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How close to the real thing?

Recently a friend of mine heard a Chopin concert in a Baptist church. I had told him that I had gone out to RMAF this year and heard some of the latest gear. His comment was that he thinks the best audio systems are only about 5% close to the real thing, especially the sound of a piano, though he admitted he hasn't heard the best of the latest equipment.

That got me thinking as I have been going to the BSO a lot this fall and comparing the sound of my system to live orchestral music. It's hard to put a hard percentage on this kind of thing, but I think the best systems capture a lot more than just 5% of the sound of live music.

What do you think? Are we making progress and how close are we?
peterayer
pubul57
3,712 posts
 
You are right about the 12Khz:( missing in action (more or less)and yet "live" and recordings remain distinctly their own sonically.

P.S. I used TDK, when I wasn't on the Thorens.....
rebbi
1,326 posts
 
This has been a very interesting discussion to follow!

I have come to think about these issues less in terms of some "absolute sound" and more as "is the system giving me as much of what the recording engineer intended as possible." As in, "Oh, so THAT'S what Paul Simon, Tchad Blake and Brian Eno wanted me to experience on that cut from "Surprise." My own rig has come progressively closer to this goal as I've tweaked and upgraded it, I think, although it's hardly take no prisoners/state of the art.

As for acoustic music, if a tweak to the system makes it more moving or involving, I'm pleased.

YMMV, of course!
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,258 posts
 
I notice that the people who are claiming current technology is close to capturing and reproducing the sound of a real musical event are severely limiting the conditions where they have experienced this phenomena. It only happens on a few records, only when I'm listening on headphones, only for small groups or solo instruments or only when I have a studio quality tape recorder playing back a tape I made in my own house. So am I to believe that 99% of the time it doesn't sound that real, but all the other times it does?

I think some of you are confusing the fact that you like the sound of your system better than live sound. That's a very different issue than whether your system can so accurately recreate a recorded event such that you cannot distinguish it from the original.
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pubul57
3,712 posts
 
Good point Onhwy61, or distinction. I often prefer listening to my home system to live while recongnizing there are aspects of live performance that are simply not present in a recording and I think the issue of compression mentioned by Shadorne is a very significant part of the difference between recorded and live music.

In my experience the difference between system and real thing does not speak to what might be more enjoyable in the listening - being different doesn't speak to what might be prefered, at least not necessarily. For example, live music rarely has the soundstaging and imaging of my system, and illusion and distortion I quite enjoy even if mostly an artifact of the recording process and better, more resolving equipment.
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