I came across a discussion on an audiophile site about the wisdom—or even possibility—of comparing high-end audio to live concert-hall sound. The original poster was of the firm opinion that the so-called holy grail of achieving live concert-hall sound in one’s own listening room is a flat impossibility, and after a certain point the expense goes up exponentially while the gains become increasingly modest.
Not surprisingly this resulted in a bit of a pile-up in the discussion group, folks chiming in quickly with agreements, disagreements, and the like. At least it didn’t degenerate into ad hominem attacks, as can happen all too easily. My overall impression was that the original poster had struck a nerve, but most people seemed to agree with him to some level or another. However, the conversation quickly took an interesting turn: why is it necessary for high-end audio to sound “live”? People began sharing personal experiences along those lines, situations in which live sound was markedly inferior to the home-stereo variety.
It led me to think a bit about some of my own live-versus-canned experiences. For one thing, there isn’t any one live sound experience; what you hear at Davies Symphony Hall at a San Francisco Symphony concert will be vastly different from the sound emanating from the stage of the Golden Gate Theater as the latest Broadway tour-rerun blasts through its thing. Those will be in turn different from a solo guitar recital in the SF Conservatory’s Sol K. Joseph Recital Hall, itself worlds apart from a rock band at a Fell Street club, all those unrecognizable from the sound of the cocktail combo rising over the din at “Catch” up near Castro/Market or the choir at Mission Dolores Cathedral. That’s a lot of sound.
Consider that Broadway show. Nowadays head-microphones are the norm. Everything is amplified to some degree or another, played back through massive horn speakers designed to fill a cavernous space like the Golden Gate. Subtlety? Fuggedit. Head-mics? Tinny. Horn speakers? Harsh. The Golden Gate Theater is a sonic black hole that sucks up sound like an acoustic vacuum cleaner. Result? Crank it up, crank it up, crank it up. You might as well be hearing the “live” music via a boombox held to your ear.
It seems that a distinction needs to be made here between live-acoustic and live-amplified, because there’s a world of difference. A pianist and an (unamplified) singer on a stage—live-acoustic. But most “live” sound isn’t of that stripe. The minute you add a microphone or an electronic pickup to the mix you’re into the recorded-sound arena. Sure, that cocktail pianist down at the local restaurant is playing the piano live, but she is crooning into a microphone, her voice (and some of the piano sound as well) amplified by—guess what?—a sound system. Set up microphones in the room and capture her with as much faithfulness as possible, it’s doubly electronic, one set of electronics attempting to capture the sound of another set of electronics. Play it at home, and a third set of electronics enters the mix.
A lot of recordings, and not just pop and rock, are made specifically as recordings, and not live music. The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper is probably the locus classicus there, but other examples can be found easily enough. Jascha Heifetz used a multitrack tape system more or less indistinguishable from the Beatles’ to record himself playing both violin parts of a Bach concerto. There’s nothing live about that.
Nor, for that matter, is there anything particularly “live” about most orchestral recordings. It is a matter of public record that most of Gershwin’s orchestral music sounds a million times better on records than it does live, because strategically-placed microphones can go far to provide clarity in an otherwise muddy texture. But the same holds true for most piano concertos; the soloist can be recorded so as to balance against the orchestra, instead of being obliterated by it, as is usually the case.
I remember last season at the SFS listening to Yuja Wang play the Prokofiev 2nd Piano Concerto, the first movement of which is dominated by a long, flamboyant cadenza. Wang played it well enough, to be sure. She reached the end of the cadenza, all thundering chords and massive amounts of pedal and slammy octaves, and then the orchestra entered. It was like watching a giant slap a fly. Even a nine-foot Hamburg Steinway hasn’t a chance against the brass section of the San Francisco Symphony, even when they’re behaving themselves. But on a recording, that can all be adjusted. The fly doesn’t get swatted. The nine-foot Hamburg Steinway turns into a twenty-five foot Hamburg Steinway. But the concerto as it really is suffers from severe imbalances, its ego-trippy adolescent posturing blatantly obvious, a mosquito having a hissy fit in front of Godzilla. A recording that actually reproduced the reality of the Prokofiev 2nd, as heard from a decent seat in the hall, would most likely be crucified by the critical establishment.
Getting back to that discussion forum for a moment, I read a number of comments along the lines of “whatever engages me emotionally is good stereo.” That’s a pretty good definition, but at the same time I have some caveats. I react mostly to the music and not the sound system. I grew up utterly engrossed in recorded sound, playing the grooves off my LPs of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and the like, and my sound systems were bargain-basement junk. To be sure, those rare occasions when somebody took me to the Denver Symphony thrilled me at a downright erotic level, but nonetheless I often got a thoroughgoing kick from my el-cheapo RCA record player. I’m perfectly capable of becoming captivated by an older recording that fails all hi-fi tests, say for example the Alfred Hertz/SFS 1928 recording of the Beethoven Leonore No. 3. Or Schnabel playing Schubert. So I can become deeply involved with music really no matter what the pedigree of the stereo system. (A lot of professional musicians have ho-hum stereo equipment, by the way, probably for just that very reason.)
But all else being equal there is a great pleasure in fine hi-fi. But hi-fi, no matter how exalted, doesn’t reproduce live acoustic sound. In many cases it improves that experience, to be sure—but there is no mistaking the inequality. I spend a lot of time hearing concerts and so I’m only too aware of the differences. A symphony orchestra is usually a lot quieter heard live than on a home stereo, but the immediacy of presence in a real, live orchestra makes up easily for that. And a big orchestra going full-tilt offers an unmatched visceral experience.
So can’t really say I buy altogether into the notion of an ‘absolute’ sound—i.e., a holy grail of perfect audio reproduction. But the journey is its own reward, and without that search, we probably wouldn’t have some of today’s wonderful hi-fi equipment, not only at the outrageously expensive ends of the spectrum, but also everyday affordable stuff as well. Good stereo systems are musical instruments in and of their own right, and deserve to be judged accordingly, and not only by their ability to provide adequate stand-ins for the “real thing”, whatever that actually may be.