Have you achieve a listening system that reach that mix engineer, master engineer or producer intended production quality?

[Robin L]

I get that and I see a lot of audiophiles say "most live shows have crap sound compared to my home system, so why would I care about live?"

I feel differently. Certainly I've been to shows with truly terrible sound (and some of those have been the giant concerts - in fact they are more prone to that IMO). But even when instruments are amplified, I still find live sound generally more compelling in character.
I used to play keyboards and sometimes bass in a very large funk band - up to 15 members sometimes, including percussion, horn sections, 4 singers etc. We had some pretty good PA systems and I used to marvel at how great it sounded - whether it was the horns or my keyboards through the system, there was a liveness and even timbral richness, not to mention dynamic quality - that outdid any "hi fi" system I knew.

I live near a strip of clubs and bars with tons of live music - folk, pop, country, rock, jazz, everything in between. Whether it's mixes of live instruments and amplified, or when they've amplified everything, I still find more richness in the live sound.

I think if you play an instrument that is usually amplified - keyboards or bass in my case, or electric guitar - the sound coming from your cabinet is "the sound" of your instrument, and that direct sound has quite a lot of timbral character and richness. But once you go in to the recordings studio and record it, and then mix it in with other stuff, it gets diluted in every way - complexity, dynamics, presence. It's just limpid compared to the real thing, even though the real thing was amplified. So I hear more richness in someone playing an amplified Fender Rhodes, or Hammond, or modern keyboard, or their guitar or even amplified drums, in many live gigs, than I do from hi fi systems. IMO of course.

I particularly notice the presence factor of live music with drums 'n' bass. I'm not talking about stadium PA, where everything is ultimately determined by the house sound system, getting homogenized in the process. But being in the kind of proximity of an unamplified drum kit and an electric bass one would experience in a small club really sorts out the textures of the sound in a way that all recordings dilute.

 

[Mart68]

Then we come around again to the notion that we can hear what the artist or engineer "intended." I would assume that part of the challenge of making the recording is to try and get "the sound" that the various artists/musicians have achieved down on tape so to speak and to mix and blend those in a successful way. Presumably, if a recording is good it will have managed to capture that magic. So to me, that's what I'm trying to hear. Not Angus Young's guitar with an extra layer of something on top...and the vocals with that same layer of something on top...etc etc. So once again, I don't really know what the intention was. I just have the recording. If it doesn't do a good job of capturing that magic, I don't really know how I can fix that at the listening end in a way that means anything.

But on a sort of basic level...I just don't feel like I'm not getting that complexity and dynamics really. I mean I've heard a lot of recordings on a lot of different systems over the years and my (reasonably) neutral setup sounds great just like many of them have.

yes I agree with all of that.

I just wanted to get that sort of 'raw clarity' that you get in the studio, once I got that - or close anyway - I was happy. After that the recording just is what it is, no point to me chasing the artist's or engineer's 'intentions' and as for chasing a 'live' or 'real' sound I leave that to the Classical fans, that's their problem

I don't even know how 'neutral' my system is, I've never measured it. Average recordings sound good and good recordings sound stunning so I think it can't be that far off. Although when I do get around to it I'll probably find it's a total dog's dinner and be scratching my head.

 

[MattHooper]

I particularly notice the presence factor of live music with drums 'n' bass. I'm not talking about stadium PA, where everything is ultimately determined by the house sound system, getting homogenized in the process. But being in the kind of proximity of an unamplified drum kit and an electric bass one would experience in a small club really sorts out the textures of the sound in a way that all recordings dilute.

Totally.

If you've played bass standing beside a drum kit, the combination - the sheer density of acoustic power and presence - makes most stereo systems sound like a joke. Even very expensive ones (with large speakers) that I've heard.

