Do you honestly believe you can get close to "live"? + other contentious stuff

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Rodney_gold

R.I.P. 5 June 2018
Joined
Jul 10, 2008
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What a load of bull , this "recreating" live stuff is.
I mean sonically , unless the music is unamplified , where has a live performance ever come close to the better sonics than a recording.?
Live is an experience where one more sense is used other than listening , and the thrill of live comes from seeing the performer , the small imperfections , the snot en trane and sweat and the buzz of the place .
However , I think there is a sort of path to re-creating live by getting to a place in your audio where the recording becomes believable.
If the timbre and attack and soundstaging and imaging are all in confluence , then one can close ones eyes and believe we are there , but bear in mind one shuts one sense down and are deliberately fooling ourselves :)

Another "myth" in hifi is this "stright wire with gain" thing. Yeh , its great to hear the recording just as it was laid down , warts and all , yeh , thats HIFI but its not audiophile nirvana. I mean the recording starts out coloured with the mic and then goes thru all sorts of enhancement, so if the recording engineer can do that , why cant we?
So this leads me on to my next thing - tone controls..........
To cointinued , we as audiophiles then futz around with all sorts of stuff to colour the sound to what we think was the original event's sonics
We do  amps , cables , isolators and all sorts of stuff to get the colorations just right.........
Yeh , there are "colourations" you cant fix or recreate with tone controls , like the sound a valve makes etc , but there are a lot you can.
These days doing parametric EQ in the digital domain can be quite cheap , behringer and others make units that enable you to eq without
losses" or make the eq far more transparent.
So now haul out a early 80's recording , typical drek.........and beleive it or not with some simple Eq's you can make it listenable and enjoyable....
So you have a bass problem in the room , you can surgically excise that node with a parametric EQ
Want a customiseable loudness button for low level listening (your ear is less sensitive to both bass and treble at lowDb's) - hey presto- you got one
A little judicious usage of a tone control should not cause angst in that you are not being true to the faith and your purity might be questioned and g-d forbid , you should be hailed as less than golden eared .......:) So where's all this straight wire with gain and no tone control nonsense come from?

My "dealer horror story" , some years ago , I made an appointment to audition some speakers , rode out like 40kms to do so on my Yammy FZR1000 , rocked up to the dealer in full leathers , was looked up and down and was told "Im sorry we have to reschedule the audition cos we have another serious customer coming in soon to listen to same speakers". I walked out and have never returned and have spent a lot of moolah on systems since than , but never with them............
Don't salesppl EVER learn " Don't judge a book by it's cover"!!!!!!!!!!!!

Car sound.......I have heard some systems in cars that sound a lot better than some seriously good home based systems so decided to get my v8 el camino bakkie(Im also into cars) fitted out , and my instruction to the installer was " I do NOT want doef doef , but want clarity and tight bass" and was shocked at how good this guy got it. I listen with Senheisser phones and a good headphone amp , and lemme tell you this was as close as it gets to being in the headphones. And it was quite cheap too - it was some lightening strike amps , a small underdash "sub" and MB quart speakers and a JVC player. I think I paid less than 15k for it all and it was the best bang for the buck I have ever spent in Audio. Some modern cars , like my wifes eurotrash Scenic , actually have good systems in em already.

Cars-- dunno if anyone else here is into cars/performance etc .....my passion is V8 muscle and I dont drive a "normal" car , I have 400hp 1980 vette , a 300 hp el Camino and an insane 7.5l (454) 500hp , 800 nm El Camino that gets at best 3k/l but is a total blast to drive......I like old school V8 stuff cos of it's grunt , the looks and the cheap cost to repair and hop em up but mostly I like V8's cos of the noise they make, better than any sound system......
PS all my cars cost me less than a middle of the road quasi executive type car woulda and they are all paid for and insurance is cheap .....so they use a load of fuel , but its still a lot cheaper than a 250k car costs to finance , insure and run.
Heres a pic of the Vette and the insane elky



 
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