Why Do Cables Matter?

@donavabdear 

Thank you for answering my question - I appreciate it.

Even the best recordings are a long way from the sound of live music, so anything we can do to get back what;s on the recording itself helps.

But we have a long way to go!

@yoyoyaya That is an interesting way to look at at recording. That statement has a lot to do with how you set up your playback system at home also. Todays recordings rarely sound like live performances being multitracked and remixed as standard. I have over the years set up 1 stereo mic over a performing group and loved it but if I did that today the sound would have to much depth, the producer must have close sounding instruments and singers. If you set up your playback system to be simply an extension of the original recording then you are really doing the old fashioned way of reproducing the live show. Today generally everything in music is not natural  I've set up hundreds of microphones on orchestras that sounded fine but it definitely wasn't natural it sounded better than natural. So perhaps there are no rules and even in playback there are no rules concerning fidelity to the original recording because recordings today don't have fidelity to original concerts anyway. As a recording engineer how do you feel about that? 

The first Cowboy Junkies album, Trinity Sessions is a great example of a stereo mic set up.  The original record has some faults but this album is a work of art from the music (I appreciate this music) to how it was recorded and the location.  The re-released record which came out a few years ago fixes a lot of the audio issues.  I appreciate the original but I listen to the new version now, also because it has two extra songs.  The new version does better at catching the ambience of the church they are in.   I feel that I am sitting inside that church while they play their songs.

This style of recording is much appreciated on a good rig.  Close mic'd multi mix down brings lots of things to hear in a high resolution rig, but these stereo mic recordings feel much more natural.  Both types are fun listening for me.

@donavabdear 

There's a lot packed into that post. So...

I don't think there is any relation between a recording setup and playback. There is a relationship between recording monitoring and playback. In both cases, you want a room that doesn't colour the sound and accurate monitors.

Regarding recording itself, recording engineering is like all engineering - it's trying to find the least bad compromise within the limitations of the available technology. There's a place for simple one or two mic recording techniques, just as there is for multi mic'd and multitracked recording and all points in between. But, at the risk of stating the obvious, there are massive differences in the quality of recordings made with all those techniques.

As far as high fidelity playback is concerned, the system is indifferent to the kind of recording it's fed. I want the playback system to recover as much information as possible regardless of how that information came to be on the recording in the first place.