[ARSCLIST] Sound--real vs. recorded--was: discography of "direct-to-disk revival"?

[steven c <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> OK, no offense but anyone who hears "perfect sound" on 78 has tin ears!
That medium is low-fidelity
> by any serious definition. The only reason I can see listening to a 78 is
if the performance is so
> to your taste that you can imagine it sounding good -- because what's
coming off those grooves ain't
> near sounding good!
>
Ahh-h-h-h...but that isn't the point! The shellac 78rpm recording...and,
prior to early 1925, the ACOUSTICALLY RECORDED 78rpm recording...represented
in its time the optimum form of recording sound. We can probably assume that
sound recordings of any accuracy didn't exist until some point around
1950...
and, possibly, until the advent of commercial stereo recording in 1958. So,
if we assume that all sound recordings prior to whichever point one selects
are to be disregarded on the basis of inadequacy, we lose any recorded
evidence of the evolution of popular music, and classical music performance,
before the date we select. This is similar to electing to discard all
history
prior to some given date (say 1958?) on the basis of it having been
inaccurately
recorded (in the physical, not sonic, sense of that word). The War of 1812?
Might as well have never happened...no photographs or sound recording prove
it did!

Further, the human mind is much more powerful as a sound editing device
than any analog or digital hardware! When I listen to a century-old 78,
my mind neatly edits out the noise and seems to recreate the missing
sound based on its experience!

Finally, ANY sound recording is only SIMILAR...not IDENTICAL...to
the performance it purports to represent! Until transducers with the
exact same characteristics as the human ear (these would, of course,
require one set of transducers per listener!) exist, along with
devices that can allow the human brain to receive the recorded
information directly (anything else by definition cannot exactly
duplicate sounds as experienced)...what each listener hears (or THINKS
he/she/it hears) is the performance, as picked up by microphones,
transformed into electric signals, processed by various hardware
(and, in most cases, intervening individuals), reconverted into
electrical signals, which then are converted to mechanical action,
and that action is somehow recorded in physical form. The result
is then "played"...a process in which the mechanically-recorded
information is re-transformed into an electrical signal which
then drives an electric-to-sound transducer. Needless to say,
there are...MUST be...differences (thus losses) in each
intermediary step...no conversion is, or can be, perfect!

It is also interesting to think about what we actually experience
at live performances, given all the unwanted noise that our brains
edit out...it would be an interesting experience to position a pair
of microphones in a simulation of an average audience seat, and
record EXACTLY the sound...unwanted and wanted...that that listener
would hear!

Steven C. Barr