>> I don't regard the end product
>> comparable to live music.
>
> That's as may be, but to deliberately downgrade a recording with low bit =
rate compression seems wilfully perverse!
Robin,
Such as cramming recordings onto a portable device with limited storage and=
listening on ear buds? I think we agree on that one. :-)
>> Cleaned and polished digital recordings are
>> manipulated to death.
> Digital has nothing to do with this, but rather the production standards =
applied. If anything, digital has given us far more in the way of sonic opt=
ions than the analogue delivery methods that required significant compromis=
es in recording, mixing, and mastering. (Context: I trained on open reel ta=
pe thirty years ago.)
I preceded you on that one - I was mixing music for transmission in the
1960's. We had tape and mag film to contend with and none of the digital
artificiality I am now complaining about. Give me a little tape hiss rather=
than the current synthetic sounds we so often hear now. The great thing
about analogue recording is that you can't mess it about as much. :-)
When I lived in London, I used to go the Promenade concerts in the Albert
Hall whenever I could. Now I have to listen to a live mix on radio or TV
which at least is a performance. A recording of the same Prom is very
different, having been topped and tailed and packaged to fit a broadcasting=
slot, it cannot be the same thing. It has lost reality. It is now a
recording, not a performance.
> It's all real. That is the great secret. ;-)
The day we start multitracking nature sounds, mixing down with compression,=
filtering and editing is when we lose the live nature of Live Nature.
The subject on the card was what digital compression rates to use. My answe=
r
was one fast enough to not compromise the recording of the natural sounds
but slow enough to store and enjoy them.
> It's all real. That is the great secret. ;-)
Birdsong in my woodlands is real. A stereo recording gives a representation=
of that reality but is not the reality itself. We are sonic illusionists.
We flap loudspeaker cones. It is only by recognising that recording is
artificial that we can persuade punters that the end product is sort of
"real".
David Brinicombe
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