There's a fella in our area here building a recording studio. I'm looking forward to it's completion since it will be the only DSD capable engineering studio in the state. He gave a brief demo for some of us by bringing in his 'puter, compression equipment, etc., and of course, some quality mics (the real deal) into the basement of a local church. We then brought in a small choir, (13 vocalists and a pianist). After a warm up number they sang for the recording. It was immediately played back raw (he was doing real-time mastering on playback) and boy did it sound terrible (the speakers in the playback system were definitely wanting). After some tweaking it got to where it was sounding ok but it was a powerful example of live vs. recorded. This was completely ad-hoc however, nothing like an actual studio. Still, a fascinating experiment. It demostrated to all of us how difficult it is to reproduce music so it's sounds "live" We tried to hypothesize what was happening. Is it because the sounds from a choir radiate in all directions as does the piano? Are our speakers too small to recreate that? Is it room modes? After all, we weren't in a real studio. It also emphasized how important source is and how difficult the whole recording/engineering/production process is. Fun stuff!
I assume the room was the same for both live and recorded sound. If the speakers weren't positioned in the same location as the live performance, the room will obviously affect the playback sound differently than the live sound. However, with vocals as your primary comparison, you shouldn't have the same problems of omni-directional dispersion that you would find when recording a piano. As your wife constantly points out, she can't hear you when your back is turned.
You've not told us what sounded "terrible" about the playback nor what type of tweaking you did to improve the sound. Those would be important clues as to where the problem originated. How much of the problem could be attributed to microphone placement? I know you're aware that quality mics don't mean squat if you don't know how to use them or don't have the time to set them up properly in any given room.
I've been attending some performances lately that have taken place in good but not great acoustic spaces. Even with that limitation, the power of a live instrument, whether vocal or acoustic, is something that can often make you question many of the "hifi" assumptions you've had for quite some time. The power of a Steinway from ten feet away can be quite amazing when compared to most loudspeakers' ability to change dynamics suddenly. And hall ambience is seldom captured correctly on most contemporary recordings without audiophile labels.
Give us some more information, Tim, and possibly we can narrow this down.
Orchestrals have beed recorded in church halls forever, including singular mic recordings that jan waxes upon with elegance(although studio single mics are much more appropriate). Poor placement? Just a poor recording medium for the application? How many mic's were used? If multi mic'd, was the sortware appropriate for coherence and time alignment? Maybe hard to tell, just checking.
This was just a quick and dirty test and not in the sanctuary, although I understand some very good recordings have been made there. We were in the basement; false ceiling, long narrow room. We originally thought we would do a solo sax player but he hurt his hand and couldn't play. Bringing the choir down from upstairs was happenstance. Only two mics in place, both the main and room mic on the same axis. We got the choir to line up at arms length from the main mic best as possible. The piano was off to the side. I think the piano created the most resonance in the room. It was recorded at 192/24 but when played back at that rate got the tweeters quite agitated. I would hope that if we were serious and knew there would be a choir rather than a sax there would have been multiple microphones rather than just the two. Playback actually sounded better compressed but suffered the loss of much of the dynamics and made the soundstage quite small.
I don't know if this helps or not, but maybe something to consider -
You say the recording sounded bad; how did it sound live? Did it sound much better? If so, where were you standing/sitting? Could it have sounded good where you were, yet bad where the mics were? Maybe you had enough space between you and the singers and piano to be able to differentiate where everything was coming from and everyone had their own space. If you were standing where the mics were,would it still sound the same, or would it have sounded blaring, sharp, and like everyone was on top of each other?
I've seen a lot of live performances in clubs, arenas, etc. Most notably in small venues (esp clubs and bars), the music sounds horrible if I'm right up front. After I back up some, the sounds come together and the music sounds the way it should. Kind of along the same lines as the sound techs being a reasonable distance away from the stage when EQ'ing.
I've also noticed that the bands that allow people to record the performance (I think the Greatful Dead were known for this) usually have the designated section somewhere in the middle of the floor. Whether or not this is for the purpose of sound quality, I have no idea.
The live performance sounded much better than the playback, even after EQ. Everyone in the room said the original playback was terrible but was improved after being tweaked. Still not as accurate a reproduction as we would've hoped for. We each got a copy of the recording to play on our home systems. It sounds better on my system than it did when played back at the church. One thought that was tossed out was room resonance. If a resonance mode occurs at 500Hz, for example, and a recording is made which includes that resonance and is played back (without EQ) in the same room that resonance would be amplified.
Your assumption is correct assuming the signal excited the resonance in the same way during performance and playback. I would make the guess that the playback suffered severely from insufficient reinforcement of the monitor speakers. As with consumer speakers (you haven't said what speakers were actually used in the church basement) studio monitors rely on reflected sounds to fill the space. Too much distance between the tweeter and the reflective walls will give you some very pitiful sound from most speakers that are meant for near field listening. It sounds as if one of the problems was the choice of speaker in that room.
Yeah, and I won't say what brand they are but I've been unimpressed with them from the beginning. They aren't near field monitors but 4 driver, 3 way home audio units. For $4000/pr. I think there are better choices.