Who put the high in hi-fi ?

Sorry not a mind altering substance related thread

After listening to music come out of a pair of Pipedream speakers costing mega $$$, £££ or €€€ the other day I was struck by the gulf that exists between real instruments and reproduced music IMO. I'm not saying that recorded music is inferior just that I find there to be huge differences and these didn't diminish when I heard them through the speakers that TAS seem to rate as closest to being there. Replay systems are now capable of reproducing the dynamic range and volume of instruments but the gulf still exists - to remind myself I go and play my drums and experience a snare at full crack or a good whack of a cymbal - the nature of resonances and reverberations from instruments just seems to be different in nature. Is the high fidelity in hi-fi then a false goal as in reality we are not trying to reproduce the actual event but create a domestically acceptable rendition i.e. the optimal version for use on domestic replay systems rather than recreating the event (whatever the event may have been) ?

Me, myself and I are still in three minds on this one.

All the best - Andrew

 

When you are talking about studio produced recordings that use overdubs, eq'ing and the rest, What you are hearing is simular to looking a painting. The painting might look real but it is two dimensional, it is what the artist wanted you to see. Studio recordings to me are works of art. The music can be manipulated by all those actively involved in the recording process. Of course there are different degrees of materials, skill and experience involved in each different recording. So to me studio recordings are not live music. They are different. Live recordings are more like a photograph. A photograph shows you what the photographer recorded through the lense of a camera. Live recordings are at the mercy of the Mics and placement thereof. I agree, that microphones are not as good as the human ear.
The reason I like good equipment is because it will reveal more music. I have heard some recordings and some stereo systems that were great. I have also heard live unamplified music that sounded bad.

 

Tresophonia.

In the classical domain, there is an attempt to recreate the sounds of the actual instruments while you the listener sit in the middle five rows back. On an excellent system you get a reasonable recreation of the experience - unlike those of us in the standing room only section of the theatre.

I believe it is much the same with jazz.

Pop and its counterparts, however, rely on manipulated sounds and all sorts of distortions are deliberately introduced - compression, limiting, phasing, equalizing etc.

Another related issue is overdubbing. In the real world a flub is a flub. In the studio a flub is overdubbed. Even a symphony orchestra's third violinist gets fixed in the studio. In real life it doesn't happen that way.

 

I like Tull's analogy, Live is a photograph - the studio is a painting.

 

A related question:

Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp) ???



Ray

 

Thank you, Andrew, for this thread.

I hope that as realists we can all come to some agreement on the proposition that audio in the home simply cannot accurately reproduce the sound of live music with 100% precision regardless of the genre.

Since so many audiophiles tend to forget that the single most important component is the listening room, one has to consider the complexities involved in designing speakers that will do their best at getting things right in a variety of environments that don't come close to what's often considered ideal. More often than not, audio enthusiasts will place a pair of large speakers in a room much too small for them, but the opposite is also true.

The volume of my own listening room is over 6000 cubic feet with asymetric walls and a vaulted ceiling that ascends from 9 to 15 feet (the angle being roughly 50 degrees). With such a room I couldn't begin to develop much of a believable sound picture with something as small and inefficient as, say, a pair of LS3/5A's, yet the area of the room is not quite 700 square feet, so large *statement* speakers such as a friend's Wilson Audio Grand Slamms overwhelm the room both visually and sonically. The happy medium for this room is in a floor standing speaker that is neither to small and thus incapable of filling the volume, nor too large to overdrive certain frequencies - especially the lower midrange. In order to allow for the volume of the room, though, the combination of the speakers and amplifiers chosen must be both efficient and powerful enough to develop reasonable dynamics.

This has been a problematic ordeal that can never be fully solved. My own best hope has been to arrive at something that can approximate the corporeal aspects of real music while concurently approaching its microdyanmics, texture, dimension, tonality and detail. There are recordings I own that can come close to doing this with the system I am running now, but I concluded many years ago that the day may never come when it would sound exactly like real music.

To RDK. I believe it was the same man who put the Ram in the Ram-a-lama-ding-dong.

 

Good thread.

Andrew,

I think all is lost when the mechanical vibrations in the air from your snare is converted into electrical signals in the microphone...it's a physics kind of thing.

 

I enjoy music most when I forget about comparing it to live unamplified music. There are times when I get a glimpse of something that approaches sounding live. But as SBG put it "the day may never come when it would sound exactly like real music". So get a good set that sounds pleasing to you and enjoy all the pleasures that recorded music has to offer...and go to a concert when you need a live fix.


Oh and the man was Barry Mann (Who Put the Bomp).

 

Yes, there is nothing like a live performance. However, the SACDs sound more "lifelike" than any recorded music to date IMHO (I don't know about the vinyl). Not all SACDs are equal...the new MOFIs are exceptionally lifelike, but the new Stones are better sounding than the earlier cds, but don't seem as lifelike.

An equal part of the live performance is, of course, visual as well as audio. You see the performance, instead of looking at blinking lights of the amplifier or staring off into space at the wall. Even a good 5.1 DVD, like the Fleetwood Mac Dance that provides the video will never capture all the nuances of actually being at a live performance. Perhaps the next step in video, like holographic images might be more lifelike.

In the meantime, try this...close your eyes while listening, and if the recording is one of SH's, for example, you will think you are in a live performance (if it's a recording of live performance), or in the recording studio during the taping of the recording (if it's not a live performance). You can also try listening to the music in another room remote from the room that is the source of the music. Oh well, we can only use our imagination.

 

Ah Peter, you beat me to it with your last paragraph. The two of Steve's albums that jump to the forefront of believeing you are right there in the studio are Elvis 24KT and Nat's Greatest Hits as you can actually feel as well as hear the room sound with your eyes closed.

 

Unfortunately, I still need those 2 cds for my collection. I think one of those went for around $150 on eBay the other day...too much for me!!

 

I don't know, but I'd like to shake his hand.

(Barry Mann posed that musical question, though.)

 

Would that be because he made your baby fall in love with you?

 

YEAAAHHH