exceptions. Sometimes it just setting the stage for them. Other times just balancing the system with instrumentation, builds that level of confidence.
"The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat" - Confucius
For about 2 years I tried going back to speakers that were not time coherent and in the end I had to go back to the coherence that does a more thorough job of convincing me of a live event. This is particularly true with good live recordings of which I have several.
I have heard experiments where otherwise decent speakers were made time coherent digitally...without any manipulation of the frequency response and the improvement by making them time coherent was nothing short of stunning. It seems to me that while your brain is cleaning up the mess speakers make it is working awfully hard to do it and this leads ultimately to fatigue and less feeling of real.
It is also in the end I had to come back to single ended amplifiers...I can hear the discontinuity of a push pull amp. Not at first mind you but after living with it for a few months I knew the two I tried had to go and come back to single ended amps (I tried the Einstein "The Absolute Tune" and the VAC Renaissance 30/30...both excellent machines but not as coherent as a good SET).
It's even more complicated and interesting. For each note that your cello plays, the strings and the various wood panels of the instrument establish unique vibrational patterns (modes) which propagate into the air and away from the instrument in 3D space. These sound waves interact (constructive/destructive interference) to differing degrees as you vary distance and direction away from the instrument (see Science, vol 310, pp 1414-1415, December 2, 2005). Thus the sound of a single instrument depends on 3D angle and distance.
Add reflections (and partial absorption) from surrounding objects and it gets even more interesting. There is complexity and richness in the real thing that no system in a home can reproduce.
On the other hand, when I listen to my rig I don't hear a lot of coughing or rattling of programs, and it's (sort of) like I'm sitting in a really good seat (and I can hit "Pause" when I need to go to the bathroom).
Yes! Absolutely!
You get it!
:)
Your brain works a lot harder when listening to reproduced music vs. live music. (EEG studies) Logic says it has to fill in the gaps...
Three most important things in Audio reproduction: Keep the noise levels low, the power high and the room diffuse.
Hey, you already wrote that in another thread.
;)
yeah - here is was a more appropriate answer....
At least I was stealing it from myself! no plagiarizing here.
Three most important things in Audio reproduction: Keep the noise levels low, the power high and the room diffuse.
My subject is the most important thought to me.
"This is Your Brain on Music" by Levitin
Three most important things in Audio reproduction: Keep the noise levels low, the power high and the room diffuse.
Thanks, I'll look into that!Most of the texts I have are now classics and no longer available -
"Acoustical Engineering" by Olson,
"Music, Physics and Engineering" also by Olson and still available,
"Music, Acoustics & Architecture" by Beranek,
"Acoustical Designing in Architecture" by Knudsen and Harris,
"The Technique of the Sound Studio" by Nisbett,
"The Audio Cyclopedia" by Tremaine,
"Architectural Acoustics" by Lawrence.While the equipment examples are clearly dated, the information remains pertinent. More recent texts present newer examples, but follow the same informational pathes. For example, "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by Everest. "The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook" by Dickason is great. But my new fave recent book is "Why You Hear What You Hear" by Heller. It's a fascinating and well-written work. My minimum recommendations for every audiophile (and professional, for that matter) are:
"Master Handbook of Acoustics" by Everest,
"Music, Physics and Engineering" by Olson,
"Why You Hear What You Hear" by Heller.Those three books should be on everyone's shelf.
Edit: Fixed a name. It's Heller, not Geller. Geller is a local orthodontist. Sorry!
:)
Edits: 08/22/14 08/22/14 08/22/14
.
With a halfway decent system, I don't think that reproduced sound seems "completely different" than live sound. Demonstrations have proven otherwise. My personal experience has shown me otherwise. At times, reproduced sound can seem startlingly lifelike. So, reproduced sound is not "completely different" than live sound IMO.No system sounds completely lifelike 100% of the time, however. How often and to what degree our systems seem lifelike depends on the gear, the recordings, and the type of music being reproduced. Certain types of sounds and musical genres are easier to reproduce than others are, some recordings are more elegantly engineered than others are, some systems are of higher quality than others are.
That said, I think it needs to be remembered that musical reproduction tends to take on a certain life of it's own, either by accident or by intention. It is related to (sometimes very closely related to) actual music, yet it is different enough to deserve consideration as a separate entity. "The ART of music playback" exists, with or without our personal consent. IT is there, do not deny it...
Approximations of living sound are not the only things we might hear when listening to our systems. Recordings and their playback systems are often used in slavish attempts to recreate live events, but depending on the technology used and the production values of people who assemble playback systems and/or make recordings, systems can also become vehicles of personal expression. For instance, recordings can be used to create fantastic renditions that are not representative of anything likely to be experienced in a live encounter while loudspeaker systems can be assembled in such a way as to further enable fantastic and/or surreal listening experiences.
