[78-L] Recording Quality - a relative term

[Julian Vein]

On 29/06/14 17:04, Ron L'Herault wrote:
> I don't know if quality has improved but I think the overall result has gone
> downhill.  Recording each musician/instrument independently and then mixing
> them in at the end gives a one-dimensional sound image to these ears.  I
> find it all most impossible to hear and understand modern vocalists because
> they are lost in the sonic plane.  First off, you don't hear the interplay
> of the instrumental sounds as they were created.  And then you don't have
> the depth.  If you close your eyes it seems like there is a line of sound in
> front of you, everything mashed together, including the singer, just another
> sound in the jumble.   Even old mono recordings had a sense of depth.  You
> could kind of feel the singer was in front of the band, and I am convinced
> that you get a feeling for where instruments were place in relation to the
> singer on an early mono recording (30s)  Was it just the time delay?  Once
> stereo got over the "ping pong" era, one could easily spatially and
> sonically place instruments and singers in a group recording as you hear it
> played back.  There was definition and separation for a while, and not just
> the side-to-side separation you'd expect.  It was a separation between
> musicians/singers.
>
> Ron L
>
==================
My sentiments exactly. Early 50s recordings were "honestly" (i.e. 
simply) done. In the jazz world the problem seems to have started with 
Rudy van Gelder who, at Blue Note's Alfred Lion's bidding, starting 
using his mixing console to obtain a balance that suited Lion. It was 
thise "hear-all-instruments-equally" requirement that meant the end of 
hearing instruments in their natural ambiance. Of course, not all 
engineers followed this method. Ewing Nunn of Audiophile records 
continued to use natural ambiance, although he sometimes experimented 
with different methods to obtain a particular effect, and not always 
successfully. When I first started hearing van Gelder's efforts in the 
late 50s/early 60s, I was often straining to hear some aspect of the 
music, usually the recessed sound of the bass player. He wasn't an 
incompetent engineer--some of his efforts are excellent--so he knew what 
he was doing. With Blue Note he was "just obeying orders". Some of his 
mid-60's stuff was bad by any standard (Blue Note and Prestige). When I 
play a RVG recordings, I'm always conscious of the recording quality, 
and knowing that it isn't an accurate representation of what was 
happening in the studio.

Perhaps there's a theory that using natural ambiance distracts from the 
music making, and that a distillation of the individual sounds is the 
best way to represent it?

As it happens, I've been listening to a lot of George H. Buck's 
catalogue lately. Some of the sound is rough, to say the least, but they 
are mostly recorded using simple mike setups, and the best of them (even 
with imperfections) make you feel the band is in the room with you.

The best recordings are those that don't make you think about the 
recording methods.

      Julian Vein