Who Else Wants an Audiophile Trained Ear?

[geekwithfamily]

Any audio expert will tell you that the best way to train your ears and brain to recognize fine audio components is to attend live music events. More specifically, live events with no amplification. You could go to the orchestra or a jazz club or a piano bar, whatever. Just get your ear in front of percussion, brass, strings and woods to develop a sense memory of these live events. For me this hasn’t been very easy, I don’t have the time or resources (or taste) to seek out these events.
Instead I stumble across live music that is unnecessarily amplified. If anything, these music sessions are ruining my ears instead of improving. Some examples:

• The Potbelly’s sandwich shop by my work employs a dude with an acoustic guitar and a voice. His instruments are amplified over the restaurant’s crappy PA system (or whatever Bose or JBL wall mount speakers you can order from a restaurant supply house), flooding my ears with mellow Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel tunes. The musician’s presence is all encompassing, the Potbelly’s offers no quiet pocket of space (they even pipe him into the men’s room. In the summer we eat outside, still no relief from another shrill, pitiful “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
• Another lunch spot, Chicago Flat Sammies, shares a space with a Chicago Tourist Info Center Pamphletville (not sure what it’s really called). The few times we’ve eaten there some really old lounge singer is playing a piano and impressing old ladies with Frank Sinatra hits or whatever other songs from that era make me feel dead inside. The space has a very high vaulted ceiling which probably amplifies the piano and singer just fine but again he is amplified so loud I can’t enjoy my $10 Nachos.
• A few months ago we took our daughter to a Thomas the Tank Engine Festival. By the end of the day we found a tent with Dan-The One Man Band. Dan rocked an acoustic guitar, bass drum, high hat, kazoo and a train whistle while singing. All amplified, but not too loud and we sat and danced with the kids near the back. So, it was pleasant, but not an opportunity for ear training. Dan sang a Johnny Cash song, which is rare at a kids’ show.
• Earlier this month we went to a local horse show. After watching a miniature horse pull an old fat guy around in a cart we decided to check out other activities. A folk music trio was playing to the side of the barbecue pit with two picnic tables in front of their fold-out trailer stage. Though their audience was only ten feet away they were blasting their fiddle, guitar, banjo and mountain harmonies over large speakers. Even though I got choked up from the music’s genuine beauty, we had to leave after a song and a half because it was just too loud.

The last real music I heard was a few years ago at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s summer jazz series. I just started actively training my ears and the shows were right across the street from my condo. Though the performances were in the open air I remember the signature sounds of an upright bass and the cymbals and snare in the drum kit. I’ve never heard a hi-fi set up come close.
It’s hard to break out of your synthesized analogy of music you settle for in your listening room. Even harder is the prospect of finding live music that will deliver a true signature of an instrument without interference from a PA system. Most days we’re all stuck with just our iPod and headphones.
How hard is it for you to experience raw, unamplified and live music?
Tags: Audiophile Family musicAudiophile, Family, music

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[brucek]

I’ve never heard a hi-fi set up come close.
It’s hard to break out of your synthesized analogy of music you settle for in your listening room.

I agree. You can walk down a noisy city street and hear someone in a third floor apartment playing a saxophone through a half closed window and you can still pick out that it's live.
We try and replicate live music with multi-thousand dollar systems and we don't even come close.....

Why is that?

brucek

[Mitch G]

Do you think we really try to replicate live music? I think we try to replicate the music that was recorded and mixed and otherwise messed with by the producer, sound guy, etc.

I guess there are recordings that are trying to be as true to a live performance as possible. But, live music is always going to be different and special. I know I only recently started making the effort to go to live performances because of their specialness. Although, most of these are "amped" performances.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, just throwing out food for thought and discussion.


Mitch

[Danny]

Maybe it's because of the natural reverberation of the room - something we so far have not been able to reproduce to the same level.

[Mitch G]

Maybe in a hundred years or so, there'll be "3D Sound" recordings where tons of data is encoded with the recording that provides information on room dimensions and contents, air temperature, real time air vibration data, etc. that players will then be able to process and compensate for in your room and thus reproduce "exactly" what was happening in the room when the original was recorded.

I'm surprised Heinlein (sp?) didn't come up with such an idea for one of his stories.


Mitch

[Wayde]

I grew up watching more live music than recorded music through high school (having been in band). Mostly amplified but definitely live. Only some of it I would categorize as 'good'.

I think the studio tries to improve on the "live" sound. I think the specialness we feel about 'live' is all about context, without that perspective a 'live' isn't as good.

