Recorded audio is engineered for plausibility, not faithful reproduction of reality

Evidence

Audio content production seldom strives to relay faithfully the listening experience of a real acoustic scenario, such as a musical concert. Even the recordings from live concerts are processed to produce a ‘good-sounding’ and plausible result, and typically an authentic reproduction of a live event is not the goal. By plausible we mean that the perceived features of the reproduced audio are believable and correspond well with listeners’ expectations in the given context. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1801

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s earlier theme of perceptual rather than physical sound — audio targets listener expectations, not acoustic truth. — connects to: Perfect technical reproduction makes any intended meaning in film sound false — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 164; Ubiquitous taping destroys the illusion that an unmediated real exists — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 769