Live versus recorded; Truth in Listening

[soundminded]

Every speaker maker who ever built more than a table radio seems to have claimed at one time or another that his speaker was the most accurate or at least for his less expensive models, more accurate for the money. But Acoustic Research is the only one I know of which held live versus recorded demonstrations for a public audience in my lifetime. I personally attended two at different Consumer Audio Shows in New York many years ago. In one, an AR3 was AB'd against a guiitarist. I sat on axis. To my ears, the AR3 was slightly (barely perceptably) brighter!!!??? That was a surprise given the speaker's reputation. However, they were so close as to be nearly indistinguishable. My second experience came some years later when a pair of AR3as were AB'd agains a Nickelodeon. That was pretty much a dead match. I'm sure many of us remember AR's ad showing a photo of AR3s against an Aoleon Skinner pipe organ. These types of demostrations were very impressive to me, far more than any you hear in a showroom. No matter how familiar you are with the sound of live music, hearing a recording and trying to remember what you heard that was comparable at a live performance weeks ago, days ago, or even last night doesn't compare to comparing the sound you heard two seconds ago from the instrument that made it in the first place.

Does anyone remember these demos, how the recoridings were made, how they were played back, how the switchovers were synchronized, what equipment was used, etc? Does anyone know of any comparable demos? Of course, once you've seen and heard such a demo, it occurs to you that assuming the set up was as fair as it could be made, any change to the sound of THAT speaker, even by the same manufacturer is a departure from accuracy, not an improvement. Anyone care to commment on this type of test?

[Guest dogmeninreno]

You know, I would think that any manufacturer today would agressively pass on this challange. I took a couple of my vinyl's and a cd to the "Hi End Room" at a local dealer (they never heard of Ar as you may deduct) and auditioned a pair of M&K high end speakers Nautilus at $5,000.00 each, $10,000 a pair. I could only listen for 10-15 minutes as my wife will attest to, and then I wanted out of the room. They were using a fine Carver Sunfire amp and the room acoustics were exceptional. I wish the AR9's were not so heavy or I may have taught the young (and helpful) salesmen what real sound is like.

Dale in Reno....

[ar_pro]

Never had the pleasure of hearing the AR live/recording tests, but I do wonder how important a part the test venue played.

Having performed music professionally while in college, I always thought that I had a pretty good ear for the real thing vs. a reproduction. And to be honest, I've never heard a playback system that could convincingly portray a drum set...some speakers seem to get the low-end "sort of right" (the big ARs), while others (the Altec A-7 comes to mind) are pretty close on dynamics, but hugely colored. Nothing has ever fooled me into thinking that I was hearing a live drummer. Not one time. Never. EXCEPT for the instance when I was listening to my system play "Sweet Jane" from the Cowboy Junkies' "Trinity Sessions" CD...when the ride cymbal enters after the vocal bridge, it was right freaking THERE. But here's the rub - "there" was 35' feet away, two rooms distant! So a weird combination of volume (a little loud), distance (we're all familiar with music that sounds better with some separation from the source), recording ("Trinity Sessions" was recorded live, with significant natural reverb), and audio system (AR-9/McIntosh amp in a big room) caused my head to snap around in surprise. Perhaps an important question to ask is "does a loudspeaker's successful live vs. recording performance in a theater or concert hall mean that it will do as well if the test is conducted in your living room?"

[soundminded]

To successfully perform a live versus recorded test, the recording must be made in an anechoic chamber or at the very least in an acoustically dead place. This avoids a double echo effect. You don't want the recording to capture any echoes from the recording venue. This way, the playback room acoustics treats the recording the same way as the live performance. For obvious reasons you want the live versus recording demo to have the speaker and the musical instrument as close as possible to each other. One difference that cannot be simulated is the spatial radiation pattern of the live instrument. The loudspeaker, whatever type it is has a fixed radiation pattern, usually relatively omnidirectional with a falloff of about 10 db at 180 degrees up to the top octave or octave and a half and then increasingly directional as you get past say 8 or 10 Khz depending on the tweeter type. Forward firing speakers might have a 10 db falloff at 15 khz by about 60 degrees off axis or less. Musical instruments on the other hand vary all over the place. For example, cymbals which are part of a drum set will probably radiate their strong high frequency components in a relatively omni pattern. Put them at the front of the performing stage of say Carnegie Hall and you will get strong high frequency reflections in the 40 to 70 ms range off the back wall you won't get from front firing loudspeakers sitting next to them. The radiating pattern of a piano varies depending not only on the type of piano but on how it is set up. A grand piano can have its sounding board closed, opened directing the sound radiated upwards from the harp reflected forward, or completely removed. Sound radiating down from the harp reflects off the floor. Human voices probably radiate like most loudspeakers with the high frequency sibilant parts of speech radiating mostly forward. Think of how difficult it is to understand someone when their back is towards you.

