Are future improvements in Amp/PreAmps slowing to a crawl?

kosst_amojan

Here is the simplified version:
When a recording is made of a performance in the hall and the sound waves strike the microphone diaphragm 2 bits of data are saved.

1: what is the exact air pressure
2: what is the exact moment in time (for that air pressure reading)

This assumes 2 channel optimum mic placement.
This allows you to triangulate the location of every instrument on stage.
That's it - nothing more nothing less. If you do this correctly you have a piece of acoustic history captured.

Can we agree on that?
Is there anyone reading this post that thinks otherwise?

If you can cause your speakers to produce the same air pressure changes along with the exact times - you have yourself an acoustic clone of that event and you will not be able to tell the difference between the live and the "copy".

That is my goal and I am quickly approaching it.

Roger

When a recording is made of a performance in the hall and the sound waves strike the microphone diaphragm 2 bits of data are saved.

1: what is the exact air pressure
2: what is the exact moment in time (for that air pressure reading)

This assumes 2 channel optimum mic placement.
This allows you to triangulate the location of every instrument on stage.
That's it - nothing more nothing less. If you do this correctly you have a piece of acoustic history captured.

Can we agree on that?
Is there anyone reading this post that thinks otherwise?

It's a well known fact that the Grateful Dead were pioneers in great sound. Their live recordings sound far better than any other bands recorded material. As to their mics, this is an excerpt from wikipedia:

The Wall of Sound acted as its own monitor system, and it was therefore assembled behind the band so the members could hear exactly what their audience was hearing. Because of this, Stanley and Alembic designed a special microphone system to prevent feedback. This placed matched pairs of condenser microphones spaced 60 mm apart and run out of phase. The vocalist sang into the top microphone, and the lower mic picked up whatever other sound was present in the stage environment. The signals were added together using a differential summing amp so that the sound common to both mics (the sound from the Wall) was canceled, and only the vocals were amplified.

@roger_paul 
You talk like you just invented recording. You do realize that there as many variations in microphones as there are in speakers, right? You do understand that the music goes through a chain of equipment at least as complicated as the playback system on it's way to becoming a recording in your hand, don't you? Any competent combination of equipment will faithfully replicate the recorded material. This doesn't take some magic line stage or power amp. You can get away with some quite high distortion and still have convincing playback so long as that distortion is low in order and complexity. It's the complex IM distortion that is very problematic. Nelson's whole approach using very fast FETs and simple topologies goes a long way in avoiding IM altogether. 

As for Owsley's Dead recordings, he was truly the master, but the WoS era isn't so much the jewel on account of him recording the WoS in it's native quad format. The recordings translate to stereo rather poorly. The Meyer Sound era is the best stuff. I've seen the Dead play a big Meyer Sound rig and the recordings are very faithful to that experience. 

kosst_amojan

" You can get away with some quite high distortion and still have convincing playback so long as that distortion is low in order and complexity."

Yes this is a good point but under the conditions you just described you cannot pass the cue that it is live. It requires the distortion levels to be taken down by a massive amount so it can approach the distortion figure of air.

I also mentioned that -
 " If you do this correctly you have a piece of acoustic history captured."

I will be making recordings using the same amplifying method. The interest by Hollywood is already there regarding 3D movies and recording with H-CAT mic preamps. It will save the studios mega bucks in post production because they will not have to manually move objects around the theater so the audience has some illusion of placement. (As in Atmos) This process will project an object back into mid air where it came from all by itself.

As far as mics and speakers well - here goes an explanation that I know is going to cause a riot...

What ever shortcomings a microphone has it is introducing a stable flaw. IOW it does not dynamically modulate the location information. The same holds true for speakers (wait for the riot...)

I know all the arguments already - no need to prove me wrong.

"speakers have a lot of distortion - how do you get around that?"
"midrange info riding on the woofer will cause Doppler"
"phase shift in the crossover will screw up the imaging"

All of those things are true but you need to pay attention to the difference between symmetrical and non-symmetrical phase errors.

To all  -
Well its been cosmic folks - time to get back to work.
I was just coming up for air.

Best thing to do is stay tuned to the web site / watch the news / read the magazines and see where this goes.

A shout out to Miguel at Tripoint audio in Florida who just learned that his house survived Irma.

Amen