The original sound - who needs it?

[doodoos]

We are striving for 'the closest approach to the original sound' a famous manufacturer once quoted. Having sat near the front in the RFH last week I was reminded how harsh the original sound can be. Brass from a distance of 20 metres or so can sound very hard! Of course so can some hifi sytems, with comments that they become unlistenable after a while. So what are we really looking for in this hobby?

[niklasthedolphin]

We are striving for 'the closest approach to the original sound' a famous manufacturer once quoted. Having sat near the front in the RFH last week I was reminded how harsh the original sound can be. Brass from a distance of 20 metres or so can sound very hard! Of course so can some hifi sytems, with comments that they become unlistenable after a while. So what are we really looking for in this hobby?

Closest to the Analog Reference when it's best will be the Nirvana of music reproduction.

When a live concert is head banging death metal with built-in 98% harmonic distortion, it's needed to manipulate everything to make it listenable.

There will be a long way of searching between every published LP/CD/R2R tape, or whatever you use, beyound mediocre sound quality. There will be very far between those editions with very high quality of sound.

Just like it is with concerts.

The world is indeed in need of sound engineers and tape operators with skills to make good stage set-up and good master recordings.

"dolph"

[Filterlab]

...The world is indeed in need of sound engineers and tape operators with skills to make good stage set-up and good master recordings...

Let's not forget that these are two very different things indeed of course.

[niklasthedolphin]

Let's not forget that these are two very different things indeed of course.

Let's not forget the difference between night and day either.

"dolph"

[Filterlab]

Indeed, one's bright and the other isn't.

[Beechwoods]

And which seat in the hall should we take as the reference? The conductors podium, the pianists chair, row 20 centre, or the soundman's booth? 3000 ears with a different take on the original sound! Not to mention the one in the musician's head. Or composers'!

[John]

Ahh sound, you pay your money and make your choices.
I love good live music the way it is also a felt sensation as well as just something I just hear but been to far to many gigs where the sound is just poor
I also heard some very high end systems that sound just wrong to my ears and heard moderate systems that have blown me away

[Filterlab]

...I love good live music the way it is also a felt sensation as well as just something I just hear but been to far to many gigs where the sound is just poor....

John, you're spot on there mate. I've heard so many poor sound quality gigs that it's put me off live music in favour of a hi-fi system. Obviously a system is never (or should I say rarely) going to capture the audible environment of a live performance, but 50% of the time the listener wouldn't want that if it's going to be a facsimile of a poorly mic'd and levelled gig. A well set-up hi-fi (be it very high-end or not) should just present what the source material offers, no more no less. The more it adds or subtracts then the further the system is getting away from being ideal.

[John]

Still love live music Rob
Its often about being part of the shared experience watching players really perform and being with friends as the band cranks along
But frustrating when it sounds a mess
Off to see Paul Gilbert on Friday and Opeth next week
Ps
Most of my friends think I am a bit mad but when they hear what my system can do usually understand

[nat8808]

Interesting topic!

This is from where I think a lot of hi-fi disagreements stem.. What do people want? Who is the artist here, the performer, the recording engineer or the listener? What artist?

If you want to hear what the artists intended then you are effectively taking a very passive role. But you can't, because you don't entirely know what the artists wanted.. you have to second guess, so decide for yourself how it should sound. That means your own tastes are creeping in through the back door, unnoticed.

Many listeners though do want to have a say in the recording process and so conciously doctor the sound at home to their tastes using different sounding equipment, adding warmth here and taking away harshness there etc etc. The listener then becomes the artist, dare I say possibly even bastardizing the work (you could liken this to touching up a Francis Bacon to make it more 'home friendly').

You also have people wanting to hear the 'music' and the 'emotion' and say things like 'soundstage isn't music' yet the very composer or musician playing the music could be reveling in the wide, vast soundstage of the hall they are playing in and truely feeling that it is conveying all the emotion they have intended in the piece! I'm sure I would be if I were the musician. Of course, they could also be completely right.

So then who is the deciding on the sound anyway? The performer/composer will have their take on how it should sound, the recording engineers may have theirs, the mastering engineer will have theirs too and probably all conflicting, especially the mastering engineer who probably has their commercial hat on perhaps giving it some generic homogeny to please as many people as possible!

I myself, in the RFH, would probably delight at the physical-ness of the brass blasts (for a bit anyway) and want to recreate their rich, crunchy harmonics and painful dynamics at home! I suspect though that not many recording engineers would record it like that, instead creating their own take on 'real life'.

For me, the answer is to record stuff myself and try to get my hi-fi to recreate it exactly how I remember it - that's the only way you can be sure you are getting the original sound. Then just please myself on pre-recorded things.

Anyway, those thoughts aren't well set out I realise.. but I think it underlies most disagreements over equipment sound. Even if you want to recreate the original sound at home you can't actually help but impose your own tastes and then those are on top of the recording engineer's tastes and those then on top of the artist's tastes!

Real attempts at recreating the original sound is a very fringe activity and probably most likely to end up in recordings of steam trains going past.. Best thing to do is buy lots of sound effect records - or listen to Resonance FM! (which I do).

Incidently, it seems to me in general that modern equipment manufacturers have dropped the idea of recreating the original sound and instead go for the more marketable 'what the buyer wants' stance (which allows and validates differences in equipment). From looking at old mags, recreating real life was more rife in the ads of the 70's and 80's.