Phonography (tankar um tónleik #29 - Evan Eisenberg)

"The word 'record’ is misleading. Only live recordings record an event; studio recordings, which are the great majority, record nothing. Pieced together from bits of actual events, they construct an ideal event. They are like the composite photograph of a minotaur. Yet Edison chose the word deliberately. He meant his invention to record grandparents' voices, business transactions and, as a last resort, musical performances. The use we put it to now might strike him as fraudulent, like doctoring the records.
One might compile a whole lexicon of deceptive phrases connected with the phonograph. […] This goes for the synthesis of sound as well. If you hear a Moog-synthesized clarinet you can say ‘That’s  the sound of a clarinet’ but not ‘That’s a clarinet’. And it certainly goes for the phonograph. If you hear a sound and say ‘Is that a clarinet I hear in the next room?’ I can answer, ‘No, it’s a record’. If you say ‘That’s the sound of a clarinet’, I can only agree. How could I call it ‘the sound of a record’? There is no such thing.
Or is there? ‘How would you like to hear music at home the way the engineer hears it in the studio? The Magnavox Compact Disc …. It’s like being in a recording studio.’ From a traditional point of view this advertisement is astonishing. The ideal is no longer live music, but some technologic Platonic form. But this makes perfect sense in terms of phonography, particularly the pop variety. Rock music in concert tends to sound like a crude impersonation of a record.
One is supposed to judge a stereo system by comparing its sound to live music. If the music one listens to is pure phonography - a pure studio product - that is impossible. One must either rely on laboratory measurements, or follow one’s tastes without regard for accuracy. The first course is unsatisfying; the second is general among pop listeners and is said to have produced a vogue of ‘artificial’ sound - excessively bright, with an emphasis on the extreme treble and bass - among speaker manufacturers. But if producers use these as studio reference speakers, then these are the proper vehicles of their sonic intentions.
Even in the classical sphere, live music is only one touchstone of recorded sound. Fidelity itself is a vexatious concept. A producer might attempt to make a record in Carnegie Hall that, when played back in Carnegie Hall, would fool a blindfolded audience. To do this he would have to remove most of the hall’s natural resonance from the recording, lest it multiply itself and muffle the music. The resulting record would sound dismal in a living room. The orchestra would not sound like an orchestra, because it would lack the associated ambience. Yet it would be faithful, in a sense, to the original. On the other hand, a record that captures all the resonance of Carnegie Hall may overwhelm a living room. So most studio recordings try to strike a balance."

-Evan Eisenberg, 1987. The Recording Angel: Music, Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa, Yale University Press (Second Edition 2005), s. 89-90.