Most loudspeakers do not have the bass capability to properly reproduce drums, especially bass drums. The huge thwack you feel undoubtedly has components near or below the limit of the audible range. My experience with AR9 convinces me that this is one of the few speakers I've ever heard that has the capability to reproduce this range when suitably installed and equalized. I have not experimented with outboard subwoofers but integrating them with other loudspeakers seems to be a big problem. If you read the design concepts behind AR9, you will see that the designers solved this problem very cleverly. Altec Lansing A-7 is very efficient and capable of great dynamic range but besides its frequency response coloration, I don't think it has the low frequency "reach" of any of the AR 12" woofer models. BTW, I ran into an Altec salesman at one trade show who was in a state of ecstasy having just sold 59 pairs of A7s to Columbia Records. He said his speaker was 9 times as efficient as AR3. With the cost of amplifier power very high in those days and the possibile sizes of the rooms to be filled that may have been significant. In a home installation, the cost may still have been a consideration but the savings in space was far more important to most people.

[Guest russwollman]

Soundminded, you said something telling is your first post that I'll copy here:

"No matter how familiar you are with the sound of live music, hearing a recording and trying to remember what you heard that was comparable at a live performance weeks ago, days ago, or even last night doesn't compare to comparing the sound you heard two seconds ago from the instrument that made it in the first place."

The human "audio memory" is notoriously short, and I'm finding it become amazingly short as I become older, such that I can no longer do A-B speaker comparisons as I once did. With some hearing loss and lots of hard work during the day, I am experiencing a lack of desire to compare speakers. It's too much work.

Sound makes brief and often subtle impressions on the human nervous system, transforming it in definite ways, and of course, the sense of hearing is always "on", so there's a nearly unending stream of input, an important consideration. Just some thoughts to ponder. AR was a marvelous firm, almost an institution in my view, and I always had great respect for the people and their products. Honesty, integrity, accuracy, faithfulness...high values were sometimes there in the sweet '60s.

[Steve F]

This is a great topic, one that Tom Tyson and I have written extensively about in the past. About a year or two ago, we participated in a written exchange with Alvin Foster of the Boston Audio Society, recounting the last—and by far, the most dramatic—of AR’s famed live vs. recorded presentations: Drummer Neil Grover vs. the AR-10Pi. The entire story is documented in great detail in The BAS Speaker, and I won’t try to duplicate it here.

Suffice to say, it was quite a production. C. Victor Campos, AR’s director of engineering and audio impresario extrodonaire, was the AR executive primarily responsible for the entire endeavor. As Tom can also attest, AR went through a lot of difficulty finding amplifiers and recording/playback devices before they found equipment that was up to the challenge.

The AR-10pi’s were virtually 100% stock, however, with only a little extra cabinet bracing and a slightly larger autotransformer. The drivers were production units, and AR never had a problem with them throughout the process.

Victor said at the time that AR’s motivation was to demonstrate that a relatively conventional loudspeaker, using drivers constructed of non-exotic materials could, in fact, come VERY close to replicating live sound…if the speaker had inherently accurate response and the requisite power handling needed for lifelike playback levels. The 10Pi had an exemplary, linear, accurate response—superb still, even by today’s standards—and proved in this test, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that the most important factors in a loudspeaker’s ability to sound convincingly lifelike are linear frequency response, low distortion, and high power handling capability. All the other factors that people often promote as being essential to speaker performance—"time alignment," exotic tweeter materials, trick radiation patterns, unusual cabinet designs, crossover components made from some secret recipe, etc.—are strictly second-tier factors. These secondary factors may influence the sound, but ONLY if the primary ones are good to begin with. If the primary determinants of good sound aren’t there (good FR, high power handling, and low distortion), the secondary factors can’t save it. In other words, no matter how much you like that special capacitor or that 2" thick MDF cabinet, if the basic response isn’t accurate to start with, the sound will never be right.

Here, then, is my article on the 1976 AR Live vs. Recorded test, as submitted to the Boston Audio Society about two years ago:

"I remember the Neil Grover "live vs. recorded" demonstration very well. It was actually 1976, not 1975. I remember that because 1976 was the year I graduated college, and I had to cut short a visit with a girl I was dating to drive over to the AR factory for the demonstration. Needless to say, she didn’t understand, but that’s how I have such a strong memory of the time frame. Besides, on a more objective note, the AR-10Pi and 11 weren’t introduced until March 1975, and this demo took place about a year after their introduction.

The Boston Audio Society had arranged with AR to hold its monthly meeting at their factory. AR was kind enough to bring Neil in, set everything up, and do a special demo just for us. In retrospect, I suppose AR must have felt it was in their interests as well, since it was a great opportunity for them to impress a large gathering of influential audio enthusiasts in one fell swoop, who would then, hopefully, go out and tell all their friends and relatives what great speakers AR made.

