Re: I think you got it all right.

Posted by David Aiken (A) on November 18, 2002 at 23:49:37

In Reply to: I think you got it all right. posted by Penguin on November 18, 2002 at 18:44:40:

When you play the recording from the anechoic chamber back, the room effects WILL interact with the sound of the recording in the same way that they will interact with the sound of a live instrument, at least on one level. The interactions won't be quite the same - the piano has a different radiation pattern to a speaker, and a stereo speaker pair will have a different radiation pattern again.

If my guess at "confusion" due to the presence of 2 different sets of acoustic environment cues is right, you will reduce that situation to one set of cues and it will be the same environment providing them in both cases, but the radiation patterns of the speaker will still be different to those of the live instrument and there will still be the other issues I raised about frequency response and dynamic handling ability of the speaker vs the live instrument so the experiment may end up telling you more about the specific speaker and how it reproduces that particular instrument than anything more generalisable.

I'm not certain it will get you all that much closer to understanding why recordings sound different since recordings aren't normally made in an anechoic chamber so the sound of the recording you make is likely to be very different from the sound of a normal recording of the same piece. You may just end up knowing why a recording made in an anechoic chamber sounds different to the sound of the same instrument live rather than why a live recording of the instrument in a normal performance venue sounds different to the sound of the live instrument.

A simpler test to get a handle on the effect of space on recordings and what then happens on playback isn't too hard. Do you have a large cathedral-type church nearby that has a choir who have released a recording made in the church. Go and listen to the choir live in the church and buy one of their recordings. Listen to the recording on your system at home and see what you think of the difference in the overall ambience as well as the way the voices sound.

My room has some acoustic treatment and I listen near field which also works to reduce room effects. When I put on something recorded in a reverberant cathedral or similar large space, I can "sense" the scale of the space when listening to the record but I am also aware of the "sound" or "feel" of my room as well. The space on the recording tends to dominate but I have an L-shaped room and one side is very different to the other, and I can hear that difference to a greater or lesser degree depending on the record, but it is there so there's always something of my room present along with the sense of the space in which the recording was made. Listening to live music there is always only the sense of one space, the space you are in.

Actually that's a lie but only a little one. I do have a recording of David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir recorded live in New York in a venue that didn't have the reverberant acoustic they liked. They digitised the signal from the mixer, sent it by telephone cable to an abbey in France where they had previously recorded. It was played back on speakers there in real time, miked and redigitised then retransmitted to New York where the feed from the French abbey was mixed into the live feed from the group on stage and played through the speakers so that the audience could listen to the group live with the acoustic of the abbey mixed in. The recording incorporates the acoustic from the abbey as well as from the live site also so playback means you have 3 sets of acoustic info when you count your own room. I have never heard of any other live performance where the performers deliberately chose to mix the acoustic information from the live venue and another space in that way.

David Aiken

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - Is there anybody equipped to perform the following test? - Penguin 16:18:28 11/17/02 (15)

I recommend that you contact... - dBe 13:26:03 11/19/02 (1)

Would they also have a Steinway player grand handy? - Penguin 18:45:29 11/19/02 (0)

Re: Is there anybody equipped to perform the following test? - chris.redmond2@bushinternet.com 14:33:17 11/18/02 (0)

A human can never match performance that closely. - jj 21:16:41 11/17/02 (11)

Re: A human can never match performance that closely. - Penguin 21:38:00 11/17/02 (10)

I think I understand what you want to achieve. - David Aiken 13:26:26 11/18/02 (7)

I think you got it all right. - Penguin 18:44:40 11/18/02 (6)

Re: I think you got it all right. - David Aiken 23:49:37 11/18/02 (5)

A few more attempts at this :-) - Penguin 18:53:52 11/19/02 (4)

Re: A few more attempts at this :-) - David Aiken 13:35:08 11/20/02 (3)

You put forth a convincing argument :-) - Penguin 20:02:01 11/20/02 (1)

Don't worry about the differences, worry about getting good recorded sound :-) NT - David Aiken 23:23:04 11/20/02 (0)

Re: A few more attempts at this :-) - Phil Tower 14:44:33 11/20/02 (0)

Re: A human can never match performance that closely. - jensw 00:14:45 11/18/02 (0)

A player piano won't help. - jj 23:31:38 11/17/02 (0)

Follow Ups

Re: I think you got it all right. - David Aiken 23:49:37 11/18/02 (5)

A few more attempts at this :-) - Penguin 18:53:52 11/19/02 (4)

Re: A few more attempts at this :-) - David Aiken 13:35:08 11/20/02 (3)

You put forth a convincing argument :-) - Penguin 20:02:01 11/20/02 (1)

Don't worry about the differences, worry about getting good recorded sound :-) NT - David Aiken 23:23:04 11/20/02 (0)

Re: A few more attempts at this :-) - Phil Tower 14:44:33 11/20/02 (0)

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