As a matter of fact, all playback contains elements of the surreal or fantastic. Even the most "lifelike" sounding systems possess an artificial character and provide compromised or twisted bits of sonic information. Any playback system creates sonic artifacts that effectively constitute skewed reality. We learn to believe in or accept the little compromises and engineered fantasies present in music playback, and when these artificial aspects combine with the more realistic aspects of playback, we are simultaneously entertained and transported to a state of "suspended disbelief". A good system provides the mental release and excitement that our minds and nervous systems crave, yet the manner in which it does these things is (to some degree) different from the way that live music does so. Records and record playback provide us with a new version of reality, but it could be argued that a good system always accomplishes this feat in the slyest manner possible.
Edits: 08/21/14 08/21/14 08/21/14 08/21/14
Unfortunately many in this hobby haven't had the opportunity to hear a raw recorded track before it's been mixed down.
I have three Double Basses and everybody involved can easily distinguish their difference when comparing raw tracks. Once mixed it becomes more difficult to distinguish between them even though their presence within the mix seems unchanged. The difference in post production studios (the rooms) is impossible for me to hear but some engineers I've worked with say they can. While the playback chain differs greatly in different post production studios I usually find the sound of my instruments startlingly life like.
The point is, that the initial recording and playback process is distinguishable only to a very few. For all intents and purposes the initial raw unmixed recording can be virtually undistinguishable from the event. Remember, the master (tape or file) is mixed down.
"musical reproduction tends to take on a certain life of it's own, either by accident or by intention. It is related to (sometimes very closely related to) actual music, yet it is different enough to deserve consideration as a separate entity."
I think that you have well-described the situation. Oddly while reading your post I was struck with the similarities between movies and home audio. While I'm not a big movie fan I've seen some where the "thereness" was pretty good but never would you really believe that you were actually present. Looking at projected slides also provides a semblance of being there and can be very enjoyable. But do avid viewers whinge all that time that the illusion isn't pefect? I really don't know, maybe they do...
But I suspect that most folks just enjoy the entertainment and the experience for what it is. It's not "real" but it can be VERY satisfying and it's the latter factor that we seek to optimize by fussing with the design and implementation of our systems.
Energy-wise very small amounts of errors can make or break the whole experience. A dragging voice coil or flickering arc (we had some pretty old theaters in town) can ruin the whole experience because even though their absolute time-energy contributions are rather small, they are totally unnatural and so they put our minds on alert.
I believe the same is true of smaller errors, they may not be overt enough to consciously notice but your brain still detects them and becomes a little more alert in case they should deterioriate to the point where they pose a risk. If they are intrinsic to the system, ameliorating them can reduce the stress and allow greater musical satisfaction.
And that's what audiophiles try to do...
Regards, Rick
Good points, Rick. This is pretty interesting stuff (to met at least) and, if I may comment further...If the movie screen is a place to blend physical reality and psychic reality, so is the space between our speakers. Sometimes the picture leans toward hyper-realism, at other times it leans toward romanticism or fantasy. At it's best, I think that the overall sense of illusion manages to strike a fine balance between the two extremes of perception.
I am also reminded of what film director Wim Wenders said about black and white photography. He often preferred black and white imagery to color imagery because of black and white's uncanny ability to provide a sort of intense "X-Ray view" into the characteristics of physical objects and the surrounding auras that seem to imply color. It is known that many people dream in black and white, rather than in color. Then again, some of us dream in full color while others dream in a mixture of black and white and color.
Something similar to this happens in audio at times, when my systems seem to accentuate the hard "structural" components of live sound. Some times I think I'm hearing the sonic equivalent of black and white, while at other times I am struck by what might be called the sonic equivalent of a plush, technicolor presentation. I doubt that everyone "sees" the musical performance in this way, so some people might roll their eyes when reading this. Just the same, weird things are sometimes worth mentioning.
All types of sonic presentations are artificial ones but each type (or combination of types) can represent an important aspect of the musical experience, at least for some.
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.
Nt
In audio playback, truthfulness applies to how close the sound you hear on your equipment is to the studio performance. The more processing in the studio (for example compression), the less truthful the disk or record you are playing. Your system and room do the rest. There are degrees of truthfulness if you compare any two systems.However, there is also an interaction, as very compressed track on a disk will generally sound awful on a truthful system, but is faithful to the recorded and processed disk.
Observe, before you think. Think before you open your yap. Act on the basis of experience.
Edits: 08/21/14
Isn't that something everyone already knows?
15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance.
axolotl
Definitely not!Everyone interested in audio goes through a learning curve similar to that you and I have, and different people are at different points along that curve. This is why, after 40 years, the stereo magazines are still publishing articles on "Sound 101".
As for me, I'm pretty good at some things now, but am still mostly clueless when it comes to electronics! I could stand to read an "Amplifier Design 101" article!
:)
Edits: 08/21/14
I thought so - maybe not!
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
If one tried listening to real instruments in some of the shoe boxes people listen to recorded music in they will find it is not a terribly good sound, but it is real.
Real is over-rated.
Smile
Sox
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