2ch: WiiM Pro; Topping E30 II DAC; Oppo, Acurus RL-11, Acurus A200, JBL Dynamics Project - Offline: L212-TwinStack, VonSchweikert VR-4
7: TIVO, Oppo BDP103D, B&K, 2pr UREI 809A, TF600, JBL B460
If someone was able to recreate the dynamic of a snare drum at home, please let us know the recipe... ;-)
Lee
Well, get the weed and the booze, and perhaps the groupies, and hire him. When the seventeen year old me attended the last of the South State Street burlesque houses - it was soon to close and I wanted to see the last gasp of a culture - the music was recorded but there was a live traps player to accent the strippers and the comics. He sat out the black and white soft core films. He was a real profesional. His eyes were glued to the performers, even though he had seen them a hundred times, to make everything fit perfectly. As a huge music fan I admired the great job he was doing of it. A good musican, he was a strong looking middle aged man who looked a lot like Stan Getz. It was not unusual to see a Polish musician in Chicago. The polka bands on local TV were great.
Completely off topic, at the time I would bicycle down into the Northwest side and work Friday nights and Saturdays at a catering pavilion. The owner was German but it was a Polish neighborhood. Let me tell you, if you were not in Chicago in the fifties and sixties and didn't attend Polish wedding receptions with live bands, you really missed something special. The Greeks (my wife's family) did it well too, but those polka bands. Good lord.
So even a dying burlesque club knew there was no substitute for the real thing. Your avatar is a nice start, though.
Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom
Too many audiophiles listen with their eyes instead of their ears
I'm with you there, Lee. When I play even one stroke on my brass Ludwig Black Beauty snare drum, the acoustic event is so dynamic that every other element of my drumkit resonates in sympathy (even the gong!). I can feel the note in my chest, and on a loud rimshot my ears will ring (which is why I've worn earplugs whenever I play, and have done so for the past 40 or so years).
While I'm quite sure that a good compression-driver based system like the M2 or DD66000s could faithfully reproduce these dynamics (the Klipschorns I used to own were particularly good at it), I've yet to hear a recording that faithfully captures this experience from the player's perspective. LPs can't do it (if the mastering engineer even tried the cutting lathe would jump right out of the groove); CDs can, but I've yet to hear a commercial release where the snare (in fact, the whole drumkit) doesn't have the life compressed out of it. I'm trying to zero-in on capturing that experience here in my home studio, but still have a ways to go (really good mics cost big $$$).
I'm a working musician....I play electric guitar in a few different bands....have for 40 years.
The stage is the last place you want to be to experience the audiences' point of reference for what live music sounds like. Unless you have a perfect mix of every square inch of every performer on stage in top notch monitors...in stereo....in your face.
There are so many variables with live music that it takes more than 3 inches of forum space to discuss it.
I have heard loudspeakers that present an incredible presentation of live acoustic jazz. I closed my eyes and could "see" the players in the room.
I have heard loudspeakers that played back "Frampton Comes Alive" better than Frampton live.....because I heard both in 1976, and the record was better than live....Still is, sound quality wise.
So....the definitive answer in my not so humble opinion is..."It depends"...on everything variable.
Edgewound...JBL Pro Authorized...since 1988
Upland Loudspeaker Service, Upland, CA
Oddly enough I thought of Frampton comes alive. It is pretty good considering it was the 70's. I also saw him live here in NZ around the same time and I though then that the album was very similar to his live performance. The other thing that is very important when comparing live to your listening room, most acts sound like crap live.
Allan.
Real is relative and in terms of reproducing a musical 'event' depends on very very flakey human acoustic memory.
You wouldn't want an uncompressed edition of a jazz band there in the confines of your listening room-too full on, too loud.
In my experience musicians are the most unreliable/indifferent bunch of 'listeners/judges' of sound systems-if they gave a sh1t we wouldn't have such appallingly mastered product to play.
So what is 'real'? for me real is goosebumps pure and simple. When my system presents a performance/recording that moves me, generates a physical response to what's being played with a physicality that good horn comp drivers and large bass drivers can deliver then that's as real as I need. Accurate is moot in that almost every channel/track is in someway modified in the recording process so what your system is reproducing is say a compressed/eq'd drum kit rather than raw in the flesh, likewise brass sections(stand a few feet away live and wait for your ears to go dull/ring for a week).
Good Morning, All,
I totally agree with what Edgewound posted on this topic. I, too, have been a pro musician, having "sung for my supper" for about 30 years, and having spent over 5 years on the road in that time. We went from teen dances, to college Frat parties, to our local clubs and hotels. Then, worked all across the Mid-West for a few years, and finally ended up doing the Las Vegas/Reno/Lake Tahoe circuit for about 3 years, opening for acts such as Lou Rawls, Donna Summers, Blood-Sweat-And-Tears, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and many others. The last big gig I had was playing drums and singing in a band that opened for Jimmy Buffet, in the then brand new Convention Center in San Diego. I've used and heard more music reproduction systems than most folks will ever hear in their entire lives! Some were excellent (to my ears), and some were absolutely horrible! After all that experience, what is "real" to me, is when music sounds like it did when I was playing drums, with the bass player (usually) on my left side, so we could listen to one another, and watch for cues as things went along. I want dynamics, and a wide bandwidth, so I can hear all that has been recorded, and "feel" it, too, when called for.
