If there was a studio in the next room, and wires directly from the mic preamps came directly into your room and into your stereo, would you be able to tell if it was live or recorded? Maybe? Maybe not? “Is it live, or is it Memorex?”, was the old commercials, doing that exact test. Ella would sing a high C and break a wine glass, and the tape would do the same! Not necessarily proving it sounds good? I’ve got a Screaming for Vengeance remaster that if you told me the wires came live from the studio next door, I’d believe you! It’s just like setting in the studio, as many here have done. But it’s all amplified music, except the vocals of course, and there are vocals on that album! Vinyl, of course.

But it is easy to see on a scope that the signal coming out does not match the signal going in. Harmonic distortions, crossover distortions, etc., etc., and then there is Digital. You take the waveform and chop it into tens of thousands of pieces, and assign a number to it. Then taking those numbers, try to put it back together. And like dragging a rock around in a groove, it really is amazing that it works at all! And doesn’t sound like a squealing siren. So, you stitch the square waves back together and it looks like stair cases going up and down, so a filter smooths the edges off until it resembles an analog waveform. You’ve got a nice smooth waveform that sounds great! But, it is not an exact match of the signal that went in. Due to averaging, it’s a very close approximation, but not exact.

The thing about our flawed ears, is that we use the same pair for most of our lives. So however weird the sound is once it reaches the brain, it’s what we are used to hearing. So a violin sounds like a violin, and a trumpet sounds like a trumpet.

Russell