[Benj]

On Dec 31, 3:07 pm, kitekrazy wrote:
SotR wrote:

No way. There will always be people who want to hear live music played by
musicians. Even if I do it for free at least I know I'm doing something
worthwhile.

I tend to appreciate amateur performers live because they don't have
the luxuries of all the technology in high end studios to make them
sound better.

Make that "better" in quotes! High Fidelity? Hell, I was there!!! I
was THERE when "Moon Dog" invented rock and roll!

You know back in the early days of recording the question of
reproduction fidelity was sort of moot because the the sound when
recorded was pretty much technology-limited. But after WWII with the
stealing of the German magnetic tape recorder designs and certain
advances in electronics it finally became possible to actually
reproduce live music pretty much as it sounded live.

I recall a nifty demo at a "hi fi" show by JBL in the 50s where they
had this curtain with a live band behind it and their HUGE home top of
the line speaker system in front of it. The game was to decide if it
was live or "Memorex". I can tell you the recorded version sounded
DAMN close to the real band. Oddly enough this idea that recorded
music was supposed to duplicate as closely as possible a live
experience sort of caught on. Recording engineer Emory Cooke made
recordings in this era that even though he is now dead and the tapes
are in the Smithsonian STILL stand up to any modern efforts!

But to return to the 50's era, I should note that the "hi fi" fad only
lasted a short time until it started to be perverted. The amazing
reality of "living presence" and other recordings suddenly began to be
displaced by hype. Enter wildly boosted EQ so recordings would sound
"hi fi" on cheap-ass radios and phonographs. And even worse for the
"rock" stuff was the age of monster reverberation! Everybody it seems
had to sound like they were playing and singing in Luray caverns or
you couldn't possibly have a "hit"!

And as most of you know this total disrespect for the intelligence of
the music-buying public has continued to this day with various fads of
what constitutes a "selling" sound cycling through various forms of
hideous distortions of the original "make it sound as close as you can
to the original band" idea. And now with the "loud" wars it's still
going on! Just hope the producers don't rediscover "retro-reverb"!!!

But in the end be thankful for all this lack of respect for the record-
buying public. And the reason is that the more they screw up the
recordings, the more desirable real live performances with truly great
sound become.

Our next topic can then be "live performances with sound that sucks"!

[Mike Rieves]

"Benj" wrote in message
...
On Dec 31, 3:07 pm, kitekrazy wrote:
SotR wrote:

No way. There will always be people who want to hear live music played
by
musicians. Even if I do it for free at least I know I'm doing something
worthwhile.

I tend to appreciate amateur performers live because they don't have
the luxuries of all the technology in high end studios to make them
sound better.

Make that "better" in quotes! High Fidelity? Hell, I was there!!! I
was THERE when "Moon Dog" invented rock and roll!

You know back in the early days of recording the question of
reproduction fidelity was sort of moot because the the sound when
recorded was pretty much technology-limited. But after WWII with the
stealing of the German magnetic tape recorder designs and certain
advances in electronics it finally became possible to actually
reproduce live music pretty much as it sounded live.

I recall a nifty demo at a "hi fi" show by JBL in the 50s where they
had this curtain with a live band behind it and their HUGE home top of
the line speaker system in front of it. The game was to decide if it
was live or "Memorex". I can tell you the recorded version sounded
DAMN close to the real band. Oddly enough this idea that recorded
music was supposed to duplicate as closely as possible a live
experience sort of caught on. Recording engineer Emory Cooke made
recordings in this era that even though he is now dead and the tapes
are in the Smithsonian STILL stand up to any modern efforts!

I heard that demonstration in Nashville and it was incredible. The only way
one could reliably tell the difference was that when the rock band was
playing live, the kick drum carried through the floor and the speakers were
isolated on stands so that they didn't vibrate the floor. With the string
quartet and the solo piano, it was impossible to reliably tell which was
live and which was recorded. I was really impressed!


But to return to the 50's era, I should note that the "hi fi" fad only
lasted a short time until it started to be perverted. The amazing
reality of "living presence" and other recordings suddenly began to be
displaced by hype. Enter wildly boosted EQ so recordings would sound
"hi fi" on cheap-ass radios and phonographs. And even worse for the
"rock" stuff was the age of monster reverberation! Everybody it seems
had to sound like they were playing and singing in Luray caverns or
you couldn't possibly have a "hit"!