Which reminds me that I once reviewed a pair of speakers, the Waveform Mach Solo which were derived from the original larger tri-amplified Mach 17 speakers. The proprietor of that company really cared about reproducing the dynamics of "live" as much as possible. As I mentioned in the review (horrors!) one of the things that stood out to me was how (relatively) convincing it was with bass guitar and especially kick drums.
When you are out in front of a kick drum and it's struck, there is this papery "whack" of the peddle hitting the drum head, and it's like the sound comes out at you hitting you like a big burst of air, supplemented by a deeper resonance of the drum. It's pretty complex and you really "feel" it.
I actually got some of that sensation from those speakers. When I played recordings of my band rehearsing or playing live, more than any other speaker I've had, they tweaked my sense of being at our band rehearsal. They didn't even do very low in the bass, but it was the solidity, power and projection of the sound that did it for me. They've stuck in my mind ever since. (Reminds me of the Klipsch La Scalas my friend had at his house recently. Kind of ridiculously limited in frequency range for such a large speaker, but within that frequency range, man did they KICK!)

 

[ADU]

I don't have the same affinity for the effort to achieve "live sound" in my system. In my experience, live sound is rarely something I really want...I've been to very few live shows that I thought really sounded very good at all. I suppose if we were talking about chamber music or small ensemble acoustic performances maybe, but once you add amps and P/A systems and racks of speakers pointing every which way in arenas and venues full of concrete and metal...meh. The few really great-sounding shows I've seen over the years actually sounded much closer to the sort of sound I get out of my system rather than further from it.

otoh, I play guitar - both acoustic and electric - and am reasonably familiar with those sounds and I'm constantly blown away by how good my neutral setup with the HE-400i headphones gets those right. I often feel like I have my ear pressed up against the front of my tube guitar amp when I'm listening to music...it's incredibly life-like.

It's not the exact reproduction of a live event that really matters for alot of audiophiles or enthusiasts. For many, it's more about the feeling or impression of it.... but with better sound quality. That's the impression I've gotten from some of them anyway (though I don't personally know any audiophiles myself).

If you've tried to follow most of the rules for maintaining good fidelity though, and you don't get at least a little of that impression from a good live recording on your gear, then there might be somethin wrong with the setup or performance of one of the components. Or maybe you're just not able to experience things in quite the same way that some other audiophiles can. I wouldn't discount either of the above as possibilities, because some people can just experience things more deeply than others.

What I generally try to strive for in my own gear though is transparency and fidelity to the recording, with as little audible distortion or coloration as possible. If there are any flaws or deficiencies in a recording, I want to hear them.

I can respect the opinions of others though who may be looking for something a bit different. And think there are things I can probably learn from them as well that might help to improve my own system or experiences with the medium.

 

[LightninBoy]

The problem might be with the home engineer generation who thinks they know how to make a record because they have a cheap Behringer interface and a $20 SM57 knockoff they bought on Amazon.

Hmm, I have both of those (but I rarely use the mic).

 

[Ricardus]

Hmm, I have both of those (but I rarely use the mic).

I've always said 57's make great hammer, regardless of who made them.

 

[MattHooper]

If you've tried to follow most of the rules for maintaining good fidelity though, and you don't get at least a little of that impression from a good live recording on your gear, then there might be somethin wrong with the setup or performance of one of the components.

Agreed. I want to be clear that I'm not claiming my system would strike anyone here necessarily as "more real sounding" or that I've stumbled in to anything amazing. I've heard moments of compelling "realism" from plenty of other systems and I'm sure many people's systems here would kick my system's butt in many departments.

And since (especially these days) I'm not normally doing direct live-in-the-room instruments compared with my system, I'm ultimately just going on my own memory and impressions of live sound in comparing. But that's the thing: I don't have to satisfy anyone else, or even necessarily satisfy some direct live to reproduced comparison: I just have to satisfy how my system sounds in regards to my own memory/impression of live sounds. And it does enough of that to be very satisfying for me.

 

[Robin L]

Totally.

If you've played bass standing beside a drum kit, the combination - the sheer density of acoustic power and presence - makes most stereo systems sound like a joke. Even very expensive ones (with large speakers) that I've heard.

