I went to a concert of Gare du Nord last Friday, and sat back (front row) once again to perceive the differences with live music versus playback in the listening room.
Btw, for those who auditioned them, what a strange bunch of dutch/belgian those are ... e.g. their mixing console looks from 40 years ago, as well as their equipment, including a vintage Rhodes electric piano and an old M-Audio keyboard fed by a brick adapter. I found no speakers radiating towards the audience, but everything was amplified. It's my guess we were listening to their own monitor speakers, possibly helped by the milk box bose speakers from the theatre (Holland-Kampen) itself.
For their live performance, well, I can't help it, but to me they are a bunch of zombies of barstools. No way they get in touch with the audience, probably incurred by (leader) Barend who IMHO better stay behind the scenes in order not to be so dictatorial and let the other band players more free. Very strange to witness this from otherwise very good music as I know it from their albums.
Also, the drumkit used, with one base drum, one snare, one small power tom and one jazz tom was apparently too few, because it was necessary to support the drummer with drumhits coming from whatever invisible device. Quite disturbing.
But then there was the bass guitar. Apart from my idea that the bass guitarist together with the trumpet player were best of the band, it occurred so much to me that the bass in my listening room s*cks;
Throughout all songs playedhe used two bass guitars (a 5 and a 4 string), and in each occasion - and at any note coming from those guitars (I mean also the high key notes) - I could clearly hear the individual vibes. Added to that the bass was played very profound, IOW with a volume way louder than I perceive it in the listening room. Mind you, not disturbing at all, just more loud, and clearly to me, free of resonance or fumbling (and of course the large space of the theatre contributed to that).
Yesterday I ran the same tracks from the albums I have of them, and there the bass is just "dark sound". Just bassy. No recognition from the instrument, no individual vibes as clear as I heard it on stage.
How can that be ?
Of course, the guy played with his own amplifier and speaker (wherever that resided), but it came to me that it was the speaker doing this. Must be very loose, or with a lightweight diaphragm, I don't know ...
But now there's this :
A few months ago I bought a bass guitar myself, and despite all the (PA) amps and speakers I own, I was advised to buy a dedicated bass guitar amp/speaker. "The energy a bass guitar produces is way beyond everyting else, but if you don't have the proper means for playback you won't even be able to surpass the drum kit" I was told.
And of course, we all know that the energy our bass speakers need is way more than the mid/high, and this kind of comes down to the same. But doesn't it get enough ? don't I hear those vibes because it gets fumbled because of bad acoustics ? do my speakers need better decoupling from the floor ?
NO. Why ? easy, because my own bass guitar with it's dedicated amp DOES produce those vibes. I didn't try it in the listening room, but I'm fairly sure it does. Indeed that (15") speaker has something like being very loose. But it's a PA thing !
On this matter I want to refer to another oddity that always has been occurring to me;
You might not believe it, but for me a good performing system could always be measured by perceiving synthesizers the best. Hmm ... but that's pure electronic "music" ! How come ?
Well, I can't tell about others, but I just own a couple of synthesizers, and it is obvious that I compare with those. Those too obviously play through their own amplification (hence not through my normal audio equipment) and those too play through their PA speakers. Are my "audiophile" speakers too refined, or what ?
We can hardly state that the normal audio equipment have to pass all the music information through one set of amps and speakers, knowing that those synthesizers (and keyboards for that matter) own all the variations of instruments (including drums), thus again all is mixed into one stream of piled music data. So it cannot be that.
Is my DAC worse than the DACs in a keyboard then ? hmm ... I hope not and can't imagine that.
It seems logical that it can be the source (the (ripped) CD and playback of it). And, of course, as we know that *does* matter.
But this is something different. This is about energy.
I am going to do a strange thing; I am going to drag down that bass guitar amplifier and speaker and connect it to the stereo.
Beware if it helps !