And as most of you know this total disrespect for the intelligence of
the music-buying public has continued to this day with various fads of
what constitutes a "selling" sound cycling through various forms of
hideous distortions of the original "make it sound as close as you can
to the original band" idea. And now with the "loud" wars it's still
going on! Just hope the producers don't rediscover "retro-reverb"!!!

But in the end be thankful for all this lack of respect for the record-
buying public. And the reason is that the more they screw up the
recordings, the more desirable real live performances with truly great
sound become.

Our next topic can then be "live performances with sound that sucks"!


What about when they try to make live concerts sound just like the
records. Wouldn't that qualify nowadays?

[William Sommerwerck]

You know back in the early days of recording the question of
reproduction fidelity was sort of moot because the the sound
when recorded was pretty much technology-limited.

This is not altogether true.

Edison claimed their Diamond Disk recordings and reproducers did not "sound
good" or have "good tone", but that they had no sound whatever of their own.
They "proved" this with live-versus-recorded performances of opera singers.
As startling as it seems to us, listeners were quite unable to hear any
difference.

I was not aware of the JBL live-versus-recorded demos. But Wharfedale (in
the UK) and AR (in the US) did them back in the 60s and early 70s.
Wharfedale used a full orchestra (!!!), AR a string quartet and solo
guitarist. Listeners to the latter generally agreed that they could not tell
the difference.

If such experiments proved the absolute fidelity of the speakers used, the
AR-3a would still be manufactuerd, and I would own them. (One speaker
designer even claimed they proved there was no audible difference among
speaker cables.) But they aren't (AFAIK), and I don't.

What such demos seem to prove is that room acoustics swamp the audible
differences between "perfect" sound (ie, the original) and its
less-than-perfect reproduction. It would be interesting to perform such
experiments again, using modern recording equipment, and a variety of amps
and speakers.


But to return to the 50's era, I should note that the "hi fi" fad only
lasted a short time until it started to be perverted. The amazing
reality of "living presence" and other recordings suddenly began to
be displaced by hype. Enter wildly boosted EQ so recordings would
sound "hi fi" on cheap-ass radios and phonographs. And even worse
for the "rock" stuff was the age of monster reverberation! Everybody
it seems had to sound like they were playing and singing in Luray
caverns, or you couldn't possibly have a "hit"!

Accompanied by the Stalagpipe organ, no doubt.

Stan Freberg famously skewered artificial reverb in his spoof of "Heartbreak
Hotel": "That's too much echo -- echo -- echo. Turn it off -- off -- off --
off."

Perhaps the major barrier to getting consistently good sound is the fact
that most people own mediocre playback equipment, and record companies feel
they have to make recordings that "sound good" on such equipment -- or
simply be playable at all. * A simply miked recording can sound extremely
realistic on high-quality equipment, but it lacks "presence" and sounds
rather distant and insipid on average systems.

Multi-miking -- which has been around since the mid-30s, when RCA introduced
a seven-channel optical recorder widely used in the movie industry -- you
can hear ersatz-stereo recordings created from the original stems in such
films as "Sun Valley Serenade" and "The Wizard of Oz" -- is one way to get
around this "problem", as well as giving better control over balance. Of
course, multi-miking largely destroys the ambience of the recording site,
which is desirable only when the ambience is poor or inappropriate. The loss
of ambience then requires its synthetic re-creation, which further mucks up
the recording.

In the early 60s, RCA abandoned Living Stereo for Dynagroove. Although two
of its components -- 30ips recording and the tracing pre-distorter -- were
legitimate advances, everything else about the system was a huge step
backwards, degrading absolute fidelity in an attempt to produce
more-pleasing sound on mediocre equipment. In one of the classic pieces of
audiophile journalism, J Gordon Holt tore into RCA, explaining in words even
a babe might understand why Dynagroove was wrong.

http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/95

This is a short editorial that predates the later, multi-page article. The
article does not appear to be available on the Stereophile site, which is
unfortunate.

