Live music vs. Recorded music

mep · May 14, 2010

All,
I just returned today from a business trip to VA Beach. I was staying at a hotel right on the beach and the VA beach is something to behold. It is super clean and of course the scenery is fantastic. Across the street from the hotel is the main drag (Atlantic Ave I think) and it is full of dive bars that look like a bunch of ex Navy Chiefs cobbled them together after they retired.

Wednesday night I went to one of the dive bars across the street from my hotel and they happened to have a guy playing acoustic guitar with a drummer. Strange combo but it worked. I was standing about 5' away from the drummer. The drummer had a very small drum set. This isn't the first time I have been that close to a drummer before, but it is always amazing when you hear it again. As I was standing there listening to the combo play, I was once again struck by how far we are from being able to capture the sound of a drum kit being played. The amount of energy that comes off of a set of drums is just incredible and we are not capturing anywhere near that energy on any recording medium. Oh sure, we all have recordings which have great drum "sound," but we don't have recordings that come close to the sound of an actual drum kit being played. And no, the Sheffield drum album doesn't come close either less anyone is pondering that notion. I am going to take a WAG and say with our current technology, we are capturing maybe 70% of what is there to be heard live. Why is that?

If I had to lay the finger of blame on the cause, my guess wold be the microphones we use. I don't think that any microphone currently known to man is capable of capturing that type of energy. I think it would take some new microphone technology if we are ever going to get there. And if we could ever get microphones to really faithfully capture the sound of a drum kit, I think we would all really need much more powerful amplifiers than most of us are currently using. I really think that we would need amps in the KW range to reproduce the sound without clipping which would also mean most of us would need different speakers.

And I don't mean to get hung up on just the sound of drums. I had a similiar experience a month or so ago when I was in San Diego at a Mexican restaurant in Old Town. I wrote about that experience before when the guy was blowing a trumpet and knocking the dust off the ceiling. That live sound is so powerful that again we are not close to capturing all of the energy that is to be heard live.

I keep coming back to the word "energy," and unless/until I can come up with something better I am going to stick with it. I think that failing to capture all of the energy that instruments are reproducing is the missing third dimension that keeps recordings sounding like recordings vice sounding like live music. And don't get me wrong, I am glad our systems sound as good as they do and they bring us great pleasure-but don't think for a minute that we are actually capturing and playing back everything that is to be heard live. If that is ever going to happen, we are going to need some type of breakthrough in recording technology and I think it starts with microphones. Of course I could be dead wrong about microphones being the culprit, but that is my guess.

I also want to be clear on something with regards to energy and that is don't confuse loudness levels with total energy capture. I do think that with the gear we have now, in order to play back recordings and make them sound as real as the medium will allow you, you do have to set your playback levels so they approximate the levels the music was actually played at. You can't turn you stereo down to a whisper and somehow think you are going to get there. I am pretty sure that most of us here have systems that are capable of playing at realistically live levels with speakers that move plenty of air. And I think that moving lots of air is also critical if you are to have any chance of playing back recordings and making them sound as real as the current state of the art allows. However, it doesn't matter how loud and clean you can play back recordings if the recordings you are playing back never contained all of the energy of the actual recorded event in the first place (and they don't). And I guess that is my point, we just aren't able to capture all of the energy that is there and that is what is holding us back from total "realness."

Any thoughts?

Mark

MylesBAstor · May 14, 2010

Well I think the one thing to define is what is the medium you're using for playback. I will say that 15 ips/2 track tape will give you a lot more of the sound of the drum kit you're looking for than analog-esp. when it comes to bass dynamics and sense of ease. Then I'd say that the best of D2D LPs have a lot better bass than conventional discs. (Lets not even talk about the one note digital bass.) Then you just never know what the mastering engineer did with the low frequencies, eg. mono'd them, rolled them off, etc. (FYI, I picked up a 15 ips Mercury safety/duplication tape where it was obvious they had rolled off the lows even before making the LP!) On a couple of my jazz 15 ips tapes, you'd be amazed by just how dynamic the playback is!

Then like you pointed out, there's the mike issue. I think Doug Sax talked about this when interviewed in TAS about the Kodo Record. But the issue is how close you can put the mike without blowing out the diaghram

Then one can factor in that the mike loses 20% of the sound.

