Somehow, I have always strongly believed that it is beneficial, to mind, heart, and soul, to attend live musical performances. Especially, what I feel is the grandest of them all, symphony orchestras, but YMMV.
It has always seemed to me that if you listen to a live type of music, its best in many ways in an actual live performance. (Not all kinds of music are like this. Some music is a form of art that takes months to years to fully realize in a recorded medium--it never existed "live" anywhere.) The live performance is the real thing that a reproduction is merely a fairly limited copy of.
In a number of ways, the true quality of live music cannot in principle or practice be reproduced, even by the best systems, and certainly such systems as you or I know, don't come close.
1) Dynamic range...the awesome dynamics of a live performance are hard to believe beforehand. Even a bit of unnecessary audience noise does not usually obscure this...the awesome low and ethereral background noise and reverberation, contrasted with the mind blowing yet effortless peaks.
2) Lack of interference from in-room reflections and modes...the reflections you hear in a live concert ARE the awesomely low ones of that concert hall itself, which could only be superimposed on the annoying short-delay ones in your listening environment that tend to obscure the various lines of music. The best of the best is the famous Tanglewood. It's entirely open except the front where the orchestra is, and the top, with a higher roof than can be imagined beforehand. The result: complete freedom from audible reverberation. Never have I heard orchestral sections with such clarity. But generally Symphony Halls are very much better than your living room anyway, Tanglewood is just even better than that.
3) Lack of all kinds of audio distortion (any deviation from the original): including accurate pitch (now assumed with digital media but it was not always so), lack of wow, flutter, and jitter (though I think digital jitter is vastly overrated with post 1997 equipment, some earlier equipment was obviously not good, now it's superstition), noise, harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion, (I'm not including the various TIM, SID, etc, because I believe those are properly already part of and included by harmonic distortion and intermodulation distortion) and dynamic modulations of the above (dynamic modulation of the noise level, for example, being more than just noise itself). People think these have all been conquered. The best electronic equipment is probably good enough already, but the inevitable speakers are not, FAR from it, regardless of hype or salesmanship. Nobody denies that speakers can be distinguished blind by trained listeners. And there are the microphones too, they are far from audibly indistiguishable as well, in any honest account.
Now, some may argue that audio reproduction is not perfect, but it's fully "good enough" never to benefit from live performance, which has it's hassles and irritations as well. But it's not clear to me, how you would know that, without having spent much time at both, and when you find people who have done both, they will always say if you love recorded live music, you cannot merely experience it reproduced, you MUST experience live music live also, as much as you can. Such people, including me, will agree with all I've said so far, and may introduce other factors as well:
4) Learning from others. When you attend a live concert, you somehow selected the concert. But you didn't necessarily select all of the music (or any!). And within he musical slections, there are also infinite options: such as to play this phrase louder or softer or faster or slower or with more vibrato... Ultimately, when you attend a live performance, you are giving up some degree of control to someone else, who has selected the music and chosen how to play it. So--you are experiencing someone else's artistic choices. This is good. This is how to experience new things, to learn and grow. Every performance is different, but that does not mean any are wrong, just different. (Sometimes there are wrongs too, but they are so small usually I hardly notice if at all in professional performances.) So each new concert is full of learning, as I have said, for the mind, heart, and soul. Even if it's a work of music you've heard before in it's most definitive performance (of which, there are usually many too). This is true with recorded music also, but you are less open to new things with a piece of recorded music you've heard before. Even within the range of all the recorded versions of something, each new live performance is a new thing, from which new aspects and angles can be learned. And when this is being driven by someone elses choices--it brings greater connection to the world (and we're just talking about the learning aspects of this so far) at the present moment. (Understandings of and intepretations even of music written long ago are constantly evolving. Your favorite iconic recording from 1958 can only reflect the understanding o that time.)
5) Gathering with others, others who share your love of music and live performance. This is not promoted in the USA as well as it was in UK, in my very limited experience there. When any performance ends at The Albert Hall, the bar there opens up, and people hang around for and hour or two afterwards, possibly meeting new similarly minded people. That is how it SHOULD be, IMO. In the USA, when the performance ends, the venue closes, and there are no additional chances to gab with others previously unknown. However, there is the general issue in the USA that the lack of public transportation means that people should be fit to drive. There may be generally smaller groups in the USA as well: more singles. Anyway, the gathering thing even such as it exists is still important, I think any concert fan will tell you.