Which reminds me that I once reviewed a pair of speakers, the Waveform Mach Solo which were derived from the original larger tri-amplified Mach 17 speakers. The proprietor of that company really cared about reproducing the dynamics of "live" as much as possible. As I mentioned in the review (horrors!) one of the things that stood out to me was how (relatively) convincing it was with bass guitar and especially kick drums.
When you are out in front of a kick drum and it's struck, there is this papery "whack" of the peddle hitting the drum head, and it's like the sound comes out at you hitting you like a big burst of air, supplemented by a deeper resonance of the drum. It's pretty complex and you really "feel" it.
I actually got some of that sensation from those speakers. When I played recordings of my band rehearsing or playing live, more than any other speaker I've had, they tweaked my sense of being at our band rehearsal. They didn't even do very low in the bass, but it was the solidity, power and projection of the sound that did it for me. They've stuck in my mind ever since. (Reminds me of the Klipsch La Scalas my friend had at his house recently. Kind of ridiculously limited in frequency range for such a large speaker, but within that frequency range, man did they KICK!)

I'm only now recording the sorts of music [poppy kids tunes with folk influences, but still involving a drum kit and electric bass] that is aided by the use of a compressor. I realize now that the Kitka albums I recorded could have used compression---"Nectar" was post-produced by other parties that thankfully, used a little soft compression. But the very first thing to go when using a compressor is the dynamic difference that a drum kit communicates. While compression doesn't mess all that much with the dynamics of an electric bass, there's no substitute for being in the presence of the real thing, recording seems to wash out bass, compression or no. One of those things that are surprisingly hard to capture, considering.

 

[MattHooper]

I'm only now recording the sorts of music [poppy kids tunes with folk influences, but still involving a drum kit and electric bass] that is aided by the use of a compressor. I realize now that the Kitka albums I recorded could have used compression---"Nectar" was post-produced by other parties that thankfully, used a little soft compression. But the very first thing to go when using a compressor is the dynamic difference that a drum kit communicates. While compression doesn't mess all that much with the dynamics of an electric bass, there's no substitute for being in the presence of the real thing, recording seems to wash out bass, compression or no. One of those things that are surprisingly hard to capture, considering.

I'm clueless when it comes to recording/producing music as I haven't done so since the 90's. And that was amateur-hour. We got some time in a professional studio after hours with the help of a studio technician to record some of our original songs. It was a quick lesson in just how hard it is to make a recording sound "like the professionally produced songs on real albums." We were a funk band and at gigs and rehearsals the music just slammed. But for the life of us we just could not capture that sound in the recording studio ESPECIALLY the bass and drums.
No matter what we did they never had the focus, punch and drive of good funk recordings. Always a bit puffy and soggy. There were clearly tricks of the trade that we just didn't know.

(That anecdote above reminds me of the book I recently read on how ABBA recorded their stuff: they started out when nobody outside Sweden listened to swedish music, they wanted to make it big on the international stage, but were puzzled at why even wannabe pop songs in their neck of the woods just didn't sound as good as the stuff from America and Britain. And none of their own efforts sounded "good" in that sense. So they studied American/British great pop recordings, traveled to America etc to learn studio technique from some of the greats, got a super talented creative engineer in Michael Tretow, and went to school in the studio. Wasn't long before their records started getting noticed for stellar production quality by the producers/engineers in America and Britain. I was just listening to their Voulez Vous album and man does some of that stuff sound good!).

 

[Robin L]

I'm clueless when it comes to recording/producing music as I haven't done so since the 90's. And that was amateur-hour. We got some time in a professional studio after hours with the help of a studio technician to record some of our original songs. It was a quick lesson in just how hard it is to make a recording sound "like the professionally produced songs on real albums." We were a funk band and at gigs and rehearsals the music just slammed. But for the life of us we just could not capture that sound in the recording studio ESPECIALLY the bass and drums.
No matter what we did they never had the focus, punch and drive of good funk recordings. Always a bit puffy and soggy. There were clearly tricks of the trade that we just didn't know.

