Interesting article

Native_bon

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Yes good article. But nothing new to those who have worked in a recording studio & listened to unamplifed instruments. People want to produce clinical sound so to hear everything.. Then you got the opposite of that, when hifi nuts when to make everything soundi pleasing on their hifi system. This is the very reason why i keep saying there are no rules as per hifi.. Just buy what sounds good to you. But it would not be that simple, cause many are into the hobby rather than the music, or just hearing the sound the hifi makes as suppose to it producing music or delivering a musical message.
 

andyjm

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Yep,

There are a bunch who post on here who 'want it to sound as if I was in the studio with the musicians' - who clearly have never stood in a studio with musicians.

The sound that the engineer hears in the control room is not a bad target to aim for with your HiFi system, but it certainly isn't how it sounded in the studio.
 

Covenanter

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andyjm said:
Yep,

There are a bunch who post on here who 'want it to sound as if I was in the studio with the musicians' - who clearly have never stood in a studio with musicians.

The sound that the engineer hears in the control room is not a bad target to aim for with your HiFi system, but it certainly isn't how it sounded in the studio.

I want it to sound something like I hear in a concert hall. I want it to be close enough that I can ignore the artifice and listen to the music.

Chris
 

Alec

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"If you haven't heard it live, you haven't really heard it – and yet 90% of judgments on classical music are made from hearing recordings."

The recording presumably sounds the way the artist wanted it to. So if I have heard a recording, I have heard it. And, would he rather I hear a live album recorded (or go to a gig) in a rubbish venue and write the music off on that basis?
 

abacus

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A good Hi Fi/Home Cinema should be faithful to the original recording (Warts and All) and not add any sound characteristics of its own, thus only leaving the room acoustics to sort out via physical and/or electronic management.

Bill
 

davedotco

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Good article but nothing we didn't already know.

I do not agree with the 'whatever sounds right to you' view, I think you need some parameters if the result is to be 'hi-fi', otherwise you just end up with a market full of 'Beats'.

I think that we can reference what we hear at home to some version of 'reality', but the question is, which one?

I think there are two viable scenarios, there may be more but I think these two cover most of the bases.

Firstly, the 'reality' that you are trying to recreate is the sound of the final mix. This may, and usually is, an entirely manufactured construct but it is, pretty much, what the artist/producer/etc, wants you to hear.

Reproducing this with real accuracy is not difficult, but doing so in a domestic situation leads to the enevitable consequences of limited bandwith, dynamic range and overall playback level. A biggish room, some decent kit and no close neighbours and you can probably get pretty close.

The second approach is to attempt to recreate the original musical performance, in such a way that you can believe that, at some point, a group of musicians actually got together and performed with real purpose. In that sense, the system appears to be producing the very 'essence' of the recording, though in reality this is most likely a fiction, a very pleasant one, but a fiction.

I have no great problem with either view and tend to subscribe to both depending on circumstance, but I think it important that we have a reference, even though that reference might be a 'performance' that never actually happened, at least not in the way that we believe it did.
 

Alec

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We should and always have and always will live in a "whatever sounds best to you" world, and theres a lot more out there than beats.

Good luck settling on those parameters.
 

davedotco

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Alec said:
We should and always have and always will live in a "whatever sounds best to you" world, and theres a lot more out there than beats.

Good luck settling on those parameters.

Then I do not think we are discussing hi-fidelity. Equipment that so obviously favours one style of music over another is, in my view deeply flawed in terms of fidelity.

I believe that hi-fidelity equipment has to attempt a degree of fidelity, the discussion that I think is important is fidelity to what.

People buy and listen to equipment that makes no such attempt, not my place to criticise but quite often it is not what I would call hi-fi. I fully understand that this is, primarily, semantics but I am very much in the "closest approach to the original sound" school of thought.

Real hi-fi (my definition) is often big, expensive and for many domestically unacceptable, so of course compromises, choices have to be made but by using the parameters mentioned earlier I think it is possible to choose a setup that remaind true to the basic premise of fidelity.
 

Andrew17321

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“It's a very affecting thing to be in the same room as these musicians – a little embarrassing, even. You're being shown something so personal, especially with chamber music, that it's almost awkward.”

This is so true. The first time I heard a trio close up, it seemed to me that the clarinetist and the cellist (both women) were making love to each other; actually it was deeper than that: their musical responses to each other seemed to bare their souls to one other, and to us, the audience. We were allowed to see/listen in to their very beings. Completely enveloping.

