Real Music vs Audiophile Mumbo Jumbo


Lets talk about music when we hear hear it played live in contrast to our home systems. I have been going out lately seeing rock concerts but none the less, it really makes me think about listening at home vs what i hear when i go out. I read with the respect the vinyl supporters and how the digital sound will never touch the warmth and other special qualities of vinyl. Well, when you go out and hear live music and close your eyes, believe me, it does not sound like a vinyl rig. In my opinion, the sound has an in your face kick that is more like solid state systems. You can hear the bass lines and the pounding of the drums and the fire of the guitars. There is no tube glow and and warmth to it. It is alive and much different.
pettyfeversk
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.
my uncle has played in jazz bands for 50 plus years, has a degree in engineering and still tours the world playing jazz festivals. when he listens to my emotiva/magnepan system he is stunned with the sound quality.[ he is not a smoke blower either] whenever he comes to town he brings his groups most recent cd to listen. i ask him didn,t this sound good in the studio when you were making the cd? he said not this good. just an anecdote.......
Actually, Broadway does a much better job with music. Hair on Broadway last year in a small theater sounded really fine; I really appreciated the intimate acoustics. But I usually need earplugs at rock concerts and can't listen to music for a day or two after I go to one.

Of course, when I listen to the Beatles, most of that never existed live in the first place. So live is usually a fabrication anyway with popular music, which only lives in the matrix anyway...