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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
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,960 posts
 
Shadorne has hit the nail on the head- commercial recordings are the primary barrier to making it sound real.

If you were to take a set of good studio microphones and put them in a different room, away from your system, you might be quite surprised to find out how lifelike the system can be if the mics are set up right. Nothing (so far) compares to a direct mic feed...
irvrobinson
295 posts
 
"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?"

No. It means that some of us believe you can recreate a pretty good facsimile of "live" when the sound sources being reproduced are well recorded, played back using some of the finest equipment available, and the sources are in reasonable proportion to the size of the room the audio system is in, and the system has the power to recreate the output of the source instrument.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,258 posts
 
A rhetorical question for Atmashpere -- if the U67 is such a good mic how come they never came at with a U67 Signature or U67 Reference MkII?

Pro audio companies just don't get it!
pubul57
3,712 posts
 
don't forget revisions A,B,C.... of the Signaturre Reference Ultimate MK2.17
phaelon
1,053 posts
 
The more I read this thread, the more it becomes clear to me just how much this topic has in common with the myriad threads on "tubes vs solid state" (Now I know why you've given this thread a pass Tvad). A common theme of those threads is whether or not solid state can sound like tubes. The answers always seems to narrow down to: yes to some and no to others, depending on ones personal values. I'm no expert but it seems to me that we hear with our brains, and the brain is pretty good at filtering out what it deems unimportant. Sure a home system can approach the real thing if the difference isn't that important to you. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, as with tubes, some will always hear a difference because there is one, and it's meaningful to them, while others will not because of the slight value the place on that difference.
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