HERE IS AN INTERESTING QUOTE / STORY I FOUND ON THE INTERNET:
It's by a gentleman called Mike McLean.
Mike McLean Held the position of Engineering Department Head at Motown Record Corporation, in Detroit, from summer, 1961 until sometime in 1970. he also worked for Motown from January, 1961 until April, 1972. During most of this period, it was his responsibility to provide the physical equipment that was used to record Motown product.
Start quote:
"In the early days at Motown, I had a big stereo speaker system at home (a pair of Bozak B-310A systems) that I thought were really great. One day, I had an opportunity to record a big jazz band in connection with my duties: Choker Campbell and his band. A very special trumpet player was part of this occasion. Sadly, I can't think of his name, even tho Hah! It came to me: Marcus Belgrave!
I used a Neumann SM-2 (nickel membrane) "MS" stereo condenser microphone and an Ampex 351-2 two track 1/4 inch tape recorder (This was the now "sitting around" machine that was the "multitrack" that Robert Bateman was using to do his good work when I arrived at Motown.) The sound of that band was just fantastic, and I had a pair of Beyer DT-48 headphones for monitoring purposes. It was a remote recording made at the Graystone Ballroom, on Woodward Ave. in Detroit, which Motown had just purchased: a huge dance hall.
I did some experimenting whereby I placed my head directly above the microphone and alternately listened to the direct sound of the band, and then, by putting on the headphones, to the recorded sound. Except for the change in spatial perspective (the sound was inside my head instead of in front of me) associated with the headphones, the basic quality, and timbre of the sound was virtually identical. I remember being very pleased by the precision of this successful direct comparison.
I could hardly wait to get home and play the tape on our big Bozak (each speaker was driven by a vacuum tube McIntosh MI-200AB 200 Watt industrial amplifier) stereo system. This was really going to be the last word, because our system was just fantastic (or so I thought at the time.) As long as I live, I will never forget how utterly disappointed I was when I played the tape. The sound was a ghastly caricature of what I had heard earlier that day in the dance hall. The bass was boomy. The lower mid-range sounded honky (no pun intended,) like a rain barrel. The mid-range had a coloration that resembled that sound produced when you tap a piece of cardboard with the tips of your fingers. The high end had a horrible coloration that was like the sound of fingernails scratching the surface of a Ping-Pong ball, along with just a touch of rattling tin foil. I almost broke into tears: I was so horrified.
In desperation, I put on the Beyer headphones, and at once I heard again the magnificence of the original, live sound. Right then and there, I learned, with the impact of a lightning bolt, how easy it is for an amateur audiophile to become totally deluded about sound. Lack of objectivity, and delusion, are rampant in the audiophile field. Most professionals eventually learn the hard way, like I did, that this possibility of self-delusion exists, and learn to use scientific techniques to avoid it. Up until that horrible moment, I really believed, from the bottom of my heart, that my Dad and I had a high quality sound system. In an instant, I recognized that our system was actually of quite poor quality."
END QUOTE.
What do you make of that ?