6) Supporting the art. Great recorded performances of live music aren't created in a vacuum, but in an ecosystem of development which is more supported financially and otherwise by live performance fees than recorded royalties, and the dispersion of this ecosystem of development, keeping it aligned with the heart and soul of every community--absolutely demands local live performances. In effect, those who listen to recorded music alone are "free riders" taking advantage of the musicians and the development of music itself that live performance actually makes possible. Furthermore, even more "concertgoers" are essential in that development, by responding differentially to what resonates with them.
Now, some people aren't impressed by such things as 4-6. They express "I already know/have what I want" and "What's in it for me" attitudes. These are short sighted and selfish, and some people may be shortsighted and selfish in one or more ways. There is nothing positive to be said about short sightedness or selfishness, however, and it would be better to help dissuade people from such mindsets, with better music education for example, for starters. I myself am writing this post to help understand these issues and persuade as well.
A critical thing for me is (4) and things related to it, and a broader theme I've been hoping to develop:
There is isn't really only one Absolute Sound.
I mean this in a variety of ways. Firstly, and with greatest import, we never experience anything the same way twice! Each experience is colored by the memories and thinking that goes with it. If we listen to something a second time, our memories and thinking have already been changed by hearing it the previous time, as well as all other thoughts and experiences in the interval.
Orchestra Maestro's often exploit this fact with a trick, they play every totally new work of music (which the audience will necessarily never have heard before, because it has never been played before) twice. Sometimes without warning. It is always said, and I have always experienced it, as not just a different piece of music, but totally different in a large number of ways. Perhaps a different genre, for example. It is then a shocking surprise that it was actually the same work of music, played the same, as much as humanly possible.
Now each new performance, or even audition, will highlight different things. This is all the more true if there are deliberate or unavoidable changes. This change in the highlighting of different things is not a disadvantage, it is a path to greater learning, personal resonance, and attachment.
It is claimed by some that music is art, but reproduction is just engineering. This is wrong in many ways, but principally in that it reflect this obsession with the Absolute Sound, as it was laid down, in one way, at one time.
But the very essence of the true absolute sound, is that it is NEVER exactly the same. So in freezing a slice of the past, and not permitting any deviation, we are also destroying its very essence.
Thus I have already argued that at least in this one way, analog reproduction, through turntable or tape, is more like live sound precisely in the fact that it is never twice the same. Everytime it is slightly different, highlighting things slightly differently, and helping to enhance a broader understanding of the music itself, even if recorded at one long lost slice in time long ago.
Now all this being said, I do appreciate the effortless noise and distortion free character of digital recorded sound anyway. I'm not saying we need turntables (though some people do) to stir things up. But what I'm trying to open people's mind to, is that there is an advantage of listening to the same thing (not that other things might often be better) in different ways. Not always on closest-to-perfection system A, but pleasant and surrounding system B, for example. Neither one is an absolute, but they complement each other by shining light through different facets. And certainly neither is perfect either.
Ultimately, the absolute, is only in one's mind, and it is the sum of all the experiences of something, different or similar as they may be.
I also feel strongly that as the ultimate executive designer of all my audio systems, I am an artist also, extracting from cans and making virtual performances, each one different.
I was going to say a lot about how perception itself is not a passive thing, music does not strain through us like as a feeder fish, but a constructive thing, each time we construct the sound and the meaning and from only a small part of the available information, and never exactly the same parts. It is this ultimate construction, in our minds and hearts, that is the ultimate art of music, and it includes every being in that chain, including ourselves.
Now, certainly, in a live performance, you have a whole variety of tools you can use. Every slight change in angle of your head, for example, brings a different set of information of which a stereo recording can only have one version. You are choosing how to sample from a much larger sphere of information. And your eyes and body are part of the whole sensation as well.
So the difference between recorded and live is as that between swimming in a fishbowl and swimming in an ocean, as far as the variety of direct information that is available. A reproducing system can, at best, only produce the perfect fishbowl, and the truth is, nothing even comes close to that. Audio reproduction is fundamentally an illusion, not true recreation of an infinitely complex soundfield.
