At the risk of flogging a well tanned horse: we *recognise* a voice from higher frequencies than the fundamental, from idiosyncracies of attack, release and everything inbetween. But just as a recognizable face on a television screen is only a substitute for the real thing, robbed of depth (and, I suppose, the ability to respond to *us*): so the recorded voice, in an (perhaps imperfectly captured) acoustical evironment that contradicts that of our living room, with a different electronic response curve to the gamut of frequencies than our ears. I remember as a kid pretending to be an operatic tenor on the radio - the first thing you do is constrict your throat to mimic the response of the one-and-one-half inch speaker of the transistor radio. Today the distortions are different, but just as misleading, particularily if you have a sub-woofer! john
At 01:20 PM 7/3/01 -0400, you wrote: ... we can compare bad live >recordings of famous singers with their studio recordings and not have a >problem recognizing them as the same singer (and when i say that, i mean with >regard to how they sing and generally, what they sound like) so, we can look >at those aspects of our performances and those of the big stars and compare >those elements that are little affected by recording quality. even on a >piece of crap, we will recognize a great singer's ability. > >mike
John Blyth Baritono robusto e lirico Brandon, Manitoba, Canada
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