I sat in the first row, no more than 6 feet away from the drumset. The AR-10Pi speakers were on stands, with the tops of the cabinets a little above Neil’s shoulder height when seated at the drums. The speakers were spaced apart just slightly less than the width of the drumset, and set very slightly behind Neil, to give him a little "working room."

The demo started. In those days, I was quite an AR speaker aficionado. But in spite of my secretly "rooting" for AR, I was very skeptical going in. Drums are far more demanding and dynamic than the string quartet AR had used for a previous live vs. recorded test a decade earlier. I hoped the 10Pi’s were up to the task. I was also worried that the playback chain (analog reel-to-reel tape recorders and amplification) wouldn’t be transparent. It was, after all, only 1976, long before digital recording and 100dB dynamic range became the norm. Any shortcomings that were revealed would naturally be attributed to the speakers, even if some other link in the chain were actually at fault. I was surprised (and relieved!) when the demo was a smash success. As it proceeded, there were times when it was impossible to distinguish between the tape and Neil’s playing. As my ears became acclimated, I could pick up a slight "boxy" coloration to the snare drum that occasionally betrayed the recorded source, but overall—very impressive. I felt strangely vindicated. My thoughts were along the lines of, "Aha! What do all you AR skeptics say now!"

For me, this demo was particularly fascinating because I am a jazz drummer, intimately familiar with all the nuances of playing, the mechanics of the drumset, the variations in sound that can be elicited from the drums and cymbals depending on how and where they’re struck, etc. During college, my playing career reached its zenith, and I was quite active (and I’ve been told, quite accomplished), playing numerous concerts and club dates around the Boston University campus and the city. My fellow group members were all music majors from the Berkley School of Music, and here I was, a marketing/business major from BU! They never quite understood this. After one particularly torrid set, our bass player turned to me and said, "Man, why the **** are you studying that advertising ****! You’re a PLAYER!" It was the most gratifying musical compliment I ever received.

So it was against this backdrop, in this mindset, that I saw the AR demo. When the demo was over, AR opened it up for questions. After a few questions from the group about the equipment, the speakers, etc., I raised my hand and said, "I’m a drummer, and I know that there’s a great deal of variance in the sound of different drumsticks. No two sticks sound the same. When I play, if I switch the sticks between my left and right hands, the cymbals will sound markedly different. And what kind of sticks did you use—wooden or nylon-tipped? How did you allow for this in the recording and demonstration process?" With wooden sticks, after a short while the shellac will wear off the tip and the wood will begin to wear down, changing the stick’s sound. Nylon tips are more rugged, but have a less mellow, "edgier" sound.

The folks from AR looked at me with surprise. Neil smiled at me, and nodded knowingly, approvingly, from one drummer to another. The sticks had indeed proven to be a tricky element during the project, they said, and a lot of effort was taken to be sure that the sticks themselves weren’t an influencing factor. Obviously, the 1976 version of AR’s "Live vs. Recorded" demonstration made quite an impression on me. I thoroughly enjoyed it."

Steve F.

[tysontom]

When you think about it, Acoustic Research was first and foremost a no-nonsense research and testing speaker manufacturer, interested in advancing the state-of-the-art of accurate, high-fidelity sound reproduction. There was a strong feeling at AR that anything that measured well in the lab would sound accurate, yet this was in stark contrast to the opinions of numerous “experts” and “golden ears” in the high-fidelity industry who felt that only individuals with “exceptional sensitivity or taste are able to judge the fidelity of a recording or music system,” as AR put it in one of its 1970’s product catalogs. AR felt differently, of course, that a speaker could be designed objectively -- much like an amplifier or a microphone -- to reproduce sound accurately. Nevertheless, in the early 1960s Edgar Villchur decided to conduct a series of public live-vs.-recorded concerts in order to demonstrate, subjectively, AR speaker accuracy against the true standard, “live music.” As others have pointed out, the ear’s memory is short and notoriously poor. Despite what some audio “experts” have said in the past, you cannot go to a concert and return home some time later and proclaim that your hifi system is “as accurate as the symphony orchestra.” The only way to make a subjective judgment on reproduction accuracy is to compare playback to an original source, with instantaneous switching back and forth in a controlled environment.

Prior to the AR-3/Fine Arts Quartet concerts there were two notable examples of public demonstrations: (1) in the early 1950s G.A. Briggs with Warfdale conducted a concert on stage comparing his speakers to that of a symphony orchestra and (2) in 1955 The New York Audio League (Julian Hirsch) conducted a concert comparing four AR-1 speakers to the large Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ in a church in Mt. Kisco, New York. The Briggs concert was partially successful, I think, but little was published about the results, and it is generally felt that the equipment of the day struggled to keep pace with the dynamic range of a full symphony orchestra. The AR-1/Aeoloen-Skinner demonstration, on the other hand, was widely reported and considered a great success. This demonstration clearly established the AR-1 as one of the definitive low-frequency reproducers, and it also convinced Julian Hirsch of the merit of the acoustic-suspension AR woofer.

