Thinking out loud here - no guarantees.
So how much of the original modal environment is being reproduced from the recording?
When you stick the mics out the window you've put them in an environment where the number of modes is infinite. Most of those modes will be low level, close to, or under the noise floor of your equipment.*
How much of those modes, and which ones, have to disappear before it stops sounding real?
What makes them disappear?
*This sentence may be a red herring.
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Which was in response to...
Which means? The OP of this thread appears to have begun with a false premise. I played along hypothetically to make my point. Either way you slice it? There can be no such thing. But, there can be an enjoyment of what one hears with a little electronic 'flavoring and spice' added into the stew. That is why I love my Barcus Berry flavoring.
some folks seem to have missed the point entirely.
If you stick mics out your window, or into the studio room on the other side of the wall, you are monitoring whatever is coming in real-time "live". It matters not at all what the system is or the mics. Modes? Dunno what that is...
So, now, someone gives you the Stevie Wonder treatment and sits you down in your favorite seat. Now, can you tell if you are listening to real-time live or what was recorded previously in the same space with the same mics, played back in the same space on the same system or not?
THAT is the premise.
Show me how it is false.
I am speaking ONLY of the effect (if any) of recording nothing more nothing less.
_-_-bear
If you stick mics out your window, or into the studio room on the other side of the wall, you are monitoring whatever is coming in real-time "live". It matters not at all what the system is or the mics. Modes? Dunno what that is...
So, now, someone gives you the Stevie Wonder treatment and sits you down in your favorite seat. Now, can you tell if you are listening to real-time live or what was recorded previously in the same space with the same mics, played back in the same space on the same system or not?
THAT is the premise.
Show me how it is false.
I am speaking ONLY of the effect (if any) of recording nothing more nothing less.
_-_-bear
By the way, if we have members with infrared vision on our forum, why don't accept that some of us have ultrasound hearing?
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/tubes-valves/191653-jj-glowing-twice-bright.html
No doubt ultrasound is lost forever in the recording on any available digital media.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/tubes-valves/191653-jj-glowing-twice-bright.html
No doubt ultrasound is lost forever in the recording on any available digital media.
We normally think of room modes. Outside is an infinitely big room and all modes exist there.
Make the room smaller and the modes get fewer and get "filtered" in various ways, reinforcing, cancelling, reverberating, and decorrelating, etc., all to pyschoacoustic effect.
So you had a satisfactory sound on the live feed from outside but you're not necessarily getting it from the recording of the same feed. Right?
So my question is, which of the available modes you were listening to have been subtracted or modified so that the sound no longer seems real to you?
Is there an experiment you might devise to discover this?
It's the microphones, their type, and their placement, that determine whether or not what you hear is believable. You can go around placing microphones to your heart's content, and you'll never record anything that approaches realism - that's because microphones aren't ears. Until you take that into consideration, you'll just be swinging at windmills. Some folks prefer the sound Blumlein, while others prefer the sound of spaced omni's. It's all a black art and it swamps the effects of any electronics in the chain. It's not until you get to the loudspeaker that you have a contender for what most effects how a recording will sound.
Bear is talking about the mic feed sounding different to the recorded feed NOT to the sound of the live event. SY doesn't hear this difference. Are there other opinions on this?
actually 192 Ksample/s Nyquist is ~2x any microphone sold for studio recording high frequency corner - and Earthworks 50 KHz mics aren't found in every studio
most mics have 20-25 KHz or less 2nd order corner frequency - sought after mics for vocals may have <15 KHz roll off
then there is the reproduction side - very few even in the audiophile world insist on 50 KHz super tweeters, even ESL panels have stator gap/preforation acoustic filter/resonance problems above there
the vast majority of recordings, loudspeakers put 2x 2nd order ~ 20 KHz roll-offs in the chain
My bad ... so we're talking about the equivalent of jitter and capacitors and nV/rt Hz ... tubes vs ss ... yadayadayada.
Hi Pano, so if it isn't the two biggest variables in the recording chain, what is it? SY laid out the obvious, and there's been no answer - so my observations stand. There is nothing in the chain to explain Bear's observations, unless you are talking about subtleties.
