Do Members use Live Music as a Reference

Rodney Gold · Feb 23, 2016

With no true reference and a room that mangles sound beyond belief .. its impossible to actually reproduce what you think was the performance as "live" .. you can set up a stereo system that does give you the illusion of being there tho

However live unamplified music DOES give a point of reference as to the dynamics , sound and scale of an instrument or performance.

was in ireland recently .. lots of irish unamplified bands playing irish jigs (not my cup of tea) , but I was often sitting next to the performers in the pub and got an insight into the sound of the instruments , the pace of the music and so forth..

My hifi will never be like that , and at times you dont want it to be

At the wedding I attended there was a small 3 man jazz band , I was right next to the double bass player .. and had my hifi reproduced what i heard , I would have been dissapointed , none of those fingering sounds and the bass sounded mushy and ill defined

DaveyF · Feb 23, 2016

NorthStar said:
When I go to the music store to buy a guitar, I need to feel the vibes first...its sound and accommodation with my own dexterity.
It has to match part of my soul.
Just one more view and use to this all love affair with our passion...the music. ...The recordings.

Interesting perspective, Bob. When I play a guitar, I do want to be able to hear a certain sound that is pleasing to my ear...and to what I believe will be pleasing to the listener as well. The sound of an un-amplified acoustic steel string is certainly very different from instrument to instrument, however it is certainly always going to be recognized as a 'steel string guitar' whatever particular model of steel string guitar I am playing. The difference to my ear as the musician, may be and probably is, different than that of the 'casual' listener.
As to the OP, I always want to hear in my system..or anyone else's, what I believe to be the best reproduction of the sound of un-amplified instruments in the 'live' space. Pity we are still so far away from that reality.

spazmatron · Feb 23, 2016

live unamplified music is my inspiration for live albums with acoustic instruments. i listen to a lot of electronica so no reference for that i guess. if you find yourself in front of your hifi being blown away by how well the band are playing together... you're there imo.

if you're listening to electronica and are surrounded by sound and taken in by texture and auditory sensation... yep you're all good.

Bass notes are just that individual notes made by discernible instruments (where applicable) not just power blob... all is well.

Phelonious Ponk · Feb 23, 2016

An old argument. I'll give my old answer: Live music is your reference? What artist? What instrument? What performance? What hall? Music is very rarely recorded in a manner that even attempts to replicate live sound, and for good reason: That doesn't work all that well. Even a small jazz quartet, playing live, in studio, or in concert, will typically be recorded with a half dozen or more microphones, at much closer proximity than any seat in any concert venue. The result, the recordings, are a thing unto themselves, but if you're going to compare them to live, they are much closer to live in your living room, a few feet away from you, all around you, than are to live in any venue you're likely to find. The good news is that these recordings, when well done, will reveal more detail than almost any seat in any house. The bad news is they'll never capture the true ambience of any house either. They're totally different experiences and in some ways, even through a modest system, playback of a recording can be better. In other ways it falls quite short.

When people say live music is their reference, I assume they are really referencing their memory of sound, mostly from other recordings and other systems, because most peoples' live listening experience doesn't include anything even remotely as intimate as a recording well done.

Tim

Phelonious Ponk · Feb 23, 2016

NorthStar said:
When I go to the music store to buy a guitar, I need to feel the vibes first...its sound and accommodation with my own dexterity.
It has to match part of my soul.

A sound system, a pair of loudspeakers, is its own musical instrument. ...Has its own reference, its own soul.
It still is an amplified musical instrument though, plugged in to the AC outlet, and I can play my own un-amplified acoustic recordings on it, and my amplified electric ones too.

When monitoring my own recordings, I use my own sound system. It's my reference to tell me about my recording techniques.

Just one more view and use to this all love affair with our passion...the music. ...The recordings.

Ah, Northstar, you touch stones close to my heart. But I've owned a lot of guitars, far too many, my ex-wives would say, and I'm even a bit of an objectivist in the music store. I've learned that, for me anyway, the "feel" is a combination of specifications - scale length, nut width, fret size, neck profile, and the type of bridge that sits under my hand - If I get those spec right, I can take it to a good luthier, get the frets dressed and polished, the neck angle, relief and string height adjusted to my taste, and any quality built instrument can "feel" right. The one that feels so right in the store is just the one that hit your sweet spot by chance, but that sweet spot is infinitely adjustable.

