Termyn8or
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Joined: 11/12/2005
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I remember when people used to complain that Aerosmith was out of time when they played live. This was because they needed a soundman to setup the foldback monitors correctly. This is not all that easy, you need EQs and feedback finders to do it right and they can't have truly good fidelity because of the feedback problem.
The problem was the slow speed of sound, that they were primarily hearing an echo of themselves, and therefore were not able to keep accurate timing. I got Aerosmith live in a small hall playing Walking The Dog and it is great. They are in perfect time and sound good. But that is a small hall. Sound travels at 1,100 FPS, slower than most bullets actually. So if your echo is coming off a wall say 400 feet away, you are hearing the sound about ¾ of a second late, which is totally unacceptable.
Once the foldback problem was solved, Aerosmith was just fine.
There is alot to music production and reproduction, and many Man hours have been spent to improve the quality. I saw Golden Earring in a small hall, actually the Variety Theater on Lorain Avenue in Cleveland and they sounded great ! Loud as hell too, but they had to ask the band to turn down because the plaster was literally getting vibrated off of the cieling. The only problem I had with the show was that it was not long enough and they did not play the old stuff, like off the Moontan album.
Venues of concerts and all that are not the only aspect of sound reproduction either. I had the European version of Moontan and it was made off of a different master, on better vinyl and really sounded alot better than the US version. It was also recorded at a lower level, and since back then everybody almost had cheap turntables, feedback became an issue. There was not enough insulation and damping and most people were actually better off with the US version, even though it has alot more distortion in it. It was also compressed alot more, but that seems sometimes to be what Americans like.
Even CDs are compressed, the 80Db dynamic range simply still isn't enough for some material. It's just that CDs are compressed less. I hear there are audio formats (which come on DVDs) now that can actually do it, but then there is the issue of the amp and speakers. You would need thousands of watts per channel to reproduce it accurately.
When you think of sound remember two things (this is one area I do know what I'm talking about).
1. To get twice as loud you need ten times the power. Also at high levels distortion ratings of speakers are embarrasing so they are rarely published. Going out and paying more for a 150WPC amp with .003THD rather than less for a 120WPC amp with .007THD is pointless. A speaker that can reproduce at 100 WPC with say ten percent THD is rare and expensive.
2. To reproduce a muted trumpet for example, at the realistic level as live would require near ten thousand watts. Live drums take less actually, until you get to the cymbals.
Last year or so I almost setup a really nice little home recording studio for a buddy of mine, it was going to happen until he found out how much it was going to cost, and that's just to record it, we are not even talking about reproducing it at live levels uncompressed.
To do that, a 110V 20 amp circuit would never handle it, so we are talking some new electrical wiring and possibly having to get higher rated incoming service. Forget it. It took a half a kilowatt just to HEAR the electric pano in decent fidelity keeping up with the live drums.
Now you are playing a concert and need foldback monitors, think of that. They must be louder than the echo. That is asking alot.
Orchestra music is a whole nother story as well. Here we have Severence, which is built like a big horn. You can hear, but to record it is another matter. They have tried alot more down that road than the rock concert people. They have treid mixing down as many as two hundred mikes and it still wasn't quite right.
So basically, the Pioneer system that hurts your ears and brings the cops has never REALLY "brought it back alive". There is and never will be anything quite like being there.
T
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RE: When music was real - 
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