No recording or playback system can ever reproduce that experience, so I am happy with reasonable quality HiFi most of the time, but I need overdoses of live music every now and again.

Andrew
 

lindsayt

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When it comes to live performances, some recordings and some systems get a lot closer to reproducing the event than others. Some recordings and systems get a lot closer to being able to close your eyes and it sounds like you're actually at the live event.

A first class system with a good recording of one or two people with their guitars - the sort of concert that would be played to the audience via a small PA rig. That type of concert can be reproduced close enough to make you think it's actually happening live in your listening room.

Solo piano concerts. There's a large variation in how close different systems get to sounding like you're actually at the live event.

Rock and pop recordings. 3 piece, 4 piece 5 piece bands with drums and bass guitars. Even after all the production effects, with the vast majority of recordings, it should still sound like a drum kit is being played and a bass guitar is being played. Far too many systems have problems with this. They sound as if the bass guitarist has huge rubber bands instead of steel strings. Far too many systems sound as if the drummers is hitting slightly soggy cardboard boxes instead of taut drumskins stretched across wood / metal drums. Linn's 40th anniversary concert provided a great example of how their top of the range system was not particularly good at recreating drumkits. Every time the bass drum pedal hit the bass drum it sent a shock wave into the audience. A shock wave that hit you in the stomach. With Linn's Klimax Exakt system there was nothing there. No shock wave. No physical impact. Not even when they turned the volume up to concert levels. With some systems you do get this shock wave from bass drums on a wide variety of studio and live recordings.

And then there's cymbals. Even with studio recordings, it should still sound as if a tuned flat metal disk is being hit by a stick and then allowed to shimmer and decay. Far too many systems make cymbals sound like a spitty / irritating TSsss TSsss sound instead of the actual instrument. Some systems are better at recreating the beauty of a struck cymbal than others. Cymbals are one instrument that can sound better through a good hi-fi system than at a live concert. That's because too many concerts have the PA's turned up so loud that cymbals sound distorted through my ears. At lower domestic listening volumes it's possible to get a cleaner cymbal sound.
 

andyjm

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Covenanter said:
]

I want it to sound something like I hear in a concert hall. I want it to be close enough that I can ignore the artifice and listen to the music.

Chris

This is damn tricky. Your brain does all sorts of wonderful things with echo in an auditorium that make it very hard to reproduce a realistic sound through two channel stereo. That and the dynamic range of a concert is a challenge as well.

I participated in a test that used a human head shape in which microphones were placed in the the 'ears'. This was then placed in an auditorium and a concert recored. All sorts of EQ had to be done to compensate for ear canals and stuff, but when the recording was played back through headphones it was remarkably lifelike. Most of this was lost when played back through speakers.
 

Covenanter

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andyjm said:
Covenanter said:
]

I want it to sound something like I hear in a concert hall. I want it to be close enough that I can ignore the artifice and listen to the music.

Chris

This is damn tricky. Your brain does all sorts of wonderful things with echo in an auditorium that make it very hard to reproduce a realistic sound through two channel stereo. That and the dynamic range of a concert is a challenge as well.

I participated in a test that used a human head shape in which microphones were placed in the the 'ears'. This was then placed in an auditorium and a concert recored. All sorts of EQ had to be done to compensate for ear canals and stuff, but when the recording was played back through headphones it was remarkably lifelike. Most of this was lost when played back through speakers.

I agree that it is tricky. I am happy that my current system gets me close enough for the music to shine through.
smiley-smile.gif


Chris
 

MajorFubar

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That's binaural stereo. Been around for years, and as you correctly point out, one major issue with it is that it only really works on headphones. Traditional recordings and mixes are designed to sound best through speakers pointing towards you.
 

Electro

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Andrew17321 said:
“It's a very affecting thing to be in the same room as these musicians – a little embarrassing, even. You're being shown something so personal, especially with chamber music, that it's almost awkward.”

This is so true. The first time I heard a trio close up, it seemed to me that the clarinetist and the cellist (both women) were making love to each other; actually it was deeper than that: their musical responses to each other seemed to bare their souls to one other, and to us, the audience. We were allowed to see/listen in to their very beings. Completely enveloping.

No recording or playback system can ever reproduce that experience, so I am happy with reasonable quality HiFi most of the time, but I need overdoses of live music every now and again.