Sound, of course, is another matter, especially in acoustic guitars. Electrics? 45% of the sound is in the pickups, 5% is in the hardware and the rest is in your hands.

Tim

bonzo75 · Feb 23, 2016

Live music diet minimum once a week - either orchestral, arias, or small ensemble. Live music reference should be a regular reference, not one where a person has gone to one live show than relapsed to using his own system as a reference, with a distant memory of his perception of what he heard during the live show.

DaveyF · Feb 23, 2016

Phelonious Ponk said:
Ah, Northstar, you touch stones close to my heart. But I've owned a lot of guitars, far too many, my ex-wives would say, and I'm even a bit of an objectivist in the music store. I've learned that, for me anyway, the "feel" is a combination of specifications - scale length, nut width, fret size, neck profile, and the type of bridge that sits under my hand - If I get those spec right, I can take it to a good luthier, get the frets dressed and polished, the neck angle, relief and string height adjusted to my taste, and any quality built instrument can "feel" right. The one that feels so right in the store is just the one that hit your sweet spot by chance, but that sweet spot is infinitely adjustable.

Sound, of course, is another matter, especially in acoustic guitars. Electrics? 45% of the sound is in the pickups, 5% is in the hardware and the rest is in your hands.

Tim

You are forgetting something, Tim. With electrics the sound also has to do with the amp...remember great players play the amp.

Zero000 · Feb 23, 2016

The recordings I make of my acoustic guitar sound better pumped through the hi-fi at volume than the real instrument.

So no I don't use it as a reference. I use my hi-fi to hear my acoustic guitar playing with much more detail and scale than I ever hear playing it. I use it as a sort of acoustic lens.

PeterA · Feb 23, 2016

Phelonious Ponk said:
An old argument. I'll give my old answer: Live music is your reference? What artist? What instrument? What performance? What hall? Music is very rarely recorded in a manner that even attempts to replicate live sound, and for good reason: That doesn't work all that well. Even a small jazz quartet, playing live, in studio, or in concert, will typically be recorded with a half dozen or more microphones, at much closer proximity than any seat in any concert venue. The result, the recordings, are a thing unto themselves, but if you're going to compare them to live, they are much closer to live in your living room, a few feet away from you, all around you, than are to live in any venue you're likely to find. The good news is that these recordings, when well done, will reveal more detail than almost any seat in any house. The bad news is they'll never capture the true ambience of any house either. They're totally different experiences and in some ways, even through a modest system, playback of a recording can be better. In other ways it falls quite short.

When people say live music is their reference, I assume they are really referencing their memory of sound, mostly from other recordings and other systems, because most peoples' live listening experience doesn't include anything even remotely as intimate as a recording well done.

Tim

Tim, I agree. It certainly is an old argument. Here is another one: There is a view that there is no absolute sound precisely because of the variables that you mention. However, live music does fall within a range of sound and the broader one's experience with live music, the better he is able to know what that range is. Regardless, someone who listens to a lot of live music knows the range of sounds that a violin can make and whether or not an audio system approximates that range or not. I have heard well regarded DACs sound nothing like real instruments. Does that mean that the recordings are flawed because the latest DACs are purport to be transparent to the source? Or does that mean that well regarded DACs actually sound different from each other and few if any are actually transparent to the recording? I recently heard a DAC that was actually very natural and convincing sounding over a variety of recordings.

In response to your two comments in bold, here is a photograph of some live music being played in a living room, the way it was meant to be heard when it was composed, that is, in a chamber. It was indeed intimate. And I have heard recordings which capture a similar sound and I've heard systems which come pretty close to sounding like what Al M. and I heard that night in Boston. Experiences like this one help me, and others, to determine all sorts of things about an audio system and its ability to transcribe a recording into something that either sounds convincing, or not.

The accuracy of the photograph can also be verified by using my memory of seeing the live performance as a reference. It looks a bit flat and the colors are slightly off compared to what I remember.

Phelonious Ponk · Feb 23, 2016

DaveyF said:
You are forgetting something, Tim. With electrics the sound also has to do with the amp...remember great players play the amp.

A major oversight on my part, Davey. Electric guitar amps are perhaps the most important thing in generating the tone. Well, other than your hands.

