Real Music vs Audiophile Mumbo Jumbo

What I want is the sound of a live musician in the studio, or at least the sound from the microphone feed.

I respect Albert's insights tremendously, but I've gotta say "bull-puckey"!!!

I do believe that unamplified music in a good venue can be used as a template to voice one`s home system

Gotta agree w Charlesldad on this one.
I also have to say that rock concerts are really tough; but I will also say that there are other factors that can easily outweigh less than stellar sound. It's just like watching sports on TV. Your HD plasma will give you much better visuals but it can't match the experience of being there.

Swampwalker

I respect Albert's insights tremendously, but I've gotta say "bull-puckey"!!!

Guess I don't understand the conflict. What's wrong with a system that can duplicate what was being fed to the microphone? Isn't that what was going on when the recording was being made?

Everything we play on our system was fed from a microphone at the point of performance, regardless if live on location or in a controlled studio setting.

While I believe this discussion relfects the personal taste and opinions of members (which are not "wrong")I must point out that I am a fairly accomplished amateur musician and have been privileged to know some fine professionals (including one retired opera baritone with perfect pitch)who believe that the Klipsch Heritage line reflects some of the best and most accurate sound reproduction available. I attend live musical events whenever possible (operas and symphonies in particular). Hardly a rock concert produced over a blaring "PA system." I have quite a collection of Klipsch Hertitage speakers and love them. So .. to each his own but please recognize that there are some very knowledgeable folks out there with excellent credentials who disagree with you and let it go at that. With that, I'm out. Enjoy the music.

Yahoochaz - I can certainly see (and hear) the appeal of these speakers. I was a professional musician myself for many years and did a considerable amount of work in a fairly prominent recording studio that used K-horns for monitors, in addition to Auritones and Yamaha NS-10m(s) of course. The Klipsch have tremendous dynamics and impact that escapes many other speakers, which can make them extremely exciting and enjoyable to listen to. However, to me, and I think I made it clear in my post that this was my opinion only, the k-horns have a nasality that sounds like one cupping their hands over their mouth and nose. Perhaps it was just that room, but I have heard others with a similar opinion about those and many other true horn speakers. All speakers I can afford have compromises and I choose the compromises I can best live with. I assume most of us do the same. Enjoy the music.

Live unamplified sound is a great tool for judging a system's accuracy, but it is not the only measure. The fact is most audiophile oriented systems cannot deal with concert level rock music. An electric guitar is an amplified instrument. Does it really matter that the PA system is an additional level of amplification? I don't think so. Does anybody participating in this forum have a system that can handle a Marshall 100 watt head driving dual 4 x 12" cabinets? Of course not! The fact that so many concert venues do not sound good is irrelevant. The fact that most popular recordings don't sound very good doesn't mean that a great sounding pop recording cannot be made. It's the same with live sound. If the promoter wants to spend the money, time and talent to get good sound it's not that hard to do.

Regarding using sound reinforcement equipment in a home setting to get the concert effect -- it's not likely to work. It's not so much about the equipment as it is the acoustic environment. A concert hall is a big space and your listening room isn't. I don't understand why, but the sound doesn't scale down to the smaller space effectively. This is true whether the sound is amplified or not. To get an accurate reproduction of a loud instrument filling a large acoustic space requires at a minimum a similarly large acoustic space.

If you really wanted to reproduce the concert effect I think you would be better off trying large studio monitors type speakers in a fairly large, well treated room. Zu, JBL, Tyler and Classic Audio Reproduction also make audiophile oriented speakers that would be applicable.