It has always seemed to me that if you listen to a live type of music, its best in many ways in an actual live performance. (Not all kinds of music are like this. Some music is a form of art that takes months to years to fully realize in a recorded medium--it never existed "live" anywhere.) The live performance is the real thing that a reproduction is merely a fairly limited copy of.
In a number of ways, the true quality of live music cannot in principle or practice be reproduced, even by the best systems, and certainly such systems as you or I know, don't come close.
1) Dynamic range...the awesome dynamics of a live performance are hard to believe beforehand. Even a bit of unnecessary audience noise does not usually obscure this...the awesome low and ethereral background noise and reverberation, contrasted with the mind blowing yet effortless peaks.
2) Lack of interference from in-room reflections and modes...the reflections you hear in a live concert ARE the awesomely low ones of that concert hall itself, which could only be superimposed on the annoying short-delay ones in your listening environment that tend to obscure the various lines of music. The best of the best is the famous Tanglewood. It's entirely open except the front where the orchestra is, and the top, with a higher roof than can be imagined beforehand. The result: complete freedom from audible reverberation. Never have I heard orchestral sections with such clarity. But generally Symphony Halls are very much better than your living room anyway, Tanglewood is just even better than that.
3) Lack of all kinds of audio distortion (any deviation from the original): including accurate pitch (now assumed with digital media but it was not always so), lack of wow, flutter, and jitter (though I think digital jitter is vastly overrated with post 1997 equipment, some earlier equipment was obviously not good, now it's superstition), noise, harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion, (I'm not including the various TIM, SID, etc, because I believe those are properly already part of and included by harmonic distortion and intermodulation distortion) and dynamic modulations of the above (dynamic modulation of the noise level, for example, being more than just noise itself). People think these have all been conquered. The best electronic equipment is probably good enough already, but the inevitable speakers are not, FAR from it, regardless of hype or salesmanship. Nobody denies that speakers can be distinguished blind by trained listeners. And there are the microphones too, they are far from audibly indistiguishable as well, in any honest account.
Now, some may argue that audio reproduction is not perfect, but it's fully "good enough" never to benefit from live performance, which has it's hassles and irritations as well. But it's not clear to me, how you would know that, without having spent much time at both, and when you find people who have done both, they will always say if you love recorded live music, you cannot merely experience it reproduced, you MUST experience live music live also, as much as you can. Such people, including me, will agree with all I've said so far, and may introduce other factors as well:
4) Learning from others. When you attend a live concert, you somehow selected the concert. But you didn't necessarily select all of the music (or any!). And within he musical slections, there are also infinite options: such as to play this phrase louder or softer or faster or slower or with more vibrato... Ultimately, when you attend a live performance, you are giving up some degree of control to someone else, who has selected the music and chosen how to play it. So--you are experiencing someone else's artistic choices. This is good. This is how to experience new things, to learn and grow. Every performance is different, but that does not mean any are wrong, just different. (Sometimes there are wrongs too, but they are so small usually I hardly notice if at all in professional performances.) So each new concert is full of learning, as I have said, for the mind, heart, and soul. Even if it's a work of music you've heard before in it's most definitive performance (of which, there are usually many too). This is true with recorded music also, but you are less open to new things with a piece of recorded music you've heard before. Even within the range of all the recorded versions of something, each new live performance is a new thing, from which new aspects and angles can be learned. And when this is being driven by someone elses choices--it brings greater connection to the world (and we're just talking about the learning aspects of this so far) at the present moment. (Understandings of and intepretations even of music written long ago are constantly evolving. Your favorite iconic recording from 1958 can only reflect the understanding o that time.)
5) Gathering with others, others who share your love of music and live performance. This is not promoted in the USA as well as it was in UK, in my very limited experience there. When any performance ends at The Albert Hall, the bar there opens up, and people hang around for and hour or two afterwards, possibly meeting new similarly minded people. That is how it SHOULD be, IMO. In the USA, when the performance ends, the venue closes, and there are no additional chances to gab with others previously unknown. However, there is the general issue in the USA that the lack of public transportation means that people should be fit to drive. There may be generally smaller groups in the USA as well: more singles. Anyway, the gathering thing even such as it exists is still important, I think any concert fan will tell you.
