I don’t do live sound reinforcement, but friends have explained (to me) one thing.........that frequencies (in live replay) are channeled into towers which reproduce highs, medium and low sounds. Much like you can do with a stereo by bi-amping and adding a third channel X2 sub. But still it’s really not the same.
In this sense (frequency response) it is really the same. However, having multiple towers can make a difference depending where in the audience you're sitting.
Why it doesn’t sound the same is a great question as in live venues essentially.......are like a big stereo?
In practice, it's effectively usually the opposite. Yes, the live system is a big stereo, a very big stereo, in fact so big that the stereo illusion will fail for a large percentage of the audience (same problem as cinema sound). For this reason, a live mix is typically mostly mono (or at least a very narrow stereo), with just some of the effects maybe wide. This isn't the case with a studio recording, we can utilise a much wider stereo image because a home stereo reproduction system only has a few feet/meters between the speakers.
If you have ever met with a guying showing off his Hi/Fi, often they will use single instrument recordings to show off what their systems can do.
Sometimes a single instrument recording can be very revealing, because there's only one instrument to focus your concentration on. For example, the note decay isn't mixed with or obscured by other instruments.
Such music, like a single drum track will somehow be played back with higher realism than complex/multi/tracked musical files?
Couple of problems here. Drum tracks are almost never designed to be high realism, the only potential exceptions are small jazz ensembles and some acoustic ethnic music. With all popular genres the drums are highly processed, although differently highly processed for different genres (which is partially what defines different genres). Secondly, we have to be careful with the term "multi-tracked" because it has two somewhat different meanings:
A. It technically means that individual instruments/mics or sub-groups of instruments/mics are recorded on separate recorder tracks. For example the lead guitar on one track, the lead vocal on another track, bass on another, etc.
B. The instruments or sub-groups of instruments are recorded on separate tracks but not at the same time. For example, the lead guitar is recorded on a track and then some time later, maybe days later, the lead vocal is recorded on another track.
Drumkits are virtually always multi-tracked, typically divided into at least: Kick, snare, hi-hats, toms, floor tom and cymbals, and commonly more tracks. This allows different processing for each of the instruments/groups of instruments within the drumkit. In pop/rock genres, this is meaning "A" of "multi-tracked", the whole drumkit is recorded at the same time but on different tracks. So generally, "a single drum track" is both multi-tracked and is not supposed to have "realism". Note that this isn't always the case, sometimes, even with rock music but particularly with electronic genres, the drums are multi-tracked using meaning "B".
Maybe it’s reflections are kept minimal?
Not a simple answer either. The individual instrument mics must be positioned very close (or even inside in the case of the kick drum) to reduce "spill" from the other instruments in the drumkit, to allow different processing for the different instruments. This greatly minimises reflections as well. However, there is typically also an "overhead pair" which picks up mainly the cymbals but also quite a lot of reflections and sometimes also a "Room Mic" which is almost entirely dedicated to capturing reflections. The mixed drum track is some combination of all these, depending on genre and subjective opinion/preference.
Or the mixture with multiple tracks is harder to reproduce. But a single drum kit can be reproduced really well by a good home stereo, which is amazing due to drums being the hardest instrument to mic effectively.
As explained above, a single drumkit IS a mixture of multiple tracks. Also, I wouldn't say the drumkit is the hardest instrument to mic effectively, although within a standard rock/pop band it certainly is and that's because it isn't one instrument but a bunch of different instruments in very close proximity. On the other hand, it's also typically the instrument(s) that most recording time has been spent on over the decades, so recording engineers are extremely well versed in how to recorded them.
That is one reason why they almost always do the drum tracks first when making a metal album. The drums are the foundation and everything else follows.
No, that's not the reason. When multi-tracking (meaning "B" above), the drums are typically recorded first because they are the rhythmic foundation, not because of it's sound or recording difficulty. Obviously, a rhythmic foundation is essential for all the subsequent musicians to follow, otherwise those subsequent takes won't sync. However, this isn't always the case, it's also common to use a "click track" which all the musicians follow and then the drumkit can be recorded at any point.
But small jazz groups can be recorded and played back really well. This might be due to the small jazz group being all recorded simultaneously with-out multitracking.
No, even a small jazz group will be multi-tracked but virtually always they would be recorded simultaneously as well. IE. Meaning "A" above.
Also all instruments being recorded are in playing position “live” in a room. This works too as all instruments are acoustic with no vocals. So such playback can be replicated to a point. Maybe primarily due to minimal wall reflections? Maybe someone knows?? At least this is what it sounds like when listening? I don’t know why this style of music and recording process offers a nuanced and enhanced realism?
As with a drumkit, the instruments in a small jazz ensemble will be close mic'ed (for separation/to avoid "spill") so they can be mixed/processed individually, they will also typically be recorded with a more distant (stereo) "pair" and one or more room mics, and then all these multi-tracks mixed together. The realism is effectively enhanced because we're largely trying to create the illusion of an acoustic event, while pop/rock cannot be an acoustic event. Pop/Rock genres evolved only because electronic manipulation became available, without this processing/manipulation pop/rock could not exist.
Again the only way you would know if it sounded like real instruments, is if you actually heard this playback in real life.
