Applause: Bummer

David99. Sorry. I guess I missed the distinction you made, but I wanted to ask. Don't you find that rock recordings are generally poor, compressed and terribly mixed? I love rock and find rock recordings frustrating. I mostly listen to them in my car. I have a live Clapton disc, I think it's titled "24 Nights", that, IMO, is much more involving than his last two studio recordings. I don't mean to be disagreeable. I am just a bit surprised and curious. Thanks.

I once listened to a live CD by the guy (can't remember his name) who used to work with Roxy Music. It sounded like they focused on recording the audience and that the music was just an after thought. I also recall that it was a European performance. Highly recommended if you want the "all that you can be" out of applause and audience chattering.

Rather than being disappointed in the sound of applause, we should be amazed. Amazed that plastic cones, aluminum ribbons, metal dones, mylar sheets and the like, are capable of sounding so much like kick drums, bassoons, Steinway concert grands and 300 year old violins. And all of this information is being retrieved by a beam of coherent light reading pits in a piece of aluminum foil! Or a stylus reading an erose canyon wall. It is truly amazing and wonderful that it sounds as close to live music as it does. Be amazed! Happy listening, Don

Quite right, elgordo. On the topic of live rock recordings, let me add that IMHO many of their technical limitations are probably the result of the equipment used in the live performance. Having the lead vocalist sing into some Shure dynamic microphone -- that's designed to be rugged enough to drive nails with so it will survive a concert tour -- will not yield the same quality of vocal as a Neumann condenser microphone that costs thousands of dollars but stays in the studio. Then the vocalist, inspired by the sheer energy he (or she) is drawing from the crowd, lets a particularly gutsy high note wail a few db louder than at the sound check before the performance, with the microphone virtually in his mouth, and the additional signal clips the input of the mixing console or the compressor that's in the signal path before the console. The console may be full of chips that don't sound particularly good, but hold up well to the rigors of travel and enable the manufacturer to produce a mixing console that doesn't cost more than your entire house, like the ones in the studio. Then, a different equalization curve is devised for virtually every microphone, so the mix sounds the way the sound tech thinks it should when played through the massive array of speakers that are deafening the audience members who are standing directly in front of them. Meanwhile, the output of the mixing console is also feeding a recording device of some sort, from which your CD or LP will be mastered. Small wonder it doesn't sound all that impressive by the time you settle into your listening chair.