2. analog
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System that sounds so real it is easy to mistaken it is not live

My current stereo system consists of Oracle turntable with SME IV tonearm, Dynavector XV cartridge feeding Manley Steelhead and two Snappers monoblocks  running 15" Tannoy Super Gold Monitors. Half of vinyl records are 45 RMP and were purchased new from Blue Note, AP, MoFI, IMPEX and some others. While some records play better than others none of them make my system sound as good as a live band I happened to see yesterday right on a street. The musicians played at the front of outdoor restaurant. There was a bass guitar, a drummer, a keyboard and a singer. The electric bass guitar was connected to some portable floor speaker and drums were not amplified. The sound of this live music, the sharpness and punch of it, the sound of real drums, the cymbals, the deepness, thunder-like sound of bass guitar coming from probably $500 dollars speaker was simply mind blowing. There is a lot of audiophile gear out there. Some sound better than others. Have you ever listened to a stereo system that produced a sound that would make you believe it was a real live music or live band performance at front of you?

 

esputnix
cerrot's avatar
cerrot
1,700 posts
 

Absolutely!

chowkwan
167 posts
 

wspohn's avatar
wspohn
610 posts
 

Closest I have come is when I was playing solo piano on vinyl, and my wife who is a pianist was a couple of rooms over called out to me and asked who was playing (she knew that I don't play and thought that I had a visitor sitting at her piano.

lewm
13,377 posts
 

“In another room “ stories are absolutely irrelevant. When the source is in another room with respect to the room inhabited by the listener, the ear and brain are deprived of several cues used to distinguish live from reproduced music. Phase and bandwidth included. When it’s an unaccompanied vocalist or single instrument, it becomes plausible that you’re hearing a live musician, until you check it out by entering the space containing the source.

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,992 posts
 

The fun thing here is knowing that microphones, electronics and headphones have been so real sounding they can fool a jaundiced audiophile and have been able to do so for decades.

I can recount several experiences where this was underlined in spades. I won't do all of them, here's one (ask if you want more): I was doing an on-location recording of a choir concert about 30 years ago, using an Ampex 351-2 tape machine, a set of Phillips small diaphragm tube condenser mics and a set of $20.00 Radio Shack headphones. After the intermission the choir was gathering at the other back stage door from the one at which I was stationed. Apparently they were going to do a number where they walked in while singing. So I rolled the tape. All of a sudden someone started singing behind me; I figured they were a soloist going to enter the door where I was. I looked around but no-one was there; I had missed the soloist entering the stage earlier (luckily got the tape rolling in time...)!

I could never get the machine to do that off of the tape playback, but off of the mic feed it was easy. Sometime if you get a chance, get your hands on a Zoom recorder or the like and headphones and see how easily you can talk while its in record mode. If you tend to shut up when someone else is talking you may find it hard to talk in this situation until you get used to it, especially if your voice is delayed. That's how real sounding mics and headphones actually are.

When we use speakers playing in a room and using a recorded media its another kettle of fish and much harder to get that spooky real thing I referred to in my first post on this thread.

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