@rauliruegas
I think I agree with much of what you’re trying to say, but your distinction between ’sound’ and ’music’ is not very helpful. Music is organized sound waves, there’s really no way around this.
What you could say is this: recorded music (whether analog or digital makes no difference) will always be absolutely crushed by live music. There’s a fundamental divide here that apparently cannot be bridged.
We’ve all heard street musicians and you can always tell even from a distance if they play live or not. It doesn’t matter if they play acoustically or with the aid of amplification. If it’s played on the spot, you will recognize it immediately. Especially in cases where musicians play live on top of a pre-recorded tape you can easily hear the fundamental difference between them both. Live music has a different ’gestalt’.
I’ve always wondered if this ’gestalt’ is already lost when the microphone picks up those airwaves. That would make the analog versus digital debate rather moot, because the essence was already lost before hitting the record button. But I have never heard a mastertape in a controlled studio environment, so I might be very wrong about this.
Perhaps the essence of live music does get captured on the mastertape, but gets lost somewhere downstream in the playback process? If this is the case the characteristics of the used ’sound carriers’ (analog tape, cassette, LP, digital tape, CD, SACD, streaming, etc.) become more important. What sound carrier and audio playback system are most capable of approaching that essence? Here opinions are all over the map, which suggests one thing: it’s all subjective. Which goes a long way to explain all those tired ’debates’ about analog versus digital, MC versus MM, CD versus SACD, tubes versus solid state, class A versus class D, horns versus dipoles, etc, etc, etc.......
It seems to me that no recording and/or playback technology is capable of capturing/reproducing the ’whole beast’. I’ve never had the same unmistakable awareness of hearing live with any audio system as I always do when I hear a street musician. Even playing through a crappy amp and loudspeaker and even from a wider distance without any visual contact. You just ’know’.
I think I agree with much of what you’re trying to say, but your distinction between ’sound’ and ’music’ is not very helpful. Music is organized sound waves, there’s really no way around this.
What you could say is this: recorded music (whether analog or digital makes no difference) will always be absolutely crushed by live music. There’s a fundamental divide here that apparently cannot be bridged.
We’ve all heard street musicians and you can always tell even from a distance if they play live or not. It doesn’t matter if they play acoustically or with the aid of amplification. If it’s played on the spot, you will recognize it immediately. Especially in cases where musicians play live on top of a pre-recorded tape you can easily hear the fundamental difference between them both. Live music has a different ’gestalt’.
I’ve always wondered if this ’gestalt’ is already lost when the microphone picks up those airwaves. That would make the analog versus digital debate rather moot, because the essence was already lost before hitting the record button. But I have never heard a mastertape in a controlled studio environment, so I might be very wrong about this.
Perhaps the essence of live music does get captured on the mastertape, but gets lost somewhere downstream in the playback process? If this is the case the characteristics of the used ’sound carriers’ (analog tape, cassette, LP, digital tape, CD, SACD, streaming, etc.) become more important. What sound carrier and audio playback system are most capable of approaching that essence? Here opinions are all over the map, which suggests one thing: it’s all subjective. Which goes a long way to explain all those tired ’debates’ about analog versus digital, MC versus MM, CD versus SACD, tubes versus solid state, class A versus class D, horns versus dipoles, etc, etc, etc.......
It seems to me that no recording and/or playback technology is capable of capturing/reproducing the ’whole beast’. I’ve never had the same unmistakable awareness of hearing live with any audio system as I always do when I hear a street musician. Even playing through a crappy amp and loudspeaker and even from a wider distance without any visual contact. You just ’know’.