"Corner frequency" does not mean on/off, it means signals with frequencies above it are attenuated, no more.
But according the Nyquist/Kotelnikov theorem there can be only one (1) level of the sinusoidal signal of half of the quantum period frequency. No louder, no softer. Only one. Zero dynamic diapason.
Is not it a loss?
Well, maybe the first step is to collect a consensus from those that have done this before jumping to conclusions about the mechanism of operation (if any). Have you actually done this experiment?
Again, maybe restated slightly for clarity, if I can be clear.
Forget the mic, forget the signal chain, forget the room modes.
There is only one variable. The variable is the live feed vs. recorded playback of the same live feed.
Try it for yourself and see, talking about it tells you not one thing.
Of course if you've gotten older (as I sadly now am getting) perhaps all of this is meaningless, perhaps not. You have to listen and decide if you hear any difference(s) or not.
_-_-bear
Forget the mic, forget the signal chain, forget the room modes.
There is only one variable. The variable is the live feed vs. recorded playback of the same live feed.
Try it for yourself and see, talking about it tells you not one thing.
Of course if you've gotten older (as I sadly now am getting) perhaps all of this is meaningless, perhaps not. You have to listen and decide if you hear any difference(s) or not.
_-_-bear
Have I actually done this experiment? In a word - no. 🙂
All I have to do is listen to the recordings of Fine (Mercury), Leyton (RCA) and Wilkinson (Decca) to come to this conclusion. Wilma and Bob Fine used Telefunken mic's whose sensitivity required them to be brought in quite close to the orchestra which, in turn, gave us Mercury's signature sound -- up-front, dynamic, but with little ambiance. Leyton and Wilkinson, on the other hand, used Neumann M50's, whose FR and sensitivity allowed them to be used further away from the orchestra with a resulting change in dynamics and ambiance retrieval. The RCA's and the Deccas sound more alike than different, although I prefer Decca.
Both types of mic's were omni, and the rest of the recording chains were very similar.... with miles and miles of wire in the form of input and output transformers littering every piece of equipment.
All of this is oversimplified, but, for the most part, true. It was the microphones, and their placement, that determined and dominated the signature sounds of the different labels - not the electronics.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it. 😛 If somebody wants to show me similar observations, where the microphones were identical and the electronics can be pointed to as causing great differences in sound -- I'm all ears.
Having spend a number of years recording classical performances, the previous post is dead on-except for no mention of speakers. The energy transformation from mechanical to electrical and back again are the most difficult transformations. Any changes in the electrical domain are minor in comparison. That is why the next leap forward will be in transducer design, not electronic circuitry. regards
John, my recording experience is admittedly limited to solo performers and small acoustic ensembles in the folk and bluegrass genres. In your work with classical music, have you seen significant degradation of electrical signals when digitally recording?
I would have, if I knew what was used in the examples that I cited. 😱
There is the story (urban myth?) of why all of George Szell's recordings were so screechy. It seems that he liked to take home session tapes to listen to on his Hi Fi, whose speakers were sorely lacking in the upper frequencies. So, the next day, he would come back to the poor engineers and demand that they boost the upper frequencies.
Don't know if it's entirely true, but I do know that the majority of his Columbia recordings are unlistenable.
I understand your frustration that people seem to ignore the actual variable that you are testing. Can't help there. But there is a problem with your test approach that has been mentioned already. Let me restate it more directly: By the way you have defined the test there are two variables, you must always listen to the recorded feed after the live feed. This imposes a perceptual difference. I don't know how important this is, but it's not fixable unless you have a time machine.
Sheldon
I have seen no degradation using digital techniques. In fact my first experience here was with the old Sony F1 system which encoded the digital audio as a video signal. I also used the JVC system which did the same thing. At the time I also had available Studer B67s with chevron heads. The only difference I could hear (over Acoustat Xs and Fried C2s was in S/N and that in favor of digital. I could finally record the 1812 with live cannon and full dynamic range!
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