* This is one of the reasons stereo LPs usually had blended or mono bass.
One of the "Living Stereo" SACDs -- DLvdE, I think -- has the bass drum
precisely centered on the master tape, to avoid excessive vertical
modulation.


And as most of you know this total disrespect for the intelligence
of the music-buying public has continued to this day with various
fads of what constitutes a "selling" sound cycling through various
forms of hideous distortions of the original "make it sound as close
as you can to the original band" idea. And now with the "loud" wars
it's still going on! Just hope the producers don't rediscover
"retro-reverb"!!!

My experience has been that most listeners, when exposed to really good
playback, almost always prefer it.

But... their preference is usually based on "greater clarity" or "less
distortion" -- NOT greater "realism". The idea that reproduced sound should
"closely approach" the original is something that most listeners have no
comprehension of, because they are not accustomed to hearing unamplified,
unprocessed, acoustic music.

[Scott Dorsey]

William Sommerwerck wrote:
In the early 60s, RCA abandoned Living Stereo for Dynagroove. Although two
of its components -- 30ips recording and the tracing pre-distorter -- were
legitimate advances, everything else about the system was a huge step
backwards, degrading absolute fidelity in an attempt to produce
more-pleasing sound on mediocre equipment. In one of the classic pieces of
audiophile journalism, J Gordon Holt tore into RCA, explaining in words even
a babe might understand why Dynagroove was wrong.

The tracing pre-distorter was NOT an advance, and it was one of the worst
things about Dyna****. The whole purpose of the thing was to produce
better sound on cheap turntables that could not track properly, and it
relied on a mathematical model of a cheap RCA turntable. Needless to say,
Dyna****ed recordings sounded much better on that turntable than on others.

It is a tragedy that there are so many recordings today which are only
available to us either on nasty PCM-1610-sounding CD reissues or on
Dyna****ed vinyl. The original Hair album is perhaps the saddest example
that I can think of.

* This is one of the reasons stereo LPs usually had blended or mono bass.
One of the "Living Stereo" SACDs -- DLvdE, I think -- has the bass drum
precisely centered on the master tape, to avoid excessive vertical
modulation.

This was normal practice back then. Mix the kick to the center, or with
minimalist recordings position the bass drum so you get a nice line on
the phase scope. Most mastering consoles had a crossover that would
sum the low end to mono if you wanted, but it's one more thing in the
signal path.

But... their preference is usually based on "greater clarity" or "less
distortion" -- NOT greater "realism". The idea that reproduced sound should
"closely approach" the original is something that most listeners have no
comprehension of, because they are not accustomed to hearing unamplified,
unprocessed, acoustic music.

And that, in short, is the whole problem.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Ralf R. Radermacher]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

The tracing pre-distorter was NOT an advance, and it was one of the worst
things about Dyna****.

Is this the same as Teldec's "Royalsound" system which allegedly added a
certain negative amount of system-inherent tracking distorsion so this
would cancel out at playback?

Ralf

--
Ralf R. Radermacher - DL9KCG - Köln/Cologne, Germany
private homepage: http://www.fotoralf.de
manual cameras and photo galleries - updated Jan. 10, 2005
Contarex - Kiev 60 - Horizon 202 - P6 mount lenses

[Scott Dorsey]

Ralf R. Radermacher wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

The tracing pre-distorter was NOT an advance, and it was one of the worst
things about Dyna****.

Is this the same as Teldec's "Royalsound" system which allegedly added a
certain negative amount of system-inherent tracking distorsion so this
would cancel out at playback?

I don't know, I have not heard of the Telec process. But that is
precisely the basis of the RCA process, and there are several RCA patents
on the pre-distortion circuit if you want me to dig them up.

Have you got any more info on Royalsound?
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[William Sommerwerck]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
William Sommerwerck wrote:

In the early 60s, RCA abandoned Living Stereo for Dynagroove. Although
two of its components -- 30ips recording and the tracing pre-distorter --
were legitimate advances...

