Measurements and Our ears

[Jud]

21 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

Perhaps... but perhaps not... Maybe it's there to "creatively" sound like a violin, or it could be an electric violin. Jean Luc Ponty had a certain violin sound that he/his producer wanted to impart, that was certainly different live, and on other recordings...

 

Even Papa John Creach's old blues fiddle is made to sound a little "out there" (to great effect) on some of the early Starship recordings.

 

 

[Albrecht]

15 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

Which generation? I'm talking about the master recording they signed off on. (I know, there may be an issue of who exactly is signing off.) 

Yeah.....

Tough to know. I hear your point and don't disagree... I'm just writing from my perspective as both someone who appreciates great quality playback, AND, creative studio production. IME, I "know" what certain acoustic instruments sound like. But I also appreciate when people make new and interesting sounds and music that make them sound "different" than what most folks would consider "normal." With amplification, we can violate and manipulate the signal from electric instruments. With EQ, & digital file processing, we can manipulate & violate acoustic instruments.

 

From some of the tests that I've heard about, (B&W tests with live piano played first, then recorded, and immediately played back), we see that home stereo systems simply suck at their ability to reproduce a live piano.

 

So, we do our best anyway, maybe even get more information from the creators of the recording themselves, and hopefully along the way, find a playback system that brings out the majority of our music the way we like it, and enhances the music listening experience for us. I enjoy my fav music in my car, on my iphone, in my bedroom.. But I enjoy it more on my main living room rig....

 

 

[Jud]

20 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

Hi,

Which generation? There's what it sounds like in the room, standing in front of the amp. Then there's what it sounds like on the board for the rough mixes. Then, it gets EQ'd before it gets "mixed-in" with the other other instruments: then it gets EQ'd again during mix-down to two channel. Then it gets EQ'd a 4th time at the mastering studio. Then the final CD or digital file generated sounds different yet again.

I can safely say that I've never heard any of my guitars sound the same on my home stereo as it does when I stand in front of my amp....   

 

And in line with the original topic, how interesting that aside from any EQ, the differences between second and succeeding in-studio generations come from equipment that no doubt measures as having inaudible distortion and noise, flat frequency response, etc., coming out of the same speakers; and if you had the very same speakers at home, through electronics that no doubt once again measured audibly noiseless, distortion-free, with level frequency response, it would sound different yet again. (Though admittedly the room would be different; anyone want to wager it would sound like a perfect copy through headphones at the studio and the same headphones at home?)

[Ralf11]

anybody mention the wah-wah pedal yet?

 

the next iteration was to create purely synthetic sounds

 

and BTW, the brain always "adjusts" colors - one reason a photo taken with fluorescent lighting looks so horrible (esp. with film cameras; less so with DSLRs as they process 'better')

 

you can defeat that automatic processing by simply living in a natural environment for several months - on return to civilization and entry into a super market you will see the horrid green light and the buzzing of fl. lights too

 

there are also studies showing a roughly similar sort of accommodation to sound also - (might be a partial answer to the question about leaving equipment on to warm up)