Recording fidelity matters less than room acoustics and head movement for perceived liveness

Evidence

On the surface, it seems ludicrous that 1920 recording and reproduction technology could have fooled audiences into thinking a recording was live. But not so fast—the live and recorded versions may well have been much closer than one might think. The results may speak more about the importance of reverberation and head movement than of fidelity at the source: phonograph, performer, and audience were in the same location in the same room. Supposing the performer had been recorded in a sound studio with little reverberation of its own, the singer and the phonograph sources would have been quite similar, especially with carefully chosen performances. This again suggests that accuracy measured at the microphone and the loudspeaker is overblown in comparison to other psychophysical factors. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 479

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the trees-as-infrastructure theme: it’s about spatial/environmental context over signal fidelity — the room itself does the perceptual work.
• XREF: Connects to One Square Inch of Silence theme that psychoacoustic context outweighs raw audio metrics.