Post title makes little or no sense.
My answer is no save an LP on Naim gear playing piano in the 80’s.
System that sounds so real it is easy to mistaken it is not live
My current stereo system consists of Oracle turntable with SME IV tonearm, Dynavector XV cartridge feeding Manley Steelhead and two Snappers monoblocks running 15" Tannoy Super Gold Monitors. Half of vinyl records are 45 RMP and were purchased new from Blue Note, AP, MoFI, IMPEX and some others. While some records play better than others none of them make my system sound as good as a live band I happened to see yesterday right on a street. The musicians played at the front of outdoor restaurant. There was a bass guitar, a drummer, a keyboard and a singer. The electric bass guitar was connected to some portable floor speaker and drums were not amplified. The sound of this live music, the sharpness and punch of it, the sound of real drums, the cymbals, the deepness, thunder-like sound of bass guitar coming from probably $500 dollars speaker was simply mind blowing. There is a lot of audiophile gear out there. Some sound better than others. Have you ever listened to a stereo system that produced a sound that would make you believe it was a real live music or live band performance at front of you?
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No. But I have experienced sounds coming from the stereo that had me thinking someone had broken into my house and was mocking me prior to axing me to death by singing along with my stereo. That caused me to swivel my head around pretty fast- and no-one was there! Spooky.
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No stereo can truly reproduce the dynamics and volume of live as @lewm states above. If you like how your system sounds stick with it chasing "live" sound is a losing battle. And @atmasphere That literally made me laugh out loud thank you. |
Yes, if you go with all pro equipment that is designed to play live and loud sounds good for music and okay for everything else, but for music nothing beats the pro lines of products, have to know what you’re buying because there are also some scams but not as much as in the home hifi for I hear most systems can’t play loud so I would like to know where is the worth in a system that can’t play loud. For a system that can play loud can also play low so kudos for if you want live sound you need to go with live equipment |
@esputnix , Yes, it can be done and in many cases improve on live sound. Others here disagree with me but I have been chasing this gremlin since I was 13 years old. As others here have already mentioned reproducing the dynamics of a live event is the most difficult problem. It requires a subwoofer system much more powerful than is usual. It also requires main speakers with extremely fast transient response and a lot of power. Other important factors are an appropriate room, avoidance of analog crossovers using digital ones if they can not be avoided, group delays need to be corrected and the frequency response of the entire affair needs to be perfectly flat in both channels to start (or as close as one can reasonably get). I then boost the bass at 3 dB/oct below 100 Hz. This is to create realistic dynamic force at lower than ear shattering levels. We all develop our own way of going about this and I think there are several paths to nirvana. I have heard three systems in 50 years that I would consider to be state of the art and capable of fooling one into believing an acoustic instrument was in the room and only one that put you in the 10th row of a stadium rock concert. Two of then were/are based on electrostatic main speakers, one on dynamic speakers. I think the hardest thing to do is getting the room right. It helps a lot if the room is designed specifically for two channel high fidelity playback. This is an option most of us do not have. We have to work with the rooms present in our houses. Although you do not have to buy the most expensive equipment out there to succeed it is still not a cheap endeavor. Forgetting about the room you are talking about spending at least $150,000 if not more. Many of us simply can not afford that much. On the bright side you do not need a system that performs at that level to enjoy music. You can do that with earbuds and your telephone. |
Um. Complex topic. As many have noted, few systems can reproduce the dynamic range of live music, especially near field. But overall the biggest limiting factor is recordings. Recordings vary from terrible to very, very good - but few are in that later range. Some are poor on purpose (compressed for playback in noisy environments and on normal systems). Most never strive for audiophile or prioritize speed, fancy production effects, etc over purity. They may sound artistic but never "real". Others are just not perfect. Either way i maintain the recording itself(along with mastering) is the single largest/most meaningful variable. The room and setup may well be next, and few even TRY to get that right. I have heard a few systems with huge speakers (one was IRS-IIIs), with master tapes or similar, and 100s of watts per channel, in a decent sized room. That came close. For smaller jazz bands and chamber, my system can sometimes startle - but its pretty pricey and tuned (if one looks at market prices...) as well.
