What a night! Sound reproduction is only a glimpse of the real thing. This thought cemented in my head after attending a live concert at The Campus, Remember The Time: The Music of Michael Jackson | Tutti Wind Orchestra
This is a young orchestra founded in 2024, comprises of 60 young musicians who has a daytime job. As the name of orchestra implies, the orchestra has only a wind and percussion sections. A fusion of sound, they collaborate with Jullian Chan Jazz Orchestra on this event. Ticket is selling fast, I somehow managed to get some.
The auditorium hall is a medium size of a wide and shallow shaped hall, accommodating 520 audiences, about half the number of MPO. We were seated in a premium seat.
A little less than 2 hours of Michael Jackson hits. I was taken by surprised by the hall acoustics, untreated ceiling with a visible air ducting and aluminum foil, side walls are of cinema-like absorption panels, a little damped but it's ok. In the contrary to The Music of Queen…Lives On! | MPO MPO sounds pale in comparison. Poor articulation, I fault the sound mixing. From Broadway to Disney: Lea Salonga with the MPO | MPO was great though. PJPAC, not great.
The tunes bring back some nostalgic attachment but the sound quality impressed me. The sound of Jullian Chan Jazz Orchestra injects so much life and drama to the music. I was shook by the sound. Our audio systems, even the finest audio systems struggle to capture the scale, dynamics impact, tonal richness and sheer physical presence of live music. And the bass, I heard the bass. You probably understand why I disregard and care less about audio enthusiasts and audio reviews, they're living in their own fantasy world. They have no ideas of what they're saying, the performance is too wide to be bridged. Our system sound is drastically scaled down in many respects from the real thing. It only serves music as of when and where we wanted to listen, for the sake of convenience.
Go get some experience of live music, you will one day come to thank me for seeing the light. I'm starting to regret my past postings and will leave my audio playback awhile for now, to allow time for my sonic memory to fade and self-deceiving again before the next live music.