Andrew

I can relate to your description , I have experienced something similar personally and it was very moving indeed , it feels like a direct communication between the souls of the musicians and the listener that ended up with me shedding tears of absolute joy . The musicians can also feel the joy in the heart of the listener and this heightens their experience as well , a truly wonderful experience for all involved !

There are some HiFi systems that are able to get close to reproducing this effect and I feel very privileged to own one , but as you say nothing beats live music .
 

Vladimir

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Being on a live event has the appeal of the crowd, the gregarious instinct, all as one, humility of indiividual self, the feel of history, participation, the huge SPL and just the reality of seing the musicians in roles of living icons/gods, brings explosion of happy mind numbing endorphins in your brain.

^ That makes live music LIVE. It engages all senses, not just the ears, as well as your intellect and full hormonal system.

From purely sonic perspective live music is mostly rubbish and many times it is unbearable. I've been on many band practices in small practice studios and the band live sounds, well, dissapointing. I much prefer recorded and produced music and so did Glen Gould.

Anything audio is mostly halucination and misinterpretation but lets not get into explaining how Evolution got us here.

Thank God for alcohol.

Cheers!

:beer:
 

davedotco

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Vladimir said:
Being on a live event has the appeal of the crowd, the gregarious instinct, all as one, humility of indiividual self, the feel of history, participation, the huge SPL and just the reality of seing the musicians in roles of living icons/gods, brings explosion of happy mind numbing endorphins in your brain.

^ That makes live music LIVE. It engages all senses, not just the ears, as well as your intellect and full hormonal system.

From purely sonic perspective live music is mostly rubbish and many times it is unbearable. I've been on many band practices in small practice studios and the band live sounds, well, dissapointing. I much prefer recorded and produced music and so did Glen Gould.

Anything audio is mostly halucination and misinterpretation but lets not get into explaining how Evolution got us here.

Thank God for alcohol.

Cheers!

:beer:

Oh dear, Vlad, truly a child of the modern world.

A facsimilie of the real thing is better than the real thing? Get a grip!

If you (or anyone else) want to understand this i'll give you a couple of examples, both on Spotify.

Try the famous Brubeck album, 'Time Out', the Legacy Edition. Play the original versions of Take Five or Blue Rondo, then play the live recordings of these tracks, recorded a year or two later at Newport.

Or if you are in the mood, try the collectors edition of Joy Division Closer. Original recording of 'Love will tear us apart' compared to the live version at London uni, a gig I probably saw.

Try them, then find a dark room, lie down and think about what you have just heard....... :cheers:
 

Vladimir

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@Dave

I meant real live event vs recorded and produced live event for sonic merits. Me standing in the crowd vs profesisonaly recorded and produced audio. It's beer vs engineer.

Enjoying live music has nothing to do with sonic merits and the art itself. It's about everything else.

Woodstock-1969.jpg


hendrix-live-woodstock.jpg


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We are ready to pay more for the system that makes us halucinate more in our living rooms. Hi-fi is a legal drug and we are all trying to get in the state of trance and make life bearable because life is suffering.
 

Electro

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I played two Cd's last night both of which were live recordings .

First one was Bjork - Homogenic live .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R774caGW2HE&list=PL42DB43F00728A3D0&index=1

The beauty and the emotional power of this live recording made me feel like I was really there the sound is extremely powerful and huge , the walls of my room dissapear and a full size accoustic envelops me allowing a real physical experience !

Even listening to the youtube clip above while typing this is creating an emotional response because it is so full of the raw emotion that many studio recordings do not have !

Then I played a Cd of Ane Brun - Live at the Stockholm Concert Hall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPI_3U8I0I4&index=2&list=RDh5MfQ-Wa584

A completely different feel but just as real !

I am so lucky :)
 

chebby

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I have a slight problem with classical music. I enjoy it ten times more when I can watch the performers than just playing the audio. (The BBC Proms is an excellent example. I can watch and listen to virtually any performance - for hours on end - engrossed by the orchestra, soloists, choirs and conductor.)

I've done the same with the Young Musician of the Year and the Leeds Piano Competitions.

When visiting London I have often watched a lunchtime concert at St. Martin In The Fields (although I haven't managed to get up to the smoke much in the last couple of years).

Choral and organ recitals at our local cathedral have always been pretty special too. (And Chichester cathedral.)

However, just playing classical audio has never been anywhere near as absorbing.

With a few exceptions, it's not the same for me with rock, pop and jazz. I have never really needed the visual element to enjoy the music.

I wish all my favourite classical music was on DVD too.

Roll on July 18th.
 

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