How close to the real thing?

Maybe y'all will be interested in this- it seems relevant to the thread...

Recently I was in the recording studio, we were trying to make a recording of my band. Our bass player is leaving town for a while, and we didn't want to forget some new material, so we were making a simple recording to help us with that.

I set up a pair of Neumann U-67s in a figure-8 pattern. They went into a cheap Mackey mixer, from there into an Alesis Masterlink, recording at 88.2KHz with 24 bits.

On playback, I used a set of Grado SR325 headphones. This is an open style of headphone. All the time, I had to look at the bass player, or our drummer, to see what they were doing. That is to say, the sound was so real I could not tell that they were not doing something while I was trying to listen to the recording. So I had to look at them to see that they were actually *not* playing! I could not turn my back on them, because if I did so, my brain was telling me right away that they were playing their instruments, rather than me listening to a recording.

In previous recording experiences (again with headphones) I have experienced the same thing.

So how far are we? The microphones and headphones have been there for quite some time. Microphone preamps and a lot of the other intervening electronics have been too.

So where is the technology weak? That seems to be a better question. Just from playing in the studio, that question is easy to answer. Speakers, power amplifiers and the actual media itself are the problems. Anyone who has released a CD knows that the biggest degradation in the sound from the master to playback occurs in the process of making the CD itself. Also I have grave doubts about 44.1 KHz 16 bits and always have.

Some amps and some speakers are so realistic that if you give them a direct microphone feed, they can easily fool you into thinking that the music is really happening. Others are not so nimble. If we had recordings in which the media was not damaged by mass reproduction (and in specific not damaged by a CD player, which if it is using Redbook standards has no hope of extracting all the data off the disk), we would also be closer. But to really do it right, you need a higher scan frequency and more bits. Or analog.

So IMO we are not far away at all. 90% of what I am talking about here are the issues with media, the remaining 10% is the difference between actual state of the art amps and speakers and those that purport to be.

I agree with Atmasphere on this one.

The barrier is/has not been the technology, more the technique applied in making recordings.

The best ones can be eerily close to lifelike in the right situation and it has been that way for quite a while, probably as far back as the golden age of vinyl.

11-24-10: Hifihvn
Sitting in the audience can be like sitting in a room full of misplaced, room tuning,sound absorption devices.

That covers what I hear in a live performance.

Lrsky,My speakers don't have that high frequency hash.I know what your talking about,but I would make any changes to get rid of it,if it was there. The conductor does get the best place.He has to hear what the orchestra is doing.It would be nice for us to hear what he does.But then,maybe that's why I like listening to recorded music.

That we can hear what the tune is, understand the lyrics, recognize the instruments, the individuals playing the instruments, where they are located in all dimensions, whether they are in key or out of tune, hear what brand of instrument and what brand of amplification they might be using and in many cases what kind of hall they're playing in, suggests to me that we're closer rather than farther to the real thing. If we weren't, why would we spend so much money and time in this hobby?

Atmasphere, as usual, has something to say. Those of us who play an instrument which can be amplified (classical guitar), know that even cheap mikes and speakers can sound more "real" than any recording. The storage systems are the most destructive to the sound. That said, I think much of the disagreement comes from the type of music considered, and its venue. I have performed on stage (I sing tenor) with huge orchestras, pipe organs, and in the case of some memorable Russian music, with an extra large percussion section. Even though the din got so loud at times that I could not hear my own voice- and a fraction of a second later all was full stop but for a single voice, yet there was never any sense of strain or was there difficulty in hearing the soloist.
It has been observed by some cynics that a group of musicians can sound exactly like a loudspeaker, but not vice versa.