[Gary Eickmeier]

Robert Peirce wrote:
In article ,
Scott wrote:

This is such a surprisingly weird assertion. Had you not told us
numerous times that you record live classical music I would suspect
that you have never been to any sort of live classical performances
at all. what exactly does "live music" sound like? Because in my
experience it sounds like a lot of different things depending on the
instruments, the musicians, the venue and the seat I am sitting in.
You seem to be treating the sound of "live music" as this monolithic
unwavering point of reference. It aint that. No way. I shudder to
think someone with a subscription to the overpriced balcony seats at
Davies Hall or Copley Hall would suffer the dire audio consequences
of thinking that their listening experience to live music in such
halls from those seats sets a standard by which playback should be
measured and even worse sets a standard by which they should
actually adjust their aesthetic values. The horror, the horror


You are both right and wrong. I stopped going to one concert series
because the house decided the music needed to be electronically
amplified and the instruments sounded wrong. They sounded wrong no
matter where I was sitting.

It is quite possible that some instruments in some halls will sound
dreadful, but you will still be able to recognize them. Some
recordings are so manipulated that you can't recognize the
instruments.

That being said, this is sometimes an improvement. There are some
things you can do in post-production that are impossible in real life.
If that helps, it helps, but you shouldn't think that is the sound of
a real instrument in a real space as some reviewers seem to think.

And for those of us who are recording engineers and can compare what we hear
when we get home to what we heard live, we know that they do not sound the
same, no matter how much "accuracy" you have in your speakers, no matter how
accurate your microphones, no matter what your recording technique. It is
not an accuracy problem, it is an acoustical problem and there is nothing we
can do about it.

The recording is a new work of art, based on a live event or a manufactured
event in the studio. It must be evaluated on its own. A playback system can
have lifelike qualities, can communicate the major qualities of a live event
within the limitations of your playback space, but cannot sound exactly the
same because playback must take place on a system with different spatial
qualities in a room of a different size and acoustics.

The only basis we have of comparing systems and/or recordings is by way of
thinking of the recording as a new performance. Then you can ask on whose
equipment and in whose room it sounds more realistic, enables the suspension
of disbelief better. Toward this end, what we can hear about speakers and
rooms is the 4 points I quoted in a previous post.

Gary Eickmeier