In the early 1960s Acoustic Research, Concertapes (a magnetic-tape purveyor) and Dynaco conducted a series of approximately 75 public, live-vs.-recorded concerts with the Fine Arts Quartet. These concerts were conducted in New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles, among other places. Equipment used was a pair of AR-3s, Dynaco Mark III amplifiers, Sony condenser microphones and an Ampex 350-2 tape recorder and electronics. Incidentally, speaker cable was ordinary 16-ga lamp cord! The recordings were done outdoors in “God’s anechoic chamber,” as they say, in order to eliminate double reverberation. The biggest problem during the recording session was quieting the birds that were trying to sing with the music. It is noteworthy that other manufacturers, such as KLH, Dunlavy and McIntosh, among others, subsequently attempted live-vs.-recorded demonstrations of their own in dealer showrooms, etc., but seemed to overlook the problem of precision recording or double reverberation during the playback, and the results were not convincing (I actually attended two or three such concerts, and the switchovers were very obvious, at least to me). Another obvious issue with live-vs.-recorded music is the speaker’s on- and off-axis frequency response, and quite frankly many speakers don’t fare well in one or both departments. In addition to its low distortion, the AR-3 was exceptionally uniform both on- and off-axis with excellent acoustic-power response, and this accuracy accounted for its unparalleled success in these live-vs.-recorded demonstrations.

After the Fine Arts Quartet demonstrations AR conducted several concerts again using AR-3s, Ampex, Dynaco with classical guitarist Gustavo Lopez. It is interesting to note that the treble control on the preamplifier had to be turned down slightly during the playback of these sessions, because the treble balance was initially too bright. In addition, the recording done for the guitar was also made outdoors, but a thunderstorm (far away in the distance), was inadvertently recorded in the mix. This part of the recording was discovered later, but it was decided that it would not detract from the music itself.

During 1966, AR performed live-vs.-recorded demonstrations at the New York High Fidelity Music Show in New York comparing the sound of a restored 1910 Seaburg nickelodeon to the sound of AR-3s (and also AR-4xs). Associated equipment used for the nickelodeon demonstration included a Magnecord 1028, B&K microphones and Dynaco amplifiers.

It is generally considered that the AR-3 live-vs.-recorded sessions were the most successful ever attempted in the industry, and no one during any of those sessions could positively tell the switchovers between the live and playback music, although those sitting close to the front of the stage could sometimes hear tape hiss through the speakers. Part of the demonstration was to intentionally ask the audience to have a show of hands when they thought they could detect the switchovers, and there would be a show of hands, and invariably they would guess wrong.

Finally, the most recent live-vs.-recorded session was done in 1976 by AR’s Advanced Development Division. This demonstration compared the AR-10Pi to drummer Neil Grover. These sessions were engineered by Victor Campos, and these demanding demonstrations were considered highly successful as well. SteveF comments in great detail on this occurrence elsewhere in the forum. The AR-10Pi sessions were probably the most technically difficult of all the ones done by AR due to the power requirements, etc.

--Tom Tyson

[soundminded]

As I said in my original posting, I heard both the guitar and nickelodeon demos and was completely convinced that the AR3 was a superbly accurate reproducer. I must have forgotten that the nickelodeon demo was with AR3s and not AR3As. This begs the question; if the AR3 was that close to perfection meaning accuracy, what prompted the decision to replace it with the AR3A and to continue further development through AR 10Pi, AR LST, AR303, and ultimately AR9?

[Guest russwollman]

"This begs the question; if the AR3 was that close to perfection meaning accuracy, what prompted the decision to replace it with the AR3A and to continue further development through AR 10Pi, AR LST, AR303, and ultimately AR9?"

1. There is no rest for the seeker of truth, ah, or accuracy.

2. The people in marketing need grist for the mill.

3. The customers are getting restless, too.

4."Everybody's gotta be someplace"—Myron Cohen.

[ninohernes]

>During 1966, AR performed live-vs.-recorded demonstrations at

>the New York High Fidelity Music Show in New York comparing

>the sound of a restored 1910 Seaburg nickelodeon to the sound

>of AR-3s (and also AR-4xs). Associated equipment used for the

>nickelodeon demonstration included a Magnecord 1028, B&K

>microphones and Dynaco amplifiers.

>--Tom Tyson

I never knew that the AR-4x's were used in live vs. recorded demonstrations. I really like my little 4x's, I am always amazed at the solid bass response of these little guys! Also, on another note, on my 4x's I would like to keep the original pots insted of replacing them. Is there anyone here who has the tools to clean them? They are quite corroded, and I dont know if they can even be cleaned.