Re: [ARSCLIST] A fundamental Flaw: Was Sampling Theory

[Dan Kj <edisone1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm certain that the main problem has become: Too much. Too many
microphones, too many channels, too many
speakers, too much echo, too much fiddling with signals.  We each have 2
ears, on opposing sides of 1 head
(that would be most of us. hehe)  ..  2 microphones, 2 channels, and
earphones would be about as close as we'll
get to sitting in an orchestra seat or in our living rooms with a string
quartet.  We'd probably need a dummy's
head & shoulders (with hair & a shirt, to be fussy) to duplicate our missing
presence in the concert hall.

Once you move those microphones farther apart than your own ears, it is
impossible to duplicate the original sound.
You cannot listen to a band with your ears 10 feet apart, or with 3 or 4 (or
a netfull) of ears.

I'm also fairly sure that most people wouldn't even enjoy hearing a truly
realistic reproduction - they're conditioned to
boosted bass notes, excess fake (or real) echo, etc.  I like my old, 'dead'
band & orchestral recordings (what few there were)
- but I doubt modern ears would buy them today.




----- Original Message -----
From: "James Lindner"



> A couple of months ago I was at a series of live concerts and I started
> wondering if there has been a fundamental flaw in the way we capture
> sound -
> either analog or digital...... it feels to me that there are fundamental
> errors in the
> way we record and reproduce sound.

Multi channel systems come closer - but still there are fundamental issues.
I was thinking about a
> system that used a net of microphones in an area and a signaling system in
> the network that somehow took into account temporal delay at different
> frequencies reaching different "microphones"
....while we can debate Analog and Digital issues - they are relatively
subtle as compared to the BIG issue
> which is - why does sound recording (analog or digital) sound so bad as
> compared to the live performance?  Where did we go wrong? If the goal was
> really to reproduce the sound of live
> performance - then clearly we have not succeeded. Something is clearly
> missing. What?? And how do we fix it?