In the world of Hi-Fi, much is made about getting as close to the live performance or what the artist/ producer had in mind in the studio. The tricky thing is, unless you were fortunate enough to have been in the mixing room or at the performance immortalised on tape, judging whether or not a particular system is recreating those moments is down to personal opinion, most of the time.

That is unless you attend the Live vs. Recorded Event at the UK Audio Show 2023, hosted by The Audio Consultants.

The Audio Consultants have hosted two musical events over the last nine months in collaboration with Cresent Records, a recording studio in Swindon. Together with the studio's renowned recording engineer Damon Sawyer, they have presented a live performance to an invited audience that was recorded, balanced and rapidly mixed to a first master within an hour.

This was printed to a CD-R and played back in the same recording space through an audio system selected and set up by The Audio Consultants. According to the attendees, the result was remarkably close to that enjoyed as a live performance.

Alan West

The Audio Consultants plan to do the same at The Staverton Park Hotel, albeit with some aspects being completed remotely. That said, we have it on good authority that Damon Sawyer and the AC team have worked out a way to present this at this UK Audio Show.

The recording session will occur on Saturday, October 7th, between 11am and 1pm in The Cedar Suite. Naturally, a limited number of tickets will be available for this closed-door event. The same ticket holders will then be invited back during the afternoon to hear the recording played back through The Audio Consultants' audio system.

Mim Grey

Mim Grey and Alan West are the musicians taking part in this audio experiment. Mim is best known for being “the most beautiful voice to come out of the UK for a long time”. Her music is sensuous, soulful, county-influenced, “a subtle fusion of Joni, James Talyor and John Mayer”. Meanwhile, Alan has been regarded as having one of the finest country music voices to come out of the UK. His emotional yet informative way of singing a story has moved many worldwide audiences.

After the closed-door sessions, all visitors can hear Mim and Alan performing live during the late afternoon of Saturday, with Sunday given over to enjoying The Audio Consultants demo systems, which will include components from Golden Ear, GutWire Cables, Hegel, HRS, Luxman, Origin Live, Ophidian, Puritan Audio Labs.

Visit UK Audio Show 2023 for Tickets