Is "Live" Sound the Gold Standard for Audio? Why? Why Not?

[Beershaun]

I think they are two different things and we chase them for 2 different reasons. I also love and prefer live music. I am prefacing the below statements on my personal feelings and not objective measurements because for me, when it comes to live music, they are mostly beside the point.

Live music is a much more emotional experience for me. The energy of even a humble cover band in a bar can't be reproduced if I took those same bar goers to my basement and played the original recordings on my personal system. It just wouldn't have the same energy and emotional experience. The power to pressurize the room/stadium and visceral experience of live music is much better. I tap my toe, smile, and bob to the beat easily in a live venue. At home my stereo can't reproduce that feeling that raises the hair on the back of my neck.

That said, as others have said, it's not techincally as well reproduced, detailed, or clear as even my humble $2K 2.1 home stereo system. I use The detail and clarity aren't there. At home I close my eyes, lean back and smile and let the system create the sound stage, I marvel at how the music sweeps back and forth seemlessly across the room, how I can hear every guitar pick contact with a string, the echos of the drum kit decay in the recording studio, how I can dive into the music and really appreciate the details of the song and enjoy it. It's a different emotional experience for me.

 

[Deleted member 16502]

Sure, if I can have my favorite singer/songwriter/acoustic combo/pianist play in a setting so exclusive that I'm not listening from many many meters away. Other than these very rare to non-existing occasions, I'll take the record. The crowd excitement does nothing to me in terms of fidelity.

 

[9radua1]

I don’t think a full live band is the reference, but more how individual instruments sound live. Like what does the snap of a snare drum sound like acoustically? The way our ears compress and compensate for those huge dynamics between the snap and the sizzle isn’t captured in mics, though some will be better than others (@Blumlein 88 ’s point), so engineers have to, well, engineer that snare sound with dynamic effects like compressors, gates, and EQs. To emulate the psychoacoustic reality. Same goes for other instruments and voices.

This need for engineering created another realm of achievement and, with time, other sound ideals. Fidelity is important, but the ideals of a recording engineer more so. The acoustic reality is still the benchmark, because it’s a cognitive necessity, but the emulation of that can be more or less abstract. Early Norwegian death metal wanted to emulate the brittle sound of a broken guitar playing in a torture chamber. Frank Filipetti won an Emmy for capturing that clean American folk romanticism on James Taylor’s Hourglass album, that to this day is just a masterpiece.

Ideals drift. And the original live concert hall sound is just a very narrow part of that.

What I think most of us want at home is just the simpel technical idea of clean sound pressure with as few cancelations as possible. This opens the window to the ideals of the artist and the engineer.

 

[restorer-john]

I think live sound is the reference, but not live music. Music is always in a venue, with its own individual acoustics and that is the problem for reproduction.

Live, natural, outdoor sounds recorded in such a way that they capture the exact feeling of being there. I've been experimenting with bird and creature sounds on our property with a few digital recorders. The reproduction on AKG-702/601 headphones is such that it's very easy to be completely fooled. Not just me, both my boys and my lovely partner. She thinks it's amazing. It actually elicits feelings and emotions that music doesn't- because it's so familiar. It's like our own atmosphere around our pole home, with the birds and noises can be re-created anywhere.

Now, if I got some real experts, with proper field recorders and skills, I reckon on a good system, it would be indistiguishable, assuming the room acoustics were dead/anechoic or very benign.

 

[Plcamp]

The thing I like about open baffle speakers is that when setup right they make performances feel “live”. The sense of ambience is there. Close your eyes and you ‘see the stage’ effect.

That Eva Cassidy album in a small club is one example.

I get clarity and detail and all that with my Paradigm Studio 100 speakers, but the “live” ambience isn’t that same as with the PAP trio 15’s.

 

[restorer-john]

hat Eva Cassidy album in a small club is one example.

I get clarity and detail and all that with my Paradigm Studio 100 speakers

That's a great example. Each track has an intimate, small venue, close to the music sound.

 

[Jimbob54]

Not for rock, no way. As others have said, maybe acoustic stuff perhaps the live sound is worth chasing. A rock album and a rock show are 2 completely different beasts and require different presentation and systems.

I would hate to think of some of the great rock records if they were simply (well recorded) captures of the band live.

 

[JeffS7444]

Going off on a tangent somewhat, upcoming firmware update to Apple's Airpod Pro could be fun as they're promising Dolby Atmos when paired with 4K Apple TV, and also position-sensing, so the mix changes as you move your head: Wouldn't it be something if they could deliver startlingly realistic sound in this manner?

 

[Joaquin Dinero]

I love and live for live concert performances. But I go to them more to "feel" the music, and the vibe, and the energy. Not for the amazing sound quality. Hearing music is much better at home.

 

[Robin L]

Yes this.

Listen to a microphone feed on a multi-pattern mic. One you can easily switch patterns on. So many times I'd heard people refer to hearing microphone feeds as an arbiter of fidelity. Okay, which pattern, which microphone?