6) Supporting the art. Great recorded performances of live music aren't created in a vacuum, but in an ecosystem of development which is more supported financially and otherwise by live performance fees than recorded royalties, and the dispersion of this ecosystem of development, keeping it aligned with the heart and soul of every community--absolutely demands local live performances. In effect, those who listen to recorded music alone are "free riders" taking advantage of the musicians and the development of music itself that live performance actually makes possible. Furthermore, even more "concertgoers" are essential in that development, by responding differentially to what resonates with them.
Now, some people aren't impressed by such things as 4-6. They express "I already know/have what I want" and "What's in it for me" attitudes. These are short sighted and selfish, and some people may be shortsighted and selfish in one or more ways. There is nothing positive to be said about short sightedness or selfishness, however, and it would be better to help dissuade people from such mindsets, with better music education for example, for starters. I myself am writing this post to help understand these issues and persuade as well.
A critical thing for me is (4) and things related to it, and a broader theme I've been hoping to develop:
There is isn't really only one Absolute Sound.
I mean this in a variety of ways. Firstly, and with greatest import, we never experience anything the same way twice! Each experience is colored by the memories and thinking that goes with it. If we listen to something a second time, our memories and thinking have already been changed by hearing it the previous time, as well as all other thoughts and experiences in the interval.
Orchestra Maestro's often exploit this fact with a trick, they play every totally new work of music (which the audience will necessarily never have heard before, because it has never been played before) twice. Sometimes without warning. It is always said, and I have always experienced it, as not just a different piece of music, but totally different in a large number of ways. Perhaps a different genre, for example. It is then a shocking surprise that it was actually the same work of music, played the same, as much as humanly possible.
Now each new performance, or even audition, will highlight different things. This is all the more true if there are deliberate or unavoidable changes. This change in the highlighting of different things is not a disadvantage, it is a path to greater learning, personal resonance, and attachment.
It is claimed by some that music is art, but reproduction is just engineering. This is wrong in many ways, but principally in that it reflect this obsession with the Absolute Sound, as it was laid down, in one way, at one time.
But the very essence of the true absolute sound, is that it is NEVER exactly the same. So in freezing a slice of the past, and not permitting any deviation, we are also destroying its very essence.
Thus I have already argued that at least in this one way, analog reproduction, through turntable or tape, is more like live sound precisely in the fact that it is never twice the same. Everytime it is slightly different, highlighting things slightly differently, and helping to enhance a broader understanding of the music itself, even if recorded at one long lost slice in time long ago.
Now all this being said, I do appreciate the effortless noise and distortion free character of digital recorded sound anyway. I'm not saying we need turntables (though some people do) to stir things up. But what I'm trying to open people's mind to, is that there is an advantage of listening to the same thing (not that other things might often be better) in different ways. Not always on closest-to-perfection system A, but pleasant and surrounding system B, for example. Neither one is an absolute, but they complement each other by shining light through different facets. And certainly neither is perfect either.
Ultimately, the absolute, is only in one's mind, and it is the sum of all the experiences of something, different or similar as they may be.
I also feel strongly that as the ultimate executive designer of all my audio systems, I am an artist also, extracting from cans and making virtual performances, each one different.
I was going to say a lot about how perception itself is not a passive thing, music does not strain through us like as a feeder fish, but a constructive thing, each time we construct the sound and the meaning and from only a small part of the available information, and never exactly the same parts. It is this ultimate construction, in our minds and hearts, that is the ultimate art of music, and it includes every being in that chain, including ourselves.
Now, certainly, in a live performance, you have a whole variety of tools you can use. Every slight change in angle of your head, for example, brings a different set of information of which a stereo recording can only have one version. You are choosing how to sample from a much larger sphere of information. And your eyes and body are part of the whole sensation as well.
So the difference between recorded and live is as that between swimming in a fishbowl and swimming in an ocean, as far as the variety of direct information that is available. A reproducing system can, at best, only produce the perfect fishbowl, and the truth is, nothing even comes close to that. Audio reproduction is fundamentally an illusion, not true recreation of an infinitely complex soundfield.
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