"It's about the SOURCE material, stupid!"

[Mallette]

Ok, so please don't anybody take offense... Just a play on an old political saying, but it is true for me. I wrote the below in another post, but between the one on music vs. gear and the tape project thread, I felt this one needed it's own thread. By this point in my journey in audio and on this august forum I find myself wondering why we spend so much time discussing amps, wires, power supplies, tubes, caps, acoustics, etc. and so little time on source material. Not that it should dominate, but there is so precious little of it and no amount of attention to the details of a system's hardware can make it better.

So...

Jay, the more experience I get recording the more I realize almost everything is about SOURCE material. Granted, I have been saying for several years I'd rather hear first class source material on a boombox than crap on a $$$$$$$$ system, but I constantly am more reaffirmed in that. Your CD took me another step.

I had never really believed that it was some special magic I had that made my own location stuff apparently so appealing to many, and have freely admitted to be mystified, if pleased. I KNEW it was not the equipment. While I use the best I can afford, that is certainly not in a class with Mapleshade, Chesky, or any of the "big boys" in audiophile recording. Yet much of my stuff has been judged by many to be equal to or better than. Go figure. Well, it DOES appear that I have a nack for the right mikes in the right place. I also understand simple signal path, no mixer, direct to DAC and HDD. Folks, that's all there is to it. Mapleshade can go on and on about their magic cables, expensive mikes, analog first and digitize later procedures and I'll say "BS." Given it's obvious they know how to select a good group, a fine acoustic venue, and how place mikes I'll wager I could lend them my homebrew rig and nobody would know the difference.

So, it is no surprise to me that your modest CD burner didn't destroy the magic of those magnificent tapes. Question: Can you quantify the difference A/B'ing the CD to the tape? I'd REALLY like you to spend a weekend over here in Seabrook sometime and bring your deck. I could make 1 bit 2.8mhz transfers and we could get a couple of other hornheads in here and test this theory.

One other thing...with the very gracious help of Shawn (srobak) you guys can now get those files I uploaded from links on my website www.mbsdar.com. I've also added that info to my signature. You can also download the "Six Cardinal Rules of Sound Acquisition" I wrote a couple of years ago that explains more of what I've learned about source material.

Thanks again for a GREAT listening and learning experience.

Dave

[oldtimer]

It's always been about the source material. Makes a low budget system like mine sound good, while a high budget system with poor source material will sound bad. Poor college students with a small amount of intelligence can figure this out (how I learned anyway).

[fenderbender]

[Y][Y][Y]

i think I wrote in another thread that I have stopped chasing the gear and started chasing the sources....I'm to the point that any gear change might result in a few % change (good or bad...It's subjective) But getting good sources can result in a 50-60% change in quality....no magic, no gizmos....amazing!

Thanks for drumming this home, I for one have taken your advice and it has been the best improvement I could have made.......

[russ69]

The only problem with this train of thought is that I can't control the source recording. I can control it's playback.

Thanx, Russ

[oldtimer]

So you are saying you can take a sow's ear and make a silk purse? Interesting. Keep on believing in your illusion of control.

[PrestonTom]

It is probably impossible to over-emphasize just how critical a god recording can be!

My own anecdote was when a friend came to visit with a CD of his daughter's cello recital. The performance was in a church and he is a knowlwgible guy who also had some time before hand to properly set up the mics for a stereophonic recording. It was achieved with a DAT recorder and transferred (without any mixing or compression etc) to a CD.

We played this over my Klipschorns. The sense of realism was very compelling. The attack on the notes, the tone, the dynamics, the "space" of the church itself were all realistically reproduced. It really was quite remarkable.

Thanks for bringing this up and reminding me.

Take care,

-Tom

[russ69]

Oh, heck no. A bad recording sucks down to it's bones. I love the few real good recordings I have but I like popular music and you just get what you get. I'm more interested in the music than listening to types of music I normally would not buy except for it's quality (not that I don't have a bunch of that). Chasing down exceptional recordings is fun but I'm usually disapointed, it's better if you like the music to start with and if it's not recorded well you can still enjoy it. You CAN enjoy listening to lesser recordings and for me that's the whole point of this game.

Thanx, Russ

[oldtimer]

You're right about that. Thanks, Russ.

[Mallette]

A look at my systems in profile should be enough to prove that there is more to it than just great source material. Bach is fine source material on a harmonica, but certainly better on a Strad. However, I find it strange that many grow restless and spend thousands on, well, somewhat esoteric things, when a CD burned by Jay from trully stellar source material would lift one to a different plane for a whole lot less.

