On Wed, 3 Jul 2019 08:18:46 +1200, geoff wrote:
On 3/07/2019 8:04 AM, wrote:
On 2 Jul 2019 19:22:03 GMT, John Williamson wrote:
The recordings I prefer are the ones that are great, but still show they
were performed by humans, possibly in front of an audience. I also dislike
the current fad for close mic'ing the orchestra sections, if not the
performers, and recording in a dead room. That's okay for pop, but no good
for classical, where the room is part of the performance.
Hence my thinking of buying a decent room....
I agree you can't get a perfect recording, but I want to hear as closely as possible what
the compser heard in his mind when he wrote it down. I don't think he was hearing blowers
and guitar squeaks and such as part of his work, any more than the pops and clicks of a scratchy
old LP record.
Room acoustics are a reality and have to be seriously addressed, especially for a live performance.
I don't know if close-miking or careful placements of several mics gives a performance or recording
closer to what the composer envisioned, but I'm in favor of whichever does.
In the case of much classical music, the composer hadn't even considered
the possibility of there being any sort of 'recording'. So the
performance 'artifacts' were expected.
Perhaps expected and necessarily tolerated, but that doesn't mean they were desired.
And even in current times such music is composed with the aim being
performance, not manicured manufactured recordings.
My preference is to hear the notes produced by the instruments, not the mechanical
noises and artifacts sometimes created by the instrument. These noises vary over the map
depending on performer and instrument, and are not called out or specified by the music composer.
If the music is performed in a well-designed venue, with reflections and reverberations at
optimum levels, excellent peformances and recordings can be had with, in many cases, a handful of mics,
but sometimes numerous mics are needed to compensate for a poor room.
I think when planning a performance, reverbs levels are of a little more interest than instrument clicks and wooshes.
But, we all have our own preferences, right?