But again, it really comes down to the recording. I’ve been startled, as have others with both analog and digital BTW. Those who demean digital sinply have not gotten it right - it has faults, yes, but so does vinyl. G |
There has been some discussion about the new Magnapan LRS+ and matching full range Subwoofer as closely sounding like live music, presented at the Montreal HiFi Show. I haven’t heard but would certainly like to. Discuss Maggie LRS+ & matching Sub |
NO! If anyone thinks recorded sound is superior to live sound(not amplified live sound) then that's an oxymoron. They are saying they don't like live sound(which is of course the standard simply by its very nature), that they prefer colorations which is their valid choice but it's not real. I can hear Gordon Holt turning in his grave. |
@audioman58, yup....a good omni set up properly in a space and driven by decent equipment can do that...and not just in the sweet spot. Haven't been lucky enough to hear a pair yet. And would avoid hearing 4 in surround....spoil me permanently, |
Mine can replay quite well the few live recordings done well in existance . Trouble is, the vast majority of albums are a recording so if even remotely playing as recorded and manipulated during and post recording ,how could it possibly sound live? Good tube microphones and proper placement are what captures live dynamics an art lacking across the majority of recorded music . A really good tuner back when good fm was plentiful on the dial often gave remarkably good live sound as well... |
Possibly the weirdest and now my favorite Atmasphere post ever...yeah man! Reviews of my Klipsch Heresy speakers often say they sound like live music. I don't necessarily agree but it's comforting to my fragile ego...I've been in the live music business for decades as a musician and live sound "Knob Turner," and like most everyone here I strive to reproduce the sound of street musicians using a cheap bass amp as, clearly, that's a true reference. Also gas powered leaf blowers...the sound of fall in New England. The vast majority of albums are recordings? Who knew? |
Sadly the MBL system mentioned was well over $150 k their stand mount speakers the 126, and120 Use the Exact same Tweeter and midrange units that sit on top ,they have dual opposing wooferson the bottom ,I am. Thinking about maybe the verygood model 126 , and just use my SVS 4000 SB powered subs then you have a full range speaker at a fraction of-the cost. |
As an audiophile, I’m not sure we’re going for a system that sounds “live”. I think what we are trying to achieve is “sound stage” and “detail” for starters. There’s a lot more variables associated with the venue with a live sound and I’ve never heard proper “sound stage “ at a live event. To me, they’re two different worlds and two different types of sound. |
@atmasphere - LOL
Since I play the guitar, no nothing can capture the live perfromance3 of my Les Paul into Marshall amplifiers. We did punch out a Manley Steelhead with parts upgrades and that was a big improvement. Stock form - no so much.
Happy Listening.
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@fuzztone |
Recorded music is "processed" by the engineer and a BUNCH of equipment. In the old days, it was mostly tube gear. If you are unfamiliar with that, visit an "old time" recording studio. Digital music uses "chips" that process "bits" and drop many of them that it considers "extraneous" to the final product. As for "realistic" reproduction, I have yet to hear anything better than the ARC/Magnepan combo set up correctly playing either master tapes or direct-to-disc recordings, both of which are "processed" as well. As for our friend with the guitar and amps, standing on the side of the stage in 1972 and listening to Duane Allman and Dickey Betts play live is about as close to "real" as I have ever heard. Cheers! |
I know this is an esoteric group but my introduction to " not live but close enough" was walking up the hill to the officer's club on Phan Rang AFB in '70 or '71 and from a hundred or so feet away wondering how they got a rock & roll band in Vietnam. Once inside, I discovered the magic of AR speakers with a large Macintosh amp cranked up to 11. Life hasn't been the same since. |
