@millercarbon
The one time I heard a 78 on a gramophone was some years ago but I still remember the feeling.... With the gramophone it is more like the singer is in there. Listening to it is like, there's a person somewhere in there singing, and I'm hearing it through this metal and stuff. But she's in there!
I agree 100%. Successful 78 recordings sound extremely realistic on the gramophone, and I feel that no electrical system can so accurately copy the effect of a live presence during a performance as a mechanical gramophone. In this paradoxical situation, again, our misunderstanding of the properties of electricity and human perception can be traced.
Or if you ever did the can with string thing as a kid, you can totally tell it is a real person and not a recording on the other end. The old telephone calls were like that too. Not this cell phone BS we have today.
When using old dial phones, it was possible to evaluate the sound of audio systems and determine which wire sounds better. This is despite the fact that the frequency response of the telephone line was 500-3000 Hz. To me the situation is similar to that of a gramophone and suggests that the presence effect is completely independent of the frequency response.
.....with all of that you know for sure you are looking at a trout. A real live trout. As opposed to if you take a picture or video of a trout, and look at it the same way, there is no doubt which is which...
Again, I agree with you. In my experience, visual perception determines whether an object is alive or inanimate by some principle similar to hearing. I spent several years researching the distinctive features of b/w analog photography which to me is by far more live than modern digital one, and found out a lot of interesting things. the main one is the lens elements and even simple glasses, have directivity.
The window glasses directivity can also be used in audio. After you choose the position of the window glass and fix it so as the picture outside the window is closest to the live one, then the sound of the system becomes more lively too, especially if the system is located next to the window. All our feelings are somehow connected. And probably there is no escape from metaphysics here.
The glass directionality experiment is easy to perform by looking in different ways through any little peace of glass.