On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 1:36:46 AM UTC-7, Adrian Tuddenham wrote:
Most listeners hear but don't really listen; they don't try to form a
'sound picture' in their heads, if they did it would be obvious that the
unnatural reverb is fake.
Well, I'm truly surprised that no one here seems to get what I'm saying. I've talked to a couple of friends (both music/audio pros) about this, and they understood right away - but also didn't have a great answer why (I'm going to say it again) the human brain accepts multiple spaces on a recording.
And it absolutely does! Tests have proven!
Even if all the performers were 'live' and in
the same room (with good acoustics) but multiple mics made them appear
at unrealistic distances, the effect would be noticeable if anyone took
the trouble to listen properly.
The *exact point* is that it *doesn't* sound unrealistic, even to people who do listen properly! It *can* sound like a suspension of disbelief, but I'm telling you people - whether or not you agree that you hear what I'm telling you that you hear
- the ear accepts... okay, repeating myself means I have nothing new to say.
I have seen paintings where the shadows in one part were in a different
direction from another part, it gave the picture a very disconcerting
effect, but the reason wasn't all that obvious to the casual observer.
Modern recording techniques with multiple mics and multiple 'plug-in'
reverbs have the same effect; the listeners have become used to
accepting it because they have no idea what a live performance sounds
like.
It turns out that I actually do have a vague idea what a live performance sounds like. The shadow analogy is good, though.
You are producing a synthetic sound to be listened-to by people
(including yourself) who have rarely heard anything but synthetic sounds
on recordings.
"Que¿" - Manuel of Fawlty Towers
Geoff wrote:
"The purpose of many (most) recordings, other than classical and most
live jazz/pop/rock/whatever recordings, is not to even attempt to
emulate a real performance space. And need not be."
Sure.
Now, I also have to double back and say that if you're after a totally realistic orchestral MIDI mock-up, the most accurate *environment* emulation is Vienna Symphonic Library's MIR with their libraries (MIR = Multiple Impulse Response). It's pretty stunning.
(I'm not saying their libraries are the most "accurate," because that's highly subjective and dependent on what you're doing; most musicians who do that use a combination of libraries, as I said.)
In any case, my world is only MIDI-plus-overdubs by default, since that's *the* world today. My multiple spaces question applies to audio in general.