Why should we think of "what microphones heard " as a standard


when they are incapable of hearing everything there is to hear ?
Even some Audiogon yellow badges members can possibly hear better.
inna
Let's not slide into tape/vinyl debate. As for Pink Floyd, DSOTM and WUWH are not good recordings, to put it mildly, whatever the reasons. If the very best microphones were made decades ago, what have they been doing ever since ?
@inna

I don’t want to hijack your thread really, but I honestly think you may be looking at the problem the wrong way.

Although I agree with bdp24’s post above, And that we, as you say, we only need good enough ears, I don’t think of this as a mic issue, but instead a "noise floor" issue and with all the sound benefits related to it. We don’t need better mics, we need a greatly reduced noise floor...and far better than most systems, for example, ever achieve...and even though at the same time we could turn around and say the same thing about the recording chain and it would be no less true.

All the hardware/wiring that could ever comprise a playback system though, whoever made it or however much or however little it costs, can only create a doorway for the signal to go through, that’s all. But, it will still be up to that signal to get through that doorway unscathed. Good luck with that. There is so much of the music signal, no matter what our source type, that is never even making it to the drivers, trust me...even under the best of circumstances. In fact, there ARE no best of circumstances, there never were...another myth IMV that deserves to be busted.

We would prefer to think of those loses that the signal encounters going through a system (Any system) as small. But, nothing could be further from the truth, I think. Once restored, I’ve found those loses to be staggering. And I think with proper amounts of noise floor reduction (passive, active or both), you will undeniably see A LOT more agreement between what the mic hears and what our (ordinary) ears hear...but, until and unless that happens, likely not.

And having lived with that difference under my roof for the last year or so to the degree I now have it, then what can I tell you about it and why should anyone care? Well...let’s start with that gulf that has Always existed between you and the performers...the ones you keep saying you are getting closer to, but never actually get there. What would you say if I told you that you can 100% erase that gulf - and do so WITHOUT relying on hyperbole. That And hearing everything the mic heard. That stuff (and more) is just for openers once you cross into the territory of what might be to gain by substantially reducing the noise floor. But, if you want the dope on all that, then you should go over to Alan Maher Designs (facebook) and go down that rabbit hole if you like, as I did. But, be prepared (in the long run, at least) to bring your wallet if you want to make the full run of it.

It’s a pretty cool time to be in this hobby at present. And the voices that have been calling on reducing the noise floor are becoming a little louder and more frequent. We see many threads on things like fuses, mats and other things that are finding new ways to take advantage of new materials like nano-carbon fiber, graphene, highly conductive ceramics and so forth that are becoming more available. I’ve been pretty optimistic for what the future of all that might yet bring for more people, both to the playback And to the recording side.

Regards
The OP needs to do some more research on recording tech.  The premise is false.

A recording engineer can listen to the musicians directly and then compare that to the microphone feed (mic, mic preamp, cables, console, power amp and loudspeaker).  The engineer doesn't have to speculate or theorize, they can hear if there is any difference.

inna, the Pink Floyd recordings you cite were made long before their London studio was built, and were recorded in other studios.

Where did you get the idea that microphones are the bottleneck in the recording process? Most commercial studios have a whole plethora of mics, different ones preferred for different applications. Each has a response characteristics that makes it more suitable for one instrument than another. Mica are transducers, just like loudspeakers, but in reverse. And just as do loudspeakers, they all sound a little different. Some are known to be highly neutral in timbre, others somewhat colored. Lots of recording engineers like the Shure SM57 as a snare drum mic because of it’s slight presence peak, which makes the drum "pop" more in the mix. No one thinks of that mic as a sound "standard", but there are mics that are.

As onhwy61 mentioned, Doug Sax (Sheffield Labs) tested mics (and other pieces of recording and playback gear) by doing a by-pass test. He would listen to the musician’s in his studio, then move into the control booth to compare the live sound to that coming out of his monitors (custom built horns, by the way). Doug was after maximum transparency and life-like timbre (not all engineers are), evaluating each pieces by how little it changed the sound in ways other than it’s intended purpose.

The reason John Bonham’s drums sound the way they do on Led Zeppelin’s recordings is not because of the mics used to capture their sound, but rather how those mics were employed. Bonham wanted a "big" drum sound, so he played his drums undamped (no muffling used, leading to an open, ringing sound), the opposite of Ringo and Levon Helm (The Band). Then his engineers didn’t use close-micing (putting each mic right up against the drum head), but rather put a number of mics a fair distance away from the drums, with "room" mics placed even further away. That increased the room-to-drum ratio/balance, and required Bonham to create his own balance between the different drums and cymbals---the balance couldn’t be "fixed in the mix". There is much more that can be said on the subject, as it is a large one.

The CD that Tony Minasian put out recently, Drums & Bells, which has  tremendous dynamic range, was recorded with one of his cheaper mics. 
Tony told me it cost under $50. 

It all lies with the engineer and how he records it.

All the best,
Nonoise