"Andy Evans" wrote in message
...
John Bowers came onto the stage with a clarinet and began to play.
After perhaps two minutes, he took the instrument from his mouth and
the clarinet solo continued. In this case, no one perceived audibly
the seque from live to recorded performance, even though we could see
after a
few seconds what had happened. There was spontaneous applause.

The clarinet is one of the worst examples of a sound that is unique
when acoustic. It's bland, very middle register and contains few
distinguishing features. A drum kit or as said by one poster a piano
are much more distinctive when acoustic and un-recorded - you need
complex overtones and subtle harmonics as well as some percussive
element to show attack.


Quite a few years ago I went to an "Evening with Quad" in a church hall
somewhere. The fairly elderly presenter gave an interesting and instructive
talk, and at one point went into the wings and returned with a tenor sax on
which he played some very good jazz. After a minute or so a couple of stage
hands came on carrying the cling-film dust cover from an ESL63, which they
slowly raised in front of him until he and the sax were isolated from the
audience. They then slowly took it away; the presenter stopped playing
after another minute or so, acknowledged the applause and explained that the
object of the exercise was to demonstrate that the film was absolutely
acoustically transparent, which was why there was no difference whatsoever
in the sound. Cue oohs and aahs from the audience, and more applause.
Well, most of them, anyway. I and a few others sat looking puzzled. To me,
it was as if he had been playing in a room, and someone had shut the door
then opened it again. OK, that's an exaggeration, but to me there was a
very noticeable difference. When I got home I took the film covers off my
own ESL63s (the metal protection covers had already been removed once my
daughter was old enough to be trusted not to poke sharp metal objects
through the cloth, and that made a huge difference) and on a variety of
sources confirmed to my own satisfaction that I preferred the sound
"without".

I did try going the whole hog by removing the "socks" - very little audible
difference, but (a) they looked hideous in a listening room which doubled as
a living room and (b) every fly in Surrey immediately developed Kamikaze
tendencies. Anyone remember those strange frightening blue devices that
butchers used to hang on their walls to attract then zap bluebottles...?

The presenter also talked about the huge range of the Quad speakers, from DC
to light, and why there was absolutely no need to use any form of sub, but
the examples he gave were frankly ridiculous and bore no relation to my own
experience - but that's a whole 'nuther story. I concluded that he was a
"Quaddie", the anditote to the "Linnies" who were just becoming famous.

Geoff MacK