So what's with hearing a good singer, on key, being shredded by the judges about how 'off key' the rendition was?
And, worse, a shrill, sour sounding POS, that the same judges go on and on about? Especially when the song is 'pitchy' as h***.
Simon Cowell alluded to this only once. He said that he went home and watched the show, and marvelled at the difference between what he heard live and what he heard played over broadcast. How much better a particular contestant sounded. From memory, he also mentioned that the ones giving a stellar live performances didn't sound so good. He wondered where the difference came from.
Thus the question: what's going on here? Any professional musicians out there that know what causes shrill to sound good and good to sound bad to live audience?
Unrelated example of disparity: [to me, often] stage performances in musical productions SOUND awful! Seems the most successful musical stage performers just sound, ...well, like 'fingernails down a blackboard' and off key. But, are accoladed by audiences worldwide. So, what gives here? [And, don't tell me it's my ears. I tune pianos and can tell you instantly the 'health' of string(s), whether it has 'turned' and sometimes even if it's one on the outside, or one on the inside of a set of three.]
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| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
And really hard to follow all the characters. ...Jim Thompson
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| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
I watch Fox News... primarily noted to annoy all the "progressives" lurking here >:-}
I watch a lot of PBS, also "The Blacklist", "Blue Bloods", and lots of old classic movies on Turner.
Also watch a lot of the cooking and house restoration shows.
I don't watch _any_ game shows or tripe such as "American Idol" :-) ...Jim Thompson
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| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
I also enjoyed that a lot, was much closer to the book indeed. Then I also watched 1-2 years ago the sequel to it, 80-s, same cast, was quite good, too.
Fox News is NOT hard hitting enough! Soft peddles too often. I enjoyed RT news ...until they dummied it down for US, and Arab News ...until they dummied that down also. I used to enjoy Korean News, but they've dummied that down too. Which leaves ...no source at all! It used to be fun to see RT News have 'breaks' at critical points in their news. Not saying censured, but raises some quesitons. How about the successful censoring of the film with a devil depicted by an unusually close resemblance to ...? It was said someone approached the producers of the film, they said sure, we'll change the devil's likeness to some white dude. Maybe voluntarily changing is not responding to censorship, but asking is, sort of. By the way, the likeness WAS incredibly close!
Blacklist is great! Spader is much nicer than his character was in "Two Days in the Valley"
I enjoy house restorations shows too Learn a lot. Cooking not so much, they're usually not very hygienic and are always putting garlic and too much salt in the food. Haven't learned much from watching those shows. Remember Ms. Macy is an incredible cook. While we were at the Amstel, in Amsterdam, she 'specified' a veal dish, which the chef made, and then added to the menu.
I like to watch shows that expect people to aspire ...American Idol, X-Factor, Dancing wwith the Srars. But they could leave out the 'making fun of people' and the 'self-aggrandizing comments'
I think alot has to do with the quality of the sound.
Studio quality is exceptional, Live quality can be greater or worse. Home q uality same,
I recall an old recording engineer say, they have 2 monitors, one a distort ed tiny speaker to simulate an old portable radio and one for the average g ood home speaker.
The difference is in filtering out the bass and treble harmonics which migh t sound pleasant during a mid range vocal screech which is pitchy. A good jazz singer knows how to mend the notes and Bob Dylan knew how to bend his voice so a guitar out of tune did not matter.
It seemed like two principles may be occurring: Perhaps being 'live' something is 'more than' what gets through broadcast. Or, perhaps being through broadcast, the vocals are not well represented. Kind of the same, but subtly different.
Ok, first premise seemed wrong because tone is tone, bad harmonics are just bad harmonics. The second premise seemed reasonable, except screech is screech whether using 17 inch analog TV monitor with tiny speaker or using large LCD screen and 'studio' quality speakers.
So that leaves ?? thus I posted.
Some singers sound awful live, which verifies that the studio 'corrected' the voice. Some singers sound better live, which verifies that the recording process is lame. And, these are usually the 'mega stars', which [to me] verifies that the recording process just can't keep up. Both statements seemed to verify both premises. Which leaves me with the question '*IF* there is no hidden agenda [can't always rule that out] what is so different?'
I do know that a singer's feedback path is extremely important. Sound either comes back through the ears, or back through bone vibrations. A singer listening to bone path usuallly sounds like most people, awful. And, a singer listening to audio feedback usually sounds better. You can see the difference when singing in a shower where the reflected sound can finally get above the direct bone path. Variation from path is also verified when you play back someone's recorded voice [and there is absolutely NO bone path] and they personally don't even recognize their own voice.
To me, the singers that get accoladed sound like the bone feedback singers. And, being live the sound levels can often be excruciatingly high, perhaps causing bone path in the judges. At home, sound levels are not set so high as to move your chair away. We once had a TV, whose lowest volume setting was too loud. Perhaps, it's a matter of decibels. LOUD energy, vibrating the bone structures may do something to the perception process. But, then again sometimes, the judges are awed by someone who sounds good, which seems to confirm that perhaps the broadcast path is not currupting the sound but rather 'filtering' it. The broadcast path seems to reduce the voice to basic, and therefore the voice HAS to be good, else sounds screechy.
I was hoping someone with experience from a sound studio would jump in here. I once had a professional musician tell me that he has to tune his intrumentation sharp for live performances [which kind of confirms what we hear on AI], else they sound 'dull' but when he's in the studio he said they had to be dead on, else they just sound bad [which confirms what we hear also]. And, he said he had to tune a bit differently for Europe vs US, which I never quite understood. Something about 'A' here is 440 and 'A' there is 442, or 446, but that doesn't seem possible.
Since the 'listening' experience appears to be so arbitrary, I start to watch the professional back up musicians. Their expressions and body language don't lie. When a good performer hits the stage, they light up. Regardless of judge comments. Plus, it seems what they like sounds good here, too.
I have not ruled out the possibility that the show is tripe causes the disparity. Who knows what hidden agendas these people have? However, any ideas on a possible 'technical' cause?
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The difference in sound is likely due to the venue's acoustics and stage
sound system setup. When listening at home, the acoustics and sound system
don't have as much influence on the sound you hear, since performers and
bands are piped into different sound equipment (studio vs stage).
The stage system is probably set for "optimal" sound as judged by someone
whose hearing is less than optimal, whereas the mikes used by the performers
and bands and the studio processing equipment are set for (approximately)
flat response. Therefore, home listeners get a more realistic version of
the sound, whereas the audence gets a highly doctored version.
I don't watch Idol either (or any other Idol).
That's my $2.29 worth,
Dave M
I can't speak to your specific questions, but it should be clear to anybody that has attended live music and then heard a similar performance broadcast that you lose SOMETHING in the recording process.
I have another observation, though. I often listen to Prairie Home Companion (a radio variety show in the US) and sometimes rip the audio from their on-line site. To support the artists, I also buy their CDs. While it is not true in every case, in a HUGE number of cases, their performance live is VASTLY better than their studio recording. Now, that may be the effect of a live audience, the expertise of the staff musicians or audio people at the show, or something else, but it has happened WAY too often to be coincidence. (I call this the Keillor effect, after the host of the program.)
Anyway, back to your original question, YOU are hearing the performer through the stage mike, the judges on that show are most likely hearing the performer directly, with maybe some amplified fill meant mostly for the show audience. The judges are only about
10 - 15 feet from the performers. I suspect they hear a very different sound, at least in some cases. Some specific performers sound HORRIBLE with certain specific mikes. Others sound great with that same mike!
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"Well, that's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are
strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above
average."
I love the tongue-in-cheek closing credits and the annual joke show.
:-)
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