carey1110,
These are difficult, mysterious questions we are trying to answer, regarding what are colorations, and are we able to eliminate or even minimize them? Despite my vast live music experience as a performer and concertgoer, and lesser experience doing live recording, I still don't know what any given recording sounded like to the engineers and production staff. I don't know precisely how commercial recording pros operate. Some of them sit distantly away in a control room, and hear the live mike feed played back on questionable monitor speakers. But when I did my recordings, I sat in the 1st row, near my mikes. I would take my headphones on and off as I compared the live sound to the mike feed heard through my headphones. In effect, I was transplanting my head onto the mike stand, which was the closest anyone could get to being in the chosen position of the mikes. I used only 2 Neumann KM184 cardioid mikes whose diaphragms were separated a little wider than my head, but I used no supplemental ambience mikes and did no mixing or processing.
So even though I tried to hear the live mike feed, I was handicapped by the huge colorations of my headphones as well as the lesser colorations of the best mike preamp and mikes that I had. I never knew what my recordings really sounded like, but what I did know was the live sound I heard from my close 1st row center seat.
I accept your definition of coloration as a deviation from the original recording. However, since the original recording sound is unknowable, the coloration is also unknowable. You're right about my other definition of coloration, which is a deviation from live sound. I believe my definition is more practical than yours. Then there are the huge colorations of various speakers. One SOTA speaker has a vastly different sound from another SOTA speaker. To overcome my uncertainties about all this, I take a practical approach of learning about a wide variety of live sounds in halls and outside in nature. What I try to do with my audio system is to recreate the approximate tonal characteristics and snap of real instruments and voices that I know from live experience. I know what a violin sounds like in various rooms, halls, and under my ear. I have learned what the common features of the violin are, despite having differences in the various environments. The same goes for other instruments, and combinations in various ensembles. I am interested in the direct instrument sounds heard close, where the main mikes are, not heard from a distance, which are a mess of reverberation, hall effects, and severely rolled off HF. I'll take the sound of my car radio appropriately EQ'd, rather than the live audience sound of 100 feet away. I've done that comparison, driving to a concert hearing a recording in the car, and being disappointed at how muddy the sound of similar music was in the hall from my distant seat.
These are difficult, mysterious questions we are trying to answer, regarding what are colorations, and are we able to eliminate or even minimize them? Despite my vast live music experience as a performer and concertgoer, and lesser experience doing live recording, I still don't know what any given recording sounded like to the engineers and production staff. I don't know precisely how commercial recording pros operate. Some of them sit distantly away in a control room, and hear the live mike feed played back on questionable monitor speakers. But when I did my recordings, I sat in the 1st row, near my mikes. I would take my headphones on and off as I compared the live sound to the mike feed heard through my headphones. In effect, I was transplanting my head onto the mike stand, which was the closest anyone could get to being in the chosen position of the mikes. I used only 2 Neumann KM184 cardioid mikes whose diaphragms were separated a little wider than my head, but I used no supplemental ambience mikes and did no mixing or processing.
So even though I tried to hear the live mike feed, I was handicapped by the huge colorations of my headphones as well as the lesser colorations of the best mike preamp and mikes that I had. I never knew what my recordings really sounded like, but what I did know was the live sound I heard from my close 1st row center seat.
I accept your definition of coloration as a deviation from the original recording. However, since the original recording sound is unknowable, the coloration is also unknowable. You're right about my other definition of coloration, which is a deviation from live sound. I believe my definition is more practical than yours. Then there are the huge colorations of various speakers. One SOTA speaker has a vastly different sound from another SOTA speaker. To overcome my uncertainties about all this, I take a practical approach of learning about a wide variety of live sounds in halls and outside in nature. What I try to do with my audio system is to recreate the approximate tonal characteristics and snap of real instruments and voices that I know from live experience. I know what a violin sounds like in various rooms, halls, and under my ear. I have learned what the common features of the violin are, despite having differences in the various environments. The same goes for other instruments, and combinations in various ensembles. I am interested in the direct instrument sounds heard close, where the main mikes are, not heard from a distance, which are a mess of reverberation, hall effects, and severely rolled off HF. I'll take the sound of my car radio appropriately EQ'd, rather than the live audience sound of 100 feet away. I've done that comparison, driving to a concert hearing a recording in the car, and being disappointed at how muddy the sound of similar music was in the hall from my distant seat.