 I just wanted to add some other perspectives to the comments:
* To me, no system, regardless of price or fame, has ever approached the sheer impact and electrifying intensity of "live" instruments reverbrating in a real performance venue. Even an amateurish band using lousy amplification and acoustic instruments performing in a lousy acoustic environment, impresses my ears with the sheer punch, presence, immediacy and spontaneity that underlies the very spirit of music making and sharing. The visual aspect of seeing music being performed is also something that can never be reproduced in an audio-only system and I won't want to compare it to "live" music. * Often, I enjoy a good concert video (LD, DVD or even VCD) on my hi-fi TV, more than the exact same song on the cd (studio or "live") version, because of the added imagery. Seeing how passionate a singer enunciates every vowel and syllable, enjoying her beauty while singing, wowing at the speed at which a guitarist actually churns out 16-beats per second notes, etc, more than makes up for the lack of fidelity of a tv's sound system! So ironic an effect on me that for many years I gave up trying to get that kind of gratification through any hi fi! * Although I have what I consider to be a fairly musical (the kind that makes you dance, groove and tap your feet with fast music, and sob when the music/lyrics are touching, rather than worry about why that last shimmer of the cymbals wasn't reproduced better by the silk dome tweeter) system which I spent quite a lot of time and money on, I dare say I am slowly being drawn away from it to my other setup -- a more modest, less painstakingly set up 5.1 surround sound DSP system. I swear by Yamaha's DSP processing, and if you tune the various parameters just right, you can make stereo music so much more enjoyable through just four loudspeakers (two front, two rear). For me, even the most expensive most musical sound system with the deepest widest highest soundstage, will still not match the goose-pimple inducing power of four real loudspeakers playing the same music with a solid DSP processor. Furthermore, with DSP, the user chooses the venue to hear any piece of music in, and in the process of tinkering with delay, echo, reverb timings, etc, is also effectively dealing with the sonic problems/limitations of the listening environment. This experience for me, is akin to the example of getting more satisfaction from watching a good concert instead of just hearing it. In this case, having more ambience and other spatial cues around me makes my ears more forgiving about frequency response anomalies and/or other system-dependent weaknesses! I have also been experimenting with DTS-encoded audio CDs (from Telarc and independent labels) and when true surround information is included in the system, there's no longer any need to debate whether "live" music is better or different or worse than "recorded" music. In my humble opinion, stereo music is passe, and multi-channel recordings are the future. * That's why I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of DVD-A or surround DSD, which marry high sound quality with the powerful impact of surround sound and video. When recorded music is accompanied by visuals, and is reproduced in multi-speaker environments with or without added DSP processing, and is readily available to ordinary people without exhorbitant prices, that's when the recording (and audiophile) industry has come of age. |
What real music performance able to overwhelm is, in general its sound wave is directly transmitted to the audience's ears in "original" form. Whereas the record music, further colored sound is usually produced due to the final process of music reproduction by playing back is significantly influenced by a number of elements e.g. the quality and combination of the hi-fi system, placement of each system component, and also subject to the listening room acoustic effect and restriction, etc. Last but not the least, the quality of music reproduction also has high dependency on the same elements mentioned above.
Yes - I once went to Kenny G's concert. The amplification was set up in a way to blow up the auditorium. What made it more miserable was, I paid more to sit at the front next to the sea of speakers....it was a torture to my hearing and I'm afraid listening to his CD is more pleasant. I think this happen to most live band performance with amplifications. Attending live concert of this sort is more to get the atmosphere or mood. There's no 'soundstage', no 'focus' etc in audiophiles's term....You get it from CD probably because the recording engineer 'wants' you to hear that?