Lots of opinions here in all directions. Lets take an example. Two weeks ago I saw Smashing Pumpkins and Janes Addiction at the Boston Garden. We were dead center, 20 rows back. It was so loud I had to use my Etymotic ear plugs. The sound was in Mono and there is always an echo in that venue. The light show was fabulous. I have a Blu-Ray of the Smashing Pumpkins Oceana concert. I think it was in New York. The recording was probably taken off the sound board and was well mixed with the instruments and voices in their proper location with reasonable blackness between. Played back at 95 dB with the bass boosted just a little the dynamics are very pleasing and realistic. Given that my system is a line source top to bottom the soundstage is vary large and lifelike. The audio experience is far superior to the live concert but the light show is no where near as overwhelming. Next is Mike Stern at the Blue Note in NYC, again dead center and two tables back from the front of the stage. We were listening to the live instruments and not a PA. I would guess a little louder than 95 dB, but still quite comfortable. Mike also has a recent BluRay, The Paris Concert. Given there is no light show the experience is scarily similar. I can match the volume perfectly. The size and timbre of the instruments is close enough that you would need do do an A/B comparison to identify the differences. Perhaps there is not quiet as much snap to the snare. I wish all live recordings could be like this one. Creating life size images is the purview of line source systems. It is apparent that many people who have responded to this threat have not heard one, particularly one that maintains it's line source behavior down to 10 Hz. Assuming a quality recording, the sound is usually superior to what you hear at a live venue. The dynamic range may not be as great but if the volume is satisfactory you do not notice this. |
@bigkidz The guitar player in my band plays a Les Paul hollow body into a Marshall Major(!) on a single Marshall stack (he used to use two but geez...). If your speakers have sufficient efficiency (mine are 98dB so slightly more efficiency than the Marshall stack) you can reproduce such a thing very convincingly 😁 Best done with no-one home... |
I can't speak for anyone else, but IME if the stars align with the right recording and system setup, you're not dealing with a noisy audience! Plus the mics are placed optimally whereas at a live performance you deal with whatever location you got. |
So that takes us down a different road of inquiry. A never ending contentious one. We can all agree that sometimes the live experience is not so great, because of room acoustics, ambient noise, noisy audience, bad amplification, etc but live instruments don’t lose their dynamics, even then. I was more responding to Mijostyn’s post advocating digital intervention, to artificially flatten the frequency response in the listening room, and enormous woofers (the way I think of the dynamics of live music has little to do with thunderous bass). I do agree with him that crossovers are often the enemy of verisimilitude. |
Not yet. If you don’t go out and listen to live music for a while you can fool yourself into believing your system comes close until you go see a show. Then it’s back to reality unfortunately. Personally I am not sure if I would want that in my home as I find most concerts leave me with strained hearing. |
The types of sounds playing through the stereo are usually a dead give away that it's the stereo. I don't have anybody in my house that's a great musician, or who can make a sound in my house sound like it was recorded in another acoustic space. Those recordings that have more pedestrian sounds like people simply talking, and were recorded in a space with a similar acoustic to my own, those have scared me a few times. One time I remember was when the system was on but I didn't know it, and a voice suddenly came over the speakers out of the blue. It gave me quite a shock. Another case was on headphones, of all things. I was listening to outtakes between tracks and in the recording some guy was laughing in the back ground. It sounded just like my friend's cackle and I got the impression he was somehow in the house when I thought I was alone in my house in Oregon and he was supposed to be in Florida with his girlfriend! |
Dispersion characteristics of real instruments tend to be very different than speakers, and that can be a giveaway. I read that Dunlavy tested his speakers in an anechoic chamber - on axis. He could get the speaker to fool someone in that situation so they couldn't tell if it was the real instrument playing in the anechoic space, or the speaker. Once you have a live acoustic space of moderate size it can be harder to fool someone in a blind test. A drum kit played in a living room will create an intensity and impactful force of sound that I don't think any stereo speaker set can reproduce in that same space - and that's probably a good thing. Possibly an array of speakers ready made just for the purpose could do it. |
As I said in my post, I heard a concert recently that was live but was inferior to what I can hear on my stereo. What is "real"? What a slippery hook on which to hang an aesthetic discussion of what makes something sound significant. Wouldn’t we agree that a stereo that produces an intimate, detailed, textured sound of an oboe sounds more like an oboe -- more "real" if you wish -- than how one sounds at distance, off axis, in a church with less than great acoustics? If the latter one has some "live" quality that you prize, would you prefer a stereo that produces *that* than the one which is more significant sounding but lacks that "live" quality? In this example, the recording of the oboe has more presence, tonality, emotion, detail, and punch than the one heard live. So why wouldn’t the presence of all those qualities -- plus the emotion -- add up to greater "reality" where "reality" is best understood as "significance"? In my view, it does. |
