Exactly my POV. That's what I meant by a good recording crew tries to reproduce the score (or Beethoven's intentions). It's a different medium than live experiences and indeed, as a frequent concert-goer, even superior in some ways.
(Small point: wouldn't you call a performance of Baroque music in a big hall a bad sound? Any time a large modern orchestra plays Bach or Handel they are creating a new (possibly awful) medium, so to speak.)
Cask05 above is having trouble grasping what a sound wave is. Stereo speakers just can't make the waves reaching your ears duplicate the sound in any other place, trivial counter-examples excepted. Can't in theory and certainly can't in practice. And many of us would add, not even close, even if you are listening from down the hallway.
In ages past, when folks fooled with live versus recorded comparisons, the recording had to be made anechoically. Got the idea now?
BTW, Cask05, you can readily whisper to your neighbor in a concert hall and be heard but I bet you'd have to shout when most of the members of this forum are demo'ing their systems at home. Systems have S/N limitations, but easy for most of us to play music at ear-destroying levels at home, not ever heard in a concert hall* beyond the podium.
Ben
*highlight of my musical life was hearing Fritz Reiner conduct Also Sprach...
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The best that any sound reproduction system can do is to recreate the "art" that the producer intended. This may or may not be "realism" or "you are there", and certainly for most recordings (mostly non-classical), it is not. Stereo is what it is, an art medium, and in that sense it is "perfect". Not that it can perfectly recreate whatever sound reality one might want, but it is perfect in the same sense that Black and White photography is a "perfect" medium for artists like Ansel Adams. You work within the medium, living by all its rules and limitations.
Multi-channel is clearly an enhancement to the "palette and canvas" of the producer, but it too cannot recreate any sound scape that one could imagine. The art lives within the medium but remains art no matter how limited the medium is.
A full orchestra in a great hall is a medium almost without bounds and the producers (conductor, composer, musicians) can achieve a very high level of art within that medium, but it too is still limited in some senses. This medium cannot achieve some things that stereo can!
The art lives within the medium and must be judged in that context. Hence the answer to the OP question is "No, recreating live performances is not the goal of the stereo medium." That would be way too limiting on the medium itself while also being a misguided view of what stereo is.
Multi-channel is clearly an enhancement to the "palette and canvas" of the producer, but it too cannot recreate any sound scape that one could imagine. The art lives within the medium but remains art no matter how limited the medium is.
A full orchestra in a great hall is a medium almost without bounds and the producers (conductor, composer, musicians) can achieve a very high level of art within that medium, but it too is still limited in some senses. This medium cannot achieve some things that stereo can!
The art lives within the medium and must be judged in that context. Hence the answer to the OP question is "No, recreating live performances is not the goal of the stereo medium." That would be way too limiting on the medium itself while also being a misguided view of what stereo is.
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I think the "from down the hallway" effect is related to dynamic range. I have heard it several times when walking through a hotel with live music, say a piano player in the bar. Even some distance away and outside the room you sense it is live sound rather than any recording. I believe it is dynamic range that gives that sensation.
Some old direct to disc recordings have the same sense and were recorded with no compressing or limiting. The Lincoln Mayorga discs spring to mind.
Another interesting cue for "live" is the spatial properties. We were doing some experimentation the other day that involved binaural listening from a remote location. Half the group was in one room and the other half in the second room. When someone started gabbing in the remote room then you thought they were local. A great sense of spatial accuracy heightened the illusion of realism (yes, frequency response wasn't perfect and the usual front/rear binaural ambiguity was there, but the "liveness" was noteworthy).
David
Some old direct to disc recordings have the same sense and were recorded with no compressing or limiting. The Lincoln Mayorga discs spring to mind.
Another interesting cue for "live" is the spatial properties. We were doing some experimentation the other day that involved binaural listening from a remote location. Half the group was in one room and the other half in the second room. When someone started gabbing in the remote room then you thought they were local. A great sense of spatial accuracy heightened the illusion of realism (yes, frequency response wasn't perfect and the usual front/rear binaural ambiguity was there, but the "liveness" was noteworthy).
David
I can agree to the level noted above. I can also agree to disagree that my home sound reproduction system should be limited by the typical state of the art in "commercial" stereo recordings.
If your personal goal/opinion is in trying to reproduce the mostly compressed, highly processed pop recordings "pretty well" and you're happy with that, then I could see how your opinion might differ.
I still think of the audio recording profession as really an applied engineering discipline, and not so much "art". There are very good engineers that can create art, and by analogy, very good audio recording engineers that can do the same. But I disagree that "stereo recording" should be limited by the current SOTA - since the results can clearly be much better without much of anything changing in current technology.
Chris
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Many of you are probably aware of this but the following link is what comes to mind when I say that I'm not satisfied with the current SOTA in audio recording/production. IMO, this aggregate profession is in a really poor state. The term "lowest common denominator" just doesn't say what comes to mind:
Bob Katz - Loudness: War & Peace
It's amazing to me how bad the current state of affairs really are.
Chris
Bob Katz - Loudness: War & Peace
It's amazing to me how bad the current state of affairs really are.
Chris
I never said this. The art should be extended to the limits possible with 2 channels. That most "commercial" recordings fail this miserably is certainly the case, but then again its the producers prerogative to "produce" junk if that is what sells.
