Is there a connection between sound and reality?
Posted by: Arye_Gur on 22 May 2003
Several days ago, I went with few friends of the Israeli Audio Forum to visit to a recording studio (The Submarine) in Tel Aviv.
This visit put a big question mark to my opinion about the fidelity of the source.
The studio is built of two rooms that a glass wall connecting them. One room is for the players and the other is the control room where the technician records the players.
We have a lecture for about 8 hours.
The producer spoke first and told us that he is the one who planes the character of the recording. He gives the technician orders to lead the recorded sound to a target he sees in his mind.
Both, the producer and the technician are a link in the art chain. They both have to understand the music they deal with and understand the musicians. For example, even when the technician needs to rest a big microphone in front of a singer, there are singers that get bad influence from it, other singers are insulted if the technician rests a small microphone in front of them…
There were two players on a piano and a violin We listen to them playing in the playing room. The technician dragged me to the violinist and put my ear near the violin. It sounded awful He did so as I asked why not recording the violin directly to a tape.
The technician explained that the music is not a sum of the instruments, but an energy that is a combination of the energy of the instruments and the space at the given place. Each space has its own capacity of energy –
And if you over it (in a living room too) you get a disturbed sound.
We listened to the music and left the room. There where 4 microphones in the room, two for the piano to catch its lows and highs, one for the violin and one at a distance for ambiance.
We went to the control room.
The music, live at the control room (via electronics and speakers) doesn’t have the same sound as in the playing room. First, the producer says what he doesn’t like or what he wants – and the technician changes the places of the microphones until every thing sounds ok to the producer.
The new place changes the sound and you already lose the connection between the real sound in the playing room and the sound in the control room, but this is the easy part.
The control room has a large table with many slides and knobs to control many channels. At the end of the table there is a centrality in which you can connect each channel on the table to many kinds of equipment with them you can manipulate and torture the sound in thousands ways.
While doing so, the signals go many times from digital to analog again and again – through lots of cable and plugs – did I hear somebody says “as short as possible path”?
They compress the sound and they stretch the sound and they change the timing between the notes and you listen to all of this and you don’t believe.
While recording, the technician sees in mind only mini systems – these are the systems most of the customers are using. If a recording sounds good with your hi-fi systems, he says, its only luck.
After that we listen to 5 tracks that where badly recorded separately, and the producer and the technician made quite a nice music of it – was amazing to see again how can they control and manipulate the sound.
So, when you are listening to music at home, you listen to a sound that the producer wants you to listen too, and I think that any connection between this sound and reality is accidental only …
Arye
Posted on: 22 May 2003 by redeye
Agreed and what the hell is reality anyway?
Still its Friday night and my chances of popping down the local to hear John Coltrane or Lucinda Williams are slim so the hifi (hate that word) will have to do.
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by paul99
Isn't the trend these days to do less electronic processing in the studio.
I understand that some new recordings make a positive virtue of the fact that vintage analogue gear was used for the recording.
The lack of electronic and digital jiggery-pokery is probably why old recordings from the 50s and 60s sound so good.
Regards,
Paul.
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by Arye_Gur
The technician told us that recording by microphones only takes a lot of time and it is very expensive.
He said that he can't tell about a recording that was made in another studio, if it was made by microphones only or with the add of EQ.
The result is the same or maybe with a very little difference.
Arye
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by david r
I used to work in studios for 8 years and what Arye says is true. I think that the best way to view your home system is to hear what the final result was in the mixing room. I don't think that recordings from the 50' & 60's sound better- what a ridiculous concept, there is far less clarity - they have their own feel and the musicanship is often excellent but the sonic quality is substantially less. This is no surprise because of the avances in technology. What woudl would sound better a top of the range gamaphone from the 50' or 60's or a current top of the range Naim.
CDSII, 52, 135's and SF Electa Amator II's
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by Mike Hanson
Great post, Arye! Perhaps this will give pause to those who are intent on believing that their systems can be classified as "accurate", when there is absolutely no benchmark against which we can compare these things.
What you may have missed in your tour, Arye, is the "mastering" stage. They get that recording sounding nicely mixed, well balanced, and generally good in the control room, and they create a "pre-master". If you burnt a copy of this and listened to it in your home system, you would know there was something wrong, even though you thought it sounded great in the control room.
This pre-master goes on to another guy (someone with fresh ears, usually in another studio), who adds a bunch of effects like loudness maximizers, reverb, aural exciters, etc., to make the final "master" sound (to him) comparable to other music in the same market. During this trip it will have gone through many more mixers, D/A and A/D conversions, etc. As you commented, this is a far cry from "as short as possible path".
All we can expect from our home systems is personal satisfaction. To expect something like "accuracy" or "realism" is self-delusion. We have nothing against which to compare it, except for that subjective sense of expectation in our heads.
