The Vain Pursuit of Excellence - Discussion.

[Macca]

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.


Stan

May have misunderstood you here Stan, but at a live performance the sound engineer will be adjusting levels all the way through - e.g for a song that commences with just vocal and strummed electric guitar (before drums, bass etc kick in) level will be increased for the guitar when playing alone and then dropped back as it becomes rythem accompaniment again.

Agree that live and studio performances are totally different animals, though

Martin

[StanleyB]

Hi Martin,

the sound and lighting engineer on stage is part of the performance set up. The sound engineer in the studio sometimes doesn't even have the artists in front of him, but just snippets of audio bits (that might have been recorded in different parts of the world) that he has to string together. It's amazing many of us buy that junk and pass it through some very expensive gear...

Stan

[Macca]

Yes- remember that Sinatra 'Duets' album where the guest artists 'phoned through' their performances? (allegedly, anyway). Don't get me started on studio engineers! I have also noticed that the musicians do not tend to help during mixing and mastering - they will all have different ideas as to how it should all sound - mostly because they have no idea of what quality playback sounds like because they only ever listen to music through a DAB portable or Dixon's sourced midi system - my theory is all that time spent in pokey practice rooms with everything cranked up to 11 has made them mutton!

Martin

[StanleyB]

Yes- remember that Sinatra 'Duets' album where the guest artists 'phoned through' their performances? (allegedly, anyway). Don't get me started on studio engineers! I have also noticed that the musicians do not tend to help during mixing and mastering - they will all have different ideas as to how it should all sound - mostly because they have no idea of what quality playback sounds like because they only ever listen to music through a DAB portable or Dixon's sourced midi system - my theory is all that time spent in pokey practice rooms with everything cranked up to 11 has made them mutton!

Give this man a beer for hitting the nail on the head.

[DSJR]

Some artists have good stereo's - the Pink Floyd guys, Tina Turner, the Dankworths, Siouxsie and Kate Bush to name a very few from "my" days. Dave Greenslade and the keyboard player from Visage (Dave "Formula") were both clients of the dealers I worked for.

I think that when you work with the original instruments, acoustic or electronic, hearing the compressed and mixed up results that we buy must be a bit of a let down. I doubt that many want to have a studio monitoring setup at home, as it's a bit like watching Corrie on a huge cinema screen

[Varun]

I agree with Macca,

For the big orchestra conductors who of course listen to new recordings and remind themsleves of the music - the quality of reproduction is of NO IMPORTANCE. I used to buy my records from Thomas Heinitz who was based in Moscow Road SW London. His shop was frequented by musicians of all sorts for advice. He had no time for the Hi Fi stuff- and most people whose calender is full have no time either.

There is such a huge difference in the recorded sound- no matter where and how recorded and live sound- that the two can not be compared.

For classical music one has to have an idea of what music is all about- and I as have said before- the perspective can not be changed.

I remember listening to Naim 250 driving Linn Saras once. The unwinding of the sound of the spring of a timer- crrrrrr- sound so often used in POP/ROCK records- in this instance in Dire Straits 'six blade knife' hit me in the face- literally lept out of the enclosure. If I dismissed other systems as inferior subsequently as they did not do what that systen did- I was horrendously wrong.

I will come back on the issue of Electronic Music as used in POP/ROCK- some time later- but in essence I agree with what Barry is saying-that you get an idea by listening to Live Music.

[Macca]

I think that when you work with the original instruments, acoustic or electronic, hearing the compressed and mixed up results that we buy must be a bit of a let down. I doubt that many want to have a studio monitoring setup at home, as it's a bit like watching Corrie on a huge cinema screen

Took me a minute to work out what you were getting at but agree 100%!

Closest approach in the home would therefore be 24/192 replay of the master through exactly the kit they used for studio replay - means having a different set up of kit for each album you play of course...

Production has to be horses for courses - you would not produce a Ska album the same way you would produce a rock power trio - although I have heard this done recently and the production just did not suit the Ska sound at all - both recordings very professional and polished, though.

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!

In the 'eighties I never understood productions of the likes of Martin Hammet - joy Division etc. - they all sounded so thin and weedy through radios and TVs. Now, through decent kit, they sound like a breath of fresh air.

Martin

[Mr. C]

The reason the digital recordings in the last 6 years are so bad, is very simple RECORD COMPANIES nothing more, the artists (on the whole sign away the production rights) so the R/C's dictate the amount of compression on the recording, who sounds loudest on Radio one.
A couple of weeks ago, a client brought some newer recordings along, they sounded, to be frank, truly bloody appalling when examined they was close to 12db compression and a tiny amount of dynamic range.
The are engineered for I-pods/boom boxes in the bed room and car stereo's verbaitum.
Any reasonable hifi system capable of showing dynamic range and transparency will immediately reproduce the recording from the true a-bort it really is a compressed, rolled off, bass lite and an utter mess that bares no resemblance to the original recording the artist made.

[Peter H]

The pursuit of sound perfection and its equipment purveyors leads to the biggest 'con' perpetuated to and by mankind. Its all an illusion. I realised this years ago when as a speaker cabinet maker I used to meet those selling the stuff and laughing when a customer left the premises after buying the latest equipment upgrade. The intriguing aspect for me is the number of continually repeated adjectives found and used by Journalists to write about the latest gear. Speaker cable is a good illustration. Mains cable is equal to the multi pound alternatives sold out there but enthusiasts wont accept that whilst they are 'informed' of the best available within magazines

[StanleyB]

The pursuit of sound perfection and its equipment purveyors leads to the biggest 'con' perpetuated to and by mankind. Its all an illusion. I realised this years ago when as a speaker cabinet maker I used to meet those selling the stuff and laughing when a customer left the premises after buying the latest equipment upgrade.

But not all of us are conmen like you, or would laugh at our customers for buying one's latest effort.

Stan