Live performance vs recording session - digital vs analogue recording

[David Pinnegar]

Hi!

I've become so fed up of digital recordings evaporating on memory cards, and also of my second Zoom H2 recorder not behaving as my first, when the opportunity came to move to magnetic tape . . . it was natural to regress in that direction!

At first I only had access to 1200ft tapes and so in a concert, we missed an item which was then recorded without the audience after the concert.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chhA3z5NnOw might be interesting for its comparisons.

The Zoom H2 decided not to respond as my first and the microphones overloaded in circumstances my previous one had performed well with. So I turned sensitivity down and boosted the menu recording level - and the amplification is clearly digital with digitisation noise horribly audible from the original recording. Whether this will be apparent through YouTube processing will be interesting to discover. But for
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK9hAZP4zmY
I chose the digital backup rather than the re-recorded item as I thought that the performance in front of the audience had a quality not captured dead without the audience.

In another situation, however,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKOSVih7tls was with an audience and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJT5Q6HooyA was without but on a superior instrument.

Do live performances always have something special?

Best wishes

David P

[revtonynewnham]

Hi

Recordings of live performances are often not "perfect" in musical terms, but should communicate something of the occasion.  There's usually no chance of editing or retakes (I always try and record rehearsals so I've got a backup).  For anything important, I'll run 2 recorders, so that a fault in one doesn't mean that the whole session is lost.  This is especially important where it's not possible to monitor the actual recording (as can be done with pro open-reel machines).

Digital vs Analogue is an interesting issue.  I think both have advantages & disadvantages.  I mainly use digital these days (open reel tape is too expensive for what I do).  When possible I record 24 bit - that means that I can leave plenty of headroom for unexpected signal peaks - the level can be normalised & dithered down to 16 bit if needed later.  Also, I always record WAV files.  Mp3's throw information away, so conversion to mp3 should be the very last stage, if it's needed for distribution.  I find it sad that many people seem to think mp3 is better than CD/WAV! I do have a portable recorder, and we have one in church (fed via the line inputs) - I've had no problems (so far) - but setting levels is critical.  Digital does not overload gracefully, like analogue.  A lot too depends on the quality of the analogue mic amps/mixer etc. 

Every Blessing

Tony

[KB7DQH]

Hmmm. I copied a chunk of a rant on another website because the snippet has implications for the "mission" of this forum... Since you have brought up magnetic tape, here goes...

...you would be surprised HOW LONG the NSA holds onto things that get the job done, and it is not because of budget constraints - the NSA is not a fashion statement, it is about doing what works and if an old method or system does the job perfectly, they keep that method or system in place.

This is referring to a system NSA used for storing and transporting monstrous amounts of data, using 2 inch wide, miles-long reels of magnetic tape... bandwidths up to 3 Mhz, and up to 256 simultaneous channels!   Now think about that statement above, and replace NSA with "church" and "things, method or system" with "pipe organ" ;) ;D ;D ;D

For the last few years I have "religiously" been archiving on my largest HDD the local weekly hour-long organ/choir program, "The Organ Loft" hosted by Roger Sherman, the program concluded 5 hours ago having been broadcast before, I merely overwrote the old file as the new antenna system on the FM tuner has proved to be far superior to what was used when I began this endeavor, there is always the possibility of ending up with a higher-quality recording. I have Audacity set up to capture at 32 bits and sample at 44.1Khz... And this is good enough to capture the multiplex carrier and its sidebands at 19khz in the audio output of the tuner, not using the "mpx filter" to make sure all the high-frequency information remains intact. 

As to the "quality" of Youtube audio... Even when stripped from downloaded videos and converted to MP3 there is significant Nyquist noise and other digital artifacts present in everything archived in that manner regardless of "upload" audio quality.   And for whatever reason, this is most apparent when reproducing pipe organs :o 

It will be intriguing to see if it is really possible to capture the "magic" of the live audience performance in a recording vs recorded without a live audience.   Of course the real "magic" of "live performance" is when one is present in the space of the performance!!!  Investigations have been made into the "non-locality" of consciousness and it has been proven that we can communicate conscious thoughts through space (and even through Faraday cages) but this might be a useful in determining if this is possible in the "time" domain as well :o  If the reader of this is wondering "just what the heck is Eric going on about" it may be useful to investigate  http://www.organmatters.com/index.php/topic,1227.msg5531.html#msg5531  and the recent work of Dr. Amit Goswami....http://www.organmatters.com/index.php/topic,1635.msg7820.html#new

Eric
KB7DQH

[MusingMuso]

It's interesting that when Peter Hurford recorded the Bach series, he did two "takes"....one intended as an archive edition, and the other (for the BBC?) more in the manner of live performances.

I found the latter infinitely more interesting than the former.

Oddly enough, I've only ever once heard the perfect Bach performance live, when Francis Jackson played the Eb P & F (St Anne)  at Leeds PC, possibly 40 years ago. Note perfect and with impeccable control, yet SO spontaneous as to be utterly thrilling if not breathtaking.

Some may not approve, but my moral is always to be a spontaneous musician, because if you haven't learned the notes perfectly, it's too late to do anything about it on the day. You CAN do something about playing musically and convincingly however, and a few errors are seldom much of a distraction unless they are glaringly awful.

Best,

MM

[JBR]

My apologies for straying slightly, but MM's post (above) reminds me just what an excellent musician Francis Jackson is.  Not surprisingly, due to his age, we don't hear as much about him now, more's the pity, but I'm sure we all have very happy recollections.