Recorded music is to live music what movies are to plays. Recorded multiple times, edited, processed,enhanced, color corrected (mastered), etc. etc. And like movies aren't trying to recreate reality, either is recorded music. The illusion may be there, but it's just an illusion. IMHO the (impossible) task of the home sound system is to recreate the sound in the mix room. That is what the artists who created the music want you to hear.
+1... and there is always aditionals guests which are different each time :ears of the owner, experience of the listener, the air load: room, space between headphones and ears...age of the captain, own mundorf Fletcher curve and fatigue...
no speaking about some drunk reccording engeener sometimes...
I listen to unamplified live music each time I can !
no speaking about some drunk reccording engeener sometimes...
I listen to unamplified live music each time I can !
My take is that the goal is to reproduce the subjective impact of live music, whether it perfectly mimics what it sounded like to someone who was there at the time is quite irrelevant to me - the recording engineer may have been listening to monitors with lousy characteristics, and never heard the intrinsic 'quality' of what he was recording - I'm not interested in his "version" ...
I judge the end result on whether it effectively convinces me that what I'm hearing is being produced by the instrument or sound source that was actually recorded, and is not a somewhat lame imitation. The human voice is excellent in this regard, and particularly using what are nominally 'poor' recordings - does everything about the qualities of the sound of a recorded voice tell you that that's a real person there, rather than a slight flawed, 'imitation' voice - is there something that "gives the game away", an artifact that clearly lets you know that it's only a recording? This is where the LIAR, "down the hallway", test is very good - if the system is behaving as it should then you should feel the need to go and doublecheck that somehow, some live performers haven't slipped themselves in place while your back was turned ...
I judge the end result on whether it effectively convinces me that what I'm hearing is being produced by the instrument or sound source that was actually recorded, and is not a somewhat lame imitation. The human voice is excellent in this regard, and particularly using what are nominally 'poor' recordings - does everything about the qualities of the sound of a recorded voice tell you that that's a real person there, rather than a slight flawed, 'imitation' voice - is there something that "gives the game away", an artifact that clearly lets you know that it's only a recording? This is where the LIAR, "down the hallway", test is very good - if the system is behaving as it should then you should feel the need to go and doublecheck that somehow, some live performers haven't slipped themselves in place while your back was turned ...
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yeah right, with a compression driver at 130 db through a subwoofer amp with the talking heads on continuous repeat LOL
Yes ... and part of this is that everything in the sound makes sense at all times - there are no 'chaos' or 'clogged' moments, which you need to mentally skip over, where you wait for the "good bits" to start again ...
of course, that would be the best but the fact is that you have to deal with how the master was done.You can never go beyond the master tapes and quality of how the music was recorded.
I personally dont like enough artist to not listen to a album because I dont like how its mastered, for me its a simple bonus if the sound is great and has that natural quality that can give the illusion of a real performance.
I personally dont like enough artist to not listen to a album because I dont like how its mastered, for me its a simple bonus if the sound is great and has that natural quality that can give the illusion of a real performance.
well, this will only happen in a bad system. any decent system will never have that chaos moment.
in my experience, this happens when the bass is totally overloading the room.
the room is in play there and speaker placement, room acoustic, ect needs to be addressed
in my experience, this happens when the bass is totally overloading the room.
the room is in play there and speaker placement, room acoustic, ect needs to be addressed
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Two Ends to One Goal, Two End Zones
There are two ends to recorded music and
they will shape the type of system you have.
Even IF your goal is live music it must still have
these two ends.
That aspect as performer
OR
That as a listener.
Some systems will do them well, other's won't.
Just as some musicians play well other's not.
Just as some Master's will sound great other's won't.
I am amazed at how judgemental
people seem to be about all this.
The reason is because music is emotional, spiritual, soulful....
It is a personal experience that is not quantifiable (sp).
The main thing that we all want...
...is to just enjoy the music.
There are two ends to recorded music and
they will shape the type of system you have.
Even IF your goal is live music it must still have
these two ends.
That aspect as performer
OR
That as a listener.
Some systems will do them well, other's won't.
Just as some musicians play well other's not.
Just as some Master's will sound great other's won't.
I am amazed at how judgemental
people seem to be about all this.
The reason is because music is emotional, spiritual, soulful....
It is a personal experience that is not quantifiable (sp).
The main thing that we all want...
...is to just enjoy the music.
Better than live is not that hard if you break away from high end audio mindset - where is your live seat? How much was the ticket? How was the performance? Did it suck or were you saturated to the soul in a sonic bliss?
Some live recordings are miked, mixed, recorded, produced ECT right, they can sound good through a system. It's best to over build a system knowing it can give you 100 percent of most recordings. That's what I shoot for. It sounds better then live nearly every time. Those absolute sound /steropile, ect writers are pimps for overpriced toys for people with cents not sense. What's weird is I see people "cloning" that crap expecting it to sound like the reviewer's ad copy.
Some live recordings are miked, mixed, recorded, produced ECT right, they can sound good through a system. It's best to over build a system knowing it can give you 100 percent of most recordings. That's what I shoot for. It sounds better then live nearly every time. Those absolute sound /steropile, ect writers are pimps for overpriced toys for people with cents not sense. What's weird is I see people "cloning" that crap expecting it to sound like the reviewer's ad copy.
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