[LAU] How bad is mp3/ogg

[Hartmut Noack]

Am 12.10.2011 23:31, schrieb Monty Montgomery:
>> I tend to think, that such reservations have to do with the way, music is
>> made fit for the market. If a recording is really "HiFi" in the sense of the
>> word, it does not only spoil the expectations of most listeners, it is hard
>> to reproduce with average equipment also. Thus such recordings are no
>> products that can be sold to everybody easily.
>
> Indeed, 'video' and 'photo-graphs' are also utterly inadequate as
> compared to the original experience and should be shunned.  Indeed,
> the printed word itself is but a pale shadow of the original unspoken
> idea.
>
> Personally I find life is far richer with all of the above.  I never
> fail to be impressed at the lengths snobbery goes toward rationalizing
> itself (rhetorical comment, not actually aimed at you Hartmut).

This is a case of misunderstanding most probably rooted in my poor 
English: I did NOT say, that recordings are a bad/inferior thing. I just 
said, that they differ from the experience, the original performance 
creates. And I said, that recording is an art in its own right. I tried 
to say, that recordings can be works of art, that cannot be replaced by 
live performance. The same as films can be works of art, that cannot be 
replaced by actors on a stage playing live.

Recordings can be great, even better than a live-experience. Anyway they 
should be. While they lack the physical power of a live-performance they 
can have lots of other qualities that live-performances cannot.

>
> On a lighter note:
>
>> Some younger drummers and guitar-players I recorded have made a long
>> face when they heard their playing for the first time reproduced by my
>> nearfield-monitors. They simply where disappointed, that my 8"-Speakers
>> did not sound "the same as powerful" as their 4x12"-stack or their 24"
>> bass-drum. Its physics -- baby ;-)
>
> Hmph, you should easily be able to get more wattage out of a proper
> driver than a bass drum.  That's engineering, Sir.

I admit, that I am not top-notch when it comes to recording drums. I do 
not have the gear and not enough experience to do such jobs as good as 
Albini can. Very well but: many engineers tend to trigger-mic the 
drum-set and use samples to make drums "sound right". So it seems to be 
not the most easy part of a rock-band recording. Anyway, I never heard a 
bass-drum, that really sounded like the punch-samples from the Alesis 
D4-sets ;-)

At the other hand: If a guitar-player stands within hand-reach of a 
4x12"-stack playing on 10 and a minute later hears the result on 2x8" 
the difference is inevitable.

Also I do not think, that it is wise to make musicians a little happier 
by raising the volume of the monitors to make it sound "more real". In 
the end a recording is made for people, that use middle-class stereos at 
50% volume in the best of cases and 3.99-earplugs playing MP3 in the 
worst. Such equipment cannot produce the same physical effects a 
4x12"-stack can produce.

>
> (IMHBCO, it's generally not the inadequacy of the recording but the
> fact that the recoding does not bundle along the original context of
> the performance. The context carries the greater power).

One more thing, that only live-performance can do. And a pro for 
recordings also: in a recording one can fiddle and re-take as long as 
everything is the way it should be. Live is live: one of the players 
having his/her bad day, stupids in the audience, a broken monitor or 
anything else that can happen in real live (but not in a studio) can 
destroy the experience.

Once I saw Neil Young playing Like a hurrican as the last encore and my 
word is good: he managed it to play about 10 minutes of solo with 2 
strings broken. It was great. He was accompanied by the boys of Pearl 
Jam and they mentioned the situation with awe. Still I dare to believe, 
that even he would have changed the strings when he would have played it 
in a studio-session ;-)

>
> Monty
>

best regs

HZN