Re: GG: Tobasco, Noise, etc.

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

At 00:49 20/07/98 -0500, John Hill wrote:
>
>Hi, Tim!
>
>On Sun, 19 Jul 1998, Tim Conway wrote:
>
>> I understand your Tabasco analogy but I had thought that, with today's 
>> computing power, it would be possible to go further than removing obvious 
>
>I think that it *will* become possible to do what you've eluded to above,
>but then the aesthetic question becomes *should* we?  Another list member
>made the (quite valid) point that he would like to hear *all* of what was
>on the original recording, tape noise, HVAC, door slams, etc.

Do you think it is just a case of computing power or is it more efficient
psychoacoustic algorithms?  I as not too sure as to the ability for us to
completely clean up old recordings, mainly because of the ears ability to
combine differing sound sources into a single complex audio image.  With
the removal of some sounds, especially frequency or phase information, the
aural image will also change to such an extent that I would image be to a
detriment to the "quality" of the sound.

>
>Miles Davis' KIND OF BLUE would be a good study on the relative merits of
>digital post-production and remastering.  I know of at least four or five
>different CD versions of this classic work and they all sound *very*
>different.  Check 'em out.  I very much doubt that most people would
>prefer a noisy 1:1 transfer or the rather poor-sounding stock Columbia
>CD that was the only one available through most of the 80s.

A friend of mine did a comparison of several different Miles recordings
from the late 60s and 70s and the different 24/20/16 bit releases, for a
record magazine in Australia.  We botht thought that the 20 bit copies were
the best sound, especially that they had an increases S/N, yet still kept
an analogue sound.  The 24 bit masters were great cranked up on a 400W amp
- one could almost hear the breathing, but the image was too forward -or
"in your face" for the music - a bit like some horrible string quartet
recordings I could mention :->


>This opens up some serious aesthetic questions that, to my knowledge, have
>not been widely discussed or addressed in sound recording periodicals or
>texts.

A good point - I know of a couple of articles and chapters that discuss the
fidelity of the original from a performing point of view ie how accurate
the recording is to the performance and other authenticity arguements.  We
now are looking at the aesthetics of meta-authenticity.
***********************************************************
* Bruce Petherick                                               *
* b.petherick@vc.unimelb.edu.au                   *
*                                                                         *
*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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