Tim

rsorren1 · Feb 23, 2016

I most definitely use live music as the reference for my audio system. As I've written here before, we support the Dallas Symphony and attend every concert we can. From our seats, I listen for the tone of the strings, woodwinds, horns, bass, percussion and piano. I can assure you I don't let this interfere with the music's message and joy of the live performance. I try to lock that into memory and listen for similar characteristics when listening at home. I do have several recordings that were made at the Myerson so that's always fun. Additionally, I'm an amateur drummer. I know what a snare, toms, kick-drum, cymbals, and hi-hat sounds like when I play. I often listen to the drum track of recordings to see if it sounds like the real thing.

NorthStar · Feb 23, 2016

This thread right here is a good thread, peaceful...no fight. ...It's about music's perspective...from the artist musicians and the artist listeners.
Yes, musicians they monitor their own recordings on a sound system. I play my acoustic guitars amplified by my own sound system and using my own EQ (adjusted guitar pedals of my preference) to create a sound that pleases/satisfies/suits me just fine.

Accidents do happen too, and it's about labor of love...

We live with what we believe, what we love...all animated by the same passion...the music, sweet music to our ears and soul.
The ultra high fidelity in audio is in the mastering of the sound, the art of creating new food for the heart of the ? music.
The music we love is live, alive...no matter if created in the moment or reproduced @ another time in space.

Our reference is in the connection. We all connect to certain music with great emotional trance. The system disappears, physically and mentally; only the memory of the moment remains. If we're here it's because it's our destiny, and no one can't take that away, no one cannot accept the destiny of someone's else passion on the sound of music, audio, sounds as our reason to be alive and satisfied.

No fight should exist, no banning should occur, only life. ...Because we're all alike, and alive. ...Even after we're dead, because the music keeps playing...the music we love.

So, before you click on that "submit" button, think above your own head, of all the other heads...and hearts.
Because we're all alike, and nobody can't take that away from us.

And when we think we're different, that's when we lose it.

KlausR. · Feb 24, 2016

PeterA said:
I am curious to learn what percentage of the membership uses live music as a reference against which to judge the success of an audio system.

I don’t, for the reasons that follow.

I contend that we also have our memories of what live music sounds like, and that these memories can also guide us in our audio evaluations. The criticism, as I understand it, is that our ears and memory can not be trusted…

As psychoacoustic research shows, auditory memory is not as good as some would like to believe. Of course you will recognize a violin as a violin or your sibling on the phone even if you haven’t seen him/her in some time, but what about listening to a first tone and a minute/hour/day/week later to a second tone and then decide whether or not both tones have the same pitch?

Bachem, Time factors in relative and absolute pitch determination, J. of the Acoustical Society of America 1954, p.751

Listeners without absolute pitch performed rather poorly, after a few minutes pitch recognition started to become poor until it was off by an octave and more. And that’s only a single tone and a single parameter, pitch. Why should they perform better for complex events comprised of bags of different tones and parameters?

… and that the recording does not fully capture the performance, so referring to live music is fundamentally flawed.

As measurements have shown, frequency response and imaging are (very) different for different locations in a concert hall. Therefore, there is no such thing as concert hall sound, and there is certainly no way of capturing the sound at a particular location without putting the mike in that very location, which is probably not what is being done in most of the cases. So yes, generally the recording does not represent what can be heard on concert hall seats, hence using live music to “calibrate” your hearing is illusive, to put it mildly.

A last point is the radiation behaviour of musical instruments which is very different from that of forward firing loudspeakers, causing perceptible differences in timbre. Because of that loudspeakers as we know them cannot reproduce instruments faithfully, so any comparison with live music is moot from the very beginning.

Klaus

Andrew Stenhouse · Feb 24, 2016

Some good points Klaus and well made.

I agree that the pursuit of "accuracy" of live or studio musical reproduction is illusory - not least because as we both agree - accuracy of what exactly? where the mic's are placed? what the mixing desk hears, the God-awful din that usually accompanies producers deciding how the "mix" is going to sound?

On the other hand - you quite rightly point out that we all know what a violin sounds like, or the human voice. I've got a pretty good ear, used to have a fair old bash at being pitch perfect, and can easily discern when a note is slightly off - for instance when a tenor sings a semi tone flat or sharp.

Now that said - I use live music as my reference for two reasons - one that is how I learned what instruments sound like and two that is when I am most easily transported into this wonderful emotional connection with the music that Bob mentioned above (I think he used the word "trance" but I guess we are talking about the same thing).

