ReadMEOnline

I’ve figured out why music sounds so much clearer and snappier at smaller venues like pubs than at larger ones.

The I reason I found is only the vocals are miked, the drums are loud enough without any amplification, they are actually too loud so the rest of the music also has to be loud to keep up.

The bass and guitars don’t go through the PA system either. Their own amps and cabs are used. They have to be adjusted separately to have the right volume to maintain balance.

So basically the instruments are either not amplified or separately amplified and the sound is mixed acoustically, by the room. similarly to fully acoustic instruments.

That puts and end to a long discussion with my audiophile and anti-audiophile friends about why live gigs sound so good without using exotic cables, and all the highest quality components.

Unlike with reproduced or full PA music, it’s not the whole mix that is amplified and then played back to the room through stereo speakers or speaker systems but individual instruments or nothing if they are loud enough acoustically.

It is not hard to see that it’s easier to maintain sound quality that way than trying to squeeze everything in a SINGLE signal (ok it’s two for stereo with those two required to remain unaltered both on their own and in relation to each other) then trying to restore it, involving multiple electro-mechanic-acoustical (mikes and speakers) transducing that are far from being perfect, expecting it to be similar to the original, when the delicate harmonic details and their decays do not only have to be maintained for each instrument to reproduce the right timbre, but for the whole mass, including the right timing between different instruments to maintain the spatial cues, separation, air, etc. The smallest change to that signal will result in multiple and magnified errors in different aspects of the restored sound.

It is also clear that while the PA engineer has a wide range of options to make changes to the sound at a live gig, after mastering and storing the music on the final media or in the final format, the music listener doesn’t have many ways to alter anything, they have to get the most out of that finalised recording. That’s why the quality of each component of a music reproduction system matters so much and has to be the best quality, including cables and why live PA is less sensitive to component quality.

Also, at small venues you are in the close field and the highs that attenuate with distance are still all there, the transients are fast and snappy. No smearing at all.

So that’s why small venues usually sound best. They might be too loud and too shimmery for some as the cymbals are the loudest and everything must be levelled with them. Depending of the size and the acoustical treatment of the place this can result in very high volume levels.

Theatre size venues also sound good but stadiums less so where you are clearly out of the close field so the highs and the transients are severely rolled and rounded off and the longer reverb times become like echo long smearing the bass too.