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In Reply to: RE: Which instruments or sounds do your speakers reproduce best? posted by genungo on August 13, 2014 at 17:10:59
OK, a live performance always sounds better. Even amplified audio played through speakers.. live performances can be recorded.. so why when we play them back are they not as good? Is it because of the electronics or the speakers?
Follow Ups:
occurs when we are "sampling" the air disturbances in the area with a microphone membrane.Maybe 10% more is lost during the recording process. Speakers and amps etc. make about 10% of the final home product.
Yeah, we're obsessing over the 10% we can control.
Good microphone placement, good recording practices, and good quality microphones and AtoD equipment is everything.
Good mixing and mastering practices can't add much, but they sure can make things worse.
Honestly, I have recordings that are so good they sound good on practically any system, but they sound fantastic on a decent system and unreal on a really good system.
So, instead of collecting fancy gear and trying to make ALL of my collection sound good, I focus on enjoying as much well recorded music as I can. If the recorded sound is worth fussing over, then fussing over the recording quality is every bit as warranted as fussing over gear.
ACtually, according to the math, it's 9x more important to fuss over recording quality. But again, audiophiles muck with the 10% they CAN control and for most, "collecting good recordings" gets crickets and wide eyed stares. Even the odd gasp.
Cheers,
Presto
what started this was the statement "a live performance is better than a recorded one". I agree with this statement. But why? The same mics can be used. (although some may have "outdoor" & "indoor" mics.) The same speakers can be used (but not likely) I am aware that some live performances and most recorded performances use recorded music. I remember the last outdoor concert I went to...my clothing was vibrating to the music and I was 100 feet away from the stage. I don't believe there are any indoor speakers that could do that. It makes me wonder if some outdoor PA speakers are better? It also bring up the question... does being outdoors make speakers sound better?
what started this was the statement "a live performance is better than a recorded one". I agree with this statement. But why? The same mics can be used. (although some may have "outdoor" & "indoor" mics.)
I think live recordings are very different than ones are created in a studio environment. And with live recordings, there are different ways they are recorded, so I don't think you can make sweeping statements about the validity or "accuracy" of live recordings in general. There are two mice recordings, two binaural, and then there are mixdowns from complex mixing arrangements of live performances, such as a rock band. You have instruments direct injected, some close mic'd and then a complex microphone set up just for the drum kit. Are all mic's in the same relative polarity? Are any digital mixers or DI (direct injection) boxes inverting? How is this "thing" being mixed? How much compression is used? Is it dynamic compression? There are so many factors which can make or break a live recording, with 1000 subjective factors in between that affect sound "quality" and sound "qualities". For me, simpler is better. I think a cello being played in proximity to a very *very* good microphone is going to be a recording with many merits. These kinds of recordings have the ability to be the most "accurate". But what if you tried to capture a rock band using this same microphone? It's not going to work.
The same speakers can be used (but not likely) I am aware that some live performances and most recorded performances use recorded music.
Sorry, you lost me here.
I remember the last outdoor concert I went to...my clothing was vibrating to the music and I was 100 feet away from the stage. I don't believe there are any indoor speakers that could do that.
There are some. Some speakers, especially high-efficiency and horn-type rigs can give you this "visceral impact" and dynamic range that other typical 2 and 3-way boxes can't. Also, some PA equipment like smaller 2 and 3-way front of house speakers can have "decent" fidelity but give you really intense impact. Sometimes larger studio monitors like ATC or PMC can give you very loud and powerful music. Depends on what you like. You can't get your "pant legs flapping" with a 6" 2-way design. Not happening.
It makes me wonder if some outdoor PA speakers are better?
They're better at producing high-spl with low distortion and excellent efficiency and have the requisite dispersion properties (if/when set up and configured properly) to give a reasonably uniform and quality listening experience to the majority of the "seats in the house". Often these speakers consist of smaller more manageable components that are built into arrays. Individually, these would probably not work well (if at all) in a home environment.
It also bring up the question... does being outdoors make speakers sound better?
A speaker sitting on the ground outside is said to be operating in half-space. A speaker hanging off of a crane 30 feet off the ground is about as close as you can get (practically) for measuring the direct radiating energy coming off a speaker with no influence from reflections. I don't like heights, so I would not want a 30 foot ladder to get up into my listening chair. Outside has merits, but for listening, you don't have the benefit that reflections and a contained space provide. A lot of the joyous imaging we audiophiles hold so dear has to do with arrival times and reverberations associated with reflections. If listening in an anechoic environment was as pleasurable as it is in theory, I think more audiophiles would do it. Most don't, because it takes up a lot of space. You either need to space of small gymnasium, or do it outdoors. I think you would need more power outdoors as well, and you'd also need a very calm day, a large field away from road-ways or industrial noise, and little or no vegetation for times when the slightest breeze would cause leaves to make noise.