Then we can talk about system's low end response and say, how much power do you need to get the levels one does live. Live music levels is something that Dave Wilson has always talked about. The problem is with many systems, they really break down eg. added distortion, when the music gets louder. We probably could listen to more realistic levels if the levels of distortion were lower. And this BTW, is something that I think many designers are taking on in the design of their electronics nowadays!

mep · May 14, 2010

Myles-My point to this thread wasn't to debate which recorded format takes us the closest to our ideal-I am referring to all of the formats you mentioned. I primarily listen to vinyl and 15 ips 2 track tapes and yes, they sound damn good. My point is that if the information is lost at the beginning, you will never be able to play it back regardless of what format you are using. It doesn't matter if you have the "best" tape deck, LP rig, amplifier(s), preamp, speakers, cables, etc. You can't play back what isn't there. And if we use your 20% microphone information loss figure, that is 20% of the music (energy) we are missing. And blowing out microphone diaghrams is obviously a real problem when you are dealing with kilo-buck microphones. That is why they are padded down or moved well back from the primary energy zone. We just can't get there now which was and is my point.

I think we are way closer to having systems that are capable of very high playback levels that don't suffer from compression or excessive distortion than we are to capturing all of the information. I do think if the microphone problem is ever solved, it will require some new gear in our systems as I stated above. My current system is capable of very high playback levels. However, if we ever achieve the ability to record all of the energy that is present, I don't think my beloved Jadis Defy 7 MKII would be able to withstand the energy levels at anything approaching live levels without severe clipping. For the here and now, anything near 11:00 on my volume control will rock the house down with clean sound. Should all of the actual energy be contained in our recordings, I don't think I could get near 11:00 without clipping.

Mark

RBFC · May 14, 2010

Great topic! This is one reason why many dedicated audiophiles swear by professional monitors (Genelec, ATC, Meyer, etc.). The peak volume and dynamic compression parameters of these pro models often surpass "audiophile" designs.

Here we have one element of the "absolute sound" argument: if no recorded media contain all the information from the original event, then there is no way any reproduction chain can ever replicate a real performance. Therefore, our definition of "absolute sound" must be amended to state that "a convincing-enough illusion of a real performance" is provided or something along those lines.

Lee

MylesBAstor · May 14, 2010

mep said:
Myles-My point to this thread wasn't to debate which recorded format takes us the closest to our ideal-I am referring to all of the formats you mentioned. I primarily listen to vinyl and 15 ips 2 track tapes and yes, they sound damn good. My point is that if the information is lost at the beginning, you will never be able to play it back regardless of what format you are using.
Mark

Hi Mark-wasn't trying to debate-just examine where in the chain these losses occur. And to be honest, am amazed at times at just how good a job we do at capturing the music too

MylesBAstor · May 14, 2010

RBFC said:
Great topic! This is one reason why many dedicated audiophiles swear by professional monitors (Genelec, ATC, Meyer, etc.). The peak volume and dynamic compression parameters of these pro models often surpass "audiophile" designs.

Here we have one element of the "absolute sound" argument: if no recorded media contain all the information from the original event, then there is no way any reproduction chain can ever replicate a real performance. Therefore, our definition of "absolute sound" must be amended to state that "a convincing-enough illusion of a real performance" is provided or something along those lines.

Lee

That's an interesting comment Lee! At CES Ocean Way Studios demoed a horn speaker and they were playing it at ear splitting levels with those 600 wpc Viola amps. But you're right-talk to many engineers and dynamics are a major consideration. Which then makes you wonder how they can put out the drek they do nowadays that are compressed beyond recognition!

audioguy · May 14, 2010

It's all about suspending disbelief. If you think capturing a drum set is tough, go listen to any full scale orchestra at a live symphony and then go home and listen to your (fill in the blanks with as many commas as you like) audio system and it is a joke as far as recreating the live sound, but can still provide enjoyment.

My guess would be that is is a cumulative affect of every component in the chain. I also agree that, generally, active speakers can do a better job of reproducing the dynamics of a live event than passive speakers.

And this is why we spend so much money trying to get just a "tad" closer to live.

mep · May 14, 2010

RBFC said:
Here we have one element of the "absolute sound" argument: if no recorded media contain all the information from the original event, then there is no way any reproduction chain can ever replicate a real performance. Therefore, our definition of "absolute sound" must be amended to state that "a convincing-enough illusion of a real performance" is provided or something along those lines.

