The Vain Pursuit of Excellence - Discussion.

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Originally Posted by Macca

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Compare the production on, say, Guns and Roses 'use your illusion' to the latest - 'chinese democracy' - the first is rich, sweet, open, dynamic - the second compressed, stodgy, false sounding - terrible, in a nutshell - yet these are both digital recordings done 19 years apart. We should be hearing a lot better - we are actually getting a lot worse!....



Martin

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Interesting, especially after reading THIS. Almost went and bought the cd on the strength of that, good job I managed to resist the temptation.

Cheers

wow! Either I'm right and Bob Ludwig is wrong or...

Anyone else got both albums and care to comment?

Further to last have just done experiment-

Put on 'Use your Illusion 2' reasonable volume listened to first 4 tracks.

Then played 'Chinese Democracy' - at same volume level on amp

Result- They are pretty much exactly the same level. Then played 'EC was here' as a blind - same level again - maybe a touch lower than the other 2 but nothing in it.

Hence - please disregard my comments re 'compression' on Chinese Dmocracy and carry on with thread.:)

Ralph -if you now want to buy a record with no good tunes or hooks and that sounds like 'U2 plays G n R' (but is not compressed) please go ahead...

Martin

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Originally Posted by StanleyB

I would have to disagree with you big time.

What you hear at a concert often bears no resemblance to what you hear in a recording studio. Very few times do the artists hurdle together as they do on stage, are the mics in the same position as on stage, and is the nearest wall as far away as on stage.
On top of that, the recordings in a studio are of a different nature than that experienced by one's ears from a stage performance. The recording engineer in the studio has to battle with signal overload on one end of his VU meter scale, and too low an output for some sounds to be heard at the other end. So he keeps having to adjust the signal levels from the various audio inputs as the music keeps rolling. That doesn't happen on stage.

Trying to recreate a stage performance in one's audio set up from a studio recording performance has nothing to do with Nirvana of the first (and I am not even addressing the complete miss-selling of the written word versus the contextual meaning). They are completely different products, and should be treated as such.

The nearest analogy I can think of is eating home made food, supermarket pre-cooked food, or food from the nearest take away. The ingredients might be the same, but the preparation methods are all different. So the end results look and taste different.
The same goes for life versus recorded music, and no amount of table dressing and dress codes is going to make them sound and taste the same.

Stan

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Hi Stan,

I think you might have misunderstood what I meant by ‘attending concerts’. I did in fact mean un-amplified acoustic performances, such as orchestral, chamber, choral or folk. I regard these as the only reference one can have to use to set up a ‘bench mark’ when building a system.

I agree that pop and rock concerts have the singers miked up as well as the guitar amplifiers and keyboards, and so the presentation is largely down to the skill of the sound engineer at the venue. This also applies to jazz concerts where there is often amplified support of the acoustic instruments.

And of course any studio recording of a performance comes to us ‘courtesy’ of the recording engineers who miked up the artist, made the original multi tracked tapes, which are then mixed down to the master tape. We have no idea what it sounded like to them – we just rely on them to do a good job. Some of Dave’s (DSJR) anecdotes from his friend who worked for Decca (?) are revealing, suggesting that the final ‘sound’ is subject to fashion and not at all absolute.

So for those who do not, or choose not to, attend live un-amplified concerts, there is no reference, although they may however play an instrument themselves or have friends or family that do. Without this reference no doubt they would put together a system that sounds ‘right’ or ‘good’ to them.

In this case the term high fidelity means having a high degree of faithfulness to the ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ of the music, without necessarily being the last word in realism, since the conveyance of emotion is just as important as tonal accuracy, dynamics, frequency response and all the other things we worry about.

Regards

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Originally Posted by barry.d.hunt

Hi Stan,

I think you might have misunderstood what I meant by ‘attending concerts’. I did in fact mean un-amplified acoustic performances, such as orchestral, chamber, choral or folk. I regard these as the only reference one can have to use to set up a ‘bench mark’ when building a system.

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A good acoustic jazz session is my point of datum for reality.

Hi Varun,

I wouldn’t dream of challenging your knowledge of Sanskrit. My knowledge of the etymology of nirvana comes from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1978):

Nirvāna : a blowing out > substantive of noun and past participle of nirvā : blow > nis : out + vā : blow, as in wind.

Thus to blow out, as the wind might blow out or extinguish a (candle) flame.


Two cartridges = two systems? Oh dear that means I have up to 11 systems! And I thought I just had the one, plus a separate ‘schonky’ system (to use Chris’s term) used with the TV.

Regards

Hello Barry,

You and I and Chris are taking the same theme. That is why I gave the example of the 1st Quad ELS 63 demo. The man refused to play amplified or electronically generated sound-on the premise that such sound had no 'reference point'.

And that is where I cited the second example of the Dire Straits reproduction by Linn+Naimsound. If an audiophile only listens to such a music and as most people do (there are exceptions)- and if all reviews of Hi-Fi equipment involves such music as a test bench, then that test bench, one would say has no caliberation. Some Stereophile magazine reviewers do use classical music but not all.

That is the main reason-I believe I have a different take on the CD sound vs analogue as opposed to some-although there seems to be a general agreement that Analogue is better on this forum.

Barry again,

'Ni' is never out. It is conditional prefix- and adds the negative to the meaning-that is NOT or WITHOUT. That is where the context come in, what I mean is without knowing what comes before and after the 'word' no sense can be made. That was the reason I listed all those different meanings.

In Buddhism- it means FINAL release from a life of bonds-ties and shackles. So it is far from extinction-but is achieved when the last breath is extinguished-not when one is living. Happens only once.

I do not for a moment believe that Buddha had time for all this cycle of rebirth-it was introduced much later-after his death. Mention this to Dalai Lama and I am sure he will get annoyed.

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Originally Posted by Mr. C

The reason the digital recordings in the last 6 years are so bad, is very simple RECORD COMPANIES .... dictate the amount of compression on the recording, who sounds loudest on Radio one.

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Yup, I think that is a major reason for the increase in use of music-destroying compression. That is what sounds best on a dynamically-limited iPod. To be fair to the R/Cs, that's just the current commercial reality - if you are after major market share, that is where your target audience lives.

How does an opinion based on experience and research make me a conman Mr Stan ? It was the dealers I found to be the conmen.