Does your system take you there or...?

If it's not a live venue recording then I suppose "there" is inside the engineer's head. I can accept that usually, and since I listen to a lot of small group piano jazz my only complaint sometimes regards weirdly wide soundstage drums, but I can live with that. I've mixed a LOT of live small venue shows and the goal is to get an even sound to everybody...not so simple...I do minimal EQ if possible and rarely compress anything (kick drum sometimes)...a little stereo reverb makes the crowd feel better than they actually do.

My system often takes me there but sometimes forgets to bring me back. Once I was virtually stuck in the Village Vanguard with a bunch of hard drinking circa 1963 "Madmen" era glass clinking smokers for almost 6 hours after Bill Evans had gone home.

I may the the only one here who LIKES my "untreated" room sound...and admits it! Reflections be damned! I'm gonna find out what Ani DiFranco smells like and send some essence to Pmburnett...I assume it's pachouli oil...in any case, spread some around the room and close your eyes! OFF YOU GO....

When it returns me I often make it stop at the store so I can pick up some stuff. Now THAT'S realism.

HA...next time I listen to Bill Evans' "Waltz for Debby" I'm gonna rattle the icecubes in a manhattan, smoke a Pell Mell, and try not to ignite the hairspray in Judith From Accounting's beehive while apologizing for causing a run in her stocking from an errant brush with my wingtip.

With live jazz you're only going to get the "being there" mojo by sitting directly in front of the band (usually a good thing requiring luck)...otherwise, although it can still be a way cool experience, sitting anyplace else makes you subject to the whims of an often cheezy sound system run by itself ("set it and forget it"), or by Clem, the disinterested and underpayed hearing impaired soundman glued to his iPhone.

I was listening to "Waltz for Debbie" again today while breaking-in a new tonearm cable...maybe it was my mood or something but man...I was transported once again by that LP and those ghosty crowd voices were right there with me. I had planned to listen for a few minutes and move on to something else but I was transfixed and had to hear both sides...suffice to say the new tonearm cable works just fine. I have a nice sounding CD of other stuff from the same gigs ("Live at the Village Vanguard") and weirdly the crowd sounds are much less obvious...makes me wonder if they were isolated somehow and edited out...weird.