Every single microphone has its own set of resonances, its own tone color. So the sound coming from a microphone will never be exactly the same as the source. But remember, that capture of sound has to go through transducers on the other side, the speakers or headphones. If the recording is something like the Mercury Living Presence recordings, with minimal miking, it's still colored by the sound of those microphones. But when the recording is a typical pop or rock recording, there's no "there" there, it's all in a soundfield where one will clearly hear elements in different sonic perspectives that would never happen in "live", unamplified music. And that kind of recording is the norm, minimal miking is not. On top of that, compression makes recordings sound better in the environments intended for playback. "Live" sound isn't the real goal for recordings, it's not the target. Only "Audiophiles" worry about such things. The goal is moving units, selling the product. By any means necessary.

 

[Thomas savage]

I love and live for live concert performances. But I go to them more to "feel" the music, and the vibe, and the energy. Not for the amazing sound quality. Hearing music is much better at home.

I agree with this .

 

[Jimbob54]

I agree with this .

Yup

My thoughts exactly . Two very different experiences and requirements of kit.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I think live sound is the reference, but not live music. Music is always in a venue, with its own individual acoustics and that is the problem for reproduction.

Live, natural, outdoor sounds recorded in such a way that they capture the exact feeling of being there. I've been experimenting with bird and creature sounds on our property with a few digital recorders. The reproduction on AKG-702/601 headphones is such that it's very easy to be completely fooled. Not just me, both my boys and my lovely partner. She thinks it's amazing. It actually elicits feelings and emotions that music doesn't- because it's so familiar. It's like our own atmosphere around our pole home, with the birds and noises can be re-created anywhere.

Now, if I got some real experts, with proper field recorders and skills, I reckon on a good system, it would be indistiguishable, assuming the room acoustics were dead/anechoic or very benign.

You've heard these before. You can refresh your memory with my ill-named cricket recordings. They were actually katydids.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/.../the-sound-of-summer-crickets.1773/post-44492

 

[Plcamp]

Not for rock, no way. As others have said, maybe acoustic stuff perhaps the live sound is worth chasing. A rock album and a rock show are 2 completely different beasts and require different presentation and systems.

I would hate to think of some of the great rock records if they were simply (well recorded) captures of the band live.

My personal live rock best ever is “Johnny Winter and Live”, even though it’s not that great a recording quality. But it excites with live energy on a capable system.

I have several dsp settings with minidsp...you can use one setup memory for general listening, and have three others with different eq (or even different crossover topology) available with one button press...best of all worlds.

(What’s really needed is the ability to save eq settings with the music file, so you can setup your fav list eq’d to your preference for each song, and it is recalled when you play it.)

 

[MediumRare]

I suppose there are ways of measuring electronics to evaluate their dynamic range and ability to transmit transients. DACs should be perfect within audibility. Amplifiers too? Maybe not. Or not or a sustained period (capacitors/power supply?). I don't recall seeing anything like that in @amirm 's measurements. Is that important?

And how about a speaker's ability to handle "live" levels of dynamics? Should that be a metric we explore and report? For example, maybe the bass measures fine in an FR, but one speaker pressurizes the room better. Can we measure that?

 

[Plcamp]

Yup

My thoughts exactly . Two very different experiences and requirements of kit.

Why two different requirements of kit? I don’t see that.

 

[Plcamp]

I suppose there are ways of measuring electronics to evaluate their dynamic range and ability to transmit transients. DACs should be perfect within audibility. Amplifiers too? Maybe not. Or not or a sustained period (capacitors/power supply?). I don't recall seeing anything like that in @amirm 's measurements. Is that important?

And how about a speaker's ability to handle "live" levels of dynamics? Should that be a metric we explore and report? For example, maybe the bass measures fine in an FR, but one speaker pressurizes the room better. Can we measure that?

big headroom....implying speaker efficiency a dominant consideration...I think that’s real.

 

[Plcamp]

I suppose there are ways of measuring electronics to evaluate their dynamic range and ability to transmit transients. DACs should be perfect within audibility. Amplifiers too? Maybe not. Or not or a sustained period (capacitors/power supply?). I don't recall seeing anything like that in @amirm 's measurements. Is that important?

And how about a speaker's ability to handle "live" levels of dynamics? Should that be a metric we explore and report? For example, maybe the bass measures fine in an FR, but one speaker pressurizes the room better. Can we measure that?

At the Linkwitz site he talks about this, comparing different types of speaker systems, and how they load the room. OB speakers load rooms quite differently (no net output at 90 degrees off axis) than enclosed as just one example (Trade off being lowest bass).

‘Live dynamics’means headroom to me, both in driver excursion and amplifier reserve. You pay a terrible price accepting a 3bd less efficient speaker...it cuts your amp headroom in half. I’m convinced waveguide loaded high efficiency drivers are key to lifting the veil of limited headroom, trying to figure out now how to exploit that.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Much of recorded music isn't even reproducible as a live event, so how can "live sound" be the gold standard.

 

[Aerith Gainsborough]

Hmm for me, no. Not really.
My main problem with live music would be the volume.

I find playing my own flute stressful, especially in the higher registers. Flute is not even considered a particularly loud instrument.
A Saxophone blows it away (no punchline intended). A grand piano in a small room is painfully loud when played anything above mf.

I seriously doubt I could enjoy much music if everything would sound as if the real instrument was played in my room.