-=> Mike Hanson <=-
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by Thomas K
quote:
I don't think that recordings from the 50' & 60's sound better - what a ridiculous concept, there is far less clarity
Perhaps Paul meant to say he
likes the sound of those recordings better.
If you were to re-record "We Get Requests" using basically the same techniques but better technology, it would of course sound "better". Thing is, people rarely record like that anymore, especially not in pop/rock.
While compression, reverb, multi-track recording etc. can be beneficial or necessary in some circumstances, I often get the feeling these techniques are used "because we can". As Arye's engineer says, if you use too many different kinds of reverb, for example, it can end up sounding "incorrect" (think concert-hall cymbals and anechoic-chamber kick drum or vice versa).
Just think of the sick bastards who created the 80s-type snare sound. I hated Depeche Mode and whatever Marc Almond's band was again with a passion. Incidentally, interviews regularly had these people confessing that they couldn't really play any instruments. Not surprising! The worst perpetrators of the warm-fart-under-the-duvet snares and Tom-Scholz-Rockman-electric-razor guitar sounds were usually pathetic musicians.
It really went pear-shaped when decent musicians or their producers adopted some of these aural aesthetics. Thank goodness those days are over and the best music is once again being recorded with more organic-sounding production techniques. Now we just need to get rid of loud masters and mass-produced EMI/BMG/Warner etc. fare.
Thomas
(feeling a bit sanctimonious)
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by JeremyD
As soon as the signal deviates from the original we are in uncharted territory because, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has devised a model that will enable us to look at the altered signal and quantify its accuracy in any meaningful sense. The hi-fi "objectivists" [a dreadful misnomer] use hand wavy arguments about "information content" to justify the significance they attribute to arbitrary measurements but these arguments are nonsensical. Of course, if we have two signals that deviate from the original in the same single parameter but to different degrees then we could trivially say that one of these is more accurate than the other but this is essentially useless in the real world, where degradation of the signal mostly doesn't happen in such a convenient way.
The only meaningful measure of accuracy would be if someone found a formula on measurable parameters that accurately predicted the probability that one system would be preferred to another. I'm sure such a thing is possible - even if it applied only to limited groups of individuals, [e.g Naim owners or some subset thereof - e.g. Mike Hanson
].
Maybe in fifty years time, you'll be able to go to a hi-fi shop, put on a pair of headphones and a brain scanning device, which will play you a selection of music and test signals, and then, using the results of the test, select a hi-fi for you from a wide range of erm... Sony and Technics options...
--J
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by paul99
Thomas and especially Davidr,
What I said was:
"The lack of electronic and digital jiggery-pokery is probably why old recordings from the 50s and 60s sound so good."
I didn't say that they sounded better or even that I preferred them, simply that they sound good.
On the other hand, the only significant and consistent difference I can hear between old analogue and modern recordings is the absence, in modern recordings, of tape-hiss or other hiss (from microphone pre-amps, I suppose) in the background.
Perhaps, before technology existed to correct errors, the recording engineers had no choice but to get the miking and acoustics right.
I have to admit, apart from the background noise issue, I can notice no significant consistent improvement in clarity between good recordings from the 50s and 60s and modern recordings.
I have a 1956 recording of the Brandenburg concertos (bought for 50p or 75p from Woolsworths, years ago) which is as good (clarity-wise) as anything else I have.
Infact, I've got probably a hundred or so records I could say that of.
Cloth-eared ridiculous old me!
Anybody else wondered, how with our super-duper high technology, recording quality is still not consistently so very much better than it was all those years ago?
Before anybody posts off something abusive, or accuses me of being ridiculous, read what I have written first.
Note, in particular, my use of the word "consistent". This allows for good and bad old recordings, good and bad new recordings and allows for the fact that particular modern recordings could be better or worse than particular old recordings. I am talking about consistent differences.
Of course, a top-notch (not messed about with)modern recording is better than the best that could be achieved in the 50s.
Regards,
Paul.
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by Simon Douglass
This thread seems to support the notion that "accuracy" is to a certain extent of secondary importance when it comes to musicality.If music sounds musical,does it matter what its been through before it reaches your ears?A good HiFi system should deliver musicality not a false impression of where all the musicians are.
Whilst the human ear is a pretty amazing pick-up device,it is still incredibly crude when compared to the processing that the auditory centres in our brains carry out.It's amazing that the tenuous path of recording studio to final perception of recorded music can sound so close to the real thing.
Simon
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by Greg Beatty
...also affects comparisions of different media.
See the following re:the new Dark Side of the Moon release that has both SACD and CD layers.
Which would you rather listen to?