Lee

Lee-While I agree that no recorded media contains all of the information from the original event, I don't think we should abandon the quest/goal to figure out how to capture the rest of what is missing. We want the "absolute sound," but we currently don't have it available to us outside of live music. I still don't have a problem with people who want to grade systems or components on how close they come to the "absolute sound." Some components could have tragic flaws and destroy the degree of illusion we now enjoy with the better components available. However, if your point is that regardless of the pedigree and expense of your system that it is still not capable of reproducing the "absolute sound" than I agree. Unless we can figure out how to capture more energy in our recordings, we just aren't going to get there.

Mark

RBFC · May 14, 2010

Mark,

In no way am I suggesting that we abandon the quest for perfect duplication of a live event. It is our passion and commitment to that goal (but more importantly for $$$, developments in other electro-acoustic fields) that pushes the technology to evolve. Currently, no reproduction system can do a live performance justice since the recorded media is incomplete. I would expect that this aspect of data storage will improve in time. In the meantime, I still derive great pleasure from my imperfect facsimile of reality!

Lee

mep · May 14, 2010

Lee-I am very happy with my system too. I love listening to music over my system. I am just trying to point out where I think we need to go to make this wacky hobby better. For the record, this is not a matter of data storage, but rather a matter of data retrieval. We first have to capture it in order to store it. Maybe microphones have to get away from having a single diaphragm and go to something like a planar array microphone where you have many diaphragms connected together. It just struck me odd the other night when I thought about what I was hearing. And that is the audio field has spent all of their money on what happens after the microphone instead of concentrating on maximizing the amount of information we can capture upfront with the microphone.

Mark

FrantzM · May 14, 2010

mep said:
Lee-While I agree that no recorded media contains all of the information from the original event, I don't think we should abandon the quest/goal to figure out how to capture the rest of what is missing. We want the "absolute sound," but we currently don't have it available to us outside of live music. I still don't have a problem with people who want to grade systems or components on how close they come to the "absolute sound." Some components could have tragic flaws and destroy the degree of illusion we now enjoy with the better components available. However, if your point is that regardless of the pedigree and expense of your system that it is still not capable of reproducing the "absolute sound" than I agree. Unless we can figure out how to capture more energy in our recordings, we just aren't going to get there.

Mark

mep

We are in entire agreement. It pains me a good deal that the goal of reproducing the real thing is being forgotten. Now it seems to be about whatever One likes … whatever that really means. I will take a passing shot at Myles "Digital one note bass" comment. Back then, 25 years ago, maybe… right now, Digital provides the best bass reproduction one can hear ... elsewhere in frequency we can debate... on BASS, case closed .. Back to the topic at hand ... I would say that the amount of energy reproduced in live music is very important to what I call the cessation of disbelief.

It seems to me that the absence or the control of power compression is the next step. Putting aside the very pesky problems of room-to-speaker interface, which can be mitigated by room treatments and … I can see the recoil due to horror from the analogue-can't-be-surpassed' clan… digital room correction. Aside from these serious and not trivial problems, we need a way to reproduce the proper relationship between these energies at play in live music. Keep in mind that there is a requirement of Homothety, i-e keeping the relationship between the components of the phenomenon intact but overall, reducing the amount of energy: if we were to play a drum or a full orchestra in our room, I doubt the results would have been pleasant.... For many systems, the relationship is simply not correct, not real. I put in that category what comes out from many small monitor-based systems which tend to “describe” the music, not ever trying to reproduce it. I have come to look with more respect at high efficiency speakers, really there, High efficiency speakers have an advantage... Horns tend to have that "rightness" when they are not being played at body-shredding levels and the non-horn high efficiency speakers Wilson top of the lines, many Von Shweikert to name only those but there are several others, anyway most speakers with efficiency above 90 dB to give around number seem to have it right. It seems to me that speakers that are truly realistic hovers above 90 Db and can play loud in all part of the frequency and THAT linearity is easier to achieve in high efficiency speakers. It is not that they can play only loud .. Oh God! They can! No! It is the rightness of their sound when the soundscape gets complex. This is an area that I would like to see explore more seriously... We all like to knock some of the professional monitors but some of them have rightness to their sound ATC, for example but also Meyer and other amongst them a Swede speaker whose name escape me for now …
Long post, I apologize but I think mep OP is very interesting and to me as I think there is an unfulfilled promise. We are nowhere where we need to be, despite the better tools at our disposal.