Not that anything can compare to the live sound of a woodwind performance right in front of your face. I haven't heard very many good live recordings. When listening to recordings the studio usually sounds better. But there is nothing like live when it's really live.

[brucek]

But there is nothing like live when it's really live

I guess my point is more about the easy identification of live versus hearing it from a stereo system.

It's a slam dunk every time. The music doesn't even have to be good.

If we sat people down blindfolded and asked them to identify whether they were listening to someone playing an instrument in front on them or were they listening to a recording of it, I dare say we'd get 10 out of 10 making the correct choice.

Why is that?

brucek

[Sonnie]

Why is that? Because they are so drastically different. I'm thinking along the same lines as Mitch, I don't think we are really trying to match up with the live sound because we know it's impossible with anything on the market today, it cannot be done, not even sure it ever will be done. It makes me wonder, exactly what are we after?

[akitaboy]

I guess my point is more about the easy identification of live versus hearing it from a stereo system.

I can't answer this, knowing what I know, but I have played instruments for more years than I care to admit, and I think that a very small piece of the puzzle is dynamic range. Any system or medium which reproduces sound is going to have some limit to dynamic range and transient response.

akitaboy

[brucek]

Any system or medium which reproduces sound is going to have some limit to dynamic range and transient response.

Yeah, that seems like it might be the answer. Perhaps harmonics that the recording equipment can't pick up might also have something to do with it.

brucek

[Wayde]

It's an interesting topic.

I remember sitting on the lake at the cottage at night and hearing the distinct sound of bagpipes being played from the distance. I innately knew it was not a recording even though complete songs were being played with flawless precision.

Talking to neighbours later on they all said yeah that's old so 'n so breaking out the pipes, he does that from time to time.

I have to agree, it's definitely the harmonics and transients. But that's because of their inherent imperfections when live that are usually 'too perfect' when recorded in a studio.

It's like looking at a hot chick in a glossy magazine. You know it's not real. The real thing has a bit of parsley between her front teeth and that's why we love the real thing.

[brucek]

I innately knew it was not a recording

Yeah, that's definitely my point. I wasn't questioning the motive in a studio of trying to capture a live performance - we know that ain't possible. I was questioning the amazing ability we have to identify something that is live.

Going back to my original post where I said you can hear music that is easily identifiable as live even when it's masked by all sorts of other distractions and noise. You know in a second, that it's live.

I've always been amazed by that.

I think the progression to multi-channel from stereo was an attempt to emulate live cues, but they've failed miserably in my opinion.

Dynamic range, transient response, harmonics must play a big part........

brucek

[Mitch G]

brucek wrote:

Dynamic range, transient response, harmonics must play a big part........

brucek

Hence my invention of encoding all the room/space dynamics.
I better contact my patent lawyer.


Mitch

[JCD]

Interesting topic... and hadn't really thought about it, but now that I have, it's got me going "hmmm..."

In the end, I think there are a few things that create the disconnect:

1. Studio recordings clean up a lot of the junk you'd get from something live and mess around with the actual signal.
2. Range is limited on a recording
3. Energy required. Think of how much energy would be needed to play that saxophone example on a recording and have it sound as loud.

I just don't know though.

Hmmm....

JCD

[brucek]

Another factor may be the separation of each individual instrument and voice.

If we theorize that dynamic range and transient response are limiting factors, how do we resolve the fact that these are functions of the electronics that both recorded music and live amplified bands both use. The difference here being that a live amplified band has a unique amplifier channel per instrument including voice.

I do think an unamplified instrument trumps an amplified one, but nevertheless I can sure tell the difference between a live amplifed band and a recording of one......?

brucek

[geekwithfamily]

Thanks for all your replies.

When I listen to hi-fi I need it to suspend my disbelief that I am listening to an alternative folk singer sitting on a stool plucking and strumming his guitar and whispering into my ear (like Iron & Wine). The nicer the hi-fi the more intimate that experience. I don't want it to distract with various distortions.

The hi-fi listening is enhanced by my limited memory of real instruments I've listened to unamplified. I can make the jump from hi-fi to real (enough) in my imagination.

I think live performances, amplified or not, are more about your experience with other audience members and the band. You don't have to imagine an acoustic guitar when one is being played ten feet away. The moment is created for you.

What I think is wierd is that completely electronic music (techno, dub) sounds better on vinyl. Maybe more care was taken in the creation of the pressing by a trained ear (as is suggested in Michael Fremer's 21st Cent. Vinyl DVD).