Yes, there are things I want to do to my systems. But I don't confuse those wants with "needs." What they, and I, need, is more quality source material. I partially agree with Russ. There is music I love that I occasionally listen to in spite of the quality of the recording...but I find myself constantly returning to material that, while I may really like the music itself far less, the quality of the source material transports me to a happy place consistently.

We come in all flavors, and all contribute something to this mad mix that is of mutual benefit.

Dave

[fenderbender]

case in point....One of my favorite Jazz recordings of all time is Jimmy Smith's The Sermon. I have a Blue note re-release and its good but not great, and it's a little beat up.....I would give a lot to own a pristine great recording of this (I just love the Hammond B-3) but I just havn't been able to find one.

Nothing I do to my system will make the recording I have any better, and I get the wants after listening to Music Matters 45 lp re releases.....but I love "the Sermon" so I enjoy it none the less.....

[jcmusic]

Jay, the more experience I get recording the more I realize almost everything is about SOURCE material. Granted, I have been saying for several years I'd rather hear first class source material on a boombox than crap on a $$$$$$$$ system, but I constantly am more reaffirmed in that. Your CD took me another step.

Dave,

I am glad you made that point, that is the sumnation of my reason for buying the tapes to start with. Here is the way I see it and the way I explained it to my wife!!! I have spent countless hours and way more money than I would have liked to, to arrive at what I consider a good sounding system to my ears. So it only makes sense to introduce the best source I possibly could to determine exactly how good my system can sound. Without a really good source I have no way of knowing how good my system really is. To my knowledge these tapes are the best source out there right now.

Jay

[artto]

I couldn’t agree more. But all of this is in fact a triple edged sword. You can’t have nirvana with a bad source and great equipment mix in a great room, or vice versa. All parameters need to be met.

It’s unfortunate that the majority of music recordings are made so carelessly. Unfortunately the same can be said for most audio equipment, and most certainly for almost all domestic acoustics which usually get no attention at all. Each one of these must be capable of providing maximum performance if you expect to achieve maximum performance.

The difficult part here is that most of us don’t have the time, inclination or many times the knowledge and experience (or even financial resources) to do much about it.

Dave, myself, and a few others here have been fortunate enough to have other musical activities in our lives which involve live music, both the performing and recording side of it. Live is the reference.

What I find most interesting is that when listeners are confronted with live verses recorded listening “tests” the majority of listeners will consistently identify the recording as being the live source. When you have the opportunity to record the same orchestra/chorus/band in several different venues over the course of many years you quickly realize how difficult it is to actually “capture” sense of place and space along with the performance. When you are present at the live performance while the recording is taking place you have a unique perspective as to what the recording should sound like. There is no substitute.

Here’s an exercise I hope all of you get the chance to try someday. It’s very revealing and a real ear-opener. Try recording something that is very familiar to you, natural everyday sounds, preferably at a time when great diversity in the sound mix can be recorded. I used my backyard. I set up a pair of omni directional mics spaced the same distance apart as the Khorns in my room (28’). It was a very still, humid summer evening on a holiday weekend. There was a festival about 4 miles to the north with fireworks/aerial bombs. A railroad is several miles to the south. I live near O’Hare and local Schaumburg airports so there’s plenty of aircraft. There were also thunderstorms moving in from the west. There’s also the sound of cars occasionally going by on the street and the constant hum of the expressway about 0.5 miles to the south. Contrast all this with the sound of Cicada and Crickets buzzing, leaves rustling in some wind, dogs barking and kids playing with firecrackers and you’ve got yourself one hell of a recording to try and capture! You have a reference ~ LIVE reference. You’ve been there before. You’ve heard it before. And you can simply walk outside and listen, go back inside and compare, live through the playback system, as well the recording. It’s a real revelation. You’ll find out very quickly how inadequate everything is regardless of the quality of your recording and playback system. The recording dynamic range capbility is simply just not there. With Direct Stream Digital (DSD/SACD) there should be enough but as yet I don’t have access to this. Just for the record I used two Oktava MC 012 mics, Monster Cable ProLink, Mackie 1202VLZ mixer feeding both a Nakamichi Dragon analog tape deck and a Sony A7 digital audio tape deck. The DAT came out much better than the analog tape but it just didn’t have the dynamic range either when it came to those aerial bombs. I could get the quiet things right (like the Cicada and Crickets) or be able to record the steep wave front low frequency sounds and lose the effect of the Crickets, but not both. My conclusion: We’re not quite there yet.