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Whilst not really being keen on YouTube reviewers or experts Zero Fidelity probably made the single most relevant statement about hifi I have heard in my 50+ years with this 'obsession', "which type of fake do you want?". No sound system can or is even designed to, replicate live performances. To be honest almost all live concerts in halls and other venues sound terrible, recordings of them sound worse. Recorded music is created in exceptionally controlled conditions designed specifically for recording music. You cannot get near the clarity and detail live via essentially PA venue's speakers. Of course in terms of the experience, when its good, you cannot beat live, but forget sound quality. |
henry53, In a small club listening to a vocalist backed up by a small jazz group or to a small jazz group alone, you certainly can hear a degree of "realism" not easily replicated in the home. In that sort of set-up, some of the instruments and a vocalist typically will be electronically amplified, but if you're sitting within about 20-25 feet of the performers, the PA system typically does not really pollute what you hear to a great degree. To demonstrate the difference between that sort of live listening and your home system, ask a professional musician to come by your house and play a few tunes in your listening room, preferably standing between your two speakers. Concerts in large halls are a whole different ball of wax, up or down. |
A little nostalgia. This was our room at 1996 Waldorf Stereophile Show. Timbre Technology TT-1 DAC, ESP Speakers, Synergistic Research cabling, Nagra tape deck, CJ amps, ASC Tube Traps.... "....At Stereophile's 1996 High-End Hi-Fi Show, at the Waldorf=Astoria in New York City, in order to promote new releases on my label John Marks Records, I arranged with ESP to hold a demonstration and press reception in their exhibit room on the show's Press Day. Arturo Delmoni was to play, live, one solo part of J.S. Bach's Concerto for Two Violins. The other solo part (Arturo again) and the continuo reduction, having previously been recorded by Jerry Bruck, were to be played back via Nagra and Conrad-Johnson electronics, the ESP Concert Grands, etc. The plan was to present a "Music Minus One" live demonstration for invited members of the press, then pour some champagne and socialize.
Earlier in the day, Stereophile writer Lonnie Brownell had asked me whether he could bring to the event a couple of nonjournalist friends he was showing around the Show. I imagine my eyes grew quite a bit larger when Lonnie's friends turned out to be drummer Max Roach and pianist Tommy Flanagan. Trumpeter Clifford Brown has always been a near-mythic figure for me. (I wanted to name our son Clifford, but that was vetoed.) To shake hands with someone who, apart from his own achievements, had worked with Brown, was a very special moment. Since that time, I have learned that Roach's impulsive gesture of stuffing a couple of hundred-dollar bills into the pocket of a strung-out Miles Davis was the spur that shamed Davis into getting clean, with all the resultant music we have to be grateful for. Roach and Flanagan were on time, which for this kind of thing means early, so I sat them in the front row, then felt like a totally inadequate idiot as I tried to make small talk. The room eventually filled and the demo began. Arturo worked his customary magic, and time stood still. All too soon, the music was over. We poured champagne, and it was my pleasure to bring glasses to Roach and Flanagan, who looked quite pleased with the proceedings. They then wandered into another room in the suite, as did most people. Jerry Bruck and I also had with us a master-tape clone of cellist Nathaniel Rosen's not-yet-released CD Reverie. We put that on the Nagra and began playing Richard Strauss's "Morgen," sung by soprano Kaaren Erickson. Moments later, Max Roach walked back into the demo room, looked around in surprise, chuckled, and said a bit sheepishly that he had come back in "to hear the young lady sing." He thought a live soprano was next on the program. A priceless memory. So, music lovers, there you have it. The previous version of ESP's Concert Grand fooled Max Roach into thinking a live soprano was in the next room. The new speaker is, according to its designer, better in nearly every way. How much more can I say?"
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@lewm It takes a whole lot bigger can to get them all back inside! |
