Dear Mike and Vocalisters:
Your comment that in "comparing recorded opera, for example, to live
opera at a large house like the met, one can plainly hear the
tremendous difference the amplification in the recording studio,
makes. in recorded opera, the voices are much more prominent than
they are in the opera house." is, of course, also true of all
recorded vrs live performances. The public today expects live
performances to emulate recorded performances. It used to be that
the public expected recorded performance to emulate live performances.
An acquaintance recently commented to me that he was surprised at how
much the string section in a live performance of a professional
symphony he had recently attended sounded like the the poor CD sound
he was getting from his recordings. He had come to believe that the
presence of all those high frequencies on the CD recording were the
fault of the CD format.
A close friend often complained to me about the lack of volume of the
singers in live professional performances and how much more he
appreciated listening to these performances on recording. When I
explained to him that it was his job as a listener to pay better
attention and not expect the sound to be in his back pocket he simply
said he preferred to listen to performances that did not have such
elevated expectations of its listeners.
A lot of the public today expects to attend "happenings", as they
were called in the '60's and '70's, when they attend concerts. At
"happenings" one is inundated with the sound and, try as one will, it
is impossible to escape the sound because of its intensity.
--
Lloyd W. Hanson
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