So when I listen to a system, it is less about what I hear and much more about how I feel: that is the ability of that system to transport me into the music and the musical event. Take my humble Harbeth 30.1's - not an expensive speaker by any means. Just a simple two way lossy box. But, and it is a very large but, they do a fantastic job on involving me in the music, and with modest amplification ( I don't think anyone on WBF would mind me describing the Luxman 507ux I own as modest).

So perhaps we are in fact talking about the same thing, but from different ends?

So, if you don't use live music as your reference - what do you use? Or don't you much care? (and I don't say that in the least pejoratively).

bonzo75 · Feb 24, 2016

What Klaus says is incorrect. You will ne surprised how many people can't distinguish between instruments, have never heard some of the instruments in an orchestra before. Violin tone is one of the key things in hifi, and what sets apart vinyl and digital

Andrew Stenhouse · Feb 24, 2016

bonzo75 said:
What Klaus says is incorrect. You will ne surprised how many people can't distinguish between instruments, have never heard some of the instruments in an orchestra before. Violin tone is one of the key things in hifi, and what sets apart vinyl and digital

Good God! really mate? I cannot imagine that an audiophile wouldn't know the difference between a violin and a viola, and having been exposed to that from hearing the instruments, and often enough to regularly distinguish between them. Ditto the various types of clarinets. I am shocked.

I agree completely - violin sounds much more like a real instrument to me when reproduced on vinyl. As do most instruments. But that is just me. Others may disagree and that is fine as well. The Nadac via DSD is the closest I have heard to digital reproduce real instruments. But a modest analog system I find more convincing. Ditto the human voice, and piano.

Purite Audio · Feb 24, 2016

Andrew Stenhouse said:
Some good points Klaus and well made.

I agree that the pursuit of "accuracy" of live or studio musical reproduction is illusory - not least because as we both agree - accuracy of what exactly? where the mic's are placed? what the mixing desk hears, the God-awful din that usually accompanies producers deciding how the "mix" is going to sound?

On the other hand - you quite rightly point out that we all know what a violin sounds like, or the human voice. I've got a pretty good ear, used to have a fair old bash at being pitch perfect, and can easily discern when a note is slightly off - for instance when a tenor sings a semi tone flat or sharp.

Now that said - I use live music as my reference for two reasons - one that is how I learned what instruments sound like and two that is when I am most easily transported into this wonderful emotional connection with the music that Bob mentioned above (I think he used the word "trance" but I guess we are talking about the same thing).

So when I listen to a system, it is less about what I hear and much more about how I feel: that is the ability of that system to transport me into the music and the musical event. Take my humble Harbeth 30.1's - not an expensive speaker by any means. Just a simple two way lossy box. But, and it is a very large but, they do a fantastic job on involving me in the music, and with modest amplification ( I don't think anyone on WBF would mind me describing the Luxman 507ux I own as modest).

So perhaps we are in fact talking about the same thing, but from different ends?

So, if you don't use live music as your reference - what do you use? Or don't you much care? (and I don't say that in the least pejoratively).

Live performance is one thing the recording of that performance completely different , when we listen at home we only have the reproduction.
Keith.

Andrew Stenhouse · Feb 24, 2016

Purite Audio said:
Live performance is one thing the recording of that performance completely different , when we listen at home we only have the reproduction.
Keith.

Well yes. Of course mate. Which brings me to the "accuracy of what exactly?" question.

Now off to bed for me. Quite late enough here.

Edit: so you see Keith what I have been reduced to: 30.1's not Cessaro's...ha ha.

Purite Audio · Feb 24, 2016

Andrew Stenhouse said:
Well yes. Of course mate. Which brings me to the "accuracy of what exactly?" question.

Now off to bed for me. Quite late enough here.

Edit: so you see Keith what I have been reduced to: 30.1's not Cessaro's...ha ha.

30's are ok though aren't they?
Re accuracy you can only hope to reproduce that 'reproduction ' as accurately as possible,
Keith.

Andrew Stenhouse · Feb 24, 2016

Purite Audio said:
30's are ok though aren't they?
Re accuracy you can only hope to reproduce that 'reproduction ' as accurately as possible,
Keith.

They are very nice for what I listen to. But the Cessaro is a better speaker, in a bigger space than mine, I suspect.

Yup I agree, which is not something I especially aspire to mate. Have you heard what the pro guys think sound good in a mastering studio?? It usually isn't very pretty.

Now I was off to bed, wasn't I. Beauty sleep beckons. God knows I need it.

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