Subject: RE: Upcoming Empreintes Digitales DVDs
From: Randolph Jordan (randolph@soppybagrecords.net)
Date: Sun Apr 30 2006 - 20:10:54 EDT
"Part of my question is "where can I be to listen to the CD / DVD". Do
I have to be in a studio? on my home 'entertainment' (surround sound
home theater) system? On my mp3 player? in the car?"
Kevin, your question is one that should be asked of all genres and
styles within the recording arts. If there is a minimum standard for
equipment to properly play back a multi-channel EA piece, surely there
is also a minimum standard to properly play back an acoustic jazz combo
recorded in stereo. While it is true that an average 5.1 home theatre
configuration is not adequate to get the full potential out of a nice
piece of EA, it is just as true that the average stereo system doesn't
come close to getting the full potential out of any kind of sound
recording whatsoever. The fact is that only a precious few souls in the
world have systems that come anywhere close to reproducing everything
that is recorded on a disc, and it all comes down to money in the end.
And, I dare say, this is true of studio set-ups as well. Very few
producers of music have a full idea about what is being put on their
discs. One would hope that an average studio would be better equipped
than the average home stereo (although this would seem to defeat the
purpose of making a nice recording in the first place), but in many
cases studios don't produce good recordings because they don't have the
necessary equipment to properly hear what they're doing. Multi-channel
compounds this problem.
Now I hear a whole bunch of you folks gearing up to tear my head off
because you've spent a lot of money getting your systems to their
current levels and surely it's not YOU that I'm talking about. But how
much did you spend? $5,000? $25,000? $100,000? Like it or not, you
will get better results from better systems. There isn't ALWAYS a
strict price/performance correlation, but in general you DO get what you
pay for. Of course, you then have to have the skill to make use of this
equipment, but that's for another post.
As with everyone, my line of work allows for a certain level of
expenditure on audio-visual equipment and I know that I'll always be
missing something, even if I increased that expenditure by massive
amounts. Life sucks that way.
So where do we draw the line? What is an acceptable system on which to
hear our favourite recordings? Short of restricting the flow of
distribution by limiting playback to concert settings that have been
tweaked to the composer's specifications, there will always be the risk
that the music we make is not heard the way we would like.
I think about this all the time while I watch "films" on DVD. Even our
crappy red-book CD standard is far more capable of reproducing an
original master tape than a DVD is capable of reproducing the images
contained on a strip of 35 mm film. The degradation between original
and copy is nothing short of appalling here, and yet I enjoy DVDs just
the same. In fact, I've had some of my most profound cinematic
experiences on my modest home system. If I had access to a quality
cinema projecting those films at exactly the times when I was most ready
to receive them then I'm sure my experiences would have been all the
better. And perhaps some would say that either we restrict our
experience of art to ideal circumstances or else do entirely without.
This is how many feel about music: it's live or it's nothing. But I
feel there is tremendous value in the kinds of experience available to
us through less than ideal means. And everyone draws their lines
differently.
So, where do you need to be to hear the recordings that are the subject
of this thread? If the composer has allowed them to be released into
the world, then it's up to you to decide if the signal-to-noise ratio
within your personal listening circumstances is strong enough to give
you what you need. And if you prefer noise over signal, then so much
the better...
Randolph.
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