Frantz

By the way, I don't think the problems are in the microphones although they could be better it is elsewhere in the reproducing chain with speakers the weakest link of this chain ...

Ron Party · May 14, 2010

FrantzM said:
I will take a passing shot at Myles "Digital one note bass" comment. Back then, 25 years ago, maybe… right now, Digital provides the best bass reproduction one can hear ... elsewhere in frequency we can debate... on BASS, case closed

I agree.

By the way, I don't think the problems are in the microphones although they could be better it is elsewhere in the reproducing chain with speakers the weakest link of this chain ...

Frantz and everyone else, (re)read Floyd Toole's Circle Of Confusion: http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/10/audios-circle-of-confusion.html

MylesBAstor · May 14, 2010

Ron Party said:
I agree.

Frantz and everyone else, (re)read Floyd Toole's Circle Of Confusion: http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/10/audios-circle-of-confusion.html

Ron:

If speakers were the root case of all our evils, how come Decca, RCA, Mercury, EMI, Blue Note, Impulse, etc. made such great recordings? Not only great recordings, but an era widely considered as the Golden Age of Recording. Or if todays studio speakers are so great, how come the bulk of the recordings, with the exception of a few audiophile labels, sound so lousy?

And I'm sorry that to my ears, digital has gone from unlistenable to barely passable sonically. (Or that many of the best digital releases are directly traceable to analog sourced material?) If more people heard what 15 ips 2 track master tapes or TP dupes sounded like, they would throw their digital gear out the window! Most classical recordings don't have any hall sense; what you are hearing is what they add in electronically post production. Yuck!

BTW, have you ever heard an Olson LC-1A, etc.? i don't think anyone would ever mistake them for an audiophile speaker. Yet RCA made many of their great classical recordings using the Olsons. The bottom line is that a great producer, engineeer or mastering engineer, knows how to compensate for the deficiencies in the equipment and recording.

Ron Party · May 14, 2010

Hi Myles. Lots of questions there in your last post.

MylesBAstor said:
Ron:

If speakers were the root case of all our evils, how come Decca, RCA, Mercury, EMI, Blue Note, Impulse, etc. made such great recordings? Not only great recordings, but an era widely considered as the Golden Age of Recording.

Maybe its heresy, but I have to ask: great according to whom? Or perhaps more accurately stated within the context of this thread, great according to what standard or set of standards? Please keep in mind Mark's observation which started this thread:

mep said:
I was standing about 5' away from the drummer. The drummer had a very small drum set. This isn't the first time I have been that close to a drummer before, but it is always amazing when you hear it again. As I was standing there listening to the combo play, I was once again struck by how far we are from being able to capture the sound of a drum kit being played. The amount of energy that comes off of a set of drums is just incredible and we are not capturing anywhere near that energy on any recording medium. Oh sure, we all have recordings which have great drum "sound," but we don't have recordings that come close to the sound of an actual drum kit being played.

I concur with Mark. You cited some labels which are held in high regard by many for the sound quality of their product, but if the standard by which sound quality is to be determined is akin to "is it live or is it Memorex", then the answer is obvious.

Ron Party · May 14, 2010

MylesBAstor said:
Or if todays studio speakers are so great, how come the bulk of the recordings, with the exception of a few audiophile labels, sound so lousy?

There are lots of reasons. I'm not sure what this has to do with this thread's topic, but the link I posted to Floyd Toole's Circle of Confusion discusses this, amongst other things. This is to state nothing of the loudness wars, nor is it to state anything about the fact that unless you are listening to a recording using the exact same speakers in virtually the exact same room as the speakers and room where the recording/mastering first occurred, then you are experiencing by definition a sound that is not true to the source. You may still love the sound, but it is not accurate, let alone is it something that can reasonably be mistaken for the live event.

And I'm sorry that to my ears, digital has gone from unlistenable to barely passable sonically.

If you are referring to the medium, i.e., CD, I'm not sure what this has to do with Mark's observation. Putting that aside for the moment, there are many outstanding recordings on CD, just as there are on vinyl or tape. Similarly, there are many horrible recordings on CD, just as there are on vinyl or tape. If the implication you are making is that digital as a medium is inferior to analog, well I'll just have to strongly disagree. The science of the matter would not support your position. If you are telling me you prefer analog over digital, I have no qualms. I would ask how you came to your preference.