(That anecdote above reminds me of the book I recently read on how ABBA recorded their stuff: they started out when nobody outside Sweden listened to swedish music, they wanted to make it big on the international stage, but were puzzled at why even wannabe pop songs in their neck of the woods just didn't sound as good as the stuff from America and Britain. And none of their own efforts sounded "good" in that sense. So they studied American/British great pop recordings, traveled to America etc to learn studio technique from some of the greats, got a super talented creative engineer in Michael Tretow, and went to school in the studio. Wasn't long before their records started getting noticed for stellar production quality by the producers/engineers in America and Britain. I was just listening to their Voulez Vous album and man does some of that stuff sound good!).

When I was getting paid to record, it was classical music for the most part, and most of it could be well covered by a couple of decent cardioid condensers in an ORTF configuration. I'd set levels, no postproduction required. A lot of the trick at the time was being there first, I started to record when the DAT recorders first arrived. Having one before anyone else up-ed the chances of getting a gig. A couple of Neumann microphones, a little Mackie board and I'm in business. Working for cheap was the rest. So, it was actually easy to do for the most part, recording concerts of classical music is nothing like producing top 40. What I'm doing now involves a microphone for everybody and more than a little compression, limiting and eq. But still, easy stuff. But any time I've recorded with a drum kit or well-played hand percussion, I use limiting and compression so all the headroom isn't eaten up by the drums and the vocals can be at a more normal level.

You're in pro audio, right? Audio for video?

 

[MattHooper]

When I was getting paid to record, it was classical music for the most part, and most of it could be well covered by a couple of decent cardioid condensers in an ORTF configuration. I'd set levels, no postproduction required. A lot of the trick at the time was being there first, I started to record when the DAT recorders first arrived. Having one before anyone else up-ed the chances of getting a gig. A couple of Neumann microphones, a little Mackie board and I'm in business. Working for cheap was the rest. So, it was actually easy to do for the most part, recording concerts of classical music is nothing like producing top 40. What I'm doing now involves a microphone for everybody and more than a little compression, limiting and eq. But still, easy stuff. But any time I've recorded with a drum kit or well-played hand percussion, I use limiting and compression so all the headroom isn't eaten up by the drums and the vocals can be at a more normal level.

Boy that must be fun.

You're in pro audio, right? Audio for video?

Yes, I do sound effects editing/design for films and tv. Totally different thing. It was really a different gig when I started in the early 90s when we had time and budgets to do lots of field recordings. These says the budgets and time (like every industry it seems) is tight as heck so lots of people rely on libraries (including sounds they and others have recorded over the years, we share stuff). I still do a fair amount of recording myself, but it's usually for grabbing sound quickly, often for manipulating. (A while back I had a scene with an airliner hijacked and there were scenes of the jet plunging up and down through a mountain range so I needed the rumbling/shaking fuselage and cockpit sound. I grabbed my shiatsu massager which had a "vibrate mode," held it down on our oven and dishwasher metal doors, recorded it in stereo as the metal vibrated and shuddered, then pitched that recording down, manipulated the tone, layered it, bit of room verb on it, and when added in to all the jet engine sounds, damn if it didn't sound like you were in a huge jet shaking as the pilot tried to maintain control. I still love this job, it's a blast).

 

[Robin L]

Boy that must be fun.

Peak fun was Berkeley's early music festivals, I must have been present at four [1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, maybe 1998]. I was working at the Musical Offering, a combination record store/cafe directly across the street from Sproul Plaza. Central planning for the festival was from Joseph Spencer, who ran the music half [CDs] of the Musical Offering. That might help explain why so many concerts were close walking distance to the M.O.