So imagine just how hard of a test that is for a second. You need to sit in a room and listen to the whole performance, then take the tape and have the musicians leave the room, and have good enough playback to recreate the musicians! Typically monitoring playback is not always optimal.
That's essentially what every professional recording engineer has always done. Although we don't tend to listen to the whole performance before recording and it's typically the musicians themselves who decide or at least inform how accurate the recording is. Typically though, everyone (musicians, engineers and producer) is more interested in a good/pleasing sound than audibly perfect fidelity, even with classical music, let alone in rock/pop, where perfect fidelity is one of the last things anyone wants! Monitoring playback, especially in commercial studios usually is optimal enough.
Once multitrack starts to be played any perception of reality goes out the window.
With extremely few exceptions, pretty much all music (of all genres) is multi-tracked from the 1970's onwards and a fair bit was multi-tracked long before the 1970's. You're barking up the wrong tree here, it's not multi-tracking, it's how multi-tracking is employed and how much of an illusion of reality we wish to create with it.
IMO Again it’s the George Martin 5th Beatle effect!
Not really. It's the pop/rock (and all subsequent genres) effect, which requires electronic manipulation to exist. George Martin invented some new effects, which were audibly obvious and along with the effects and production techniques already in common use, effectively used the studio as almost an additional instrument in the band. But this was really just a small (but audibly obvious) evolution of what was already standard practice. For example, in the late 1950's Phil Spectre created the "
Wall of Sound" production technique, essentially layering many takes/multi-tracks on top of one another, this was further developed by Brian Wilson and many others well before the seminal Sgt. Pepper album and the "studio as an instrument". And this is just one example.
It doesn’t doesn’t exist in real-life so no way can it be recreated live.
A fair bit of it can indeed be created live by the live mix engineer, most of the effects used on the Sgt. Pepper album for example, they obviously can't be created acoustically though. Some studio productions can't be recreated live, so either the productions are rearranged for live performance or the live performance is partially (or entirely) played back from a studio recording.
But remember too, that while a live small jazz band is a good subject for realism in playback, the reality is that each instrument is in reality being played back in a 3D space in real life. So the problem not only the placement of sound generation, but the angle and reflection of sounds off the avenue walls are different positioning for every instrument used. It’s if they can get the sonic reflections down to zero that this style of recording works best.........maybe, I don’t know.
No, "reflections down to zero" sounds terrible and absolutely nothing like "realism". So much so, that it's sometimes difficult to identify even what instrument it's supposed to be, let alone subtleties of realism! The sound of acoustic instruments that we're used to, is highly reliant on the mixture of the actual sound the instrument is producing and the reflections of that sound, and with some/many instruments the balance needs to be far more towards the reflections than the "direct" sound. The actual variables with say a small jazz band are: The room acoustics, the position of the instruments within that acoustic and the position of the mics relative to the instrument/s. The latter having the most audible affect.
Where in rock it’s all about working with the sonic reflections. The way they recorded John Bonham's drums in a house with a 29 foot ceilings which allows the record producers and sound engineers to mix that room reverberation back into the drum mix. At the time they had microphones hanging down up over the rafters 20 something feet off the ground, to capture the echo.
In every genre we have to work with the sonic reflections. There's nothing fundamentally different about your example. Overheads are virtually always used, although typically only about 6ft or so off the ground and then a "room mic" much further away (but typically not so high), to capture the echo.
The most profound thing about rock recording at times is giving instruments body by allowing the room sound to be added into the recording.
Actually, it's pretty much the opposite! The most profound thing about rock recording is NOT having room sound in the recording (or the mix). All the instruments in a rock band, including vocals are typically recorded with close mics and extremely little room sound. The exception is drumkit as mentioned but even then it's typically only a relatively small amount. Most of the "body" is created electronically (EQ, compression, chorusing, overdriving guitar amps/cabs, etc.) and then arteficial delay based effects; analogue or digital delay, echo chambers, reverb units, doubling, etc., are applied. The other end of the extreme is classical music recordings, where most, if not all of the delay based effects are in fact from the actual recording room/venue but there is still often some small amount of EQ and compression and sometimes also some arteficial reverb applied. The very extreme, even beyond rock, is of course the electronic music genres.
Vocals too are a highly susceptible to room reflections which the performers can actually interact with in real-time to get a special sound/tone. Vocals can be handled different ways where they can use separate backing tracks with simply contain the room response and that specific track can be re-added to a recording.
Again, lead vox are almost always close mic'ed with extremely little room reflections, they are typically added artificially (not from the recording room), later during mixing. There are exceptions but they're uncommon. The same is broadly true with backing vox although it's maybe slightly more common to record the actual room reflections.
A live playback has very little if any of this craftsmanship.
True, because you probably wouldn't hear much of it and if you did, it would cause a mess, as it interacts with the more dominant venue reflections being produced in response to the sound being output from the speakers. However, depending on the size and reflective nature of the venue, we will often add some artificial digital delay or reverb (as it's highly configurable), to "fill in the gaps" or mitigate some reflection issues. This too is "craftsmanship" but is necessarily "rougher"/more agricultural that the controlled acoustics and time available in a studio recording.
G