FrantzM · May 14, 2010

Hi

Myles, I , immodestly qualify myself has a good audiophile and with a very good pair of ears. I have had he opportunity to hear analog and digital studio masters.. I would not throw my (now buried) digital chain anywhere ..
Now about the quality of today's recordings or lack thereof ...
I would agree that many of these old recording were of exceeding quality , what I am not ready to accept is that today’s better recording doesn't surpass these. I take what has been accomplished by Reference Recoding for example and by Lyrita and By Propius and By Chesky to name a few and I am sure you would be the first to unearth some other brands too obscure for me to remember. I continue to marvel at the works of Bob Fine and Layton et all but I find the work of Keith Johnson extraordinary and in more ways than one superior to the best Mercury or RCA or Decca, if only and IO know I am repeating my argument he could find conductors of the caliber of those Mercury, RCA and CBS had at their disposal ... So yes the old standards are great but equipment -wise there were rooms for improvements.. Imagine what these people could have accomplished with Equipment such as those modified by people like Keith Johnson, Tim de Paravicini or Kavi Alexander to , again , name a very few ...
Let us be realistic here, the idea is to make money and to make it you provide your customer with what they want or think they want . The public is asking for a perspective where they want to see on the lap of the artists and they are provided such. They want to think Britney spears can sing and computers are used to provide her with a semblance of voice. It isn't that ALL today's recording artists are bad , simply that tin these days of mp3.. Well you know the rest and before you shout "Crass Commercialism !!!" remember the vertiginous and dizzying ascension of components prices in High End Audio, too often without merit, alas!!! Way too often ... Now the race is on for the next half million dollars amplifiers (Are we there yet? ... Soon, very soon, there is a $300 K amplifier IIRC)... So it is true that present days recording are not any good but can we also say that back then in the golden ages of LP recording ALL recording were good, No the vast majority of those recording were mediocre, For anyone around 40 , there is the ping-pong recording and the Multi-miked and close-miked and spot-miked recordings that were difficult to listen to for any length of time .. SO Let’s not romanticize the past too much .. Commercial recordings were bad . As they continue to be ..

Now let’s approach the exemplary recordings that were made with limited equipment. I would quickly say that not ALL their equipment were bad, I know You did not declare such but I am making a point here. While the speakers were deficient in many ways the rest of the recording/reproducing chain was not too bad. Add to that, these people were extremely knowledgeable about the limitations of their recording gear, both the producers (Wilma Cozart Fine comes to mind ) and the Engineers ( Bob Fine) they knew what their equipment could do and especially COULD NOT do, so they compensated ... be it at the lathe but also in mastering, in microphones and even orchestra placement. The better example , I can give is how musicians are often lousy audiophiles, they hear it in their heads and compensate.. these guys did something similar ... and before I forget, when it comes to electronics , yesteryear tube equipment can hold their own ... so ..
Yet it is difficult to not admit that speakers have improved and greatly so..We know more about the Room-speaker interface than even 20 years ago , what many, including me consider the Golden Years of High End Audio. What we have today in term of technology is much better than yesterday.. I am not sure that Tim de Paravicini could have modded his Studer with what was available 30 years ago and reach the results he claims ... Microphones are much more linear and so are the electronics . What we are not looking toward is more realism and I sincerely believe it has commercial potential .. mep has a raised a very important subject and it needs to be explored ...

Frantz

mep · May 15, 2010

Ron Party said:
I agree.

Frantz and everyone else, (re)read Floyd Toole's Circle Of Confusion: http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/10/audios-circle-of-confusion.html

Ron-Thanks for posting the link. I read the article which discusses Floyd Toole's "Circle of Confusion." The article was written by Sean Olive from Harman International. Floyd makes a very valid point that no one in the recording and playback chain is held to any type of standard which makes it appear like a dog chasing its tail for all involved. However, I think most of us agree that somehow great recordings do get made in spite of this. I will pick one recording from 1957 as an example: Sonny Rollins Way out West. The sound that was captured on the master tape in 1957 should give modern day recording engineers a reality check. I would dare say in terms of realism of recording a jazz band, has any recording significantly bettered this record in terms of the quality/realism they were able to capture? I will let others chime in here. I would dare say that on average, modern jazz recordings have done no better than maybe staying on par with the quality of Way Out West in terms of capturing realism. That still means we haven't advanced much since 1957. In other words, there has been little progress in 53 years in the art of capturing the magic of music.

