Re: Gould's CBC recordings

[Bruce Petherick <b.petherick@vc.unimelb.edu.au>]

At 18:02 20/07/98 +0800, you wrote:
>Hello Ingvar and the list,
>
>I'm afraid I disagree with Ingvar. To me, the whole purpose of CDs and 
>LPs and other recording media is to give the listener the illusion that 
>he or she is in the room or hall where the recording took place. Anything 
>that destroys that illusion is to be avoided. 

... and that is exactly what can't be done - it is _impossible_ to give
someone the exact illusion that they are in the room, or hall where the
recording took place for a number of reasons.  The first, and overriding is
the playback mechanism - one _isn't_ in the hall when one listens back.
Even headphones colour sound playback to a certain degree so that the
illusion of placement of microphones is disturbed.  I am not saying that
this destroys the entire illusion, but certainly effects it to a large degree.
	Another point against the room illusion problem is that almost all
recordings now are multi-track, or at least use multi microphones who's
only reason to exist is to destroy the illusion of being in the exact same
room.  For example, flutes in an orc are often spot-miked so that they can
be heard over the string mass.  In popular recordings of the 20-40s, the
singers often stood in the mike shell, with the band 10 or so feet behind
to "balance" the sound, obvisouly not what was being heard in the room at
the time.
	When I was in my final year doing Music technology, we spent 6 seminars on
this topic - something I enjoyed quite a bit :-.

***********************************************************
* Bruce Petherick                                               *
* b.petherick@vc.unimelb.edu.au                   *
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*il n'y a pas de hors-text                                      *
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* Bringing Musicology to the masses                   *
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* Harry Conick Jr is the Hanson of the Jazz world *
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