I had my recording gear in a rolling typewriter desk, holding recorder, mics, cables, microphone preamp and monitor in the form of Stax headphones. I could roll from the store to Zellerbach Hall, right across the street, or First Congregational Church, just around the corner of Dana and Durant, behind the Musical Offering and a block away, or further in the campus at Wheeler Hall or further up the campus at Hertz Hall. First Congo also had a mini chapel, useful for harpsichord recitals. There were other assorted venues in Berkeley for the festival, a few more churches nearby. Roll into one concert, set up, record, return to the Musical Offering---there would be in-store appearances by the musicians, present just as much as anyone else for the company, food and wine, world-famous musicians schmoozing with the fans, sometimes making deals with record companies or with Joseph for SFEMS [San Francisco Early Music Society], as he would be programming SFEMS' regular season. I'd roll from one concert to the next, get to know the musicians a little backstage, have "the best seat in the house", at least in terms of perspectives and balances, be present for some excellent music making. Get paid for each of those four gigs on one day---the festival would take up a whole week, multiple performances at multiple sites, every day. Yes, it was great fun.

 

[NgtFlyer]

I have spent time in a recording studio or two and broadcast facilities over the years. I've been a music enthusiast (and to some degree, audio/sound enthusiast) for many years. I have a set of somewhat picky ears. I can hear the "tinnitus tone" that is inserted in FM radio broadcast in current times and it drives me crazy. As for my home listening stuff, my office system gets the most use. It consists of:
TOSlink from my primary source - my computer. Goes to a splitter which then is sent to my NAD C368 amplifier, which drives a pair of ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2 speakers. The sound? Quite satisfying. At low volume, it's relatively unlively, but you don't need "lively" for background listening. When listening at a bit higher level, the sound is very nice. I can hear a lot of detail if listening for it. But I listen to music, not the equipment.

The other TOSlink lead goes to my Topping E30/L30 combo, which drives a pair of ATH-M50x headphones that has improved pads installed. I do switch on the parametric EQ setting that Amir provided for these headphones. I don't need to say much about the sound since all of that is well covered in reviews, but I will say this. I have spent many evenings with those headphones on and a smile on my face. That's what enjoying music is all about.

 

[rwortman]

I read an old interview with Floyd Toole a while back wherein he said his goal in his home system was to play recordings and have them sound as real as possible and if he needed to deviate from what was on the recording to do that, so be it and that included adding artificially produced surround effects. I want to extract maximum enjoyment. What else is the system for? If someone likes a little added harmonic content from a turntable or less than perfect amplification, cool. When you go to an amplified live performance, you aren’t listening to pure mic feeds.

 

[Offler]

Excuse me, but I don't understand this "intended" thing.

Do you wonder whether you hold a cup as the potter intended? Are your fingers too big or too small?
Do you wonder whether you wear your clothes as the seamstress intended? Do you think it fits "correctly"?
Do you wonder whether you play a guitar the way the luthier intended? Do you think it has the right strings?
Do you wonder whether you drive your car the way the designer intended? Does it go fast enough?

I doubt you wonder, because they're all just products, and you use them as you see fit. A musical recording is a product, too. Nothing magical and mystical, and nothing sacred. Just a product. They make it for a profit, and you buy it to use as you see fit, just like the other things I listed.

So don't worry ..... be happy.

Jim Taylor

For example make photos as I see them fit, and mostly i dont make them for any profit - its a hobby and I want to become proficient in using proper equipment and editing tools as a side effect.

The thing is that i have a display which is calibrated with a sensor to have a very specific 24bit sRGB color palette with D65 whitepoint, and all post processing is done with this calibrated display as a reference.

Even when 24bit sRGB is default for most of displays, even web browsers insert filters to "improve" on the image and there might be color shift on the same computer where I edited the photos. I expect that to happen, also I have to expect that most people will NOT view the photos on 27'' display, but on mobile phone, or a tablet in better case, but there certainly is an intention, in case the display fits the intended parameters.

I expect there is something similar in audio, but i really dont know if there is anything such specific in audio industry as precisely defined color pallettes in photography.