THE DECISIVE FACTOR FOR ACHIEVING NATURAL SOUND

[♔Chello]

THE DECISIVE FACTOR FOR ACHIEVING NATURAL SOUND

I have been interested in sound since I was 3-4 years old; I discovered - even then - that the sound changed when I moved the speakers.

For many years I was focused on details in the bass and treble range, while the midrange and its crucial role only became important many years later.

I made my first music collection when I was 6-8 years old by recording from the radio, cassettes and LPs and having access to my father's tube amplifier and reel-to-reel tape player, which I took over.

Even then I thought that old recordings from the 50s were better than others, but I didn't find out why until a few years ago.

They ARE better today too, but why ?

There are several reasons for this, but an important one is the microphone technology used and the fact that all amplifier circuits were tube-based.

Another is that only minimal effects were used - everything was recorded live, and a lot of time was spent setting up all the equipment; especially microphones.

What was truly unique was the recreation of the natural acoustics around each instrument (Ambience, of course..!).

At that time, horn speakers were also quite widespread, which further amplified the amount of ambience - the same recordings lose life reproduced with ordinary speakers.

Regular dynamic-based headsets versus electrostatic (STAX, for example) make the same difference.

The development of transistor-based amplifiers was a step backwards, while the transition from analog to digital technology was the death knell.

I want to put it just as brutally, because the most important thing in music reproduction is the acoustics (the amount of ambience), which with digital technology is almost never real, but simulated.

With digital technology, we have terms like DRY and WET, while analog was WET; even though the acoustics of the room could be almost zero, the ambience of the instruments was still present..!


An arranger/synth only has the option to adjust the ambience for drums and perc alone - all other instruments must be given artificial ambience, which will never be as good as the original.

We can still choose instruments carefully, and choose those that have the appropriate amount of natural ambience recorded, and adjust the amount of natural ambience for drums/perc in relation to these.

All effects should be used with the utmost caution, because they are all artificial.

My world consists of (natural) ambience, as you may have guessed.