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From: reid@decwrl.UUCP (Brian Reid)
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: live vs. recorded: a recent experience
Message-ID: <4901@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Jan-84 00:43:39 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.4901
Posted: Wed Jan 18 00:43:39 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Jan-84 06:12:08 EST
Organization: DEC Western Research Lab, Los Altos, CA
Lines: 57

As a diversion, I run a small record label in the hours I don't spend
working at Stanford. I am a fanatic for sound quality, and since it is my
money I insist on proof-listening everything. Before I approve the next
step, I listen to master tapes, mixes, reference lacquer pressings, test
pressings, and so forth. I have spent a lot of time in the last 3 years
teaching myself how to be a better "critical listener", and I like to think
I'm pretty good at it by now.

I enjoy George Winston's piano music. [lest someone pigeonhole my tastes, I
also enjoy The Dregs, Otis Redding, and most opera]. Winston records on
Windham Hill, a local Palo Alto outfit that goes to the same extremes that I
do to produce ultra-quality recordings.

When I buy a new record, my usual practice is to play it once on a B&O
turntable, recording it on my Nakamichi 680 onto TDK-MAR-90 cassettes. I
then listen to the cassettes through my Hafler 220 poweramp and KEF 103.2
speakers or AKG-K240 headphones. [now you know my various votes for the most
cost-effective quality available to people who are trying to make mortgage
payments and raise small children.]

Last Fall I went on a real binge of listening to George Winston tapes. At
least once a day, more like twice, I played the @i[December] and @i[Autumn]
albums. Until I had them completely memorized. Every tone and overtone,
every timing nuance, every resonance, the sound of fingernails hitting keys.
Sometimes I almost didn't need to put the tape on in order to hear the sound
in my mind.

Just after Thanksgiving a friend got some tickets to a George Winston
concert in San Francisco at Symphony Hall. The stage was bare, save for a
wonderful old Steinway and a soft-spoken barefoot Winston. There were 2 AKG
(i.e. "good") microphones, one for his voice and one for the piano strings. 
Small monitor speakers, which looked like JBL's, were set up at opposite
ends of the stage.

I really enjoyed the concert, but the sound quality was MUCH better in my
living room than it was in my 10th-row near-center concert hall seat. I
know what good Steinways sound like, I know what bad Steinways sound like,
and this was neither. San Francisco's symphony hall (Louise M. Davies Hall)
has a reputation for generally good acoustics, and we were sitting in very
choice seats. 

So what was wrong? My theory is that there were two problems, namely a
frequency-related phasing error in the sound reinforcement system, and a
serious all-frequency phasing error between the speakers and the actual
piano. I kept wanting to run up and unplug the microphones and dash back to
my seat, to see if that made the sound quality better.

Has anybody else experienced anything similar? I have been to rock
concerts in which the "live" sound bore no relation to the recorded sound I
was used to hearing from that group, but I don't think that was so much an
acoustic phenomenon or a sound-reproduction problem as it was a difference
in the audio effects and the mixing; I believe this piano problem is
something else.

	Brian Reid
	Stanford
	..decwrl!glacier!reid