The same speakers can be used (but not likely) I am aware that some live performances and most recorded performances use recorded music. I remember the last outdoor concert I went to...my clothing was vibrating to the music and I was 100 feet away from the stage. I don't believe there are any indoor speakers that could do that. It makes me wonder if some outdoor PA speakers are better? It also bring up the question... does being outdoors make speakers sound better?
That's my three cents.
Cheers,
Presto
has to do with the "instruments" reproduced. With most rock and popular music played "live", the sound reinforcement systems themselves become part of the sound - for better or for worse.
As for me, I have little interest in truly capturing the sound reinforcement experience.
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.
Edits: 08/15/14 08/15/14 08/15/14 08/15/14
I made the same basic point in my reply to your earlier thread "Relevant loudspeaker tests" about 5 weeks ago. See http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/speakers/messages/33/335392.html. For convenience, here it is:
"Rooms and loudspeakers are only part of the problem. Musical instruments and microphones are two other parts of it.
With current "practical" technology, we cannot reproduce a musical instrument sound via a recording and subsequent reproduction system. It cannot happen.
Start with the source - a musical instrument. The sound is different at every position around the instrument. This sound is radiated into a room, which imparts its own aural signature. Couple that with the fact that every instrument has a different radiation pattern.
A microphone only picks up the direct sound of the instrument from one point in space, and picks up the room ambient sound, and imparts its own signature due to frequency-dependent and other characteristics. This then is "reproduced" through a single point via a loudspeaker which has a singular radiation pattern, and re-radiates the single-point sound into another room!
Given this, it's amazing that stereo systems sound as good as they do - even if they don't sound like real instruments!"
***
As a follow-up, as long as we're back on this topic, some people misunderstood my use of the phrase "single point via a loudspeaker" in that post. The microphone which picks up the sound is a single point in the room (unless someone wants to nit-pick microphone diaphragm size - which DOES matter, but not for this dicussion).
What I was referring to with regard to the loudspeaker was the loudspeaker location - i.e., a "single location", as opposed to emanating from the entire room, not specifically a particular type of speaker or "point source" speaker. I would have thought that everyone here would have understood that, and hope this clears up any misunderstanding.
This simple fact that a microphone captures direct instrument sound at only one point around the instrument, and also picks up the room's ambient sound (which has the room's sonic characteristics) from a multitude of directions, AND imparts its own sonic signature due to its directional characteristics which vary with frequency, AND its own tailored on-axis curve, and crushes it all together to be "reproduced" from a SINGLE LOCATION VIA A LOUDSPEAKER in the room, which has a singular fixed radiation pattern which does not vary based on the instrument being reproduced, renders futile any attempt to make a cello sound like a real cello, or a trumpet sound like a real trumpet.
Back to the OP's original question:
"Some of us look for speakers that excel at reproducing certain types of instruments or sounds in music. Which ones?"
Rock 'n rollers seem to prefer "boom-sizzle".
:)
I never posted "relevant loudspeaker tests" must have me mixed up with someone else. I did ask several questions more than once in this post..yet you seem to think I need to know something else. And you seem to think what you say is an absolute fact. Somewhere in this post someone said "live performances sound better". That is my experience too. All I want to know is why? I am here to pick up ideas to make my system sound better. I think there are no more easy improvements. It sounds amazing to me every time I listen to it. Thanks for your help...
Cloudwalker, my post in this thread was in reply to BigGuyInAtl, wherein he described some of what I had already posted in his thread "Relevant loudspeaker tests" five weeks ago. I felt it was worth referencing and elaborating upon. If you read it, you'll understand.
I read your answer many times...are you sure you were responding to my question? if you were there is 1 thing I still don't understand. In many live performances the sounds we hear have usually been amplified and played through speakers. At least this is what I am thinking about. Very little of the sounds we hear is unamplified. Why does what we hear often sound better than recording that same original sound and playing it back? They both use the same microphones and mic placements. And if played outside there is no reflected sound..
OK, I understand my confusion and mis-answer :))
Given that part I have to disagree, It's been a while since a live PA performance matched the sound quality of a home playback system.
An electronic instrument (keyboard, Guitar) weally has a hard time competing with an acoustic instument, directly. However, you can't get an acoustic equivalent of a Jimmy Page Guitar. He sound so much better in my listening room compared to the last Zep Concert I enjoyed.
Three most important things in Audio reproduction: Keep the noise levels low, the power high and the room diffuse.
I hope someone can answer them!
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