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Re: [ARSCLIST] Dynamic-frequency Range
Trying to make recordings sound like "real life" is a trap that has
resulted in thousands of deadly boring records. TV doesn't look like
what my eyes see, but that's not the point of it. It's lots of little
dots on a piece of glass that approximate an image, but as long as it is
funny or interesting, I still enjoy it. Realism isn't the point of
making records either, despite Edison and his silly "tone tests" or
Philips and their "blind" (maybe deaf is the better word) comparisons
between CDs and a live string quartet.
I think the best people figured out very early that making records is
like making any sort of art and it could be anything they wanted it to
be and "photorealism" was not a criteria for quality.
David Seubert
UCSB
Tom Fine wrote:
If you consider that, for instance, an Edison Gem player has a horn
with a bell about the size of a flugelhorn, one can see how the medium
did not allow anywhere near fidelity to a piano. I've heard cylinders
played on the more deluxe types with huge horns and they still sound
awful to my ears. A musician who actually cared about how his
instrument sounded, especially someone like a solo piano player who
cares about dynamics and subtle shading of notes, would want to avoid
the medium altogether. I guess cylinders were something different in
their day, obviously greatly admired for the leap of being able to
time-shift a performance and have repeated hearings of something, but
sheesh, I can't see how anyone who has grown up in the high fidelity
era can stand to listen to them. 10 grades worse than 78's, and I
think you all know how I feel about most 78's so I won't belabor that
one. I'm talking specifically about using the medium for music, not
for spoken word or sung "skits" (usually racist and none too funny by
today's standards) that cylinders were also used for. In those cases,
no better or worse than most modern AM radio (ie not too good but the
words are usually intelligable). I know, I know, they're historic
artifacts, which is why I'm glad they're preserved and people still
care about them. Just not ever my choice for quality listening time.
-- Tom Fine