Having said that, I have a dear and very old friend, who played bass in an early band in which we played in the mid to late 1960's, for whom I built a very nice Altec Lansing system, many years ago. He LOVED it, and so did I!! Later, when he got married, his wife liked the music, but constantly complained about how huge the speakers were!! In absolute truth, that weren't THAT big, but, to her, they looked like refrigerators!! She later talked my friend into selling those wonderful old Altecs, and buying a......... yeah, you guessed it, BOSE system!!! My friend hated the sound of it, but loved the fact that his wife enjoyed it, and that she stopped complaining all the time about the Altecs. I visited him one day, and was shocked to see what had become of his music system. I asked his wife, "Don't you think that the Altec speakers sounded much more 'real' than these little Bose speakers"? To which she replied, with all honesty, "Actually, they sound the same to me, and I love how small these are"!
So, there you have it, Folks. To that Gal, there was no difference in sound when comparing a nice old Altec system, and a Bose system, and she thought the latter sounded very "real". Go figure......... But, basically, that experience supports the essence of what Edgewound posted, as far as "real" being different for each individual, as, for me, there is no way on God's Green Earth that I could ever think that the Bose system sounded "real"!!! Take care, and God Bless!
Every Good Wish,
Doc
The only thing that can never be taken away from you, is your honor. Cherish it, in yourself, and in others.
It's all real, unfortunately, it's just not all real good.
Barry.
P.S. Nice to see you Ken! Hope all is well.
If we knew what the hell we were doing, we wouldn't call it research would we.
All we listen too on our systems is a reproduction. There is nothing real about any of it in the recording chain. All that matters is that you enjoy the experience. I thoroughly enjoy listening to my set-ups beyond that nothing else really matters. Rob
"I could be arguing in my spare time"
2ch: WiiM Pro; Topping E30 II DAC; Oppo, Acurus RL-11, Acurus A200, JBL Dynamics Project - Offline: L212-TwinStack, VonSchweikert VR-4
7: TIVO, Oppo BDP103D, B&K, 2pr UREI 809A, TF600, JBL B460
Most of the time I think that we are still miles from producing a believable illusion of reality with our playback systems, just as we surely are with video. A while back though ( I wrote about it here at the time), I conducted an experiment that showed that at times we can come pretty close. I installed a drum kit in my living room and recorded myself butchering the drums and cymbals using Blumlein coincident Reslo ribbon mics in the listening chair, a tube hi fi preamp running wide open as a mic pre, and an Alesis Masterlink hard drive recorder running at 24/96. I would play back the recording at live level for visitors using my fully compression horn loaded speaker system and sitting at the drums, mimicking the recorded sounds. Several listeners told me that they couldn't tell which was which without looking. They said that even the locations in space were reproduced well for the center seated listener.
Steve, I am really, really happy with what I use now, but I can always work up some envy for your Cogent forays. I again thought of your gear when Widget mentioned how it couldn't be done without compression drivers. How close he must be, I thought to myself. Too bad you don't have the opportunity to try some First Watt amps with it. F1J for direct connection w/o crossovers to a lower frequency driver; F5 for the top, crossover or not. I am confident they would be the most accurate power amps available for your drivers. I use them here and they are as close to transparent as you can get with existing technology. The F1J is current source, output ohms 60, and gives all the bass any single driver can output. It is flat down to at least 10Hz and no worse than +0.25dB to 200KHz. The F5 is flat to DC, down 0.25dB at 200KHz. The actual bandwidth is probably a megahertz (no caps outside the power supply) and has distortion at the power you would need of no more than .001%. Your horns could probably do bat echos with it. Their sound is not dry; one gain stage and very natural sounding. Nothing but music to feed the horns. A one ohm load will not upset these amps. They are both dead quiet, noise being in the picowatt region.
I expect there are some examples floating around in California that an enterprising fellow could borrow. Nelson Pass put them together not too far away. He assembled a hundred F1s and all but three have been converted to JFET output. The run of F5s was likewise a hundred. I found both of mine used.
Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom
Too many audiophiles listen with their eyes instead of their ears
Hi Steve;
I am excited to hear your system again, it has been a while.
I too love the dynamic capabilties of horns. Allow me to recomend a crazy tune that for those of us who have a system that will play run and hide loud, is the audio equivalent of driving real fast. Its called The Race, by Yellow, the same guys that did the Oh Yeah song used in Ferris Bueller. There are several mixes of it and when I get to the shop I will edit this and identify it properly.
It has real V8 race car fly by, lots of percussion, lots of big brass and sax and plenty of synth bass and other noise.
It is by far the funnest OMG song I have ever heard.
All the best,
Barry.
If we knew what the hell we were doing, we wouldn't call it research would we.
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