I guess my whole point in starting this thread was to suggest that if we are ever going to advance significantly from where we are today, there will have to be a new paradigm established in how we record music and most probably how we play it back. We have yet to smash the old paradigm that we are still living with. Yes, our playback systems have gotten better over the years, but the amount of information that is captured during the recording process hasn't changed all that much. I will hold up the Way Out West recording again and say to modern recording engineers "show me what you have done that is better."

If we don’t find a better way to record music, we will forever be stuck in the paradigm we are in now where we make incremental improvements to our playback systems but we will forever be missing a big chunk of the musical energy that is there to be recorded and has always been “left on the table.”

Mark

Steve Williams · May 15, 2010

Mark, you always make a world of sense

MylesBAstor · May 16, 2010

Ron Party said:
Hi Myles. Lots of questions there in your last post.

Maybe its heresy, but I have to ask: great according to whom? Or perhaps more accurately stated within the context of this thread, great according to what standard or set of standards? Please keep in mind Mark's observation which started this thread:

I concur with Mark. You cited some labels which are held in high regard by many for the sound quality of their product, but if the standard by which sound quality is to be determined is akin to "is it live or is it Memorex", then the answer is obvious.

Well let's put it another way

With all of today's fancy electronics, lathes, A2Ds, D2As, it is extremely rare to surpass, much less equal the sound of the original. That bespeaks a lot about the producers and original engineers.

As to who: if we want to be subjective, many have recognized by AES and other organizations such as Rudy van Gelder, Robert and Wilma Cozart Fine, etc for their contributions to the recording art. In my field, usually recognition by one's peers, is a great honor.

In the end it comes down to one's ears and do the instruments sound like they should being played live? Do they or don't they? That is what the critic is about. And hopefully some have had the opportunity to be at recording sessions and then hear the finished product. Or even listening to the transfers to digital or analog. I'll tell you my experience with the vast majority of digital transfers: there is more information lost in the manufacturing of CDs (I can't say SACDs since didn't do that comparison) than in analog mastering.

Ron Party · May 16, 2010

MylesBAstor said:
Well let's put it another way With all of today's fancy electronics, lathes, A2Ds, D2As, it is extremely rare to surpass, much less equal the sound of the original. That bespeaks a lot about the producers and original engineers.

While OT, I would think it is more than rare; I would think it is impossible to surpass the original.

As to who: if we want to be subjective, many have recognized by AES and other organizations such as Rudy van Gelder, Robert and Wilma Cozart Fine, etc for their contributions to the recording art. In my field, usually recognition by one's peers, is a great honor.

Again, Myles, what does this have to do with the OT?

I, for one, do not want to be *subjective*. If there is a *Best* (since this is the WBF), the answer must be true for everyone, all of the time. The answer must be objective and repeatable. Otherwise, what's true for one (i.e., I can't tell the difference between live and recorded), may not be true for another (i.e., I can tell the difference).

Mark's post queried why he could immediately answer the "is it live or is it Memorex" question. I have a lot of RVG issues in my collection and, as much as I enjoy them (and I do, quite a bit), I never am under the illusion that I am listening to a live event. This holds true regardless of the playback system and medium.

The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of well established scientific principles at work here which clearly explain the answer to Mark's question. It starts with the microphone. It ends with the playback system (which includes the room). The differences between analog and digital are trivial compared to these scientific principles.

In the end it comes down to one's ears and do the instruments sound like they should being played live? Do they or don't they?

Now were back OT. The answer is they don't.

Let's take one of those RVG issues. Let's take Herbie Hancock. I don't care if I am listening to vinyl, tape, CD, or HRx, I am never under the illusion that Herbie is playing his piano right there in my room. Mark's comment about the *paradigm* is spot on.

I'll tell you my experience with the vast majority of digital transfers: there is more information lost in the manufacturing of CDs (I can't say SACDs since didn't do that comparison) than in analog mastering.

This is really OT. I don't want to turn this thread into another analog vs. digital debate.

Live music vs. Recorded music

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