greg@oliven.UUCP (Greg Paley) (03/01/85)
In discussing the live performances vs. recordings I am here referring strictly to the difference in sound per se, not in musical interpretation. Also I'm making no statement about the superiority of one over the other: I believe both are essential but are different experiences, not to be directly compared. In references to equipment and recordings, it's common to use live performance sound as a criterion for excellence. The better the equipment and recording, the closer it sounds to the live performance. This is particularly true of publications like "Absolute Sound". I think that, to a degree, they're kidding themselves, or, rather, being tricked by their own senses. It would be interesting to ask a blind person what their opinion is about the same recordings and equipment, because I feel that the visual element in a live performance situation radically alters one's perceptions and memory of what was actually heard. It is as though some human (subconscious) mechanism strives to provide a sense of coherence between the varying inputs of eye and ear. I've made a point when attending live concerts recently of listening to extended passages with my eyes closed. I find that such concepts as "imaging", "depth of field", "ambience", and general balances heard live would not be considered acceptable by audiophile standards were they to be exactly reproduced on a recording at home. This, at least, is my conclusion when listening to large orchestral and choral forces in large auditoriums. A particular example of this is a performance I heard last Friday of the San Jose Symphony under George Cleve performing Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde" with Jessye Norman and Richard Cassily as soloists. The performance itself was exceptionally fine, incidentally. The orchestral playing astonished me, since this orchestra is generally considered to be of provincial quality. With my eyes open, locating the performing forces for me, everything seemed to sound fine - voices clearly projecting and a marvelous balance and depth to the sound. With my eyes closed, I realized that if this were a recording, I'd consider the miking of soloists to be seriously deficient - they seemed recessed and submerged into the orchestra. This was particularly true of the tenor, even though he has a huge voice and performs the likes of Otello and Tannhaueser (boy it would be nice to be able to type umlauts here) at the Met. Even though I didn't plan to mention musical performance, there's one point I can't resist mentioning here. Several people have complained about James King's handling of the tenor part in this work on the Haitink and Bernstein recordings, praising the work of Araiza on the new Giulini recording and Wunderlich on the Klemperer recording. I understand what they're saying, but feel it necessary to clarify that Araiza and Wunderlich are giving recording-studio-only performances; voices of this sweetness and beauty would be lost against this orchestration in a live performance or else, if they would be heard at all, they would have none of that sweetness and beauty left by the time they had managed to project their sound over the orchestra. King's performance, though lacking in their subtlety, is a "real life" one which he could, and has, duplicated in concert. Imaging and "depth" are also relatively lost in a live performance, without the eye to locate the relative positions of the performers. By the time the sound of individual soloists and sections has blended in the hall, it would be impossible to locate them as emanating from a fixed position, or even to know, for example, that the horns are seated behind the winds, who in turn are seated behind the strings. My point is that even those who recommend "simple" two and three-mike recordings with "natural" balances are still expecting to hear, on a recording, sounds that are radically different from what they would really hear live. The sound on those older Mercury and RCA recordings appears natural at home but is still exaggerating the detail and sense of spatial deployment, so as to compensate for the missing visual element. I think this is partially responsible for what remains a lukewarm (at best) reception of the CD on the part of the staff of "Absolute Sound" and like-minded writers. I certainly didn't like the early CD samples (and players) I heard, and the defects were obvious: strident upper mid-range and treble, complete lack of any hall acoustic, etc. I no longer hear these defects on many more recent classical releases on good players (the Philips/Magnavox series, NAD, NEC, etc.). What I do hear is remarkably close to what I hear live. However, lacking the visual stimulus as well as the exaggerations that helped compensate for the visual element on earlier recordings, these can seem subdued, lacking in "life" and vitality, and generally (paradoxically) less "live" even though they are, in my opinion, more "accurate" when compared directly to a number of analogue LP's. Recording producers will probably end up having to decide whether to alter and "hype up" the sound of CD's in order to compete directly with older analogue recordings, or wait for the audio writers to adjust their thinking (and expectations) when listening to CD's. The success of CD's at the sales counter indicates that the general public isn't having any problem with this. - Greg Paley
rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) (03/04/85)
[] Bravo! Right on! I also find live performances ($50 seats at the met,Grand Tier) subject to loss of musical information by dropping into the noise level. Except for that the performances frequently approach and even sometimes exceed the musical enjoyment of a good CD. Now, the $35 orchestra seats of last month (Right side, Lohengrin) suffered from beaming of reflections off the right wall in the treble. Moving your head an inch or so moved you in and out of the beam lobes - talk of standing waves in living rooms, who would have thunk to find worse in the met. All right, all right. I'll admit that in general the live performance still has something going for it (besudes visual values) that home audio doesn't, but, at a higher price than the CD version for the real thing, the differences are getting smaller and smaller. -- "It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg
riner@dsd.UUCP (john riner) (03/05/85)
> I think that, to a degree, they're kidding themselves, or, rather, > being tricked by their own senses. It would be interesting to > ask a blind person what their opinion is about the same recordings > and equipment, because I feel that the visual element in a live > performance situation radically alters one's perceptions and > memory of what was actually heard. It is as though some human > (subconscious) mechanism strives to provide a sense of coherence > between the varying inputs of eye and ear. > - Greg Paley I heartily agree. The visual/aural connection is very important in the imaging process. At a live performance you are probably in the reverberant sound field (where sound is coming from more than just the source) and this causes your eyes to help "locate" the sound. If you have ever been at an overamplified performance the sound comes from the speakers because your eyes see the movement but your ears say it isn't coming from there and your brain is confused so the performance seems lousy. In listening at home, you don't have the visual stimulation and you are sitting in the direct sound field (unless you have a verrrry large room). The recording engineer must attempt to create the image with only aural stimulus and this inevitably means the recording is different than the live performance per se. It doesn't mean that it is good or bad though, I'll leave that to the critics. Personally, I am my own critic but this leaves me with no one to blame. -- John Riner UUCP: !fortune!dsd!riner AMPEX Corp Redwood City, CA. Nobody knows what I am talking about, so these must be my opinions and not theirs.