This evening as I was walking along 8th Street I realized that I was hearing live music. I looked around to see who might be singing and playing the guitar. There was a group of people sitting outside an entrance, and I looked over as I approached to see if one of them had a guitar. But no, they were just sitting around talking – no guitar and no singing.<\/p>\n
But when I passed the entrance, I looked inside and saw it was a coffee shop. Way in the back was a guy singing into a microphone and playing his guitar to entertain the diners – not an uncommon sight. Mystery solved.<\/p>\n
But then I got to thinking – how had I known it was live music, from clear up the block? The music I’d heard had travelled from the back of the coffee shop out into the street – I was still a good fifty feet up the sidewalk when I first heard it and realized I was hearing live music. And I hadn’t just suspected I was hearing live music, as opposed to a recording. I had been certain<\/i> of it.<\/p>\n
If the guy had been singing without an amp, it would have been easy to explain the difference. There’s all kinds of phase information in live audio that gets flattened, distorted or just plain lost when played back through a speaker. Humans are extremely good at detecting subtle textures in sound, and the difference between a live sound source and the poor substitute of playback through stereo speakers is quite dramatic.<\/p>\n
But the guy I’d heard was singing into a microphone. I wasn’t hearing his voice and guitar directly – I was hearing music coming out of an amplifier and speaker. So why was it so obvious, even from all the way up the block, that I was hearing a live performance?<\/p>\n
I have some theories, but I’m curious to know if anyone else has any thoughts on the subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This evening as I was walking along 8th Street I realized that I was hearing live music. I looked around to see who might be singing and playing the guitar. There was a group of people sitting outside an entrance, and I looked over as I approached to see if one of them had a … Continue reading “Live music”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1860,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859\/revisions\/1860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}