The tracing pre-distorter was NOT an advance, and it was one of the
worst things about Dyna****. The whole purpose of the thing was to
produce better sound on cheap turntables that could not track properly,
and it relied on a mathematical model of a cheap RCA turntable.
Needless to say, Dyna****ed recordings sounded much better on that
turntable than on others.

The tracing pre-distorter did not, per se, improve tracking -- it improved
tracing. * The idea was to compensate for the harmonic distortion introduced
by the use of a playback stylus with a finite radius (in this case, 0.7 mil
spherical). The improvement would apply to any pickup with such a stylus
(ie, the overwhelming majority in 1963), regardless of its manufacturer or
absolute quality.

* RCA's literature suggested that, in passages with strong high-frequency
modulation, the stylus would be less-likely to leave the groove.

[Scott Dorsey]

William Sommerwerck wrote:

The tracing pre-distorter did not, per se, improve tracking -- it improved
tracing. * The idea was to compensate for the harmonic distortion introduced
by the use of a playback stylus with a finite radius (in this case, 0.7 mil
spherical). The improvement would apply to any pickup with such a stylus
(ie, the overwhelming majority in 1963), regardless of its manufacturer or
absolute quality.

IF it was properly aligned (ie. correct VTA and correctly perpendicular to the
groove). And if it WAS actually spherical and the correct diameter.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Peter Larsen[_2_]]

William Sommerwerck wrote:

http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/95

This is a short editorial that predates the later, multi-page
article. The article does not appear to be available on the
Stereophile site, which is unfortunate.

It is all there, including a comment to the effect that JGH had gotten
something wrong, which he hadn't, read carefully. Seems that Microsoft are
not the first to know best .... O;-)


Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Adrian Tuddenham]

William Sommerwerck wrote:

You know back in the early days of recording the question of
reproduction fidelity was sort of moot because the the sound
when recorded was pretty much technology-limited.

This is not altogether true.

Edison claimed their Diamond Disk recordings and reproducers did not "sound
good" or have "good tone", but that they had no sound whatever of their own.
They "proved" this with live-versus-recorded performances of opera singers.
As startling as it seems to us, listeners were quite unable to hear any
difference.

They are surprisingly good and do not need the hefty correction which is
necessary for a lot of other acoustic recordings from that period. The
playback machines were a bit limited in horn size (and consequently in
bass handling ability) because the internal horn had to track with the
playback mechanism and could only be about half the width of the
cabinet. (This was a leadscrew-powered parallel-tracker.)


I was not aware of the JBL live-versus-recorded demos. But Wharfedale (in
the UK) and AR (in the US) did them back in the 60s and early 70s.
Wharfedale used a full orchestra (!!!), AR a string quartet and solo
guitarist. Listeners to the latter generally agreed that they could not tell
the difference.
[...]
What such demos seem to prove is that room acoustics swamp the audible
differences between "perfect" sound (ie, the original) and its
less-than-perfect reproduction. It would be interesting to perform such
experiments again, using modern recording equipment, and a variety of amps
and speakers.

The Wharfedale experiments were first performed in the Royal Festival
Hall, which was disliked by many concert-goers because it had too little
reverberation. If there was ever a hall where the playback acoustics
were least likely to mask the shortcomings of the equipment, the RFH was
it. (I'm not saying it couldn't have happened, only that G.A.Briggs did
his best to avoid it)

A couple of surprising facts emerged from those demonstrations:

That 12 to 25 watts was sufficient for realistic reproduction in a huge
space like that.

That the harpsicord sounded as though it was being played through a
damaged loudspeaker when it was actually being played 'live'.


--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

[[email protected]]

On Jan 1, 6:39*am, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

The idea that reproduced sound should
"closely approach" the original is something that most listeners have no
comprehension of, because they are not accustomed to hearing unamplified,
unprocessed, acoustic music.

There is part A of the problem, well stated. Part B is compression,
both types.

bobs

Bob Smith
BS Studios
we organize chaos
http://www.bsstudios.com

[SotR]

Perhaps the major barrier to getting consistently good sound is
the fact
that most people own mediocre playback equipment, and record companies feel
they have to make recordings that "sound good" on such equipment --


Barry Gordy's goal with Motown was to create music that sounded good on
crappy single speaker car radio's of the day.

SotR