"I am there" vs. "They are here"

Rwbadley: Not wacky. A couple of years ago we brought in a string trio to play for a function at our house, and they were seated in the area of the living room right in-between the system and where my listening chair normally resides. I was a little surprised during their performances to realize that if I closed my eyes while listening to them play, I couldn't really locate the individual players in space with any sense of precision.

In fact, not only wasn't there a feeling of 'pinpoint imaging', but I also couldn't describe the sound as being 'detailed', 'present', 'bloomy', 'finely resolved', blah blah blah etc. I couldn't even say it seemed especially dynamically unrestricted compared to playing recordings through my system in the same space. Rather, it sounded quite unremarkable from a standpoint of audiophile terminology - somewhat amorphous and congealed together, a little murky and rolled-off in the treble, spatially a bit small and not terribly dimensional, and not nearly as 'involving' or 'easy to follow' as I expected. Sonically underwhelmed would be a fair despription of my overall reaction. (All this is leaving the attributes of the performance itself to the side - we're talking about a pick-up group sight-reading without prior rehearsal for the occasion, so there was some shaky ensemble and intonation among the inevitable flubs and misses.)

Part of this I'm sure had to do with the less-than-ideal performance-acoustic attributes of my listening room as well as the background noise of the party, but still, I was probably the only person there who was thinking about any of this crap - and not simply because I was probably the only audiophile in the place, but specifically because this performance was occurring where I normally listen to my own system. That it didn't necessarily sound 'impressive' by comparison speaks not only to the fallability of the "They are here" paradigm, but confirms for me that a whole lot of what we talk about in relation to reproduced sound qualities are in truth largely artifacts of the record/playback processes, and not inherent to the original performance itself. That truth doesn't invalidate those technical processes, or the ways in which we verbally deconstruct what they accomplish, but it does help keep me mindful of the reality of what I'm dealing with when I listen critically at home.

Zaikesman-

Thanks for the well written response.

What an interesting thing; to plunk a live trio in the spot where your system would be! What a let down (in a way) to find prediliction towards the reproduced version. That really says something positive about the quality of your audio system!

Re: the dynamic sound quality of your trio I have a hunch that were Satchmo himself to blow and belt a phrase or two that suddenly the dynamics of a live performance would be realized ;-)

RW

I agree that my system - which to my mind is good but by no means great judged by the standard of being able to transmit or recreate the 'absolute sound' of a live performance - could not fool one into thinking they were hearing a live trumpet, and would suffer by comparison if a live trumpet were played in my listening space, certainly dynamically, and I assume tonally as well. But I wonder if such an experiment would still reveal that the live instrument did not give the impression of emanating from a particularly well-defined point in space. I actually hear a live acoustic instrument on a regular basis in my house, but since I'm the one playing my guitar, the sonic perspective can't really be compared.

The rest of what I usually hear live is either amplified through a PA, of if it's all-acoustic, the performance is taking place in a very different kind of space than I have at home. Thinking about this topic has reminded me of the art museum in my town which keeps a concert grand piano in a largish wood-panelled hall for recitals; I recall that when I've heard that piano played live on a couple occasions, it sounded diffuse, muffled, and dynamically restrained, too 'quiet' even (and from only a few feet away) - a sound that if an audiophile were to accurately reproduce it at home through their system, would ironically be unlikely to satisfy or impress in terms of fulfilling our typical preconception about what a live piano 'ought' to sound like. Listening to recordings, we're listening to microphones as much as to instruments.