Apparently you two guys didn't read the first part! : )ubertar wrote:The way you're setting things up, there's no way to compare anything. Two listeners hearing the same "Real Life" sounds are going to perceive them differently. No "Real Life" sound can be repeated exactly the same, so this becomes a "tree falling in the forest" navel-gazing exercise.dfuruta wrote:Yes, but this is assuming a priori that your reference recording isn't losing anything from the original acoustic event, which is in fact the question, isn't it? I mean, you can certainly use this method to learn how two different technologies emphasize different things, but I fail to see how this helps with comparison to Real Life, unless you're able to assume that some reference format is Close Enough, in which case you've already won.fossiltooth wrote:Easy: You just split the signal out to two separate recorders. For instance, you could send bus 1-2 to a tape machine and bus 3-4 to a digital recorder, and bus 5-6 out to a lathe, wax cylinder, or wire recorder.
You could also use a pre-recorded acoustic event. Something that you can play through a speaker and compare results to. What you're testing for here is the relative amount of change from this original recording.
That means you simply put up a microphone, feed it into a preamp, and send the output of that preamp to any number of capture devices. You can do this by using simple busses, and you can easily do it during an actual live event. This is audio engineering 101. All you need is one live source, one mic, and the ability to send that signal to more than one place. (You can then compare your recorders to eachother, as well as to the original analog voltage in the circuit before it even hits either recorder.)fossiltooth wrote:Easy: You just split the signal out to two separate recorders. For instance, you could send bus 1-2 to a tape machine and bus 3-4 to a digital recorder, and bus 5-6 out to a lathe, wax cylinder, or wire recorder.dfuruta wrote:I'd be curious to hear about the procedure for measuring a recording's accuracy to the acoustic event being recorded. I'm sure there's an easy way to do this, but it's not occuring to me.
After that, I went on to say that, yes, you can also do a similar kind of test with a pre-recorded source rather than a live source. And that kind of test is also valid. You can still compare how much change you have from your original source recording. If you prefer doing this test with a live source, then sure, that's even better.
But why not do both? Oh, wait: People have. Many, many times. The scientific method was not invented yesterday! It's how all the stuff you record with was invented -- from the wax cylinder to the laptop. You're welcome to try these kinds of tests as well! What's "navel-gazing" is making assumptions without testing them. Honest, rigorous experimentation is the exact opposite of that. : )