HiFi & Sound reproduction

[pastoralguy]

Here, here Alpine.

[MrGongGong]

Dear, dear dear. You have simply reaped what you have sown. If you can't stand the heat...........

Now, if you have a MESSAGE, I am sure someone will read it; especially if you type it out carefully and use the right words to express yourself.

(Boot? Foot? Other?)

I think you need to read the rules my friend

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?2547-Terms-amp-Conditions-Moderation-and-House-Rules&p=65658#post65658

[jayne lee wilson]

FFS
no one suggested that it was "pointless" using high quality recording and playback devices

It's not "playing games" either

Some people don't like to see their cultural assumptions challenged

Maybe take it to a separate thread ?


(i'm still puzzled by what you mean by "manipulated" and spare me the patronising crap about writing in English , this is a MESSAGEBOARD not a Phd seminar !)



Of course it is

YOu might think that what music is , is somehow a fixed thing that we all understand. But , I can assure you that this is far from the case...

Dear GG - You use an epigrammatic, generalised style for these posts, setting yourself up as a subversive analyst of "received ideas" - but that very style makes YOUR ideas hard to understand. Saying "all is real, the wombles are real puppets" but then worrying about how people "conflate the live experience and the recorded" is too opaque & contradictory to reason with. If "all is real", why should this live/recorded distinction matter to YOU?

It's no good getting cross if others don't accept your ideas; you either elaborate and try to reason it out or you don't. If you don't....

[MrGongGong]

I'm not cross about it
and they aren't "my"ideas
as someone who works with recordings as part of composing music , with field recordings and "live" electronics etc the whole are of what "live" means is very interesting to me. This is a general discussion ?
I don't see any contradiction in thinking that electronic music (like wot you get on CDs) is real and stating that , unlike in the visual arts, people seem to have a problem in music with the idea of a recording being something other than a performance document. Its a long time since I read Walter Benjamin but I think there is something in The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction about this
and also much to think about here

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754655480

I might be vague at times
but some people are just rude

[johnb]

Dear, dear dear. You have simply reaped what you have sown. If you can't stand the heat...........

Now, if you have a MESSAGE, I am sure someone will read it; especially if you type it out carefully and use the right words to express yourself.

(Boot? Foot? Other?)

IMO this is verging on being rudely offensive and the thread is beginning to resemble a p*ssing contest.

Please be courteous.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Yes. I've often thought that Karajan's finest recording were those he made for Decca.

[Dave2002]

The suggestion has been made, and echoed by at least one other, that it is pointless trying to make a 'realistic' reproduction of a piece of music. The whole idea of 'realism' has been mocked and those who seek realism derided. Is there any wonder that the OP has abandoned his thread which was presumably meant to be a serious search for information. It has been thoroughly hijacked by people intent on issuing snide remarks and blatantly playing games. You only need to look at the number of posts they have made and the scant regard for grammar and accuracy to understand what their motives are - and it is not to help others.

Please understand Dave that I am not pointing my finger at you. I do realise that you asked a couple of 'sucker' questions earlier on but then you quite reasonably came clean about it.


I'm not sure what prompted that question. Classical music is littered with folk tunes and copied phrases. Anyone who makes a montage or an altered version, remastered version etc is making a new work of art. I have no problem with that whatsoever. What got me started in classical music was 'Switched on Bach'! My point, because of this thread, has always been that MY aim in listening to reproduced music is to hear it as faithfully to the original art work as possible. By 'original' I do not just mean the composers original score and period instruments I mean any version of it. I don't see how that can be made any more clear.

Egad, it must be the heat. I have no idea what you mean by 'sucker' questions. I assume you used that phrase as a term of endearment.

Possibly if we were all co-located we could explain things to each other much more effectively, but there seem to have been some different assumptions and ideas made in this discussion which have caused confusion, upset, entrenched positions and doubtless a lot more.

I am with you and Jayne in wanting to hear the "best" quality sound where possible. Mr GG's point is that "best" is contextual. I'm not going to go into the "real/realistic ..." discussion, but I have a lot of sympathy with Mr GG's view, and it should not be ignored/disregarded. We can explore it again later, if you wish.

Regarding the cost of equipment it does not always follow that higher prices imply better quality, but generally they might. In that context I'd rather hear a £30k system than a £100 one. However, some people simply think "it's the music that matters", and don't care if they listen on a small system, in mono, or on a transistor radio. Even Jayne has confessed to that. Some musicians like hi-fi, while many just want to hear the outline of the piece, and can tolerate what you might call low quality equipment.

Some of Mr GG's points are perfectly valid, but he's coming from a completely different direction. I suspect he likes what you would call high quality sound too, but he may also enjoy other things. Did you realise that some pop music in relatively recent years has been influenced by digital compression? Some people apparently liked the sound of MP3 compressed music, so artists started making recordings which included that extra level of distortion. I hate that idea, but if they wanted to express themselves in that way, who am I to stop them?

Helping people to enjoy "good" things is OK, dictating that they have to listen to sounds or appreciate music in the same way that you do is not. Hence my comment about a musical police state.

There are issues about live versus recorded sound, and about edited versions of recordings. I go to concerts, and generally, but not always, enjoy them. Sometimes the sound quality exceeds anything one could ever hear from "hi-fi", and sometimes it is miserably awful. Go to hear a string quartet in a school hall, for example. The music making may be superb, but let down by the hall.

I have recordings which are "live" and indeed I listened to one yesterday. I was surprised that the audience applause at the end had been taken out - it felt odd. On the other hand, recordings which have obvious technical flaws, either recording flaws or performance flaws can be frustrating. If someone has been kind enough to "correct" the short comings then many people might be grateful.

Yet a further point is that we can accept technical limitations by musicians in a live performance which we would not like in a recording. The same performers may perform differently on different days. Some days may feel magical, others not. Oddly enough for one of my bugbear pieces - the Queen of the Night aria - one of the best technical performances I ever heard was actually live. A stunning feat. Or maybe I was just carried away with the overall performance. I really don't like many recorded performances of that - they don't match up to my ideal, and very few singers have the technical ability to get it to work. Whatever was Mozart thinking of?

A point has been made about recording in venues, and that some won't work. However, as an end user, a consumer, I and others have no significant ways of influencing this. There have been recordings and performances of Mahler's 8th symphony done in locations such as Liverpool Cathedral, St Pauls and I believe Symphony Hall Birmingham. Often the costs of putting on such events is so large that if a recording is to be made it has to be done during the same time period. There have also been recordings, such as of Saint Saëns third symphony, where some component is missing - in this case the organ part, and added in later, so there never was a live event. Some of them work well.

I do not have the power, nor the financial resources, to coerce a group of musicians to perform a large scale piece that I might like in a venue of my choice. Hence the only choice I can reasonably make regarding recordings of large scale works, or events associated with them, is to either buy the recording or not, or to attend the event, or not. This applies to works such as Mahler's 8th, Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony, Fould's World Requiem.

It's getting cooler now, maybe, so perhaps some of the problems which have afflicted this thread or the one it was separated from, will now abate.