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How close to the real thing?

Recently a friend of mine heard a Chopin concert in a Baptist church. I had told him that I had gone out to RMAF this year and heard some of the latest gear. His comment was that he thinks the best audio systems are only about 5% close to the real thing, especially the sound of a piano, though he admitted he hasn't heard the best of the latest equipment.

That got me thinking as I have been going to the BSO a lot this fall and comparing the sound of my system to live orchestral music. It's hard to put a hard percentage on this kind of thing, but I think the best systems capture a lot more than just 5% of the sound of live music.

What do you think? Are we making progress and how close are we?
peterayer
musicslug
403 posts
 
what perspective is 'real', sitting in the middle of the orchestra or 40 rows back?

I personally like the 'first 5 rows' type of recording (as opposed to the 25th row...), so sometimes a recording is MORE enjoyable than sitting in the audience - assuming the mics were close in and my hypothetical seat is not in the first rows.

I was recording a concert lately, with my mics right up by the musicians, and I ended up listening to the concert through the headphones instead of 'naturally'. I could crank it up, and it was like I was next to the instruments (bliss!).

(and it sounded even better at home, since my headphones are crap and the home system is nice...).
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depotec
19 posts
 
No way does a good microphone get less than 50% of real sound, at least not voice. I recorded a lot of voice on a mono Nagra with a Neuman Mic and it was VERY close to reality. I could compare one ear in the headphones to the other ear hearing live, and a good mic and a mono Nagra is amazing. Music may be far more difficult and stereo is strange.
br3098
660 posts
 
Elizabeth,

I do not believe that even the best home systems are anywhere near 90%-95% percent in terms of realism, but I will qualify my statement by stating the obvious. There are many, many factors involved in what we consider to be "real" sound - too many to discuss in detail here. So, equipment aside, I will limit myself to three.

1- space/distance/time acoustics (aka room ambiance). This is pretty self-explanitory. Your room is not a concert hall. Or a sound stage. Through technical gimmickry (hardware) you can kinda sorta reproduce the same sound, but not really.

2- our perception of sound and how we process it (psychoacoustics). Neuron action potentials and other interesting stuff.

3- simple physics. A speaker is not a piano, a guitar, or a human voice. Although you can mimic those sounds closely enough that it the differences between live and recorded are almost indetectable to a spectrum analyzer, most people can still hear the difference. Well, except Bose customers anyway.
depotec
19 posts
 
One can monitor the playback head of a Nagra and compare it to the line as well. Amazing machine.
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