I play the drums, but the experience most applicable to my audiophile hobby is recording in a professional studio. It's important to remember that in many cases 'faithful' reproduction requires figuring out what the producer and sound engineer want the listener to hear, not what the actual instrument sounded like if you heard it from a normal listening position.
In one case I had kick drum that rang no matter what we did to deaden it, so it was fixed in post production. In another case the lead guitar was re-recorded several weeks after we had finished because they thought the sound wasn't quite right.
This may not be true in every case, but remember that even if the musicians are playing at the same time most of the instruments are fully isolated from each other and are subsequently mixed down to two channels. Prior to that all manner of tweaking can be done to achieve a coherent sound that the producer is trying to achieve.
Live music is recorded similarly, where the instruments and vocals are singley mic'd and then subsequently mixed down. Area mic's on modern recordings are less common. And remember that the sound engineer has control over instrument placement in three dimensions.
As far as drums go, modern samples are very sophisticated and many artists use triggers. Striking the head triggers a sample, the actual acoustic sound never gets recorded.
To my ears, knowing that the circumstances and equipment invoked in the recorded process are (mostly) unknown, I appreciate recordings and systems that can reproduce realistic dynamics. As one poster mentioned above, instruments coming at the listener at the same volume denote either compression during production or lack of fidelity in the reproduction.
In one case I had kick drum that rang no matter what we did to deaden it, so it was fixed in post production. In another case the lead guitar was re-recorded several weeks after we had finished because they thought the sound wasn't quite right.
This may not be true in every case, but remember that even if the musicians are playing at the same time most of the instruments are fully isolated from each other and are subsequently mixed down to two channels. Prior to that all manner of tweaking can be done to achieve a coherent sound that the producer is trying to achieve.
Live music is recorded similarly, where the instruments and vocals are singley mic'd and then subsequently mixed down. Area mic's on modern recordings are less common. And remember that the sound engineer has control over instrument placement in three dimensions.
As far as drums go, modern samples are very sophisticated and many artists use triggers. Striking the head triggers a sample, the actual acoustic sound never gets recorded.
To my ears, knowing that the circumstances and equipment invoked in the recorded process are (mostly) unknown, I appreciate recordings and systems that can reproduce realistic dynamics. As one poster mentioned above, instruments coming at the listener at the same volume denote either compression during production or lack of fidelity in the reproduction.