DSotM Disk Analysis- GregB
Insert Witty Signature Line Here
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by Thomas K
Paul,
No abusiveness was intended. I was addressing and quoting David, who apparently misquoted you (I think you'll find we're in perfect agreement, really).
IMO, the technology really has much less effect on the outcome than the engineer's/producer's personal taste and expertise.
Thomas
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by Mike Hanson
quote:
Originally posted by J. A. Toon:
A more "accurate" system will get closer to the end result left by the studio.
This is theoretically possible, although improvable. With each "upgrade", you're playing the part of the producer, getting your system to create sound that you expect and desire. True accuracy has little to do with it.
quote:
Not _every_ modern recording is completely screwed around with. Some modern recordings are pretty good, and sound quite "live".
At least you
perceive it to be that way. I have many recordings that
seem to sound very "live", yet they don't sound the same as any live concerts that I've attended. Furthermore, none of those live concerts have sounded the same as each other. The musicians were different, the venues were different, my sitting positions were different, my ears may have had too much wax in them, I was sleepy, etc. Where's the benchmark? Where's the controlled experiment? Where's the objectivity?!?
Accuracy? ... Bah!
Admit it: It's all about self-satisfaction, and there's nothing wrong with that.
-=> Mike Hanson <=-
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by Greg Beatty
Sometimes when comparing components I find that one component consistently "fools" me into thinking I'm hearing something "real". The piano just sounds more like a piano, the horns, bells, and chellos sound more like, well, horns, bells, and chellos. When kit does this with different recordings, my usual conclusion is that this kit sounds more "lifelike" than the other kit.
The trouble comes when I remember *why* I'm listening to the hifi and the kit that sounds *less* lifelike is more engaging. Is more musical. Is the one I want to listen to - while the other one is impressive in a "see how real it sounds" kindof way, but is little more than sonic wallpaper otherwise.
Maybe its dynamics, maybe its timing, maybe something else - I dunno. But as someone who used to be after Ameri-fi, I'm now not so intriqued by all of this "sounding real" business anymore. Its one of several "nice to have" attributes.
- Greg
Insert Witty Signature Line Here
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by Paul Ranson
With regards to 'loudness' you might find
this interesting.
Paul
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by jayd
I believe an important distinction needs to be drawn between accurately reproducing what happened in the studio/club/arena where the recording took place and accurately reproducing what is encoded on the disc.
Surely we can only achieve some measure of the former if the people doing the capturing really want it to happen, and really do a terrific job, and are really lucky besides.
As for the latter of these two aims, hi-fi should adhere to the Hippocratic oath: "Above all, do no harm."
Jay
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by david r
Paul99 - apologies I didn't mean to be derisive and 'consistent' is a key word - in which case I agree with you in general. The point is that most recording are mastered for systems that cannot differentiate between a good and bad recording anyway.
CDSII, 52, 135's and SF Electa Amator II's
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by undertone
Dear Members,
While mulling this one over, it is important, I believe, to consider some (sad) facts of life in the chain of events that gets the music to your earholes;
1) Performing music is an Art, recording and selling music is a Business.
2) Where is the first place a person hears a new recording? (by percentage), on the Radio.
3) Where do most people today listen to the radio? (by percentage), in the Car.
4) What system are most of today's recordings engineered and mastered to sound "good" on? the Car system.
5) Why do a great number of modern recordings sound crap on your expensive and well thought-out home system, well you get the idea. As long as recors are made as a "business" this problem will continue.
There is a conflict of interest between the artist and the record company. The artist wants to produce the best possible product while the record company wants to sell as many copies as possible. The creative chain starts life in a recording studio or other venue, all of which are as different as our own respective listening rooms. There is no "signature" recording process, and recording engineers and producers are guilty of constant knob twiddling from start to finish.
Thankfully this problem is not 100%, and there are some artists who actually care enough about the quality of their product to have some influence over the recording and mastering process. As well, there are plenty of "boutique" type recordings that have been made where quality is Job #1 throughout. Is SACD and DVDA the answer? Clearly no for the entire back catalog of the world, but if new recordings are made in either format (or any other new ones that come along) in a "performance-to-native" way, we have a chance to hear some really great recordings in the future.
Setting up a music playback system for the home is a minefield in and of itself. Everybody has a different opinion, as can be witnessed by this and all the other forums. Most people agree that until the source component is "right", the rest of the system is somewhat irrelevant. But if the quality of the software that plays in the highly developed and tweaked source component is crap, the whole excercise is a constantly moving target. But at least it keeps us off the streets at night.
Posted on: 23 May 2003 by david r
Does anyone know of a resource (book or online) where one can check out the quality of the recordings as well as the musical content. I knwo one of the hifi mags does this on a monthly basis but there is no compilation of these reviews that can be used as a guide
CDSII, 52, 135's and SF Electa Amator II's