[Mallette]

Excellent comments, Artto, and so true. One of the first tests of the "SoundCube" mike system I developed (described in the "Sixcard" on my website) was to do exactly as you said. I put it on my front porch. When I played it back with 4 identical Frazier Mk IV speakers spaced precisely in a square with me in the the center, I could not tell what was real traffic and what was recorded, even though the window was open where I could see out. Very spooky and revealing. Then, I heard the front door open then close, and I mean there was no doubt in my mind the PAW had just come home. I got up, called, and walked toward the door. Totally confused, I went out and looked all over the front yard for someone.

Finally, I went back and backed up the playback. There it was again, and yet AGAIN, I got up and went and looked. This time, I fully realized it was ME, coming back in from having started the recording!.

Real surround is trully awesome and immersive. My experiments in that medium were cut short by the move three years ago, but I am increasingyly anxious to return to them. Engineers who concentrate only on the music source and leave out the context totally miss the point, IMHO. The space is part of the whole experience, and if you don't believe it, just put a piano out in the middle of a field (or if you want to get extreme, in an anechoic chamber) and see how you like it. Stereo is capable of only an approximation of that, just enough to be tolerable.

It's time for a change.

Dave

[ClaudeJ1]

Excellent comments, Artto, and so true. One of the first tests of the "SoundCube" mike system I developed (described in the "Sixcard" on my website) was to do exactly as you said. I put it on my front porch. When I played it back with 4 identical Frazier Mk IV speakers spaced precisely in a square with me in the the center, I could not tell what was real traffic and what was recorded, even though the window was open where I could see out. Very spooky and revealing. Then, I heard the front door open then close, and I mean there was no doubt in my mind the PAW had just come home. I got up, called, and walked toward the door. Totally confused, I went out and looked all over the front yard for someone.

Finally, I went back and backed up the playback. There it was again, and yet AGAIN, I got up and went and looked. This time, I fully realized it was ME, coming back in from having started the recording!.

Real surround is trully awesome and immersive. My experiments in that medium were cut short by the move three years ago, but I am increasingyly anxious to return to them. Engineers who concentrate only on the music source and leave out the context totally miss the point, IMHO. The space is part of the whole experience, and if you don't believe it, just put a piano out in the middle of a field (or if you want to get extreme, in an anechoic chamber) and see how you like it. Stereo is capable of only an approximation of that, just enough to be tolerable.

It's time for a change.

Dave

You thread is dead on. I finally built my $20,000 reference speaker's for a fraction of that number (poor man's KPT-MCM-4T) and my favorite music will never be the same. The extreme dynamics, detail, etc. of my time aligned horns reveal things I've never heard before in my music collection. Some recordings sound better, some now sound like crap. I have owned every Heritage speaker ever made (Khorns on down) and a few of the new skinny ones, but this is the best. The bigger the horn, the better the horn.

Your immersive idea is probably what Quad should have been, but instead, the idiots put the singer on a flying trapeze, so it died. I once heard handclaps around me with one of the early synthetic time delay units in the 70's, so I knew this is what it should sound like.

Now we have true discrete surround channels, and what do they do? We can hear a drummer's cymbals behind us and a bunch of other nonsense.........same crap, so I listen to music DVD movies in 2.1 because of it (dissappointing and frustrating).

One recent exception is the Martin Scorcese production called "Shine A Light" featuring the Rolling Stones in a live NYC concert with special guests. The ONLY thing you hear in the rear channels is the ambience of the venue and the handclaps from the crowd. That's the way it should be. It's not as crisp and clean as Diana Krall's "Live in Paris" in terms of detail, since it's so amplified (hey, it's Rock and Roll, after all), but at least you can control the sound levels to something less than a real concert and save your hearing.

BTW, Dave, I finally listened to your 4 CD's and the Chamber Music recording has got to be one of the finest recordings of anything I've ever heard, with the Piano recording in second place. Keep up the QUEST!!

[Mallette]

Thanks, Claude. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that applause should come from the rear, that antiphonal from the front is a contradiction in terms, and than no man should be forced to listen to a trap set that keeps moving around..."

What I have termed "Virtual Presence" is stupidly simple to obtain and such a great experience. I understand the excesses of the "quad" period, though if that had solely been responsible for it's failure it would have survived. Most early stereo was just as guilty..."Revolver" is an exercise in pure ping pong. However, stereo had the advantage of only a single system and survived in spite of excess.

Did you read my "Six Cardinal Rules of Sound Acquisition?" Once written, I thought "Duh." However, the almost total disregard for at least the principals, if not the procedures, I have documented there accounts for the sad state of surround recording today, IMHO.

Dave