Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site

What is Realism in Sound Reproduction?

Realism in staged music sound reproduction will usually be understood to mean the generation of a sound field realistic enough to satisfy any normal ear-brain system that it is in the same space as the performers, that this is a space that could physically exist, and that the sound sources in this space are as full bodied and as easy to locate as in real life. Realism does not necessarily equate to accuracy or perfection. Achieving realism does not mean that one must slavishly recreate the exact space of a particular recording site. For instance, a recording made in Avery Fisher Hall but reproduced as if it were in Carnegie Hall is still realistic, even if inaccurate. While a home reproduction system may not be able to outperform a live concert in a hall the caliber of Boston's Symphony Hall, in many cases the home experience can now exceed a live event in acoustic quality. For example, a recording of an opera made in a smallish studio can now easily be made to sound better at home than it did to most listeners at a crowded recording session. One can also argue that a home version of Symphony Hall, where one is apparently sitting tenth row center, is more involving that the live experience heard from a rear side seat in the balcony with obstructed visual and sonic prospect. In a similar vein, realism does not mean perfection. If a full symphony orchestra is recorded in Carnegie Hall but played back as if it were in Carnegie Recital Hall, one may have achieved realism but certainly not perfection. Likewise, as long as localization is as effortless and as precise as in real life, the reproduced locations of discrete sound sources usually don't have to be exactly in the same positions as at the recording site to meet the standards of realism discussed here. (Virtual Reality applications, by contrast, often require extreme accuracy but realism is not a consideration.) An example of this occurs if a recording site viewed from the microphone has a stage width of 120° but is played back on a stage that seems only 90° wide. What this really means in the context of realism is that the listener has moved back in the reproduced auditorium some fifteen rows, but either stage perspective can be legitimately real. Being able to localize a stage sound source in a stereo or surround multi channel system does not guarantee that such localization will sound real. For example, a soloist's microphone panned by a producer to one loudspeaker is easy to localize but almost never sounds real.

In a similar vein, one can make a case that one can have glorious realism, even without any detailed front stage localization, as long as the ambient field is correct. Anyone who has sat in the last row of the family circle in Carnegie Hall can attest to this. This kind of realism makes it possible to work seeming miracles even with mono recordings.

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site